Online Encyclopedia

main to the gradually developing characteristics of the product, quel literary. The precise delimitation of what may narrowly be called " English " literature, i.e. in the English See also:

LANGUAGE (adapted from the Fr. langage, from langue, tongue, Lat. lingua)

language, is perhaps impossible, and separate articles are devoted to See also:

AMERICAN

American literature (q.v.), and to the See also:

VERNACULAR (Lat. verna, dim. vernaculus, a slave horn in his master's house)

vernacular literatures of See also:

Scotland (see SCOTLAND; and See also:

CELT: Literature), See also:

Ireland (see CELT: Literature), and See also:

WALES (Cymru, Gwalia, Cambria)

Wales (see CELT: Literature); see also See also:

CANADA

CANADA: Literature. Reference may also be made to such See also:

general articles on particular forms as NOVEL; See also:

ROMANCE

ROMANCE; See also:

VERSE (from Lat. versus, literally a line or furrow drawn by turning the plough, from vertere, and afterwards signifying an arrangement of syllables into feet)

VERSE, &C. I. EARLIEST TIMES TO CHAUCER English literature, in the etymological sense of the word, had, so far as we know, no existence until See also:

Christian times. There is no See also:

EVIDENCE (Lat. evidentia, evideri, to appear clearly)

evidence either that the See also:

HEATHEN

heathen English had adopted the See also:

ROMAN

Roman See also:

ALPHABET (see also WRITING)

alphabet, or that they had learned to employ their native monumental script (the See also:

RUNES, RUNIC LANGUAGE AND INSCRIPTIONS

runes) on materials suitable for the See also:

writing of continuous compositions of considerable length. It is, however, certain that in the pre-literary period at least one See also:

SPECIES

species of poetic See also:

art had, attained a high degree of development, and that an extensive See also:

BODY

body of See also:

POETRY

poetry was handed down—not, indeed, with See also:

ABSOLUTE (Lat. absolvere, to loose, set free)

absolute fixity of form or substance—from See also:

GENERATION (from Lat. generare, to beget, procreate; genus, stock, race)

generation to generation. This unwritten poetry was the work of minstrels who found their audiences in the halls of See also:

KINGS, FIRST AND SECOND BOOKS OF

kings and nobles. Its themes were the exploits of heroes belonging to the royal houses of Germanic See also:

EUROPE

Europe, with which its listeners claimed kinship.

Its See also:

METRE ((terpuc?, sc. rFxvf, from Gr. Or poi', measure)

metre was the alliterative See also:

long See also:

LINE

line, the lax See also:

RHYTHM (Greek pvBµds, from bap, to flow)

rhythm of which shows that it was intended, not to be sung to See also:

REGULAR

regular melodies, but to be recited—probably with some. See also:

KIND (O. E. ge-cynde, from the same root as is seen in " kin," supra)

kind of instrumental See also:

ACCOMPANIMENT (i.e. that which " accompanies ")

accompaniment. Of its beauty and See also:

POWER [WILLIAM GRATTAN] TYRONE (1797-1841)

power we may See also:

JUDGE (Lat. judex, Fr. juge)

judge from the best passages in See also:

BEOWULF

Beowulf (q.v.); for there can be little doubt that this poem gained nothing and lost See also:

RANCH

ranch in the See also:

PROCESS

process of literary redaction. The See also:

CONVERSION (Lat. conversio, from convertere, to turn or ,change)

conversion of the See also:

PEOPLE

people to See also:

CHRISTIANITY

Christianity necessarily involved the decline of the minstrelsy that celebrated the glories of heathen times. Yet the descendants of See also:

WODEN

Woden, even when they were devout Christians, would not easily lose all interest in the achievements of their kindred of former days. Chaucer's knowledge of " the See also:

SONG

song of See also:

Wade " is one See also:

PROOF (in M. Eng. preove, proeve, preve, &°c., from O. Fr . prueve, proeve, &c., mod. preuve, Late. Lat. proba, probate, to prove, to test the goodness of anything, probus, good)

proof among others that even so See also:

LATE

late as the l4th century the deeds of Germanic heroes had not ceased to be recited in See also:

MINSTREL

minstrel verse. The paucity of the extant remains of Old English heroic poetry is no See also:

ARGUMENT

argument to the contrary. The wonder is that any of it has survived at all. We may well believe that the professional reciter would, as a See also:

RULE

rule, be jealous of any See also:

ATTEMPT (Lat. adtemptare, attentare, to try)

attempt to commit to writing the poems which he had received by tradition or had himself composed. The See also:

clergy, to whom we owe the writing and the preservation of the Old English See also:

MSS., would only in rare instances be keenly interested in See also:

SECULAR (Lat. saecularis, of or belonging to an age or generation, saeculum)

secular poetry. We possess, in fact, portions of four narrative poems, treating of heroic legend—Beowulf, Widsith, Finnesburh and Waldere. The second of these has no poetical merit, but great archaeological interest: It is an enumeration of the famous kings known to See also:

German tradition, put into the mouth of a minstrel (named Widsith, " far-travelled "), who claims to have been at many of their courts and to have been rewarded by them for his song. The See also:

list includes See also:

HISTORICAL

historical persons such as See also:

ERMANARIC (fl. 350-376)

Ermanaric and See also:

ALBOIN (d. 572 or 573)

Alboin, who really lived centuries apart, but (with the usual See also:

CHRONOLOGICAL

chronological vagueness of tradition) are treated as contemporaries.

The extant fragment of Finnesburh (5o lines) is a brilliant See also:

BATTLE

battle piece, belonging to a See also:

story of which another See also:

PART

part is introduced episodically in Beowulf. Waldere, of which we have two fragments (together 68 lines) is concerned with Frankish and Burgundian traditions based on events of the 5th century; the See also:

hero is the " See also:

WALTHARIUS

Waltharius " of Ekkehart's famous Latin epic. The English poem may possibly be rather a literary See also:

composition than a genuine example of minstrel poetry, but the portions that have survived are hardly inferior to the best passages of Beowulf. It may reasonably be assumed that the same minstrels who entertained the English kings and nobles with the See also:

RECITAL (from Lat. recitare, to read out, particularly of a public document)

recital of See also:

ancient heroic traditions would also celebrate in verse the See also:

MARTIAL (MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIALIS)

martial deeds of their own patrons and their immediate. ancestors. Probably there may have existed an abundance of poetry commemorative of events in the See also:

CONQUEST

conquest of See also:

BRITAIN (Gr. Hperavuml vi7vot, Bperravia; Lat. Britannia, rarely Britannia)

Britain and the struggle with the Danes. Two examples only have survived, both belonging to the loth century: The Battle of Brunanburh, which has been greatly over-praised by critics who were unaware that its striking phrases and compounds are See also:

mere traditional echoes; and the Battle of See also:

MALDEN

Malden, the work of a truly great poet, of which unhappily only a fragment has been preserved. One of the marvels of See also:

HISTORY

history is the rapidity and thoroughness with which Christian See also:

CIVILIZATION

civilization was adopted by the English. See also:

Augustine landed in 597; See also:

FORTY

forty years later was See also:

BORN, IGNAZ, EDLER VON (1742–1791)

born an English-See also:

man, See also:

ALDHELM (c. 640-709)

Aldhelm, who in the See also:

JUDGMENT

judgment of his contemporaries throughout the Christian See also:

WORLD

world was the most accomplished See also:

SCHOLAR, SCHOLARSHIP

scholar and the finest Latin writer of his See also:

time. In the next generation England produced in See also:

Bede (Bwda) a man who in solidity and variety of knowledge,. and in literary power, had for centuries no See also:

RIVAL

rival in Europe. Aldhelm and Bede are known to us only from their Latin writings, though the former is recorded to have written vernacular poetry of great merit. The extant Old English literature is almost entirely Christian, for the poems that belong to an earlier period have been expurgated and interpolated in a Christian sense. From the writings that have survived, it would seem as if men strove to forget that England had ever been heathen.

The four deities whose names are attached to the days of the See also:

WEEK (from A.S. wicu, Germanic *wikon, probably=change, turn)

week are hardly mentioned at all. The names Thunor and Tiw are sometimes used to translate the Latin See also:

JUPITER

Jupiter and See also:

Mars; Woden has his See also:

PLACE (through Fr. from Lat. platea, street; Gr. IrAar6s, wide)

place (but not as a See also:

god) in the genealogies of the kings, and his name occurs once in a magical poem, but that is all. Bede, as a historian, is obliged to tell the story of the conversion; but the only native divinities he mentions are the goddesses Hreth and Eostre, and all welearn about them'is that they gave their names to frrethemonath (See also:

March) and See also:

EASTER

Easter. That superstitious practices of heathen origin long survived among the people is shown by the acts of See also:

church See also:

COUNCILS

councils and by a few poems of a magical nature that have been preserved; but, so far as can be discovered, the definite See also:

WORSHIP (i.e. " worth-ship," O. Eng. weor8scipe)

worship of the ancient gods quickly died out. English heathenism perished' without leaving a See also:

RECORD (Lat. recordari, to recall to mind, from cor, heart or mind)

record. The Old English religious poetry was written, probably without exception, in the See also:

CLOISTER (Lat. claustrum; Fr. cloitre; Ital. chiostro; Span. claustro; Ger. Kloster)

cloister, and by men who were See also:

FAMILIAR (through the Fr. familier, from Lat. familiaris, of or belonging to the familia, family)

familiar with the See also:

Bible and with Latin devotional literature. Setting aside the wonderful See also:

DREAM (from a root dreug, connected with Germ. trugen, to deceive)

Dream of the See also:

ROOD (O.E. rod, a stick, another form of " rod, O.E. rodd, possibly cognate with Lat. rudis, a staff)

Rood, it gives little evidence of high poetic See also:

GENIUS (from Lat. genere, gignere)

genius, though much of it is marked by a degree of culture and refinement that we should hardly have expected. Its material and thought are mainly derived from Latin See also:

SOURCES

sources; its expression is imitated from the native heroic poetry. Considering that a great deal of Latin verse was written by English-men in the 7th and succeeding centuries, and that in one or two poems the line is actually composed of an English and a Latin hemistich rhyming together, it seems See also:

STRANGE, SIR ROBERT (1721-1792)

strange that the Latin See also:

INFLUENCE (Late Lat. influentia, from influere, to flow in)

influence on Old English versification should have been so small. The alliterative long line is throughout the only metre employed, and although the See also:

LAWS

laws of See also:

ALLITERATION (from Lat. ad, to, and littera, letter)

alliteration and rhythm were less rigorously obeyed in the later than in the earlier poetry, there is no trace of approximation to the structure of Latin verse. It is true that, owing to See also:

IMITATION (Lat. imitatio, from intitari, to imitate)

imitation of the Latin See also:

HYMNS

hymns of the church, See also:

RHYME

rhyme came gradually to be more and more frequently used as an See also:

ORNAMENT (Lat. ornare, to adorn)

ornament of Old English verse; but it remained an ornament only, and never became an essential feature. The only poem in which rhyme is employed throughout is one in which sense is so completely sacrificed to See also:

sound that a See also:

TRANSLATION

translation would hardly be possible.

It was not only in metrical respects that the Old English religious poetry remained faithful to its native See also:

MODELS

models. The imagery and the diction are mainly those of the old heroic poetry, and in some of the poems See also:

Christ and the See also:

SAINTS, BATTLE OF THE

saints are presented, often very incongruously, under the aspect of Germanic warriors. Nearly all the religious poetry that has any considerable religious value seems to have been written in See also:

NORTHUMBRIA (regnum Northanhymbrorum)

Northumbria during the 8th century. The remarkably vigorous poem of See also:

JUDITH, THE BOOK OF

Judith, however, is certainly much later; and the See also:

Exodus, though See also:

early, seems to be of See also:

SOUTHERN

southern origin. For a detailed See also:

account of the Old English sacred poetry, the reader is referred to the articles on C2E1MON and CYNEwurr, to one or other of whom nearly every one of the poems, except those of obviously late date, has at some time been attributed. The See also:

RIDDLES (A.S. raedan, to interpret)

Riddles (q.v.) of the See also:

Exeter See also:

BOOK

Book resemble the religious poetry in being the work of scholars, but they See also:

bear much more decidedly the impress of the native English See also:

CHARACTER (Gr. xapareri7p, from xap&crew, to scratch)

character. Some of them See also:

RANK (O.Fr. rant or rent, mod. rang, generally connected with the O.E. and O.H.G. bring, a ring)

rank among the most See also:

ARTISTIC

artistic and pleasing productions of Old English poetry. The Exeter Book contains also several pieces of a gnomic character, conveying proverbial instruction in morality and worldly See also:

WISDOM, BOOK OF, or WISDOM OF SOLOMON (Sept. Io4ia IaXwµwvos; Lat. Vulg. Liber sapientiae)

wisdom. Their morality is Christian, but it is not unlikely that some of the See also:

wise sayings they contain may have come down by tradition from heathen times. The very curious See also:

DIALOGUE

Dialogue of See also:

Solomon and See also:

Saturn may be regarded as belonging to the same class. The most See also:

ORIGINAL

original and interesting portion of the Old English literary poetry is the See also:

GROUP

group of dramatic monologues—The Banished Wife's Complaint, The See also:

HUSBAND

Husband's See also:

MESSAGE (a word occurring in slightly different forms in several languages, e.g. Fr. message, Span. mensaje, Ital. messagio; adapted from the Low Lat. missaticum, from mittere)

Message, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Deor and Wulf and Eadwacer. The date of these compositions is uncertain, though their occurrence in the Exeter Book shows that they cannot be later than the loth century.

That they are all of one period is at least unlikely, but they are all marked by the same See also:

PECULIAR

peculiar See also:

TONE, THEOBALD WOLFE (1763-1798)

tone of pathos. The monodramatic form renders it difficult to obtain a clear See also:

IDEA (Gr. Ibia, connected with i&eiv, to see; cf. Lat. species from specere, to look at)

idea of the situation of the supposed speakers. It is not improbable that most of these poems may relate to incidents of heroic See also:

LEGEND (through the French from the med. Lat. legenda, things to be read, from legere, to read)

legend, with which the original readers were presumed to be acquainted. This, however, can be definitely affirmed only in the See also:

case of the two See also:

SHORT, FRANCIS JOB (1857– )

short pieces—Deor and Wulf and Eadwacerwhich have something of a lyric character, being the only examples in Old English of strophic structure and the use of the refrain. Wulf and Eadwacer, indeed, exhibits a still further development in the same direction, the monotony of the long line metre being varied by the See also:

ADMISSION

admission of short lines formed by the suppression of the second hemistich. The highly See also:

DEVELOPED

developed art displayed in this remarkable poem gives See also:

REASON (Lat. ratio, through French raison)

reason for believing that the existing remains of Old English poetry very inadequately represent its extent and variety. While the origins of English poetry go back to heathen times, English See also:

PROSE

prose may be said to have had its effective beginning in the reign of See also:

ALFRED

Alfred. It is of course true that vernacular prose of some kind was written much earlier. The English laws of tEthelberht of See also:

Kent, though it is perhaps unlikely that they were written down, as is commonly supposed, in the lifetime of Augustine (died A.D. 604), or even in that of the See also:

king (d. 616), were well known to Bede; and even in the 12th-century transcript that has come down to us, their crude and elliptical See also:

style gives evidence of their high antiquity. Later kings of Kent and of Wessex followed the example of See also:

PUBLISHING

publishing their laws in the native See also:

TONGUE (O. Eng. lunge)

tongue.

Bede is known to have translated the beginning of the See also:

GOSPEL (O. Eng. godspel, i.e. good news, a translation of Lat. bona annuntiatio, or evangelium, Gr. evayyeXwv; cf. Goth. iu spillon, " to announce good news," Ulfilas' translation of the Greek, from iu, that which is good, and spellon to announce)

gospel of See also:

John (down to vi. 9). The early part of the Anglo-Saxon See also:

CHRONICLE (from Gr. Xpovos, time)

Chronicle (q.v.) is probably founded partly on prose See also:

ANNALS (Annales, from annus, a year)

annals of pre-Alfredian date. But although the amount of English prose written between the beginning of the 7th and the middle of the 9th century may have been consider-able, Latin continued to be regarded as the appropriate vehicle for See also:

WORKS

works of any literary pretension. If the English clergy had retained the scholarship which they possessed in the days of Aldhelm and Bede, the creation of a vernacular prose literature would probably have been longer delayed; for while Alfred certainly was not indifferent to the need of the laity for instruction, the evil that he was chiefly concerned to combat was the See also:

IGNORANCE (Lat. ignorantia, from ignorare, not to know); want of knowledge, a state of mind which in law has important consequences. A well-known legal maxim runs: ignorantia juris non excusat ("ignorance of the law does not excuse")

ignorance of their spiritual guides. Of the works translated by him and the scholars whom he employed, St See also:

Gregory's See also:

PASTORAL (from Lat. pastor, a shepherd)

Pastoral Care and his Dialogues (the latter rendered by See also:

Bishop Werferth) are expressly addressed to the priesthood; if the other See also:

TRANSLATIONS

translations were intended for a wider circle of readers, they are all (not excepting the secular History of See also:

OROSIUS, PAULUS (fl. 415)

Orosius) essentially religious in purpose and spirit. In the interesting See also:

PREFACE (Med. Lat. prefatia, for classical praefatio, praefari, to speak beforehand)

preface to the Pastoral Care, in the important accounts of See also:

NORTHERN

Northern lands and peoples inserted in the Orosius, and in the See also:

FREE

free rendering and amplification of the See also:

CONSOLATION (Fr. consolation, Lat. consolatio, from consolari, to assuage, comfort, console)

Consolation of Boethius and of the Soliloquies of Augustine, Alfred appears as an original writer. Other fruits of his activity are his Laws (preceded by a collection of those of his 7th-century predecessor, See also:

Ine of Wessex), and the beginnings of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: The Old English prose after Alfred is entirely of derical author-See also:

SHIP

ship; even the Laws, so far as their literary form is concerned, are hardly to be regarded as an exception. Apart from the Chronicle (see ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE), the bulk of this literature consists of translations from Latin and of homilies and saints' lives, the substance of which is derived from sources mostly accessible to us in their original form; it has therefore for us little importance except from the philological point of view. This remark may be applied, in the main, even to the writings of lElfric, notwithstanding the great interest which attaches to his brilliant achievement in the development of the capacities of the native language for literary expression. The translation of the gospels, though executed in A lfric's time (about moo), is by other hands. The sermons of his younger contemporary, See also:

ARCHBISHOP (Lat. archiepiscopus, from Gr. apxceatorcoros)

Archbishop See also:

Wulfstan, are marked by earnestness and eloquence, and contain some passages of historical value.

From the early years of the 11th century we possess an encyclopaedic See also:

MANUAL

manual of the See also:

SCIENCE (Lat. scientia, from scire; to learn, know)

science of the time—chronology, See also:

ASTRONOMY (from Gr. &arpov, a star, and v ,usiv, to classify or arrange)

astronomy, See also:

ARITHMETIC (Gr. apeOµ7run7, sc. TEXVn, the art of counting, from (ipLBµos, number)

arithmetic, metre, See also:

RHETORIC (Gr. psroperctj TEXvq, the art of the orator)

rhetoric and ethics—by the See also:

monk Byrhtferth, a See also:

PUPIL (Lat. pupillus, orphan, minor, dim. of pupus, boy, allied to puer, from root pm- or peu-, to beget, cf. "pupa," Lat. for " doll," the name given to the stage intervening between the larval and imaginal stages in certain insects)

pupil of See also:

ABBE (Serbo-Croatian Rai))

Abbe of See also:

Fleury. It is a compilation, but executed with intelligence. The numerous works on See also:

MEDICINE

medicine, the properties of herbs, and the like, are in the main composed of selections from Latin See also:

TREATISES

treatises; so far as they are original, they illustrate the history of superstition rather than that of science. It is interesting to observe that they contain one or two formulas of incantations in Irish. Two famous works of fiction, the romance of See also:

APOLLONIUS

Apollonius of See also:

TYRE (Phoen. and Hebr. =" rock," Assyr. S'urru, Egypt. Dara, Early Lat. Sarra)

Tyre and the See also:

LETTER (through Fr. lettre from Lat. littera or litera, letter of the alphabet; the origin of the Latin word is obscure; it has probably no connexion with the root of linere, to smear, i.e. with wax, for an inscription with a stilus)

Letter of See also:

Alexander, which in their Latin form had IX. 20much influence on the later literature of Europe, were Englished in thellth century with considerable skill. To the same period belongs the, curious See also:

TRACT (from Lat. tractare, to treat of a matter, through Provencal tractat and Ital. trattato)

tract on The Wonders of the See also:

East. In these works, and. some See also:

minor productions of the time, we see that the minds of Englishmen were beginning to find interest in other than religious subjects. The crowding of the English monasteries by foreigners, which was one of the results of the See also:

Norman Conquest, brought about a rapid See also:

ARREST (Fr. arrester, arreeter, to stop or stay)

arrest of the development of the vernacular literature. It was not long before the boys trained in the monastic See also:

SCHOOLS

schools ceased to learn to read and write their native tongue, and learned instead to read and write See also:

French. The effects of this See also:

CHANGE (derived through the Fr. from the Late Lat. cambium, cambiare, to barter; the ultimate derivation is probably from the root which appears in the Gr. «a urmu', to bend)

change are visible in the rapid alteration of the literary language. The artificial tradition of grammatical correctness lost its hold; the archaic literary vocabulary See also:

fell into disuse; and those who wrote English at all wrote as they spoke, using more and more an extemporized phonetic spelling based largely on French analogies.

The 12th century is a brilliant period in the history of Anglo-Latin literature, and many works of merit were written in French (see ANGLO-NORMAN). But vernacular literature is scanty and of little originality. The See also:

PETERBOROUGH

Peterborough Chronicle, it is true, was continued till 1154, and its later portions, while markedly exemplifying the changes in the language, contain some really admirable writing. But it is substantially correct to say that from this point until the See also:

AGE (Fr. age, through late Lat. aetaticum, from aetas)

age of Chaucer vernacular prose served no other purpose than that of popular religious edification. For See also:

LIGHT

light on the intellectual See also:

LIFE

life of the nation during this period we must look mainly to the works written in Latin. The homilies of the 12th century are partly modernized transcripts from See also:

IELFRIC

iElfric and other older writers, partly translations from French and Latin; the See also:

REMAINDER, REVERSION

remainder is. mostly See also:

COMMONPLACE

commonplace in substance and clumsy in expression. At the beginning of the 13th century the Ancren Riwle (q.v.), a book of counsel for nuns, shows true literary genius, and is singularly interesting in its substance and spirit; but notwithstanding the author's remark-able mastery of English expression, his culture was evidently French rather than English. Some minor religious prose works of the same period are not without merit. But these examples had no literary following. In the early 14th century the writings of See also:

Richard Rolle and his school attained great popularity. The profound influence which they exercised on later religious thought, and on the development of prose style, has seldom been adequately recognized. The A yenbite of Inwyt (see See also:

MICHEL, See also:

DAN), a wretchedly unintelligent translation (finished in 1340) from See also:

Frere Lorens's See also:

SOMME

Somme See also:

des vices et des vertus, is valuable to the student of language, but otherwise worthless.

The break in the continuity of literary tradition, induced by the Conquest, was no less See also:

COMPLETE

complete with regard to poetry than with regard to prose. The poetry of the 13th and the latter part of the 12th century was uninfluenced by the written works of Old English poets, whose archaic diction had to a great extent become unintelligible. But there is no ground to suppose that the See also:

SUCCESSION (Lat. successio, from succedere, to follow after)

succession of popular singers and reciters was ever interrupted. In the See also:

north-See also:

west, indeed, the old recitative metre seems to have survived in oral tradition, with little more alteration than was rendered necessary by the changes in the language, until the middle of the 14th century, when it was again adopted by literary versifiers. In the See also:

south this metre had greatly degenerated in strictness before the Conquest, but, with gradually increasing laxity in the laws of alliteration and rhythm, it continued long in use. It is commonly believed, with great See also:

INTRINSIC (through Fr. intrinsique, from Lat. intrinsecus, inwardly; inter, within, secus, following, from root of sequi, to follow)

intrinsic See also:

PROBABILITY (Lat. probabilis, probable or credible)

probability but with scanty actual evidence, that in the Old English period there existed, beside the alliterative long line, other forms of verse adapted not for recitation but for sing See also:

ing, used in popular lyrics and See also:

BALLADS

ballads that were deemed too trivial for written record. The influence of native popular poetic tradition, whether in the form of recited or of sung verse, is clearly discernible in the earliest Middle English poems that have been preserved. But the authors of these poems were familiar with Latin, and probably spoke French as easily as their See also:

MOTHER

mother tongue; and there was no longer any literary See also:

convention to restrain them from adopting See also:

FOREIGN

foreign metrical forms. The II artless verses of the See also:

HERMIT

hermit Godric, who died in 1170, exhibit in their metre the combined influence of native rhythm and of that of Latin hymnology. The See also:

PROVERBS, BOOK OF (Heb. Mishle Slzelomoh, " Proverbs of Solomon," abridged by the later Jews to Mishle; Septuagint, irapotpiai or II. EaX.; Lat. Vulg. Parabolae sal. and Liber proverbiorum)

Proverbs of Alfred, written about 1200, is (like the later Proverbs of Hendyng) in style and substance a gnomic poem of the ancient Germanic type, containing See also:

MAXIMS, LEGAL

maxims some of which may be of immemorial antiquity; and its rhythm is mainly of native origin. On the other See also:

hand, the See also:

SOLEMN (Lat. sollemnis, sollemnis, less correctly solennis, yearly, annual; from sollus = totus, whole, entire, Gr. Mos., and annus, year)

solemn and touching meditation known as the Moral See also:

ODE (Gr. uiSri, from aei&ew, to sing)

Ode, which is somewhat earlier in date, is in a metre derived from contemporary Latin verse—a line of seven accents, broken by a See also:

CAESURA (Lat. for " cutting," Gr. row))

caesura, and with feminine end-rhymes. In the Ormulum (see See also:

ORM, or ORMIN

ORM) this metre (known as the septenarius) appears without rhyme, and with a syllabic regularity previously without example in English verse, the line (or distich, as it may be called with almost equal propriety) having invariably fifteen syllables.

In various modified forms, the septenarius was a favourite measure throughout the Middle English period. In the poetry of the 13th century the influence of French models is conspicuous. The many devotional lyrics, some of which, as the Luve Ron of See also:

Thomas of See also:

Hales, have great beauty, show this influence not only in their varied metrical form, but also in their peculiar mystical tenderness and fervour. The Story of See also:

Genesis and Exodus, the substance of which is taken from the Bible and Latin commentators, derives its metre chiefly from French. Its poetical merit is very small. The secular poetry also received a new impulse from See also:

France. The brilliant and sprightly dialogue of the See also:

OWL (O. Eng. Ule, Swed. Uggla, Ger. Eule—all allied to Lat. Ulula, and evidently of imitative origin)

Owl and See also:

Nightingale, which can hardly be dated later than about 1230, is a " contention " of the type familiar in French and Provencal literature. The " Gallic " type of See also:

HUMOUR (Latin humor)

humour may be seen in various other writings of this period, notably in the See also:

LAND

Land of See also:

COCKAIGNE (COCKAYNE), LAND OF (O. Fr. Coquaigne, mod. Fr. cocagne, " abundance," from Ital. Cocagna; " as we say ` Lubberland,' the epicure's or glutton's home, the land of all delights, so taken in mockerie ": Florio)

Cockaigne, a vivacious See also:

SATIRE (Lat. satira, satura; see below)

satire on monastic self-See also:

INDULGENCE (Lat. indulgentia, indulgere, to grant, concede)

indulgence; and in the See also:

FABLIAU

fabliau of See also:

Dame Siviz, a story of Eastern origin, told with almost Chaucerian skill. Predominantly, though not exclusively French in metrical structure, are the charming love poems collected in a MS. (Harl. 2253) written about 1320 in See also:

HEREFORDSHIRE

Herefordshire, some of which (edited in T. See also:

Wright's Specimens of Lyric Poetry) find a place in See also:

MODERN

modern popular anthologies.

It is noteworthy that they are accompanied by some French lyrics very similar in style. The same MS. contains, besides some religious poetry, a number of See also:

POLITICAL

political songs of the time of See also:

EDWARD

Edward II. They are not quite the earliest examples of their kind; in the time of the Barons' See also:

War the popular cause had had its singers in English as well as in French. Later, the victories of Edward III. down to the taking of Guisnes in 1352, were celebrated by the Yorkshireman Laurence See also:

MINOT, LAURENCE (fl. 1333—1352)

Minot in alliterative verse with strophic arrangement and rhyme. At the very beginning of the 13th century a new species of composition, the metrical chronicle, was introduced into English literature. The huge work of See also:

LAYAMON

Layamon, a history (mainly legendary) of Britain from the time of the mythical See also:

BRUTUS (originally an adjective meaning " heavy," "stupid," kindred with Gr. aap(s, cf. Eng. " brute," " brutal")

Brutus till after the See also:

MISSION

mission of Augustine, is a free rendering of the Norman-French See also:

BRUT, BRUTE

Brut of See also:

WACE, HENRY (1836– )

Wace, with extensive additions from traditional sources. Its metre seems to be a degenerate survival of the Old English alliterative line, gradually modified in the course of the work by assimilation to the regular syllabic measure of the French original. Unquestionable evidence of the knowledge of the poem on the part of later writers is scarce, but distinct echoes of its diction appear in the chronicle ascribed to See also:

Robert of See also:

Gloucester, written in rhymed septenary See also:

MEASURES

measures about 1300. This work, founded in its earlier part on the Latin historians of the 1 zth century, is an See also:

INDEPENDENT

independent historical source of some value for the events of the writer's own times. The succession of versified histories of England was continued by Thomas See also:

BEK, ANTONY (d. 1311)

Bek of See also:

CASTLEFORD

Castleford in See also:

YORKSHIRE

Yorkshire (whose work still awaits an editor), and by Robert See also:

MANNYNG, ROBERT (ROBERT of BRUNNE) (c. 1264–1340 ?)

Mannyng of Brunne (See also:

Bourne, See also:

LINCOLNSHIRE

Lincolnshire). Mannyng's chronicle, finished in 1338; is a translation, in its earlier part from Wace's Brut, and in its later part from an Anglo-French chronicle (still extant) written by See also:

Peter See also:

LANGTOFT, PETER (d. c. 1307)

Langtoft, See also:

CANON

canon of See also:

BRIDLINGTON

Bridlington. Not far from the See also:

YEAR

year 1300 (for the most part probably earlier rather than later) a vast See also:

mass of hagiological and homiletic verse was produced in See also:

DIVERS

divers parts of England.

To Gloucester belongsan extensive See also:

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

series of Lives of Saints, metrically and linguistically closely resembling Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, and perhaps wholly or in part of the same authorship. A similar collection was written in the north of England, as well as a large body of homilies showing considerable poetic skill, and abounding in exempla or illustrative stories. Of exempla several prose collections had already been made in Anglo-French, and See also:

William of Wadington's poem See also:

Manuel des padres; which contains a great number of them, was translated in 1303 by Robert Mannyng already mentioned, with some enlargement of the anecdotic See also:

ELEMENT (Lat. elementum)

element, and frequent omissions of didactic passages. The great rhyming chronicle of Scripture history entitled See also:

Cursor Mundi (q.v.) was written in the north about this time. It was extensively read and transcribed, and exercised a powerful influence on later writers down to the end of the 14th century. The remaining homiletic verse of this period is too abundant to be referred to in detail; it will be enough to mention the sermons of William of See also:

SHOREHAM

Shoreham, written in strophic form, but showing little either of metrical skill or poetic feeling. To the next generation belongs the Pricke of See also:

Conscience by Richard Rolle, the influence of which was not less powerful than that of the author's prose writings. Romantic poetry, which in French had been extensively cultivated, both on the See also:

CONTINENT (from Lat. continere, "to hold together "; hence " connected," " continuous ")

continent and in England from the early years of the 12th century, did not assume a vernacular form till about 1250. In the next See also:

HUNDRED

hundred years its development was marvellously rapid. Of the vast mass of metrical romances produced during this period no detailed account need here be at-tempted (see ROMANCE, and articles, &c. referred to; ARTHURIAN ROMANCE). Native English traditions form the basis of -King See also:

Horn, See also:

GUY, THOMAS (1644–1724)

Guy of See also:

Warwick, Bevis of Hamtoun and Havelok, though the stories were first put into literary form by Anglo-Norman poets. The popularity of these See also:

home-grown tales (with which maybe classed the wildly fictitious Goer de See also:

Lion) was soon rivalled by that of importations from France.

The English rendering of See also:

FLORIS, FRANS

Floris and Blancheflur (a love-romance of See also:

Greek origin) is found in the same MS. that contains the earliest copy of King Horn. Before the end of the century, the French See also:

MATTER

matter of Britain " was represented in English by the Southern See also:

Arthur and See also:

Merlin and the Northern Tristram and Yvaine and Gawin, the " matter of France " by See also:

Roland and Vernagu and Oluel; the Alexander was also translated, but in this instance the immediate original was an Anglo-French and not a See also:

CONTINENTAL

continental poem. The See also:

TALE (O.Eng. talu, number, account, story; the word is common to many Teutonic languages; cf. Ger. Zahl, number, Erzahlung, narrative, Du. taal, speech, language)

tale of See also:

Troy did not come into English till long afterwards. The Auchinleck MS., written about 1330, contains no fewer than 14 poetical romances; there were many others in circulation, and the number continued to grow. About the middle of the 14th century, the Old English alliterative long line, which for centuries had been used only in unwritten minstrel poetry, emerges again in literature. One of the earliest poems in this revived measure, Wynnere and Wastour, written in 1352, is by a professional reciter-poet, who complains bitterly that original minstrel poetry no longer finds a welcome in the halls of great nobles, who prefer to listen to those who recite verses not of their own making. About the same date the metre began to be employed by men of letters for the translation of romance—William of Palerne and See also:

Joseph of Arimathea from the French, Alexander from Latin prose. The later development of alliterative poetry belongs mainly to the age of Chaucer. The extent and character of the literature produced during the first See also:

HALF

half of the 14th century indicate that the literary use of the native tongue was no longer, as in the preceding age, a mere condescension to the needs of the See also:

COMMON

common people. The rapid disuse of French as the See also:

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

ordinary See also:

MEDIUM

medium of intercourse among the middle- and higher ranks of society, and the consequent substitution of English for French as the vehicle of school instruction, created a widespread demand for vernacular See also:

READING

reading. The literature which arose in See also:

ANSWER (derived from and, against, and the same root as swear)

answer to this demand, though it consisted mainly of translations or adaptations of foreign works, yet served to develop the appreciation of poetic beauty, and to prepare an See also:

AUDIENCE (from Lat. audire, to hear)

audience in the near future for a poetry in which the genuine thought and feeling of the nation were to find expression. II.

CHAUCER TO THE See also:

RENAISSANCE, THE

RENAISSANCE The age of Chaucer is of peculiar interest to the student of literature, not only because of its brilliance and productiveness but also because of its apparent promise for the future. In this, as in other aspects, Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) is its most notable literary figure. Beginning as a student and imitator of the best French poetry of his See also:

day, he was for a time, like most of his French contemporaries, little more than a skilful maker of elegant verses, dealing with conventional material in a conventional way, arranging in new figures the same See also:

FLOWERS, ARTIFICIAL

flowers and bowers, sunsets and song-birds, and companies of See also:

FAIR

fair See also:

WOMEN

women and their lovers, that had been arranged and rearranged by every poet of the See also:

Court circle for a hundred years, and celebrated in sweet phrases of almost unvarying sameness. Even at this time, to be sure, he was not without See also:

close and loving observation of the living creatures of the real world, and his verses often bring us flowers dewy and fragrant and fresh of See also:

COLOUR (Lat. color, connected with celare, to hide, the root meaning, therefore, being that of a covering)

colour as they See also:

GREW, NEHEMIAH (1641-1712)

grew in the See also:

FIELDS, JAMES THOMAS (1817-1881)

fields and gardens about See also:

LONDON

London, and birds that had learned their See also:

MUSIC

music in the See also:

woods; but his poetry was still not easily distinguishable from that of See also:

MACHAULT

Machault, See also:

FROISSART, JEAN (1338-1410?)

Froissart, See also:

Deschamps, Transoun and the other " courtly makers " of France. But while he was still striving to See also:

MASTER (Lat. magister, related to tnagis, more, as the corresponding minister is to minus, less; the English form is due partly to the O. Eng. maegister, and partly to O. Fr. maistre, mod. maitre; cf. Du. meester, Ger. Meister, Ital. maestro)

master perfectly the technique of this See also:

PRETTY

pretty art of trifling, he became acquainted with the new literature of See also:

Italy, both poetry and prose. Much of the new poetry moved, like that of France, among the conventionalities and artificialities of an unreal world of romance, but it was of wider range, of See also:

fuller tone, of far greater emotional intensity, and, at its best, was the fabric, not of elegant ingenuity, but of creative human See also:

PASSION (post-classical Lat. passio, formed from pati, passus, to suffer, endure)

passion,—in See also:

DANTE

Dante, indeed, a wonderful visionary structure in which love and hate, and pity and terror, and the forms and countenances of men were more vivid and real than in the world of real men and real passions. The new prose—which Chaucer knew in several of the writings of Boccaccio—was vastly different from any that he had ever read in a modern tongue. Here were no mere brief anecdotes like those exempla which in the middle ages illustrated vernacular as well as Latin sermons, no cumbrous, slow-moving treatises on the Seven Deadly Sins, no half-articulate, pious meditations, but rapid, vivid, well-constructed narratives ranging from the sentimental beauty of stories like See also:

GRISELDA

Griselda and the See also:

Franklin's Tale to coarse mirth and malodorous vulgarity equal to those of the tales told later by Chaucer's See also:

Miller and See also:

Reeve and Summoner. All these things he studied and some he imitated. There is scarcely a feature of the verse that has not See also:

LEFT

left some trace in his own; the prose he did not imitate as prose, but there can be little doubt that the subject matter of See also:

BOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI (1313-1375)

Boccaccio's tales and novels, as well as his poems, affected the direction of Chaucer's literary development, and quickened his See also:

HABIT (through the French from Lat. habitus, from habere, to have, hold, or, in a reflective sense, to be in a certain condition; in many of the English senses the French use habitude, not habit)

habit of observing and utilizing human life, and that the narrative art of the prose was influential in the transformation of his methods of narration. This transformation was effected not so much through the mere superiority of the See also:

ITALIAN

Italian models to the Frcnch as through the stimulus which the See also:

DIFFERENCES, CALCULUS OF (Theory of Finite Differences)

differences between the two gave to his reflections upon the processes and technique of composition, for Chaucer was not a careless, happy-go-lucky poet of divine endowment, but a conscious, reflective artist, seeking not merelyfor See also:

FINE

fine words and fine sentiments, but for the proper arrangement of events, the significant exponent of character, the right tone, and even the appropriate background and See also:

ATMOSPHERE (Gr. fir µ6r, vapour; orkaipa, a sphere)

atmosphere, as may be seen, for example, in the transformations he wrought in the Pardoner's Tale.

It is therefore in the latest and most original of the See also:

Canterbury Tales that his art is most admirable, most distinguished by technical excellences. In these we find so many admirable qualities that we almost forget that he had any defects. His diction is a See also:

MODEL (0. Fr. modelle, mod. modele; It. modello, pattern, mould; from Lat. modus, measure, standard)

model of picturesqueness, of simplicity, of dignity, and of perfect See also:

ADAPTATION (from Lat. adaptare. to fit to)

adaptation to his theme: his versification is not only correct but musical and varied, and shows a progressive tendency towards freer and more complex melodies; his best tales are not mere repetitions of the ancient stories they retell, but new creations, transformed by his own imaginative realization of them. full of figures having the dimensions and the vivacity of real life, acting on adequate motives, and moving in an atmosphere and against a background appropriate to their characters and their actions. In the tales of the Pardoner, the Franklin, the Summoner, the See also:

SQUIRE

Squire, he is no less notable as a consummate artist than as a poet. Chaucer, however, was not the only writer of his day remark-able for mastery of technique. See also:

Gower, indeed, though a man of much learning and intelligence, was neither a poet of the first rank nor an artist. Despite the admirable qualities of clearness, See also:

order and occasional picturesqueness which distinguish his work, he lacked the ability which great poets have of making their words mean more than they say, and of stirring the emotions even beyond the See also:

BOUNDS, BEATING THE

bounds of this enhanced meaning; and there is not, perhaps, in all 'his voluminous work in English, French and Latin, any indication that he regarded composition as an art requiring consideration or any care beyond that of conforming to the chosen rhythm and finding suitable rhymes. There were others more richly endowed as poets and more finely developed as artists. There was the beginner of the Piers Plowman See also:

cycle,' the author of the See also:

PROLOGUE (from Gr. 7rpo, before, and Myer, a word)

Prologue and first eight passus of the A-See also:

TEXT (Lat. textum, woven fabric, from texere, to weave)

text, a man of clear and profound observation, a poet whose See also:

IMAGINATION

imagination brought before him with distinctness and reality visual images of the See also:

motley individuals and masses of men of whom he wrote, an artist who knew how to organize and See also:

DIRECT

direct the figures of his dream-world, the See also:

MOVEMENT

movement of his ever-unfolding See also:

VISION (from Lat. videre, to see), or SIGHT

vision. There was the remarkable successor of this man, the author of the B-text, an almost prophetic figure, a great poetic idealist, and, helpless though he often was in the direction of his thought, an absolute master of images and words that seize upon the See also:

heart and haunt the memory. Besides these, an unknown writer far in the north-west had, in Gawayne and the Grene See also:

Knight, transformed the See also:

MEDIEVAL

medieval romance into a thing of See also:

SPEED, JOHN (1552–1629)

speed and colour, of vitality and See also:

MYSTERY (Gr. µw(Trilpcov, from tcuvrm, an initiate, µfew, to shut the mouth)

mystery, no less remarkable for its fluent definiteness of form than for the delights of See also:

hall-feast and See also:

hunt, the graceful See also:

COMEDY

comedy of temptation, and the lonely ride of the doomed Gawayne through the silence of the See also:

FOREST

forest and the deep See also:

SNOW (in O. Eng. sndw; a common Indo-European word; cf. in Teutonic languages, Ger. Schnee, Du. sneeuw; in Slavonic snieg', Lith. snegas; Gr. vi4a, Lat. nix, nivis, whence the Romanic forms, Ital. neve, Fr. neige, &c.; Ir. and Gael. sneachd; the original

snow. In the same region, by its author's power of visual imagination, the Biblical See also:

PARAPHRASE (Gr. irapa¢pavis, from rrapa4p4av, to relate something in different words, 'raga, beside, and ¢pai"eav, speak, tell)

paraphrase, so often a mere humdrum narrative, had been transformed, in See also:

PATIENCE

Patience, into a narrative so detailed and vivid that the reader is almost ready to believe that the author himself, rather than See also:

Jonah, went down into the See also:

sea in the belly of the great See also:

fish, and sat humbled and rebuked beside the withered See also:

GOURD

gourd-See also:

VINE

vine.

And there also, by some strange See also:

CHANCE (through the O. Fr. cheance, from the Late Lat. cadentia, things happening, from cadere, to fall out, happen; cf. " case ")

chance, blossomed, with perhaps only a See also:

LOCAL

local and temporary fragrance until its rediscovery in the 19th century, that delicate See also:

flower of loneliness and aspiration, See also:

Pearl, a wonder of elaborate art as well as of touching sentiment. All these writings are great, not only relatively, but absolutely. There is not one of them which would not, if written in our own time, immediately See also:

mark its author as a man of very unusual ability. But the point of special concern to us at the See also:

PRESENT

present moment is not so much that they show remarkable poetic power, as that they possess technical merits of a very high order. And we are accustomed to believe that, although genius is a purely ' Piers Plowman has been so long attributed as a whole to See also:

Lang-land (q.v.), that in spite of modern See also:

ANALYTICAL

analytical See also:

criticism it is most conveniently discussed under that name. See also:

PERSONAL

personal and incommunicable element, technical gains are a common See also:

possession; that after See also:

Marlowe had developed the technique of See also:

BLANK (from the Fr. blanc, white)

blank verse, this technique was available for all ; that after See also:

Pope had mastered the heroic See also:

COUPLET

couplet and See also:

Gray the ode, and See also:

POE, EDGAR ALLAN (18og-1849)

Poe the short story, all men could write couplets and odes and short stories of technical correctness; that, as See also:

TENNYSON, ALFRED TENNYSON

Tennyson puts it, " All can grow the flower now, For all have got the See also:

SEED (from the root seen in Lat. serere, to sow)

seed." But this was singularly untrue of the technical gains made by Chaucer and his great contemporaries. Pearl and Patience were apparently unknown to the 15th century, but Gawayne and Piers Plowman and Chaucer's works were known and were influential in one way or another throughout the century. Gawayne called into existence a large number of romances dealing with the same hero or with somewhat similar situations, some of them written in verse suggested by the remarkable verse of their model, but the resemblance, even in versification, is only superficial. Piers Plowman gave rise to satirical allegories written in the alliterative long line and furnished the figures and the machinery for many satires in other metres, but the technical excellence of the first Piers Plowman poem was soon buried for centuries under the tremendous social significance of itself and its successors. And Chaucer, in spite of the fact that he was praised and imitated by many writers and definitely claimed as master by more than one, not only transmitted to them scarcely any of the technical conquests he had made, but seems also to have been almost without success in creating any change in the See also:

TASTE (from Lat. taxare, to touch sharply; tangere, to touch)

taste of the public that read his poems so eagerly, any demand for better literature than had been written by his predecessors. Wide and lasting Chaucer's influence undoubtedly was. Not only was all the court-poetry, all the poetry of writers who pretended to cultivation and refinement, throughout the century, in England and Scotland, either directly or indirectly imitative of his work, but even the humblest productions of unpretentious writers show at times traces of his influence.

Scotland was fortunate in having writers of greater ability than England had (see SCOTLAND: Literature). In England the three See also:

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

chief followers of Chaucer known to us by name are See also:

LYDGATE, JOHN (c. 1370–c. 1451)

Lydgate, Hoccleve (see See also:

OCCLEVE (or HOCCLEVE), THOMAS (1368—1450?)

OCCLEVE) and See also:

Hawes. Because of their praise of Chaucer and their supposed personal relations to him, Lydgate and Hoccleve are almost inseparable in modern discussions, but 15th century readers and writers appear not to have associated them very closely. Indeed, Hoccleve is rarely mentioned, while Lydgate is not only mentioned continually, but continually praised as Chaucer's equal or even See also:

SUPERIOR

superior. Hoccleve was not, to be sure, as prolific as Lydgate, but it is difficult to understand why his work, which compares-favourably in quality with Lydgate's, attracted so much less attention. The See also:

TITLE (0. Fr. title, mod. titre, from Lat. titulus)

title of his greatest poem, De regimine principum, may have repelled readers who were not princely born, though they would have found the work full of the moral and prudential maxims and illustrative anecdotes so dear to them; but his attack upon See also:

Sir John See also:

OLDCASTLE, SIR JOHN (d. 1417)

Oldcastle as a heretic ought to have been decidedly to the taste of the orthodox upper classes, while his See also:

LAMENTATIONS (Lamentations of Jeremiah)

lamentations over his misspent youth, his tales and some of his minor poems might have interested any one. Of a less vigorous spirit than Lydgate, he was, in his mild way, more humorous and more original. Also despite his sense of personal loss in Chaucer's See also:

DEATH

death and his care to transmit to posterity the likeness of his beloved master, he seems to have been less slavish than Lydgate in imitating him. His memory is full of Chaucer's phrases, he writes in verse-forms hallowed by the master's use, and he tries to give to his lines the movement of Chaucer's decasyllables, but he is comparatively free from the influence of those early allegorical works of the Master which produced in the 15th century so dreary a See also:

FLOCK

flock of imitations. Lydgate's productivity was enormous,—how great no man can say, for, as was the case with Chaucer also, his fame caused many masterless poems to be ascribed to him, but, after making all necessary deductions. the amount of verse that has come down to us from him is astonishing. Here it may suffice to saythat his translations are predominantly epic (140,000 lines), and his original compositions predominantly allegorical love poems or didactic poems. If there is anything duller than a dull epic it is a dull See also:

ALLEGORY (iXXos, other, and ayopeuav, to speak)

allegory, and Lydgate has achieved both.

This is not to deny the existence of See also:

GOOD, JOHN MASON (1764-1827)

good passages in his epics and ingenuity in his allegories, but there is no pervading, persistent life in either. His epics, like almost all the narrative verse of the time, whether epic, legend, versified chronicle or metrical romance, seem designed merely to satisfy the See also:

DESIRE

desire of 15th century readers for See also:

INFORMATION (from Lat. informare, to give shape or form to, to represent, describe)

information, the craving for facts—true or fictitious—the same craving that made possible the poems on See also:

ALCHEMY

alchemy, on See also:

HUNTING (the verbal substantive from " hunt "; O. Eng. huntian, hunta; apparently connected with O. Eng. hentan, Gothic hinpan, to capture, O.H.G. hunda,booty)

hunting, on See also:

MANNERS, CHARLES (1857– )

manners and morals, on the duties of See also:

PARISH (Gr. irapouda, district, neighbourhood; 7r&poucos, one dwelling near or beside, from crap&, OtKOS, house; Lat. paroecur, Late Lat. parochia; cf. Fr. paroisse)

parish priests, on the seven liberal arts. His allegories, like most allegories of the age, are ingenious rearrangements of old figures and old machinery, they are full of what had once been imagination but had become merely memory assisted by cleverness. The great See also:

FAULT (Mid. Eng. faute, through the French, from the popular Latin use of fallere, to fail; the originallof the Latin being replaced in English in the 15th century)

fault of all his work, as of nearly all the literature of the age, is that it is merely a more or less skilful manipulation of what the author had somewhere read or heard, and - not a faithful transcript of the author's own peculiar sense or conception of what he had seen or heard or read. The fault is not that the old is repeated, that a twice-told tale is retold, but that it is retold without being re-imagined by the See also:

TELLER, WILHELM ABRAHAM (1734-1804)

teller of the tale, without taking on from his See also:

PERSONALITY (from Lat. persona, originally an actor's mask, from personare,1 to sound through)

personality something that was not in it before. Style, to be sure, was a thing that Lydgate and his See also:

FELLOWS, SIR CHARLES (1799-1860)

fellows tried to See also:

SUPPLY (through Fr. from Lat. supplere, to fill up)

supply, and some of them supplied it abundantly according to their See also:

LIGHTS, CEREMONIAL USE OF

lights. But style meant to them See also:

EXTERNAL

external decoration, classical allusions, personifications, an inverted or even dislocated order of words, and that famous " ornate diction," those " aureate terms," with which they strove to surpass the See also:

MELODY (Gr. ,ueXw3ia, a choral song, from name, tune, and gi6i, song)

melody, picturesqueness and dignity which, for all its simplicity, they somehow dimly discerned in the diction of Chaucer. See also:

Stephen Hawes, with his allegorical See also:

TREATISE

treatise on the seven liberal sciences, came later than these men, only to write worse. He was a See also:

DISCIPLE

disciple of Lydgate rather than of Chaucer, and is not only lacking in the vigour and sensitiveness which Lydgate sometimes displays, but exaggerates the defects of his master. If it be a merit to have conceived the pursuit of knowledge under the form of the efforts of a knight to win the hand of his See also:

LADY (0. Eng. hlaefdige, Mid. Eng. ldfdi, lavedi; the first part of the word is hldf, loaf, bread, as in the corresponding hldford, lord; the second part is usually taken to be from the root dig-, to knead, seen also in " dough "; the sense development fr

lady, it is almost the See also:

SOLE (Solea)

sole merit to which Hawes can See also:

lay claim. Two or three good situations, an See also:

EPISODE

episode of See also:

low comedy, and the See also:

EPITAPH (Gr. it oa¢cos, sc. X/yos, from bri, upon, and ra¢os, a tomb)

epitaph of the Knight with its famous final couplet, exhaust the list of his credits. The efforts that have been made to trace through Hawes the line of See also:

Spenser's spiritual ancestry seem not well advised.

The resemblances that have been pointed out are such as arise inevitably from the allegories and from the traditional material with which both worked. There is no reason to believe that Spenser owed his general conception to Hawes, or that the Faery Queene would have differed in even the slightest detail from its present form if the Pastime of See also:

PLEASURE (through Fr. plaisir from Lat. placere, to please; Gr. rlbovii)

Pleasure had never been written. The machinery of chivalric romance had already been applied to spiritual and moral themes in See also:

Spain without the aid of Hawes. It is obvious that the fundamental lack of all these men was imaginative power, poetic ability. This is a sufficient reason for failure to write good poetry. But why did not men of better ability devote themselves to literature in this age? Was it because of the perturbed conditions arising from the prevalence of foreign and See also:

CIVIL

civil See also:

WARS

wars? Perhaps not, though it is clear that if Sir Thomas See also:

MALORY, SIR THOMAS

Malory had perished in one of the many fights through which he lived, the chivalric and literary impulses which he perhaps received from the " Fadre of Curteisy," Richard See also:

Beauchamp, See also:

EARL

earl of Warwick, would have gone for nothing and we should lack the Morte Ddrthur. But it may very well be that the wars and the tremendous See also:

INDUSTRIAL

industrial growth of England fixed the attention of the strongest and most original See also:

SPIRITS

spirits among the younger men and so withdrew them. from the possible attractions of literature. But, after all, whatever general truth may See also:

lie in such speculations, the way of a See also:

young man with his own life is as incalculable as any of the four things which Agur son of Jakeh declared to be past finding out; local and special accidents rather than general communal influences are See also:

apt to shape the choice of boys of exceptional character, and we have many instances of great talents turning to literature or art when war or See also:

commerce or science was the dominant attraction of social life. But even recognizing that the followers of Chaucer were not men of genius, it seems strange that their imitation of Chaucer was what it was. They not only entirely failed to see what his merits as an artist were and how greatly superior his mature work is to his earlier in point of technique; they even preferred the earlier and imitated it almost exclusively.

Furthermore, his mastery of verse seemed to them to consist solely in writing verses of approximately four or five stresses and arranging them in couplets or in stanzas of seven or eight lines. Their preference for the early allegorical work can be explained by their lack of taste and See also:

CRITICAL (in alphabetical order of authors)

critical discernment and by the great See also:

VOGUE, EUGENE MELCHIOR, COMTE DE (1848- )

vogue of allegorical writing in England and France. Men who are just beginning to think about the distinction between literature and ordinary writing usually feel that it consists in making literary expression differ as widely as possible from See also:

SIMPLE

simple direct speech. For this reason some sort of artificial diction is developed and some artificial word order devised. Allegory is used as an elegant method of avoiding unpoetical plainness, and is an easy means of substituting See also:

LOGIC (Xoy1K7, sc. rixvrt, the art of reasoning)

logic for imagination. The failure to reproduce in some degree at least the melody and smoothness of Chaucer's decasyllabic verse, and the particular form which that failure took in Lydgate, are to be explained by the fact that Lydgate and his fellows never knew how Chaucer's verse sounded when properly read. It is a See also:

MISTAKE (i.e. take amiss)

mistake to suppose that the disappearance of final unaccented e from many words or its instability in many others made it difficult for Lydgate and his fellows to write melodious verse. Melodious verse has been written since the disappearance of all these sounds, and the possibility of a choice between a form with See also:

FINALE (Ital. for " end ")

finale and one without it is not a hindrance but an See also:

ADVANTAGE

advantage to a poet, as See also:

GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON (1749-1832)

Goethe, See also:

SCHILLER, JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON (1759-18o5)

Schiller, See also:

HEINE, HEINRICH, (1797-1856)

Heine and innumerable German poets have shown by their practice. The real difficulty with these men was that they pronounced Chaucer's verse as if it were written in the English of their own day. As a matter of fact all the types of verse discovered by scholars in Lydgate's poems can be discovered in Chaucer's also if they be read with Lydgate's See also:

PRONUNCIATION (Lat. pronuntiatio, from pronuntiare, proclaim, announce, pronounce)

pronunciation. Chaucer did not write archaic English, as some have supposed,—that is, English of an earlier age than his own,—it would have been impossible for him to do so with the unfailing accuracy he shows; he did, however, write a conservative, perhaps an 61d-fashioned, English, such as was spoken by the conservative members of the class of society to which he was attached and for which he wrote. An English with fewer final e's was already in existence among the less conservative classes, and this rapidly became See also:

standard English in consequence of the social changes which occurred during his own life.

We know that a misunderstanding of Chaucer's verse existed from the 16th century to the time of Thomas See also:

TYRWHITT, THOMAS (1730–1786)

Tyrwhitt; it seems clear that it began even earlier, in Chaucer's own lifetime. There are several poems of the 15th century which were long ascribed to Chaucer. Among them are:—the Complaint of the See also:

Black Knight, or Complaint of a See also:

LOVER, SAMUEL (1797-1868)

Lover's Life, now known to be Lydgate's; the Mother of God, now ascribed to Hoccleve; the See also:

CUCKOO

Cuckoo and the Nightingale, by See also:

CLANVOWE, SIR THOMAS

Clanvowe; La Belle Dame sans merci, a translation from the French of Alain See also:

CHARTIER, ALAIN (c. 1392—c.1430)

Chartier by 'Richard See also:

Ros; Chaucer's Dream, or the Isle of Ladies; the See also:

ASSEMBLY, UNLAWFUL

Assembly of Ladies; the Flower and the See also:

LEAF (O. Eng. leaf, cf. Dutch loof, Ger. Laub, Swed. lof, &c.; possibly to be referred to the root seen in Gr. Ma-eta, to peel, strip)

Leaf; and the Court of Love. The two poems of Lydgate and Hoccleve are as good as Chaucer's poorest work. The Assembly of Ladies and the Flower and the Leaf are perhaps better than the Book of the Duchess, but not so good as the See also:

PARLIAMENT (Anglo-Lat. parliamentum, Fr. parlement, from parler, to speak)

Parliament of Fowls. The Flower and the Leaf; it will be remembered, was very dear to John See also:

KEATS, JOHN (1795-1821)

Keats, who, like all his contemporaries, regarded it as Chaucer's. An additional interest attaches to both it and the Assembly of Ladies, from the fact that the author may have been a woman; See also:

PROFESSOR (the Latin noun formed from the verb profiteri, to declare publicly, to acknowledge, profess)

Professor See also:

SKEAT, WALTER WILLIAM (1835– )

Skeat is, indeed, confident that he knows who the woman was and when she wrote. These poems, like the Court of Love, arethoroughly conventional in material, all the figures and poetical machinery may be found in dozens of other poems in England and France, as Professor See also:

NEILSON, ADELAIDE (1846—188o)

Neilson has shown for the Court of Love and Mr See also:

Marsh for the Flower and the Leaf; but there are a freshness of spirit and a love of beauty in them that are not common; the conventional birds and flowers are there, but they seem, like those of Chaucer's Legend, to have some See also:

TOUCH (derived through Fr. toucher from a common Teutonic and Indo-Germanic root, cf. " tug," " tuck," O. H. Ger. zucchen, to twitch or draw)

touch of life, and the conventional companies of ladies and gentlemen ride and talk and walk with natural See also:

grace and ease. The Court of Love is usually ascribed to a very late date, as late even as the middle of the 16th century. If this is correct, it is a notable instance of the persistence of a Chaucerian influence. An effort has been made, to be sure, to show that it was written by Scogan and that the writing of it constituted the offence mentioned by Chaucer in his See also:

ENVOY (Fr. envoye, " sent ")

Envoy to Scogan, but it has been clearly shown that this is impossible, both because the language is later than Scogan's time and because nothing in the poem resembles the offence clearly described by Chaucer. Whatever may be true of the authorship of the Assembly of Ladies and the Flower and the Leaf, there were women writers in England in the middle ages.

Juliana of See also:

Norwich wrote her Revelations of Divine Love before 1400. The much discussed Dame Juliana See also:

Berners, the supposed compiler of the treatise on hunting in the Book of St Albans, may be mythical, though there is no reason why a woman should not have written such a book; and a shadowy figure that disappears entirely in the sunlight is the supposed authoress of the See also:

Nut See also:

Brown Maid, for if language is capable of definite meaning, the last See also:

STANZA (Low Lat. stantia, Ital. stantia or stanza)

stanza declares unequivocally that the poem is the work of a man. But there is a poem warning young women against entering a nunnery which may be by a woman, and there is an interesting entry among the records of New See also:

Romney for 1463-1464, Paid to See also:

AGNES, SAINT

Agnes See also:

FORDE, FRANCIS (d. 1770)

Forde for the See also:

PLAY

play of the Interlude of our See also:

Lord's Passion, 6s. 8d.," which is apparently the earliest mention of a woman dramatist in England. Finally, See also:

Margaret, countess of See also:

Richmond, the mother of See also:

Henry VII., not only aided scholars and encouraged writers, but herself translated the (See also:

SPURIOUS

spurious) See also:

FOURTH

fourth boqk of St Thomas A. Kempis's Imitatio Christi. Another Margaret, the duchess of See also:

BURGUNDY

Burgundy, it will be remembered, encouraged See also:

CAXTON, WILLIAM (c. 1422-1491)

Caxton in his translation and See also:

PRINTING (from Lat. imprimere, O. Fr. empreindre)

printing. Women seem, indeed, to have been especially lovers of books and patrons of writers, and See also:

SKELTON, JOHN (c. 1460-1529)

Skelton, if we may believe his See also:

GARLAND, JOHN (fl. 1202—1252)

Garland of See also:

LAUREL

Laurel, was surrounded by a bevy of ladies comparable to a modern literary See also:

CLUB (connected with " clump ")

club; See also:

ERASMUS, DESIDERIUS (1466–1536)

Erasmus's Suffragette Convention may correspond to no reality, but the Learned Lady arguing against the Monk for the usefulness and pleasure derived from books was not an unknown type. Women were capable of many things in the middle ages. English records show them to have been physicians, churchwardens, justices of the See also:

peace and sheriffs, and, according to a satirist, they were also priests. The most original and powerful poetry of the 15th century was composed in popular forms for the See also:

EAR (common Teut.; O.E. are, Ger. Ohr, Du. oor, akin to Lat. auris, Gr. ovs)

ear of the common people and was apparently written without conscious artistic purpose. Three classes of productions deserve special attention, —songs and carols, popular ballads and certain dramatic compositions.

The songs and carols belong to a species which may have existed in England before the Norman Conquest, but which certainly was greatly modified by the musical and lyric forms of France. The best of them are the direct and simple if not entirely artless expressions of personal emotion, and even when they contain, as they sometimes do, the description of a See also:

PERSON, OFFENCES AGAINST THE

person, a situation, or an event, they deal with these things so subjectively, confine themselves so closely to the rendering of the emotional effect upon the See also:

SINGER, SIMEON (1846-1906)

singer, that they lose none of their directness or simplicity. Some of them deal with secular subjects, some with religious, and some are curious and delightful blendings of religious worship and aspiration with earthly tenderness for the embodiments of helpless See also:

INFANCY

infancy and protecting motherhood which gave Christianity so much of its power over the affections and imagination of the middle ages. Even those which begin as mere expressions of joy in the See also:

Yule-See also:

TIDE (O. Eng. lid, cf. Ger. Zeit, time or season, connected with root of Sanskrit a-diti, endless)

tide eating and drinking and merriment catch at moments hints of higher joys, of finer emotions, and lift singer and hearer above the See also:

NOISE (a word of doubtful origin; O. Fr. nogse or nose; Prov. nausa, which points to Lat. nausea, sickness, as the origin; others take Lat. noxia, harm, as the source)

noise and stir of See also:

earth. Hundreds of songs written and sung in the 15th century must have perished; many, no doubt, lived only a single See also:

SEASON (0. Fr. seson, seison, mod. saison, Lat. satio, sowing time, the spring, from serere, to sow; in Late Lat. the word is found with its present meaning, the spring being considered as particularly the season of the year)

season and were never even written down; but chance has preserved enough of them to make us wonder at the age which could produce such masterpieces of tantalizing simplicity. The lyrics which describe a situation form a logical, if not a real transition to those which narrate an episode or an event. The most famous of the latter, the Nut Brown Maid, has often been called a ballad, and " lyrical ballad " it is in the sense established by See also:

Coleridge and See also:

Wordsworth, but its See also:

AFFINITIES

affinities are rather with the song or See also:

CAROL (O. Fr. carole)

carol than with the folk-ballad, and, like See also:

HENRYSON, ROBERT (c. 1425—c. 1500)

Henryson's charming See also:

ROBIN

Robin and Malkin, it is certainly the work of a man of culture and of conscious artistic purpose and methods. Unaccompanied, as it is, by any other work of the same author, this poem, with its remarkable technical merits, is an even more astonishing literary phenomenon than the famous single See also:

SONNET (Ital. Sonetto, dim. of Suono, Fr. Sonnet)

sonnet of Blanco See also:

White. It can hardly be doubted that the author learned his technique from the songs and carols. The folk-ballad, like the song or carol, belongs in some form to immemorial antiquity. It is doubtless a mistake to suppose that any ballad has been preserved to us that is a purely communal product, a confection of the common knowledge, traditions and emotions of the community wrought by subconscious processes into a song that finds chance but inevitable utterance through one or more individuals as the whole See also:

commune moves in its molecular See also:

dance. But it is equally a mistake to argue that ballads are essentially metrical romances in a See also:

state of decay.

Both the matter and the manner of most of the best ballads forbid such a supposition, and it can hardly be doubted that in some of the folk-ballads of the 15th century are preserved not only traditions of dateless antiquity, but formal elements and technical processes that actually are derived from communal song and dance. By the 15th century, however, communal habits and processes of composition had ceased, and the traditional elements, formulae and technique had become merely conventional See also:

AIDS

aids and guides for the individual singer. Ancient as they were, conventional as, in a sense, they also were, they exercised none of the deadening, benumbing influence of ordinary conventions. They furnished, one may say, a vibrant framework of emotional expression, each tone of which moved the hearers all the more powerfully because it had sung to them so many old, unhappy, far-off things, so many battles and treacheries and sudden griefs; a framework which the individual singer needed only to fill out with the simplest statement of the event which had stirred his own imagination and passions to produce, not a work of art, but a song of universal See also:

APPEAL

appeal. Not a work of art, because there are scarcely half a dozen ballads that are really works of art, and the greatest ballads are not among these. There is scarcely one that is free from excrescences, from dulness, from trivialities, from additions that would spoil their greatest situations and their greatest lines, were it not that we resolutely shut our ears and our eyes, as we should, to all but their greatest moments. But at their best moments the best ballads have an almost incomparable power, and to a people sick, as we are, of the ordinary, the usual, the very trivialities and impertinences of the ballads only help to define and emphasize these best moments. In histories of English literature the ballads have been so commonly discussed in connexion with their rediscovery in the 18th century, that we are apt to forget that some of the very best were demonstrably composed in the 15th and that many others of uncertain date probably belong to the same time. Along with the genuine ballads dealing with a See also:

RECENT

recent event or a traditional theme there were ballads in which earlier romances are retold in ballad style. This was doubtless inevitable in view of the increasing epic tendency of the ballad and the interest still See also:

FELT (cognate with Ger. Filz, Du. vilt, Swed. and Dan. fill; the root is unknown; the word has given Med. Lat. filtrum, " filter ")

felt in metrical romances, but it should not mislead us into regarding the genuine folk-ballad as an out-growth of the metrical romance. Besides the ordinary epic or narrative ballad, the 15th century produced ballads in dramatic form, or, perhaps it were better to say, dramatized some of its epic ballads. How commonlythis was done we do not know, but the scanty records of the period indicate that it was a widespread See also:

CUSTOM (from O. Fr. costume, costume or coustume; Low Lat. costuma, a shortened form of consuetudo)

custom, though only three plays of this character (all concerning Robin See also:

Hood) have come down to us.

These plays had, however, no further independent development, but merely furnished elements of incident and atmosphere to later plays of a more highly organized type. With these ballad plays may also be mentioned the See also:

CHRISTMAS (i.e. the Mass of Christ)

Christmas plays (usually of St See also:

George) and the See also:

SWORD (0. Eng. sweord; ultimately from an Indo-European root meaning to wound)

sword-dance plays, which also flourished in the 15th century, but survive for us only as obscure elements in the masques and plays of See also:

BEN (from Old Eng. bennan, within)

Ben See also:

JONSON

Jonson and in such modern rustic performances as Thomas See also:

Hardy has so charmingly described in The Return of the Native. The additions which the 15th century made to the ancient cycles of Scripture plays, the so-called Mysteries, are another instance of a literary effort which spent itself in vain (see See also:

DRAMA (literally "action," from Gr. Snail, act or do)

DRAMA). The most notable of these are, of course, the world renowned comic scenes in the See also:

TOWNELEY (or TOwNLEY), CHARLES (1737-1805)

Towneley (or See also:

Wakefield) Plays, in the pageants of See also:

CAIN

Cain, of See also:

NOAH (ni, rest; Septuagint, New Testament, Philo, Josephus, Na*, N&i os, Nweos: Vulg. Noe)

Noah and of the Shepherds. In none of these is the 15th century writer responsible for the original comic intention; in the pageants of Cain and of the Shepherds fragments of the work of a 14th century writer still remain to prove the earlier existence of the comic conception, and that it was traditional in the Noah See also:

PAGEANT

pageant we know from the testimony of Chaucer's Miller; but none the less the 15th century writer was a comic dramatist of original power and of a skill in the development of both character and situation previously unexampled in England. The inability of Lydgate to develop a comic conception is strikingly displayed if one compares his Pageant for Presentation before the King at See also:

HEREFORD

Hereford with the work of this unknown artist. But in our admiration for this man and his famous episode of Mak and the fictitious See also:

INFANT (in early forms enfaunt, enfant, through the Fr. enfant, from Lat. infans, in, not, and fans, the present participle of fari, to speak)

infant, we are apt to forget the equally fine, though very different qualities shown in some of the later pageants of the See also:

York Plays. Such, for example, is the final pageant, that of the Last Judgment, a drama of slow and majestic movement, to be sure, but with a large and fine conception of the great situation, and a See also:

NOBLE, SIR ANDREW (1832- )

noble and dignified elocution not inadequate to the theme. The See also:

ABRAHAM, or ABRAM (Hebrew for " father is high ")

Abraham and See also:

ISAAC (Hebrew for " he laughs," on explanatory references to the name, see ABRAHAM)

Isaac play of the See also:

Brome MS., extant as a separate play and perhaps so performed, which has been so greatly admired for its cumulative pathos, also belongs demonstrably to this century. It is not, as has been supposed, an intermediate See also:

STAGE (Fr. 6/age; from Lat. stare, to stand)

stage between French plays and the See also:

Chester Abraham and Isaac, but is derived directly from the latter by processes which comparison of the two easily reveals. Scripture plays of a type entirely different from the well-known cyclic mysteries, apparently confined to the Passion and Resurrection and the related events, become known to us for the first time in the records of this century. Such plays seem to have been confined to the towns of the south, and, as both their location and their structure suggest, may have been borrowed from France.

In any event, the records show that they flourished greatly and that new versions were made from time to time. Another form of the medieval drama, the Morality Play, had its origin in the 15th century,—or else very late in the 14th. The earliest known examples of it in England date from about 1420. These are the See also:

Castle of Perseverance and the See also:

PRIDE, THOMAS (d. 1658)

Pride of Life. Others belonging to the century are Mind, Will and Understanding, Mankind and Medwall's Nature. There are also parts of two pageants in the Ludus Coventriae (c. 146o) that are commonly classed as Moralities, and these, together with the existence of a few personified abstractions in other plays, have led some critics to suppose that the Morality was derived from the Mystery by the See also:

GRADUAL (Med. Lat. gradualis, of or belonging to steps or degrees; gradus, step)

gradual introduction of personified abstractions in the place of real persons. But the two kinds of plays are fundamentally different, different in subject and in technique; and no replacement of real persons by personifications can change a Mystery into a Morality, Moreover, the Morality features in Mysteries are later than the origin of the Morality itself and are due to the influence of the latter. The Morality Play is merely a dramatized allegory, and derives its characters and its peculiar technique from the application of the dramatic method to the allegory, the favourite literary form of the middle ages. None of the 15th century Moralities is literature of the first rank, though both the Castle of Perseverance and Pride of Life contain passages ringing with a passionate sincerity that communicates itself to the hearer or reader. But it was not until the beginning of the 16th century that a Morality of permanent human interest appeared in Everyman, which, after all, is a translation from the Dutch, as is clearly proved by the fact that in the two prayers near the end of the play the Dutch has complicated but regular stanzas, whereas the English has only irregularly rhymed passages. Besides the Mysteries and Moralities, the 15th century had also See also:

MIRACLE (Lat. miraculum, from mirari, to wonder)

Miracle Plays, properly so called, dealing with the lives, martyrdoms and miracles of saints.

As we know these only from records of their performance or their mere existence—no texts have been preserved to us, except the very curious Play of the Sacrament—it is impossible to speak of their literary or dramatic qualities. The Miracle Play as a form was, of course, not confined to the 15th century. Notwithstanding the assertions of historians of literature that it died out in England soon after its introduction at the beginning of the 12th century, its existence can be demonstrated from c. rlro to the time of See also:

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM (1564-1616)

Shakespeare. But records seem to indicate that it flourished especially during this period of supposed barrenness. What was the nature of the " Komedy of Troylous and Pandor " performed before Henry VIII. on the 6th of See also:

JANUARY

January 1516 we have no means of knowing. It is very early indeed to assume the influence of either classical or Italian drama, and although we have no records of similar plays from the 15th century, it must be remembered that our records are scanty, that the middle ages applied the dramatic method to all sorts of material, and that it is therefore not impossible that secular plays like this were performed at court at a much earlier date. The record at any See also:

RATE

rate does not indicate that it was a new type of play, and the Griselda story had been dramatized in France, Italy and the See also:

NETHERLANDS

Netherlands before 1500. That not much good prose was written in the 15th century is less surprising than that so little good verse was written. The technique of verse composition had been studied and mastered in the preceding age, as we have seen, but the technique of prose had apparently received no serious consideration. Indeed, it is doubtful if any one thought of prose as a possible medium of artistic expression. Chaucer apparently did not, in spite of the See also:

COMPARATIVE

comparative excellence of his Preface to the See also:

ASTROLABE (from Gr. liar pop, star, and Aa(3eiv, to take)

Astrolabe and his occasional noteworthy successes with the difficulties of the See also:

PHILOSOPHY (Gr. gthos, fond of, and vo4 (a, wisdom)

philosophy of Boethius; Wycliffe is usually clumsy; and the translators of See also:

Mandeville, though they often give us passages of great See also:

CHARM (through the Fr. from the Lat. carmen, a song)

charm, obviously were See also:

PLAIN (O. Fr. plain, from Lat. plenum)

plain men who merely translated as best they could. There was, however, a comparatively large amount of prose written in the 15th century, mainly for religious or educational purposes, dealing with the same sorts of subjecis that were dealt with in verse, and in some cases not distinguish-able from the verse by any feature but the See also:

ABSENCE (Lat. absentia)

absence of rhyme.

The vast body of this we must neglect; only five writers need be named: John See also:

CAPGRAVE, JOHN (1393-1464)

Capgrave, Reginald See also:

PECOCK (or PEACOCK), REGINALD (c. 1395-c. 1460)

Pecock, Sir John See also:

Fortescue, Caxton and Malory. Capgrave, the compiler of the first chronicle in English prose since the Conquest, wrote by preference in Latin; his English is a condescension to those who could not read Latin and has the qualities which belong to the talk of an See also:

EARNEST (probably a corruption of the obsolete arles or erles, adapted from Lat. equivalent arrha, due to a confusion with the adjective " earnest," serious, O. Eng. eornust, cognate with Ger. ernst)

earnest and sincere man of commonplace ability. Pecock and Fortescue are more important. Pecock (c. 1395-c. 1460) was a man of singularly acute and logical mind. He prided himself upon his See also:

DIALECTIC, or DIALECTICS

dialectic skill and his See also:

FACULTY (through the French, from the Lat. facultas, ability to do anything, from facilis, easy, facere, to do; another form of the word in Lat. facilitas, facility, ease, keeps the original meaning)

faculty for discovering arguments that had been overlooked by others. His writings, therefore—or at least the Repressor—are excellent in general structure and arrangement, his ideas are presented clearly and simply, with few digressions or excrescences, and his sentences, though sometimes too long, are more like modern prose than any others 'before the age of See also:

Elizabeth. His style is lightened by frequent figures of speech, mostly illustrative, and really illustrative, of his ideas, while his intellectual ingenuity cannot fail to interest even those whom his prejudices and preconceptions repel. Fortescue, like Capgrave, wrote by preference in Latin, and, like Pecock, was philosophical and controversial. But his See also:

PRINCIPAL

principal English work, the Difference between an Absolute and a Limited See also:

MONARCHY (Fr. monarchic, from Lat. monarchia, Gr. uovapXia, rule of one, µbvos, alone, apXi7, rule)

Monarchy, differs from Pecock's in being rather a See also:

PLEADING (Fr. plaider, plaidoyer)

pleading than a logical argument, and the geniality and glowing patriotism of its author give it a far greater human interest. No new era in literary composition was marked by the activity of William Caxton as translator and publisher, though the printing-See also:

PRESS (through Fr. presse from Lat. pressare, frequentative of premere, to crush, squeeze, press)

press has, of course, changed fundamentally the problem of the dissemination and preservation of culture, and thereby ultimately affected literary See also:

PRODUCTION (Lat. productionem, from producere, to pro-duce)

production profoundly.

But neither Caxton nor the writers whose works he printed produced anything new in form or spirit. His publications range over the whole See also:

field of 15th century literature, and no doubt he tried, as his See also:

QUAINT (O. Fr. cointe, from Lat. cognitus, known, probably influenced by association with Lat. corn plus, neat)

quaint prefaces indicate, to direct the public taste to what was best among the works of the past, as when he printed and re-printed the Canterbury Tales, but among all his numerous publications not one is the See also:

HERALD (O. Fr. heraut, herault; the origin is uncertain, but O.H.G. heren, to call, or hariwald, leader of an army, have been proposed; the Gr. equivalent is Kddpvi : Lat. praeco, caduceator, fetialis)

herald of a new era. The only book of permanent interest as literature which he introduced to the world was the Morte Darthur of Sir Thomas Malory, and this is a compilation from older romances (see ARTHURIAN LEGEND). It is, to be sure, the one book of permanent literary significance produced in England in the 15th century; it glows with the warmth and beauty of the old knight's conception of See also:

CHIVALRY (O. Fr. chevalerie, from Late Lat. caballerius)

chivalry and his love for the great deeds and great men of the visionary past, and it continually allures the reader by its fresh and vivid diction and by a syntax which, though sometimes faulty, has almost always a certain naive charm; " thystorye (i.e. the history) of the sayd Arthur," as Caxton long ago declared, " is so gloryous and shynyng, that he is stalled in the first place of the moost noble, beste and worthyest of the Crysten men "; it is not, however, as the first of a new species, but as the final flower of an old that this glorious and shining book retains its place in English literature. Whatever may have been the effect of the wars and the growth of industrial life in England in withdrawing men of the best abilities from the pursuit of literature, neither these causes nor any other interfered with the activity of writers of lesser See also:

POWERS, HIRAM (1805-1873)

powers. The amount of writing is really astonishing, as is also its range. More than three hundred separate works (exclusive of the large number still ascribed to Lydgate and of the seventy printed by Caxton) have been made accessible by the Early English Text Society and other public or private presses, and it seems probable that an equal number remains as yet unpublished. No list of these writings can be given here, but it may not he unprofitable to indicate the range of interests by noting the classes of writing represented. The See also:

CLASSIFICATION (Lat. classis, a class, probably from the root cal-, cla-, as in Gr. icaMce, clamor)

classification is necessarily rough, as some writings belong to more than one type. We may See also:

note, first, love poems, allegorical and unallegorical, narrative, didactic, lyrical and quasi-lyrical; poems autobiographical and exculpatory; poems of eulogy and appeal for aid; tales of entertainment or instruction, in prose and in verse; histories ancient and modern, and brief accounts of recent historical events, in prose and in verse; prose romances and metrical romances; legends and lives of saints, in prose and in verse; poems and prose works of religious meditation, devotion and controversy; treatises of religious instruction, in prose and in verse; ethical and philosophical treatises, and ethical and prudential treatises; treatises of See also:

government, of political See also:

ECONOMY

economy, of foreign travel, of See also:

HYGIENE (Fr. hygiene, from Gr. ir'taivety, to be healthy)

hygiene, of See also:

surgery, of alchemy, of See also:

HERALDRY

heraldry, of hunting and hawking and fishing, of farming, of good manners, and of cooking and See also:

CARVING

carving. Prosaic and intended merely to serve See also:

PRACTICAL

practical uses as many of these were, verse is the medium of expression as often as prose. Besides this large amount and variety of English compositions, it must be remembered that much was also written in Latin, and that Iatin and French works of this and other centuries were 'read by the educated classes.

Although the intellectual and spiritual movement which we See also:

CALL (from Anglo-Saxon ceallian, a common Teutonic word, cf. Dutch kallen, to talk or chatter)

call the Italian Renaissance was not unknown in England in the 14th and 15th centuries, it is not strange that it exercised no perceptible influence upon English literature, except in the case of Chaucer. Chaucer was the only English man of letters before the 16th century who knew Italian literature. The Italians who visited England and the Englishmen who visited Italy were interested, not in literature, but in scholarship. Such studies as were pursued by Free, See also:

Grey, Flemming, See also:

TILLY, JOHANN TZERCLAES, COUNT OF (1559-1632)

Tilly, .Gunthorpe and others who went to Italy, made them better grammarians and rhetoricians, and no doubt gave them a freer, wider outlook, but upon their return to England they were immediately absorbed in administrative cares, which left them little leisure for literary composition, even if they had had any inclination to write. They prepared the way, however, for the leaders of the great intellectual awakening which began in England with See also:

LINACRE (or LYNAKER), THOMAS (c. 146o-1524)

Linacre, See also:

Colet, More and their fellows, and which finally culminated in the age of Spenser, See also:

Bacon, Shakespeare, Jonson, See also:

Gilbert, See also:

Harvey and Harriott. When the middle ages ceased in England it is impossible to say definitely. Long after the new learning and culture of the Renaissance had been introduced there, long after classical and Italian models were eagerly chosen and followed, the epic and lyric models of the middle ages were admired and imitated, and the ancient forms of the drama lived See also:

side by side with the new until the time of Shakespeare himself. John Skelton, although according to Erasmus " unum Britannicarum literarum lumen ac decus," and although possessing great originality and vigour both in diction and in versification when attacking his enemies or indulging in playful rhyming, was not only a great admirer of Lydgate, but equalled even the worst of his predecessors in aureate pedantries of diction, in complicated impossibilities of syntax, and in meaningless inversions of word-order whenever he wished to write elegant and dignified literature. And not a little of the absurd diction of the middle of the 16th century is merely a continuation of the See also:

BAD, BCD

bad ideals and practices of the refined writers of the 15th. In fine, the 15th century has, aside from its vigorous, though sometimes coarse, popular productions, little that can interest the lover of literature. It offers, however, in richest profusion problems for the literary antiquarian and the student of the relations between social conditions and literary productivity,—problems which have usually been attacked only with the light weapons of irresponsible See also:

SPECULATION

speculation, but which may perhaps be solved by a careful comparative study of many literatures and many periods. Moreover, although in the quality of its literary output it is decidedly inferior to the 14th century, the amount and the wide range of its productions indicate the gradual See also:

EXTENSION (Lat. ex, out ; tendere, to stretch)

extension of the habit of reading to classes of society that were previously unlettered; and this was of great importance forthe future of English literature, just as the innumerable dramatic performances throughout England were important in developing audiences for Marlowe and Shakespeare and See also:

Beaumont and See also:

Fletcher.

For bibliography see vol. ii. of the See also:

Cambridge History of Literature (1909); and Brandl's Geschichte der mittelenglischen Literatur (re-printed from See also:

Paul's Grundriss der germanischen Philologie). Interesting general discussions may be found in the larger histories of English Literature, such as Ten Brink's, See also:

JUSSERAND, JEAN ADRIEN ANTOINE JULES (1855- )

Jusserand's, and (a little more antiquated) See also:

COURTHOPE, WILLIAM JOHN (1842— )

Courthope's and See also:

Morley's. (J. M. MA.) General Influences, and Prologue to 1579.—The history of letters in England from More's See also:

UTOPIA

Utopia (1516), the first Platonic vision, to See also:

Milton's See also:

Samson Agonistes (1671), the latest classic tragedy, is one and continuous. That is the period of the English Renaissance, in the wider sense, and it covers all and more of the literature loosely called " Elizabethan." With all its complexity and subdivisions, it has as real a unity as the age of See also:

PERICLES (49o-429 B.C.)

Pericles, or that of See also:

PETRARCH (1304-1374)

Petrarch and Boccaccio, or the period in See also:

Germany that includes both See also:

LESSING, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM (1729–1781)

Lessing and Heine. It is peculiar in length of span, in variety of power, and in See also:

WEALTH

wealth of production, though its master-works on the greater See also:

scale are relatively few. It is distinct, while never. quite cut off, from the middle age preceding, and also from the classical or " Augustan" age that followed. The coming of See also:

DRYDEN, JOHN (1631-1700)

Dryden denoted a new phase; but it was still a phase of the Renaissance; and the break that declared itself about 166o:See also:

COUNTS

counts as nothing beside the break with themiddle ages; for this implied the whole change in art, thought and See also:

TEMPER (from Lat. temperare, to mingle or compound in due proportion, to qualify, rule, regulate, to be moderate, formed from tempos, time, fit or due season)

temper, which re-created the See also:

EUROPEAN

European mind. It is true that many filaments unite Renaissance and middle ages, not only in the religious and purely intellectual region, but in that of art. The matter of See also:

Geoffrey of See also:

Monmouth, the tales of Arthur and of See also:

TROILUS

Troilus, the old See also:

FAIRY (Fr. fee, faerie; Prov. facia; Sp. hada; Ital. fata; med. Lat. fatare, to enchant, from Lat. fatum, fate, destiny)

fairy See also:

FOLKLORE

folklore of the South, the topic of the Falls of Princes, lived on; and so did the characteristic medieval form, allegory and many of the old metres of the 14th century. But then these things were transformed, often out of knowledge.

Shakespeare's use of the histories of See also:

MACBETH

Macbeth, See also:

LEAR, EDWARD (1812-1888)

Lear and Troilus, and Spenser's of the allegoric romance, are examples. And when the gifts of the middle ages are not trans-formed, as in the See also:

MIRROR (through O. Fr. mirour, mod. miroir, from a sup-posed Late Lat. miratorium, from mirari, to admire)

Mirror for Magistrates, they strike us as survivals from a lost world. So vital a change took long in the working. The English Renaissance of letters only came into full flower during the last twenty years of the 16th century, later than in any Southern land; but it was all the richer for delay, and would have missed many a life-giving element could it have been driven forward sooner. If the actual process of genius is beyond See also:

ANALYSIS (Gr. avci and Meta, to break up into parts)

analysis, we can still See also:

NOTICE

notice the subjects which genius receives, or chooses, to work upon, and also the vesture which it chooses for them; and We can See also:

WATCH (in O. Eng. wcecce, a keeping guard or watching, from wacian, to guard, watch, wacan, to wake)

watch some of the forces that long retard but in the end fertilize these workings of genius. What, then, in England, were these forces ? Two of them lie outside letters, namely, the political See also:

settlement, culminating in the later reign of Elizabeth, and the religious settlement, whereby the See also:

ANGLICAN

Anglican Church grew out of forces.. ora the English See also:

Reformation. A third force lay within the See also:

SPHERE (Gr. vclsa?pa, a ball or globe)

sphere of the Renaissance itself, in the narrower meaning of the See also:

TERM

term. It was culture—the prefatory work of culture and See also:

EDUCATION

education, which at once prepared and put off the flowering of pure genius. " Elizabethan " literature took its complexion from the circumstance that all these three forces were in operation at once. The Church began to be fully articulate, just when the See also:

NATIONAL

national feeling was at its highest, and the tides of classical and immigrant culture were strongest. Spenser's Faerie Queene, See also:

Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity and Shakespeare's Henry V. came in the same See also:

DECADE (from Gr. Oka, ten)

decade (1590-1600).

But these three forces, political, religious and educational, were of very different duration and value. The See also:

ENTHUSIASM

enthusiasm of 1590-1600 was already dying down in the years 1600-1610, when the great tragedies were written; and soon a wholly new set of political forces began to tell on art. The religious See also:

INSPIRATION (Lat. inspirare, breathe upon or into)

inspiration was mainly confined to certain important channels; and literature as a whole, from first to last, was far more secular than religious. But Renaissance culture, in its ramifications and consequences, tells all the time and over the whole field, from 1500 to 166o. It is this culture which really hinds together the long and varied chronicle. Before passing to narrative, a short See also:

REVIEW (Fr. revue, from revoir, to see again, Lat. re and videre)

review of each of these elements is required. Down to 1579 the Tudor rule was hardly a direct inspiration to authors. The reign of Henry VII. was first duly told by Bacon, and that of Henry VIII. staged by Shakespeare and Politics. Fletcher, in the time of See also:

James I. Sir Thomas More found in Roper, and See also:

WOLSEY, THOMAS (c. 1475–1530)

Wolsey in See also:

Cavendish, sound biographers, who are nearly the earliest in the language. The later years of Henry VIII. were full of episodes too tragically picturesque for safe handling in the lifetime of his See also:

CHILDREN, LAW RELATING TO

children. The next two reigns were engrossed with the religious war; and the first twenty years of Elizabeth, if they laid the bases of an age of peace, well-being, and national self-confidence that was to prove a teeming See also:

SOIL

soil for letters, were themselves poor in themes for patriotic art.

The abortive See also:

TREASON (Fr. trahison, Lat. traditio)

treason of the northern earls was echoed only in a ringing ballad. But the voyagers, freebooters, and explorers reported their experiences, as a See also:

DUTY (from " due," that which is owing, O. Fr. deu, dil, past participle of devoir; Lat. debere, debitum; cf. " debt ")

duty, not for fame; and these, though not till the See also:

GOLDEN

golden age, were edited by See also:

HAKLUYT, RICHARD (c. 1553—1616)

Hakluyt, and fledged the poetic fancies that took wing from the " See also:

INDIAN

Indian See also:

Peru to the " still-vext Bermoothes." Yet, in See also:

DEFAULT (Fr. defaut, from defailler, to fail, Lat. fallere)

default of any true historian, the See also:

queen's wise delays and diplomacies that upheld the English power, and her refusal to See also:

LAUNCH

launch on a See also:

PROTESTANT

Protestant or a national war until occasion compelled and the See also:

COUNTRY (from the Mid. Eng. contre or contrie, and O. Fr. cuntree; Late Lat. contrata, showing the derivation from contra, opposite, over against, thus the tract of land which fronts the sight, cf. Ger. Gegend, neighbourhood)

country was ready, were subjects as uninspiring to poets as the burning questions of the royal See also:

MARRIAGE

marriage or the royal title. But by 158o the nation was filled with the sense of Elizabeth's success and greatness and of its own prosperity. No shorter struggle and no less achievement could have nursed the insolent, jubilant patriotism of the years that followed; a feeling that for good reasons was peculiar to England among the nations, and created the peculiar forms of the chronicle play and poem. These were borrowed neither from antiquity nor from abroad, and were never afterwards revived. The same exultation found its way into the current forms of ode and pastoral, of masque and allegory, and into many a See also:

DEDICATION (Lat. dedicatio, from dedicare, to proclaim, to announce)

dedication and interlude of prose. It was so strong as to outlive the age that gave it See also:

WARRANT (Med. Lat. warantum; O. Fr. garant, warant, derived from O.H.G. root represented in modern German bygewdhren)

warrant. The passion for England, the passion of England for herself, animates the bulk of See also:

DRAYTON, MICHAEL (1563-1631)

Drayton's Poly-Olbion, which was finished so late as 1622. But the public issues were then changing, the temper was darker; and the civil struggle was to speak less in poetry than in the prose of political theory and ecclesiastical argument, until its after-See also:

EXPLOSION

explosion came in the verse of Milton. The English Reformation, so long political rather than doctrinal or imaginative, cost much writing on all sides; but no book like See also:

CALVIN, JOHN (1509-1564)

Calvin's Institution is its See also:

TROPHY (Gr. Tpo7rauov, from TpE7rw, put to flight; Lat. tropaeum)

trophy, at once and marking a term of departure in the national prose. Still, the debating weapons, the axes and billhooks, of vernacular English were sharpened—somewhat jaggedly—in the pamphlet battles that dwarfed the original energies of Sir Thomas More and evoked those of See also:

TYNDALE (or TINDALE), WILLIAM (c. 1492-1536)

Tyndale and his See also:

friends. The powers of the same style were proved for descriptive economy by Starkey's Dialogue between See also:

Pole and Lupset, and for religious appeal by the See also:

blunt sound rhetoric and forthright jests in the sermons of See also:

LATIMER, HUGH (c. 1490-1555)

Latimer (died 1555).

See also:

FOXE, JOHN (1516-1587)

Foxe's. reports of the martyrs are the type of early Protestant English (1563); but the reforming divines seldom became real men of letters even when their See also:

PURITANISM (Lat. puritas, purity)

Puritanism, or discontent with the final Anglican settlement and its temper, began to announce itself. Their spirit, however, comes out in many a corner of poetry, in See also:

GASCOIGNE, GEORGE (c. 1535—1577)

Gascoigne's See also:

STEEL, FLORA ANNIE (1847– )

Steel See also:

Glass as in Spenser's Shepherd's See also:

CALENDAR

Calendar; and the English Reformation lived partly on its pre-See also:

NATAL

natal memories of See also:

LANGLAND, WILLIAM (c. 1332–c. 1400)

Langland as well as of Wycliffe. The See also:

FRUIT (through the French from the Lat. fructus; frui, to enjoy)

fruit of the struggle, though retarded, was ample. Carrying on the work of See also:

Fisher and See also:

CRANMER, THOMAS (1489-1556)

Cranmer, the new church became the See also:

NURSING

nursing mother of English prose, and trained it more than any single influence,—trained it so well, for the purposes of sacred learning, translation and See also:

ORATORY (Lat. oratorio, sc. ors; from orare, to speak or pray)

oratory, and also as a medium of poetic feeling, that in these activities England came to rival France. How late any religious writer of true rank arose may be seen by the See also:

LAPSE (Lat. lapses, a slip or departure)

lapse of over half a century between Henry VIII.'s See also:

ACT (Lat. actus, actum)

Act of Supremacy and Hooker's treatise. But after Hooker the See also:

CHAIN (through the O. Fr. citable, chcene, &c., from Lat. catena)

chain of eloquent divines was unbroken for a hundred years. Renaissance culture had many stages and was fed from many streams. At the outset of the century, in the See also:

wake of Erasmus, under the teaching of Colet and his friends, there Classical spread a sounder knowledge of the Greek and Latin culture. See also:

TONGUES, GIFT OF, or GLOSSOLALIA (yXwova, tongue, aXeiv, speak)

tongues, of the classic texts, and so of the ancient life and mind. This period of See also:

HUMANISM (from Lat. humanus, human, connected with holm)

humanism in the stricter sense was far less brilliant than in Italy and France. No very great scholar or savant arose in Britain for a long time; but neo-Latin literature, the See also:

SATELLITE (from the Lat. satelles, an attendant)

satellite of scholarship, shone brightly in George See also:

Buchanan. But scholarship was created and secured; and in at least one, rather solitary, work of power, the Utopia (which remained in Latin till 1551), the fundamental process was begun which appropriates the Greek mind, not only for purposes of schooling, but as a source of new and independent thinking.

In and after the middle of the century the See also:

CLASSICS

classics were again put forward by See also:

CHEKE, SIR JOHN (1514-1557)

Cheke, by See also:

Wilson in his Art of Rhetoric (1553), and by See also:

ASCHAM, ROGER (c. 1515-1568)

Ascham in his letters and in his Schoolmaster (1570), as the true See also:

STAPLE

staple of humane education, and the See also:

PATTERN

pattern for a simple yet lettered English. The literature of translations from the classics, in prose and verse, increased; and these works, at first plain, business-like, and uninspired, slowly See also:

rose in style and power, and at last, like the translations from modern tongues, were written by a series of masters of English, who thus introduced See also:

Plutarch and See also:

Tacitus to poets and historians. This labour of See also:

MEDIATION (Lat. medius, middle)

mediation was encouraged by the rapid expansion and reform of the two See also:

UNIVERSITIES

universities, of which almost every great master except Shakespeare was a member; and even Shakespeare had ample Latin for his purpose. The direct impact of the classics on " Elizabethan " literature, whether through such translations or the originals, would take long to describe. But their indirect impact is far stronger, though in result the two are hard to discern. Italy and France. This is another point that distinguishes the English Renaissance from the Italian or the French, and makes it more complex. The knowledge of the thought, art and enthusiasms of See also:

Rome and See also:

Athens constantly came See also:

ROUND (O. Fr. rond, Lat. rotundus, the Fr. is the source also of Du. rond; Ger., Swed., Dan. and Nor. rond)

round through Italy or France, tinted and charged in the passage with something characteristic of those countries. The early playwrights read See also:

SENECA

Seneca in Latin and English, but also the foreign Senecan tragedies. Spenser, when starting on his pastorals, studied the Sicilians, but also See also:

SANNAZARO, JACOPO (1458-1530)

Sannazaro and See also:

Marot. Shakespeare saw heroic antiquity through Plutarch, but also, surely, through See also:

MONTAIGNE, MICHEL DE (1533-1592)

Montaigne's reading of antiquity. Few of the poets can have distinguished the original See also:

FOUNTAIN (Late Lat. fontana, from ions, a spring)

fountain of See also:

PLATO

Plato from the canalized supply of the Italian Neoplatonists.

The influence, however, of See also:

CICERO

Cicero on the Anglican See also:

PULPIT (from Lat. pulpitum, a staging, platform: equivalents are Fr. chaire d'eglise, Ital. pulpito, Ger. Kanzel)

pulpit was immediate as well as See also:

CONSTANT, BENJAMIN (1845-1902)

constant; and so was that of the conciser Roman masters, See also:

SALLUST [Gams SALLUSTIUS CRlspus] (86–34 B.c.)

Sallust and Tacitus, on Ben Jonson and on Bacon. Such scattered examples only intimate the existence of two great chapters of English literary history,—the effects of the classics and the effects of Italy. The bibliography of 16th-century translations from the Italian in the fields of political and moral speculation, poetry, fiction and the drama, is so large as itself to tell part of the story. The genius of Italy served the genius of England in three distinctive ways. It inspired the recovery, with new modulations, of a lost music and a lost See also:

PROSODY (Gr. rpovwSta)

prosody. It modelled many of the chief poetic forms, which soon were developed out of recognition; such were tragedy, allegory, song, pastoral and sonnet. Thirdly, it disclosed some of the master-thoughts upon government and conduct formed both by the old and the new Mediterranean world. See also:

MACHIAVELLI, NICCOLO (1469-1527)

Machiavelli, the student of ancient Rome and modern Italy, riveted the creed of Bacon. It might be said that never has any modern people so influenced another in an equal space of time—and letters, here as ever, are only the See also:

VOICE (Fr. voix, from Lat. vox)

voice, the See also:

SYMBOL (Gr. o-uµ(3oXov, a sign)

symbol, of a whole life and culture—if we forgot the sway of French in the later 17th and 18th centuries. And the power of French was alive also in the 16th. The track of Marot, of See also:

RONSARD, PIERRE DE (1524-1585)

Ronsard and the See also:

PLEIAD (Gr. Meats)

Pleiad and See also:

DESPORTES, PHILIPPE (1546-1606)

Desportes, of See also:

RABELAIS, FRANCOIS (c. 1490—1553)

Rabelais and Calvin and Montaigne, is found in England. Journeymen like Boisteau and Belleforest handed on immortal tales.

The influence is noteworthy of See also:

SPANISH

Spanish mannerists, above all of See also:

Guevara upon sententious prose, and of the novelists and humorists, headed by Cervantes, upon the drama. German legend is found not only in Marlowe's Faustus, but in the by-ways of play and story. It will be long before the See also:

rich and coloured tangle of these threads has been completely unravelled with due tact and science. The presence of one strand may here be mentioned, which appears in unexpected spots. As in See also:

GREECE

Greece, and as in the day of Coleridge and See also:

Shelley, the fabric of poetry and prose is shot through with philosophical ideas; a further distinction from other literatures Philolike the Spanish of the golden age or the French sophy. of 1830. But these were not so much the ideas of the new See also:

PHYSICAL

physical science and of Bacon as of the ethical and metaphysical ferment. The See also:

WAVE

wave of free talk in the circles of Marlowe, Greville and See also:

Raleigh ripples through their writings. Though the direct influence of See also:

GIORDANO, LUCA (1632–1705)

Giordano See also:

Bruno on English writers is probably limited to a See also:

REMINISCENCE (from Lat. reminisci, to remember)

reminiscence in the Faerie Queene (Book vii.), he was well acquainted with See also:

Sidney and Greville, argued for the Copernican theory at Greville's See also:

house, lectured on the soul at See also:

Oxford, and published his See also:

EPOCH (Gr. E7roxij, holding in suspense, a pause, from E1rxav, to hold up, to stop)

epoch-marking Italian dialogues during his two years' stay (1583-1585) in London. The debates in the earlier schools of Italy on the nature and See also:

TENURE (Fr. tenure, from Lat. tenere, to hold)

tenure of the soul are heard in the Religious defining the religious change for millions of later men change. Nosce Teipsum (1599) of Sir John See also:

Davies; a stoicism, " of the schools " as well as " of the See also:

BLOOD

blood," animates See also:

Cassius and also the French heroes of See also:

Chapman; and if the earlier drama is sown with Seneca's old maxims on See also:

sin and destiny, the later drama, at least in Shakespeare, is penetrated with the freer reading of life and conduct suggested by Montaigne. Platonism—with its vox See also:

ANGELICA

angelica sometimes a little hoarse—is present from the youthful Hymns of Spenser to the last followers of See also:

DONNE, JOHN (1573–1631)

Donne; sometimes See also:

DRAWN

drawn from Plato, it is oftener the Christianized See also:

DOCTRINE

doctrine codified by See also:

FICINO, MARSILIO (1433-1499)

Ficino or See also:

PICO

Pico.

It must be noted that this play of philosophic thought only becomes marked after 1580, when the preparatory tunings of English literature are over. We may now .quickly review the period down to 1580, in the departments of prose, verse and drama. It was a time which left few memorials of form. Early modern English prose, as a medium of art, was of slow growth. For long there was alternate strife and See also:

union (ending in marriage) between the Latin, or more rhetorical, Prose to and the ancestral elements of the language, and this 1580. was true both of diction and of construction. We need to begin with the talk of actual life, as we find it in the hands of the more naff writers, in its See also:

IDIOM (Gr. t&%wµa, something peculiar and personal; lbws, one's own, personal)

idiom and gusto and unshapen power, to see how style gradually declared itself. In state letters and reports, in the recorded words of Elizabeth and See also:

Mary of Scotland and public men, in travels and See also:

MEMOIRS

memoirs, in Latimer, in the See also:

RUDE, FRANCOIS (1784–1855)

rude early versions of Cicero and Boethius, in the more unstudied speech of Ascham or See also:

Leland, the material lies. At the other extreme there are the English See also:

LITURGY (Low Lat. liturgia; Gr. X€Zros, public, and Epyov, work; )Aetrovpy6s, a public servant)

liturgy (1549, 1552, 1559, with the final See also:

FUSION

fusion of Anglican and Puritan eloquence), and the sermons of Fisher and Cranmer,—nearly the first examples of a sinuous, musical and Ciceronian See also:

CADENCE (through the Fr. from the Lat. cadentia, from cadere, to fall)

cadence. A noble pattern for See also:

SAGA (literally a story committed to writing)

saga-narrative and lyrical prose was achieved in the successive versions (1526–1540–1568) of the See also:

HEBREW

Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, where a native simple diction of short and melodious clauses are prescribed by the matter itself. Prose, in fact, down to Shakespeare's time, was largely the work of the churchmen and translators, aided by the chroniclers. About the See also:

mid-century the stories, as well as the books of conduct and See also:

MAXIM, SIR HIRAM STEVENS (184o- )

maxim, drawn from Italy and France, begin to thicken. Perverted symmetry of style is found in euphuistic hacks like See also:

PETTIE, JOHN (1839-1893)

Pettie.

Painter's See also:

PALACE (Lat. Palatium, the name given by Augustus to his residence on the Palatine Hill)

Palace of Pleasure (1566) provided the plots of See also:

BANDELLO, MATTEO (1480-1562)

Bandello and others for the dramatists. See also:

HOBY, SIR THOMAS (1530–1566)

Hoby's version (1561) of See also:

Castiglione's Courtier, with its command of elate and subtle English, is the most notable imported book between Berners's Froissart (1523–1525) and North's Plutarch (1579). Aschani's School-master is the most typical English book of Renaissance culture, in its narrower sense, since Utopia. See also:

HOLINSHED (or HOLLINGSIIEAD), RAPHAEL (d. c. 158o)

Holinshed's Chronicle (1577–1587) and the work of See also:

Halle, if pre-critical, were all the fitter to See also:

MINISTER (Lat. minister, servant)

minister to Shakespeare. The lyric impulse was fledged anew at the court of Henry See also:

WYATT, JAMES (1746–1813)

Wyatt's songs show the revival, not only of a love- poetry more plangent than anything in English since Chaucer, but also of the long-deadened sense of metre. In Wyatt's sonnets, octaves, terzines and other Italian measures, we can watch the painful triumphant struggles of this noble old master out of the See also:

SLOUGH

slough of formlessness in which verse had been left by Skelton. Wyatt's See also:

PRIMARY

primary See also:

DEED (in O. Eng. dead, from the stem of the verb " to do ")

deed was his gradual re- See also:

DISCOVERY

discovery of the See also:

IAMBIC

iambic decasyllabic line duly accented—the line that had been first discovered by Chaucer for England; and next came its See also:

BUILDING

building into sonnet and stanza. Wyatt (d. 1542) ended with perfect formal accuracy; he has the honours of victory; and Henry See also:

Howard, earl of See also:

Surrey (d. 1347), a younger-hearted and more gracious but a lighter poet, carried on his labour, and caught some of Chaucer's as well as the Italian tunes. The blank verse of his two translated Aeneids, like all that written previous to See also:

PEELE, GEORGE (1558-c. 1598)

Peele, gave little inkling of the latencies of the measure which was to become the See also:

CARDINAL (Lat. cardinalis)

cardinal one of English poetry. It was already the vogue in Italy for translations from the classics; and we may think of Surrey importing it like an uncut See also:

JEWEL, JOHN (1522-1571)

jewel and barely conscious of its value.

His original poems, like those of Wyatt, waited for See also:

print till the See also:

eve of Elizabeth's reign, when they appeared, with those of followers like Grimoald, in Tottel's See also:

MISCELLANY

Miscellany (1557), the first of many such garlands, and the outward proof of the poetical revival dating twenty years earlier. But this was a false See also:

DAWN (the 16th-century form of the earlier " Jawing " or " dawning," from an old verb " daw," O. Eng. dagian, to become day; cf. Dutch dagen, and Ger. tagen)

dawn. Only one poem of See also:

AUTHENTIC (from Gr. aOO 'rns, one who does a thing himself)

authentic power, See also:

Sackville's See also:

INDUCTION (from Lat. inducere, to lead into; cf. Gr. ilrayu yli)

Induction (1563) to that dreary patriotic venture, A Mirror for Magistrates, was published for twenty years. In spirit medieval, this picture of the See also:

GATES, HORATIO (1728-1806)

gates of See also:

HELL (0. Eng. hel, a Teutonic word from a root meaning " to cover," cf. Ger. Holle, Dutch hel)

hell and of the kings in See also:

bale achieves a new melody and a new intensity, and makes the coming of Spenser far less incredible. But poetry was long starved by the very ideal that nursed it—that of the all-sided, all-accomplished "courtier" or See also:

cavalier, to whom verse-making was but one of all the accomplishments that he must perfect, like See also:

FENCING

fencing, or courting, or equestrian skill. Wyatt and Surrey, Sackville and Sidney (and we may add See also:

HAMLET

Hamlet, a true Elizabethan) are of this type. One of the first competent professional writers was George Gascoigne, whose remarks on metric, and whose blank verse satire, The Steel Glass (1576), See also:

SAVE, or SAVA (Ger. Sau; Hungarian Szdva; Lat. Savus)

save the years between Sackville and Spenser. Otherwise the See also:

gap is filled by painful rhymesters with rare flashes, such as See also:

GOOGE, BARNABE (1540-1594)

Googe, See also:

Churchyard and See also:

TURBERVILLE (or TURBERVILE), GEORGE (154o?-1610?)

Turberville. The English Renaissance drama, both comic and tragic, illustrates on the largest scale • the characteristic power of the See also:

ANTIQUE (Lat. antiquus, old)

antique at this period—at first to reproduce itself in imitation, and then to generate something utterly 1sso. Urams to different from itself, something that throws the antique to the winds. Out of the Morality, a See also:

SERMON (Lat. sermo, a discourse)

sermon upon the certainty of death or the temptations of the soul, acted by personified qualities and supernatural creatures, had grown up, in the reign of Henry VII., the Interlude, a dialogue spoken by representative types or trades, who faintly recalled those in Chaucer's Prologue. These forms, which may be termed medieval, continued long and blended; sometimes heated, as in Respublica, with doctrine, and usually lightened by the comic play of a " See also:

VICE

Vice " or in-See also:

CARNATION (Dianthus Caryophyllus, natural order Caryophyllaceae)

carnation of sinister roguery.

John See also:

Heywood was the chief maker of the pure interludes, and Bishop Bale of the Protestant medleys; his King Johan, a reformer's See also:

PARTISAN, or PARTIZAN

partisan tract in verse, contains the germs of the chronicle play. In the drama down to 158o the native See also:

TALENT (Lat. talentum, adaptation of Gr. TaXavrov, balance, ! Recollections of a First Visit to the Alps (1841); Vacation Rambles weight, from root raX-, to lift, as in rXi vac, to bear, 1-aXas, and Thoughts, comprising recollections of three Continental

talent is sparse enough, but the historical interest is high. Out of a seeming welter of forms, the structure, the metres and the species that See also:

KYD, THOMAS (1558-1594)

Kyd and Marlowe found slowly emerged. Comedy was first delivered from the interlude, and fashioned in essence as we know it, by the schoolmasters. See also:

DRAWING

Drawing on See also:

PLAUTUS, TITUS MACCIUS (originally perhaps MACCUS; cf. Asin. Prol. 11)

Plautus, they constructed duly-knitted plots, divided into acts and scenes and full of homely native fun, for their pupils to present. In See also:

THERSITES

Thersites (written 1537), the See also:

OLDEST

oldest of these pieces, and in Udall's See also:

RALPH (d. 1122)

Ralph Roister Doister (1552 at latest), the best known of them, the characters are lively, and indeed are almost individuals. In others, like Misogonus (written 1560), the abstract element and improving purpose remain, and the source is partly neo-Latin comedy, native or foreign. Romance crept in: serious comedy, with its brilliant future, the comedy of high sentiment and averted dangers mingled still with See also:

FARCE

farce, was shadowed forth in See also:

DAMON

Damon and Pithias and in the curious play Common Conditions; while the domestic comedy of intrigue dawned in Gascoigne's Supposes, adapted from See also:

ARIOSTO, LODOVICO (1474-1533)

Ariosto. Thus were displaced the ranker rustic fun of Gammer Gurton's See also:

NEEDLE (O. Eng. ncedl; the word appears in various forms in Teutonic languages, Ger. Nadel, Dutch naal, the root being ne-, to sew, cf. Ger. nahen, and probably Lat. nere, to spin, Gr. vi)ats, spinning)

Needle (written c. 1559) and other labours of " rhyming mother= wits." But there was no style, no talk, no satisfactory metre. The verse of comedy waited for See also:

Greene, and its prose for See also:

LYLY (LILLY, or LYLIE), JOHN (1553–1606)

Lyly. Structure, without style, was also the main achievement of the early tragedies.

The Latin plays of Buchanan, sometimes biblical in topic, See also:

REST (O. Eng. rest, reste, bed, cognate with other Teutonic forms, e.g. Ger. Rast, Riiste, rest, and probably Gothic Rasta, league, i.e. resting or stopping place)

rest, as to their form, upon See also:

EURIPIDES (48o–4o6 B.C.)

Euripides. But early English tragedy was shapen after the Senecan plays of Italy and after Seneca himself, all of whose dramas were translated by 1581. See also:

GORBODUC

Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, acted about 1561, and written by Sackville and See also:

Norton, and See also:

Hughes' Misfortunes of Arthur (acted 1588), are not so much plays as wraiths of plays, with their chain of slaughters and revenges, their two-dimensional personages, and their lifeless maxims which fail to sweeten the bloodshot atmosphere. The Senecan form was not barren' in itself, as its sequel in France was to show: it was only barren for England. After Marlowe it was driven to the study, and was Verse to 1580. still written (possibly under the impulse of Mary countess of See also:

Pembroke), by, See also:

Daniel and Greville, with much reminiscence of the French Senecans. But it left its trail on the real drama. It set the pattern of a high tragical See also:

ACTION

action, often motived by revenge, swayed by large ideas of See also:

FATE

fate and retribution, and told in blank metre; and it bequeathed, besides many moral sentences, such minor points of mechanism as the See also:

GHOST (a word common to the W. Teutonic languages; O.E. vest, Dutch, 'geest, Ger. Geist)

Ghost, the See also:

CHORUS (Gr. xopbs)Z

Chorus and the inserted play. There were many hybrid forms like Gismond of Salern, based on foreign story, alloyed with the mere personifications of the Morality, and yet contriving, as in the case of Promos and See also:

CASSANDRA

Cassandra (the See also:

FOUNDATION (Lat. fundatio, from fundare, to found)

foundation of Measure for Measure), to interest Shakespeare. Thus the drama by r58o had some of its See also:

CARPENTRY

carpentry, though not yet a true style or versification. These were only to be won by See also:

ESCAPE (in mid. Eng. eschape or escape, from the O. Fr. eschapper, modern echapper, and escaper, low Lat. escapium, from ex, out of, and cappa, cape, cloak; cf. for the sense development the Gr. iichueoOat, literally to put off one's clothes, hence to sli

escape from the classic tutelage. The ruder chronicle play also began, and the reigns of John and Henry V. amongst others were put upon the stage.

Verse from Spenser to Donne.—Sir See also:

Philip Sidney almost shares with See also:

Edmund Spenser the honours of announcing the Spenser. new verse, for part of his Astrophel and Stella was written, if not known in unpublished form, about 158o-1581, and contains ten times the passion and poetry of The Shepherd's Calendar (1599). This work, of which only a few passages have the See also:

seal of Spenser's coming power, was justly acclaimed for its novelty of experiment in many styles, pastoral, satiric and triumphal, and in many measures: though it was criticized for its " rustic " and archaic diction—a " no language " that was to have more influence upon poetry than any of the real dialects of England. Spenser's desire to write high tragedy, avowed in his See also:

OCTOBER

October, was not to be granted; his nine comedies are lost; and he became the chief non-dramatic poet of his time and country. Both the plaintive See also:

PESSIMISM (from Lat. pessimus, worst)

pessimism of Petrarch and du Bellay, with their favourite method of See also:

EMBLEM (Gr. Eµ3Xysa, something put in or inserted, from EµfiiXAew, to throw in)

emblem, and the Platonic theory of the spiritual love and its heavenly begetting sank into him; and the Hymns To Love and To Beauty are possibly his earliest verses of sustained perfection and exaltation. These two strains of feeling Spenser never lost and never harmonized; the first of them recurs in his Complaints of 1591, above all in The Ruins of Time, the second in his Amoretti (1595) and See also:

COLIN, ALEXANDRE (1526-1612)

Colin Clout and Epithalamion, which are autobiographical. These and a hundred other threads are See also:

WOVEN

woven into The Faerie Queene, an unfinished allegorical epic in See also:

HONOUR (Lat. honos or lwnor, honoris; in English the word was spelled with or without the u indifferently until the 17th century, but during the 18th century it became fashion-able to spell the word " honor "; Johnson's and Webster's Dictionaries stereoty

honour of moral goodness, of which three books came out in 1590 and three more in 1596, while the fragment Of Constancy (so-called) is first found in the See also:

POSTHUMOUS

posthumous See also:

FOLIO (properly the ablative case of the Lat. folium, leaf, but also frequently an adaptation of the Ital. foglio)

folio of 1609. This poem is the fullest reflex, outside the drama, of the soul and aspirations of the time. For its scenery and mechanism the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto furnishes the framework. In both poems tales of knightly adventu-e intertwine unconfused; in both the slaying of monsters, the See also:

CAPTURE (from Lat. capere, to take; Fr. prise maritime; Ger. Wegnahme)

capture of strong places, and the See also:

RELEASE (O.Fr. reles, variant of relais, from relaisser, to release, let go, Lat. relaxare)

release of the See also:

innocent, hindered by wizard and sorcerer, or aided by magic sword and horn snd mirror, constitute the quest; and in both warriors, ladies, dwarfs, dragons and figures from old See also:

MYTHOLOGY

mythology jostle dreamily together. To all this pomp Spenser strove to give a moral and often also a political meaning. Ariosto was not a vales sacer; and so Spenser took See also:

TASSO, TORQUATO (1544-1595)

Tasso's theme of the See also:

HOLY

holy war waged for the See also:

Sepulchre, and See also:

EXPANDED

expanded it into a war between good and evil, as he saw them in the world; between chastity and lust, See also:

LOYALTY

loyalty and detraction, England and Spain, England and Rome, Elizabeth and usurpers, Irish See also:

GOVERNOR (from the Fr. gouverneur, from gouverner, O. Fr. governer, Lat. gubernare, to steer a ship, to direct, guide)

governor and; Irish See also:

REBEL, JOHANN PETER (176o-1826)

rebel, right and wrong. The title-virtues of his six extant books he affects to take from See also:

Aristotle; but Holiness, See also:

TEMPERANCE

Temperance, Chastity, See also:

JUSTICE (Lat. justitia)

Justice, Friendship and See also:

COURTESY (O. Fr. curtesie, later courtoisie)

Courtesy form a medley of medieval, puritanical and Greek ideals.

Spenser's moral sentiments, often ethereally noble, might well be contrasted, and that not always to their See also:

CREDIT (Lat. credere, to believe)

credit, with those more secular and naturalistic ones that rule in Shakespeare or in Bernardino See also:

TELESIO, BERNARDINO (1509-1588)

Telesio and Giordano Bruno. But The Faerie Queene lives by its poetry; and its poetry lives independently of its creed. The idealized figures of Elizabeth, who is the Faerie Queene, and of the " magnificent " See also:

Prince Arthur, fail to bind the adventures together, and after two books the poem breaks down in structure. And indeed all through it relies on episodeand pageant, on its prevailing and insuppressible loveliness of See also:

SCENE (Fr. scene, Lat. scaena, Gr. oflvil, a tent or booth, a stage or scene)

scene and tint, of phrasing and of melody, beside which the inner meaning is often an interruption. Spenser is not to be tired; in and out of his See also:

TAPESTRY

tapestry, with its " glooming light much like a shade," See also:

pace his figures on horseback, or in See also:

DURANCE (anc. Druentia)

durance, with their clear and pictorial allegoric trappings; and they go either singly, or in his favourite masques or pageants, suggested by emblematical See also:

PAINTING

painting or civic procession. He is often duly praised for his lingering and liquid melodies and his gracious images, or blamed for their langour; but his ground-tone is a sombre melancholy—unlike that of Jaques—and his deepest quality as a writer is perhaps his angry power. Few of his forty and more thousand lines are unpoetical; in certainty of style. amongst English poets who have written profusely, he has nc equals but Chaucer, Milton and Shelley. His " artificial " diction, drawn from middle English, from See also:

DIALECT (from Gr. Sia stcror, conversation, manner of speaking, &aXeyec6at, to converse)

dialect or from false See also:

ANALOGY (Gr. avaXo-yLa, proportion)

analogy, has always the intention and nearly always the effect of beauty; we soon feel that its absence would be unnatural, and it has taken its rank among the habitual and exquisite implements of English poetry. This equality of noble form is Spenser's strength, as dilution and See also:

DIFFUSION (from the Lat. diffundere; dis-, asunder, and fundere, to pour out)

diffusion of phrase, and a certain monotonous slowness of tempo, are beyond doubt his weaknesses. His chief tech, nical invention, the nine-line stanza (ababbcbcC) was developed not from the Italian See also:

OCTAVE (from Lat. octavus, eighth, octo, eight)

octave (abababcc)., but by adding an alexandrine to the eight-line stave (ababbcbc) of Chaucer's Monk's Tale. It is naturally articulated twice—at the fifth line, where the turn of repeated rhyme inevitably charms, and at the ninth, which runs now to a crashing See also:

CLIMAX, JOHN (c. 525–600 A.D.)

climax, now to a pensive and sighing close. In rhyming, Spenser, if not always accurate, is one of the most natural and resourceful of poets.

His power over the heroic couplet or See also:

QUATRAIN

quatrain is shown in his See also:

FABLE (Fr. fable, Lat. fabula)

fable, Mother Hubbard's Tale, and in his curious verse memoir, Colin Clout ; both of which are medleys of satire and flattery. With formal tasks so various and so hard, it is wonderful how effortless the style of Spenser remains. His Muiopotmos is the lightest-handed of See also:

MOCK

mock-heroics. No writer of his day except Marlowe was so faithful to the See also:

law of beauty. The See also:

MANTLE

mantle of Spenser fell, somewhat in shreds, upon poets of many schools until the Restoration. As though in thanks to his master Tasso, he See also:

LENT (0. Eng. lenclen, " spring," M. Eng. lenten, lente, lent; cf. Dut. lente, Ger. Lenz, " spring," 0. H. Ger. lenzin, lengizin, lenzo, probably from the same root as " long " and referring to " the lengthening days ")

lent to Edward See also:

FAIRFAX, EDWARD (c. 1580-1635)

Fairfax, the best Spentranslator of the See also:

Jerusalem Delivered (See also:

GODFREY, SIR EDMUND BERRY (1621-1678)

Godfrey of sertans. Bulloigne, 1600), some of his own ease and intricate melody. See also:

HARINGTON, SIR JOHN (1561—1612)

Harington, the witty translator of Ariosto (1591)and spoilt See also:

child of the court, owed less to Spenser. The allegorical colouring was nobly caught, if sometimes barbarized, in the Christ's Victory and See also:

TRIUMPH (triumphus)

Triumph of the younger See also:

GILES (GIL, GILLES), ST

Giles Fletcher (1610), and Spenser's emblematic style was strained, even cracked, by Phineas Fletcher in The See also:

PURPLE

Purple See also:

ISLAND (O.E. ieg =isle, +land')

Island (1633), an aspiring fable, gorgeous in places, of the human body and faculties. Both of these brethren clipped and marred the stanza, but they form a See also:

LINK

link between Spenser and their studentMilton. The allegoric form, long-winded and broken-backed, survived late in Henry More's and Joseph Beaumont's verse disquisitions on the soul. Spenser's pastoral and allusive manner was allowed by Drayton in his Shepherd's Garland (1593), and differently by William See also:

Browne in Britannia's Pastorals (1613–1616 ), and by William Basse; while his more honeyed descriptions took on a mawkish taste in the See also:

ANONYMOUS

anonymous Britain's See also:

IDA (d. 559)

Ida and similar poems.

His golden Platonic style was buoyantly echoed in See also:

ORCHESTRA (Fr. Orchestre; Ger. Kapelle, Orchester; Ital. Orchestra)

Orchestra (1596), Sir John Davies' poem on the dancing See also:

SPHERES, MUSIC OF THE

spheres. He is continually traceable in 17th-century verse, blending with the See also:

ALIEN (Lat. alienus)

alien currents of Ben Jonson and of Donne. He was edited and imitated in the age of See also:

Thomson, in the age of William See also:

Morris, and constantly between. The. typical Elizabethan poet is See also:

Michael Drayton; who followed Spenser in pastoral, Daniel, Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare in sonnet, Daniel again in chronicle and legend, and Marlowe in mythological story, and who Drayton yet remained himself. His Endimion and See also:

PHOEBE

Phoebe Dania in passages stands near Hero and Leander ; his England's Heroical Epistles (1597) are in ringing rhetorical couplets; his Odes (16o6), like the Ballad of See also:

AGINCOURT (AZINCOURT)

Agincourt and the Virginian Voyage, forestall and equal See also:

Cowper's or See also:

Campbell's; his Nymphidia (1627) was the most popular of See also:

BURLESQUE (Ital. burlesco, from burla, a joke, fun, playful trick)

burlesque fairy poems; and his pastorals are full of See also:

GRACES, THE, (Gr. X&panes, Lat. Gratiae)

graces and felicities. The work of Drayton that is least read and most often mentioned is his Poly-Olbion (1612–1622), a vast and pious effort, now and then nobly repaid, to versify the scenery, legend, customs and particularities of every English See also:

COUNTY (through Norm. Fr. comae, cf. O. Fr. cunte, conk', Mod. Fr. comae, from Lat. comitatus, cf. Ital. comitato, Prov. comtat; see COUNT)

county. The more recluse and pensive habit of See also:

SAMUEL

Samuel Daniel chills his long chronicle poems; but with Chapman he is the clearest voice of Stoicism in Elizabethan letters; and his harmonious nature is perfectly expressed in a style of happy, even excellence, free alike from " fine madness " and from See also:

STRAIN (through O. Fr. straindre, estraindre, mod. i treindre, from Lat. stringere, to draw tight, related to stress, stretch, string, &c.)

strain. Sonnet and See also:

EPISTLE

epistle are his favoured forms, and in his Musophilus (1599) as well as in his admirable prose See also:

Defence of Rhyme (1602), he truly prophesies the hopes and glories of that illustre vulgare, the literary speech of England. All this patriotic and historic verse, like the earlier and ruder See also:

Albion's England (1586) of William See also:

Warner, or Fitzgeoffrey's poem upon See also:

Drake, or the outbursts of Spenser, was written during or inspired by the last twenty years of the queen's reign; and the same is true of Shakespeare's and most of the other history plays, which duly eclipsed the formal, rusty-gray chronicle poem of the type of the Mirror for Magistrates, though See also:

EDITIONS

editions (1559-161o) of the latter were long repeated. Patriotic verse outside the See also:

THEATRE (BEarpov, " a place for seeing," from OeacOae)

theatre, however, full of zeal, started at a disadvantage compared with love-sonnet, song, or mythic narrative, because it had no models before it in other lands, and remained therefore the more shapeless. The English love-sonnet, brought in by Wyatt and rifest between 1590 and 1600, was revived as a purely studious imitation sonnets. by See also:

Watson in his Hekatompathia (1582), a See also:

STRING

string of translations in one of the exceptional measures that were freely entitled " sonnets." But from the first, in the hands of Sidney, whose Astrophel and Stella (1591) was written, as remarked above, about 1581, the sonnet was ever ready to See also:

PULSE

pulse into feeling, and to flash into unborrowed beauty, embodying sometimes dramatic See also:

FANCY (a shortened form, dating from the 15th century, of " fantasy," which is derived through the O. Fr. fantasie, modern fantaisie. from the Latinized form of the Gr. cbavraoia, Oavrai'ecv, Oat Pais, to show)

fancy and often living experience. These three See also:

fibres of imitation, imagination and See also:

CONFESSION (Lat. confessio, from confiteor, acknowledge, confess)

confession are inter-See also:

TWISTED

twisted beyond severance in many of the cycles, and now one, now another is uppermost.

Incaution might read a personal See also:

DIARY

diary into Thomas See also:

Lodge's Phillis (1593), which is often a translation from Ronsard. Literal See also:

JUDGES, THE BOOK OF

judges have announced that Shakespeare's Sonnets are but his mode of taking exercise. But there is poetry in " God's plenty" almost everywhere; and few of the series fail of lovely lines or phrasing or even of perfect sonnets. This holds of Henry See also:

Constable's See also:

DIANA

Diana (1592), of the Parthenophil and Parthenophe of Barnabe See also:

Barnes (1593), inebriate with poetry, and of the stray minor See also:

groups, Alcilia, Licia, See also:

CAELIA

Caelia; while the Caelica of See also:

FULKE, WILLIAM (1538-1589)

Fulke Greville, Lord See also:

Brooke, in irregular form, is full of metaphysical passion struggling to be delivered. Astrophel and Stella, Drayton's Idea (1594.1619), Spenser's Amoretti and Shakespeare's Sonnets (printed 1609) are addressed to definite and probably to known persons, and are charged with true poetic rage, ecstatic or plaintive, desperate or solemn, if they are also intermingled with the mere word-play that mocks or beguiles the ebb of feeling, or with the purely plastic work that is done for solace. In most of these series, as in Daniel's paler but exquisitely-wrought See also:

DELIA

Delia (1591-1592), the form is that of the three separate quatrains with the closing couplet for emotional and melodic climax; a See also:

SCHEME (Lat. schema, Gr. oxfjya, figure, form, from the root axe, seen in exeiv, to have, hold, to be of such shape, form, &c.)

scheme slowly but defiantly evolved, through traceable gradations, from that stricter one of Italy, which See also:

Drummond and Milton revived, and where the crisis properly coincides with the change from octave to sestet. The amorous mythologic tale in verse derives immediately from contemporary Italy, but in the beginning from See also:

OVID [PUBLIUS OvID1us NASO] (43 B.C.–A.D. 17)

Ovid, Mythic whose Metamorphoses, familiar in See also:

GOLDING, ARTHUR (c. 1536-c. 1605)

Golding's old version poems. (1555–1557), furnished descriptions, decorations and many tales, while his Heroides gave Chaucer and Boccaccio a model for the self-See also:

anatomy of tragic or plaintive sentiment. Within ten years, between 1588 and 1598, during the early sonnet-vogue, appeared Lodge's Scillaes See also:

METAMORPHOSIS

Metamorphosis, Shakespeare's See also:

VENUS

Venus and See also:

ADONIS

Adonis and See also:

Rape of Lucrece, Marlowe's Hero and Leander and Drayton's Endimion and Phoebe. Shake-speare owed something to Lodge, and Drayton to Marlowe. All these points describe a love-situation at length, and save in one instance they describe it from without. The exception is Marlowe, who achieves a more than Sicilian perfection; he says everything, and is equal to everything that he has to say.

In Venus and Adonis the poet is enamoured less of love than of the tones and poses of lovers and of the beauty and gallant See also:

motion of animals, while in The Rape of Lucrece he is See also:

INTENT (from Lat. intend ere, to stretch out, extend, particularly in the phrase intendere animum, to turn one's mind to, purpose)

intent on the gradations of lust, shame and indignation, in which he has a spectator's interest. Virtuosity, or the delight of the executant in his own brilliant cunning, is the mark of most of these pieces. If we go to the lyrics, the versified mythic tales and the sonnets of Elizabethan times for the kind of feeling that See also:

MOLIERE (1622-1673)

Moliere's Alceste loved and that See also:

Burns and Shelley poured into Lyric. song, we shall often come away disappointed, and think the old poetry heartless. But it is not heartless, any more 'than it is always impassioned or personal; it is decorative. The feeling is often that of the craftsman; it is not of the singer who spends his vital essence in song and commands an answering thrill so long as his native language is alive or understood. The arts that deal with ivories or enamelling or See also:

SILVER

silver suggest themselves while we watch the delighted tinting and See also:

CHASING, or ENCHASING

chasing, the sense for gesture and grouping (in Venus and Adonis), or the delicate beating out of rhyme in a See also:

MADRIGAL (Ital. madrigale)

madrigal, or the designing of a single See also:

MOTIVE (from Lat. movere, to move)

motive, or two contrasted motives, within the See also:

PANEL (O. Fr. panel, mod. panneau, piece of cloth, from Med. Lat. pannellus, diminutive of pannus, cloth)

panel of the sonnet. And soon it is evident how passion and emotion readily become plastic matter too, whether they be drawn from books or observation or self-See also:

SCRUTINY (Fr. scrutin, Late Lat. scrulinium, from scrutari, to search or examine thoroughly)

scrutiny. This is above all the case in the sonnet; but it is found in the lyric as well. The result is a wonderful fertility of lyrical pattern, a wonderfully diffused power of lyrical See also:

EXECUTION (from Lat. ex-sequor, exsecutus, follow or carry out)

execution, never to recur at any later time of English literature. Wyatt had to recover the very form of such verse from oblivion, and this he did in the school of translation and adaptation. Not only the decasyllabic, but the lyric, in short lines had almost died out of memory, and Wyatt brought it back. From his day to Spenser's there is not much lyric that is noteworthy, though in Gascoigne and others the impulse is seen.

The introduction of Italian music, with its favourite metrical schemes, such as the madrigal, powerfully schooled and coloured lyric: in especial, the caressing See also:

double ending; regular in Italian but heavier in English, became common. The Italian poems were often translated in their own measure, line by line, and the musical setting retained. Their tunes, or other tunes, were then coupled with new and original poems; and both appeared together in the song-books of Dowland the lutanist, of See also:

Jones and See also:

BYRD, WILLIAM (1543-1623)

Byrd (1588), and in chief (16o1–1619) of Thomas See also:

Campion. The words of Campion's songs are not only supremely musical in the wider sense, but are chosen for their singing quality. Misled awhile by the See also:

HERESY

heresy that rhyme was wrong, he was yet a master of lovely rhyming, as well as of a lyrical style of great range, gaily or gravely happy. But, as with most of his fellows, singing is rather his calling than his consolation. The lyrics that are sprinkled in plays and romances are the finest of this period, and perhaps, in their kind, of any period. Shakespeare is the greatest in this See also:

province also; but the power of infallible and unforgettable song is often granted to slighter, gentler playwrights like Greene and See also:

Dekker, while it is denied to men of weightier build and sterner purpose like Chapman and Jonson. The songs of jonson are indeed at their best of absolute and antique finish; but the irrevocable See also:

dew of See also:

NIGHT

night or dawn seldom lies upon them as it lies on the songs of See also:

Webster or of Fletcher. The best lyrics in the plays are dramatic; they must be read in their own setting. While the action stops, they seize and dally with the dominant emotion of the scene, and yet relieve it. The songs of Lodge and See also:

Breton, of Drayton and Daniel, of Oxford and Raleigh, and the fervid brief flights of the Jesuit See also:

Southwell, show the omnipresence of the vital See also:

GIFT (a common Teutonic word, cf. Ger. die Gift, gift, das Gift, poison, formed from the Teut. stem gab-, to give, cf. Dutch geven, Ger. geben; in O. Eng. the word appears with initial y, the guttural of later English is due to Scandinavian influence)

gift, whether among professional writers of the journalistic type, or among poets whose gift was not primarily song, or among men of action and quality or men of See also:

religion, who only wrote when they were stirred.

See also:

LULLABY

Lullaby and See also:

VALENTINE, or VALENTINUS

valentine and compliment, and love-plaint ranging from gallantry to desperation, are all there; and the Fortunate See also:

HOUR

Hour, which visits commonly only a few men in a generation, and those but now and then in their lives, is never far off. But the master of melody, Spenser, left no songs, apart from his two insuperable See also:

WEDDING

wedding odes. And religious lyric is rarer before the reign of James. ' Much of the best lyric is saved for us by the various Miscellanies, A Handful of Pleasant Delights (1584), the See also:

Phoenix See also:

NEST

Nest (1593) and See also:

DAVISON, WILLIAM (c. 1541-1608)

Davison's Poetical Rhapsody (16oa); while other such collections, like England's See also:

Helicon(1600), were chiefly garlands of verse that was already in print. There is plenty of satiric anger and raillery in the spirit of the time, but the most genuine part of it is drawn off into drama. Except for stray passages in Spenser, Drayton and others, formal satire, though profuse, was a literary unreal thing, a pose in the manner of See also:

PERSIUS

Persius or See also:

JUVENAL (DECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS) (c. 60-140)

Juvenal, and tiresome in expression. In this kind only Donne triumphed. The attempts of Lodge and Hall and See also:

Marston and John Davies of Hereford and Guilpin and See also:

WITHER, GEORGE (1588-1667)

Wither are for the most part simply weariful in different ways, and satire waited for Dryden and his age. The attempt, however, persisted throughout. Wyatt was the first and last who succeeded in the genial, natural Horatian style. Verse from Donne to Milton.—As the age of Elizabeth receded, some changes came slowly over non-dramatic verse. In Jonson, Mete- as in John Donne (1573-1631), one of the greater poets physical or of the nation, and in many writers after Donne, may fantastic be traced a kind of See also:

COUNTER

Counter-Renaissance, or revulsion schools. against the natural man and his claims to pleasure—a revulsion from which regret for pleasure lost is seldom far.

Poetry becomes more ascetic and mystical, and this feeling takes shelter alike in the Anglican and in the Roman faith. George See also:

Herbert (The See also:

Temple, 1633), the most popular, quaint and pious of the school, but the least poetical; See also:

CRASHAW, RICHARD (1613-165o)

Crashaw, with his one ecstatic vision ( The Flaming Heart) and occasional golden stanzas ; Henry See also:

Vaughan, who wrote from 1646 to 1678, with his mystical landscape and magical cadences; and Thomas See also:

TRAHERNE, THOMAS (1637?-1674)

Traherne, his See also:

FELLOW

fellow-dreamer, are the best known of the religious Fantastics. But, earlier than most of these are Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and See also:

HABINGTON, WILLIAM (1605-1654)

Habington with his Cascara (1634), who show the same temper, if a fitful power and felicity. Such writers form the devouter See also:

section of the famous "metaphysical" or "fantastic" school, which includes, besides Donne its founder, pure amorists like See also:

Carew (whose touch on certain rhythms has no fellow), young See also:

ACADEMIC

academic followers like See also:

Cartwright and See also:

Cleveland (in whom survives the vein of satire that also marks the school), and Abraham See also:

Cowley, who wrote from 1633 to 1678, and was perhaps the most acceptable living poet about the middle of the century. In his Life of Cowley See also:

Johnson tramples on the "See also:

META

meta-physical " poets and their vices, and he is generally right in detail. The See also:

SHOCK, or COLLAPSE

shock of See also:

COLD (in O. Eng. cald and ceald, a word coming ultimately from a root cognate with the Lat. gelu, gelidus, and common in the Teutonic languages, which usually have two distinct forms for the substantive and the adjective, cf. Ger. Kolte, kalt, Dutch koude

cold quaintness, which every one of them continually administers, is fatal. Johnson only erred in ignoring all their virtues and all their historical importance. In Donne poetry became deeply intellectualized, and in temper disquisitive and introspective. The poet's emotion is played with in a See also:

cat-and-See also:

MOUSE

mouse See also:

FASHION (adapted from Fr. facon, agon, Lat. factio, making, facere, to do or make)

fashion, and he torments it subtly. Donne's passion is so real, if so unheard-of, and his See also:

BRAIN (A.S. braegen)

brain so finely-dividing, that he can make almost any See also:

IMAGE (Lat. imago, perhaps from the same root as imitari, copy, imitate)

image, even the remotest, even the commonest, poetical. His satires, his Valentine, his See also:

LITANY

Litany, and his lyric or odic pieces in general, have an insolent and sudden daring which is warranted by deep-seated power and is only equalled by a few of those tragedians who are his nearest of See also:

KIN (0. E. cyn, a word represented in nearly all Teutonic languages, cf. Du. kunne, Dan. and Swed. kon, Goth kuni, tribe; the Teutonic base is kunya; the equivalent Aryan root gan- to beget, produce, is seen in Gr. 'yEvos, Lat. genus, cf. "kind")

kin. The recurring contrast of " wit " or intelligence, and " will " or desire, their struggle, their mutual See also:

ILLUMINATION

illumination, their fusion as into some third and undiscovered element of human nature, are but one See also:

IDIOSYNCRASY (Gr. Ibwavyspavia, peculiar habit of body or temperament; 'lbws, one's own, and viryKpao , blending, tempering, from o-vyiepavvvoOat, to put together, compound, mix)

idiosyncrasy of Donne's intricate soul, whose general progress, so far as his dateless poems permit of its discovery, seems to have been from a See also:

pagan-ism that is unashamed but crossed with gusts of compunction, to a mystical and otherwordly temper alloyed with covetous regrets.

The Anatomy of the World and other ambitious pieces have the same quality amid their outrageous strangeness. In Donne and his successors the merely ingenious and ransacking See also:

INTELLECT (Lat. intellectus, from intelligere, to understand)

intellect often came to overbalance truth and passion; and hencearose conceits and abstract verbiage, and the difficulty of finding a perfect poem, however brief, despite the omnipresence of the poetic gift. The "fantastic school, if it contains some of the rarest sallies and passages in English, is one of the least satisfactory. Its faults only exaggerate those of Sidney, Greville and Shakespeare, who often misuse homely or technical See also:

METAPHOR

metaphor; and English verse shared, by coincidence not by borrowing, and with See also:

variations of its own, in the general strain and See also:

TORTURE (from Lat. torquere, to twist)

torture of style that was besetting so many poets of the Latin countries. Yet these poets well See also:

EARN

earn the name of metaphysical, not for their philosophic phrasing, but for the See also:

SHUTTLE (O. Eng. shitel, &c.; from the same word as " shoot ")

shuttle-See also:

FLIGHT

flight of their fancy to and fro between the things of earth and the realities of spirit that lie beyond the See also:

SCREEN (usually, but very doubtfully, connected with Lat. scrinium, a box for holding books, from scribere, to write; a connexion with Ger. Schranke, barrier, has been suggested)

screen of the flesh. Between Spenser and Milton many measures of lyrical and other poetry were modified. Donne's frequent use of roughly-accentual, almost tuneless lines is unexplained and Rhythm. was not often followed. Rhythm in general came to be studied more for its own See also:

SAKE

sake, and the study was rewarded. The lovely cordial music of Carew's amorous iambics, or of Wither's trochees, or of Crashaw's odes, or of Marvell's octosyllables, has never been regained. The formal ode set in, sometimes regularly " Pindaric " in See also:

STROPHE (Gr. o-rpod>)

strophe-grouping, sometimes irregularly Pindaric " as in Cowley's experiments. Above all, the heroic couplet, of the isolated, balanced, rhetorical order, such as Spenser, Drayton, Fairfax and See also:

Sylvester, the translator (159o--16o6) of Du Bartas, had often used, began to be a regular See also:

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

instrument of verse, and that for special purposes which soon became lastingly associated with it. The flatteries of Edmund See also:

Waller and theOvidian translations of See also:

Sandys dispute the priority for smoothness and finish, though the fame was Waller's for two generations; but See also:

Denham's overestimated See also:

Cooper's See also:

Hill (1642), Cowley's Davideis (1656), and even See also:

OGILBY, JOHN (1600–1676)

Ogilby's Aeneid made the path plainer for Dryden, the first See also:

SOVEREIGN

sovereign of . the rhetorical couplet which throve as blank verse declined.

Sonnet and madrigal were the favoured measures of William Drummond of Hawthornden, a real and exquisite poet of the studio, who shows the general See also:

DRIFT (from "drive ")

drift of verse towards sequestered and religious feeling. Drummond's Poems of 1616 and Flowers of See also:

ZION, or SION (Heb. iiag, perhaps from runs " to be dry," nqs " to set up," or is " to protect "; Arabic analogies favour the meaning " hump," " summit of a ridge," and so " citadel ")

Zion (1623) are full of Petrarch and Plato as well as of Christian resignation, and he kept alive the artistry of phrasing and versification in a time of indiscipline and conflicting forms. William Browne has been named as a Spenserian, but his Britannia's Pastorals (1613-1616), with their slowly-rippling and overflowing couplets which influenced Keats, were a medley of a novel kind. George Wither may equally rank among the lighter followers of Spenser, the easy masters of lyrical narrative, and the devotional poets. But his Shepherd's Hunting and other pieces in his See also:

VOLUME

volume of 1622 contain lovely landscapes, partly English and partly artificial, and stand far above his pious works, and still further above the dreary satires which he lived to continue after the Restoration. Of poets yet unmentioned, Robert See also:

HERRICK, ROBERT (1591-1674)

Herrick is the chief, with his two thousand lyrics and epigrams, gathered in See also:

HESPERIDES

Hesperides and Noble See also:

Numbers (1648). His power of song and flerrlalr. sureness of cadence are not excelled within his range of topic, which includes flowers and maidens—whom he treats as creatures of the same race—and the See also:

swift decay of both their beauties, and secular regret over this decay and his own mortality and the transience of amorous pleasure, and the virtues of his friends, and country See also:

sports and See also:

lore, and religious compunction for his own paganism. The Hesperides are pure Renaissance work, in natural sympathy with the Roman elegiac writings and with the Pseudo-See also:

ANACREON

Anacreon. Cowley is best where he is nearest Herrick, and his See also:

POSY (a shortened form of poesy, Fr. poesie, poetry)

posy of short lyrics outlives his " epic and Pindaric art." There are many writers who last by virtue of one or two poems; Suckling by his See also:

ADEPT (if used as a substantive pronounced adept, if as an adjective adept; from Lat. adeptus, one who has Attained)

adept playfulness, Love-See also:

LACE (corresponding to Ital. merletto, trina; Genoese Pizzo; Ger. spitzen; Fr. dentelle; Dutch kanten; Span. encaje; the English word owes something to the Fr. lassis or laces, but both are connected with the earlier Lat. laqueus; early French laces were

lace and See also:

Montrose by a few gallant stanzas, and many a name-less poet by many a consummate cadence. It is the age of sudden flights and brief perfections. All the farther The long out of reach, yet never wholly despaired of or un- poem. attempted in England, was the " long poem," heroical and noble, the " phantom epic," that See also:

SHADOW (0. Eng. Schadewe, sceadu; a form of " shade "; connected with Gr. 6-Ore's, darkness)

shadow of the ancient masterpieces, which had striven to life in Italy and France. See also:

Davenant's Gondibert (1651), Cowley's Davideis and See also:

CHAMBERLAYNE, WILLIAM (1619-1679)

Chamberlayne's Pharonnida (1659) attest the effort which Milton in 1658 resumed with triumph.

These works have between them all the vices possible to epic verse, dulness and flatness, faintness and quaintness and incoherence. But there is some poetry in each of them, and in Pharonnida there is far more than enough poetry to save it. Few writers have found a flawless style of their own so early in life as John Milton (1608–1674). His youthful pieces show Milton some signs of Spenser and the See also:

Caroline fantastics; but soon his vast poetical reading ran clear and lay at the service of his talent. His vision and phrasing of natural things were already original in the Nativity Ode, written when he was twenty; and, there also, his versification was already that of a master, of a renovator. The pensive and figured beauty of L'Altegro and Il Penseroso, two contrasted emblematic panels, the high innocent See also:

PLATONISM

Platonism and golden blank verse of the See also:

COMUS (from sd p.os, revel, or a company of revellers)

Comus (1634); the See also:

BIRTH (a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages from the root of the verb " to bear ")

birth of long-sleeping power in the Lycidas (1637), with its unapproached contrivance both in evolution and detail, where the , See also:

PRECIOUS (O. Fr. precios, mod. precieux, Lat. pretiosus, of high value or price, pretium)

precious essences of earlier myth and pastoral seem to be distilled for an offering in honour of the tombless friend; the newness, the promise, the sureness of it all amid the current schools! The historian finds in these poems, with their echoes of Plato and Sannazzaro, of Geoffrey of Monmouth and St John, the richest and most perfect instance of the studious, decorative Renaissance style, and is not surprised to find Milton's scholars a century later in the age of Gray. The critic, while feeling that the strictly lyrical, spontaneous element is absent, is all the more baffled by the skill and enduring charm. The sonnets were written before or during Milton's long See also:

IMMERSION (Lat. immersio, dipping),

immersion (1637–1658) in prose and warfare, and show the same gifts. They are not See also:

CAST (from the verb meaning " to throw "; the word is Scand. in origin, cf. Dan. kaste, and Swed. kasta; " cast " in Middle Eng. took the place of the A.S. weor pan, cf. Ger. werf en)

cast in the traditional form of love-cycle, but are occasional poems; in metre they revert, not always strictly but once or twice in full perfection, to the Italian scheme; and they recall not Petrarch but the spiritual elegies or patriot exaltations of Dante or See also:

GUIDICCIONI, GIOVANNI (1480-1541)

Guidiccioni. Milton also had a medieval side to his brain, as the History of Britain shows. The heroic theme, which he had resolved from his youth up to celebrate, at last, after many hesitations, proved to be the fall of man.

This, for one of his creed and for the audience he desired, was the greatest theme of all. Its scene was the Ptolemaic universe with the Christian See also:

HEAVEN (0. Eng. hefen, heofon, heofone; this word appears in O.S. hevan; the High. Ger. word appears in Ger. Himmel, Dutch hemel; there does not seem to be any connexion between the two words, and the ultimate derivation of the word is unknown; the sugges

heaven and hell inserted. The time, indicated by retrospect and prophecy, was the whole of that portion of eternity, from the creation of Christ to the doomsday, of which the history was sacredly revealed. The subject and the general span of the action went back to the popular mystery play; and Milton at first planned out See also:

PARADISE (Gr. lrap6BEwos)

Paradise Lost as such a play, with certain elements of classic tragedy embodied. But according to the current theory the epic, not the drama, was the noblest form of verse; and, feeling where his power lay, he adopted the epic. The subject, therefore, was partly medieval, partly Protestant,—for Milton was a true Protestant in having a variant of doctrine shared by no other mortal. But the ordering and presentment, with their See also:

OVERTURE (Fr. ouverture, opening)

overture, their interpolated episodes or narratives, their journeys between See also:

OLYMPUS

Olympus, Earth and hell, invocations, set similes, battles and divine thunderbolts, are those of the classical epic. Had Milton shared the free thought as well as the scholarship of the Renaissance, the poem could never have existed. With all his range of soul and skill, he had a narrower speculative brain than any poet of equal gift; and this was well for his great and peculiar task. But whatever Milton may fail to be, his heroic writing is the permanent and absolute expression of something that in the English stock is inveterate—the Promethean self-possession of the mind in defeat, its right to solitude there, its claim to judge and deny the See also:

victor. This is the spirit of his devils, beside whom his divinities, his unfallen angels (Abdiel excepted), and even his human couple with their radiance and beauty of line, all seem shadowy. The discord between Milton's doctrine and his sympathies in Paradise Lost (1667) has never escaped notice.

The discord between his doctrine and his culture comes out in Paradise Regained (1671), when he has at once to reprobateand glorify Athens, the "mother of arts." In this afterthought to the earlier epic the action is slight, the Enemy has lost spirit, and the Christ is something of a See also:

PEDAGOGUE

pedagogue. But there is a new charm in its even, grey See also:

DESERT

desert tint, sprinkled with illuminations of See also:

gold and luxury. In Samson Agonistes (1671) the ethical treatment as well as the machinery is Sophoclean, and the See also:

THEOLOGY

theology not wholly Christian. But the fault of Samson is forgotten in his suffering, which is Milton's own; and thus a See also:

CROSS

cross-current of sympathy is set up, which may not be much in keeping with the story, but revives the somewhat exhausted interest and heightens a few passages into a See also:

BARE

bare and inaccessible grandeur. The essential solitude of Milton's energies is best seen in his later style and versification. When he resumed poetry about 1658, he had nothing around him to help him as an artist in heroic language. The most recent memories of the drama were also the worst; the forms of Cowley and Davenant, the would-be epic poets, were impossible. Spenser's manner was too even and fluid as a rule for such a purpose, and his power was of an alien kind. Thus Milton went back, doubtless full of Greek and Latin memories, to Marlowe, Shakespeare and others among the greater dramatists (including John See also:

Ford) ; and their tragic diction and measure are the half-hidden bases of his own. The product, however, is unlike anything except the imitations of itself. The incongruous elements of the Paradise Lost and its divided sympathies are cemented, at least superficially, by its style, perhaps the surest for dignity, character and beauty that any Germanic language has yet developed. If dull and pedantic over certain stretches, it is usually infallible.

It is many styles in one, and Time has laid no hand on it. In these three later poems its variety can be seen. It is perfect in personal invocation and appeal; in the complex but unfigured rhetoric of the speeches; in narrative of all kinds; for the See also:

INLAYING

inlaying work of simile or scenery or pageant, where the See also:

QUICK

quick, pure impressions of Milton's youth and prime—possibly kept fresher by his blindness—are felt through the sometimes conventional setting; and for soliloquy and choric speech of a might unapproachable since Dante. To these calls his blank verse responds at every point. It is the seal of Milton's artistry, as of his self-confidence, for it greatly extends, for the epical purpose, all the known powers and liberties of the metre; and yet, as has often been shown, it does so not spasmodically but within fixed technical laws or rather habits. Latterly, the underlying metrical ictus is at times hard to detect. But Milton remains by far the surest and greatest instrumentalist, outside the drama, on the English unrhymed line. He would, however, have scorned to be judged on his form alone. His soul and temper are not merely unique in force. Their historic and representative character ensure attention, so long as the oppositions of soul and temper in the England of Milton's time remain, as they still are, the deepest in the national life. He is sometimes said to harmonize the Renaissance and the Puritan spirit; but he does not do this, for nothing can do it. The Puritan spirit is the deep thing in Milton; all his culture only gives immortal form to its expression.

The critics have instinctively felt that this is true; and that is why their political and religious prepossessions have nearly always coloured, and perhaps must colour, every judgment passed upon him. Not otherwise can he be taken seriously, until historians are without public passions and convictions, or the strife between the hierarch and the Protestant is quenched in English civilization. Drama, 1580-1642.-We must now go back to the drama, which lies behind Milton, and is the most individual product of all English Literature. The nascent drama of genius Drama. can be found in the " University wits," who See also:

FLOUR

flour- ished between 158o and 1595, and the chief of whom are Lyly, Kyd, Peele, Greene and Marlowe. John Lyly is the first practitioner in prose—of shapely comic See also:

plot and pointed talk—the artificial but actual talk of courtly masquers who rally one another with a See also:

bright and barren finish that is second nature. Campaspe, Sapho and Phao, See also:

MIDAS

Midas, and Lyly's other comedies, mostly written from 158o to 1591, are frail vessels, often filled with compliment, mythological allegory, or topical satire, and enamelled with pastoral interlude and flower-like song. The work of Thomas Kyd, especially The Spanish Tragedy (written e. 1585), was the most violent effort to put new See also:

WINE (Lat. vinum, Gr. oivos)

wine into the old Senecan bottles, and he probably wrote the lost pre-Shakespearian Hamlet. He transmitted to the later drama that subject of pious but ruinous revenge, which is used by Chapman, Marston, Webster and many others; and his chief play was translated and long acted in Germany. Kyd's want of modulation is complete, but he commands a substantial skill of dramatic mechanism, and he has more than the feeling for power, just as Peele and Greene have more than the feeling for luxury or grace. To the expression of luxury Peele's often stately blank verse is well fitted, and it is by far the most correct and musical before Marlowe's, as his See also:

ARRAIGNMENT (from Lat. ad, to, and rationare, to reason, call to account)

Arraignment of See also:

Paris (1,584) and his See also:

David and Bethsabe attest. Greene did something to create the blank verse of See also:

GENTLE (through the Fr. gentil, from Lat. gentilis, belonging to the same gens, or family)

gentle comedy, and to introduce the tone of idyll and chivalry, in his See also:

FRIAR (from the Lat. (rater, through the Fr. frere)

Friar Bacon and Friar See also:

BUNGAY

Bungay (1594).

Otherwise these writers, with See also:

NASHE (or NASH), THOMAS (1567-1601)

Nashe and Lodge, fall into the wake of Marlowe. Tamburlaine, in two parts (part i. c. 1587), The Life and Death of See also:

DOCTOR (Lat. for " teacher ")

Doctor Faustus, The See also:

JEW, THE WANDERING

Jew of See also:

Malta, Edward II. (the first Marlowe. chronicle play of genius), and the incomplete poem Hero and Leander are See also:

CHRISTOPHER, SAINT (Christophorus, Christoferus)

Christopher Marlowe's title-deeds (1564-1593). He established tragedy, and inspired its master, and created for it an adequate diction and versification. His command of vibrant and heroic recitative should not obscure his power, in his greater passages, describing the descent of See also:

HELEN

Helen, the passing of See also:

MORTIMER (Family)

Mortimer, and the union of Hero and Leander, to attain a kind of Greek transparency and perfection. The thirst for ideal beauty, for endless See also:

EMPIRE

empire, and for prohibited knowledge, no poet has better expressed, and in this respect Giordano Bruno is nearest him in his own time. This thirst is his own; his great See also:

CARTOON (Ital. cartone, pasteboard)

cartoon-figures, gigantic rather than heroic, proclaim it for him: their type recurs through the drama, from Richard III. to Dryden's orotund heroes; but in Faustus and in Edward II. they become real, almost human beings. His constructive gift is less developed in proportion, though Goethe praised the planning-out of Faustus. The See also:

GLORY (through the O. Fr. glorie, modern gloire, from Lat. gloria, cognate with Gr. KXebs, abets)

glory and influence of Marlowe on the side of form rest largely on his meteoric blank lines, which are varied not a little, and nobly harmonized into periods, and resonant with names to the point of splendid extravagance; and their sound is heard in Milton, whom he taught how to See also:

EXPRESS (through the French from the past participle of the Lat. exprimere, to press out, by transference used of representing objects in painting or sculpture, or of thoughts, &c. in words)

express the grief and despair of demons dissatisfied with their See also:

KINGDOM

kingdom. Shakespeare did not excel Marlowe in Marlowe's own excellences, though he humanized Marlowe's Jew, launched his own blank verse on the tide of Marlowe's oratory, and modulated, in Richard II., his master's type of chronicle tragedy. As the middle ages receded, the known life of man upon this earth became of sovereign interest, and of this interest the drama is the freest artistic expression.

If Marlowe Shake- is the voice of the impulse to explore, the plays of spectre. Shakespeare are the amplest See also:

FREIGHT, (pronounced like " weight "; derived from the Dutch vracht or vrecht, in Fr. fret, the Eng. " fraught " being the same word, and formerly used for the same thing, but now only as an adjective= " laden ")

freight brought home by any voyager. Shakespeare is not only the greatest but the earliest English dramatist who took humanity for his province. But this he did not do from the beginning. He was at first subdued to what he worked in; and though the dry pedantic tragedy was shattered and could not touch him, the See also:

gore and rant, the impure though genuine force of Kyd do not seem at first to have repelled him; if, as is likely, he had a hand in See also:

Titus A ndronicus. He probably served with Marlowe and others of the school at various stages in the composition of the three chronicle dramas finally entitled Henry VI. But besides the high-superlative style that is common to them all, there runs through them the rhymed rhetoric with which Shakespeare dallied for some time, as well as the softer See also:

FLUTE

flute-notes and deeper undersong that foretell his later blank verse. In Richard III., though it is built on the scheme and charged with the style of Marlowe, Shakespeare first showed the intensity of his original power. But after a few years he swept out of Marlowe's See also:

ORBIT (from Lat. orbita, a track, orbis, a wheel)

orbit into his own vaster and unreturning See also:

CURVE (Lat. curvus, bent)

curve. In King John the lyrical, epical, satirical and pathetic chords are all present, if they are scarcely harmonized. Meantime, Lyly and Greenehaving displaced the uncouther comedy, Shakespeare learned all they had to See also:

TEACH [THATCH OR THACH], EDWARD (d. 1718)

teach, and shaped the comedy of poetic, chivalrous fancy and good-tempered high spirits, which showed him the way of escape from his own rhetoric, and enabled him to perfect his youthful, noble and gentle blank verse. This attained its utmost fineness in Richard II., and its full cordiality and beauty in the other plays that consummate this period A Midsummer Night's Dream, The See also:

MERCHANT (O. Fr. marcheant, modern marchand; from Lat. mercari, to trade, merx, goods, merchandise)

Merchant of See also:

Venice, 18 590-95.

and one romantic tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. Behind them lay the earlier and fainter romances, with their chivalry and gaiety, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost and The Two Gentlemen of See also:

Verona. Throughout these years blank verse contended with rhyme, which Shakespeare after a while abandoned save for special purposes, as though he had exhausted its See also:

HONEY (Chin. me ; Sansk. madhu, mead, honey; cf. A.S. medo, medu, mead; Gr. p Xt, in which 0 or b is changed into X; Lat. mel ; Fr. miel ; A.S. hung ; Ger. Honig)

honey. The Italian Renaissance is felt in the scenery and setting of these plays. The novella furnishes the story, which passes in a See also:

CITY (through Fr. cite, from Lat. civitas)

city of the Southern type, with its absolute ruler, its fantastic by-laws on which the plot nominally turns, and its mixture of real life and marvel. The personages, at first fainter of feature and symmetrically paired, soon assume sharper outline: Richard II. and Shylock, Portia and Juliet, and Juliet' See also:

NURSE (a shortened form of the earlier " nourice," adapted through the French from Lat. nutrix, nu/rite, to nourish)

Nurse and Bottom are created. The novella has left the earth and taken wings: the spirit is now that of youth and Fancy (or love brooding among the shallows) with interludes of " fierce vexation," or of tragedy, or of kindly farce. And there is a visionary element, felt in the musings of See also:

THESEUS

Theseus upon the nature of poetry of the dream-faculty itself; an element which is new, like the use made of fairy folklore, in the poetry of England. Tragedy is absent in the succeeding histories (1597-1599), and the comedies of wit and romance (1599-1600), in which Shakespeare perfected his style for stately, pensive or boisterous themes. Falstaff, the most popular as 160000. 16. he is the wittiest of all imaginable comic persons, dominates, as to their prose or See also:

LOWER

lower world, the two parts of Henry IV., and its interlude or offshoot, The Merry Wives of See also:

Windsor.

The play that celebrates Henry V. is less a drama than a pageant, diversified with mighty orations and cheerful humours, and filled with the love of Shakespeare for England. Here the most indigenous form of art invented by the English Renaissance reaches its climax. The Histories are peopled chiefly by men and warriors, of whom Hotspur, " dying in his excellence and flower," is perhaps more attractive than Henry of Agincourt. But in the " middle comedies," As You Like It, Much See also:

ADO (d. 874)

Ado, and Twelfth Night, the warriors are home at court, where women rule the scene and deserve to rule it; for their wit now gives the note; and Shakespeare's prose, the medium of their talk, has a finer grace and humour than ever before, See also:

EUPHUISM

euphuism lying well in subjection behind it. Mankind and this world have never been so sharply sifted or so sternly consoled, since See also:

LUCRETIUS (TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS) (c. 98–55 B.C.)

Lucretius, as in Shakespeare's tragedies. The See also:

ENERGY (from the Gr. ivipyela; iv, in, ipyov, work)

energy which created them evades, like that of the See also:

sun, our estimate. But they were not 1601-1608. out of relation to their time, the first few years of the reign of James, with its conspiracies, its See also:

Somerset and See also:

OVERBURY, SIR THOMAS (1581-1613)

Overbury horrors, its enigmatic and sombre figures like Raleigh, and its revulsion from Elizabethan buoyancy. In the same decade were written the chief tragedies of Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Marston, See also:

TOURNEUR, CYRIL (c. 1575-1626)

Tourneur; and The White See also:

DEVIL (Gr. &a,3oXos, " slanderer," from &ctflisXX sty, to slander)

Devil, and A Yorkshire Tragedy, and The Maid's Tragedy, and A Woman Killed with Kindness. But, in spite of Shakespeare's affinities with these authors at many points, Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, with the three Roman plays (written at intervals and not together), and the two quasi-antique plays Troilus and Cressida, and See also:

Timon of Athens, form a body of drama apart from anything else in the world. They reveal a new tragic philosophy, a new poetic style, a new dramatic technique and a new world of characters. In one way above all Shakespeare stands apart; he not only appropriates the ancient pattern of heroism, of right living and right dying, revealed by North's Plutarch; others did this also; but the intellectual movement of the time, though by no means fully reflected, is reflected in his tragedies far more than else-where.

The new and troublous thoughts on man and conduct that were penetrating the general mind, the freedom and play of vision that Montaigne above all had stimulated, here find their fullest See also:

SCOPE (through Ital. scopo, aim, purpose, intent, from Gr. o'KOaos, mark to shoot at, aim, o ic07reiv, to see, whence the termination in telescope, microscope, &c.)

scope; and See also:

FLORIO, GIOVANNI (1553?-1625)

Florio's translation (16o3) of Montaigne's Essays, coming out between the first and the second versions of Shakespeare's Hamlet, counted probably for more than any other book. The Sonnets (published 16o9) are also full of far-wandering thoughts on truth and beauty and on good and evil. The story they reveal may be ranked with the situations of the stranger dramas like Troilus and Measure for Measure. But whether or no it is a true story, and the Sonnets in the main a confession, they would be at the very 'worst a perfect dramatic record of a great poet's suffering and friendship. Shakespeare's last period, that of his tragi-comedies, begins about 16o8 with his contributions to Pericles, Prince of Tyre. For unknown reasons he was moved, about the time Last of his retirement home, to record, as though in justice period. to the world, the happy turns by which tragic disaster is at times averted. Pericles, The See also:

Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The See also:

TEMPEST, MARIE (1866– )

Tempest all move, after a series of crimes, calumnies, or estrangements, to some final scene of enthralling beauty, where the lost reappear and love is recovered; as though after all the faint and desperate last partings—of Lear and Cordelia, of Hamlet and Horatio—which Shakespeare had imagined, he must make retrieval with the picture of young and happy creatures whose life renews See also:

hope even in the experienced. To this end he See also:

CHOSE (Fr. for " thing ")

chose the loose action and free atmosphere of the roman d'aventure, which had already been adapted by Beaumont and Fletcher, who may herein have furnished Shakespeare with novel and successful theatrical effects, and who certainly in turn studied his handiwork. In The Tempest this tragi-comic scheme is fitted to the tales brought by explorers of far isles, See also:

WILD, JONATHAN (c. 1682-1725)

wild men, strange gods and See also:

AIRY, SIR GEORGE BIDDELL (1801-1892)

airy music. Even if it be true that in Prospero's words the poet bids farewell to his magic, he took part later nevertheless in the composition of Henry VIII.; and not improbably also in The Two Noble Kinsmen. His See also:

SHARE (O. Eng. scearu, chiefly in compounds, e.g. land-scearu, a share of land, from sceran to cut; cf. " shear" )

share in two early pieces, See also:

ARDEN, FOREST OF

Arden of Feversham (1592) and Edward III., has been urged, never established, and of many other dramas he was once idly accused.

Shakespeare's See also:

THRONE

throne rests on the foundation of three, equal and master faculties. One is that of expression and versification; the next is the invention and presentation of human character in action; the third is the theatrical faculty. The writing of Dante may seem to us more steadily great and perfect, when we remember Shakespeare's conceits, his experiments, his haste and impatience in his long wrestle with tragic language, his not infrequent sheer infelicities. But Dante is always himself, he had not to find words for hundreds of imaginary persons. BaIzac, again, may have created and exhibited as many types of man-kind, but except in soul he is not a poet. Shakespeare is a supreme if not infallible poet; his verse, often of an antique simplicity or of a rich, harmonious, romantic perfection, is at other times strained and shattered with what it tries to express, and attains beauty only through discord. He is also many persons in one; in his Sonnets he is even, it may be thought, himself. But he had furthermore to study a personality not of his own fancying-with something in it of Caliban, of Dogberry and of Cleopatra—that of the audience in a playhouse. He belongs distinctly to the poets like Jonson and See also:

MASSINGER, PHILIP (1583-1640)

Massinger who are true to their art as practical dramatists, not to the poets like Chapman whose works chance to be in the form of plays. Shakespeare's mastery of this art is approved now by every nation. But apart from the skill that makes him eternally actable—the skill of raising, straining and relieving the suspense, and bringing it to such an ending as the theatre will tolerate—he played upon every chord in his own hearers. He frankly enlisted Jew-hatred, Pope-hatred and France-hatred; he flattered the queen, and celebrated the Union, and stormed the house with his fanfare over the national soldier, Henry of Agincourt, and glorified England, as in Cymbeline, to the last.

But in deeper ways he is the chief of playwrights. Unlike another master, See also:

IBSEN, HENRIK (1828-1906)

Ibsen, he nearly always tells us, without emphasis, by the words and behaviour of his characters, which of them we are to, love andhate, and when we are to loveiand.when to hate those whom we can neither love nor hate wholly. Yet he is not to be bribed, and deals to his characters something of the same injustice or rough justice that is found in. real life. His loyalty to life, as well as to the stage, puts the See also:

CROWN

crown on his felicity and his fertility, and raises him to his solitude of dramatic greatness. Shakespeare's method could not be imparted, and despite reverberations in Beaumont, Fletcher, Webster and others he left no school. But his friend Ben Jonson, his nearest equal in vigour of brain, though not in poetical in- /oason. tuition, was the greatest of dramatic influences down to the shutting of the theatres in 1642, and his comedies found fresh disciples even after 166o. He had " the devouring See also:

eye and the portraying hand "; he could master and order the contents of a mighty if somewhat burdensome memory into an organic drama, whether the matter lay in Roman historians or before his eyes in the London streets. He had an armoury of doctrine, drawn from the Poetics and See also:

HORACE [QuINTus HORATIUS FLACCUS] (65-8 B.C.)

Horace, which moulded his creative practice. This was also partly founded on a revulsion against the plays around him, with their loose build and moral improbabilities. But in spite of his photographic and constructive power, his vision is too seldom free and genial; it is that of the satirist who thinks that his See also:

OFFICE (from Lat. officium, " duty," " service," a shortened form of opifacium, from facere, " to do," and either the stem of opes, " wealth," " aid," or opus, " work ")

office is to improve mankind by derisively representing it. And he does this by beginning with the "humour," or abstract idiosyncrasy or quality, and clothing it with accurately See also:

minute See also:

costume and gesture, so that it may pass for a man; and indeed the result is as real as many a man; and in his best-tempered and youthful comedy, Every Man in his Humour (acted 1598), it is very like life. In Jonson's monumental pieces, Volpone or the See also:

Fox (acted 1605) and The Alchemist (acted 161o), our See also:

LAUGHTER

laughter is arrested by the lowering and portentous atmosphere, or is loud and hard, startled by the enormous skill and energy displayed.

Nor are the joy and See also:

RELIEF

relief of poetical comedy given for an instant by The Silent Woman, See also:

Bartholomew Fair (acted 1614), or The Staple of See also:

NEWS

News, still less by topical plays like Cynthia's See also:

REVELS, MASTER OF THE

Revels, though their unfailing farce and rampant fun are less charged with contempt. The erudite tragedies, See also:

SEJANUS, LUCIUS AELIUS

Sejanus (acted 16(33) and See also:

CATILINE [Lucius SERGIUS CATILINA] (C. I08-62 B.C.)

Catiline, chiefly live by passages of high forensic power. Jonson's finer elegies, eulogies and lyrics, which are many, and his fragmentary Sad Shepherd, show that he also had a free and lovely talent, often smothered by doctrine and temper; and his verse, usually strong but full of knots and snags, becomes flowing and graciously finished. His prose is of the best, especially in his Discoveries, a series of ethical essays and critical maxims; its prevalently brief and emphatic rhythms suggesting those of See also:

HOBBES, THOMAS (1588–1679)

Hobbes, and even, though less easy and civil and various, those of Dryden. The " sons of Jonson, See also:

Randolph and Browne, See also:

SHADWELL, THOMAS (c. 1642-1692)

Shadwell and Wilson, were heirs rather to his See also:

RIOT (0. Fr. riote, of uncertain etymology)

riot of " humours," his learned method and satiric aim, than to his larger style, his architectural power, or his relieving graces. As a whole, the romantic drama (so to entitle the remaining bulk of plays down to 1642) is a vast stifled See also:

JUNGLE (Sans. jangala)

jungle, full of wild life and song, with strange growths and heady perfumes, with glades of See also:

SUNSHINE

sunshine and recesses of poisoned dramaRomantic . darkness; it is not a cleared forest, where single and splendid trees grow to shapely perfection. It has poetry enough for anything "; passionate situations, and their eloquence; and a number, doubtless small considering its mass, of living and memorable personages. Moral keeping and constructive mastery are rarer still; and too seldom through a whole drama do we see human life and hear its voices, arranged and orchestrated by the artist. But it can be truly said in defence that while structure without poetry is void (as it tended at times to be in Ben Jonson), poetry without structure is still poetry, and that the romantic drama is like nothing else in this world for variety of See also:

ACCENT

accent and unexpectedness of beauty. We must read it through, as See also:

Charles See also:

Lamb did, to do it justice. The diffusion of its characteristic excellences is surprising. Of its extant plays it is hardly safe to leave one unopened, if we are searchers for whatsoever is lovely or admirable.

The reasons for the lack of steadfast power and artistic conscience lay partly in the conditions of the stage. Playwrights usually wrote rapidly for See also:

BREAD

bread, and sold their rights. The performances of each play were few. There was no authors' See also:

copyright, and dramas were made to be seen and heard, not to be read. There was no articulate dramatic criticism, except such as we find casually in Shakespeare, and in the practice and theory of Jonson, who was See also:

DEAF

deaf or hostile to some of the chief virtues of the romantic playwrights. The wealth of dramatic production is so great that only a broad classification is here offered. George Chapman stands Chapmaa. apart, nearest to the greatest in high austerity of sentiment and in the gracious gravity of his romantic love-comedies. But the crude See also:

MELODRAMA (a coined word from Gr. µEXos, music, and Spaµa, action)

melodrama of his tragedies is void of true theatrical skill. His quasi-historical French tragedies on See also:

BUSSY, ROGER DE RABUTIN, COMTE DE (1618–1693)

Bussy d'Ambois and See also:

BIRON, ARMAND DE GONTAUT, BARON DE (1524-1592)

Biron and See also:

Chabot best show his gift and also his insufferable interrupting quaintness. His versions of See also:

HOMER, WINSLOW (1836-191o)

Homer (1598-1624), honoured alike by Jonson and by Keats, are the greatest verse translations of the time, and the real work of Chapman's life. Their virtues are only partially Homer's, but the general epic See also:

NOBILITY

nobility and the See also:

MAJESTY (Fr. majeste; Lat. majestas, grandeur, greatness, from the base mag-, as in magnus, great, major, greater, &c.)

majesty of single lines, which in length are the 'near See also:

EQUIVALENT

equivalent of the See also:

HEXAMETER

hexameter, redeem the want of Homer's limpidity and continuity and the translator's imperfect knowledge of Greek. A vein of satiric ruggedness unites Jonson and Chapman with Marston and Hall, the professors of an artificial and disgusting invective; and the same strain spoils Marston's plays, and obscures his genuine f43mmand of the language of feverish and See also:

BITTER, KARL THEODORE FRANCIS (1867– )

bitter sentiment.

With these writers satire and contempt of the world lie at the See also:

root both of their comedy and tragedy. It is otherwise with most of the romantic dramatists, who may be provisionally grouped as follows. (a) Thomas Dekker and Thomas Heywood are writers-of-all-work, the former Dekker profuse of tracts and See also:

PAMPHLETS

pamphlets, the latter of treatises and Heywood. and compilations. They are both unrhetorical and void of pose, and See also:

DIVIDE

divide themselves between the artless comedy 'of bustling, lively, English humours and pathetic, unheroic tragedy. But Dekker has splendid and poetical dreams, in Old See also:

Fortunatus (1600) and The Honest Whore, both of luxury and of tenderness; while Heywood, as in his English Traveller and Woman killed with Kindness (acted 1603), excels in pictures of actual, chivalrous English gentlemen and their generosities. The fertility and volubility of these writers, and their modest carelessness of fame, account for many of their imperfections. With them may be named the large See also:

CROWD, CROUTH, CROWTH

crowd of professional journeymen, who did not want for power, but wrote usually in See also:

PARTNERSHIP (earlier forms, partener, parcener, from Late Lat. partionarius for partitionarius, from partitio, sharing, pars, part)

partnership together, like See also:

MUNDAY (or MONDAY), ANTHONY (c. 1553-1633)

Munday, See also:

CHETTLE, HENRY (1564?–16o7?)

Chettle and Drayton, or supplied, like William See also:

ROWLEY, WILLIAM (c. 1585-c. 1642)

Rowley, underplots of rough, lively comedy or tragedy. (b) Amongst dramatists of primarily tragic and sombre temper, who in their best scenes recall the creator of Angelo, Iago and Timon, must be named Thomas "See also:

DIET

diet" See also:

Middleton (1570 ?-1627), John Webster, and See also:

Cyril and Webster. Tourneur. Middleton has great but scattered force, and his verse has the grip and See also:

RING (O.E. hring; a word common to Teutonic languages; and probably cognate with the Lat. circus, Gr. KtpKOS or KpLKOS, Skt'. chakra, wheel, circle, cf. also " harangue "); in art, a band of circular shape of varying sizes, made of any material and used f

ring of the best period without a sign of the decadence. He is strong in high comedy, like The Old Law, that turns on some exquisite point of honour— " the moral sense of our ancestors "; in comedy that is merely graphic and vigorous; and in detached sketches of lowering wickedness and lust, like those in The See also:

CHANGELING

Changeling and Women beware Women. He and Webster each created one unforgettable desperado, de See also:

FLORES

Flores in The Changeling and Bosola iii The Duchess of Malfi (whose " pity," when it came, was " nothing akin to him ").

In Webster's other principal play, See also:

VITTORIA

Vittoria Corombona, or the White Devil (produced about 1616), the title- character is not less magnificent in defiant See also:

CRIME (Lat. crimen, accusation)

crime than Goneril or Lady Macbeth. The style of Webster, for all his See also:

MECHANICAL

mechanical horrors, distils the essences of pity and terror, of wrath and scorn, and is profoundly poetical; and his point of view seems to be blank See also:

FATALISM (Lat. fatum, that which is spoken, decreed)

fatalism, without Shakespeare's ever-arching See also:

RAINBOW

rainbow of moral sympathy. Cyril Tourneur, in The Revenger's Tragedy, is even more of a poet than Webster; he can find the phrase for half-insane wrath and nightmare brooding, but his See also:

CHAOS

chaos of impieties revolts the artistic judgment. These specialists, when all is said, are great men in their dark province. (c) The playwrights who may be broadly called romantic, of whom Beaumont, Fletcher and Massinger are the chief, while they share in the same sombre vein, have a wider range and move more in the daylight. The three just named left a very large body of drama, tragic, comic and tragi-comic, in which their several shares can partly be discerned by metrical or other tests. Beaumont (d. 1616) is nearest the See also:

PRIME, PRIMER AND PRIMING

prime, with his vein of Cervantesque mockeryandhis pure, beautifully-broken and cadenced verse, which is seen in his contributions to Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy. Fletcher (d. 1625) brings us closest to the actual gaieties and humours of Jacobean life; he has a profuse comic gift and the rare See also:

INSTINCT

instinct for natural dialogue. His verse, with its See also:

flood of vehement and expansive rhetoric, heard at its best in plays like Bonduca, cannot cheat us into the illusion that it is truly dramatic; but it overflows with beauty, like his silvery but monotonous versification with its endecasyllabics arrested at the end. In Fletcher the decadence of form and feeling palpably begins.

His personages often See also:

FACE (from Lat. fades, derived either from facere, to make, or from a root fa-, meaning " appear "; cf. Gr. cbatvstv)

face about at critical instants and bely their natures by sudden revulsions. Wanton and cheap characters invite not only dramatic but personal sympathy, as though the author knew no better. There is too much fine writing about a chastity which is complacent rather than instinctive, and satisfied with its formal resistances and technical escapes; so that we are far from Shakespeare's heroines. These faults are present also in Philip Massinger (d. 1640), who offers in substantial recom- pense, not like Beaumont and Fletcher treasures of Massignger. incessant vivacious episode and poetry and lyric interlude, but an often splendid and usually solid constructive skill, and a steady eloquence which is like a high table-land without summits. A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1632) is the most enduring popular comedy of the time outside Shakespeare's, and one of the best. Massinger's interweaving of impersonal or political conceptions, as in The Bondman and The Roman Actor, is often a triumph of arrangement; and though he wrote in the reign of Charles, he is saved by many noble qualities from being merely an artist of the decline. (d) A mass of plays, of which the authorship is unknown, uncertain or attached to a mere name; baffle classification. There are domestic tragedies, such as Arden of Feversham; scions of the vindictive The many. drama, like The Second See also:

MAIDEN, or MAID

Maiden's Tragedy; historic or half-historic tragedies like See also:

NERO (37-68)

Nero. There are chronicle histories, of which the last and one of the best is Ford's See also:

PERKIN, SIR WILLIAM HENRY (1838-1907)

Perkin See also:

WARBECK, PERKIN (c. 1474-1499)

Warbeck, and melodramas of See also:

ADVENTURE (from Lat. res adventura, a thing about to happen)

adventure such as Thomas Heywood poured forth. There are realistic See also:

CITIZEN (a form corrupted in Eng., apparently by analogy with " denizen," from O. Fr. citeain, mod. Fr. citoyen)

citizen comedies akin to The Merry Wives, like See also:

Porter's refreshing Two Angry Women of See also:

ABINGDON

Abingdon; there are Jonsonian comedies, vernacular farces, light intrigue-pieces like Field's and many more. Few of these, regarded as wholes, come near to perfection; few fail of some sally or scene that proves once more the unmatched diffusion of the dramatic or poetic instinct.

(e) Outside the regular drama there are many varieties: academic plays, like The Return from See also:

PARNASSUS (mod. Likkoura or Likeri)

Parnassus and Lingua, which are still mirthful; many pastoral plays or entertainments in the Italian style, like The Faithful Shepherdess; versified character-sketches, of which Day's Parliament of Bees, with its Theocritean grace and point, is the happiest; many masques and shows, often lyrically and scenically lovely, of which kind Jonson is the master, and Milton, in his Comus, the transfigurer; Senecan dramas made only to be read, like Daniel's and Fulke Greville's; and Latin comedies, like See also:

IGNORAMUS (Latin for " we do not know," " we take no notice of ")

Ignoramus. All these species are only now being fully grouped, sifted and edited by scholars, but a number of the six or seven hundred dramas of the time remain unreprinted. There remain two writers, John Ford and James See also:

Shirley, who kept the higher tradition alive till the Puritan See also:

ordinance crushed the theatre in 1642. Ford is another specialist, Fo of See also:

GRAVE

grave, sinister and concentrated power (reflected rdano 5hir/ey. in his verse and diction), to whom no topic, the See also:

INCEST (Lat. incestus, unchaste)

incest of Annabella in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, or the high crazed heroism of Calantha in The Broken Heart, is beyond the See also:

PALE (through Fr. pal, from Lat. palms, a stake, for paglus, from the stem pag- of pangere, to fix; " pole " is from the same original source)

pale, if only he can dominate it; as indeed he does, without Beaumont and Fletcher. complicity, See also:

STANDING

standing above his subject. Shirley, a fertile writer, has the general characteristic gifts, in a somewhat dilute but noble form, of the more romantic playwrights, and claims honour as the last of them. Prose from 1579 to 166o.–With all the unevenness of poetry, the sense of style, of a standard, is everywhere; felicity is never far off. Prose also is full of genius, but it is more disfigured than verse by See also:

ABERRATION (Lat. ab, from or away, errare,, to wander)

aberration and wasted power. A central, classic, durable, adaptive prose had been attained by Machiavelli, and by See also:

AMYOT, JACQUES (1513-1593)

Amyot and Calvin, before i55o. In England it was only to become distinct after 166o. Vocabulary, See also:

SENTENCE (Lat. sententia, a way of thinking, opinion, judgment; vote, sentire, to feel, think)

sentence-structure, See also:

PARAGRAPH

paragraph, idiom and rhythm were in a state of unchartered freedom, and the history of their See also:

CRYSTALLIZATION

crystallization is not yet written.

But in more than See also:

COMPENSATION (from Lat. compensare, to weigh one thing against another)

compensation there is a See also:

COMPANY

company of prose masters, from Florio and Hooker to Milton and See also:

Clarendon, not one of whom clearly or fully anticipates the modern style, and who claim all the closer study that their special virtues have been for ever lost. They seem farther away' from us than the poets around them. The verse of Shakespeare is near to us, for its tradition has persisted; his prose, the most natural and noble of his age, is far away, for its tradition has not persisted. One reason of this difference is that English prose tried to do more work than that of France and Italy; it tried the work of poetry; and it often did that better than it did the normal work of prose. This overflow of the imaginative spirit gave power and See also:

ELASTICITY

elasticity to prose, but made its task of finding See also:

EQUILIBRIUM (from the Lat. aequus, equal, and libra, a balance)

equilibrium the harder. Moreover, prose in England was for long a natural growth, never much affected by critical or academic canons as in France; and when it did submit to canons, the result was often merely manner. The tendons and sinews of the language, still in its adolescent power and bewilderment, were long unset; that is, the parts of speech—noun and verb, epithet and adverb—were in freer interchange than at any period afterwards. The build, length and cadence of a complex sentence were habitually elaborate; and yet they were disorganized, so that only the ear of a master could regulate them. The law of taste and measure, perhaps through some national See also:

DISABILITY

disability, was long unperceived. Prose, in fact, could never be sure of doing the day's work in the right fashion. The cross-currents of pedantry in the midst of simplicity, the distrust of clear plain brevity, which was apt to be affected when it came, the mimicries of foreign fashions, and the quaintness and cumbrousness of so much See also:

AVERAGE

average writing, make it easier to classify Renaissance prose by its interests than by its styles. The Elizabethan novel was always unhappily mannered, and is therefore dead.

It fed the drama, which devoured it. The The novel. tales of Boccaccio, Bandello, Cinthio, Margaret of See also:

NAVARRE (Span. Navarra)

Navarre, .and others were purveyed, as remarked above, in the forgotten treasuries of Painter, Pettie, See also:

Fenton and See also:

WHETSTONE, GEORGE (1544?-1587?)

Whetstone, and many of these works or their originals filled a shelf in the playwrights' See also:

LIBRARIES

libraries. The first of famous English novels, Lyly's Eiiphues (1578), and its sequel Gylyand Euphues and his England, are documents of form. euphuism. They are commended by a certain dapper shrewdness of observation and an almost witty priggery, not by any real beauty or deep feeling. Euphuism, of which Lyly was only the patentee, not the inventor, strikes partly back to the Spaniard Guevara, and was a model for some years to many followers like Lodge and Greene. It did not merely provide Falstaff with a pattern for mock-moral diction and See also:

VEGETABLE

vegetable similes. It genuinely helped to organize the English sentence, complex or co-See also:

ORDINATE

ordinate, and the talk of Portia and Rosalind shows what could be made of it. By the See also:

arch-euphuists, clauses and clusters of clauses were paired for parallel or contrast, with the See also:

BEAT (a word common in various forms to the Teutonic languages; it is connected with the similar Romanic words derived from the Late Lat. battere)

beat of emphatic alliteration on the corresponding parts of speech in each constituent clause. This was a useful discipline for prose in its period of groping. Sidney's incomposite and unfinished See also:

ARCADIA

Arcadia, written 1580-1581, despite its painful forced antitheses, is sprinkled with lovely rhythms, with pleasing formal landscapes, and even with impassioned sentiment and situation, through which the writer's eager and fretted spirit shines. Both these stories, like those of Greene and Lodge,show by their somewhat affected, edited delineation of life and their courtly tone that they were meant in chief for the eyes of ladies, who were excluded alike from the stage and from its audience.

Nashe's drastic and photographic tale of masculine life. See also:

JACK

Jack See also:

WILTON

Wilton, or The Unfortunate Traveller, stands almost alone, but some of the gap is filled by the contemporary pamphlets, sometimes vivid, often full of fierce or maudlin declamation, of Nashe himself—by far the most powerful of the group—and of Greene, Dekker and See also:

Nicholas Breton. Thus the English novel was a minor passing form; the leisurely and amorous romance went on in the next century, owing largely to French influence and example. In criticism, England may almost be counted with the minor Latin countries. Sidney, in his Defence of Poesy (1595, written about 1580), and Jonson, in his Discoveries, offer a criticism. well-inspired and lofty restatement of the current answers to the current questions, but could give no account of the actual creative writing of the time. To defend the " truth " of poetry—which was identified with all inventive writing and not only with verse—poetry was saddled with the work of science and instruction. To defend its character it was treated as a delightful but deliberate bait to good behaviour, a theory at best only true of allegory and didactic verse. The real relation of tragedy to spiritual things, which is admittedly shown, however hard its See also:

DEFINITION (Lat. definitio, from de-finire, to set limits to, describe)

definition, in Shakespeare's plays, no critic for centuries tried to See also:

FATHOM

fathom. One of the chief quarrejs turned on metric. A few lines that Sidney and Campion wrote on what they thought the See also:

SYSTEM

system of Latin quantity are really musical. This theory, already raised by Ascham, made a stir, at first in the group of Harvey, Sidney, See also:

Dyer and Spenser, called the " See also:

AREOPAGUS ("Apews Ilayos)

Areopagus," an informal attempt to copy the Italian See also:

ACADEMIES

academies; and it was revived on the brink of the reign of James. But Daniel's See also:

FIRM

firm and eloquent Defence of Rhyming (1602) was not needed to persuade the poets to continue rhyming in syllabic verse.

The stricter view of the nature and classification of poetry, and of the dramatic unity of action, is concisely given, partly by Jonson, partly by Bacon in his See also:

ADVANCEMENT

Advancement of Learning and De Augmentis; and, Jonson, besides passing his famed judgments on Shakespeare and Bacon, enriched our critical vocabulary from the Roman rhetoricians. Scholastic and sensible manuals, like See also:

WEBBE, WILLIAM (fl. 1586)

Webbe's Discourse of Poetry and the Art of English Poesy (1589) ascribed to See also:

PUTTENHAM, GEORGE (d. 1590)

Puttenham, come in the See also:

REAR

rear. The translators See also:

COUNT (Lat. comes, gen. comitis, Fr. comte, Ital. conte, Span. conde)

count for more than the critics; the line of their great achievements from Berners' Froissart (1523–1525) to See also:

Urquhart's Rabelais (1653) is never broken long; and though their lives are often obscure, their number °ns latora. witnesses to that far-spread diffusion of the talent for English prose, which the wealth of English poetry is apt to hide. The typical craftsman in this field, See also:

Philemon See also:

Holland, translated See also:

LIVY [Thus L1v1us] (59 B.C.—A.D: 17)

Livy, See also:

Pliny, Suetonius, Plutarch's Morals and See also:

Camden's Britannia, and his fount of English is of the amplest and purest. North, in his translation, made from Amyot's classic French, of Plutarch's Lives (1579), disclosed one of the master-works of old example; Florio, in Montaigne's Essays (1603), the See also:

CHARTER (Lat. charta, carta, from Gr. Xap-rns, originally for papyrus, material for writing, thence transferred to paper and from this material to the document, in O. Eng. boc, book)

charter of the new freedom of See also:

MENTAL

mental exploration; and See also:

SHELTON, THOMAS (fl. 1612-1620)

Shelton, in See also:

Don Quixote (1612), the chief tragi-comic creation of continental prose. These versions, if by no means accurate in the letter, were adequate in point of soul and style to their great originals; and the English See also:

DRESS (from the Fr. dresser, to set out, arrange, formed from Lat. directus, arranged, dirigere, to direct, arrange)

dress of Tacitus (1591), See also:

APULEIUS, LUCIUS

Apuleius, See also:

HELIODORUS

Heliodorus, See also:

COMMINES, PHILIPPE DE (c. 1445-c. 1511)

Commines, See also:

CELESTINA, LA

Celestina and many others, is so good and often so sumptuous a fabric, that no single class of prose authors, from the time of More to that of Dryden, excels the prose translators, unless it be the Anglican preachers. Their matter is given to them, and with it a certain standard of form, so that their natural strength and richness of phrase are controlled without being deadened. But the want of such See also:

CONTROL (Fr. contrdle, older form contre rolle, from Med. Lat. contra-rotulus, a counter roll or copy of a document used to check the original; there is no instance in English of the use of " control " in this, its literal, meaning)

control is seen in the many pamphleteers, who are the journalists of the time, and are often also playwrights or tale-tellers, divines or politicians. The writings, for instance, of the hectic, satiric and graphic Thomas Nashe, run at one extreme into fiction, and at the other into the virulent rag-sheets of the Marprelate controversy, which is of historical and social but not of artistic note, being only a fragment of that vast mass of disputatious literature, which now seems See also:

GROTESQUE

grotesque, excitable or dull. Richard Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594–1597), an accepted defence of the Anglican position against See also:

Geneva Hooker. and Rome, is the first theological work of note in the English tongue, and the first of note since Wycliffe written by an Englishman. It is a plea for reason as one of the safe and lawful guides to the faith; but it also speaks with admirable temper and large feeling to the ceremonial and aesthetic sense.

The First Book, the scaffolding of the treatise, discusses the nature of law at large; but Hooker hardly has pure speculative power, and the language had not yet learnt to move easily in abstract trains of thought. In its elaboration of clause and period, in its delicate resonant eloquence, Hooker's style is Ciceronian; but his inversions and mazes of subordinate sentence somewhat See also:

RACK

rack the genius of English. Later divines like See also:

JEREMY, EPISTLE OF

Jeremy See also:

Taylor had to disintegrate, since they could not wield, this admirable but over-complex eloquence. The sermons (1621–1631) of Donne have the mingled strangeness and intimacy of his verse, and their subtle See also:

FLAME (Lat. flamma; the root flag- appears in flagrare, to burn, blaze, and Gr. d, XEryew)

flame, imaginative tenacity, and hold upon the springs of See also:

AWE, LOCH

awe make them unique. Though without artificial symmetry, their sentences are intricately harmonized, in strong contrast to such pellet-like clauses as those of the learned See also:

LANCELOT (Lancelot du Lac, or Lancelot of the Lake)

Lancelot See also:

ANDREWES, LANCELOT (1555-1626)

Andrewes, who was Donne's younger contemporary and the subject of Milton's Latin epitaph. With See also:

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosophy began its unbroken course and took its long-delayed rank in Europe. Bacon. His prose, of which he is the first high and various master in English, was shaped and coloured by his See also:

bent as orator and pleader, by his immixture in affairs, by his speculative brain, and by his use and estimate of Latin. In his conscious craftsmanship, his intellectual confidence and curiosity, his See also:

DIVINING

divining faith in the future of science, and his resolve to follow the leadings of nature and experience unswervingly; in his habit of storing and using up his experience, and in his wide wordly insight, crystallized in maxim, he suggests a kind of Goethe, without the poetic hand or the capacity for love and lofty suffering. He saw all nature in a See also:

map, and wished to understand and control her by outwitting the " idols," or inherent paralysing frailties of the human judgment. He planned but could not finish a great cycle of books in order to realize this conception. The De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623) expanded from the English Advancement of Knowledge (16o5) draws the map; the Novum Organum (162o) sets out the errors of See also:

SCHOLASTICISM

scholasticism and the methods of inductive logic; the New See also:

ATLANTIS, ATALANTIS, or ATLANTICA

Atlantis sketches an ideally equipped and moralized scientific community.

Bacon shared with the great minds of his century the notion that Latin would outlast any vernacular tongue, and committed his chief scientific writings to a Latin which is alive and splendid and his own, and which also disciplined and ennobled his English. The Essays (1597, 1612, 1625) are his lifelong, gradually accumulated diary of his opinions on human life and business. These famous compositions are often sadly mechanical. They are chippings and basketings of maxims and quotations, and of anecdotes, often classical, put together inductively, or rather by " simple enumeration " of the pros and cons. Still' they are the honest notes of a practical observer and statesman, disenchanted—why not?—with mankind, concerned with cause and effect rather than with right and wrong, wanting the finer faith and insight into men and women, but full of reality, touched with See also:

MELANCHOLY (Gr. µe)tayXotia, from µEtas, black, and Xotii, bile)

melancholy, and redeeming some arid, small and pretentious counsels by many that are large and wise. Though sometimes betraying the workshop, Bacon's style, at its best, is infallibly expressive; like Milton's angels, it is " dilated or condensed " according to its purposes. In youth and age alike, Bacon commanded the most opposite patterns and extremes of prose—the curt maxim, balanced in See also:

ANTITHESIS (the Greek for " setting opposite ")

antithesis or triplet, or standing solitary; the sumptuous, satisfying and brocaded period; the movements of exposition, oratory, pleading and narrative. The History of Henry VII. (1622), written after his fall from office, is in form as well as insight and mastery of material the one historical classic in English before Clarendon. Bacon'smusical sense for the value and placing of splendid words and proper names resembles Marlowe's. But the master of mid-Renaissance prose is Shakespeare; with him it becomes the voice of finer and more impassioned spirits than Bacon's—the voice of Rosalind and Hamlet. And the eulogist of both men, Ben Jonson, must be named in their company for his senatorial See also:

WEIGHT

weight and dignity of ethical counsel and critical maxim.

As the See also:

Stuart rule declined and fell, prose became enriched from five chief sources: from philosophy, whether formal or unmethodical; from theology and See also:

PREACHING (Fr. preecher, from Lat. praedicare, to proclaim)

preaching and political dispute; from the poetical contemplation of death; from the observation of men and manners; and from antiquarian scholarship and history. As in France, where the first three of these kinds of writings flourished, it was a time rather of individual great writers than of any admitted pattern or common ideal of prose form, although in France this pattern was always clearlier defined. The mental energy, meditative See also:

DEPTH

depth, and throbbing brilliant colour of the English drama passed with its decay over into prose. But Latin was still often the supplanter: the treatise of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, -De Veritate, of note in the early history of See also:

DEISM (Lat. dens, god)

Deism, and much of the writing of the ambidextrous Thomas Hobbes, are in Latin. In this way Latin Hobbes. disciplined English once more, though it often tempted men of genius away from English. The See also:

LEVIATHAN

Leviathan (1651) with its See also:

COMPANION (through the O. Fr. compaignon or compagnon, from the Late Lat. companio,—cum, with, and panis, bread,—one who shares meals with another; the word has been wrongly derived from the Late Lat. compagnus, one of the same pages or district)

companion books on Human Nature and See also:

LIBERTY (Lat. libertas, from liber, free)

Liberty, and Hobbes' explosive dialogue on the civil wars, See also:

BEHEMOTH (the intensive plural of the Hebrew b'hernah, a beast)

Behemoth (1679), have the bitter concision of Tacitus and the clearness of a half-relief in See also:

BRONZE

bronze. Hobbes' speculations on the human See also:

animal, the social See also:

contract, the absolute power of the sovereign, and the subservience owed to the sovereign by the Church or Kingdom of Darkness," enraged all parties, and left their track on the thought and controversial literature of the century. With Ben Jonson and the jurist See also:

SELDEN, JOHN (1584–1654)

Selden (whose English can be judged from his Table Talk), Hobbes anticipates the brief and clear sentence-structure of the next age, though not its social ease and amenity of form. But his grandeur is not that of a poet, and the poetical prose is the most distinctive kind of this period. It is eloquent above all on death and the vanity of human Funereal affairs; its solemn See also:

TENOR (through Fr. and It. from Lat. tenor, holding on, course, sense of a law, tone)

tenor prolongs the reflections of prose. Claudio, of Fletcher's Philaster, or of Spenser's Despair. It is exemplified in Bacon's See also:

ESSAY, ESSAYIST (Fr. essai, Late Lat. exagium, a weighing or balance; exigere, to examine; the term in general meaning any trial or effort)

Essay Of Death, in the anonymous descant on the same subject wrongly once ascribed to him, in Donne's plea for See also:

SUICIDE (from Lat. sui, of oneself, and cidium, from cued ere, to kill)

suicide, in Raleigh's History of the World, in Drummond's See also:

CYPRESS (Cupressus)

Cypress See also:

Grove (1623), in Jeremy Taylor's sermons and Holy Dying (1651), and in Sir Thomas Browne's See also:

URN (Lat. urna, either from root of urere, to burn, being made of burnt clay, or connected with urceus, Gr. I5pxa, jar)

Urn-See also:

BURIAL

Burial (1658) and Letter to a Friend.

Its usual vesture is a long purple period, freely Latinized, though Browne equally commands the form of solemn and monumental See also:

EPIGRAM

epigram. He is also free from the dejection that wraps round the other writers on the subject, and a holy quaintness and gusto relieve his ruminations. The Religio See also:

Medici (1642) , quintessentially learned, wise and splendid, is the fullest memorial of his power. Amongst modern prose writers, De Quincey is his only true rival in musical sensibility to words. Jeremy Taylor, the last great English casuist and schoolman, and one of the first pleaders for religious tolerance (in his Liberty of Prophesying, ;647), is above all a preacher; See also:

TENDER

tender, Jeremy intricate, copious, inexhaustible in image and Taylor. picturesque See also:

QUOTATION

quotation. From the classics, from the East, from the animal world, from the life of men and children, his illustrations flow, without end or measure. He is a master of the lingering cadence, which soars upward and onward on its coupled clauses, as on balanced iridescent wings, and is found long after in his scholar See also:

RUSKIN, JOHN (1819-1goo)

Ruskin. Imaginative force of another kind pervades Robert See also:

Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy Burton. (1621), where the humorous medium refracts and See also:

COLOURS, MILITARY

colours every See also:

ray of the recluse's far-travelled spirit. The mass of Latin See also:

CITATION (Lat. citare, to cite)

citation, woven, not quilted, into Burton's style, is another proof of the vitality of the See also:

COSMOPOLITAN (Gr. Kbvµos, world, and IroXirgs, citizen)

cosmopolitan language. Burton and Browne owe much to the pre-critical learning of their time, which yields up such precious savours to their fancy, that we may be thankful for the delay of more precise science and scholarship. Fancy, too, of a suddener and wittier sort, pre-serves some of the ample labours of Thomas Fuller, which are scattered over the years 1631–1662; and the Lives and Compleat See also:

ANGLER

Angler (1653) of Izaak See also:

Walton are unspoilt, happy or pious pieces of idyllic prose.

No adequate note on the secular or sacred learning of the time can here be given; on Camden, with his vast erudition, historical, antiquarian and comparatively critical (Britannia, in Latin, 1586); or on Ussher, with his patristic and chronological learning, one of the many savants of the Anglican church. Other divines of the same See also:

CAMP (from Lat. campus, field)

camp pleaded, in a plainer style than Taylor, for freedom of personal judgment and against the multiplying of " vitals in religion "; the chief were Chilling-See also:

worth, one of the closest of English apologists, in his Religion of Protestants (1638), and John Hales of See also:

ETON

Eton. The Platonists, or rather Plotinists, of Cambridge, who form a curious digression in the history of modern philosophy, produced two writers, John See also:

Smith and Henry More, of an exalted and See also:

ESOTERIC

esoteric prose, more directly inspired by Greece than any other of the•time; and their See also:

CHAMPION (Fr. champion, Late Lat. campio from campus; a field or open space, i.e. one " who takes the field " or fights; cf. Ger. Kampf, battle, and Kampfer, fighter)

champion of erudition, See also:

CUDWORTH, RALPH (1617-1688)

Cudworth, in his True Intellectual System, gave some form to their doctrine. Above the vast body of pamphlets and disputatious writing that form the historian's material stands Edward See also:

Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. Clarendon's History of the See also:

REBELLION

Rebellion, printed in 1702- 1704, See also:

THIRTY

thirty years after his death. Historical writing hitherto, but for Bacon's Henry VII., had been tentative though profuse. Raleigh's vast disquisition upon all things, The History of the World (1614), survives by passages and poetic splendours; gallantly written second-hand works like See also:

Knolles's History of the See also:

TURKS

Turks, and the rhetorical History of the Long Parliament by May, had failed to give England rank with France and Italy. Clarendon's book, one of the greatest of memoirs and most vivid of portrait-galleries, spiritually unappreciative of the other side, but full of a subtle discrimination of character and political motive, brings its author into line with See also:

Retz and See also:

SAINT (lat. sanctus, " holy ")

Saint-See also:

Simon, the watchers and recorders and sometimes the makers of See also:

con- temporary history. Clarendon's Life, above all the picture of See also:

Falkland and his friends, is a personal record of the delightful sort in which England was thus far infertile. He is the last old master of prose, using and sustaining the long, sinuous sentence, unworkable in weaker hands. He is the last, for Milton's polemic prose, hurled from the opposite camp, was Milton's written between 1643 and 166o. Whether reviling prose.

bishops or royal See also:

PRIVILEGE

privilege or indissoluble monogamy, or recalling his own youth and aims; or claiming liberty for print in Areopagitica (1644); in his demonic defiances, or angelic calls to arms, or his animal eruptions of spite and hatred, Milton leaves us with a sense of the motive energies that were to be transformed into Paradise Lost and Samson. His sentences are ungainly and often inharmonious, but often irresistible; he rigidly withstood the tendencies of form, in prose as in verse, that Dryden was to represent, and thus was true to his own literary See also:

DYNASTY (Gr. &vvaareta, sovereignty, the position of a hevnori7r, lord, ruler, from SuvaaBay to be able, Suvaµas, power)

dynasty. A special outlying position belongs to the Authorized Version (1611) of the Bible, the late fruit of the long toil that had begun with Tyndale's, and, on the side of style, with the Wycliffite translations. More scholarly than all the preceding versions which it utilized, it won its in-comparable form, not so much ' because of the " See also:

GRAND

grand style that was in the See also:

air," which would have been the worst of models, as because the style had been already tested and ennobled by generations of translators. Its effect on poetry and letters was for some time far smaller than its effect on the national life at large, but it was the greatest translation—being of a whole literature, or rather of two literatures—in an age of great translations. Some other kinds of writing soften the transition to Restoration prose. The vast See also:

CATALOGUE (a Fr. adaptation of the Gr. KaraXoyos, a register, from Karalyety, to enrol or pick out)

catalogue of Characters numbers hundreds of titles. Deriving from See also:

THEOPHRASTUS

Theophrastus, who was edited by See also:

Casaubon in 1592, they are yet another Renaissance form that England shared with France. But in English hands, failing a La Bruyere —in Hall's, in Overbury's, even in those of the See also:

gay and skilful See also:

Earle (Microcosmographie, 1628)—the Character is a mere listof the attributes and oddities of a type or calling. It is to the Jonsonian drama of humours what the Pensee, or detached remark, practised by Bishop Hall and later by See also:

Butler and See also:

Halifax, is to the Essay. These works tended long to be common-place or didactic, as the popular Resolves of See also:

Owen See also:

FELTHAM, or FELLTHAM, OWEN (d. 1668)

Feltham shows. Cowley was the first essayist to come down from the See also:

DESK (from Lat. discus, quoit, in med. sense of " table," cf. " dish " and Ger. Tisch, table, from same source)

desk and talk as to his equals in easy phrases of middle length.

A time of dissension was not the best for this kind of peaceful, detached writing. The letters of James See also:

HOWELL, JAMES (c. 1594-1666)

Howell, the autobiography of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and the memoirs of Kenelm See also:

Digby belong rather to the older and more mannered than to the more modern form, though Howell's English is in the plainer and quicker movement. IV. RESTORATION PERIOD Literature from z66o to z7oo.—The Renaissance of letters in England entered on a fresh and peculiar phase in the third See also:

QUARTER (through Fr. from Lat. quartarius, fourth part)

quarter of the century. The See also:

BALANCE (derived through the Fr. from the Late Lat. bilantia, an apparatus for weighing, from bi, two, and lanx, a dish or scale)

balance of intellectual and artistic power in Europe had completely shifted since i580. Inspiration had died down in Italy, and its older classics were no longer a stimulus. The Spanish drama had flourished, but its influence though real was scattered and indirect. The Germanic countries were slowly emerging into literature; England they scarcely touched. But the literary empire of France began to declare itself both in Northern and Southern lands, and within half a century was assured. Under this empire the English genius partly fell, though it soon asserted its own equality, and by 1720 had so reacted upon France as more than to repay the See also:

DEBT (Lat. debitum, a thing owed)

debt. Thus between 166o and 1700 is prepared a temporary dual control of European letters. But in the age of Dryden France gave England more than it received; it gave more Freach influence.

than it had ever given since the age of Chaucer. During Charles II.'s days See also:

Racine, Moliere, La See also:

FONTAINE, PIERRE FRANCOIS LEONARD (1762-1853)

Fontaine and See also:

BOSSUET, JAQUES BENIGNE (1627-1704)

Bossuet ran the best of their course. Cavalier exiles like Waller, Cowley and Hobbes had come back from the winter of their discontent in Paris, and Saint-Evremond, the typical See also:

bel esprit and critic, settled long in England. A vast body of translations from the French is recounted, including latterly the works of the Protestant refugees printed in the free Low Countries or in England. Nat urally this influence told most strongly on the social forms of verse and prose—upon comedy and satire, upon criticism and maxim and epigram, while it also affected theology and thought. And this meant the Renaissance once more, still unexhausted, only working less immediately and in fresh if narrower channels. Greek literature, Plato and Homer and the dramatists, became dimmer; the secondary forms of Latin poetry came to the fore, especially those of Juvenal and the satirists, and the pedestris sermo, epistolary and critical, of Horace. These had some direct influence, as Dryden's translation of them, accompanying his See also:

Virgil and Lucretius, may show. But they came commended by Boileau, their chief modernizer, and in their See also:

TRAIN (M. Eng. trayn or trayne, derived through Fr. from Late Lat. trahinare, to drag, draw, Lat. trahere, cf. trail, trace, ultimately from the same source)

train was the fashion of gallant, epigrammatic and social verse. The tragedy of See also:

Corneille and Racine, developed originally from the Senecan drama, contended with the traditions of Shakespeare and Fletcher, and was reinforced by that of the correcter Jonson, in shaping the new theatre of England. The French codifiers, who were often also the distorters, of Aristotle's Poetics and Horace's Ars poetica, furnished a canonical body of criticism on the epic and the drama, to which Dryden is half a disciple and half a rebel. All this implied at once a loss of the larger and fuller inspirations of poetry, a decadence in its great and primary forms, epic, lyric and tragic, and a disposition, in default of such creative power, to turn and take stock of past production.

In England, therefore, it is the age of secondary verse and of nascent, often searching criticism. The same critical spirit was also whetted in the fields of science and speculation, which the war and the Puritan rule had not encouraged. The activities of the newly-founded Royal Society told directly upon literature, and tide' counted powerfully in the organization of a clear, an Letters. See also:

UNIFORM

uniform prose—the " close, naked, natural way of speaking," which the historian of the Society, See also:

Sprat, cites as The Authorised Version. part of its See also:

PROGRAMME, or PROGRAM

programme. And the style of Sprat, as of scientific masters like See also:

Newton and Ray the botanist, itself attests the change. A time of profound and peaceful and fruitful scientific labour began; the whole of Newton's Principia appeared in 1687; the dream of Bacon came nearer, and England was less isolated from the See also:

INTERNATIONAL, THE

international work of knowledge. The spirit of method and observation and induction spread over the whole field of thought and was typified in John See also:

Locke, whose Essay concerning Human Understanding came out in English in 1690, and who applied the same deeply sagacious and cautious calculus to education and religion and the " conduct of the understanding." But his works, though their often mellow and dignified style has been ignorantly underrated, also show the change in philosophic writing since Hobbes. The old grandeur and pugnacity are gone; the imaginative play of science, or quasi-science, on the literature of reflection is gone; the eccentrics, the fantasts, the dreamers are gone, or only survive in curious transitional writers like Joseph Glanvil (Scepsis scientifica, 1665) or Thomas See also:

Burnet (Sacred Theory of the Earth, 1684). This change was in part a conscious and an angry change, as is clear from the attacks made in Samuel Butler's Hudibras (1663-1668) upon scholastic verbiage, See also:

ASTROLOGY

astrology, fanatical sects and their disputes, poetic and " heroic " enthusiasm and intellectual whim. Before the Restoration men of letters, with See also:

SIGNAL

signal exceptions like Milton and Marvell, had been Cavalier, courtly and Anglican in their sympathies. The Civil War had scattered them and loclal away from the See also:

capital, which, despite Milton's dream influence. in Areopagitica of its humming and surging energies, had ceased to be, what it now again became, the natural haunt and Rialto of authors.

The taste of the new king and court served to rally them. Charles II. relished Hudibras, used and pensioned Dryden, sat under See also:

Barrow and South and heard them with appreciation, countenanced science, visited comedies, and held his own in talk by mother-wit. Letters became the pastime, and therefore one of the more serious pursuits, of men of quality, who soon excelled in song and light scarifying verse and comedy, and took their own tragedies and criticisms gravely. Poetry under such auspices became gallant and social, and also personal and partisan; and satire was soon its most vital form, with the accessories of compliment, rhymed popular argumentation and See also:

ELEGY

elegy. The social and conversational instinct was the master-influence in prose. It produced a subtle but fundamental change in the attitude of author to reader. Prose came nearer to living speech, it became more civil and natural and persuasive, and this not least in the pulpit. The sense of ennui, or boredom, which seemed as unknown in the earlier part of the century as it is to the modern German, became strongly developed, and prose was much improved by the fear of provoking it. In all these ways the Restoration accompanied and quickened a speedier and greater change in letters than any political event in English history since the reign of Alfred, when prose itself was created. The formal change in prose can thus be assigned to no one writer, for the good reason that it presupposes a change of spoken style lying deeper than any personal influence. Prose and If we begin with the writing that is nearest living criticism. talk—the letters of See also:

OTWAY, THOMAS (1652-1685)

Otway or Lady See also:

RACHEL (1821-1858)

Rachel See also:

Russell, or the diary of See also:

PEPYS, SAMUEL (1633-1703)

Pepys (1659-1669)—that supreme disclosure of our mother-earth—or the evidence in a state trial, or the dialogue in the more natural comedies; if we then work upwards through some of the plainer kinds of authorship, like the less slangy of L'Estrange's pamphlets, or Burnet's History of My Own Time, a solid Whig memoir of historical value, until we reach really admirable or lasting prose like Dryden's Preface to his Fables (1700), or the maxims of Halifax;—if we do this, we are aware, amid all varieties, survivals and reversions, of a strong and rapid drift towards the style that we call modern.

And one sign of this movement is the revulsion against any over-saturating of the working, daily language, and even of the language of appeal and eloquence, with the Latin element. In Barrow and Glanvil, descendants of Taylor and Browne, manyLatinized words remain, which were soon expelled from style like foreign bodies from an organism. As in the mid-sixteenth and the mid-eighteenth century, the process is visible by which the Latin vocabulary and Latin complication of sentence first gathers strength, and then, though not without leaving its traces, is forced to ebb. The instinct of the best writers secured this result, and secured it for good and all. In Dryden's diction there is a nearly perfect balance and See also:

HARMONY (Gr. dpµovia, a concord of musical sounds, dpA'ew to join; &plan midi (sc. TeXvil)

harmony of learned and native constituents, and a sensitive tact in Gallicizing; in his build of sentence there is the same balance between curtness or bareness and complexity or ungainly lengthiness. For ceremony and compliment he keeps a See also:

ROLLING

rolling period, for invective a short See also:

sharp stroke without the gloves. And he not only uses in general a sentence of moderate scale, inclining to brevity, but he finds out its harmonies; he is a seeming-careless but an absolute master of rhythm. In delusive ease he is unexcelled; and we only regret that he could not have written prose oftener instead of plays. We should thus, how-ever, have lost their prefaces, in which the bulk and the best of Dryden's criticisms appear. From the Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668) down to the Preface to Fables (1700) runs a series of essays: On the Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, On Heroic Plays, On Translated Verse, On Satire and many more; which form the first connected body of criticisms in the language, and are nobly written always. Dryden's prose is literature as it stands, and yet is talk, and yet again is mysteriously better than talk. The critical writings of John See also:

DENNIS, JOHN (1657—1734)

Dennis are but a sincere application of the rules and canons that were now becoming conventional ; See also:

RYMER, THOMAS (1641—1713)

Rymer, though not so despicable as See also:

MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, BARON (1800-1859)

Macaulay, said, is still more depressing than Dennis; and for any critic at once so free, so generous and so sure as Dryden we wait in vain for a century.

Three or four names are usually associated with Dryden's in the work of reforming or modifying prose: Sprat, See also:

TILLOTSON, JOHN (1630-1694)

Tillotson, Sir William Temple, and George See also:

Savile, See also:

MARQUIS

marquis of contd-Halifax; but the honours rest with Halifax. Sprat, butors to though clear and easy, has little range; Tillotson,though the new lucid, orderly, and a very popular preacher, has little distinction ; Temple, the elegant essayist, has a kind of barren See also:

GLOSS, GLOSSARY

gloss and fine literary manners, but very little to say. The political tracts, essays and maxims of Halifax (died 1695) are the most typically modern prose between Dryden and Swift, and are nearer than anything else to the best French writing of the same order, in their finality of epigram, their neatness and mannerliness and sharpness. The Character of a See also:

TRIMMER, JOSHUA (1795-1857)

Trimmer and See also:

ADVICE (Fr. avis, from Lat. ad, to, and visum, viewed)

Advice to a Daughter are the best examples. Religious literature, Anglican and Puritan, is the chief remaining See also:

DEPARTMENT (Fr. departement, from departir, to separate into parts)

department to be named. The strong, eloquent and coloured preaching of Isaac Barrow the mathematician, who preachers. died in 1677, is a survival of the larger and older manner of the Church. In its balance of logic, learning and emotion, in its command alike of Latin splendour and native force, it deserves a recognition it has lost. Another See also:

ATHLETE (Gr. aOX177'7r; Lat. athleta)

athlete of the pulpit, Robert South, who is so often praised for his wit that his force is forgotten, continues the lineage, while Tillotson and the See also:

elder See also:

Sherlock show the tendency to the smoother and more level prose. But the revulsion against strangeness and fancy and magnificence went too far; it made for a temporary bareness and meanness and disharmony, which had to be checked by See also:

ADDISON, JOSEPH (1672-1719)

Addison, See also:

BOLINGBROKE, HENRY ST JOHN, VISCOUNT (1678-1751)

Bolingbroke and See also:

Berkeley. From what Addison saved our daily written English, may be seen in the vigorous slangy hackwork of See also:

Roger L'Estrange, the translator and pamphleteer, in the news-sheets of See also:

DUNTON, JOHN (1659-1733)

Dunton, and in the satires of Tom Brown. These writers were debasing the coinage with their See also:

street journalism. Another and far nobler variety of vernacular prose is found in the Puritans.

See also:

Baxter and See also:

Howe, Fox and See also:

BUNYAN, JOHN (1628-1688)

Bunyan, had the English Bible behind them, which gave them the best padres of their inspiration, though the first two of them were prose. also erudite men. Richard Baxter, an immensely fertile writer, is best remembered by those of his own See also:

FOLD

fold for his Saint's See also:

EVERLASTING, or IMMORTELLE

Everlasting Rest (165o) and his autobiography, John Howe for his evangelical apologia The Living Temple of God (1675), Fox for his See also:

Journal and its mixture of quaintness and rapturous See also:

MYSTICISM (from Or. µuety, to shut the eyes; µuorrts, one initiated into the mysteries)

mysticism. John Bunyan, the least instructed of Runyan. them all, is their only born artist. His creed and point of view were those of half the nation—the half that was usually inarticulate in literature, or spoke without style or genius. His reading, consisting not only of the Bible, but of the popular allegories of giants, pilgrims and adventure, was also that of his class. The See also:

PILGRIM

Pilgrim's Progress, of which the first part appeared in 1678, the second in 1684, is the happy flowering See also:

SPORT (a contracted or shortened form of "disport," to amuse, divert oneself, O. Fr. se dis porter or deporter, to leave off work, hence to play, Lat. dis-, away, and portare, to carry; the origin of the meaning lies in the notion of turning away from ser

sport amidst a growth of barren See also:

PLANTS

plants of the same tribe. The Progress is a dream, more vivid to its author than most men's waking memories to themselves; the emblem and the thing signified are merged at every point, so that Christian's See also:

JOURNEY (through O. Fr. jornee or journee, mod. Fr. journee, from med. Lat. diurnata, Lat. diurnus, of or belonging to dies, day)

journey is not so much an allegory with a See also:

key as a spiritua' vision of this earth and our neighbours. Grace Abounding, Bunyan's diary of his own voyage to salvation, The Holy War, an overloaded fable of the fall and recovery of mankind, and The Life and Death of Mr Badman, a novel telling of the triumphal earthly progress of a scoundrelly tradesman, are among Bunyan's other contributions to literature. His union of spiritual intensity, sharp humorous vision, and power of simple speech consummately chosen, mark his work off alike from his own inarticulate public and from all other literary performance of his time. The transition from the older to the newer poetry was not abrupt. Old themes and tunes were slowly disused, others previously of lesser mark rose into favour, and a few Trans'- quite fresh ones were introduced. The poems of John See also:

Bona/ verse.

See also:

Oldham and See also:

Andrew.Marvell belong to both periods. Both of them begin with fantasy and elegy, and end with satires, which indeed are rather documents than works of art. The monody of Oldham on his friend Morwent is poorly exchanged for the Satires on the See also:

JESUITS

Jesuits (1681), and the lovely metaphysical verses of Marvell on gardens and orchards and the spiritual love sadly give place to his Last Instructions to a Painter (1669). In his Horatian Ode Marvell had nobly and impartially, applied his earlier style to national affairs; but the time proved too strong for this delightful poet. Another and a Hudibras. stranger satire had soon greeted the Restoration, the Hudibras (1663-1678) of Samuel Butler, with its companion pieces. The returned wanderers delighted in this horribly agile, boisterous and fierce attack on the popular party and its religions, and its wrangles and its manners. Profoundly See also:

ECCENTRIC (from Gr. F,c, out of, and Kivrpov, centre)

eccentric and tiresomely allusive in his form, and working in the short rhyming couplets thenceforth called " Hudibrastics," Butler founded a small and peculiar but long-lived school of satire. The other verse of the time is largely satire of a different tone and metre; but the earlier kind of finished and gallant lyric persisted through the reign of Charles II. The songs of John See also:

Wilmot, Earl of See also:

Rochester, are usually malicious, some-songsters. times passionate; they have a music and a splendid self-See also:

ABANDONMENT (Fr. abandonnement, from abandonner, to abandon, relinquish; abandonner was originally equivalent to mettred banddn, to leave to the jurisdiction, i.e. of another, bandon being from Low Latin bandum, bannum, order, decree, " ban ")

abandonment such as we rever meet again till Burns. See also:

SEDLEY, SIR CHARLES (c. 1639-1701)

Sedley and See also:

DORSET, EARLS, MARQUESSES AND DUKES OF

Dorset and Aphra See also:

BEHN, APHRA (otherwise AFRA, APHARA or AYFARA) (164o-1689)

Behn and Dryden are the rightful heirs of Carew and See also:

LOVELACE, RICHARD (1618-1658)

Lovelace, those infallible masters of short rhythms; and this See also:

SECRET (Lat. secretum, hidden, concealed)

secret also was lost for a century afterwards. In poetry, in prose, and to some extent in drama, John Dryden, the creature of his time, is the master of its expression. He Dryden. began with See also:

PANEGYRIC

panegyric verse, first on See also:

Cromwell and then on Charles, which is full of fine things and false writing.

The Annus Mirabilis (1667) is the chief example, celebrating the See also:

PLAGUE (in Gr. Xotµos; in Lat. pestis, pestilentia)

Plague, the See also:

FIRE (in O. Eng. f j'r; the word is common to West German languages, cf. Dutch vuur, Ger. Feuer; the pre-Teutonic form is seen in Sanskrit pu, pavaka, and Gr. irup; the ultimate origin is usually taken to be a root meaning to purify, cf. Lat. purus)

Fire and the See also:

NAVAL

naval victory, in the quatrains for which Davenant's pompous Gondibert had shown the way. The Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668), a dialogue on the rivalries of blank verse with rhyme, and of the Elizabethan drama with the French, is perfect modern prose; and to this perfection Dryden attained at a See also:

BOUND, or BOUNDARY (from O. Fr. bonde, Med. Lat. bodena or butina, a frontier line)

bound, while he attained his poetical style more gradually. He practised his couplet in panegyric, in heroic tragedy, and in dramatic prologue and See also:

EPILOGUE

epilogue for twenty years before it was consummate. Till 168o he supported himself chiefly by his plays, which have not lived so long as their critical prefaces, already mentioned. His diction and versification came to their full power in his satires, rhymed arguments, dedications and translations. See also:

ABSALOM (Hebrew for " father of [or is] peace ")

Absalom and Achitophel (part i., 1681; part ii., with See also:

NAHUM (Hebrew for " rich in comfort [is God] ")

Nahum See also:

Tate, 1682), as well as The See also:

MEDAL (Fr. medaille, from Lat. metallum)

Medal and Mac See also:

FLECKNOE, RICHARD (c. 1600-1678?)

Flecknoe, marked a new birth of English satire, placing it at once on a level with that of any ancient or modern country. The mixture of deadly good temper, Olympian unfairness, and rhetorical and metrical skill in each of these poems has never been repeated. The presentment of Achitophel, earl of See also:

Shaftesbury, in his relations with Absalom Walters and Charles the minstrel-king of See also:

JUDAH

Judah, as well as the portraits of Shimei and Barzillai and Jotham, the eminent Whigs and Tories, and of the poets Og and Doeg, are things whose vividness age has never discoloured. Dryden's Protestant arguings in Religio Laici (1682) and his equally sincere Papistical arguings in The See also:

HIND

Hind and the See also:

PANTHER

Panther (1687) are just as skilful. His translations of Virgil and parts of Lucretius, of Chaucer and Boccaccio (Fables, 17oo), set the seal on his command of his favourite couplet for the higher kinds of appeal and oratory. His Ode on See also:

Anne See also:

Killigrew, and his popular but coarser Alexander's Feast, have a more lyric harmony; and his songs, inserted in his plays, reflect the change of fashion by their metrical adeptness and often thoroughgoing wantonness. The epithet of " glorious," in its older sense of a certain conscious and warranted pride of place, not in that of boastful or pretentious, suits Dryden well.

Not only did he leave a model and a point of departure for Pope, but his influence recurs in See also:

Churchill, in Gray, in Johnson and in See also:

CRABBE, GEORGE (1754-1832)

Crabbe, where he is seen counteracting, with his large, wholesome and sincere bluntness, the acidity of Pope. Dryden was counted near Shakespeare and Milton until the romantic revival renewed the sense of proportion; but the same sense now demands his See also:

ACKNOWLEDGMENT (from the old acknow, a compound of on- and know, to know by the senses, which passed through the forms oknow, aknow and acknow; acknowledge is formed on analogy of " knowledge ")

acknowledgment as the English poet who is nearest to their frontiers of all those who are exiled from their kingdom. Restoration and Revolution tragedy is nearly all abortive; it is now hard to read it for pleasure. But it has noble flights, and its historic interest is high. Two of its species, Tragedy. the rhymed heroic play and the rehandling of Shake- speare in blank verse, were also brought to their utmost by Dryden, though in both he had many companions. The heroic tragedies were a hybrid offspring of the heroic romance and French tragedy; and though The Conquest of See also:

Granada (1669-167o) and Tyrannic Love would be very open to satire in Dryden's own vein, they are at least generously absurd. Their intention is never ignoble, if often impossible. After a time Dryden went back to Shakespeare, after a fashion already set by Sir William Davenant, the connecting link with the older tragedy and the inaugurator of the new. They " revived " Shakespeare; they vamped him in a style that did not wholly perish till after the time of See also:

GARRICK, DAVID (1717-1779)

Garrick. The Tempest, Troilus and Cressida, and Antony and See also:

CLEOPATRA

Cleopatra were thus handled by Dryden; and the last of these, as converted by him into All for Love (1678), is loftier and stronger than any of his original plays, its blank verse renewing the ties of Restoration poetry with the great age. The heroic plays, written in one or other metre, lived long, and expired in the burlesques of See also:

Fielding and See also:

Sheridan. The See also:

REHEARSAL (from " rehearse," to say over again, repeat, recount, O.Fr. rehercer, from re, again, and hercer, to harrow, cf. " hearse," the original meaning being to rake or go over the same ground again as with a harrow)

Rehearsal (1671), a gracious piece of fooling partially aimed at Dryden by See also:

Buckingham and his friends, did not suffice to kill its victims.

Thomas Otway and Nathaniel See also:

Lee, both of whom generally used blank verse, are the other tragic writers of note, children indeed of the extreme old age of the drama. Otway's long-acted Venice Preserved (1682) has an almost Otway. Shakespearian skill in melodrama, a wonderful tide of passionate language, and a blunt and bold delineation of character; but Otway's inferior style and verse could only be admired in an age like his own. Lee is far more of a poet, though less of a dramatist, and he wasted a certain talent in noise and fury. Restoration comedy at first followed Jonson, whom it was easy to try and imitate; Shadwell and Wilson, whose works are a museum for the social See also:

ANTIQUARY

antiquary, photographed comedy. the humours of the See also:

TOWN

town. Dryden's many comedies often show his more boisterous and blatant, rarely his finer qualities. Like all playwrights of the time he pillages from the French, and vulgarizes Moliere without stint or shame. A truer light comedy began with Sir George Etherege, who mirrored in faithful as well as brutal; he excels in the graphic reckless See also:

EXHIBITION

exhibition of outward humours and bustle; he scavenges in the most callous good spirits and with careful cynicism. The Plain Dealer (1677), a skilful transplantation, as well as a depravation of Moliere's Le Misanthrope, is his best piece: he writes in prose, and his prose is excellent, modern and lifelike. (O. E.*) V. THE 18TH CENTURY In the reign of Anne (1702–1714) the social changes which had commenced with the Restoration of 166o began to make themselves definitely felt.

Books began to penetrate social among all classes of society. The period is consequently changes. one of differentiation and expansion. As the practice of reading becomes more and more universal, English writers lose much of their old idiosyncrasy, intensity and obscurity. As in politics and religion, so in letters, there is a great development of See also:

NATIONALITY

nationality. Commercial considerations too for the first time become important. We hear relatively far less of religious controversy, of the bickering between episcopalians and non-conformists and of university squabbles. Specialization and cumbrous pedantry fall into profound disfavour. Provincial feeling exercises a diminishing sway, and literature becomes increasingly See also:

METROPOLITAN (Lat. metropolitanus, Gr. µnrpoiroXtrns)

metropolitan or suburban. With the multiplication of moulds, the refinement of prose See also:

POLISH

polish, and the development of breadth, variety and ease, it was natural enough, having regard to the place that the country played in the world's affairs, that English literature should make its debut in western Europe. The strong national savour seemed to stimulate the foreign appetite, and as represented by Swift, Pope, See also:

DEFOE, DANIEL (c. 1.659—1731)

Defoe, Young, See also:

Goldsmith, See also:

Richardson, See also:

Sterne and See also:

OSSIAN

Ossian, if we exclude See also:

Byron and See also:

Scott, the 18th century may be deemed the cosmopolitan age, See also:

PAR (Lat. par, equal)

par excellence, of English Letters. The charms of 18th-century English literature, as it happens, are essentially of the rational, social and translatable kind: in intensity, exquisiteness and eccentricity of the choicer kinds it is proportionately deficient.

It is pre-eminently an age of prose, and although verbal expression is seldom represented at its highest power, we shall find nearly every variety of English prose brilliantly illustrated during this period: the aristocratic style of Bolingbroke, Addison and Berkeley; the gentlemanly style of Fielding; the keen and logical controversy of Butler, Middleton, Smith and See also:

Bentham; the rhythmic and balanced if occasionally involved style of Johnson and his admirers; the limpid and flowing manner of See also:

Hume and See also:

MACKINTOSH, SIR JAMES (176 1832)

Mackintosh; the light, easy and witty flow of See also:

Walpole; the divine chit-chat of Cowper; the colour of Gray and Berkeley; the See also:

ORGAN

organ See also:

roll of See also:

Burke; the detective journalism of Swift and Defoe; the sly familiarity of Sterne; the dance music and waxcandles of Sheridan; the pomposity of See also:

Gibbon; the air and ripple of Goldsmith; the peeping preciosity of See also:

BOSWELL, JAMES (1740-1795)

Boswell,—these and other characteristics can be illustrated in 18th-century prose as probably nowhere else. But more important to the historian of literature even than the development of qualities is the evolution of types. And in this respect the 18th century is a veritable See also:

INDEX

index-museum of English prose. Essentially, no doubt, it is true that in form the prose and verse of the 18th century is mainly an extension of Dryden, just as in content it is a reflection of the increased variety of the city life which came into existence as English See also:

trade rapidly increased in all directions. But the taste of the day was rapidly changing. People began to read in vastly increasing numbers. The folio was making place on the shelves for the See also:

OCTAVO

octavo. The bookseller began to transcend the mere tradesman. Along with See also:

NEWSPAPERS

newspapers the advertizing of books came into fashion, and the See also:

MARKET (Lat. mercatus, trade or place of trade)

market was regulated no longer by what learned men wanted to write, but what an increasing multitude wanted to read. The arrival of the octavo is said to have marked the enrolment of man as a reader, ttlat of the novel the See also:

ATTACHMENT

attachment of woman. Hence, among other causes, the rapid decay of lyrical verse and printed drama, of theology and epic, in ponderous tomes. The fashionable types of which the new century was to See also:

witness the fixation are accordingly the essay and the satire as represented respectively by Addison and See also:

Steele, Swift and Goldsmith, and by Pope and Churchill.

Pope, soon to be followed by Lady Mary Wortley See also:

Montagu, was the first English-man who treated letter-writing as an _ art upon a considerable scale. Personalities and memoirs prepare the way for history, in which as a department of literature English letters hitherto had been almost scandalously deficient. Similarly the new growth of fancy essay (Addison) and plain See also:

BIOGRAPHY (from the Gr. (3ios, life, and yp&4 , writing)

biography (Defoe) prepared the way for the English novel, the most important by far of all new literary combinations. Finally, without going into unnecessary detail, we have a significant development of See also:

topography, journalism and criticism. In the course of time, too, we shall perceive how the pressure of town life and the logic of a capital city engender, first a fondness for landscape gardening and a somewhat artificial Arcadianism, and then, by degrees, an intensifying love of the country, of the open air, and of the rare, See also:

EXOTIC (Gr. EWTIK6s, foreign, from few, outside)

exotic and remote in literature. At the outset of the new century the two chief architects of public See also:

OPINION (Lat. opinio, from opinari, to think)

opinion were undoubtedly John Locke and Joseph Addison. When he died at High Laver in October 1704 at the mature age of seventy-two, Locke had, perhaps, done more than any man of the previous century to prepare the way for the new era. Social duty and social responsibility were his two watchwords. The key to both he discerned in the Human Understanding—" no province of knowledge can be regarded as independent of reason." But the great modernist of the time was undoubtedly Joseph Addison (1672–1719). He first left the 17th century, with its stiff euphuisms, its formal obsequiousness, its ponderous scholasticism and its metaphorical antitheses, definitely behind. He did for English culture what See also:

Rambouillet did for that of France, and it is hardly an exaggeration to call the half-century before the great fame of the English novel, the half century of the Spectator. Addison's mind was fertilized by intercourse with the greater and more original genius of Swift and with the more inventive and more genial mind of Steele.

It was Richard Steele (1672–1729) in the Tatler of 1709–1710 who Steele. first realized that the specific which that urbane age both needed and desired was no longer copious preaching and rigorous declamation, but homoeopathic doses of good sense, good taste and good-humoured morality, disguised beneath an easy and fashionable style. Nothing could have suited Addison better than the opportunity afforded him of contributing an occasional essay or roundabout See also:

paper in praise of virtue or dispraise of stupidity and bad form to his friend's periodical. When the Spectator succeeded the Tatler in March 1711, Addison took a more active share in shaping the chief characters (with the immortal See also:

BARONET

baronet, Sir Roger, at their See also:

head) who were to make his fops the gaiety and insolence of the world he knew. The society depicted by William See also:

WYCHERLEY, WILLIAM (c. 1640-1716)

Wycherley, the one comic dramatist of power between Massinger and See also:

Congreve, at first Wyche).- seems hardly human; but his energy is skilful and ley. Locke: Addison. up the " Spectator Club "; and, better even than before, he saw his way, perhaps, to reinforcing his copious friend with his own more frugal but more refined endowment. Such a privileged talent came into play at precisely the right moment to circulate through the See also:

COFFEE (Fr: cafe, Ger. Kaffee)

coffee houses and to convey a large measure of French courtly ease and elegance into the more humdrum texture of English prose. Steele became rather disreputable in his later years, Swift was banished and went mad, but Addison became a personage of the utmost consideration, and the essay as he left it became an almost indispensable accomplishment to the complete gentlemen of that age. As an architect of opinion from 1717 to 1775 Addison may well rank with Locke. The other side, both in life and politics, was taken by See also:

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), who preferred to represent man on his unsocial swift. side. He sneered at most things, but not at his own order, and he came to defend the church and the country squirearchy against the conventicle and See also:

CAPEL (OF HADHAM), ARTHUR CAPEL, BARON (fl. 164o-1649)

Capel court. To under-mine the complacent entrenchments of the Whig capitalists at war with France no See also:

sap proved so effectual as his See also:

PEN (Lat. penna, a feather, pen)

pen.

Literary influence was then exercised is politics mainly by pamphlets, and Swift was the greatest of pamphleteers. In the Journal to Stella he has left us a most wonderful portrait of himself in turn currying favour, spoiled, petted and humiliated by the party leaders of the Tories from 1710-1713. He had always been See also:

savage, and when the Hanoverians came in and he was treated as a suspect, his hate widened to embrace all mankind (Gulliver's Travels, 1726) and he See also:

BIT (from the verb " to bite," either in the sense of a piece bitten off, or an act of biting, or a thing that bites or is bitten)

bit like a mad See also:

dog. Would that he could have bitten more, for the infection of English stylists ! In wit, logic, energy, See also:

PITH (O.E. pitca, cognate with Du. pit, kernel of a nut)

pith, resourcefulness and Saxon simplicity, his prose has never been equalled. The choicest English then, it is arbothnoG the choicest English still. Dr John See also:

Arbuthnot (1667- 1735) may be described as an understudy of Swift on the whimsical side only, whose malignity, in a nature otherwise most kindly, was circumscribed strictly by the limits of political persiflage. See also:

Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), unorthodox as he was in every respect, discovered a little of Swift's choice pessimism in his See also:

ASSAULT (from Lat. ad, to or on, and saltare, to leap)

assault (in The Fable of the Bees of 1723) against the genteel optimism of the Characteristics of Lord Shaftesbury. Neither the matter nor the manner of the brilliant Tory chieftain Henry St John, See also:

VISCOUNT (through O. Fr. viscomte, mod. vicomte, from Low Lat. vice-comes, cf. Portug. visconde, Ital. visconte)

Viscount Bolingbroke Boling- (1678-1751), appears to us now as being of the highest See also:

broke. significance; but, although Bolingbroke's ideas were second-hand, his work has an historical importance; his dignified, balanced and decorated style was the See also:

CYNOSURE (Lat. cynosura, Gr. Kuv000upa, from iambs, genitive of Kixav, a dog, and oup1L, tail)

cynosure of 18th-century statesmen. His essays on " History " and on " a Patriot King " both disturb a soil well prepared, and set up a reaction against such evil tendencies as a narrowing conception of history and a primarily factious and partisan conception of politics. It may be noted here how the fall of Bolingbroke and the Tories in 1714 precipitated the decay of the Renaissance ideal of literary patronage.

The dependence of the press upon the House of Lords was already an See also:

ANOMALY (from Gr. lwvw)

anomaly, and the practical See also:

TOLERATION (from Lat. tolerare, to endure)

toleration achieved in 1695 removed another obstacle from the path of liberation. The government no longer sought to strangle the press. It could generally be tuned satisfactorily and at the worst could always be temporarily muzzled. The See also:

PENSIONS

pensions hitherto devoted to men of genius were diverted under Walpole to spies and journalists. Yet one of the most unscrupulous of all the fabricators of intelligence, looked down upon as a See also:

HUCKSTER

huckster of the meanest and most inconsiderable literary wares, established his fame by a masterpiece of which literary genius had scarcely even See also:

COGNIZANCE (Lat. cognoscere, to know)

cognizance. The new trade of writing was represented most perfectly by Daniel Defoe (166o-1731), who represents, too, what few writers Defoe. possess, a competent knowledge of work and See also:

WAGES (the plural of " wage," from Late Lat. wadium, a pledge, O. Fr. wagier, gagier)

wages, buying and selling, the squalor and roguery of the very hungry and the very mean. From See also:

REPORTING

reporting sensations and chronicling faits divers, Defoe worked his way almost insensibly to the Spanish tale of the old See also:

Mendoza or See also:

PICARESQUE

picaresque pattern. See also:

Robinson Crusoe was a true story expanded on these lines, and written down under stress of circumstance when its author was just upon sixty. Resembling that of Bunyan and, later, See also:

SMOLLETT, TOBIAS GEORGE (1721-1771)

Smollett in the skilful use made of places, facts and figures, Defoe's style is the mirror of man in his See also:

SHIRT

shirt sleeves. What he excelled in was plain, straightforward story-telling, in under-standing and appraising the curiosity of the man in the street, and in possessing just the knowledge and just the patience, and just the literary stroke that would enable him most effectually to satisfy it. He was the first and cleverest of all descriptive reporters, for he knew better than any successor how and where to throw in those irrelevant details, tricks of speech and circumlocution, which tend to give an air of verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative—the funny little splutterings and naivetes as of a plain man who is not telling a tale for effect, but striving after his own manner to give the plain unvarnished truth. Defoe contributes story, Addison character, Fielding the life-atmosphere, Richardson and Sterne the sentiment, and we have the 18th-century novel complete—the greatest literary birth of modern time.

Addison, Steele, Swift and Defoe, as master-builders of prose fiction, are consequently of more importance than the " Augustan poets," as Pope and his school are sometimes called, for the most that they can be said to have done is to have perfected a more or less transient mode of poetry. To the passion, imagination or musical quality essential to the most inspired kinds of poetry Alexander Pope (1688–1744) can lay small claim. His best work is contained in Pope the Satires and Epistles, which are largely of the See also:

PROVERB (Lat. proverbium, from pro, forth, publicly, verbum, word; the Greek equivalent is irapolµia, from 7rapa, alongside, and oiµos, way, road, i.e. a wayside saying; Ger. Sprichwort)

proverb-in-rhyme order. Yet in lucid, terse and pungent phrases he has rarely if ever been surpassed. His classical fancy, his elegant turn for periphrasis and his venomous sting alike made him the idol of that urbane age. See also:

VOLTAIRE, FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET DE (1694–1778)

Voltaire in 1726 had called him the best poet living, and at his death his style was See also:

PARAMOUNT (Anglo-Fr. paramont, up above, par el mont, up or on top of the mountain)

paramount throughout the civilized world. It was the See also:

APOTHEOSIS (Gr. aaoOeou)

apotheosis of wit, point, lucidity and technical correctness. Pope was the first Englishman to make poetry pay (apart from patronage). He was flattered by imitation to an extent which threatened to throw the school of poetry which he represented into permanent discredit. See also:

Prior, Gay, See also:

Parnell, See also:

AKENSIDE, MARK (1721-1770)

Akenside, See also:

POMFRET, JOHN (1667-1702)

Pomfret, See also:

GARTH, SIR SAMUEL (1661-1719)

Garth, Young, Johnson, Goldsmith, See also:

Falconer, See also:

Glover, Grainger, See also:

Darwin, See also:

Rogers, See also:

HAYLEY, WILLIAM (1745—1820)

Hayley and indeed a See also:

HOST

host of others—the once famous See also:

mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease—worshipped Pope as their poetic founder. The second-rate wore his badge. But although the cult of Pope was the established religion of poetic taste from 1714 to 1798, there were always nonconformists.

The poetic revolt, indeed, was far more versatile than the religious revival of the century. The Winter (1726) of James Thomson may be regarded as in- Thomson. augurating a new era in English poetry. Lady Winchilsea, John See also:

Philips, author of Cyder, and John Dyer, whose Grongar Hill was published a few months before Winter, had pleaded by their work for a truthful and unaffected, and at the same time a romantic treatment of nature in poetry; but the ideal of artificiality and of a frigid poetic diction by which English poetry was dominated since the days of Waller and Cowley was first effectively challenged by Thomson. At the time when the Popean couplet was at the height of its vogue he deliberately put it aside in favour of the higher poetic power of blank verse. And he it was who transmitted the sentiment of natural beauty not merely to imitators such as Savage, See also:

Armstrong, See also:

Somerville, See also:

LANGHORNE, JOHN (1735–1779)

Langhorne, See also:

MICKLE, WILLIAM JULIUS (1735-1788)

Mickle and See also:

SHENSTONE, WILLIAM (1714-1763)

Shenstone, but also to his elegist, William See also:

Collins, to Gray and to Cowper, and so indirectly to the lyrical bards of 1798. By the same hands and those of Shenstone experiments were being made in the stanza of The Faerie Queene; a little later, owing to the virtuosity of Bishop See also:

Percy, the cultivation of the old English and Scottish ballad literature was beginning to take a serious turn. Dissatisfaction with the limitations of "Augustan" poetry was similarly responsible for the revived interest in Shakespeare and Chaucer. Gray stood not only for a far more intimate worship of wild external nature, but also for an awakened curiosity in Scandinavian, See also:

CELTIC

Celtic and Icelandic poetry. To pretend then that the poetic heart of the 18th century was Popean to the core is nothing short of extravagance. There were a number of true poets in the second and third quarters of Collins. Gray.

the century to whom all credit is due as pioneers and precentors of the romantic movement under the depressing conditions to which innovators in poetry are commonly subject. They may strike us as rather an anaemic See also:

BAND

band after the great Elizabethan poets. Four of them were mentally deranged (Collins, See also:

Smart, Cowper, See also:

Blake), while Gray was a hermit, and Shenstone and Thomson the most indolent of recluses. The most adventurous, one might say the most virile of the group, was a boy who died at the age of seventeen. Single men all (save for Blake), a more despondent group of artists as a whole it would not perhaps be easy to discover. Catacombs and cypresses were the forms of imagery that came to them most naturally. Elegies and funeral odes were the types of expression in which they were happiest. Yet they strove in the main to follow the gleam in poetry, to reinstate imagination upon its throne, and to substitute the singing voice for the rhetorical recitative of the heroic couplet. Within two years of the death of Pope, in 1746, William Collins was content to sing (not say) what he had in him without a glimpse of wit or a flash of eloquence—and in him many have discerned the germ of that romantic eclosion which blossomed in Christabel. A more important if less original See also:

FACTOR (from Lat. facere, to make or do)

factor in that movement was Collins's severe critic Thomas Gray, a man of the widest curiosities of his time, in whom every attribute of the poet to which scholar-ship, taste and refinement are contributory may be found to the full, but in whom the strong creative energy is fatally lacking—despite the fact that he wrote a string of " divine truisms " in his Elegy, which has given to multitudes more of the exquisite pleasure of poetry than any other single piece in the English language. Shenstone and Percy, See also:

CAPELL, EDWARD (17,3–1781)

Capell, the Wartons and eventually See also:

CHATTERTON, THOMAS (1752-1770)

Chatterton, continued to mine in the shafts which Gray had been the first to sink. Their laborious work of discovery resembled that which was commencing in regard to the See also:

GOTHIC

Gothic See also:

ARCHITECTURE (Lat. architectura, from the Gr. ap)(LTEKrwv, a master-builder)

architecture which the age of Pope had come to regard as rude and barbaric.

The Augustans had come seriously to regard all pre-Drydenic poetry as grossly See also:

BARBARIAN (Gr. fap/3apos)

barbarian. One of the greatest achievements of the mid-eighteenth century was concerned with the disintegration of this obstinate delusion. The process was manifold; and it led, among other things, to a realization of the importance of the study of comparative literature. The literary grouping of the 18th century is, perhaps, the biggest thing on the whole that English art has to show; but The novel. among all its groups the most famous, and probably the most original, is that of its proto-novelists Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne. All nations have had their novels, which are as old at least as Greek vases. The various types have generally had collective appellations such as Milesian Tales, Alexandrian Romances, Romances of Chivalry, Acta Sanctorum, Gesta Romanorum, Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, Romances of Roguery, Arabian Nights; but owing to the rivalry of other more popular or more respectable or at least more eclectic literary forms, they seldom managed to attain a permanent lodgment in the library. The taste in prose fiction changes, perhaps, more rapidly than that in any other kind of literature. In Britain alone several forms had passed their prime since the days of Caxton and his Arthurian prose romance of Morte d'Arthur. Such were the wearisome Arcadian romance or pastoral heroic; the new centos of tales of chivalry like the Seven Champions of Christendom; the utopian, political and philosophical romances (Oceana, The Man in the Moone); the grotesque and facetious stories of rogues retailed from the Spanish or French in See also:

DWARF (A.S. dweorg, D. dwerg, Icel. dvergr)

dwarf volumes; the prolix romance of modernized classic heroism (The Grand See also:

Cyrus); the religious allegory (Bunyan's Life and Death of Mr Badman); the novels of outspoken French or Italian gallantry, represented by Aphra Behn; the imaginary voyages so notably adapted to satire by Dr Swift; and last, but not least, the minutely prosaic chronicle- novels of Daniel Defoe. The prospect of the novel was changing rapidly. The development of the individual and of a large well-to-do See also:

urban middle class, which was rapidly multiplying its See also:

AREA

area of leisure, involved a curious and self-conscious society, hungry for pleasure and new sensations, anxious to be told about themselves, willing in some cases even to learn civilization from their betters. The disrepute into which the drama had fallen since Jeremy See also:

Collier's attack on it directed this society by an almost inevitable course into the flowery paths of fiction.

The novel, it is true, had a reputation which was for the time being almost as unsavoury as that of the drama, but the novel was not a confirmed See also:

ill-doer, and it only needed a touch of genius to create for it a vast See also:

CONGREGATION (Lat. congregatio, a gathering together, from cum, with, grex, gregis, a flock, herd)

congregation of enthusiastic votaries. In the Taller and Spectator were already found the methods and subjects of the modern novel. The De Coverley papers in the Spectator, in fact, want nothing but a love-See also:

THREAD (0. Eng. praed, literally, that which is twisted, prawan, to twist, to throw, cf. " throwster," a silk-winder, Ger. drehen, to twist, turn, Du. draad, Ger. Draht, thread, wire)

thread to convert them into a serial novel of a high order. The supreme importance of the sentimental interest had already been discovered and exemplified to good purpose in France by Madame de la Fayette, the Marquise de See also:

Tencin, See also:

MARIVAUX, PIERRE CARLET DE CHAMBLAIN DE (1688-1763)

Marivaux and the Abbe See also:

Prevost. Samuel Richardson (1689-1762), therefore, when he produced the first two modern novels of European Richard-son. fame in Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1748), inherited far more than he invented. There had been Richardsonians before Richardson. Clarissa is nevertheless a See also:

PIONEER

pioneer work, and we have it on the high authority of M. Jusserand that the English have contributed more than any other people to the formation of the contemporary novel. Of the long-winded, typical and rather chaotic English novel of love analysis and moral sentiment (as opposed to the romance of adventure) Richardson is the first successful charioteer. The novel in England gained prodigiously by the shock of opposition between the ideals of Richardson and Henry Fielding (1707-1754), his rival and parodist. Fielding's brutal Fielding toleration is a fine corrective to the slightly rancid morality of Richardson, with its See also:

FRANK, JAKOB (1726-1791)

frank insistence upon the See also:

CASH

cash-value of chastity and virtue.

Fielding is, to be brief, the succinct antithesis of Richardson, and represents the opposite pole of English character. He is the Cavalier, Richardson the See also:

ROUNDHEAD

Roundhead; he is the See also:

GENTLEMAN (from Lat. gentilis, " belonging to a race or gens," and " man "; Fr. gentilhomme, Span. gentil hombre, Ital. gentil huomo, in its original and strict signification, a term denoting a man of good family, the Lat. generosus (its invariable transl

gentleman, Richardson the tradesman; he represents church and county, Richardson See also:

CHAPEL

chapel and See also:

borough. Richardson had much of the patient insight and intensity of genius, but he lacked the humour and literary accomplishment which Fielding had in rich abundance. Fielding combined breadth and keenness, classical culture and a delicate Gallic See also:

IRONY (Gr. dipaweLa, from eipwv, one who says less than he means, eiepees, to speak)

irony to an extent rare among English writers. He lacked the delicate See also:

INTUITION (from Lat. intueri, to look at)

intuition of Richardson in the analysis of women, nor could he See also:

COMPASS (Fr. corn pas, ultimately from Lat. cum, with, and passus, step)

compass the broad farcical humour of Smollett smoilett: or the sombre colouring by which Smollett produces at times such poignant effects of contrast. There was no poetry in Fielding; but there was practically every other 'ingredient of a great prose writer—taste, culture, order, vivacity, humour, penetrating irony and vivid, pervading common sense, and it is Fielding's chef-d'oeuvre Tom Jones (1749) that we must regard if not as the fundament at least as the head of the corner in English prose fiction. Before Tom Jones appeared, the success of the novel had drawn a new competitor into the field in Tobias Smollett, the descendant of a good western See also:

LOWLAND

lowland See also:

FAMILY

family who had knocked about the world and seen more of its hurlyburly than Fielding himself. In See also:

RODERICK

Roderick See also:

RANDOM (older forms randon, randrun; from the French, cf. randir, to run quickly, impetuously; generally taken to be of Teutonic origin and connected with Ger. Rand, edge, brim, the idea being possibly of a brimming river)

Random (1748) Smollett represents a rougher and more uncivilized world even than that depicted in Joseph See also:

Andrews. The savagery and See also:

HORSE (a word common to Teutonic languages in such forms as hors, hros, ros; cf. the Ger. ross)

horse-play peculiar to these two novelists derives in part from the See also:

ROGUE

rogue romance of Spain (as then recently revived by Lesage), and has a counterpart to some extent in the graphic art of See also:

HOGARTH, WILLIAM (1697–1764)

Hogarth and See also:

ROWLANDSON, THOMAS (1756–1827)

Rowlandson; yet one cannot altogether ignore an element of exaggeration which has greatly injured both these writers in the estimation (and still more in the See also:

AFFECTION (Lat. ad, and facere, to do something to, sc. a person)

affection) of posterity. The genius which struggles through novels such as Roderick Random and See also:

Ferdinand Count Fathom was nearly submerged under the hard conditions of a general writer during the third quarter of the 18th century, and it speaks volumes for Smollett's powers of recuperation that he survived to write two such masterpieces of sardonic and humorous observation as his Travels and See also:

HUMPHRY, OZIAS (1742-1810)

Humphry See also:

CLINKER

Clinker. The fourth proto-master of the English novel was the antiquarian humorist See also:

Lawrence Sterne. Though they owed a good deal to Don Quixote and the French novelists, Fielding and Smollett were essentially observers of life in the quick.

Sterne. Sterne brought a far-fetched style, a bookish apparatus and a deliberate eccentricity into fiction. Tristram Shandy, produced successively in nine small volumes between 176o and 1764, is the pretended history of a personage who is not born (before the fourth volume) and hardly ever appears, carried on in an eccentric rigmarole of old and new, original and borrowed humour, arranged in a style well known to students of the later See also:

Valois humorists as fatrasie. Far more than Moliere, Sterne took his literary bien wherever he found it. But he invented a kind of tremolo style of his own, with the aid of which, in See also:

CONJUNCTION (from Lat. conjungere, to join together)

conjunction with the most unblushingly indecent innuendoes, and with a conspicuous genius for humorous See also:

PORTRAITURE

portraiture, trembling upon the See also:

VERGE (Lat. virga, a rod)

verge of the pathetic, he succeeded in winning a new domain for the art of fiction. These four great writers then, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne—all of them great pessimists in comparison with the benignant philosophers of a later fiction—first thoroughly fertilized this important field. Richardson obtained a European fame during his lifetime. Sterne, as a pioneer impressionist, gave all subsequent stylists a new handle. Fielding and Smollett grasped the new instrument more vigorously, and fashioned with it models which, after serving as patterns to Scott, See also:

MARRYAT, FREDERICK (1792-1848)

Marryat, Cooper, See also:

Ainsworth, See also:

DICKENS, CHARLES JOHN HUFFAM (1812-187o)

Dickens, See also:

Lever, See also:

Stevenson, See also:

MERRIMAN

Merriman, See also:

WEYMAN, STANLEY JOHN (1855— )

Weyman and other romancists of the 19th century, have still retained a fair measure of their original popularity unimpaired. Apart from the novelists, the middle period of the 18th century is strong in prose writers: these include Dr Johnson, See also:

Oliver /ohnson. Goldsmith, Lord See also:

Chesterfield and Horace Walpole. The last three were all influenced by the sovereign lucidity of the best French style of the day.

Chesterfield and Walpole were both writers of aristocratic experience and of European knowledge and sentiment. Johnson alone was a distinctively English thinker and stylist. His knowledge of the world, outside England, was derived from books, he was a good deal of a scholar, an earnest moralist, and something of a divine; his style, at any rate, reaches back to Taylor,. Barrow and South, and has a good deal of the complex structure, the cadence, and the balance of English and Latinistic words proper to the 17th century, though the later influence of Addison and Bolingbroke is also apparent; Johnson himself was fond of the essay, the satire in verse, and the moral tale (Rasselas); but he lacked the creative imagination indispensable for such work and excelled chiefly as biographer and critic. For a critic even, it must be admitted that he was singly deficient in original ideas. He upholds authority. He judges by what he regards as the accepted rules, derived by Dryden, See also:

RAPIN, PAUL DE (1661-1725)

Rapin, Boileau, Le See also:

BOSSU, RENE LE (1631-1680)

Bossu, Rymer, Dennis, Pope and such " estimable critics " from the ancients, whose decisions on such matters he regards as See also:

para- See also:

MOUNT, WILLIAM SIDNEY (1807-1868)

mount. He tries to carry out a systematic, motived criticism; but he asserts rather than persuades or convinces. We go to his critical works (Lives of the Poets and Essay on Shakespeare) not for their conclusions, but for- their shrewd comments on life, and for an application to literary problems of a See also:

CAUSTIC (Gr. rcavvraubs, burning)

caustic common sense. Johnson's character and conversation, his knowledge and 'memory were far more remarkable than his ideas or his writings, admirable though the best of these were; the exceptional traits which met in his person and made that age regard him as a See also:

nonpareil have found in James Boswell a delineator un- rivalled in patience, dexterity and dramatic insight. The result has been a portrait of a man of letters more alive at the present time than that which any other age or nation has be- queathed to us. In most of his ideas Johnson was a generation behind the typical academic critics of his date, Joseph and Thomas See also:

Warton, who championed against his authority what the doctor regarded as the finicking notions of Gray.

Both of the Wartons were enthusiastic for Spenser and the older poetry; they were saturated with Milton whom they placed far above the correct Mr Pope, they wrote sonnets (thereby provoking Johnson's ire) and attempted to revive medieval and Celtic lore in every direction. Johnson's one attempt at a novel or tale was Rasselas, a long " Rambler " essay upon the vanity of human hope and ambition, something after the manner of the See also:

ORIENTAL

Oriental tales of which Voltaire had caught the idea from Swift and See also:

MONTESQUIEU, CHARLES LOUIS DE SECONDAT, BARON DE LA BREDE ET DE (1689-1755)

Montesquieu; but Rasselas is quite unenlivened by humour, personality or any other charm. This one quality that Johnson so completely lacked was possessed in its fullest perfection by Oliver Goldsmith, whose style is the supreme expression of 18th-century clear- Gold- ness, simplicity and easy graceful fluency. Much of smith. Goldsmith's material, whether as playwright, story writer or essayist; is trite and commonplace—his material worked up by any other hand would be worthless. But, when-ever Goldsmith writes about human life, he seems to pay it a compliment, a relief of fun and good fellowship accompanies his slightest description, his playful and delicate touch could trans-form every thought that he handled into something radiant with sunlight and fragrant with the perfume of youth. Goldsmith's plots are Irish, his critical theories are French with a light See also:

TOP (cf. Dan. top, Ger. Topf, also meaning pot)

top dressing of Johnson and See also:

Reynolds or Burke, while his prose style is an idealization of Addison. His versatility was great, and, in this and in other respects, he and Johnson are constantly reminding us that they were hardened professionals, writing against time for See also:

MONEY

money. Much of the best prose work of this period, from 1740 to 1780, was done under very different conditions. The increase of travel, of intercourse between the nobility of Europe, and of a sense of solidarity, self-consciousness, leisure and connoisseurship among that section of English society known as the governing class, or, since Disraeli, as " the Venetian See also:

OLIGARCHY (Gr. oXiyot, few, apxil, rule)

oligarchy," could hardly fail to produce an increasing See also:

CROP (a word common. in various forms, such as Germ. Kropf, to many Teutonic languages for a swelling, excrescence, round head or top of anything; it appears also in Romanic languages derived from Teutonic, in Fr. as troupe, whence the English " crupper "

crop of those elaborate collections of letters and memoirs which had already attained their apogee in France with Mme de See also:

SEVIGNE, MARIE DE

Sevigne and the duc de Saint-Simon. England was not to remain far behind, for in 1718 commence the Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; ten years more saw the commencement of Lord See also:

HERVEY, JAMES (1714–1758)

Hervey's Memoirs of the Reign of George II.; and Lord Chesterfield and Lord See also:

Orford (better known as Horace Walpole) both began their ficheseldterd inimitable series of Letters about 1740. These writings, and Walpole.

none of them written ostensibly for the press, serve to show the enormous strides that English prose was making as a medium of vivacious description. The letters are all the re-creation of extensive knowledge and cosmopolitan acquirements; they are not strong on the poetic or imaginative side of things, but they have an intense appreciation of the actual and mundane side of fallible humanity. Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his son and to his godson are far more, for they introduce a Ciceronian polish and a Gallic irony and wit into the hitherto uncultivated See also:

GARDEN (from O. Fr. garden, mod. Fr. jardin; this, like our words " garth," a paddock attached to a building, and " yard," comes from a Teutonic word for an enclosure which appears in Gothic as gards and O. H. Ger. gart, cf. Dutch gaarde and Ger. .garten)

garden of the literary graces in English prose. Chesterfield, whose theme is manners and social amenity, deliberately seeks a form of expression appropriate to his text—the perfection of tact, neatness, good order and savoir faire. After his grandfather, the See also:

marquess of Halifax, Lord Chesterfield, the synonym in the vulgar world for a heartless exquisite, is in reality the first fine gentleman and epicurean in the best sense in English polite literature. Both Chesterfield and Walpole were conspicuous as raconteurs in an age of witty talkers, of whose talk R. B. Sheridan, in The School for See also:

SCANDAL

Scandal (1777), served up a supreme. Some of it may be tinsel, but it looks wonderfully well under the lights. The See also:

STAR

star comedy of the century represents the sparkle of this brilliant crowd: it reveals no See also:

HEARTS

hearts, but it shows us every See also:

TRICK

trick of phrase, every eccentricity of manner and every foible of thought. But the most mundane of the letter writers, the most frivolous, and also the most pungent, is Horace Walpole, whose writings are an See also:

epitome of the history and biography of the Georgian era. " Fiddles sing all through them, See also:

wax lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, fine See also:

PLATE

plate, fine equipages glitter and sparkle; never was such a brilliant, smirking Vanity Fair as that through which he leads us." Yet, in some ways, he was a corrective to the self=complacency of his generation, a vast See also:

DILETTANTE

dilettante, lover of " Gothic," of curios and antiques, of costly printing, of old illuminations and stained glass.

In his short miracle-novel, called The Castle of See also:

OTRANTO

Otranto, he set a fashion for mystery and terror in fiction, for medieval legend, diablerie, mystery, horror, antique See also:

FURNITURE (from " furnish," Fr. fournir)

furniture and Gothic See also:

JARGON

jargon, which led directly by the route of Anne See also:

Radcliffe, See also:

MATURIN, CHARLES ROBERT (1782-1824)

Maturin, Vathek, St See also:

Leon and See also:

FRANKENSTEIN

Frankenstein, to Queenhoo Hall, to Waverley and even to See also:

Hugo and Poe. Meanwhile the area of the Memoir was widening rapidly in the hands of Fanny, the sly daughter of the wordly-wise and fashionable musician, Dr See also:

BURNEY, CHARLES (1726-1814)

Burney, author of a novel Fanny (Evelina) most satirical and facete, written ere she was Burney. Boswell. well out of her teens; not too kind a satirist of her former patroness, Mrs Thrale (afterwards See also:

PIOZZI, HESTER LYNCH (1741-1821)

Piozzi), the least tiresome of the new group of scribbling sibyls, See also:

BLUE (common in different forms to most European languages)

blue stockings, lady dilettanti and Della Cruscans. Both, as portraitists and purveyors of Johnsoniana, were surpassed by the inimitable James Boswell, first and most fatuous of all interviewers, in brief a See also:

BIOGRAPHICAL

biographical genius, with a new See also:

RECIPE

recipe, distinct from Sterne's, for disclosing personality, and a deliberate, artificial method of revealing himself to us, as it were, unawares. From all these and many other experiments, a far more flexible prose was developing in England, adapted for those critical reviews, magazines and See also:

JOURNALS

journals which were multiplying rapidly to exploit the new masculine interest, apart from the schools, in history, topography, natural philosophy and the picturesque, just as circulating libraries were springing up to exploit the new feminine passion for fiction, which together with memoirs and fashionable poetry contributed to give the booksellers bigger and bigger ideas. It is surprising how many types of literary productions with which we are now familiar were first moulded into definite and The See also:

pro- classical form during the Johnsonian period. In Press of addition to the novel one need only mention the author- economic treatise, as exemplified for the first time in ship. the admirable symmetry of The Wealth of Nations, the diary of a faithful observer of nature such as Gilbert White, the Fifteen Discourses (1769–1791) in which Sir See also:

JOSHUA, BOOK OF

Joshua Reynolds endeavours for the first time to expound for England a philosophy of Art, the historico-philosophical tableau as exemplified by See also:

Robertson and Gibbon, the light political See also:

PARODY (Gr. s-apybia, literally a song sung beside, a comic parallel)

parody of which the poetry of The Rolliad and See also:

ANTI, or CAMPA

Anti-Jacobin afford so many excellent models; and, going to the other extreme, the ponderous archaeological or topographical .monograph, as exemplified in Stuart and Revett's Antiquities of Athens, in Robert See also:

Wood's See also:

COLOSSAL

colossal Ruins of See also:

PALMYRA

Palmyra (1753), or the monumental History of See also:

LEICESTERSHIRE

Leicestershire by John See also:

NICHOLS, JOHN (1745–1826)

Nichols. Such works as this last might well seem the outcome of Horace Walpole's maxim: In this scribbling age " let those who can't write, glean." In short, the literary landscape in Johnson's day was slowly but surely assuming the general outlines to which we are all accustomed. The literary conditions of the period dated from the time of Pope in their main features, and it is quite possible that they were more considerably modified in Johnson's own lifetime than they have been since. The booksellers, or, as they would now be called, publishers, were steadily superseding the old ties of patronage, and basing their relations with authors upon a commercial footing. A stage in their progress is marked by the success of Johnson's friend and Hume's correspondent, William Strahan, who kept a See also:

COACH (through the Fr. coche, originally from the Magyar kocsi, an adjective from the Hungarian place named Kocs, between Raab and Buda, i.e. the sort of vehicle used there in the 15th century)

coach, " a credit to literature." The evolution of a normal status for the author was aided by the definition of copyright and gradual extinction of piracy.

Histories of their own time by Clarendon and Burnet have been in much See also:

REQUEST, LETTERS OF

request from their own day to this, and the first, at least, Historians is a fine See also:

MONUMENT (Lat. monumentum or monumentum; from monere, to advise, bring to mind, remind; the German equivalent is Denkmal)

monument of English prose; Bolingbroke again, in 1735, dwelt memorably upon the ethical, political and philosophical value of history. But it was not until the third quarter of the 18th century that English literature freed itself from the imputation of lagging hopelessly behind France, Italy and Germany in the serious work of historical reconstruction. Hume published the first volume of his History of England . in 1754. Robertson.'s History of Scotland saw the light in 1759 and his Charles V. in 1769; Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire came in 1776. Hume was, perhaps, the first modernistin history; he attempted to give his work a modern interest and. See also:

SCOT, MICHAEL (? 1175-1232)

Scot though he was, a modern style—it could not fail, as he knew, to derive piquancy from its derision of the Whiggish See also:

ASSUMPTION, FEAST OF

assumption which regarded 1688 as a political See also:

MILLENNIUM (a pseudo-Latin word formed on the analogy of biennium, triennium, from Lat. milk, a thousand, and armies, year)

millennium. Wm. Robertson was, perhaps, the first man to adapt the polished periphrases of the pulpit to historical generalization. The gifts of See also:

COMPROMISE (pronounced compromize; through Fr. from Lat. compromittere)

compromise which he had learned as See also:

MODERATOR (from Lat. moderare, to impose a modus, limit)

Moderator of the General Assembly he brought to bear upon his historical studies, and a language so unfamiliar to his lips as academic English he wrote with so much the more care that the greatest connoisseurs of the day were enthusiastic about " Robertson's wonderful style." Even more portentous in its superhuman dignity was the style of Edward Gibbon, who conbined with the unspiritual optimism of Hume and Robertson a far more concentrated devotion to his subject, an See also:

INDUSTRY (Lat. industria, from indu-, a form of the pre, position in, and either stare, to stand, or struere, to pile up)

industry more monumental, a greater co-ordinative vigour, and a malice which, even in the 18th century, rendered him the least credulous man of his age. Of all histories, therefore, based upon the transmitted evidence of other ages rather than on the personal observation of the writer's own, Gibbon's Decline and Fall has hitherto maintained its reputation best. Hume, even before he was superseded, fell a See also:

PREY (0. Fr. preie, mod. proie, Lat. praeda, booty, from prae and the root hed—seen in prehendere, prendere, to grasp)

prey to continuations and abridgements, while Robertson was supplanted systematically by the ornate pages of W. H.

See also:

PRESCOTT, WILLIAM HICKLING (1796-1859)

Prescott. The increasing transparency of texture in the working English prose during this period is shown in the writings of theologians such as Butler and See also:

Paley, and of thinkers such as Berkeley and Hume, who, by prolonging and extending Berkeley's contention that matter was an See also:

ABSTRACTION (Lat. abs and trahere)

abstraction, had shown that mind would have to be considered an abstraction too, thereby signalling a school of reaction to common sense or " external reality " represented by Thomas See also:

Reid, and with modifications by David See also:

Hartley, Abraham See also:

Tucker and others. Butler and Paley are merely two of the biggest amd most characteristic apologists of that day, both great stylists, though it must be allowed that their very lucidity and good sense excites almost more doubt than it stills, and both very successful in repelling the enemy in controversy, though their very success accentuates the faults of that unspiritual age in which churchmen were so far more concerned about the title deeds than about the living portion of the church's See also:

ESTATE (through O. Fr. estat, mod. flat, from Lat. status, state, condition, position, stare, to stand)

estate. Free thought was already beginning to sap their defences in various directions, and in Tom See also:

Paine, See also:

PRIESTLEY, JOSEPH (1733-1804)

Priestley, See also:

Price, See also:

Godwin and Mackintosh they found more formidable adversaries than in the earlier deists. The greatest champion, however, of continuity and conservation both in church and state, against the new schools of latitudinarians and radicals, the great eulogist of the unwritten constitution, and the most perfect master of emotional prose in this period, prose in which the harmony of sense and sound is attained to. an extent hardly ever seen outside supreme poetry, was Edmund Burke, one of the most commanding intellects in the whole range of political letters—a striking contrast in this respect to See also:

Junius, whose mechanical and journalistic talent for invective has a quite ephemeral value. From 166o to 1 76o the English mind was still much occupied in shaking off the last traces of feudality. The crown, the parliament, the See also:

MANOR

manor and the old penal See also:

CODE (Lat. codex)

code were left, it is true: but the old tenures and gild-brotherhoods Return to , nature. the old social habits, miracles, arts, faith, religion and letters were irrevocably gone. The attempt of the young See also:

Chevalier in 1745 was a complete See also:

ANACHRONISM (from ava, back, and xpovor, time)

anachronism, and no sooner was this generally felt to be so than men began to regret that it should so be. Men began to describe as " grand " and " picturesque " scenery hitherto summarized as " barren mountains covered in mist "; while Voltaire and Pope were at their height, the world began to realize that the Augustan age, in its zeal for rationality, civism and See also:

TRIM

trim parterres, had neglected the wild freshness of an age when literature was a wild flower that grew on the common. See also:

Rousseau laid the See also:

AXE (0. Eng. aex; a word common, in different forms, in the Teutonic languages, and akin to the Greek 41v17; the New English Dictionary prefers the spelling " ax ")

axe to the root of this over-sophistication of life; Goldsmith, half understanding, echoed some of his ideas in " The Deserted See also:

VILLAGE

Village." Back from books to men was now the prescription—from the crowded town to the spacious country. From plains and valleys to peaks and pinewoods.

From cities, where men were rich and corrupt, to the earlier and more See also:

PRIMITIVE

primitive moods of earth. The breath had scarcely left the body of the Grand Monarque before an intrigue was set on See also:

FOOT

foot to dispute the provisions of his will. So with the critical testament of Pope. Within a few years of his death we find Gray, Warton, See also:

HURD, RICHARD (1720-1808)

Hurd and other disciples of the new age denying to Pope the highest kind of poetic excellence, and exalting imagination and fancy into a sphere far above the Augustan qualities of correct taste and good judgment. De- centralization and revolt were the new watchwords in literature. We must eschew France and Italy and go rather to See also:

ICELAND (Dan. Island)

Iceland or the See also:

HEBRIDES, THE, or WESTERN ISLES

Hebrides for fresh poetic emotions: we must shun academies and classic 'coffee-houses and go into the street-corners or the hedge-lanes in See also:

SEARCH, or VISIT AND SEARCH

search of Volkspoesie. An old See also:

MUNIMENT

muniment See also:

CHEST (Gr. Kiarl, Lat. cista, O. Eng. cist, test, &c.)

chest and a roll of yellow See also:

PARCHMENT

parchment were the finest incen- Change in tives to the new spirit of the picturesque. How else poetic are we to explain the enthusiasm that welcomed the spirit. sham Ossianic poems of James See also:

Macpherson in 176o; Percy's patched-up ballads of 1765 (Reliques of Ancient Poetry); the new enthusiasm for Chaucer; the " black letter " school of See also:

RITSON, JOSEPH (r7.52-1803)

Ritson, Tyrrwhitt; George See also:

Ellis, See also:

Steevens, Ireland and See also:

Malone; above all, the spurious 15th-century poems poured forth in 1768– 1769 with such a wild gusto of archaic imagination by a See also:

PRODIGY

prodigy not quite seventeen years of age ? Chatterton's precocious fantasy cast a wonderful spell upon the romantic imagination of other times. It does not prepare us for the change that was coming over the poetic spirit of the last two decades of the century, but it does at least help us to explain it. The great masters of verse in Britain during this period were the three very disparate figures of William Cowper, William Blake and Robert Burns.

Cowper was not a poet of vivid and rapturous visions. There is always something of the rusticating city- scholar about his humour. The ungovernable impulse and imaginative passion of the great masters of poesy were not his to claim. His motives to express himself in verse came very largely from the outside. The greater part, nearly all his best poetry is of the occasional order. To touch and retouch, he says, in one of his letters—among the most delightful in English— is the secret of almost all good writing, especially verse. What- ever is short should be See also:

NERVOUS

nervous, masculine and compact. In all the arts that raise the best occasional poetry to the level of greatness Cowper is supreme. In phrase- moulding, verbal gymnastic and prosodical See also:

MARQUETRY (Fr. marqueterie, from marqueter, to inlay, literally to mark, marquee)

marquetry he has scarcely a rival, and the fruits of his poetic industry are enshrined in the See also:

FILIGREE (formerly written filigrann or filigrane; the Ital. filigrana, Fr. filigrane, Span. filigrana, Ger. Drahtgefiecht)

filigree of a most delicate fancy and a highly cultivated intelligence, purified and thrice refined in the fire of mental affliction. His work expresses the rapid civilization of his time, its humanitarian feeling and growing sensitiveness to natural beauty, home comfort, the claims of animals and the charms of light literature. In many of his short poems, such as " The Royal George," artistic simplicity is indistinguishable from the stern reticence of genius. William Blake had no immediate literary descendants, for he worked alone, and Lamb was practically alone in recognizing what he wrote as poetry.

But he was by far the most original of the reactionaries who preceded the Romantic Revival, and he caught far more of the Elizabethan air in his lyric verse than any one else before Coleridge. The Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, in 1789 and 1794, sing themselves, and have a See also:

BIRD

bird- like spontaneity that has been the despair of all song-writers from that day to this. After 1800 he winged his flight farther and farther into strange and unknown regions. In the finest of these earlier lyrics, which owe so little to his contemporaries, the ripple of the stream of romance that began to gush forth in 1798 is distinctly heard. But the first poetic genius of the century was unmistakably Robert Burns. In song and satire alike Burns is racy, in the highest degree, of the poets of North Britain, who since Robert See also:

Sempill, Willy See also:

Hamilton of Gilbertfield, See also:

DOUCE, FRANCIS (1757-1834)

douce See also:

Allan See also:

Ramsay, the See also:

EDINBURGH

Edinburgh periwig-maker and miscellanist, and Robert See also:

Fergusson, " the writer-chiel, a deathless name," had kept alive the old native poetic tradition, had provided the strolling fiddlers with merry and wanton staves, and had perpetu- ated the daintiest shreds of national music, the broadest See also:

col- loquialisms, and the warmest hues of patriotic or local sentiment. Burns immortalizes these old staves by means of his keener vision, his more fiery spirit, his stronger passion and his richer volume of sound. Burns's fate was a pathetic one. Brief, broken glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete, his poems wanted all things for completeness: culture, leisure, sustained effort, length of life. Yet occasional, fragmentary, extemporary as most of them are, they bear the See also:

GUINEA

guinea See also:

STAMP (from " to stamp," to strike or tread heavily, hence to impress, O. Eng. stempen, Du. stampen, Ger. stampfen, whence, O. Fr. estamper, mod. etamper)

stamp of true genius. His eye is unerring, his humour of the ripest, his wit both fine and abundant. His ear is less subtle, except when dialect is concerned.

There he is infallible. Landscape he understands in subordination to life. For abstract ideas about Liberty and 1789 he cares little. But he is a patriot and an insurgent, a hater of social distinction and of the rich. Of the divine right or eternal merit of the system under which the poor man sweats to put money into the rich man's See also:

POCKET

pocket and fights to keep it there, and is despised in proportion to the amount of his See also:

PERSPIRATION (Lat. per, through, and spirare, to breathe)

perspiration, he had a low opinion. His work has inspired the See also:

MEEK, FIELDING BRADFORD (1817—1876)

meek, has made the poor feel themselves less of ciphers in the world and given courage to the down-trodden. His love of women has inspired some of the most ardently beautiful lyrics in the world. Among modern folk-poets such as J6kai and See also:

Mistral, the position of Burns in the hearts of his own people is the best assured.

End of Article: ENGLISH LITERATURE

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