y.A ■■■;,» •^':^".3dr.:-;i>' ■%r-^ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 189I BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library PR 129.I8M98 The influence of Italian upon English li 3 1924 013 347 921 Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013347921 THE INFLUENCE OF ITALIAN UPON ENGLISH LITERATURE DURING THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. BY J. ROSS MURRAY, B.A. SCHOLAR OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE. BEING THE ESSAY WHICH OBTAINED THE LE BAS PRIZE, i8 CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS. 1886 CamiTitigt : PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SON, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. PREFACE. In the following pages an attempt is made to esti- mate accurately the nature and extent of the influence exercised by Italy upon the English writers of the Elizabethan and Stuart periods. General remarks upon the Renaissance and its developments in different parts of Europe have been avoided, except where they served to illustrate the special subject of consideration. So much has been written upon the Renaissance that it seemed unnecessary to repeat what has already received all but universal recognition. But it is possible to show almost exactly how much English Literature owes to Italy, as distinct from the debt due to other countries, and from the undefinable influences which are abroad in an age like that of the Renaissance. To show when and how this debt commenced, how it accumulated, and what the consequences were to the debtor is the object of this essay. CONTENTS. I. Homely Rimers PAGE 7 II. Courtly Makers .... 15 III. Italian and English Novels . 20 IV. Our Dramatists' Debts 27 \'. Signs of the Times .... 39 VI. English and Italian Epics , 43 VII. English and Italian Lyrics . . . . 56 Conclusion 62 THE FOLLOWING WORKS, AMONGST OTHERS, HAVE BEEN USED; Sismondi, Literature of the- South of Europe. J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy. Collier's Dramatic Literature. Ward's History of English Drama. Symon(fs, Predecessors of Shakspere. Warton's Histoiy of English Poetry. Gosse, Seventeenth Century Studies. Morley, Manual of English Literature Symonds, Italian Byways. I. HOMELY RIMERS. 'Vernacular literature all but dead','— 'Poetry and Religion no longer capable of suggesting a genuine sentiment^' — ' style, metre, rhyme, language, art of every kind is at an end' — such is the verdict usually pro- nounced upon the English writers who flourished, or rather did not ' flourish,' during the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Some, however, hesitate to acquiesce in the justice of this sentence. They discover germs of life, nay, they discover signs of a healthy and vigorous life where others see nothing but the symptoms of disease, infirmity or death. In their opinion the poetry of the period 'may be fairly described as the dawn of a new dayV and they are inclined to associate it rather with the glorious developments that took place during the reigns of Henry VIII.'s children than with the darkness and barrenness of the fifteenth century. But however much critics may differ, they appear to agree in one respect, namely, in treating this period as one that is undeserving of any very serious or prolonged attention. The text-books which claim to give to the 'beginner' a general survey of the field of English ' J. R. Green, Short History, p. 390. "^ Taine, Eng. Literature, Bk. I. chap. III. * Craik, Manual Eng. Lit. p. 191. 8 HOMELY RIMERS. Literature may perhaps be excused for hurrying over this portion with a passing observation or two, but it may well be asked what reason there is /or the neglect from which it suffers at the hands of those whose business and whose delight consist in drawing forth and exhibiting those treasures which are to be found even in the midst of the rubbish-heaps of past ages. Why has the indefatigable Prof. Arber not given us, amongst his numerous reprints, more of the verses written by the contemporaries of Roy and Tyndal, ' doggrel ' though they be ? Why has no Dr. Grosart yet appeared to present the lovers of our old literature with sumptuous editions of the complete works of Barclay and Skelton .-' The reason is not far to seek, and perhaps from certain points of view it is a fair one. The fact is that the early part of the sixteenth century lies under a double disadvantage, — first that of being undeniably feeble in imagination and all that constitutes poetic genius, secondly that of being in such close proximity to the extraordinary outburst of literary activity which found its precursors in Wyatt and Surrey, and rose to its height in Spenser and Shakspere. The glimmering of the pre-Rena:issance night became darkness when compared with the brilliancy of the galaxy which ac- companied the shining of that ' bright occidental star ' which arose in the second half of the century. But surely this fact, to anyone who wishes to have si comprehensive view of literature, and of the causes which make or mar its prosperity, will be an inducement leading him to seek the motive-power and reason of so great and so sudden a change, and in order to arrive at this he is bound to examine the writings of the pre- Renaissance authors, — to notice what are the character- istic differences between these and their Elizabethan HOMELY RIMERS. 9 successors ; to consider what influences the writers were subject to in each case, and which of these influences came from abroad, which from home, and whether the former or the latter exerted more power. Our task at present is to make only one part of this investigation. We have to consider whether any in- fluence from Italy was at work in England when Hawes, Barclay, Skelton, Heywood and their contemporaries represented English literature, and what effect, if any, such influence had upon their work. Now if we were to select one feature of these writings as more prominent than any of the others it would probably be their plain, homely character — a plainness and homeliness peculiarly English, apparent alike in their matter, form and spirit. The topics with which they deal are mostly national and popular, or such as occasion frequent notices of the manners and life of the people, so much so that they have a considerable value for the historical student. Robin Hood is a favourite subject of reference. Cardinal Wolsey is a butt for satirical allusion. Chaucer and Lydgate, the poets of the people,- are the models after which they are formed, and to which they pay tribute. Stephen Hawes knew much of their poetry by heart. Even when the themes are taken from foreign sources, only such are chosen as admit of being easily adapted to English taste ; thus — the Narrenschiff of Brandt, translated by Barclay, was just the thing for the people who were catered for by William Roy and John Bale. The homeliness of these authors is however far more noticeable in the style, metre, and diction which they adopt, and which is of an essentially popular rather than of a scholarly or courtly kind. The Chaucerian stanza is the favourite of Hawes and Barclay, who had neither lO HOMELY RIMERS. inclination nor ability enough to attempt other measures. As for John Skelton — that 'rude railing rhymer' — whatever may be thought of the merits of his verse it cannot be denied that it has a vigour and plainness which is peculiarly Saxon. Let him defend himself : " For though my rime be ragged, Tattered and jagged, Rudely rain-beaten, Rusty and mooth-eaten, If ye take wel therewith It hath in it some pith." But most of all in the tone and temper of what they have written does the sturdy independence of English charac- ter, as yet unaiifected by foreign influences of any objectionable kind, show itself, — the character which appears stamped on every page of honest Latimer's sermons. Through all their works there runs a tone of seriousness, and in the poetry it prevails as much as anywhere. The Pastime of Pleasure is a long sermon in verse. ' Pregnant' Barclay not only chose a didactic poem for translation into English, but moralized therein on his own account as well as on Brandt's. Some of Skelton's best pieces are his invectives against the degenerate clergy, and his satires on the social and religious abuses of the times. Other characteristics of this poetry go to prove that it was almost entirely the production of native forms and ideas, and was very slightly affected by influences from outside. It shows a painful dearth of originality of thought, a want of imagination, an absence of the creative faculty. Barclay is little more than a versifier of other men's ideas. Hawes merely follows in the track of Chaucer. Skelton, who is by far the most powerful of the three, never soars into the regions of HOMELY RIMERS. II fancy. Hey wood is dull and obscure in his allegories S occasionally witty in his epigrams, and coarsely jovial in his interludes. There is no elegance of style, no grace of expression, no refinement of thought in these poets. Hawes was the only one who had any apprecia- tion of the uses of Romance and Allegory, and what he had was borrowed from Dan Chaucer and 'Moral' Gower. These facts are worth noticing because it is almost certain that during this time the foreign influences which were destined to produce such a remarkable change, or at least to aid in producing it, were already entering the country. The proofs of this are not nu- merous but they are sufficiently conclusive. It was at the Universities that the first signs appeared. In the reign of Henry VII. Italian poets were in demand at the Court, and Italian rhetoricians at the University. Cambridge was so ' destitute of skill in Latinity ' that it had to procure the services of a certain Caius Auberinus, an Italian, 'for composing the public orations and epistles.' In the year 1488 we find one Cornelio Vitelli at Oxford, an Italian who had come ' to give that barbarous University some notions^' Three years later Grocyn, fre.sh from the teaching of the famous Politian, came to Exeter College. Colet and Linacre were only two out of a number of Englishmen who had visited Italy, and associated with the best known litterati of Florence and Padua. Travel to foreign Universities had ' Harrison (Description of England) very fairly observes with regard to Hey wood's tedious poem called the The Spider and the Fly that "he dealeth so profoundly, and beyond all measure of skill, that neither he himself that made it, neither any one that readeth it, can reach unto the meaning thereof." ^ Anthony a Wood. 12 HOMELY RIMERS. become so common that Barclay thought it necessary to enter a protest against the custom, not having any high opinion of its results. The nobility and higher clergy seem to have made a practice of securing learned Italians as tutors for their children, or even for them- selves, and when John Fisher was recommended to send for an Italian to teach him Greek, Erasmus dissuaded him on the ground that these foreigners, however suc- cessful in imparting learning, did not promote good manners. At Court too, Italian manners, whether good or bad, were being gradually introduced. In 15 12 'on the day of the Epiphany, at night, the king with eleven others was disguised after the manner of Italy, called a Mask, a thing not seen before in England \' Educated men began to be dissatisfied with what they considered the rudeness and barbarism of the vernacular, and sought to enrich it with foreign words. It is important to observe therefore that, notwith- standing these innovating tendencies, scarcely any effect was produced upon the generation of literary men represented by Hawes, Barclay and Skelton, as far as the form and substance and spirit of their poetry was concerned. Of course they were not unaffected by the great movement that was then passing from Italy over the whole of Western Europe — the 'New Learning.' Skelton himself was no mean scholar and was honoured by Erasmus with the proud title ' Unum Britannicarum litterarum decus et lumen.' But this involved no "apish imitation' of Italian ideas as set forth by Pulci or Boiardo or others of the moderns. If they imitated Southern poets it was to Petrarch or Mantuan that they went. Skelton", in a list of poets of all nations whom ' Edward Hall, Chronicle. * Skelton, Garland of Laurel. HOMELY RIMERS. 1 3 he supposes to be gathered together in the presence of Pallas, mentions among others " Boccaccio with his volumys grete...Poggius Florentinus, with many a mad tale... Plutarch and Petrarch, two famous clerkis," but does not mention any of the Italians who had already enriched their vernacular with many a lively poem, and were even venturing to rival Petrarch in the writing of sonnets. Barclay avows his obligation to Mantuan, but shows no acquaintance with the recent developments of Italian poetry. It is true that a few translations from Italian authors were made during this period, but they were made, in almost every case from the Latin, showing that at present the influence was chiefly academical. Thus Barclay's first three Eclogues were derived from the Miseriae Cttrialium of Aeneas Sylvius, and the large debts which Sir Thos. Elyot in his dovernoiir owed to the Italians were all due to the Latin works of Pontano, Beroaldo and Patrizzi\ The fact that in 1532 there was printed a versification of Boccaccio's story of Sigismunda and Gtiiscardo does not necessarily point to any new Italian influence, for the story had become, in a sense, English property, having been previously translated as early as the fourteenth century, when, as any reader of Chaucer knows, Boccaccio was well known in England. Stephen Hawes is said by Warton'' to have 'become a complete master of the French and Italian poetry,' but whereas the marks of his French accomplishments are conspicuous in Grande Amour, it is hard to find in his poems any trace of familiarity with Italian. A few Italian phrases occur in Skelton, but they prove nothing, for the poem in which they are ^ See the very thorough edition of Elyot's Governour by H. Croft, Introd. " Hist. Eng. Poetry, in. p. 170. 14 HOMELY RIMERS. found' was intended to be a 'mingle-mangle' of all kinds of words and phrases jumbled together. It has been supposed that to Skelton may be attributed the introduction to England of that species of poetry which was invented in Italy and received the title ' Macaronic,' but even supposing that the mixture of words from Latin with the vernacular is rightly described as Maca- ronic, it seems impossible that Skelton could have derived it from its inventor, for Folengo's Macaronices was not published till 1521 and Skelton died in 1529, so that even if the Speake Parrot was one of his latest poems, there is scarcely time for Folengo's idea to reach England. If indeed it be a fact that Sir Thomas More derived the idea of his Utopia from Amerigo Vespucci's account of his voyages, then it must be confessed that this period owes at least one considerable debt to Italy, but this is no indication whatever that Italian books were being circulated in England, even had we forgotten the fact that the first book of Utopia was both written and printed on the Continent, and that. Antwerp and Louvain were familiar with the Italians while these were still strangers to home-keeping Britons. Our conclusion therefore must be that during the first quarter of the sixteenth century no perceptible change or development had taken place in English literature through the incoming of Italian influence. Perhaps we may assign 1529, the year of Skelton's death, as the epoch when the signs of a ' new departure ' first appeared, in the altogether different poetry which will now have to be described. ' Speahe Parrot. II. COURTLY MAKERS. The first distinct impetus in the direction of imitating the modern Itahan poetry came from the Court. We have already seen how the germs of this movement existed, how Itahan poets were hired occasionally for the amusement of the lords and ladies of Henry VII.'s Court, and how Italian masks became fashionable early in the reign of Henry VIII. The latter king, in addition to his fondness for pomp and gaiety, had an affection for learning and the Belles Lettres, and his court soon imbibed a taste for that refinement which was only to be found in France and Italy, and the special home and nursery of which was the land where Lorenzo de Medici patronized Learning, Poetry, Sculpture and Painting, and where Ariosto and Boiardo, Trissino and Sanazzaro were already household names. Men who had learnt to admire the finished elegance and musical versification of such poets were not likely to retain much love for the ragged rimes of Skelton. They began to try whether their own language was not capable of becoming the vehicle of sonnets, madrigals and canzoni like those in which the ready Florentine sang graceful praises to his mistress. The two men who set the example of this 'Italianizing' were both courtiers, and the passage in which Puttenham mentions their work, although well 1 6 COURTLY MAKERS. known, cannot be omitted here, because it describes so exactly the general nature of the result which they achieved. He says' 'There sprang up a new Company of Courtly makers of whom Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, and Henry Earl of Surrey were the two Chieftains ; who having travelled into Italy, and there tasted the sweet and stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as novices newly crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy.' The only correction necessary to make upon this passage is that no proof exists that Surrey was ever in Italy, this supposition having arisen merely from a legendary account that grew up around the name of the Tuscan Geraldine whose praises he sings. We know however that Wyatt did spend some time in Italy, and it is he whom we must regard as the first importer into our island of the lyrical love-poetry which has since formed so considerable a part of our literature. But the claims of Wyatt and Surrey in this direction are now so generally recognized that it will only be necessary to state, as a commentary on I^uttenham's remarks, the exact amount that they contributed towards the develop- ment of our poetry, and the extent to which this con- tribution was supplied to them by Italy. Without attempting therefore to assign to each of these ' Courtly makers' his proper share in the result, and without trying to draw a comparison and a contrast between the two men — though this would be interesting enough — ^we may say briefly that the result they achieved was three- fold. First they brought the sonnet into use. Secondly, they introduced blank-verse. Thirdly, they proved that the language was capable of finer things than had ever ^ Art of English Poesie in loc. COURTLY MAKERS. l"] before been attempted, or, in the words of a modern critic, became ' the earliest exact writers of the modern tongue.' But how much of this result was due to Italian influence .■' We may confidently answer — almost the whole of it. The fact is that these ' Chieftains ' of the ' new company,' however talented, were under the com- plete control of their Italian masters. They are simply clever and graceful imitators, they produce nothing original. They can sing sweetly, but only the songs that their music-masters have taught them ; they can compose elegantly, but only in the style that they learnt in their foreign schools. They have been so charmed with the ease and melody of Italian 'verse that they are almost exclusively occupied with attempting to reproduce it in their own tongue, and seldom think of daring to strike out on lines of their own. Thus Wyatt, when translating the sentiments of Alamanni, is not satisfied unless he faithfully copies also the style, and reproduces the terza rima of the original. In the same way Surrey, when the idea of translating Virgil into English verse occurs to him, not only chooses exactly the two books which Francesco Molza had recently turned into Italian, but imitates the versi sciolti of Molza in his blank verse. Again, why is it that both Wyatt and Surrey, in paraphrasing parts of the Bible, happen to choose the Psalms, and out of all the Psalms — those called the Penitential .'' Simply because they found that these Psalms had been versified by their models, Dante and Alamanni. It may be observed too that almost all the sentiments of their smaller poems are echoes of ideas already put into verse by the Tuscan poets. Still it would be unjust to deny them the merits of freshness and vivacity, or to say that LE BAS. 2 l8 COURTLY MAKERS. Wyatt did not think for himself; his pieces on ' How to use the Court and himself therein/ and on ' The mean and sure estate ' contain reflections suggested more by his own life than by anything he had read in books. One more comment must be made on Puttenham's statement quoted above, and that is to emphasize the force of his happy phrase ' Courtly makers.' It must not be supposed that the style of poetry introduced by Surrey and Wyatt speedily became popular. On the contrary, it remained for several years a fashion almost confined to the Court and its 'hangers-on.' Their poems were never printed till I5S7, when they came out in TotteFs Miscellany, and until that time they were handed about in MSS. among the nobility and in the fashionable circles, beyond which the sensation produced by them rarely travelled. Thus amongst their imitators we notice the names of Lord Morley, Lord Vaux, Sir Francis Bryan, Viscount Rochfort, all of whom are supposed to have contributed to Tottel's Miscellany,, or similar collections. But they seem to have had the effect of stimulating the study of Italian. We know that Elizabeth, JEdward VI. and Lady Jane Grey were all well read in the language. Nor was this taste confined to the upper classes. From an inscription on a tomb dating 1537, it appears that a citizen's wife, Elizabeth Lucar by name, understood 'Latin, Spanish and Italian, writing, speaking and reading it with perfect utterance'.' No doubt this good woman was a prodigy, but there are other things to show that during the last years of Henry VIII. an interest in Italian literature was growing. In IS4S Roger Ascham" complains of the introduction of outlandish words from the Italian into common speech. ^ Strype's Parker, I. p. 358. * Toxopkilus. COURTLY MAKERS. I9 About the same time a series of pamphlets appeared on the subject of Women and Wives, bearing various titles, which seern to have been suggested by the famous Italian story of Belfegor to which Macchiavelli had given such wide circulation. There were several Italians of culture resident in England, who would doubtless encourage at the Universities and elsewhere the study of their own unequalled literature. Peter Martyr, more properly called Vermigli, was at Oxford, and Bernardino Ochino was Prebendary of Canterbury. But in spite of all this, the new movement failed to touch the people ; it only stirred the few. It would require something more than 'Courtly makers' to popularize Italian authors or Italian fashions of writing and speaking among the sober, homely English folk with whom Hey wood and Skelton were still favourites. Elegantly composed love-ditties, and sentimental sonnets were all very well for ladies and gentleman who had nothing else to do but sentimentalize, but they did not appeal to that desire for action, that eager thirst for incident and sensation which the awakening of a new life stirred in the minds of the people. How this feeling was appealed to we have now to see. III. ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. Queen Elizabeth had scarcely completed her first measures for securing her throne and country from foreign interference, when the impetus was given, which resulted in a few years in the subjection of Literary England to the control of a foreign power. This impetus was given by the translation of Italian novels. In 1562 appeared rimed versions of some of Boccaccio's tales. In the same year was published Arthur Broke's verse paraphrase of Bandello's story of Romeus and jFulietta. In 1565 came a translation of Ariosto's Ariodanto and Ginevra. In the next year appeared sixty novels from Boccaccio under the title Paynters Palace of Pleasure, and this was followed in 1567 by a similar collection of 34 novels from Bandello and Cinthio. Between the years 1567 and 1587 the favourite tale of Boccaccio called Filocopo went through several editions. About 1576 came another collection of stories, entitled A petite Palace of Pettie his pleasure. This list might be con- tinued much further' ; but enough has been said to show 'e.g. 1576. TurberviUe's Ten Tragkall Tales out of sundry Italians. 1582. Whetstone's Zr^/^a?«(ro« y containing Cinihio's tales. 1583. The first volume of Belle Forrest's repository. 1587. The Amorous Fiatnetta ; licensed by the Bishop of London. J597. Two talcs out ofAriosto, etc. ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. 21 that during the first part of Elizabeth's reign there was quite an inundation of Italian ' novels/ if they may be so called, though the ' novella ' was very different from what we understand by a novel in these days. These tales were circulated throughout the country. They were published in cheap, portable forms, got up in an attractive style, with ingenious titles that were sure to arouse curiosity or interest. They found their way into the homes of almost all classes, and rivalled the new Geneva Bible and the Revised Prayer-Book in popularity. The man who was ignorant of Boccaccio was regarded more out of the fashion than he would now be who knows nothing of Victor Hugo or Sir W. Scott. Not even the Arabian Nights surpass the popularity which the Ecatommithi of Cinthio once enjoyed. So much interest in this kind of literature was aroused that many made up their minds to read it in the original, and the teachers of Italian found scores of eager and apt scholars. In 1567 a Dictionary 'for the better under- standing of Boccaccio, Petrarch and Dante ' had already gone through three editions, and between 1550 and 1600 four Italian Grammars were published. Every year numbers of copies of Bandello, Cinthio, the Decameron and similar books were brought over from Frankfort book-mart and found a ready sale at Stourbridge fair (the Cambridge students being eager purchasers pro- bably), or at the St Paul's book-stalls. The significance of this demand for the newly- imported tales is not difficult to understand when the character of the ' Novella ' is known. That which chiefly gave it favour was its popular nature. As Mr Symonds^ remarks : ' the Novella was in a special sense adapted to the public which during the age of the Despots grew up ' Eenaissance in Italy, Vol. v. pp. 52, 53. 22 ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. in Italy.... Its qualities and its defects alike betray the as- cendancy of the bourgeois element. . . .Literature produced to please the bourgeois must be sensible and positive ; and its success will greatly depend upon the piquancy of its appeal to ordinary unidealized appetites.' What is true of the Italian citizens of the age of the Despots is, to a modified degree, true of the Londoners of the Elizabethan age. The shop-keeper and the apprentice, as well as the merchant, the banker, and the student found some- thing that appealed to them in the tales of intrigue and adventure, of scandal and reprisal, of romance and mystery which had amused the leisure hours of the Florentine and the Paduan. This was the first time the people had had an opportunity of reading anything of the kind; the Decameron indeed had been known in England before, but only through such versions as Chaucer's, and now the public was for the first time brought into direct contact with the sensationalism of Italian life. There was however an influential minority who, so far from looking with favour upon this rapid spread of interest in Southern literature, protested against it on the ground that it tended to undermine the public morality. Indeed their fear was well grounded, ag any- one who knows the outrageous sins against all decency and purity committed by the Novellieri will confess. Sometimes the Puritans, or those who in this matter at least sympathized with them, were successful in suppress- ing some of the more objectionable publications, as when in 1619 the Archbishop of Canterbury issued an inhibition against the Decameron. But at first the Censors of the press seem to have winked at the circula- tion of the most licentious tales, and it was left for Roger Ascham and one or two other honest guardians ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. 23 of the public morals to lift up their voices in condemna- tion. Ascham', writing in 1570, says that if he had his way he would burn them all : ' More evil is done by precepts of fond books, of late translated out of Italian into English, sold in every shop in London, commended by honest titles, the sooner to corrupt honest manners... There be more of these ungracious books set out in print these few months than have been seen in England many score years hence;... the Morte d' Arthur ...-wa.5 bad enough, but these ten times worse, being so subtle';... 'They think more of Petrarch and Boccaccio than of the Bible.' He regards the tales as a source of Atheism : ' One special point to be learnt in Italian books... to think nothing of God Himself ; and as tending to spread Roman Catholicism: 'More Papists be made by your merry books of Italy than by your earnest books of Louvain.' His language is not a bit too strong. There is no doubt that these 'Italian Prints' are responsible for very much that makes some of our Elizabethan literature unreadable in these days, and for much that must remain as a blot upon its brightness even when due allowance is made for the difference in the manners of those days. It may be worth while to call attention to the contrast between this period and the preceding in this respect. Skelton, however coarse he might be, was not impure, but many of the Elizabethans are wantonly gross, and the cause of the difference is, mainly the contact with Italian corruption. But on the other hand our literature owes to the introduction into England of these Nozelle a triple debt of which Ascham was not aware, which, in fact, did not become manifest till after his death. ' Scholemaster, passim. 24 ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. In the first place they gave the earliest stimulus to novel writing. Previous to this time there had been no attempt at prose fiction worth speaking of. More's Utopia is an exception. The idea of writing fiction in narrative does not seem to have occurred to Englishmen until they had become famihar with the Novelle. But then began imitations, and we may safely say that the imitations were superior in some respects at least to the originals. John Lyly, who wrote his famous Enpfmes in 1579, is the man who bears the honour of being the precursor of the race of English Novelists. Robert Greene was one of the most prolific and popular of those who followed him. Both had been ' Italianized ' to a higher degree than most of their contemporaries, and the influence is apparent in almost all of their productions. Greene's tales had immense popularity. Some of them ran through several editions, and even held their ground until the modern English novel had fairly come in to supersede them. Gabriel Harvey, who was no lover of Greene, grumbles at the favour they receive, and com- plains that they are driving out even the universally admired masterpieces of Italy : ' Even Guicciardini's silver history, and Ariosto's golden cantoes grow out of request, and the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia is not greene enough for queasie stomachs, but they must have Greene's A rcadia'...l>i ash bears similar testimony : 'glad was that printer that might be so blest to pay him dear for the very dregs of his wit' These novelettes were generally free from the worst blemishes of the Italian models, and sometimes, as in the case of Euphues, were written with a distinctly didactic purpose. Immense as is the distance which separates a Greene from a Thackeray we may therefore confess that as lovers of ' light literature ' of the better class, we owe a debt of ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. 25 gratitude to the former and his contemporaries for having pointed the way to the modern novel. The second obHgation which English literature owes to that Italian influence which accompanied the transla- tion and imitation of the Novelle is the improvement of English prose writing, — the formation, in fact, of a new Prose. Sir Henry Blount was using a pardonable exag- geration when he said that to Lyly 'our nation is in- debted for a new English.' The first phase of the new style appeared in that peculiar kind 'of writing known as ' Euphuism,' the characteristics of which are not badly described by William Webbe as 'fit phrases, pithy sentences, gallant tropes, flowing speech, plain sense \' Anyone who compares this kind of writing, as exhibited in Lyly, Lodge or Sidney, with the prose of Elyot, Latimer or of Robinson's translation of the Utopia, recognizes the foreign element at once. Whatever was the chief influence which moulded the style of Euphues^, it is certain that the richness, the affectation, the imagery, the elegant finish of the prose-writing which obtained currency in Elizabeth's reign were results of contact with Italy. But, like the poetry of Surrey and Wyatt, it was not a style that was ever likely to become really popular. It was chiefly a Court fashion. Side by side with its refined intricacy existed the simple straightforward prose of the people. Yet even this was to some extent aff"ected by the tendency to cultivate a correct and elegant way of writing. Hooker was no euphuist, but his stately periods may owe something to the suggestions of the easy-flowing sentences of Lyly. 1 Discourse of English Poelrie. 2 Landmann, in his Euphuismus, considers that the style was pattly due to the example of the Spanish Guevara. 26 ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. Bacon is free from affectation, but he may have un- consciously learnt in the school of Euphuism how to write lucidly. Certainly the influence of this school survived in what has been called the 'Poetical Prose' of the earlier Stuarts ; it is seen in the quaintness of Fuller, in the liveliness of Jeremy Taylor, in the magnificent sentences of Milton's Areopagitica, and in the 'splendid pedantries ' of Sir Thomas Browne. These two results, then, followed the introduction of the Novelle into our country — the creation of a pro.se fiction, and the commencement of a new prose style. But there was a third, far greater than these, and so important in its consequences, as well as permanent in its effect, that we shall be . justified in referring its consideration to a special chapter. IV. OUR DRAMATISTS' DEBTS. It has been asserted above that Lyly and Greene may be regarded as the precursors of the modern novel- writers. But it is necessary to guard this statement against misapprehension. Not for a full century and a half did the actual beginnings of our novel-literature (as distinguished from romances) appear, and the whole interval between Robert Greene and Samuel Richardson was barren of any serious attempt to form a prose fiction of life, manners and character. Popular as Pandosio and Menaphon and Perimedes were, they did not produce any development of the species of writing of which they and Euphues were the best known repre- sentatives. What was the reason of this .'' It was because another species of writing had almost simultaneously arisen, which in a few years completely outbid the novelette in the competition for popularity, and received such an enthusiastic welcpme, that there was no chance of its rival being properly attended to. This was the Drama. So much has been written upon the origin and growth of the English Drama that nothing need here be said, beyond what is necessary to illustrate the part which Italy played in this new development. One statement will be sufficient to show the extraordinary growth of its 28 OUR DRAMATISTS' DEBTS. literature, and it shall be that of Prynne, who in his Histrio-Mastix (published in 1633) observes: — 'Above 40,000 play-books printed within these last two years, (as Stationers inform me) they being now more vendible than the choicest sermons.' One remark may be offered, amongst many that occur, as giving a reason for the precedence which this form of composition took above every other in the popular favour, namely, that it satisfied, more than any other could do, that excitement, that desire for Incident, Adventure and Action, that love of sensationalism which so strongly characterized the Elizabethan age. Having prefaced so much, the question which we have to answer is — what had the Italian Novelle to do with the rise of the English Drama .' Every reader of Shakspere, however uncritical, is struck by the fact that the names of the Dramatis Personae in so many of his plays are Italian, and that the scene where the incidents occur is so often an Italian town. Knowing little of the conditions of the age in which Shakspere lived, and nothing of the history of Italian literature, he wonders why this is so. He turns perhaps to the Introduction of the Clarendon Press copy which he happens to be reading, and dis- covers that the poet is indebted for the leading incident of the play to some Italian novel ; this rouses his curiosity, he pursues his researches further, and even- tually finds that this Prince of Dramatists, so far from having invented out of his boundless imagination the stories which have delighted the last three centuries, was indebted not only for names and scenes, but for many episodes and ideas, and sometimes for whole plots, to obscure tale-books imported from Venice and Florence. In his first surprise at this discovery his OUR DRAMATISTS' DEBTS. 29 opinion of Shakspere inclines to fall somewhat ; he begins to wonder what would be left, if the borrowed elements were taken away ; in that case, he thinks, we should have no Othello, no Romeo and Juliet, and probably no Hamlet ; we should lose the Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, and Measure for Measure ; we should miss much that gives vivacity and interest to the Tempest, the Taming of the Shrew, and Twelfth Night ; we should have to give up more or less of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, All's well that ends well, and the Comedy of Errors. All these plays, he- finds, are derived either directly or^ indirectly, either in the whole plot, or in part of it, from translations of Italian novels. He cannot help imagining where Shak- spere would have gone for his material, if these novels had never come into his hands. Would he have drama- tised the Arthurian legends 1 Would he have been obliged to make the most of dry chronicles, homely ballads, and ale-house tales } Or would he have sought stuff for his genius to fashion into shape in the stories that were getting abroad about the wonderful lands of the far West .' It may be idle to speculate in this way, but it is most important to recognize the immense obligation Shakspere owes to Italy. It is not necessary to make any apology for him ; it was the best thing he could do perhaps. He could hardly help doing it. Italy fascinated him as it did many others. Here he found in rich abundance the very best material for tragedy and romantic comedy. Our opinion of his powers is not lessened. All poets borrow. Their great- ness consists not in inventing the form, not in creating the skeleton, but in filling it with life. What Shakspere did all the other dramatists of his times did also. In fact it was quite the orthodox 30 OUR dramatists' debts. method of working up a play to start from a novel. This custom commenced almost simultaneously with the translation of the Novelle. Arthur Brooke in 1 562 says that he had seen the argument of Romeus and Julietta set forth on the stage ; but the earliest known play derived from a Novella }s the Tancred and Gis- munda which appeared in 1568. A merely cursory examination of the contemporaries and successors of Shakspere will show how much they drew from the same source. Thus, — nine of Beaumont and Fletcher's dramas have their scenes laid in Italy, four of Mas- singer's, four of Ford's, and in all these the ' Personae ' are, of course, Italians. Ben Jonson in the first draft of his Every man in his Humaur gave Italian names to the characters. Shakspere himself hints at the pre- valence of the custom with perhaps a touch of satire* : ' His name's Gonzago : the story is extant and writ in choice Italian.' Some of the. most powerful of the Elizabethan tragedies were based on these tales. Webster worked up the horrors he found in Bandello, and pro- duced his Duchess of Amalfi. Some of the novels were especial favourites ; thus the story of Belfegor as told both by Macchiavelli and Straparola was the source of no less than three plays — Dekker's If it be not good, the Divil is in it, Ben Jonson's The Devil is an Ass, and John Wilson's Belfegor. Even in the later Stuart period this source was occasionally reverted to. In Sir W. Davenant's Platonic Lovers the names are all Italian, and his too is the Just Italian. In Farquhar's The Twin Rivals, which came out in 1702, there is a recommendation to a poet in search of a plot to ' read the Italian ' as well as the Spanish plays, and Dryden ' Hamlet iii. ii. OUR dramatists' debts. 31 in 1678 obtained some of the incidents for his indecent Limberham from a novel of Cinthio's. If we now put the question ' what was the element of attraction that so strongly drew our dramatists to Italian sources?' we shall have no difficulty in deter- mining the answer. Italy was at that time the home of the Heroic and the Tragic. It was, more than any other, the land of Adventure, Intrigue, Sensationalism, Scandal, Crime. The courts were centres of refinement, gallantry and subtlety ; the Academies were nurseries of learning, but also of evil theories ; the towns were full of turbulent life, and restless activity ; the streets were constant scenes of strife and assassination. Mocking Atheism went side by side with devout Catholicism, cynical indifference watched the gorgeous processions of the pomp-loving Cardinals, while eager place-hunting and passionate Revenge dogged their footsteps with the dagger and bowl of poison ever at hand, and poets all the time went on singing dainty melodies of Love and Beauty. All this was known in England. The newest intrigue at the Vatican — -the last scandal of the Court of Ferrara — the latest murder at Florence — the news on the Rialto — all this was eagerly looked for by those who made it their business to purvey exciting stimulants to the imagination of the public. For them no fiction could have charms equal to the wondrous facts of Southern life. None lent themselves more ■ readily to stage adaptation. None could possibly be better subjects for Tragedy. Poets went over to Italy and came back full of poetic fervour and tragic sentiment. Those who did not go were almost equally affected by the contagion. In addition to the Tales they had the histories of Macchiavelli, of Guicciardirli, and Contarini, in which they saw the life of Italy reflected. The very 32 OUR dramatists' DEBTS. fact that most of the poets only knew Italy by hearsay helped to give a weird, romantic glamour to their conceptions. What went on in England was quite prosaic in comparison. True, there were events of romantic interest, such as those connected with the names of Mary Queen of Scots, and Amy Robsart, but no Elizabethan dramatist dared even allude to these. But in using Italian materials there was no fear, and the playwrights had free license to avail themselves of whatever would suit their purpose. The use which they made of their opportunity was not always such as will commend itself to the taste of the Nineteenth Century. They seemed to revel sometimes in depicting disgusting scenes, and in trying to rival, in sanguinary and revolting details, the horrors of such productions as Cinthio's Orbecche. But we must remember that they were only reproducing what actually went on in the land that fascinated them, and we may be thankful on the one hand that in England they could find nothing sufficiently horrible to inspire their awful Muse, and on the other that the really noble tragedians of this period, while retaining what was necessary for the completion of the plot and the full expression of the ideas, rejected in most cases \h.os^ unnecessary accessories which were introduced to pamper the depraved taste which looked to Italy for the Police News of the day. It follows from these considerations, and from the intercourse with Italy that has been already noticed, that the Drama would be likely to be influenced in other ways than merely by the Novelle supplying plots. There are several reasons for believing that other developments and characteristics of the Elizabethan and Stuart Drama were more or less of foreign importation. We know that as early as 1566 Ariosto's Comedy OUR dramatists' debts. 33 Gli Sitppositi was translated. In 1578 a company of Italian Players was in England and performed before the Queen. Many traces exist in the Elizabethan writers proving their familiarity with Italian acting. Ben Jonson^ mentions the 'extemporal plays,' which Whetstone" also remarks upon, observing that 'the Comedians of Ravenna are not tied to any written device.' Middleton, as is clear from his description of their acting in the Spanish Gipsy, had seen players of the same kind. Shakspere notices them, and Kyd' says, " The Italian tragedians are so sharp of wit That in one hour's meditation They would perform anything in action." ' Masks ' had by this time become common, and were performed with great splendour, but they were still recognized as a distinctly foreign amusement : " Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night Sweet speeches, comedies and pleasing shows*." Some of the more conservative onlookers did not altogether approve of this taste for outlandish novelties : " All eyes behold with eager deep desire These enterludes, these newe Italian sports And every giwde that glads the mind of men"." But some of the most talented poets saw in these a new and inviting outlet for their efforts, and Jonson, Lyly, Chapman and Fletcher reproduced with considerable success the kind of pageant which had long amused the Milanese and Florentines at holiday-time. Italian Comedy never seems to have been much known in England, but indirectly it had some effect. Massinger drew from it, and D' Israeli supposes that his • The Case is Altered. ' Ileftameron, ' Spanish Tragedy. * Marlowe, Rdw. II. I. i. " Gascoigne, Steele Glass. LE BAS. 3 34 • OUR dramatists' debts. pmpiric came from the same source as Moli^re's M^decin, — namely the famihar Dottore of Southern Comedy, another of the stock characters of which is imitated by Gosson in his Captain Mario. We cannot forget too that to Italy we owe nearly all the familiar figures of our Pantomime, — the Zany, Harlequin, Pantaloon; Punch, Mountebank, Scaramouch and Columbine are all Italians by name and nature, The ballet came from Italy, so did ' Puppet-plays,' and it was in Italy that women first began to act on the stage. There was one tendency visible during the reign of Elizabeth, which, had it been stronger, might have materially affected the character of our drama; This was the influence of Classic example and Academic rules. Some of the leading critics of that time thought that the model of the Classic drama ought to be strictly adhered to. Among these were Sir P. Sidney and Whetstone, who, in his preface to the play Promos and Cassandra, shows his preference for the Classical over the Romantic method. In Comedy Plautus and Terence were considered the best examples, and in England, as in Italy, numerous imitations of their comedies were produced,— a fashion which was perhaps encouraged by the habit of producing plays at the Universities. The same tendency to be guided by the examples of antiquity showed itself in the attempts made by some purists to naturalize the hexameter, and in the protests made by men like Ascham, Puttenham and Milton against the use of rime. Happily however for the development of a true English literature, these attempts failed for the most part. Though well-meant, they were contrary to nature. It was putting new wine into old bottles to clothe and hamper the bursting energy of English life with antique methods and conventional measures. The OUR DRAMATISTS' DEBTS. 35 impetuosity and careless freedom of the early dramatists refused to submit to the dictation of their elders. And thus it was that there arose the grandest development of all our literature of this period, — the Romantic Drama, of which Marlowe is said to be the ' Father/ but of which Shakspere is the life and soul. This is a peculiarly English growth, and its origin is to. be sought rather in the general conditions of the time, than in any special Italian or other influence. Italy had nothing to com- pare with the Romantic Comedy of Shakspere. It is not indeed unlikely, as an eminent critic has remarked', that the Elizabethan dramatists received, unconsciously perhaps, ideas from the Commedia dell' arte, which Shakspere formed into shape. This branch of Italian literature, which at the outset was distinctly popular, was in his time subject to the influence of the Academies. But in England there were no such Academies, and the dramatists had nothing to prevent them from seizing and adapting for their own purposes whatever useful elements they found in this Commedia. Chiefly it was in the ' variety of effect which it was capable of producing with a series of characters more or less fixed, so as to preclude all deeper characterization"' that its value lay. It has been already shown what an impression was made in England by the improvisations of Italian players. No wonder then if Shakspere, who probably came up to London just at the time when this was first observed, soon turned his attention to consider the possibility of using the idea to produce something quite different. A few years probably before he brought out his first play, a well-known Florentine poet was attempt- ing to strike out a new line in what he called Farsa, a kind of dramatic composition which he thus dsscribes : 1 Ward, in Hist. Dram. Lit., passim. - lb. 3—2 36 .OUR dramatists' debts. "The Farce is a third species, newly framed, Twixt Tragedy and Comedy. She profits By all the breadth and fulness of both forms. Shuns' all their limitations^." This ■ sweet, country lass/ as he was pleased to call the new-comer whom he was trying to introduce to the people, was therefore contemporaneous with the rise of the Romantic Comedy in England. The way had been led by Lyly and Greene, whose fame rests as much upon their dramas as upon their novelettes.' Lyly's plays were quite a new departure, and are rightly called ' Court Comedies.' Greene too, while imitating the Italians, wrote plays that were distinctly original in cast, and one authority gives it as his opinion that 'the Romantic Play — the English Farsa — may be called in a great measure his discovery.' Lastly came that wonderful 'warbler' of ' woodnotes wild,' who, fi-nding' this ' sweetest prettiest country lass ' waiting, for a lover and a champion, made her the 'bride-elect of Shakspere's genius ' and ' placed her side by side with Attic Tragedy and Comedy upon the supreme throne of Art.' A few words will suffice to trace the later influence of Italy upon our Drama. From 1630 to 1660 it is not easy to find anything worth noticing, except, of course an occasional borrowing of some Italian story. There was no fresh influence exerted, and simply for this reason — that* the age of the Seicentisti had commenced in Italy, from which no good thing was to be expected. But with the Restoration there began a new movement in English dramatic circles. Then it was that the Opera first found a home in England. In 1.459 Evelyn makes an entry in his diary to the effect that he.' went to see the new Opera, after the Italian way,, in recitative 1 Quoted in Symonds, Shahsper^s Predecessors. OUR dramatists' debts. 37 music and sceanes." Sir Will. Davenant was the enter- prising dramatist to whom the introduction of this latest Italian novelty was due. " I would have introduced heroique story In stilo recitativo" says the musician in his Playhouse to Let. But the opera proper was a long time in taking root here. As early as 1594 it had made its first appearance in Italy when Ottario Rinuccini brought out his Dafne, and it was not really established in England till the beginning of the eighteenth century. Even then it did not meet with a very cordial reception. In 1706 John Dennis says '(The operas) drive out poetry;... if an opera is to infuse generous sentiment. ..it must be writ with force, ...but this is incompatible with music, especially in so masculine a language as ours.' This however was not the general opinion. John Dryden in his preface to Albion and Albanius (1685) says: 'It is almost needless to speak of that noble language in which this musical drama was first invented and performed. All who are conversant in the Italian cannot but observe that it is the softest, the sweetest, the most harmonious, not only of any modern tongue, but even beyond any of the learned.' He goes on to confess his own debt to ' it : ' I may own some advantages which are n*t common to every writer, such as are the knowledge of the Italian and French languages, and the being conversant with some of the best performances in this kind, which have furnished me with such variety of measures.' His allusion to the French language leads us to the last remarks which it is necessary to make on the subject of the drama. With the Restoratio;i, French manners, language and literature had ehtered England, and soon 38 OUR dramatists' debts. became a part of cultured life as they had never done before. Owing to the genius of the French stage at this period, and the utter poverty of the Italian, it was inevitable that the latter should give way, and forfeit the supremacy which it had hitherto held. There was not a single dramatist in Italy to compare with Racine, Corneille or Moli^re. No wonder then that the Restora- tion Dramatists turned to France for inspiration. It was partly in imitation of Corneille that Dryden made rime the vehicle of tragedy, although he mentioned (as instances of the same thing) the ' Spanish and Italian tragedies, all writ in rime*.' Otway, even when dealing with an episode of Italian history in his Venice Preserved, takes it from a French book, and in another play closely imitates Racine. Finally the century was closed and Italian influence practically ended with the rise of the new Prose Comedy of Manners, under Wycherley and Congreve, who derived their inspiration from Moliere. ' Dedication to the Rival Ladies, 1663. V. SIGNS OF THE TIMES. As might be expected, the results of contact with the life of Italy were far more extensive than has yet been indicated. An immense impulse was given to the study of Italian literature of all kinds — history, philo- sophy, travels ', as well as poetry and fiction. No one was considered accomplished in Elizabeth's Court unless he could quote Ariosto, or garnish his speech with Italian proverbs. No poetry was esteemed in literary circles unless it followed Italian precedents in sentiment and versification. Poets were fond of showing their acquaintance with the language of Romance by insert- ing Italian words in their verses. Those were con- sidered the best courtiers who took most pains to carry out the teaching of Castiglione's ' Cortigiano ' — their ' Hand-book of the Perfect Gentleman '; a treatise which had much to do with the forming of that school of elaborate politeness and gentility which Sir Walter ' In 1597 Abraham Hartwell translated a work on the Congo, written by Filippo Pigafetta in 1591. In 1594 Wolf translated a book on the philosophy of Di. I. Bk, X. » Or!, ^ur. xiv. 74. .ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS, SI indications of Milton's attachment to Italy. In his treatise on Education he recommends that boys should learn Italian, which he considers might be ' easily ' done 'at any odd hour.' To two of the sweetest lyrics that the English language owns he gave Italian titles. He wrote sonnets in Italian, and several of his shorter poems bear traces of the Italian manner. It would be wrong to leave Spenser and Milton without stating, at least briefly, the immense distance which separated them from the Italian authors as regards their purpose in writing. The chief aim of Ariosto and Tasso was to amuse, and they were not very careful about any other end ; the chief aim of Spenser and Milton was to instruct, and they always kept this end in mind. 'To fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline,' says the Poet-exponent of the true 'Euphuism,' 'is the generall end of all the booke.' Milton takes a still higher strain : — " What in me is dark Illumine; what is low raise and support, That to the highth of this great argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to man" — - Such is the invocation of the Prophet of the Common- wealth. How utterly different from the impudent hy- pocrisy of the ' Divino ' Aretino, or the easy-going wantonness of an Ariosto or Trissino ! The contrast between the ideals of the English and Italian authors is worth the attention of any one who wishes to appreciate the real worth of English Literature, and can only be overlooked by those who strangely consider that artistic beauty of style, perfection of form and prettiness of sentiment constitute the excellence of ' Divine P.ofesy.' 53 .ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. But what could be expected from the poets who were brought up in the atheistic and dissolute courts of Ferrara and Florence? Ariosto and Tasso, with all their richness and elegance, with all their beauty of idea and execution, are marred from first to last by wanton impurity of thought and wilful licentiousness of language. They have rarely a genuine thought for anything higher than the gratification of desire ; their only real allegi- ance is offered to — "That law of gold, That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted, Which Nature's own hand wrote — What pleases is permitted." Spenser, on the other hand, makes it one of his chief objects to inculcate self-restraint and purity of heart and life ; when he describes chastity as "that fairest virtue, far above the rest^" he does so honestly, and not merely for the sake of pay- ing the Virgin Queen a pretty compliment. The same contrast is seen from another point of view when we contrast the levity and reckless gay- heartedness of the Southerns with the serious tone that characterizes Spenser and Milton, and which, with the former, took shape in the personification of the Christian virtues (an idea quite alien to Italian methods), and with the latter, in the whole conception of the Paradise Lost. ' Not a ripple of laughter,' says the historian of the English people, 'breaks the calm surface of Spenser's versed' M. Taine, whose French vivacity cannot under- stand our island-gravity, would attribute this difference to the dull foggy atmosphere in which the heavy Briton is condemned to dwell, as contrasted with the sunny skies of the south, but apart from all reasoning of this 1 F. Q. in. Prelude. - J. R. Green, Siori ffistory, p. 417. ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. S3 kind, it is very probable that Spenser's seriousness was partly, at least, caused by the outrageous lengths to which Italian recklessness and godlessness had gone, and by the not unreasonable fear that his beloved England might, under the contaminating influence of foreign libertinism, be brought to a like condition. On every side he saw the moral degradation of Poetry. His friend Sidney had seen it too, and sorrowed over it, as a true lover of poetry must, to see it dragged in the mud. ' The comedies rather teach than reprehend amorous conceits, the lyric is larded with passionate sonnets, the Elegiac weeps the want of his mistress.' Hall, whose satires were published about the same time as the second part of the Fairy Queen, speaks in far more slashing terms : "Did never yet no damned libertine, No elder heathen, nor new Florentine, Tho' they were famous for lewd liberty Venture upon so shameful villainy." Even the best of Spenser's contemporaries were in danger of prostituting their genius in order to gratify the depraved taste of the age — a taste engendered chiefly by the 'wanton books' which good bishop Alley had condemned as early as ISS9- 'What is so expedient unto a Commonwealth,' said the Bishop, ' as not to suffer witches to live .' And — I pray you — be not they worse than a hundred witches that take men's senses from them* .'' Since his time the evil had grown apace. It had become fashionable to write verses urging a Fife of pleasure at the expense of virtue, and the literary world was full of pieces after the style of the elegant lyric of Lorenzo de Medici, the burden of which is 1 See Prynne, Histrio-Mastix. 54 English and Italian epics, "Vouths and Maids enjoy to day! Nought ye know about to morrow." Shakspere, who, as the author of Venus and Adonis, cannot be altogether exonerated from blemish in this respect, exactly describes the nature of the evil and its source : — "Then there are fouhd Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound The open ear of youth doth always listen; Report of fashions in proud Italy, Whose manners still our tardy apish nation Limps after in base imitation." It was with a deep sense of this corruption of manners and degradation of poetry that Spenser wrote his Fairy Queen. He and Milton are the Poets of the Puritan movement in its best and most liberal phases. They would have been poets had they never known a word of Italian, and never tasted the 'sweet and stately measures' of the southern poetry; they would have been 'Puritans' had there never been any imported vices from Rome and Florence to rouse their indignation, but it is open to question whether they would ever have had such a hold upon the people's love and reverence had they not been enabled, by their appreciation of the Romantic epic of the south, to appeal to the sentiments and associations which were uppermost in the minds of their contempora- ries, and which will continue to exercise a charm, so long as Strength and Beauty are admired, and Hero- worship endures. One word about the two Prose epics of the seven- teenth century. Is it possible that the Bedfordshire Tinker who gave to Puritan England a ' Christian ' for an Orlando, and a ' Mansoul freed ' for a Gerusalemme Liberata, had read Fairfax's translation of Tasso, or ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 55 Harrington's of Ariosto ? Unlikely as this may appear at first sight, there is something to be said for it. At any rate the author of the Pilgrim s Progress and the Holy War must have been acquainted at first or second hand with the Fairy Queen, and so indirectly he experi- enced the influence of the Southern epics. Thus, after a lapse of 200 years the romance first propagated in a profane burlesque by the mocking Pulci, having passed through all kinds of treatjnent, was fashioned by a homely local preacher into a text book of earnest religion. VII. ENGLISH AND ITALIAN LYRICS. On the lighter poetry of the latter part of the six- teenth and the first half of the seventeenth century a marked effect continued to be produced by the fashion of imitating Italian writers. Hallam, in noticing the ' remarkable sweetness of modulation/ which character- izes some of the poetry of Elizabeth's last years, seems to agree with the opinion that this is to be attributed to ' the general fondness for music' A cause which is at least as likely may be found in the general fondness for the melody of Italian lyrics. Other less commendatory characteristics showed themselves in the early Stuart period. Cowley's youthful poems contained imitations of the Italian conceits ; the puritan Marvell was not free from their influence, and the same ta§te appears as late as Dryden. One of Crayshaw's largest pieces is a trans- lation from Marini's Strage degli Innocenti^ and some of Herrick's , liveliest lyrics, such as ' To live merrily and to trust to good verses^ are free reproductions of senti- ments peculiarly Italian, — sentiments of which his better self repented when he wrote "My unbaptized rhymes, Writ in my wild unhallo^ved times." It is interesting to observe how Marvell, while attracted by the graceful form and fancy of Italian poetry, and adopting much of its method, rejects and condemns its ^ Gosse, Seventeenth Century Studies, p. 157. ENGLISH AND ITALIAN LYRICS.- 57 ungracious licentiousness ; how pure and noble is the tone of his dialogue - poem Clorinda and Damon, (where the echo device is brought in very cleverly,) or the dialogue between the Soul and Pleasure, where all seductive charms fail to entice the soul, for "Nature wants an art To conquer one resolved heart.'' There were however two kinds of poetry in which the example of Italy was particularly strong. One of these was the style which prevailed in the first two reigns of the seventeenth century, and was adopted by Donne, Lovelace, Crayshaw, Herrick, Her- bert and several others ; a school of writers whom Dr Johnson christened ' Metaphysical,' whom others call ' Fantastic,' and yet others prefer to describe as flourish- ing in the ' Decline of Elizabethan poetry.' In one sense at least the last phrase pretty accurately describes the school, for the kind of writing which they practised was a corruption of the Euphuism of Elizabeth's court. For laboured .similes, far-fetched conceits, and a tendency to sacrifice clearness of thought to cleverness of expres- sion the verses of John Donne were the lineal descend- ants of Lyly's Prose. But some of the adherents of this school of poets followed another example. They derived much of their manner straight from Italy, where Marini, at the begin- ning of this century, was creating quite a sensation by setting a new fashion of verse, its chief features being whimsical comparisons, abundance of antithesis and concetti, and pompous descriptions. Crayshaw was a Marinist, and probably Herbert, Carew and Herrick were not unacquainted with the poems of this new leader of fashion. S8 ENGLISH AND ITALIAN LYRICS. As being akin to this kind of writing may be men- tioned the ' Emblems' of Quarles and similar writers. The liking for this kind of composition seems to have been first called forth by the Latin verse Emblems of Andrea,' Alciati, published about the middle of the sixteenth cen- tury; these were soon translated into Italian and French, and produced numerous imitations, e.g. those of Juan de Horozco.in 1591.- But their religious .tendency made them special favourites in England, where Quarles and Wither found a large circulation for their little books. Anagrams came into fashion in Queen. Elizabeth's time ; Puttenham tried to make one on her name, remarking that ' this conceit is well allowed of in France a;nd Italy.' The idea too, of writing verses in various shapes first came to Puttenham when he was in Italy, as quite a novelty. The second species of Poetry in which Italian influence was conspicuous was the Pastoral. Ever since the appearance in 1502 at the Neapolitan Court of Jacopo Sanazzaro's Arcadia this kind of writing had been enjoying a popularity which rather grew than diminished as the years went by. By Sanazzaro 'a literary Eldorado had been discovered, which was destined to attract explorers through the next three centuries*.' In England one of the first explorers was Sir P. Sidney, who devoted himself to giving to his countrymen a poetic Romance exactly in the style of Sanazzaro. Lyly in his Gallatkea, Greene in his Morando, Lodge in his Rosalynde made use of the new mine that had been opened, and Spenser spent his youthful energies Upon The Shepherd's Kalendar. A fresh impetus was given by the appearance of two other Italian models — Tasso's Aminta in 1581, and Guarini's ■* Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, Vol. v. p. 197. ENGLISH AND ITALIAN. LYRICS. 59 Pastor Fido in 1585. The popularity in England of the latter is testified to by Ben Jonson (who himself could write gracefully in the Pastoral method) : "Here's Pastor Fido,... All our English writers, I mean such as are happy in the Italian, Will deign to steal out of this author, mainly'." It is rather curious therefore that no translation of this work appeared until Sir Richard Fanshawe brought out his version in 1647. The imitations, however, were almost countless. Every poet tried his hand at the style. Some of these productions were very poor affairs, but others were fully deserving of the encomiums they received ; most of all, the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher, Milton in Comiis, Marvell in Thyrsis and Dorinda, Wither in the Shepherd's Hunting, wrote with a grace and prettiness which had never been equalled before in the English language. In the hands of Wither and Browne especially, the Pastoral met with a sympathetic treatment which saved it from becoming entirely con- ventional ; they were inspired with a genuine love for the natural beauty of the Country, and there is a simple freshness in Browne's Britannia's Pastorals which we miss in the courtly performances of the Italian writers. Wither deserves notice for the bold stand which he made against the conservative and imitative tendencies of the day: " Pedants shall not tie my strains To our antique poets' veins; ***** Being bom as free as these, I shall sing as I shall please." A protest like this was seasonable and useful. There ^ Volpone, in. 1. 6a ENGLISH AND ITALIAN LYRICS'. was a danger in Wither's time of an Academy, or some- thing of that kind, being established, which should dictate to every one what was good poetry and what was not, and which should prescribe regulations for all kinds of composition. Such a Corporation or Censorship, whatever its advantages, would not have been a boon to England. In Italy, where the idea originated, the numerous Academies, so far from advancing the true interests of poetry, were largely instrumental in causing the artificiality and poverty of the ' Seicentisti.' Above all things it was considered necessary that the Italian poet should conform to rule : he always wrote with the thought of the Academy before his mind, and so his genius was hampered, his flights of fancy were confined to lines fixed by others. The French Academy, though different from institutions of the same name in Florence and Milan, was due to their example, and was founded in 1636. In England no less an authority than Milton recommended the establishment of a similar society to those which he had visited with so much pleasure in the company of his friend Diodati. His words are Worth quoting : "It were happy for the Commonwealth if our magistrates. . .would take into their care... the n\anaging of our public sports and festival pastimes, that they might be such as... may civilize, adorn, and make discreet our minds, by the learned an(} affable meeting of frequent academies, and the procurement of wise and artful recitations;. ..whether this may be... at set and solemn paneguries, in theatres, porches or what other .place, or way may win most upon the people, to receive at once both recreation and instruction, let them in authority consult ^" "Hie Earl of Roscommon, who had travelled in Italy during the Commonwealth, formed a plan for ' refining our la.nguage and fixing its standard,' and Dryden is ' Season of Church Government. ENGLISH AND ITALIAN LYRICS. 6 1 Said to have sympathized with his notions, which how- ever, though taken up enthusiastically by some persons, and revived, later on, by Dean Swift, never came to any- thing. It is not easy to say what would have been the effect, if Milton's project — conceived in such a different spirit from the whimsically-named clubs of dilettante poets of Italy — could have been realized, but probably we have not very much reason to regret its failure. Perhaps the characteristic which most distinguishes the great English poets of these centuries from the Italian is the independence which, even when they are copying, leads them to cast off the restraints of the original, and to be impatient of the conventional fetters of so-called decorum and good- taste, to which the Southerns yielded So complacently. We cannot regret it. Let Shakspere be 'barbarous' and 'wild.' Let Spenser be 'rustick' and 'gothick.' Better so than to be unnatural and affected. Better the rugged majesty of the honest Teuton than the voluptuous effeminacy of the doubtful Tuscan. Let Italy wear the laurel for graces of symmetry, elegant correctness, and sweet melody ; England will be content with loving her poet-sons for their kindly strength, their soaring fancy, and their earnest purpose. CONCLUSION. It only remains to sum up. What is the net amount of our debt to Italy .■' Of course the influence exerted by and on a literature is not one that can be easily counted or weighed, but, as was said at the outset, it is possible to estimate pretty accurately what was the actual effect in this case, and this is because the Italian charm was so strong and lasting. First then in im- portance among the actual results we should be inclined to place the impetus given to our Drama, especially to Tragedy and the Romantic Comedy of Shakspere. The second place should perhaps be occupied by the fertile suggestions offered to Spenser and Milton. Not lower in the list must be put that expansion and enrichment of the resources of the vernacular which Italian refine- ment brought about ; and immediately following this should be reckoned the prose Euphuism of Elizabeth's, and the poetical Euphuism of Charles I's reign. Then must be remembered the germs of prose fiction, the additions made to versification in the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, and blank verse ; the additions made to the vocabulary ; the cultivation of quips, proverbs, anagrams and "elegant sentences,' and the naturalization of the Pastoral. In fact it may be now asserted that CONCLUSION. 6;^ Italy gave us materials and colours, easel and paint- brushes, set models and copies before us, and then left us to paint our own pictures. She furnished our poets with finer apparatus, and more attractive subjects than they have ever had before or since. It was matter and form that we derived from her; the spirit was our own. Great as our obligations were, they do not detract from the originality of the English Muse. The ' Italianate ' polish which sometimes obscured our authors' native worth was only superficial ; when that was rubbed off the discovery was made how much better the plain British oak was without such varnish. So the absurd and objectionable fashions copied ' apishly ' from Italy passed away, and there was left behind the glorious workmanship of all the noble thoughts and musical strains that we associate with the names of Shakspere, Spenser and Milton. CAM^RIDGh: PRINTED UY C. J. CLAY, M. A. AND SON, AT THE UNIVERSITY I'KESS. ."^ ■#jia''*.-