THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 /-c
 
 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 1485-1547
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY
 
 in (TttDor Literature 
 
 1485-1547 
 
 BY 
 JOHN M. BERDAN 
 
 fork 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1920 
 
 A tt right* rettrved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1920 
 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1920.
 
 College 
 
 To C. B. T. 
 
 Goe little booke: thy selfe prefent, 
 As child whofe parent is unkent: 
 To him that if the prefident 
 Of nobleffe and of cheualree. . . . 
 
 15703R7
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 When a writer offers a new work on an old subject, the schol- 
 arly public rightly demands both fresh handling of the old mate- 
 rial and fresh material itself. True as this is as a general proposi- 
 tion, it is still more applicable in the case of Early Tudor literature, 
 because here the subject itself is usually considered to lack in- 
 terest. That the authors, whose works form the subjects for the 
 following discussions, are unread is evident, because there are few 
 modern editions, and those few in the publications of learned, or 
 antiquarian, societies inaccessible to the general public. There is 
 fashion in scholarship, just as there is in everything else. The 
 drama of the sixteenth century has been elaborately studied. To 
 the nineteenth century, the most fascinating writer in literature 
 was probably Shakespeare. Any fact, any book, however remotely 
 connected with his work, was valued. This interest embraced 
 his contemporaries, his predecessors, and the predecessors of his 
 predecessors, until the whole development of the drama in England 
 has been extensively studied. For this reason the dramatic 
 problems are omitted in this work, except as they appear in 
 connection with the poetry. The case of the poetry, on the other 
 hand, is quite different. Spenser, intangible, incomprehensible and 
 very diffuse, has never proved so interesting a protagonist. Much 
 less so his predecessors. It sounds a paradox when I affirm that 
 the period is interesting! 
 
 This paradox is apparent only. Interest may arise from many 
 causes ; here the interest is not in the literature of the age so much 
 as in the succeeding literature of the time of Elizabeth, which it 
 conditioned. That is regarded as one of the great periods. To 
 understand it is the function of the scholar, and to appreciate it 
 is the privilege of the reader. But its roots lie back in the first 
 half of the century. When Spenser was going to college in 1569, 
 Hawes was one of the great English poets with two editions in 
 1555, Skelton's works had just been collected in 1568, Barclay 
 had his collected edition in 1570, and Heywood was alive, the 
 Dean of English literature. Tottel's Miscellany, from its first
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 appearance in 1557, had eight editions before the close of the 
 century. Students that begin English literature with the accession 
 of Elizabeth act upon the illogical assumption that those writers 
 had no literary past. As Mr. Colby wittily expresses it: "They 
 have no patience with development or kindliness for beginnings; 
 they would condemn" every tadpole as a sort of apostate frog." 
 That the tadpole is a tadpole must be frankly realized. I wish 
 to protest against the sentimentalism which finds undiscovered 
 "beauties of our worthy" in work which the world has agreed to 
 forget. Dr. Johnson with good common sense protests to the 
 effect that life is surely given us for other purposes than to gather 
 what our ancestors have wisely thrown away and to appreciate 
 work that has no value except that it has been forgotten. On the 
 other hand, aesthetic appreciation is heightened by intellectual 
 comprehension. Your enjoyment of a symphony is increased 
 by the knowledge of the effects the musician is trying to produce. 
 Your appreciation of the power of an artist is supplemented by 
 an understanding of the limitations under which he produced his 
 masterpiece. Knowledge is the handmaiden of appreciation. But 
 such knowledge is acquired only at the cost of studying much 
 admittedly inferior work. The moment that such work is placed 
 in the scheme of things, that it is seen in relation to work admit- 
 tedly superior, it gains a reflected interest. As in a great poem Ars 
 est celare artem, the earlier, cruder work shows traits which in the 
 masterpiece have defied your analysis. Pope misjudged Shake- 
 speare, not because he did not know Shakespeare, but because 
 his ignorance of pre-Shakespearean dramatists prevented him 
 from understanding the canon of the Elizabethan drama and by 
 so doing he was unable to perceive the finesse of Shakespeare's 
 art. Yet the plays of Peele and Greene and Kyd are scarcely 
 exhilarating reading. So with Spenser. Many of the modern 
 criticisms of the Faerie Queene would surprise no one so much as 
 the poet himself . He is praised for what he did not do and blamed 
 for what he conscientiously tried to do. Surely the first objective 
 in good criticism is a realization of the writer's aim. And that 
 realization must come from a careful study of the preceding 
 writers. To this extent the period may be said to have interest. 
 To claim interest for one period solely because of its relations 
 to another period is to damn with faint praise. It is a negative
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 advantage. Before the student takes up the study of Early Tudor 
 literature with enthusiasm something positive must be shown him. 
 To do this requires a discussion of the nature of literature. That 
 is psychological. As the writings of an individual are indications 
 of his mental processes, so the writings of an age combine to give 
 an impression of the mental life and outlook of that age. This is 
 the reason for the well known phenomenon that the literature of 
 a given period can all be recognized as belonging to that period 
 by the possession of common characteristics. The Hero and 
 Leander is as definitely Elizabethan, as the Epistle to Dr. Arbuth- 
 not is definitely Augustan, or as In Memoriam is definitely Mid- 
 Victorian. In other words, if Tennyson had lived two hundred 
 and fifty years previously, or Marlowe a hundred and fifty years 
 later, they would have written, if at all, in quite a different man- 
 ner. A battalion moves as a single unit only because the separate 
 personalities composing it have surrendered the initiative. But 
 in the army of literature that condition does not hold. Each 
 writer proudly proclaims the fact that he is captain of his soul, 
 that he writes as seems to him good, that he is a conscious in- 
 novator turning his back on the past, and behold! each fits 
 into his place in the great procession, the text-books label 
 him Elizabethan, Jacobean, Restoration, or what not, exactly 
 as though his one desire had been perfect conformity, and in a 
 survey of literature as a whole, it is possible to speak of the Au- 
 gustan Age, the Romantic Movement, etc., and to have studies 
 on the Elizabethan Drama, the development of the novel, the 
 Georgian poets, etc. But for this undoubted fact there must 
 be some explanation. Brunetiere explains it by applying the 
 Darwinian doctrine of natural selection. But what is the sur- 
 vival of the fittest in literature? Is there a struggle between books? 
 Joseph Andrews was conceived in ridicule of Pamela and yet both 
 are still read. Is it possible to imagine two authors whose appeal 
 is more opposite in kind than Dumas and Jane Austen? Yet 
 The Three Musketeers and Pride and Prejudice, the same person 
 enjoys them both. At the mid-century romance seemed dead. 
 Dickens and Thackeray and Trollope charmed by drawing pictures 
 of modern life. Heigh-ho comes Stevenson and we all hunt pirates 
 or engage in Scottish brawls. Although the doctrine of evolution 
 seems inapplicable, yet there must be some explanation.
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 If we start de novo, then, there are three factors which combine 
 to condition a writer's work: the literary past as known to him, 
 the present state of thought in his particular world, and his own 
 personality. These are the three unknown factors in the equation. 
 He is conditioned by the past, because we inherit both our lan- 
 guage and our forms of expression. Surely it is the use only of 
 the language that is personal; few men have invented even a 
 single word, and the expression "to choose your words" means 
 merely to select from your pitifully small proportion of the three 
 hundred thousand words in the New English Dictionary the 
 best words at your command. The choice of what language shall 
 be your mother tongue is as far from your power as is the selection 
 of your grandparents. But on the other hand, just as you are 
 you and not the incarnation of any grandparent, the fact that 
 your speech is inherited does not prevent you from expressing 
 your own personality in your use of it. Quite the contrary in 
 fact, since in your conversation you give your past, your educa- 
 tion, your home surroundings and your character, and in thus 
 expressing your own individuality, you yet necessarily speak the 
 language of your epoch. The English of today is not the English 
 of Shakespeare, of Dryden, of Addison, of Wordsworth, or of 
 Tennyson; nor is it the English to be used in the year 2000. The 
 change in language is slow, but certain. 
 
 If this be true of language, the material of which literature is 
 compounded, it is also true of the forms through which it finds ex- 
 pression. Verse forms, such as the rime-royal, the sonnet, the ron- 
 deau, etc., are rarely the invention of one man. The form, as we 
 know it, is the result of indefinite modifications and combinations 
 and is the product of many hands. Even back of the Spenserian 
 stanza, for example, are numberless poems in the seven-line rime- 
 royal and the ottava rtma of eight lines. Tradition required that 
 Spenser should use a stanza for the type of poem he contemplated. 
 By combining these two well-known stanzas and by adding an 
 alexandrine his supreme metrical genius evolved a new form. But 
 to assume that Spenser in conceiving his stanza was unconscious 
 of the past and forgetful of what others had done before him is 
 illogical. His stanza, however original, is yet the outcome of other 
 stanzas. The same reasoning applies to the form of the poem as 
 a whole. The type of poem was naturally thoroughly well-known
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 to him as it existed both in England and hi Italy. The chivalric 
 element, the allegorization and the political allusion were not new. 
 In writing a poem in which they figure, he felt that he was follow- 
 ing traditional lines, as he was. And, to repeat the illustration 
 used before, our difficulty in judging the Faerie Queene is due 
 largely to our ignorance of the literary past as known to him. A 
 great deal of the unfavorable criticism directed against his work 
 is due to a failure to recognize the peculiarities and the limitations 
 of the type. The critic must bear in mind the aim of the artist. 
 The first question is, then, to what extent has he succeeded in ac- 
 complishing what he set out to do. The second is to what extent 
 is that aim laudable. Otherwise criticism becomes merely the 
 expression of personal preference, and one is brought to the blank 
 wall of De gustibus non est disputandum. And unless the partic- 
 ular problem of the artist is clearly recognized, intellectual anarchy 
 results. The delicate frescoes of Julio Romano in the Palazzo del 
 Te are discussed in the terms suitable for Leonardo's Last Supper. 
 The problem of Puvis de Chavannes in covering the blank spaces 
 of a wall requires utterly different treatment from that in painting 
 an easel portrait. I am using illustrations borrowed from Art be- 
 cause the truth of the position becomes obvious from the mere 
 statement. In the allied art of literature, unhappily, the same 
 truth is not so universally accepted. The generalizations that a 
 writer is conditioned by the type of work he has chosen and that 
 the chosen type is conditioned by the literary past are still tacitly 
 ignored by many critics. And to accept them as truths is not an 
 easy matter, since such acceptation requires a withholding of 
 judgment until a well-rounded understanding of previous work as 
 known to the author has been gained. The first requirement for 
 the critic is not taste, not appreciation, however valuable and de- 
 sirable they may be, it is a knowledge of literary history. 
 
 But if a knowledge of the literary past of an author is essential 
 in judging his work, so also is a knowledge of his literary present, 
 his literary environment, so to speak. Each man is in essentials a 
 product of his age. Our mental point of view is affected necessarily 
 by our physical surroundings. Modern sanitation and privacy 
 make for a higher sense of modesty and decency; increased facility 
 in transportation gives us a wider outlook and an interest in world 
 affairs. The American born in 1900, by that fact, has more varied
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 interests than the American born in 1800. Judged according to 
 absolute standards he may be better, or he may be worse; that is 
 not the point at issue. He is different from his forefathers, not 
 through any quality inherent in him or for which he deserves either 
 praise or blame, but because of the accident of the date of his 
 birth. The same condition applies equally to the intangible in- 
 tellectual factors. Certain conceptions characterize any given 
 epoch. For example, it is impossible to over-emphasize the doc- 
 trine of evolution as originated with Darwin and amplified by 
 Herbert Spencer. It affects our ideas on every subject. Again 
 the outlook on life of the man of 1900 differs from that of the man 
 of 1800 because he was born a hundred years later. This difference 
 may seem more marked in the contrast between some epochs, but 
 it always exists to some extent. The son is never identical with 
 the father. The literature of every age, therefore, exhibits the 
 peculiarities of its time. 
 
 It follows from such reasoning as that in the preceding para- 
 graph that he who most thoroughly expresses the desires and long- 
 ing of his own age is the writer most popular in his own age. This 
 can be tested by the selling power of the book. From one point of 
 view, literature may be regarded as a marketable commodity. A 
 man buys a poem because there he finds expressed emotions of 
 which he is conscious in himself, but which in himself are inartic- 
 ulate. As a man is said to be known by his friends, so also is 
 he known by the books he reads. Curiosity may account for the 
 momentary success of a piece of work; enduring popularity must 
 be ascribed to other factors. For a month the Hymn of Hate was 
 probably the most widely read poem in England and America, but 
 the explanation of that popularity was due to purely temporary 
 conditions. When those conditions changed, the poem lost its 
 interest to the reading public. Or, the large sale of a book may be 
 due to clever exposition of a political situation, due to the use of 
 personal references, scandalous or otherwise. Momentary popu- 
 larity, then, the best-seller of the age, does not predicate literary 
 immortality; it means only that for that particular moment men 
 found the work of interest. On the other hand, enduring literary 
 reputation means that many men throughout the centuries find 
 the book of interest. Clearly the chances are better for an author 
 to arouse the interest of the men of the future ages, whom he does
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 not know, if he can arouse the interest of the men of his own age, 
 whom he does know. As human nature changes slowly the inten- 
 sity of the interest will be about proportionate. This may of course 
 be upset by local conditions. A man may be publishing fine work 
 at a time when the whole strength of the nation is devoted to ends 
 the reverse of literary. Herrick's Hesperides appeared in 1648, 
 when the nation was distraught with political dissension, the year 
 before the execution of the king. Naturally the book found few 
 readers and was lost in the confusion. Or a writer for any given 
 reason may be out of the current of his age. Milton retired to the 
 country for six years to surrender himself to a study of classic 
 models. For an age that wished short poems exhibiting intel- 
 lectual agility, he wrote long poems, slow in movement. Naturally 
 he found comparatively few readers. In an age which believed 
 in authority, he wrote a poem in which his sympathy, certainly, is 
 with rebellion. Again, naturally, he found few readers. But, in 
 general, in spite of the common view to the contrary, the writer 
 whose work posterity acclaims, has been accepted as great by the 
 men of his own generation. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, 
 Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, each before his death was ac- 
 cepted as a great poet. Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray, no one 
 can question their contemporary popularity. Each was regarded 
 by his age as being a chosen interpreter. The converse of the 
 proposition is that the historian of literature, who expects to in- 
 terpret the age, must go back to those writers particularly who 
 in their time were popular. 
 
 Theoretically, then, if the past and the present of any writer be 
 known, by subtraction we should be able to understand what was 
 his contribution to the literature of the nation. Today such an 
 operation is exceedingly difficult. Knowledge is so widely diffused, 
 books of all types are so accessible, libraries are so numerous, that 
 the past of any individual writer is almost beyond conjecture ex- 
 cept what may be deduced from his work. And equally his re- 
 ception, except in a very few cases, is a matter of doubt. As 
 Brander Matthews says somewhere, it is no longer a question of 
 a reading public, but reading publics. A piece of work may be 
 very popular in one locality and fail completely in another. The 
 whole woof of modern society is so complex that it is very difficult 
 to see the pattern. Still more difficult is it to estimate correctly
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 what elements will be chosen as valuable by the succeeding ages. 
 Therefore, although the generalization applies now as it has applied 
 in the past, to illustrate it one must go back to the past. For this 
 purpose the literature of the first half of the sixteenth century is 
 peculiarly happy. The literary past of the men is made com- 
 paratively simple since there is a partial break in the continuity, 
 due to the Wars of the Roses and a modification of the language. 
 In this part of our literature, consequently, the problems are simple 
 and it is possible to arrive at definite solutions. And those solu- 
 tions are important because upon them will rest the interpretation 
 of the great literature of the age of Elizabeth. The following work 
 aims by analysis to give an intellectual comprehension of the 
 conditions which caused the various authors to write as they did. 
 The question always before the reader is not, How did they write, 
 but, Why did they write in such a form. Surely the second ques- 
 tion is clearly answered, if he can be given a comprehension of 
 their aims and their limitations; if he can be put back to a state 
 analogous to that of the author's time, he can read his work with 
 a fullness of emotional sympathy otherwise impossible. And with 
 the knowledge thus gained he may turn to Elizabethan poetry 
 with the same fullness of understanding that a friend of the parents 
 brings to the son. 
 
 So the interest which the reader is invited to find in this period 
 is two-fold: first, because one sees here the beginnings of great 
 work; second, because, owing to the partial break with the past ; 
 the separate strains in the literature, more easily than in other pe- 
 riods, can be submitted to analysis. This view has been criticised 
 adversely as "mechanical". I confess that I do not see the jus- 
 tice of the criticism. History, if the study of it has any value 
 whatsoever, teaches that the individual is merged in the many. 
 It is not the biography of great men; it is the record of great move- 
 ments. The history of England is not in the lives of her kings and 
 queens; it is in the development of the English people, in which 
 very often the great man has not been on the throne. To apply 
 this view to literature can, surely, be neither new nor startling. 
 It does, however, bring writers into fresh juxtapositions. For in- 
 stance, Heywood as a follower of the Medieval Tradition, or Skel- 
 ton as a Medieval Latinist, may cause surprise. On the other 
 hand, if by such juxtaposition the significance of the work be-
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 comes more clearly evident, the method is justified. To what 
 extent such fresh interpretation is sound, the reader must decide. 
 Since the purpose of the book is to give an understanding of 
 the literary forces in the first hah" of the sixteenth century and how 
 each force affected the individual writer, I have allowed myself 
 the privilege of abundant quotation. Such excerpts are in the 
 nature of documents in evidence. They are the facts which sup- 
 port the reasoning, and, as such, must be known to the reader. 
 I have had the less hesitancy in doing this, however, because many 
 of the books from which the quotations are taken are not easily ac- 
 cessible; sometimes, even when the books are accessible, in the effort 
 to make my position clear, I have quoted passages, instead of merely 
 giving the references, in the belief that the time of the student 
 will be saved thereby. For the same reason I have omitted a gen- 
 eral bibliography, which seems to me both pedantic and futile. 
 In a subject such as this, which includes renaissance works in six 
 languages, it would be easy to create the impression of great learn- 
 ing. On the other hand, the title of a book or article is deceptive. 
 It may contain nothing but age-old surmises and misinformation; 
 or it may be the most profound treatment of the question. And 
 the unhappy student dares not run the risk of neglecting it. There- 
 fore, I have tried to indicate in my notes what particular value 
 each work possesses. And, although I would not wish to make 
 the assumption that I know all the work done in my field, hu- 
 manly speaking that is impossible, the works noted are merely a 
 fraction of what I have read, the ones most helpful to me. As 
 such I offer them as a guide to the student. My great fear is that 
 I have used work and have not acknowledged it. After years of 
 reading along certain lines, the mind forgets the source of a thought 
 or fact, and so assimilates the idea that it seems original. I am 
 afraid that such a condition has occurred in my work; I can only 
 plead that I am the first reader to be deceived and that corrections 
 will most gratefully be acknowledged. There is one more point to 
 be added, before I finish this explanation of the mechanism of the 
 book. I have divided it into six monographs, each one distinct 
 and able to be read as a whole. The gain here is that a student 
 of a particular movement will find that treated without having to 
 wade through a mass of preliminary matter; the corresponding 
 loss, however, is that a certain amount of repetition is unavoidable.
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 I have tried to reduce the amount as much as possible by means 
 of cross-references and a full index both of the work and to the 
 notes. 
 
 Now I come to the pleasant task of acknowledging the very 
 great help I have received from many quarters. The particular 
 places where aid has been rendered will, I trust, be found recorded 
 in the notes. Here I wish to confess to a debt of a different nature, 
 general rather than specific. Many of my friends have given me 
 the advantage of airing my positions before them, of exposing my 
 ignorance to their knowledge. To over-estimate the gain to this 
 work from such contact would be impossible; to acknowledge it is 
 mere honesty. On the other hand, it must be as clearly stated 
 that the responsibility for the various heresies contained in the 
 following pages is my own; sometimes I misunderstood their rea- 
 sonings, sometimes I dared to disagree. With this clear under- 
 standing that the guilt is mine, I take pleasure in thanking Pro- 
 fessor Keller for his suggestions on the sociological part of the 
 work, Professor Goodell for helping me with the Greek, and Pro- 
 fessor Morris and Professor Hendrickson for their untiring kind- 
 ness in discussing with me the Latin background. To these last 
 gentlemen I owe much more than mere scholastic gratitude for 
 the warmth of the encouragement. Professor Luquiens must have 
 a feeling of accomplishment on seeing this work completed, since 
 he has put so much of his energy into it. For such kindness I 
 cannot adequately phrase my sense of indebtedness. In conclu- 
 sion I must express the recognition of my obligation to Mr. Keogh 
 and the officials of the Yale Library who put the resources of that 
 great institution personally at my disposal. Professor Bolton of 
 Syracuse has verified my references, Mr. Raymond Jenkins read 
 part of the manuscript, and Miss Underwood with most gracious 
 patience has revised the proof. I hope that they realize how 
 grateful I am. 
 
 Finally hi a separate paragraph I must confess that from the 
 first page of the manuscript to the last page of the proof this 
 work has passed beneath the scrutinizing eye of my dear wife. 
 That there are not more errors in diction is due to her persist- 
 ency. But she should receive no credit. Is it not her book? 
 
 J. M. B. 
 Yale University.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 1 
 
 Four main Factors (1) Humanism The contrast between the Christian 
 and the pagan philosophy of life Its effect in art On living conditions 
 In entertainments On dress On jewelry On dining On morality 
 On the attitude toward children On the attitude toward marriage 
 (2) The Copernican system The medieval conception of the supernatu- 
 ral The medieval attitude toward nature Sanitation of old London 
 Disease Remedies Cheapness of death (3) The geographic dis- 
 coveries The desire for communication with the Far East The diffusion 
 of this idea The extension of it in practice Its effect upon literature 
 (4) The invention of printing Fifteenth century England Scanty 
 population Two planes of literature The political situation Henry 
 VH The problems arising from his accession to the throne The per- 
 sonality of Henry VIII. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 48 
 
 The effect upon literature of the historical situation The change in pro- 
 nunciation The difficulty in writing Chaucer surviving largely by his 
 content Lydgate the great source of inspiration The formal literary 
 tradition Its characteristics The Flower and the Leaf The Assembly 
 of Ladies The Court of Love Its language Its content Stephen Hawes 
 His theory of poetry The Example of Virtue The Pastime of Pleas- 
 ure The similarity between them The sources The Godfrey Gobelice 
 episode The romantic elements The Comfort of Lovers Hawes verse 
 experiments His reputation Skelton The Bowge of Court Its con- 
 creteness Its satire His relation to Barclay The interpretation of the 
 allegory Heywood The Spider and the Flye Its characteristics Its 
 interpretation The use of comic detail The use of the dilemma The 
 use of alliteration Pseudo-Chaucerian influence. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 120 
 
 The dominance of the Church The familiarity with Medieval Latin Its 
 extensive use The medieval poetics Influence on English for the form 
 only The Cotorcs In arrangement of words Latin tags The effect 
 
 xvii
 
 xviii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 upon English vocabulary The rithm The stanza forms The Not- 
 browne Mayde Skelton His reading His humanism His lyrics His 
 use of Latin The Skeltonic verse Its origin His satires The problem 
 of dating His loyalty Colin Clout His attack upon Wolsey Why 
 Come Ye Not to Court? The continuation of Colin Clout The Reply- 
 cacion The theory of poetry Its dedication Polemic dialogues A 
 Proper Dialogue Rede Me and Be nott Worthe Phillip Sparrow Elynour 
 Rummyng Skelton and the Humanists London Lickpenny Cocke 
 LorreUes Bate The Eye Way to the Spittal Hous Realism. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HUMANISM 230 
 
 The connotation of Humanism Its gradual growth Skelton as a Human- 
 ist Italy the pioneer Humanism in England Alexander Barclay 
 The Eclogues Ship of Fools Mirror of Good Manners Henry Brad- 
 shaw John Heywood Humanism of the Oxford group Its artificiality 
 Its morality Its relation to the Reformation Sir Thomas More 
 Utopia Its modernity Its criticism Its intellectuality Erasmus 
 His feeling toward England His popularity His morality His ra- 
 tionalism CoUoquia His attitude toward reform Humanism versus 
 Scholasticism in education The aim The three great theorists The 
 growth of the movement in England The aim Physical exercise 
 Classic heroes Expurgations The effect upon English literature The 
 effect on teaching On the vernacular Education of Women English 
 Verse TotteVs Miscellany Wyatt Uncertain Authors Nicholas 
 Grimald His pedantry Origin of blank verse Ascham the theorist and 
 Grimald the exponent. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURES 361 
 
 The effect of Spanish upon English Celestina Lord Berners Golden 
 Book Its popularity Its content Image of Governance Sir Francis 
 Bryan Dispraise of the Life of a Courtier Germany Trade relations 
 Reformation The Assertio Situation in England Literary results 
 Tyndale's New Testament Supplicacyon for the Beggars More's reply 
 The polemic dialogue Rede me and be not wrothe Coverdale Sternhold 
 The jest books Salomon and Marcolphus Van Doesborgh Laurens 
 Andrewe Parson of Kalenborowe Tyll Hmdeglas Realism France 
 The effect upon the language Castle of Labour Colyn BlowboVs Testa- 
 ment Jyl of Brentford 's Testament Ballade Rondeau Clement 
 Marot The Court Tottel's Miscellany Wyatt Italy Wyatt Uncer- 
 tain Authors The prose Morte Darthur Froissart Huon of Burdeaux 
 Kalendayr ofshyppards.
 
 CONTENTS xix 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 504 
 
 The text doubtful Surrey's rank His family connections His char- 
 acter His religious feeling His death "Fair Geraldine" Compared 
 with Wyatt His language Marot Uncertain Authors His medieval- 
 ism Psalms Vergil Blank verse Summary.
 
 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 1485-1547
 
 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 
 
 That which separates peoples, far more than geographical 
 boundaries or "the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea," is the basic 
 philosophy that underlies their national life, the unwritten as- 
 sumptions that, like axioms in geometry, are accepted without 
 the need of proof. The difficulty of the difference in language may 
 be surmounted. The denotation of a word is given hi any diction- 
 ary; it is the connotation which counts. An American may learn 
 to speak Turkish, but it is impossible for him to think like a Turk 
 because he is an American. If this be true today when personal 
 contact is possible, it is still more true in dealing with the languages 
 of the past. Words at best are tricky instruments, and Marlowe, 
 that great master of self-expression, complains of their inadequacy. 
 Yet to his contemporaries his mighty line must have come charged 
 with a fullness of meaning that we can only guess at, and it is 
 probable that no one would be more surprised at the elucidations 
 of the commentators than Shakespeare himself. To comprehend 
 a poem written three hundred years ago requires creative imag- 
 ination. The negative part of such creation is not difficult. It 
 is not difficult to strip the world of steam, electricity and gasoline 
 and to picture to ourselves the result. But positively for the 
 modern American to adopt the point of view of the sixteenth 
 century Englishman, to see that life unmodified either by the 
 glamour of romanticism or by the working of his own personal 
 equation, and fully to appreciate the unconscious and unexpressed 
 motives for their actions, is impossible. Nevertheless the degree 
 of our success in achieving this impossibility measures the value 
 of our literary judgments. 
 
 An attempt at least to realize this ideal is essential in dealing 
 with works composed during an age of transition. As the term 
 
 1
 
 2 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 "age of transition" implies, living conditions are in a flux and 
 ideas of the outworn past jostle ideas of the yet unborn future. 
 History is not the record of battles and of murders, of kings or of 
 councils, rather is it the study of the modifications of the social 
 fabric resulting from new thoughts. As the body politic is com- 
 posed of many individuals, so these modifying thoughts come not 
 from one but from many. And it is a slow process. Take, for 
 example, the discovery of gunpowder. Probably not many ideas 
 have more completely revolutionized human society. It made 
 for democracy, since the armed peasant became the equal of the 
 mailed knight. Feudalism, based as it was upon the defensive 
 power of armor, with its fundamental conception of innate su- 
 periority, was thus doomed. The application of this discovery 
 extends over centuries. Writing in the middle of the thirteenth 
 century Roger Bacon gave the formula for the composition of 
 gunpowder, yet in the sixteenth century Henry VIII held his 
 jousts and his tournaments and encouraged the practice in the 
 use of the long bow. But the discovery of gunpowder, shaking 
 though it did the very framework of human society, was only one 
 of a number of factors that silently, slowly, inevitably remodelled 
 the human spirit. The revival of an interest in the civilizations 
 of Greece and Rome, the substitution of the Copernican for the 
 Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the extension of geographical 
 knowledge, and the invention of printing with movable type, 
 each aided in transforming the medieval into the modern man. Of 
 this change the literature is the record. It shows the continued 
 struggle to force the old medieval forms to express the new 
 Renaissance conceptions, to charge the old bottles with new wine, 
 and the slow evolution of suitable forms. The old and the new 
 are here intermingled. It is an age of transition. 
 
 The first of these mental factors is the apparently insignificant 
 revival of the study of the classic literatures. The Latin language, 
 of course, had never been forgotten; it was used in the Church; 
 to a certain extent, Roman writers were read in every age and, to 
 a still less extent, imitated. But the effect of a book depends upon 
 the spirit in which it is read. It is one thing to know Vergil and 
 Ovid as entertaining pagans outside the pale, to search their works 
 for prophetical intimations of the coming of Christianity, and to 
 allegorize their poems into Christian myths, and quite another
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 3 
 
 to accept them reverently as masters. The medieval Vergil is not 
 even the Dantesque shade. He was remembered rather as the 
 undignified wizard of the fabliaux and admiration for him found 
 expression in the sortes Vergilianae. This monstrous conception 
 of Vergil appears in English as late as 1520. But, in general, the 
 fourteenth century witnessed a change in the point of view. This 
 change is associated with the revival of the study of Greek, and 
 may be said to have begun when Petrarch in his old age began 
 the reading of Homer. It is difficult for the modern student to 
 grasp the importance of this introduction of the classic philosophy 
 of living. To us there is no novelty in the classic point of view; 
 translations of all the principal writers abound; and, moreover, 
 for the past four hundred years modern literatures have assimilated 
 and discussed the leading tenets of classic thought to so great a 
 degree that on reading the original author we are already neces- 
 sarily familiar with the general conceptions and our attention is 
 held only by the comparatively minor points. And the case is, 
 as it were, judged before it is brought into court. It requires, 
 therefore, an effort of the imagination for us to conceive an age 
 when this thought, so familiar to us, had all the charm of novelty 
 and when a knowledge of Greek connoted radical thinking in 
 matters religious and political. For the antipodal contrast be- 
 tween Christian and pagan ideals in one respect must be remem- 
 bered. During the Middle Ages the stress was laid, not upon this 
 life, but upon the next. Even from the beginning the promise 
 implied in the fact of the Resurrection was one of the main causes 
 for the spread of Christianity. This was further amplified by the 
 belief in the millenium, common in the first four centuries and 
 appearing sporadically later. The second coming of the Saviour, 
 so fiercely anticipated by Tertullian, logically transfers the interest 
 from the merely temporal concerns of this life to the all-engrossing 
 subject of the eternal life. Such is still the attitude of many of 
 our hymns, especially those adapted from the Latin, that death 
 with its prospect of heaven brings a happy release from earthly 
 woe. 
 
 Brief life is here our portion; 
 
 Brief sorrow, short-lived care; 
 The life that knows no ending. 
 
 The tearless life is there.
 
 4 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Oh happy retribution! 
 
 Short toil, eternal rest. 
 For mortals and for sinners, 
 
 A mansion with the blest. 1 
 
 There is no need to multiply illustrations. The medieval hymnol- 
 ogy teaches that this world is a temporary place of trial, that it 
 is a battle-ground, that we are pilgrims journeying to our eternal 
 home where the faithful will be recompensed. 
 
 Nunc tribulatio; 
 Tune recreatio, 
 
 Sceptra, coronse; 
 Tune nova gloria 
 Pectora sobria 
 
 Clarificabit, 
 Solvet tenigmata, 
 Veraque sabbata 
 
 Continuabit. 
 Patria splendida, 
 Terraque florida, 
 
 Libera spinis, 
 Danda fidelibus 
 Est ibi civibus 
 
 Hie peregrinis. 
 
 That such an extreme was practiced by society at large at any 
 time is, of course, untrue; it would imply the cessation of the 
 business of living, and during the middle ages, as in every other 
 age, men were chiefly occupied by their petty private concerns. 
 Yet it was (and is) realized in some religious establishments and 
 was held as an ideal by the world in general, and affected every 
 human relationship. Care of the body was considered as a con- 
 cession to the weakness of the flesh; the love of parents, home, 
 wife, country, or the approbation of the community was regarded, 
 theoretically at least, as a distraction from the pursuit of the 
 highest life. This may be illustrated by the life of Saint Alexis. 
 
 1 Hie breve vivitur, O retributio! 
 
 Hie breve plangitur, Stat brevis act io, 
 
 Hie breve fletur; Vita perennis; 
 
 Non breve vivere, O retributio! 
 
 Non breve plangere, Cselica mansio 
 
 Retribuetur; Stat lue plcnis . . .
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 5 
 
 To free himself from all earthly attachments, Alexis abandoned 
 on his wedding night his wife, his parents and his country; having 
 been made abbot for his austerities, he again abandoned his re- 
 sponsibilities; at last for the sake of greater humiliation he lived 
 as a mendicant in his father's palace; and at his death he was 
 miraculously recognized as a saint. The teaching is that, although 
 such a life is not possible for all, it is beautiful and pleasing to God. 
 The external manifestation of such philosophy is shown in the 
 dominance of the religious element in architecture and in art; the 
 internal, in the essentially Christian virtues of humility and self- 
 sacrifice and in an introspective and subjective mental attitude. 
 By the Greeks, on the other hand, immortality was conceived in 
 terms of this life; in some vague way it was a continuation and 
 prolongation of this life. The Orpheus and Eurydice story, and 
 perhaps the Eleusinian mysteries, indicate a belief in a life here- 
 after. The Phaedo of Plato discusses it. But there is no radical 
 difference in the conception of the two existences. In classic 
 poetry the future is presented as a shadowy place of doubtful 
 ghosts. Death is merely an inevitable evil. It was the present 
 that was important, and man's relation to his fellow men in the 
 world about him. Attention was directed not to the individual 
 but to the community. As the cathedral expresses a typical 
 phase of the middle ages, so the agora, or forum, represents the 
 classic civilization. Civic consciousness existed in a far higher 
 degree than in the later age. And the Londoner, or Parisian, of 
 1500 found in the Rome of Augustus a civilization much more 
 complex and elaborately organized than any with which he was 
 familiar. Constant contact with humanity, however it may 
 dull the sensibilities, drives away morbid introspection. Owing 
 to this fact classic writing has been characterized as possessing 
 " the two noblest of things, sweetness and light. " Classic thought 
 is unconscious of self and objective. Eudaimonism is the ethical 
 basis, that is, well-being in this life; and many found this well-being 
 in sensual indulgence. As the pagan and Christian philosophies 
 are thus opposed, the revived interest in the former brought with 
 it profound modifications in the whole social structure of the 
 latter, 1 the greater the interest the more profound the change. 
 
 1 The importance of the change is thus signalized by Karl Federn: Die Welt war 
 fin Jammerthal, ein ikies Gebiet des Blends und schwerer PrUftlngen. Die Ausbil-
 
 6 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Discussions arose, doubts were born, and conventionalities were 
 shattered in the conflict of these two antagonistic forces. Moved 
 by the one, the Borgian orgies revived the lusts of imperial Rome; 
 in reaction, Martin Luther started the Reformation; and between 
 them, attracted by both and repelled by both, wavered Erasmus, 
 in his own person summing up the unrest of the age. 
 
 The first result was an immense increase in appreciation of 
 physical beauty. The loveliness of line of a perfect column and 
 the smooth ripple of muscle beneath the skin filled the men of the 
 Renaissance with delight. As social conditions became more 
 settled, the house was regarded as a home, rather than as a fortress, 
 and was adorned with loving care. Graceful festoons draped the 
 windows and the chimneys flowered in fantasy. The beautiful 
 simplicity of the Doge's palace faces the decorous richness of 
 Sansovino's Library. The grimness of Loche is exchanged for the 
 lightness of Blois and the frostwork of Chambord. Ghiberti 
 dreams his doors and Bramante his domes. The Bysantine rigidity 
 of Cimabue and the statuesque grouping of Giotto develop into 
 the richness of Titian, the tenderness of Raphael, the strength of 
 Michelangelo, the subtilty of Leonardo and the interpretative skill 
 of Holbein. And where before Art was the hand-maiden of the 
 Church, now all life became her province and Giorgione paganizes 
 in the mellow Fete Champetre. 1 Thus they looked at the world 
 with the creative eye and behold! it was very good. 
 
 The same impulse found expression also in the trivialities of 
 everyday life. Just as the temptation of the Renaissance artists 
 was for multiplicity of detail and over-ornamentation, so in minor 
 matters, in house-furnishing and table decoration, the fault lay in 
 a lack of restraint. A gorgeous lavishness became characteristic 
 of the period, although we catch only faint reflects of the splendid 
 background in the literature. To be interpreted by the gray 
 modern mind these writings must be read with the understanding 
 that in the thought of both author and contemporary audience 
 
 dung solcher Anschauungen musste durch den schrechlichen Zustand befordert 
 werden: die Welt war in diesen Jahrhunderten wirklich ein Jammer thai; und sie 
 verloren ihre Macht mit dem Augenblick, wo die Zustande sich besserten und die 
 Menschen sich wieder des Lebens zu freuen anfiengen. Dante, 9-10. 
 
 1 Like so many other pictures given to Giorgione, the attribution of this to him 
 has been vehemently denied.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 7 
 
 there was this elaborate richness of daily life. Probably the extreme 
 example is to be found in Cardinal Wolsey's country seat at Hamp- 
 ton Court. Moreover, since we have the inventory of the furnish- 
 ings when the palace was given to the King and since Hampton 
 Court itself is still not changed beyond all recognition, it is possible 
 to reconstruct the mise en scene of the great Cardinal. Everything 
 was on a large scale. 1 There were two hundred and eight guest 
 rooms, each with "a bason and a ewer of silver, some gilt and 
 some parcel gilt, and some two great pots of silver in like manner, 
 and one pot at the least with wine and beer, a bowl or goblet, and a 
 silver pot to drink beer in; a silver candlestick or two, with both 
 white lights and yellow lights of three sizes of wax; and a staff 
 torch; a fine manchet, and a chet-loaf of bread." The beds were 
 hung with red, green, or russet velvet, or satin, or silk, or sarcenet, 
 and elaborately carved "with fowls and beasts having banners 
 about their neck with the arms of England and France," 3 or with 
 the imagery of children playing in the water; two trussing beds 
 were of alabaster. In the list, chair follows chair, carved and 
 gilded, with cushions of embroideries and tapestry. There were 
 forty-five pairs of brass or wrought iron andirons. The walls were 
 hung with tapestries. To acquire a sufficient number agents ran- 
 sacked the continent. In 1520, for example, Sir Thomas Gresham 
 was ordered to take the measure for eighteen rooms, and yet in 
 December, 1522, Wolsey bought twenty-one complete sets, con- 
 sisting of one hundred and thirty-two pieces. Such ostentatious 
 profusion at any time indicates the parvenu, but here, when the 
 parvenu is a cardinal, it also indicates a change in Christian ideals. 
 For this love of display there is another explanation beside that 
 of personal gratification. In an age when comparatively few could 
 read, the appeal had to be visual to bring home to the people the 
 importance of any event. This is the logical reason for corona- 
 tion processions, ambassadorial receptions, masques, etc. The ex- 
 tent to which any circumstance affected the nation was signified 
 by the outward splendor accompanying it. The magnificence of 
 
 1 These details are taken principally from The History of Hampton Court, by 
 Ernest Law, London, 1890. 2nd ed. 
 
 1 Calendars of State Papers, Venetian, vol. 15*7-33, No. 205. From the Sanvdo 
 Diariet, vol. xlvi., p. 264. Quoted by Law, ibid., vol. i, 109-110.
 
 8 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Wolsey's establishment was a political measure. The crosses and 
 pillars borne before him were the visible expression of power of a 
 servant of the king. The forms and ceremonies attendant upon 
 the arrival of the cardinal's hat expressed to the multitude the 
 importance of the new dignity. The grandeur of Wolsey's state 
 was not then merely a personal love of display, nor do the pages 
 in Hall's Chronicle devoted to detailed description of festivities 
 argue naive admiration on the part of the chronicler. In an age 
 when there were no editorials and no inspired articles, the signi- 
 ficant events were signalized by appeals to the inherent dramatic 
 instinct. This may be illustrated by the long account of the cele- 
 bration of the French alliance in 1527 as given by the Italian 
 Secretary Spinelli. Politically, it was an event of major impor- 
 tance, the union of France and England against the conquering 
 arms of Spain. At home, it meant the triumph of the party of 
 Anne Boleyn, with all that that implies. The pictorial representa- 
 tion of this importance is as follows. 1 
 
 On the fourth instant all the ambassadors, with the exception of the Emperor's, 
 were summoned to Greenwich; where, in the presence of the King and the chief 
 personages of the Court, the French ambassador, the Bishop of Tarbes, delivered an 
 oration, which was answered by the Bishop of London; who on the morrow, Car- 
 dinal Wolsey being unable to officiate from indisposition, sang mass with the 
 usual ceremonies, after which at the high altar, where the missal was opened by the 
 Cardinal, the French ambassadors swore in his hands to observe the perpetual peace 
 now concluded with the King of England, he on his part swearing in like manner. 
 
 Two of the ambassadors, namely, the prelate and the soldier, dined with the 
 King, the others dining apart together. 
 
 On rising from the table they went to the Queen's apartment, where the Princess 
 danced with the French ambassador, the Viscount of Turenne, who considered her 
 very handsome and admirable by reason of her great and uncommon mental en- 
 dowments, but so thin, spare, and small as to render it impossible for her to be 
 married for the next three years. 
 
 Then yesterday there was a joust, the challengers at the tilt being four, the com- 
 petitors being sixteen, each of whom ran six courses; a very delectable sight, by 
 reason of the prowess of the knights. The joust ended with the day, not without 
 rain, which rather impeded the jousting. 
 
 The King and Queens, with some 200 damsels, then went to the apartments 
 which I informed you in a former letter were being prepared on one side of the tilt 
 yard at Greenwich for the reception of the French ambassadors, the rest of the 
 company following them. The site adjoined the other chambers, from whence the 
 King and the nobility view the jousts. There were but two halls, about thirty 
 paces in length, and of proportional height and breadth. The centre of the ceiling 
 
 1 Brewer, History of the Reign of Henry VIII, 2, 151.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 9 
 
 of the first hall was entirely covered with brocatel, of no great value, but producing 
 a good effect. The walls were hung with the most costly tapestry in England, 
 representing the history of David; and there was a row of torches closely set, 
 illuminating the place very brilliantly, being ranged below the windows, which 
 were at no great distance from the roof. The royal table was prepared in front of 
 the hall, with a large canopy of tissue, beneath which was the King, with the 
 Queens, his wife and sister, at the sides. Then came two long tables; at one end of 
 which, on the right-hand side were seated the French ambassador and the Princess, 
 each pairing with some great lady. At the other table, to the left, the Venetian 
 ambassador and the one from Milan, placed themselves, with the rest of the lords 
 and ladies. At no great distance from the two tables were two cupboards, reaching 
 from the floor to the roof, forming a semicircle, on which was a large and varied 
 assortment of vases, all of massive gold, the value of which it would be difficult to 
 estimate; nor were any of them touched; silver-gilt dishes of another sort being used 
 for the viands of meat and fish, which were in such variety and abundance that the 
 banquet lasted a long while. 
 
 The door of this hall was in the form of a very lofty triumphal arch, fashioned 
 after the antique, beneath which were three vaulted entrances. Through one 
 passed the dishes for the table; through the other they were removed; and on each 
 side of the centre one, which was the largest, stood two enormous cupboards bearing 
 wine to be served at table. Over the triumphal arch was a spacious balcony for the 
 musicians, bearing the arms of the King and Queen, with sundry busts of Emperors, 
 and the King's motto, "Dieu et mon droit," and other Greek words. Could never 
 conceive anything so costly and well designed as what was witnessed that night at 
 Greenwich. 
 
 On rising from table all were marshalled, according to their rank, along a corridor 
 of no great length, to the other hall, which was of rather less size than the first. The 
 floor was covered with cloth of silk embroidered with gold lilies. The ceiling, 
 which was well-night flat, was all painted, representing a map of the world, the 
 names of the principal provinces being legible; there were also the signs of the 
 zodiac and then' properties, these paintings being supported by giants. Along the 
 sides of the hall were three tiers of seats, each of which had a beam placed length- 
 wise for the spectators to lean on, nor did one tier interfere with the other. Above 
 these tiers were in like manner three rows of torches, so well disposed and contrived 
 as not to impede the view. 
 
 Within the space for the spectators, on the right-hand side in the first tier, the 
 ambassadors were placed; in the second, the Princes; in the third, those to whom 
 admission was granted, they being few. On the opposite side, in the same order, 
 were the ladies; whose various styles and apparel, enhanced by the brilliancy of the 
 lights, caused me to think I was contemplating the choir of angels, they in like 
 manner, being placed one above the other. Two-thirds of the distance down the 
 hall an arch of a single span had been erected, its depth being five feet and a half 
 (English measure), all gilt with fine gold, the inside of the arch being decorated with 
 a number of beautiful figures in low relief. The magnificence of this arch was such 
 that it was difficult to comprehend how so grand a structure could have been raised 
 in so short a space of time. In the centre to the front stood the royal throne, on 
 which the King sat, the two Queens being seated below at his feet.
 
 10 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 All the spectators being thus methodically placed, without the least noise or 
 confusion, and precisely as pre-arranged, the entertainment commenced. One 
 thing above all others surprised me most, never having witnessed the like anywhere, 
 it being impossible to represent or credit with how much order, regularity, and 
 silence such public entertainments proceed and are conducted in England. First of 
 all, there entered the hall eight singers, forming two wings, and singing certain 
 English songs; in their centre was a very handsome youth alone, clad in skyblue 
 taffety, a number of eyes being scattered over his gown; and having presented them- 
 selves before the King, the singers then withdrew in the same order, there remain- 
 ing by himself the youth, in the disguise of Mercury, sent to the King by Jupiter, 
 delivered a learned Latin oration in praise of his Majesty; which panegyric being 
 ended, he announced that Jupiter, having frequently listened to disputes between 
 love and riches, concerning their relative authority, and being unable to decide the 
 controversy, he appointed his Majesty as judge, and requested him to pronounce 
 and pass sentence on both of them. Thereupon Mercury departed; and next came 
 eight young choristers of the chapel, four on each side; those to the right were all 
 clad in cloth of gold, much ornamented, and the first of them was Cupid; the others 
 to the left were variously arrayed, and their chief was Plutus. In the centre walked 
 one alone in the guise of Justice, who sang. 
 
 In this order they presented themselves to the King, before whom Justice com- 
 menced narrating the dispute between the parties in English, and desired Cupid to 
 begin with his defence; to which Plutus replied; each of the choristers on either side 
 defending their leaders by reciting a number of verses. The altercation being 
 ended, Cupid and Plutus determined that judgment should go by battle; and thus, 
 having departed, three men-at-arms in white armour, with three naked swords in 
 their hands, entered from the end of the hall, and having drawn up under the 
 triumphal arch, an opening was made in its centre by some unseen means, and out 
 of the arch fell down a bar, in front of which there appeared three well-armed 
 knights. The combat then commenced valiantly, man to man, some of them dealing 
 such blows that their swords broke. After they had fought some while a second 
 bar was let down, which separated them, the first three having vanquished the 
 others, fighting with great courage; and the duel being thus ended, the combatants 
 quitted the hall in like manner as they had entered it. Thereupon there fell to the 
 ground, at the extremity of the hall, a painted canvas (curtain) from an aperture, 
 in which was seen a most verdant cave, approachable by four steps, each side being 
 guarded by four of the chief gentleman of the Court, clad in tissue doublets and 
 tall plumes, each of whom carried a torch. Well grouped within the cave were 
 eight damsels, of such rare beauty as to be supposed goddesses rather than human 
 beings. They were arrayed in cloth of gold, their hair gathered into a net, with a 
 very richly jewelled garland, surmounted by a velvet cap, the hanging sleeves of 
 their surcoats being so long that they well-nigh touched the ground, and so well and 
 richly wrought as to be no slight ornament to their beauty. They descended 
 gracefully from their seats to the sound of trumpets, the first of them being the 
 Princess, hand in hand with the Marchioness of Exeter. Her beauty in this array 
 produced such an effect on everybody that all the other marvellous sights pre- 
 viously witnessed were forgotten, and they gave themselves up solely to contempla- 
 tion of so fair an angel. On her person were so many precious stones that her
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 11 
 
 splendour and radiance dazzled the sight in such wise as to make one believe that 
 she was decked with all the gems of the eighth sphere. Dancing thus, they pre- 
 sented themselves to the King, their dance being very delightful by reason of its 
 variety, as they formed certain groups and figures most pleasing to the sight. Their 
 dance being finished, they ranged with themselves on one side; and in like order the 
 eight youths, leaving their torches, came down from the cave, and after performing 
 their dance, each of them took by the hand one of those beautiful nymphs, and, 
 having led a courant together for a while, returned to their places. 
 
 Six masks then entered. To detail their costume would be but to repeat the 
 words, "cloth of gold," "cloth of silver," etc. They chose such ladies as they 
 pleased for their partners, and commenced various dances; which being ended, the 
 King appeared. The French ambassador, the Marquis of Turenne, was at his side, 
 and behind him four couple of noblemen all masked, and all wearing black velvet 
 slippers on their feet; this being done lest the King should be distinguished from the 
 others; as, from a hurt which he lately received on his left foot when playing at 
 tennis, he wears a black velvet slipper. They were all clad in tissue doublets, over 
 which was a very long and ample gown of black satin, with hoods of the same 
 material, and on their heads caps of tawny velvet. They then took by the hand an 
 equal number of ladies, dancing with great glee, and at the end of the dance un- 
 masked; whereupon the Princess with her companions again descended, and came 
 to the King, who, in the presence of the French ambassadors, took off her cap, and, 
 the net being displaced, a profusion, of silver tresses, as beautiful as ever were seen 
 on human head, fell over her shoulders, forming a most agreable sight. The afore- 
 said ambassadors then took leave of her; and all departing from that beautiful 
 place returned to the supper hall, where the tables were spread with every sort of 
 confection and choice wines for all who chose to cheer themselves with them. The 
 sun, I believe, greatly hastened his course, having, perhaps, had a hint from Mer- 
 cury of so rare a sight. So showing himself already on the horizon, warning being 
 thus given of his presence, everybody thought it time to quit the royal chambers, 
 returning to their own with such sleepy eyes that the daylight could not keep them 
 open. 
 
 However stupid may seem to us the reading of such a description, 
 the account deserves careful consideration from the fact that the 
 shrewdest state in Europe required that it be so circumstantial. 
 The reverend seniors of the Doge's council did not find these de- 
 tails trivial. It was an important state occasion as seen by im- 
 partial eyes. As it was written to be read only in Venice, the 
 superlatives, unlike those used by Hall, cannot be laid to patriotic 
 motives. The decorations alone, without including the expense 
 of the entertainment, cost 8000 in modern currency; Holbein 
 was employed to paint part of the scenery; Rastell,"for writing 
 of the dialogue and making (poetry) in rhyme, both in English 
 and Latin", received 3s. 4d. (2 in modern currency), a curious
 
 12 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 comparative valuation of scenery and poetry. Inclination and 
 political necessity then combined to make life splendid. 
 
 With such gorgeous backgrounds and such spectacular pro- 
 ductions they naturally dressed the part. The reason why our 
 stage pictures seem unreal is because they are unreal. Our cotton- 
 backed velvets and paste jewels create no illusion. We neither 
 know how to wear the clothes nor do we possess them. The ward- 
 robe lists of that time itemize gowns for both men and women of 
 silk, of satin, and of velvet, and lined with foxskin and ermine. 
 Henry, Earl of Stafford, according to the inventory of 1522, pos- 
 sessed thirteen gowns of cloth of tissue, white damask, cloth of 
 gold, velvet, and satin; his wife sixteen gowns of the same mater- 
 ials, pearled and lined with velvet. As such costumes are obviously 
 valuable, they may be said to have invested their capital in their 
 clothes. This state of affairs was due principally to the fact that, 
 since the statute of 1487 forbade "usury", surplus monies were 
 expended on land and on articles of use. Property was a tangible 
 asset. That explains Spinelli's enthusiasm for the King's dis- 
 play of plate," nor were any of them touched" ; it was a gratifying 
 exhibition of royal power. In accumulating treasure the King set 
 the example to his subjects. An earlier Venetian traveller had 
 remarked : * 
 
 The most remarkable thing in London, is the wonderful quantity of wrought 
 silver. I do not allude to that in private houses, though the landlord of the house 
 in which the Milanese ambassador lived, had plate to the amount of 100 crowns, but 
 to the shops of London. In one single street, named the Strand, leading to St. 
 Paul's, there are fifty two goldsmith's shops, so rich and full of silver vessels, great 
 and small, that in all the shops in Milan, Rome, Venice, and Florence put together, 
 I do not think there would be found so many of the magnificence that are to be seen 
 in London. 
 
 This exaggeration was rendered plausible by the fact that, in de- 
 fiance of modern economics, no gold or silver was allowed to be 
 exported. Brought into England by her foreign commerce, they 
 necessarily remained there. The will of Elizabeth Browne, 2 pre- 
 served among the Paston documents, shows to what an extent 
 property assumed such form. 
 
 1 Italian Relation, Camden Soc., 1847, 42. 
 * Potion Letters, ed. Gairdner. 3, 463.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 13 
 
 Moreover I geve and biqueith to my doughter Mary . . . First, a standing 
 cupp of silver gilt, chaced with plompes, weyeng with the cover, knoppe and devise 
 xlij. unces et dimidium. Item, a standing cupp of silver and gilt, chaced with 
 flowres, weying with the cover, the knopp, and devise, xxvij. unces et dimidium. 
 A playn standing cupp of silver gilt, weing with the cover, the knopp and the devise, 
 xxx unces. A standing cupp of silver and gilt, chaced with half plompes, weying 
 with the cover, knopp and devise xx. unces and dimidium. A playn standing cupp 
 of silver gilt weying with cover and the knoppe and the devyse xxvij. unces and an 
 half. A standyng cuppe of silver and gilt, weyng with the cover, the knoppe and 
 the devyse xxvj. unces. A saltseler of sylver and gilte, weying with the cover, the 
 knoppe and the devyse xxiij unces. A saltseler of sylver and gilt, without a cover, 
 weying xxij. unces and an halfe. A litill saltseler or sylver and gilt, weying with the 
 cover and the knoppe and the devyse xv. unces and an half. A litell saltseler or 
 sylver and gilt, without the cover, weying viij. unces and an halfe. And vij. holies 
 of sylver, parcelles gilt, weying iiij. . . . xviij. unces. And ij. peces of silver with a 
 cover weying xlviij. unces. A dozen and a half of silver sponys weying xxiij. unces, 
 and iij. sponys of silver and gilt weying iij. unces and iij. quartrons, and a long 
 spone of sylver and gilt for ginger, weying j. unce and iij. quartrons. Item, a 
 chafing disshe of sylver weying xxvj. unces. And ij. litell crewettes of sylver weying 
 viij. unces. A chalese of sylver and gilt with the paten, weying xj. unces. An haly 
 water stok of silver with the lid, handill, and spryngill, weying xij. unces. An 
 Agnus with a baleys, iij. saphires, iij. perlys with an image of Saint Anthony apon 
 it. And a tablet with the Salutacion of Our Lady, and the iij. Kingis of Collayn. 
 A bee with a grete pearl. A dyamond, an emerawde, iij. grete perlys hanging apon 
 the same. A nother bee with a grete perle with an emerawde and a saphire, weying 
 ij. unces iij. quarters. A pece of the Holy Crosse, crossewise made, bordured with 
 silver aboute; iij. brode girdilles, . . . etc. 
 
 As Elizabeth Browne was not apparently a person of great wealth, 
 this astonishing list must show the kind of possessions conventional 
 in her state of life, and it illustrates the comment of the Italian. 1 
 
 And every one who makes a tour in the island will soon become aware of this 
 great wealth, as will have been the case with your Magnificence, for there is no 
 innkeeper, however poor and humble he may be, who does not serve his table with 
 silver dishes and drinking cups; and no one, who has not in his house silver plate to 
 the amount of at least 100 sterling, which is equivalent to 500 golden crowns with 
 us, is considered by the English to be a person of any consequence. But above all 
 are their riches displayed in the church treasures. 
 
 Whereupon he gives an account of the shrine of St. Thomas at 
 Canterbury which reads like that of Aladdin's cave : 
 
 but every thing is left far behind by a ruby, not larger than a man's thumb-nail, 
 which is set to the right of the altar. The church is rather dark, and particularly 
 
 1 Italian Relation, ibid, 28.
 
 14 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 so where the shrine is placed, and when we went to see it the sun was nearly gone 
 down, and the weather was cloudy; yet I saw that ruby as well as if I had it in my 
 hand; they say that it was the gift of a king of France. 
 
 To us this suggests such an exhibition as that at the shrine of 
 San Carlo Borromeo at Milan, which may be regarded as a part 
 of the conservatism of the Roman Church. But today such 
 exhibitions are the exceptions, rather than the rule. Then the 
 whole life, political as well as religious, private as well as public, 
 was toned to that pitch of gorgeousness, and the modern reader 
 must imaginatively supply such a background to the literature. 
 Such display affected also every detail of the life. Each noble- 
 man kept his state and had scores of retainers living at his expense. 
 A condition, proper to feudal society, remained for Renaissance 
 ostentation. For the entire court the King set free table (bowge). 
 To quote again from the Italian Relation, 1 
 
 he does not change any of the ancient usages of England at his Court, keeping a 
 sumptuous table, as I had the opportunity of witnessing twice that your Mag- 
 nificence dined there, when I judged that there might be from 600 to 700 persons at 
 dinner. And his people say that his Majesty spends upon his table 14,000 sterling 
 annually, which is equal to 70,000 crowns. 
 
 In this respect the King was but the first in the Kingdom. All the 
 great nobles and ecclesiastics provided "sumptuous" fare for num- 
 bers that seem to us incredible. The manner of living of a great 
 noble is given us in the household book of the Duke of Bucking- 
 ham. For example, on Thursday, the sixth of January 1508, meals 
 were prepared for four hundred and fifty-nine persons. To feed 
 this number required 1137 loaves of bread, 66 quarts of wine, 1039 
 quarts of ale, 36 rounds of beef, 12 carcasses of mutton, 2 calves, 
 4 pigs, 1 dry ling, 2 salt cod, 2 hard fish, 1 salt sturgeon, 3 swans, 
 6 geese, 6 suckling pigs, 10 capons, 1 lamb, 2 peacocks, 2 herons, 
 22 rabbits, 18 chickens, 16 woodcock, 9 melards, 23 widgeons,18 
 teals, 20 snipes, 9 dozen of great birds, 6 dozen of little birds, 3 
 dozen larks, 9 quails from the store, half a fresh salmon, 1 fresh 
 cod, 4 dog fish, 2 tench, 7 little bremes, half a fresh congre, 21 little 
 roaches, 6 large fresh eels, 10 little whiting, 17 flounders, 100 lam- 
 preys, 3 sticks of little eel sowers, 3 plaice, 1 fresh. . . ,4000 eggs, 
 24 dishes of butter, 2 flaggons of. . . ,15 flaggons of milk, 3 flaggons 
 
 1 Ibid, 46.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 15 
 
 of cream, 2 flaggons of frumenty, 200 oysters, and herbs. Aside 
 from the quantity and the variety, the list is remarkable also for 
 the fact that, except for the last item "herbs", there are no vege- 
 tables. Englishmen were still in the carnivorous age. The manner 
 of preparation may be illustrated from the well-known Life of 
 Wolsey by Cavendish. 
 
 Ye must understand that my lord was not there, nor yet come, but they being 
 merry and pleasant with their fare, devising and wondering upon the subtleties. 
 Before the second course, my Lord Cardinal came in. ... Anon came up the 
 second course, with so many dishes, subtleties, and curious devices, which were 
 above a hundred in number, of so goodly proportion and costly, that I suppose the 
 Frenchmen never saw the like. The wonder was no less than it was worthy indeed. 
 There were castles with images in the same; Paul's church and steeple, in proportion 
 for the quantity as well counterfeited as the painter should have painted it upon a 
 cloth or wall. There were beasts, birds, fowls of divers kinds, and personages, most 
 lively made and counterfeit in dishes; some fighting as it were, with swords, some 
 with guns and crossbows, some vaulting and leaping; some dancing with ladies, 
 some in complete harness, jousting with spears, and with many more devices than 
 I am able with my wit (to) describe. Among all, one I noted: there was a chess- 
 board subtilely made of spiced plate, with men to the same; and for the good pro- 
 portion, because that Frenchmen be very expert in that play, my lord gave the 
 same to a gentleman of France, commanding that a case should be made for the 
 same in all haste, to preserve it from perishing in the conveyance thereof into his 
 country. . . . Then went cups merrily about, that many of the Frenchmen were 
 fain to be led to their beds . . . 
 
 The last survival of such culinary art is to be found in the orna- 
 ments for wedding-cakes, the little bride and groom under the 
 bell, which most of us have seen only through confectioners' 
 windows. It belongs to a past age, an age when the appeal was 
 made to the eye rather than to the palate, just as children are 
 delighted with ice-cream in fancy moulds. In general, in all this 
 emphasis upon externality during the Renaissance there is a 
 child-like quality. 
 
 Lack of restraint in the manner of life was symptomatic of the 
 internal change in the philosophy of the period. In reaction 
 against Semitic ideals taught by the Bible the moral code was 
 relaxed. Intellectually, vertu lost the meaning of virtue to become 
 synonymous with ability; emotionally, the bounds of decency 
 were overstepped in a worship of beauty. 1 In the first direction, 
 
 1 " Dieae wichtige Konsequenz besteht darin, as prinzipielle, also grundstUrzende 
 Umwalzungen im seitherigen Produkyionsmechanismus der Menschen unbedingt
 
 16 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 lying became a political accomplishment and assassination a 
 legitimate weapon. One of the keenest books of any age, II 
 Principe of Macchiavelli, has for hero the notorious Cesar Borgia 
 whose masterpiece of diplomacy was the murder of two hundred 
 of his opponents who were his guests at a banquet in Sinigaglia. 
 But Macchiavellianism was not peculiar to Macchiavelli; it 
 pervades the age. In the second direction, to gratify the lusts of 
 the flesh was considered admirable and done in the name of 
 Hellenism. For, while we have behind us centuries of criticism, 
 they accepted the whole without discrimination. Nor is this to 
 be wondered at. Ancient Greece and Rome presented a complex 
 ordered civilization beyond the conception of feudalism. The 
 descriptions of Athens at the time of Pericles, or Rome at the 
 time of Augustus, with broad portico-lined streets, seemed of the 
 very fabric of dreams to the 15th century dweller in muddy, un- 
 sanitary London, or Paris. To us with our stadiums seating 
 seventy thousand people there is nothing colossal about the 
 Coliseum; its interest is in its historical associations. To them 
 it was the work of supermen, the memorial of an age when life 
 was finer than any that they knew. Now there are certain 
 features of classic life, however much we may tacitly ignore them, 
 that unquestionably existed, for although Greek culture is rep- 
 resented by the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles and by 
 the statues of Phidias and Lysippus, the same culture in another 
 phase is given in the erotic writers and the vase-paintings. Nor 
 had the Renaissance sufficient perspective to differentiate. To 
 them the Priapeia, equally with the Aeneid, was the work of Vergil 
 and worthy of imitation, perhaps even more worthy of imitation 
 by persons of culture because it presented conceptions opposed 
 to the conventional ideas taught by the Church and held by the 
 common herd. Much of the Renaissance immorality is merely 
 an artistic pose. In proportion to the progress of humanism there 
 follows concomitantly a freedom of expression in literature and 
 in art, and Italy, the center of humanistic culture, was also the 
 center of pagan morality. There, a wide divergence from Christ- 
 ian ethics is exhibited in all classes of society. The unedifying 
 
 auch zu einem vollig neuen geistigcn Inhalt des Lebens, je nachdcm sogar, wenn 
 man, so sagen will, zu einer volligen Neugeburt der Idee ftihren mtissen." Edward 
 Fuchs, Sittengeschichte, Renaissance, 99.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 17 
 
 entries in Burckhardt's Diary show a state of affairs in the Vatican 
 scarcely suggestive of St. Peter. The measure of the Italian 
 prince is given by the lives of the Baglioni, the Sforzas, or the 
 D'Estes, and the novelle give us that of the citizen. All testimony 
 points to a general decline in the moral code. It is not that there 
 were sporadic outbursts, such as followed the Restoration in 
 England, or the Regency in France, or that there was any con- 
 sciousness of wrong-doing, or any sense of shame. When a 
 Duchess of Urbino allows herself to be painted nude, even by a 
 Titian, it must mean a conception of decency very different from 
 our own, or when Cardinal Bandello feels it fitting to introduce 
 exceedingly free tales by short prayers, or when the author of the 
 obscene Ragionamenti could expect to be made a prince of the 
 Church, a state of morality is posited in which the modern dis- 
 tinctions between right and wrong do not exist. 
 
 As humanism radiated from Italy to the northern nations, its 
 progress was marked by an increased appreciation of the beautiful 
 and a relaxation of morality. In France, the expedition of Charles 
 Vni in 1494, when the French court en masse promenaded the 
 length of Italy, introduced southern culture to the generality. 
 Actually dates mean little when used in connection with a great 
 movement. As early as 1478 the facetious tales in Latin of Poggio 
 and Valla were published at Paris, and continuously Italian 
 influence dribbled into France through Lyons. Yet, broadly 
 speaking, owing to the strong personality of Clement Marot and 
 the influence of his school, French literature does not become 
 Italianate before the publication of the Dejfense el Illustration 
 de la langue fran^aise in 1549. On the other hand Francis First's 
 patronage of Italian artists, such as Leonardo and Cellini for 
 example, and his love for Italian architecture, as at Fontainebleau, 
 are too well known to need comment. Almost equally well known 
 through Brant6me are the scandalous conditions at the Valois 
 courts. In France the general proposition holds. 
 
 In England the proposition does not hold for the first half of 
 the sixteenth century. Not until Nash and Shakespeare and 
 Marlowe do we find literature at all comparable in sensuousness 
 with the Italian. And, unless English prudery has suppressed 
 such work, it seems probable that then, as now, the Anglo-Saxon 
 was repelled rather than attracted by the artistic excesses of the
 
 18 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Latin nations. The movement was slow. Just as England had 
 no painters to compare with the great Italians, on the other hand 
 her literature had no analogies to the Italian capitoli or writers 
 of the type of Aretino. Even at the end of the century Nash feels 
 it necessary to excuse himself for his "lascivious rhymes," and 
 Gascoigne apologizes for the looseness of his poems, a looseness 
 largely imaginary and defended by foreign precedent. Humanism 
 in England for the first half of the century was on the side of 
 morality. Ascham protests violently against the introduction of 
 Italian culture and of "baudy" Italian books. An additional 
 reason for this attitude may be found in the character of the 
 protagonists of English humanism. To associate Sir Thomas 
 More, Cheke, Lilly, or Linacre with dissolute living is impossible. 
 The result is that humanism there became primarily intellectual 
 in character; for the first hah* of the century at least its freedom 
 was that of the mind only. 
 
 In freeing English humanism from the responsibility of the in- 
 troduction of refined vice, it must, however, be confessed that the 
 effect was largely negative. The spiritual uplift of the age of faith 
 had gone, and the contagion of European example produced a 
 low moral tone. The grossness of the age is illustrated in the letters 
 of Henry to Anne Boleyn. Skelton, a royal tutor, laureated by 
 three universities, and ordained priest, allows himself to use words 
 that today are to be found only in the slums and stews. Writers 
 use the unadorned substantive whose place in the language of 
 more polite peoples is taken by a suggestive paraphrase. They 
 call a spade a spade, partly because they know no other expression, 
 and partly because they see no objection to stating the fact. This 
 coarseness caught the attention of the Venetian traveller. 1 
 
 And altho their dispositions are somewhat licentious, I have never noticed any 
 one, either at court or amongst the lower orders, to be in love, ... I say this of the 
 men, for I understand it is quite the contrary with the women, who are very violent 
 in their passions. Howbeit the English keep a very jealous guard over their wives, 
 though any thing may be compensated in the end, by the power of money. 
 
 The general effect of humanism upon the English morals in the 
 sixteenth century was to make the age one of transition from a 
 coarseness in expression, which is brutal and repelling, to a refine- 
 ment, which, by concealing, is suggestive. 
 
 1 Italian Relation, ibid, 24.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 19 
 
 One phase of this almost animal attitude on the part of the 
 early Tudors deserves careful consideration by the student of lit- 
 erature, namely their ideas concerning the treatment of children 
 and then* attitude toward the marriage relation. These funda- 
 mental conceptions necessarily underlie all love poetry, such as the 
 sonnet sequences of Wyatt and of Surrey. Our belief in the im- 
 portance of the child and the sanctity of marriage causes us to 
 read into their words meanings that are not there. We are senti- 
 mental over the presence of the child in the home; they were not. 
 To illustrate from a familiar case, I think that it shocks the modern 
 reader that Lorenzo in eloping with Jessica should allow her to 
 rob Shy lock; the elopement is excused by the power of love "on 
 such a night", but what can excuse the theft of the jewels? To 
 the sixteenth century mind both the elopement and the theft were 
 on the same plane. If Lorenzo stole the daughter, why should he 
 stickle at taking what was of less value? The relation between the 
 parent and the child was sternly practical. Let the Italian con- 
 tinue. 1 
 
 The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested towards their children; 
 for after having kept them at home till they arrive at the age of 7 or 9 years at the 
 utmost, they put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of 
 other people, binding them generally for another 7 or 9 years. And these are called 
 apprentices, and during that time they perform all the most menial offices; and few 
 are born who are exempted from this fate, for every one, however rich he may be, 
 sends away his children into the houses of others, whilst he, in return, receives those 
 of strangers into his own. And on inquiring their reason for this severity, they 
 answered that they did it in order that their children might learn better manners. 
 But I, for my part, believe that they do it because they like to enjoy all their com- 
 forts themselves, and that they are better served by strangers than they would be 
 by their own children. Besides which the English being great epicures, and very 
 avaricious by nature, indulge in the most delicate fare themselves and give their 
 household the coarsest bread, and beer, and cold meat baked on Sunday for the 
 week, which, however, they allow them in great abundance. That if they had their 
 own children at home, they would be obliged to give them the same food they made 
 use of for themselves. That if the English sent their children away from home to 
 learn virtue and good manners, and took them back again when their apprenticeship 
 was over, they might, perhaps, be excused; but they never return, for the girls are 
 settled by their patrons, and the boys make the best marriages they can, and, 
 assisted by their patrons, not by their fathers, they also open a house and strive 
 diligently by this means to make some fortune for themselves; whence it proceeds 
 
 1 Italian Relation, ibid, 24. On this whole subject compare The Age of Erasrmu, 
 P. S. Allen, Oxford, 1914.
 
 20 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 that, having no hope of their paternal inheritance, they all become so greedy of 
 gain that they feel no shame in asking, almost "for the love of God," for the smallest 
 sums of money; and to this it can be attributed, that there is no injury that can be 
 committed against the lower orders of the English, that may not be atoned for by 
 money. 
 
 Such is the way the English "home" of the sixteenth century 
 appeared to an intelligent Italian. Naturally the account must 
 be taken with many grains of salt. Used to the communal family 
 life of Italy, where all the generations and their families live under 
 one roof, he is too ready to see the evils of another system and to 
 assign wrong motives to those practicing it. Nevertheless the 
 system existed and brought with it certain consequences. The 
 relation between the parent and the child was necessarily formal. 
 One of the best illustrations is given in Ascham's report of the 
 conversation of Lady Jane Grey. As she was the niece of the King 
 and a possible heir to the throne, the presumption is that she would 
 be treated with special consideration. Ascham is here arguing 
 that the teacher should use persuasion rather than force. The 
 value of the following account is, therefore, that no criticism 
 against the parents is implied ; their attitude is assumed to be the 
 normal one of the age. 1 
 
 One of the greatest benefits that ever God gave me, is, that he sent me so sharp 
 and severe parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either 
 of father or mother; whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be 
 merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else; I must do it, as it 
 were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the 
 world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently some- 
 times with pinches, nips, bobs, and other ways (which I will not name for the honour 
 I bear them) so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time 
 come that I must go to Mr. Elmer. . . . 
 
 The gentleness of the teacher obviously lies in favorable contrast 
 with parental discipline. Opposed to this picture is that given us 
 by Erasmus of the family life of Sir Thomas More, but the con- 
 temporary celebrity of the latter shows that the former was more 
 nearly the rule. Children were regarded as property and, as prop- 
 erty, negotiable. Marriages were bought and sold. Of this there 
 is abundant testimony. The Paston Letters, of the latter half of 
 
 1 The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, Rev. Dr. Giles, iv, 118.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 21 
 
 the fifteenth century, have preserved Stephen Scrope's complaint 
 of his guardian: l 
 
 He bought me and sold me as a beast, against all right and law, to mine hurt 
 more than 1000 marks. 
 
 Yet the same man, with a changed point of view, tells his corre- 
 spondent that 2 
 
 For very need I was fain to sell a little daughter I have for much less than I 
 should have done by possibility. 
 
 The same conditions prevailed in the sixteenth century. In this 
 spirit the Duke of Norfolk wrote Wolsey: 3 
 
 I beseech Your Grace to be a gode Lord unto me concernyng the office of the 
 late lord Mounteagle and to move the King's Grace that for my mony paying, as 
 another wold, I myght have the young man to marry one of my doghters. I think 
 his londe shal be little above m le marks a yere, with wich I wold be well contented, 
 not myndyng to marry my doughters no hier. 
 
 With marriage considered in this frankly commercial spirit, senti- 
 ment evaporates. The result, as was noted at the time, was not 
 happy. In his Dialogue Starkey represents Pole as saying: 4 
 
 Among the wych, as I remembyr, was ther notyd the faute of bryngyng vp of the 
 nobylyte, wych, for the most parte, are nuryschyd wyt (h) out cure, bothe of theyr 
 parentys being alyfe, and much were of them in whose ward commynly they dow 
 fal aftur theyr deth; the wych care for nothyng but only to spoyle theyr pupyllys 
 and wardys, or els to mary them aftur theyr plesure, wherby the true loue of matry- 
 mony was and ys vtturly taken away and destroyd; to the wych, as euery man 
 knowyth, succede infynyte myserys and mysordurys of lyfe. 
 
 The correctness of Cardinal Pole's deduction could be proved by 
 citing a number of examples of unhappy marriages, among which 
 would be listed that of his Grace of Norfolk himself. It is this atti- 
 tude that makes Henry VIII 's marital experiences comprehensi- 
 ble. Thomas, his apologist, explains simply : 5 
 
 Now, as touching the King's so many wives, whom he chopped and changed at his 
 pleasure (as you say), the truth is, that he hath had a great many wives, and with 
 some of them hath had as ill-luck as any other poor man. 
 
 1 Potion Letters, ed. Gairdner, Intro, clxxv. 
 1 ////'/., Intro, clxxvi. 
 
 * Norfolk to Wolsey, 15 April, 1523. . . . Record Office, Scottish State Paperi, 
 ii. no. 7. 
 
 4 Starkey's Dialogue between Lupset and Pole, ed. Brewer, 186. 
 
 * The Pilgrim, by William Thomas, ed. Froude, 55.
 
 22 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 In any case, the situation is only slightly more scandalous than 
 his father's negotiations for a second wife. Marriage then was 
 regarded, not from the point of view of the contracting parties, 
 but from the standpoint of the family. When a man wished other- 
 wise, the easy morality of the sixteenth century allowed unsancti- 
 fied attachments, since from feudal times the Renaissance had 
 inherited a difference in meaning between the words "lover" and 
 "husband". As this condition was inherited from feudal times, it 
 is illogical to posit it as a result of humanism. On the other hand, 
 the spread of classic culture not only did not remedy the evil, it 
 served to intensify it. In ancient Greece the wife is not the one 
 celebrated in poetry and romance, and while republican Rome has 
 her Cornelias, the luxury of the later city was the attraction for 
 the men of the Renaissance. And a great gain to civilization by 
 the introduction of Christianity, namely the recognition of the 
 rights of the woman and the child, in the sixteenth century had 
 been gravely impaired. To summarize, then, the total effect upon 
 Renaissance England of the working of the classic spirit is diffi- 
 cult. In one respect, it increased the joy of living, but, in another, 
 it did so at the expense of spiritual growth. Humanism, in the 
 minds of such men as Ascham, certainly was associated with a 
 sense of morality almost Puritanical, and yet the very works in 
 which they advocate it are filled with denunciations of its logical 
 results in Italy. These logical results, moreover, the freedom in 
 thought and in life, acting in varying ways, produced the ancestors 
 of the Puritans. Tyndale, Martin Marprelate, Cromwell, there 
 is a kinship between them, and humanism becomes a factor in the 
 English Reformation. 
 
 This revival of an interest in classic literatures by stimulating 
 man's intellect stimulated also an interest in the natural world 
 about him. A mind brought into contact with the guesses at 
 truth by the ancient philosophers refused to be satisfied with dog- 
 matic utterances, however authoritative. Modern science was 
 born, and with it the struggle between inspirational and inferential 
 teaching, which is still with us. The conflict between Galileo and 
 the Church, between science and faith, precedes chronologically 
 the debate between Huxley and Gladstone by centuries, but the 
 principle involved is the same. Shall man accept the conclusions 
 of his reason founded upon scientific data when such conclusions
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 23 
 
 are in opposition to the explanations of the same phenonoma 
 given by religious doctrine? The particular question at issue in 
 the sixteenth century was not the cosmogony of Genesis but the 
 substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astron- 
 omy. Like other great ideas it advanced slowly. It appears in a 
 rudimentary form in the speculations of the "Pythagoreans" at 
 the end of the fifteenth century. Copernicus, returning from 
 Italy, enunciated it in 1530, and Galileo and Kepler popularized 
 it nearly a century later. During the period with which we deal it 
 was a subtile, unsettling force, destructive rather than construc- 
 tive, and its effect appears rather in the mental attitude assumed to- 
 ward things in general. To understand why the abstruse question 
 of the relation of the sun to the earth should have had such momen- 
 tous consequences it must be remembered what the Ptolemaic 
 system implied. According to the medieval interpretation of this, 
 the earth was a flat plain covered by a series of transparent globes 
 between which the planets moved with the "music of the spheres". 
 Looking down from above were God and the saints. In the mapp- 
 amondo in the Campo Santo at Pisa, God is represented as a gi- 
 gantic figure holding this mechanism. Two deductions followed this 
 conception, each flattering to man's sense of his own importance. 
 The first was the belief in the immediate nearness of the super- 
 natural, not the telepathic spiritual presence of the Divine, but 
 a corporeal reality that in the Pisan Campo Santo, or in Orcagna's 
 painting in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, or in Giotto's fresco 
 in the Arena Chapel at Padua, is terrible in its grotesqueness. The 
 life of man was a battle between the powers of light and the powers 
 of darkness, a battle in which the soul played a somewhat pas- 
 sive part. On one side actual tangible devils were awaiting their 
 opportunity; on the other were ranged the Virgin and the saints. 
 In any and all contingencies the repentant sinner could rely upon 
 their aid. 
 
 Miracles were of common occurrence and, according to report, 
 upon them chiefly depended the repentant scallawag. Many a 
 thief has been spared, many a peril averted, by timely prayers 
 to the saints. In fact it was well known that each saint, and even 
 each madonna, had peculiar prerogatives, and an acute per- 
 ception of the difference of attributes rendered prayer more 
 efficacious. And this point of view was universal; it was approved
 
 4 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 by the Church and recognized by the State; it was held by the 
 monarch, the scholar, the merchant, the priest; it had been tested 
 by thousands; it was so. To a world of such conceptions, imag- 
 ine the mental upheaval caused by the Copernican theory where 
 the earth is but a restless midge hurtling through space, man an 
 atom in the scheme of things, and God withdrawn beyond the 
 silent voids. No wonder that both Church and State opposed 
 such a doctrine, that Copernicus' books were destroyed, that 
 Galileo was forced to recant, and that Bruno was burned, or that 
 a faint apprehension of its consequences should have brought the 
 whole question of religion to the fore. It was all embracing in its 
 scope and both the mystic and the atheist were equally affected. 
 If the first deduction were important in changing man's concep- 
 tion of his relation to God, the second was no less so in changing 
 his relation to nature. By a literal interpretation of the covenant 
 with Noah, the Middle Ages believed man to be the most important 
 factor in the universe. All things were created for his use, existed 
 for him, and were to be studied in regard to him. As the earth 
 had been given him for his habitation, the assumption was made 
 that all natural phenomena were to be explained in terms of human 
 benefit, and, if that benefit was not obvious, it was because his 
 purblind eyes could not see God's hidden purpose. The meaning 
 was there if only the book of nature could be read. When, for 
 example, a comet appeared, the desire was not to investigate its 
 nature and the law by which it is governed, but to determine its 
 significance, and, as clearly so striking a phenomenon would not 
 be employed upon trifles, its appearance portended battle, murder, 
 or sudden death. If once the premises upon which they argued 
 be accepted, their conclusions are logical; there is nothing absurd 
 in astrology or alchemy. To us, with our knowledge based upon 
 other hypotheses, the science of the Middle Ages seems ridiculous 
 and we make the error of thinking of its professors as simple and 
 child-like. We complacently laugh at an age that could accept 
 such extravagant opinions, and the vast tomes of the schoolmen 
 are read in search of the bizarre, the great acumen and acuteness 
 displayed in the reasoning quite forgotten. But so long as the 
 deductive method only was employed, not in spite of, but because 
 of, the acuteness of the reasoning, if a man starts in the wrong 
 direction, the farther he goes the farther he goes astray little
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 25 
 
 progress was possible in science. The pagan Arab it was that 
 studied nature, while Christian Europe was lost in futile specula- 
 tions. 
 
 That nature obeys her own laws, quite independent of man's 
 convenience, is a modern conception and one which influences to 
 the last detail the daily life of each of us. Natural law moves on, 
 crushing our protesting impotence, and we have learned that 
 happiness lies in our adjusting ourselves to powers that we may 
 direct but cannot control. The Middle Ages had not learned 
 this. Their disdain of nature permitted habits of life and living 
 conditions clearly unsanitary. Today the back scese of old Naples 
 give a faint appreciation of the actuality of Tudor London. 
 Through the middle of narrow unpaved streets, one of More's 
 Utopian dreams was of streets twenty feet in width ran, or 
 stagnated, the accumulated garbage, offal, and sewage of the in- 
 habitants. The unhappy traveller fought for precedence with 
 swine that acted as scavengers. Overhead hovered flocks of 
 kites * "which are so tame, that they often take out of the hands 
 of little children, the bread smeared with butter, in the Flemish 
 fashion, given to them by their mothers." Within the half- 
 timbered houses matters were no better. 2 
 
 First of all, Englishmen never consider the aspect of their doors or windows; 
 next, their chambers are built in such a way as to admit of no ventilation. Then a 
 great part of the walls of the house is occupied with glass casements, which admit 
 light, but exclude the air, and yet they let in the draft through holes and corners, 
 which is often pestilential and stagnates there. The floors are in general laid with 
 white clay, and are covered with rushes, occasionally removed, but so imperfectly 
 that the bottom layer is left undisturbed, sometimes for twenty years, harbouring 
 expectorations, vomitings, the leakage of dogs and men, ale-droppings, scraps of 
 fish, and other abominations not fit to be mentioned. Whenever the weather 
 changes, a vapour is exhaled, which I consider very detrimental to health. . . . 
 More moderation in diet, and especially in the use of salt meats, might be of service; 
 more particularly were public aediles appointed to see the streets cleaned from mud 
 and urine, and the suburbs kept in better order. 
 
 That under such sanitation as Erasmus has here described, the 
 plague should be a frequent and terrible visitor is not surprising, 
 
 1 Italian Relation, ibid., 11. 
 
 1 Erasmus to John (?) Francis, Wolsey's physician, translated by Brewer, Reign 
 qf Uenry VIII. i. 289.
 
 26 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 but the particular epidemic which called forth his strictures was 
 the sudor Anglicus, or Sweating Sickness. Dr. Caius, a Welsh 
 physician, had studied it. 1 
 
 In the year of our Lord, 1485, shortly after the seventh day of August, at which 
 time King Henry VII. arrived at Milford, in Wales, out of France, and in the first 
 year of his reign, there chanced a disease among the people, lasting the rest of that 
 month and all September, which for the sudden sharpness and unwonted cruelness 
 passed the pestilence. For this commonly giveth in four, often seven, sometime 
 nine, sometime eleven, and sometime fourteen days, respite to whom it vexeth. 
 But that immediately killed some in opening their windows, some in playing with 
 children in their street doors; some in one hour, many in two, it destroyed; and, at 
 the longest, to them that merrily dined it gave a sorrowful supper. As it found 
 them, so it took them: some in sleep, some in wake, some in mirth, some in care, 
 some fasting and some full, some busy and some idle; and in one house sometime 
 three, sometime five, sometime more, sometime all; of the which, if the hah* in every 
 town escaped, it was thought great favour. This disease, because it most did stand 
 in sweating from the beginning until the ending, was called The Sweating Sickness; 
 and because it first began in England, it was named in other countries " The English 
 Sweat." 
 
 This pestilence appeared again in 1506, 1517, 1528(?) and 1551 
 and it has been calculated that over thirty thousand persons died 
 of it during the five visitations. Precautions seemed unless. Du 
 Bellay, the French Ambassador, writes: 2 
 
 This sweat, which has made its appearance within these four days, is a most 
 perilous disease. One has a little pain in the head and heart, suddenly a sweat 
 breaks out, and a doctor is useless; for whether you wrap yourself up much or 
 little, in four hours, sometimes in two or three, you are dispatched without lan- 
 guishing, as in those troublesome fevers. However, only about two thousand have 
 caught it in London. Yesterday going to swear the truce, we saw them as thick as 
 flies rushing from the streets and shops into their houses to take the sweat, whenever 
 they felt ill. I found the Ambassador of Milan leaving his lodgings in great haste 
 because two or three had been suddenly attacked. ... In London, I assure you, 
 the priests have a better time of it than the doctors, except that the latter do not 
 help to bury. If the thing goes on corn will soon be cheap. It is twelve years since 
 there was such a visitation, when there died ten or twelve thousand persons in ten or 
 twelve days, but it was not so bad as this has been. The Legate (Wolsey) had come 
 for the term (to Westminster), but immediately bridled his horses again, and there 
 will be no term. 
 
 1 Stories from State Papers, A. C. Ewald, i, 140. 
 1 Reign of Henry VIII, ibid., ii, 271.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 27 
 
 A few days later he writes: 1 
 
 The King keeps moving about for fear of the plague. Many of his people have 
 died of it in three or four hours. ... Of 40,000 attacked in London only 2,000 are 
 dead, but if a man only put his hand out of bed during twenty-four hours it becomes 
 stiff as a pane of glass. 
 
 The panic of both Cardinal and King was not due to unfounded 
 fear, as the former himself had been attacked four separate times 
 and among the immediate attendants of the latter, Bryan Tuke, 
 his Secretary suffered, and Sir William Compton, a favorite 
 courtier, and William Gary, the husband of Mary Boleyn, both 
 died. Even Anne Boleyn herself was attacked. The King made 
 his will and took the sacraments to be prepared for sudden death. 
 The quickness of the disease and its fatality are illustrated in the 
 case of Ammonius, the Latin Secretary and friend of Erasmus. 
 He had arranged at dinner with a friend to ride to Merton the 
 following day to escape the infection; early next morning a mes- 
 senger arrived to tell the friend that Ammonius had died in eight 
 hours. To combat the evil medical science had receipts of which 
 the three following are typical. 
 
 Take three large spoonfuls of water of dragons, and a quarter of a spoonful of the 
 treacle of Gean, and hah* a nutshellfull of unicorn's horn scraped small, and a 
 quarter of a spoonful of fine good powder of maces, and make all that same hot, 
 and so let the patient drink it, and keep him well, neither over hot nor over cold, but 
 whole in his arms and feet, and let him keep him by taking clothes off him by 
 little and little, till he be dried up, and let him use wholesome meats, and by the 
 grace of God he shall not perish. Probatum est of my Lord Darcy and SO persons 
 in his house all in peril. 
 
 A proved medicine against the pestilence, called the philosopher's egg. Take 
 first an egg and break an hole in one end thereof, and do out the white from the 
 yolk as clean as you can; then take whole saffron and fill the shell therewith by the 
 yolk, then close it at both ends with two half egg shells; then rake it in the embers 
 till it be so hard that you may stamp it to fine powder hi a mortar, shell and all; 
 then take as much white mustard seed as the weight of the egg and the saffron is 
 and grind it as small as meal; then tuke the 4th part of an ox. of a dittony root, and 
 as much of turmontell and of crownutes one dram; stamp this three sundry times 
 very fine in a mortar, and then mix them three well together; after take as a thing 
 most needful the root of angelica and pimpernel, of each one drachm, and make 
 them to powder and mix with the rest; then compound herewith 4 or 5 grans a 
 quantity of unicorn's horn if it be possible to be gotten, and take so much weight 
 
 1 Reign of Henry VIII, Brewer, App. i.
 
 28 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 as all these powders come to of fine treacle, and stamp the same with the powders in 
 a mortar, till they be all mixed and hang to the pestle, and then it is perfectly made; 
 put this electuary in glass boxes, and you may keep it 20 or 30 years; the longer 
 the better. 
 
 Another very true medicine. For to say every day at seven parts of your body, 
 7 paternosters, and 7 Ave Marias, with 1 credo at the last. Ye shal begyn at the 
 ryght syde, under the ryght ere, saying the "paternoster qui es in coelis sanc- 
 tificetur nomen tuum," with a cross made there with your thumb, and so say the 
 paternoster full complete, and 1 Ave Maria, and then under the left ear, and then 
 under the left armhole, and then under the left thigh (?) hole, and then the last at 
 the heart, with 1 paternoster, Ave Maria, with 1 credo; and these thus said daily, 
 with the grace of God is there no manner drede hym. Quod pro certo probatum est 
 cotidie. 
 
 With remedies like these, which seem about equally good, the 
 terror inspired by the Sweating Sickness may well be imagined. 
 And this was not the only terror; the Black Death l was a re- 
 current visitor in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, while 
 fevers, which are today differentiated and fought individually, 
 then as a single disease exacted their toll. Death was near. 
 Whether the foreground in the literature be fantastic, gorgeous, 
 or joyous, the modern reader must remember that the background 
 was of somber black. Beneath the light vibrant laugh and the 
 staccato tinkle of the lute, he must hear the dull tolling of the 
 sepulchral bell. 
 
 The effect of these general conditions was to vulgarize and to 
 cheapen death. It was so common that it lost its punitive effect. 
 
 1 The "plague" must not be confused with the epidemic of syphilis which raged 
 during the closing years of the fifteenth century. The statement is often made that 
 it was then introduced into Europe by the companions of Columbus. Although 
 without question it was regarded by the physicians of that time as a new disease, 
 the theory of the Columban origin must be received with great caution. The 
 question is at present being hotly debated. Dr. Ivan Bloch of Vienna argues 
 in favor of the theory on the ground that no pre-Columban bones have been found 
 with lesions. The case for the negative is stated by Dr. J. K. Proksch (Geschichte 
 de Geschlechtskrankheiten, Handbuch der Geschlecktskrankheiten, Wien und Leipzig, 
 1910, I Band, 48-49): "dagegen ist es aus sehr vielen, schon hundertmal darge- 
 legten Griinden wissenschaftlich absolut unmSglich, diesen drei viel zu spat gekom- 
 menen und sonst auch ganz unverlasslichen Zeugen dafilr die endgiiltige Ent- 
 scheidung zu Uberlassen, dass die Syphilis vor der ersten Riickkehr des Kolumbus 
 aus Amerika (1493) in Europa nicht existiert hat." When doctors disagree, it 
 behooves the layman to be silent. I owe these references to the kindness of Dr. 
 John E. Lane.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 29 
 
 Of what deterrent value was it merely to kill a man today when 
 probably he would die tomorrow naturally? Thus arose the 
 horrible features of the tortures, of the quarterings, and of the 
 public executions. When capital punishment was the sentence 
 for petty theft, the imagination was called upon for weird 
 horrors when a real crime had been committed. According to 
 Holinshed, twenty-two thousand persons were executed for theft 
 during the reign of Henry VIII and it was the economic loss to 
 the state by this practice that More lamented in the Utopia. 
 Moreover as during the fifteenth century there had been a con- 
 tinual shifting of political parties, and as each party when success- 
 ful uniformly condemned the defeated, few families indeed es- 
 caped the sentence. At the accession of Henry VII many of the 
 persons to compose parliament, including the King himself, were 
 under sentence of outlawry, and the difficulty was resolved by 
 the judges by the declaration that all under sentence should take 
 seat only after the sentence had been revoked, except the King 
 "by reason of the fact that he has taken upon him the supreme 
 authority, and is king. " The fatality of the age may be shown 
 by enumerating the tragedies of the brilliant company assembled 
 for the christening of the future Queen Elizabeth. Henry Bour- 
 chier, Earl of Essex, who carried the bason, was killed by a fall 
 from his horse; Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter and Earl 
 of Devonshire, who carried the wax, was beheaded; Henry Grey, 
 Duke of Suffolk and third Marquis of Dorset, who carried the 
 salt, was beheaded; the mother, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded; the 
 godfather, Archbishop Cranmer, was burned at the stake; in the 
 company were Baron Hussey and Lord Rocheford, who were both 
 beheaded, Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, who lived to see 
 both his son and his daughter beheaded, and Lord Darcy whose 
 son-in-law was hanged. It was a grim age, the days of bluff King 
 Hal! 
 
 The first rift in this darkness is the Copernican doctrine, in 
 that there was conceived the existence of law apart from super- 
 natural agency or human interest. After the idea had been as- 
 similated, the succeeding steps through the centuries seem inevit- 
 able. Scientific knowledge, based upon experiments, necessarily 
 accumulated; whereas, so long as it was held that logical deduction 
 1 Year Book 1, Henry VII, fol 4b.
 
 30 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 from premises inspired directly by God was the only procedure, 
 the energy of the Middle Ages had been misdirected. It is for 
 this reason that the answer to an apparently abstruse question 
 such as is that of the relation of the earth to the sun forms one of 
 the mental cleavings between the medieval and the modern man. 
 
 Contemporaneously with these two vast changes in the mental 
 outlook, produced by the revived interest in classic lite and thought 
 and produced by the new scientific point of view, appeared the 
 third great factor that was to revolutionize the world, namely the 
 extension of geographic knowledge. The world of classic civiliza- 
 tion, which the Middle Ages had inherited, centered around the 
 Mediterranean Sea. To the north the Empire had extended to 
 the North Sea and England; to the south it was bounded by the 
 Sahara. Beyond these limits was a region of casual myth; there 
 was little to stir even curiosity. To the west lay the Mare Tene- 
 brosnm, concerning the bounds of which it was futile to speculate; 
 their attitude towards the ocean was similar to ours in regard to 
 stellar space, an inability to conceive either an end or an absence 
 of end, and in the meantime an increased interest in matters that 
 we can know. The result was that Europe was backed against the 
 Atlantic and faced the east from whence came her perils. From 
 the earliest times the history of Europe has consisted in resisting 
 invasions from Asia. Greece had the Persian and Rome had the 
 Parthian. With the fall of the Empire a succession of barbarian 
 tribes overran Europe. To the Middle Ages the conflict between 
 the Cross and the Crescent was still reality without romance. It 
 was not until 1492 that the JVioors were driven from Granada, and 
 not until 1683 that the tide was finally turned by the victory of 
 Jan Sobieski under the walls of Vienna. During the whole of the 
 Renaissance the Great Turk was an ever-present menace. How- 
 ever delightful danger may be in retrospect, rarely is one suffi- 
 ciently philosophic to enjoy the present peril, and Europe, "facing 
 mornward still", had no leisure to enjoy the thrill. With the pass- 
 ing of the ages of faith, the unification given by that faith had 
 gone, and a Renaissance picture is that of Pius II dying on the 
 mole at Ancona after he had summoned all Christendom for a 
 final crusade against the Turk, and waited in vain! 
 
 If Europe's interest in Asia was due partly to fear, it was also 
 due partly to love of gain. There were three great trade routes
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 31 
 
 from Europe to the far east; the northern, via the Caspian Sea, 
 the Oxus, to the Indus; the middle, through Syria, down the 
 Euphrates to the Persian Gulf; and the southern, via the Red Sea. 
 By the rise of the Saracen Empire in the seventh and eighth cen- 
 turies the southern and middle of these routes had passed into the 
 control of the Arabs. The possession of the sole remaining route 
 explains the commercial prosperity first of Constantinople, and 
 later of Venice. The stately palaces on the Grand Canal rose from 
 the profits of the trade, since from the thirteenth century Venice 
 was the natural port of the products of the east. Venetian galleys 
 carried indigo, incense, gumarabic, aloes, myrrh, lake, nutmegs, 
 cloves, cardamums, and other spices, ginger, camphor, rice, mus- 
 lins, silk stuffs, almonds, wax, cubebs, oil, malmsey, sugar, cur- 
 rants, honey, pigments, vitriol, rock alum, etc. etc. to all parts of 
 western Europe. As there was no refrigeration, condiments were 
 used in cooking to an amount unapproached in modern times 
 and all spices came from the Orient. In 1453, however, the last 
 route for this commerce was closed to Europe by the capture of 
 Constantinople by the Turks, and Asia was apparently lost. Its 
 glories as told by the occasional traveller, such as Marco Polo, or 
 by the occasional missionary, such as Friar Odoric, took on the 
 lustre of romance. The travels of "Sir John Mandeville" and the 
 Epistle of Prester John were accepted at their face value. The 
 grossly fictitious mingled with the actual because men had lost 
 the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction, and the whole 
 subject shone with the light that is the peculiar property of things 
 that are lost. Even now Kubla Khan is a king in dreams ! 
 
 During the last half of the fifteenth century Europeans were 
 bent upon recovering their lost inheritance. Although the eastern 
 routes were closed to them, there yet remained the ocean at their 
 back. Already Prince Henry of Portugal had been sending his 
 ships farther and farther down the African coast. Cape Verde 
 was passed in 1445; in 1471 the equator was crossed; the mouth 
 of the Congo was found in 1484; and three years later the Cape of 
 Good Hope received its name. At the close of the century, after 
 having triumphantly circumnavigated Africa, Vasco da Gama re- 
 turned with * " nutmegs and cloves, pepper and ginger, rubies and 
 emeralds, damask robes with satin linings, bronze chairs with 
 1 Prince Henry the Navigator, Major, 398-401.
 
 32 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 cushions, trumpets of carved ivory, a sunshade of crimson satin, a 
 sword in a silver scabbard, etc." Europe was again in contact with 
 the East. 
 
 While the Portuguese were hunting for the eastern passage 
 around Africa, the possibility of reaching Asia by sailing directly 
 west had also been suggested. Before 1474 Toscanelli, a Floren- 
 tine astronomer, had sent Columbus a map showing this direct 
 route. Later, in reply to Columbus, he adds: * 
 
 I am very much pleased to see that I have been well understood, and that the 
 voyage has become not only possible but certain, fraught with honour as it must be, 
 and inestimable gain, and most lofty fame among all Christian people. You cannot 
 take in all that it means except by actual experience, or without such copious and 
 accurate information as I have had from eminent and learned men who have come 
 from those places to the Roman Court, and from merchants who have traded a long 
 time in those parts, persons whose word is to be believed (persone di grande au- 
 toritil). When that voyage shall be accomplished, it will be a voyage to powerful 
 kingdoms, and to cities and provinces most wealthy and noble, abounding in all 
 sorts of things most desired by us; I mean, with all kinds of spices and jewels in 
 great abundance. It will also be advantageous for those kings and princes who 
 are eager to have dealings and make alliances with the Christians of our countries, 
 and to learn from the erudite men of these parts, as well in religion as in all other 
 branches of knowledge. 
 
 The interest in this well-known passage lies in the number of 
 motives suggested for the undertaking. To discover the Indies 
 would appeal equally to the merchant, to the scholar, and to the 
 statesman. Although indicated rather than mentioned in the 
 letter, there was another strong appeal, the desire to spread the 
 Christian religion. Practically, then, the interest not only of all 
 that wrote books but also of all that bought books was excited by 
 this western experiment. 
 
 In literature the new conception also made its appearance. In 
 the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, the demon Astarotte informs 
 Rinaldo that beyond the Pillars of Hercules in the other hemis- 
 phere are cities, and castles, and government. As the passage was 
 written in 1488, four years before the voyage of Columbus, at the 
 Florentine court the possibility of making such a trip was a matter 
 of common speculation. This does not, of course, detract from the 
 splendor of Columbus' achievement; it merely shows that in his 
 case, as in that of Copernicus, the conception did not spring Min- 
 
 1 Translated by Fiske: Discovery of America, i, 361-362.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 33 
 
 erva-like from his single brain, but was the offspring of many 
 minds. 
 
 It must be remembered, however, in discussing the effect upon 
 literature of the discovery of America, that it was a long time be- 
 fore it was realized that it was a new world that had been dis- 
 covered. At first the belief was that it was the coast of Asia, and 
 later that the American continent was only an island obstructing 
 the route. The problem was how to pass around it. Accordingly, 
 the interest in the discovery was at first little more than curiosity. 
 In January, 1502, as we are told in the London Chronicle, three 
 men were brought to England "oute of an Hand founde by mer- 
 chaunts of Bristoll farre beyong Ireland, the which were clothed 
 in Beeste skynnes and ate raw flessh, and were in their demeanour 
 as Beests". In 1508 Barclay, adapting Locher's Latin version of 
 Brandt's German poem, concludes that it is all folly. 1 
 
 For nowe of late hath large londe and grounde 
 Ben founde by maryners and crafty gouernoura 
 The whiche londes were neuer knowen nor founde 
 Byfore our tyme by our predecessours 
 And here after shall by our successours 
 Parchaunce mo be founde, wherein men dwell 
 Of whome we neuer before this same harde tell 
 
 Ferdynandus that late was kynge of spayne 
 
 Of londe and people hath founde plenty and store 
 
 Of whome the bydynge to us was vncertayne 
 
 No christen man of them harde tell before 
 
 Thus is it foly to tende unto the lore 
 
 And vnsure science of vayne geometry 
 
 Syns none can knowe all the worlde perfytely. 
 
 To many people living in 1500 the discovery of the American 
 continent produced the same reaction as did the discovery of 
 the North Pole to many people living in the twentieth century. 
 There was the thrill of adventure and of achievement, coupled 
 with the same doubts of utility. But as voyage followed voyage, 
 as the coast line became more clearly marked and as colonies 
 began to be settled, the wonder of the wideness of the world was 
 brought home to them. Tales of Aztecs and Incas, marvellous 
 in very truth and still more marvellous in the stories told by the 
 
 1 Ship of Fools, Jamieson, 1874. ii, 20.
 
 34 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 soldiers of Cortez and Pizarro, spread over Europe. The effect 
 of these travellers' tales was to stimulate the imagination. The 
 real and the fabulous became confused. To the excited sailor 
 a manatee upright hi the sea nursing its young seemed a mermaid; 
 classic myth has nothing more monstrous than the giant octopus; 
 and Prester John himself is no more improbable than Montezuma. 
 Our geography is defined and exact, and illustrated with photo- 
 graphs; theirs had all the fascination of mystery, the intoxication 
 of danger, and the lure of romance. Yet, owing to the fact that 
 the significance of the discovery was not appreciated for a long 
 time, the effect upon the imagination was of gradual growth, and 
 for the first hah* of the sixteenth century it is rather a general than 
 a specific cause of literary inspiration. Not until the generation 
 of Spenser and Shakespeare and Raleigh is it possible to cite 
 concrete illustrations of its working. To them all truth seemed 
 unconfined and the human mind free to wander at will. The line 
 dividing fact from fancy became almost obliterated. As Spenser 
 playfully argues, Faeryland is no more unreal than America. 1 
 
 Right well I wote most mighty Soueraine, 
 That all this famous antique history, 
 Of some th' abundance of an idle braine 
 Will iudged be, and painted forgery, 
 Rather then matter of iust memory, 
 Sith none, that breatheth liuing aire, does know, 
 Where is that happy land of Faery, 
 Which I so much do vaunt, yet no where show, 
 But vouch antiquities, which no body can know 
 
 But let that man with better sence aduize, 
 That of the world least part to vs is red: 
 And dayly how through hardy enterprize. 
 Many great Regions are discourered, 
 Which to late age were neuer mentioned. 
 Who euer heard of th' Indian Peru? 
 Or who in venturous vessell measured 
 The Amazons huge river now found trew? 
 Or fruitfullest Virginia who did euer vew? 
 
 Yet all these were, when no man did them know; 
 
 Yet haue from wisest ages hidden beene: 
 
 And later times things more unknowne shall show. 
 
 1 The Faerie Queene, Spenser, Bk. ii, Prologue, Oxford, 1909.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 35 
 
 Why then should witlesse man so much misweene 
 That nothing is, but that which he hath scene? 
 What if within the Moones faire shining spheare? 
 What if in euery other starre unseene 
 Of other worldes he happily should heare? 
 He wonder would much more: yet such to some appeare. 
 
 As Spenser here implies, this stimulation was not limited to 
 questions dealing only with material subjects; it passed over also 
 into the spiritual realm. Hamlet's retort, 
 
 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy, 
 
 is characteristic of the age. The old limits, grown hard and fixed 
 through the centuries, were broken and the imagination grew with 
 the wonders it fed on. Literature, which without this third factor 
 might have been confined to close analysis such as is the Prince 
 of Macchiavelli, became broad as life itself. 
 
 And, as imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name. 
 
 At this critical moment in the development of Europe when 
 these three great ideas were to change to the smallest detail the 
 outlook on life, came the invention of printing by movable type. 
 Previously the number of books had been few and the texts in- 
 accurate. The catalogue of the library of Oriel College in 1375 
 lists only one hundred items, and yet this was a famous collection. 
 Chaucer's scholar dreams of twenty! By this new method books 
 became accessible to the many and the texts were based upon the 
 collation of manuscripts. Still more, a new work could spread 
 over Europe in a comparatively short time. The all-pervasiveness 
 of the printed page today has obscured for most of us the im- 
 portance of the press in our daily life; like the air we breathe we 
 are conscious of it only when something goes wrong. Although 
 the old proverb, Vita sine libris est mortis imago, would relegate 
 the great mass of medieval life to the mortuary, yet our modern 
 life is dependent to a very great degree upon our mental contact
 
 36 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 with our fellows. Progress is due not so much to the individual 
 but to the united effort of all working hi the same field, a condition 
 which implies that the individual must himself be conscious of his 
 fellow workmen. Such unity of thought as is here required is 
 given by the press. Without its invention the other three factors 
 would have operated, doubtless, and in time man's spirit would 
 have been freed. But without question the time would have been 
 incomparably longer. As it was, the invention of printing came 
 at a time when man was full of utterance and by it his voice was 
 carried everywhere. It was in vain that laws were passed against 
 the influx of the Lutheran heresy; in vain that Calvin was con- 
 demned; TyndalPs Bible, printed in the Netherlands, found its 
 way to all parts of England. The Devil had to be fought with 
 fire, and the greater proportion of More's works are controversial 
 and in English. Even the King himself was forced to enter the 
 arena. By the invention of the press the nation was rendered 
 sensitive to every fresh current of thought. Public opinion was 
 created, a fact that explains the position of Erasmus and the 
 power of Aretino. And finally, by the reaction of mind on mind 
 due to its agency, is evolved the modern man. 
 
 Such is the Renaissance, the re-birth. Of course the term is a 
 misnomer, in that life is necessarily continuous and these four 
 factors operated through an extended period of time. Yet it 
 makes the sixteenth century a period set apart. As Wordsworth 
 says of the cataclysmic years of the French Revolution, 
 
 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive; 
 But to be young was very heaven. O times 
 In which the meager, stale, forbidding ways 
 Of custom, law, and statute took at once 
 The attraction of a country in romance. 
 
 so here there was the same receptibility of impression. As in the 
 life of an individual it is platitudinous to say that the clock does 
 measure his life, so a nation or a race seems at some times to live 
 more intensely than at others. The long, slow, fat years of peaceful 
 sloth are followed by others of great intellectual activity and of 
 strenuous intellectual endeavor. Such a time was the Renaissance. 
 By the four great factors, which have just been outlined, all men 
 were affected but they were not affected equally by all factors,
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 37 
 
 nor all by any one factor to an equal degree. One man might be 
 interested in the humanistic revival, but might believe that scien- 
 tific interests were negligible and that the Reformation was the 
 work of unlettered barbarians; whereas another, equally sincere 
 and equally of the age, might feel that the Rome of Leo was the 
 Beast of Revelations and Leo himself the incarnate Anti-Christ. 
 The Renaissance seems to consist of a bewildering variety of 
 brilliant individuals, with nothing in common except that the 
 characteristics of each are described with a superlative. Great 
 saints, Saint Theresa; great sinners, Cesar Borgia; great thinkers, 
 Macchiavelli; great scientists, Copernicus; great scholars, Budeus; 
 great artists, Leonardo; great poets, Ariosto; great knights, 
 Bayard; great blaggards, Aretino. Names at hazard throng the 
 mind, each a vivid personality and one which the world has not 
 forgotten. The same paradoxical contrast may be found even 
 within the limits of a single life. More, who has been beatified, 
 argued for religious toleration, wore a haircloth shirt and prided 
 himself on persecuting heretics. Henry, the Defender of the Faith, 
 was the first Protestant king of England. There is no need to pile 
 up instances. Forces that had been accumulating for centuries 
 had broken loose, swirling in a mighty whirlpool and engulfing 
 all. But the effect of the forces on any individual varied accord- 
 ing to his temperament and according to the time. What is true 
 of one man is not necessarily true of another; what is true of one 
 man at a certain time is not necessarily true of the same man at 
 another time. The total result is bewildering because each par- 
 ticle is in constant motion, and therein lies the fascination of 
 the study. 
 
 Up to this point the general reasoning, with a change in dating, 
 would be applicable to any of the European countries, and the 
 illustrations might have been drawn from any one of them. When 
 the reasoning is narrowed specifically to England, however, still 
 another factor is introduced, the social conditions there, because 
 literature like every other commodity obeys the laws of supply and 
 demand. The buyer buys the book because he wishes to read it; 
 he wishes to read it because he finds it interesting. The popular- 
 ity of a book in any given section is, therefore, a direct indication 
 of the state of mind of the people in that section. Conversely, 
 since an author composes in the expectation that his work will be
 
 38 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 read, the kind of work done is conditioned by the public state of 
 mind. However true this statement of the relationship between 
 the author and his public is now, the same statement holds to a 
 still greater degree in the Renaissance. Men of education, namely 
 both the writers and the readers, tended automatically to collect 
 around a court, and in each court there was a definite literary pub- 
 lic and literary opinion. Each Italian state, for example, produced 
 a local school, which differed in its output from the others. The 
 Neapolitan differs from the Tuscan, the Tuscan from the Ferra- 
 rese, etc., and it is not until the Spanish domination, after 1530, 
 that the writers lose their distinguishing characteristics in the 
 bathos of Petrarchan imitation. In England also, so far as it is a 
 question of formal literature, it was limited to court circles . London 
 dominates. In the first place, the country was so scantily popu- 
 lated that it attracted the attention of the Italian Traveller. 1 
 
 I rode, as your Magnificence knows, from Dover to London, and from London to 
 Oxford, a distance of more than 200 Italian miles, and it seemed to me to be very 
 thinly inhabited; but, lest the way I went with your Magnificence should have 
 differed from the other parts of the country, I enquired of those who rode to the 
 north of the kingdom, i. e. to the borders of Scotland, and was told that it was the 
 same case there; nor was there any variety in the report of those who went to 
 Bristol and into Cornwall. 
 
 His observation is supported by modern researches. In the fif- 
 teenth and sixteenth centuries, York had declined " in inhabitants 
 as well as in position and wealth." 2 By 1547 the number of people 
 in Plymouth had fallen from the medieval count over fifty per 
 cent. 3 The great western and central cities, with the exception of 
 Bristol, are relatively modern. Clearly war and the plague had 
 done their work. In the second place, not only were the provinces 
 less important, but, measured in time, they were more distant. 
 For example, in 1515 the Venetian ambassador spent a day on the 
 road between Dover and Canterbury. Travelling was not only 
 incommodious, it was also dangerous. 4 Small parties slowly pick- 
 
 1 Ibid., 31. 
 
 1 Jas. Raine, History of York, 202. 
 
 1 R. N. Worth, History of Plymouth, 26. 
 
 4 R. Brown, Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII, I, 60. For the general condi- 
 tion, cf. the long note in Croft's edition of Elyot's Gouernour, ii, 81-84, where the 
 legislative acts are given.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 39 
 
 ing their way over miry and rutty roads were liable to be set upon 
 by thieves, so liable, in fact, that in 1506 Quirini in the suite of 
 Philip preferred to await his master several months rather than 
 brave the dangers of the road to London. 1 That this fear was 
 only slightly exaggerated is shown by the comment of the Italian: 2 
 
 There is no country in the world where there are so many thieves and robbers as 
 in England; insomuch, that few venture to go alone in the country, excepting in the 
 middle of the day, and fewer still in the towns at night, and least of all in London. 
 
 Geographically, culture, so far as it found expression in formal 
 literature, was almost confined to the south of England. 
 
 The expression "formal literature" has been used to differen- 
 tiate the type of work which will be considered in the following 
 chapters from the ballads with which we have no concern. The 
 scarcity of population and the difficulty of communication give 
 the explanation to the phenonenon that in the Renaissance two 
 different literatures existed simultaneously and, as it were, in par- 
 allel planes. In the first, the authors are generally known; they 
 are connected with the Court; the composition is pretentious, 
 follows definite models, and is responsive to European influences: 
 in the second, the authors are generally anonymous; the com- 
 position is simple, and follows the ballad form. The antithesis 
 between these two may be carried indefinitely. Court poetry 
 deals with European subject matter, often after European models; 
 the ballads deal primarily with English subjects, usually in the 
 conventional quatrain: nature in the first is seen through books; 
 in the second it is studied from life; action in the first is slow and 
 detailed; in the second it is rapid and suggested; the art of the 
 first is studied and formal; in the second it is spontaneous and real. 
 It is to be added that references in the first class to poems of the 
 second class are apt to be supercilious, 3 and lastly that, while 
 the little skiffs of the second class have triumphantly floated 
 down the centuries, the great galleons of the first have succumbed 
 to wind and weather. 
 
 Another feature to be considered for its effect upon the liter- 
 ature is the political situation. When, August twenty-second, 
 
 I England under the Tudors, by Dr. Wilhelm Busch, 1895, i, 253. 
 * Italian Relation, ibid., 84. 
 
 I 1 wryte DO lest ne tale of Robyn bode. Barclay, Ship of Fools, Jamieson, ii, 331.
 
 40 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 1485, the crown which had rolled from the head of Richard IV 
 was picked from the hawthorne bush to be placed upon that of 
 Henry, Duke of Richmond, the old order had passed. The long 
 struggle between York and Lancaster, which history poetically 
 calls the Wars of the Roses, had necessarily been unfavorable 
 to authors. Scarcely a writer survives as a personality, with the 
 exception of Lydgate and Occleve whose works are read only by 
 specialists. With the exception of the ballads there are few pieces 
 that have any interest beyond the philological. This condition 
 is not surprising. England had suffered the throes of civil war for 
 generations and war, although it may offer subject matter for liter- 
 ature, rarely grants the leisure necessary for composition. Yet 
 too much emphasis must not be placed upon these wars in dis- 
 cussing the literary output, because their action was sporadic. 
 It must be remembered that Caxton was apparently placidly 
 issuing his books at Westminster when Edward IV was still upon 
 the throne, while Richard III had usurped the power by the 
 murder of his nephews, and during the battle of Bosworth Field. 
 The reign of Edward IV of twenty-two years had given stability 
 that, in spite of the episodic career of Richard III, was continued 
 by Henry VII. To establish his dynasty upon a firm foundation 
 was the first problem of the new monarch. Henry's claim to the 
 throne was at best questionable. The direct Plantagenet line had 
 ceased with the deposition of Richard II, the son of the Black 
 Prince and grandson of Edward III. The Lancastrian branch 
 claimed descent from John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward 
 III, and the York branch from Edmund Langley, the fifth son. 
 But Henry Tudor claimed descent only from an illegitimate con- 
 nection of John of Gaunt with Katherine Swynford, a connection 
 that had been legitimized by Richard II, but whose descendants 
 had been excluded from the throne by Henry IV. Moreover, 
 Henry Tudor derived his right through his mother, and if descent 
 through the distaff side were accepted, all the Yorkist heirs had 
 a prior claim. Even the choice of him to lead the insurrection was 
 apparently due to Archbishop Morton, the patron of More. At 
 the battle he had only five thousand soldiers and the victory was 
 gained by the aid at the decisive moment of three thousand more 
 under William Stanley. His right to the throne consisted in his 
 being considered the most valuable man in his party and his pos-
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 41 
 
 session of it was due to troops over whom he had no control. Under 
 such circumstances his seat was far from secure. Evidently with 
 this in mind the Italian remarks: l 
 
 This kingdom has been, for the last 600 years, governed by one king, who is not 
 elected, but succeeds by hereditary right. Should there be no direct heir, and the 
 succession be disputed, the question is often settled by the force of arms. . . . 
 And, heretofore, it has always been an understood thing, that he who lost the day 
 lost the kingdom. 
 
 In relation to the attitude of the people toward their sovereign he 
 says: 2 
 
 . . . but from what I understand few of them are very loyal. They generally hate 
 their present and extol their dead sovereigns. 
 
 Such was the condition confronting Henry Tudor. 
 
 To meet the problem the first act of the new reign was the 
 authorization of his title by Parliament. Then by marriage with 
 Elizabeth, the heiress of the Yorkist faction, Henry united in his 
 children the claims of the two parties. The necessity for such 
 action is apparent in the light of the insurrection of Lambert 
 Simnel, personating the Earl of Warwick, a possible Yorkist heir, 
 and of Peter Warbeck, personating one of the princes murdered 
 in the tower. Later, by means of the marriage of his son Arthur 
 to the Infanta of Spain, he gained European recognition for his 
 dynasty. Beyond this, his policy may be defined as avoidance 
 of foreign complications, conciliatory measures at home, and an 
 accumulation of treasure that would enable him to be independent 
 of Parliament. His success in the last of these aims may be esti- 
 mated from the fact that in 1497 the Milanese ambassador valued 
 his treasure at 1,350,000, a sum so vast, considering the pur- 
 chasing power of money at that time, that it seems an incredible 
 amount to have been amassed in twelve years. In discussing the 
 social factors affecting the early years of Henry VIII, then, these 
 two must be borne in mind; first, a sense of social inferiority with 
 other sovereigns, a feeling none the less strong because it was 
 never expressed, and second, the possession of this large amount 
 of ready money. The first gave Henry the desire and the second 
 
 1 Italian Relation, ibid., 46. Ibid.
 
 42 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the means for the somewhat vulgar love of display so character- 
 istic of his Court. 
 
 To this analysis of early Tudor society one more factor, and 
 that the most important from the point of view of the type of 
 literature produced at the Court, must be added, namely the 
 personalities of the rulers. The modern reader must remember 
 that, as there was no reading public, there was no such thing as 
 the profession of letters. Authorship was merely incidental. For 
 example, Hawes was Groom of the Chamber to Henry VII, 
 Barclay a monk, Skelton first royal tutor and then Rector of Diss, 
 More a lawyer, Heywood a courtier, Surrey and Wyatt nobles, 
 etc. Writing books was a side issue, a polite accomplishment. 
 And the literature of the Court has a personal, intimate, almost 
 epistolary tone; while occasionally books were written addressed 
 to all England, such as the Ship of Fools, they were usually com- 
 posed with a definite circle of readers before the mind of the writer. 
 Caxton's prefaces are really open letters. His allusion to Skelton, 
 for example, in the dedication to his Eneydos would be understood 
 because the majority of his readers knew Skelton personally. It 
 was a small world. And in this world dominated naturally the 
 personality of the king. He it was that could make, or mar, a 
 writer's fortune, his approbation meant success, and his disapproval 
 spelled failure. Of the two Tudor kings, Henry VII may be dis- 
 missed with few words. During his reign modern English litera- 
 ture is just beginning. His preference was for French, due to his 
 early residence abroad, and a Frenchman Andre" was his official 
 historiographer. He was fond of music and encouraged song- 
 writing, again especially in foreign languages. His account book 
 shows various items paid for books, unfortunately omitting the 
 titles. Once only does it state that Verard received six pounds for 
 printing two volumes entitled the Gardyn of Helth. To the Con- 
 ventual monastery at Greenwich he presented a "valuable" 
 library. And he advanced Pynson ten pounds to enable him to 
 print a book of the mass. These meager details show merely that 
 he was not averse to learning. Probably the great problems of 
 statecraft had absorbed his energies, leaving him slight inclination 
 for literature. 
 
 Henry VIH, on the contrary, is the protagonist of the Renais- 
 sance in England. Early in his lifetime the hope of the nation
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 43 
 
 centered upon him. Hawes, in a poem dedicated to Henry VII, 
 after celebrating the virtues of his father and mother, thus eulo- 
 gizes the young prince in a burst of lyric exuberance. 1 
 
 Thus God, by grace did well combine 
 
 The Red Rose and the White in marriage. 
 Being oned, right clear doth shine 
 In all cleanness and virtuous courage; 
 Of whose right and royal lineage, 
 
 Prince Henry is sprung, our King to be, 
 After his father, by right good equity. 
 
 O, noble Prince Henry! our second treasure, 
 
 Surmounting in virtue and mirror of beauty! 
 O, gem of gentleness and lantern of pleasure! 
 O, rubicund blossom and star of humility! 
 O, famous bud, full of benignity! 
 I pray to God well for to increase 
 Your high Estate in rest and peace ! 
 
 Shortly before this comes the celebrated account of Erasmus. 2 
 
 I was staying at Lord Mountjoy's country house when Thomas More came to see 
 me, and took me out with him for a walk as far as the next village, where all the 
 King's children, except Prince Arthur, who was then the eldest son, were being 
 educated. When we came into the hall, the attendants not only of the palace, but 
 also of Mountjoy's household, were all assembled. In the midst stood Prince 
 Henry, then nine years old, and having already something of royalty in his de- 
 meanour, in which there was a certain dignity combined with singular courtesy. 
 On his right was Margaret, about eleven years of age, afterwards married to James, 
 King of Scots; and on his left played Mary, a child of four. Edmund was an in- 
 fant in arms. More, with his companion Arnold, after paying his respects to the 
 boy Henry, the same that is now King of England, presented him with some writing. 
 For my part, not having expected anything of the sort, I had nothing to offer, but 
 promised that on another occasion I would in some way declare my duty towards 
 him. Meantime I was angry with More for not having warned me, especially as the 
 boy sent me a little note, while we were at dinner, to challenge something from my 
 pen. I went home, and in the Muses' spite, from whom I had been so long di- 
 vorced, finished the poem within three days. 
 
 The popular conception of Henry as only a bestial corpulent 
 tyrant must be revised if one is to understand the age. In every 
 
 1 Hawes, Example of Virtue, 295-290, Dunbar Anthology, ed. Arber, 294. 
 * Epiitlet of Erasmus, F. M. Nichols, i, 201.
 
 44 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 way, physically, mentally, morally, he was the personified ideal. 
 To the people at large he seemed the embodiment of the typical 
 Englishman. His delight in archery, in wrestling, in joust and in 
 tourney, his skill on the tennis court and his boldness at the hunt, 
 thrilled men to whom mental attainment meant little. As Pro- 
 fessor Pollard aptly remarks: l 
 
 "Suppose there ascended the throne today a young Prince, the 
 hero of the athletic world, the finest oar, the best bat, the crack 
 marksman of his day, it is easy to imagine the enthusiastic support 
 he would receive from thousands of his people who care much for 
 sport, and nothing at all for politics." But mentally he was 
 equally fortunate in pleasing the scholar. His education had 
 been unusually careful, to such a degree that Lord Herbert of 
 Cherbury, a century later, was led to assume that he had been 
 destined for the Church. He knew Latin well, spoke French 
 easily, understood Italian, and later acquired Spanish. His 
 father's love of music he had inherited; he composed pieces, one 
 of which, Pastime with good company, is occasionally heard now. 
 He set the example to his Court in making verses, both in English 
 and French. He was an enthusiastic humanist, defending the 
 "Greeks" against the "Trojans" at Oxford, and attracted many 
 men of learning to his Court. Finally in 1521 his book against 
 Luther was finished, a work that, however much revised by 
 others, was yet his own, and the Pope granted him the title 
 Fidei Defensor. He was certainly distinguished for his excellences 
 for the first hah* of his reign. The Venetian ambassador, repre- 
 senting the shrewdest court in Europe, would have no object in 
 giving an account untrue because flattering, since his letter would 
 be read only by his own rulers in Venice. His report would be 
 marked by calm analysis, because its object was to enable the 
 Venetian Council to estimate the character of the King as a leading 
 piece in the game of European politics. The following report was, 
 therefore, a statement of the facts as seen by the writer, and is 
 free from the suspicion of self-interest that might be inferred in 
 the case of an Englishman, or even of Erasmus. 2 
 
 1 Henry VIII, A. F. Pollard, 41. 
 
 1 Calendar of Stale Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs, Existing 
 in the Archives and collections of Venice, and in other libraries of Northern Italy, ed. by 
 Rawdon Brown, 1871. iv, 293.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 45 
 
 In this Eighth Henry, God combined such corporal and mental beauty, as not 
 merely to surprise but to astound all men. Who could fail to be struck with ad- 
 miration on perceiving the lofty position of so glorious a prince to be in such ac- 
 cordance with his stature, giving manifest proof of that intrinsic mental superiority 
 which is inherent in him? His face is angelic rather than handsome; his head 
 imperial (Cesarina) and bald, and he wears a beard, contrary to English custom. 
 Who would not be amazed when contemplating such singular corporal beauty, 
 coupled with such bold address, adapting itself with the greatest ease to every 
 manly exercise. He sits his horse well, and manages him yet better; he jousts and 
 wields his spear, throws the quoit, and draws the bow, admirably; plays at tennis 
 most dexterously; and nature having endowed him in youth with such gifts, he was 
 not slow to enhance, preserve and augment them with all industry and labour. It 
 seeming to him monstrous for a prince not to cultivate moral and intellectual ex- 
 cellence, so from childhood he applied himself to grammatical studies, and then to 
 philosophy and holy writ, thus obtaining the reputation of a lettered and excellent 
 Prince. Besides the Latin and his native tongue, he learned Spanish, French, and 
 Italian. He is kind and affable, full of graciousness and courtesy, and liberal; 
 particularly so to men of science (virtuosi), whom he is never weary of obliging. 
 
 Such a characterization, however false it may appear to modern 
 eyes, enables us to comprehend the exultation in England upon 
 Henry's accession that is shown by Mountjoy in his letter to 
 Erasmus. 1 
 
 What, my dear Erasmus, may you not look for from a prince, whose great qual- 
 ities no one knows better than yourself, and who not only is no stranger to you, but 
 esteems you so highly ! He has written to you, as you will perceive, under his own 
 hand, an honour which falls but to few. Could you but see how nobly he is bearing 
 himself, how wise he is, his love for all that is good and right, and espcially his love 
 for men of learning, you would need no wings to fly into the light of this new risen 
 and salutary star. Ob, Erasmus, could you but witness the universal joy, could you 
 but see how proud our people are of their new sovereign, you would weep for pleas- 
 ure. Heaven smiles, earth triumphs, and flows with milk and honey and nectar. 
 This king of ours is no seeker after gold, or gems, or mines of silver. He desires only 
 the fame of virtue and eternal life. I was lately in his presence. He said that he 
 regretted that he was still so ignorant; I told him that the nation did not want him 
 to be himself learned, the nation wanted him only to encourage learning. He re- 
 plied that without knowledge life would not be worth our having. 
 
 With such a paragon on the throne no wonder men looked for a 
 
 new Golden Age! Literature and Learning united to call him 
 
 blessed and the Renaissance in England was incarnate in her King. 
 
 In modern opinion this aspect of Henry's character is apt to be 
 
 1 Life and Letters of Erasmus, J. A. Proude, 90.
 
 46 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 obscured by the moral issue and that in turn to be discussed in 
 terms of abstract morality. Of a king that married six wives, ex- 
 ecuted two and divorced two, that sent to the block More and 
 Fisher, that, using men as his instruments, ruthlessly abandoned 
 them when they no longer served his purpose, what good can be 
 said? And it was under this king, also, that the Church of Eng- 
 land separated from the Church of Rome, a fact which has biassed 
 many writers. Moral standards, however, vary from age to age. 
 In accordance with the standards of his age, Henry's character 
 stands as high certainly as those of his fellow sovereigns, higher 
 in fact than that of the profligate Francis. And although it is true 
 that during the lifetime of Katherine Henry had at least two illicit 
 connections, it is equally true that it was not on that account that 
 moral indignation was excited against him. The peculiarity of 
 his case lies in the fact that he tried to legalize his amours in order 
 to legitimize the possible heir to the throne. Even in his excesses 
 he showed care for the State. That he was far from the sensual 
 monstrosity of popular legend is also shown by the comparative 
 purity of the literature. 1 That the age was coarse and brutal is ob- 
 vious; the astonishing feature is that, in comparison with either 
 the Italian or the French, the English literature is so pure in in- 
 tention. And if, as has been suggested, Court literature takes its 
 color from the character of the king, this freedom from the erotic 
 must be due, at least to some degree, to Henry himself. 
 
 Henry's dominance of his age seems perplexing, His acts seem 
 those of a tyrant, callously shedding the blood of the noblest and 
 the best, and carelessly sacrificing any interest in opposition to his 
 own. Professor Pollard's statement of the enigma is worth quoting. 2 
 
 Henry's standing army consisted of a few gentlemen pensioners and yeomen of 
 the guard; he had neither secret police nor organized bureaucracy. Even then 
 Englishmen boasted that they were not slaves like the French, and foreigners 
 pointed a finger of scorn at their turbulence. Had they not permanently or tem- 
 porarily deprived of power nearly half their kings who had reigned since William 
 the Conqueror? Yet Henry VIII not only left them their arms, but repeatedly 
 urged them to keep those arms ready for use. He eschewed that air of mystery 
 with which tyrants have usually sought to impose on the mind of the people. All 
 his lift- he moved familiarly and almost unguarded in the midst of his subjects, and 
 
 1 English conditions are almost omitted in the renaissance chapter of Das Ero- 
 tische Element in der Karikatur by Eduard Fuchs. 
 
 2 Henry VIII, ibid., 3.
 
 THE BACKGROUND TO THE LITERATURE 47 
 
 he died in his bed, full of years, with the spell of his power unbroken and the terror 
 of his name unimpaired. 
 
 The answer is that in Henry two antagonistic points of view found 
 expression. The nation at large had learned from the bitter lesson 
 of the late wars the value of stable government. To it Henry rep- 
 resented, just as his daughter Elizabeth did in the second half of 
 the century, the personified State. His sudden death, or death 
 without heirs, threatened anarchy. Therefore Parliament in any 
 crisis was willing to legalize his action. By Parliament and by the 
 nation any individual, even as reverend as Fisher or as saintly as 
 More, would be sacrificed if his living endangered the common 
 good, irrespective of abstract justice. There is, consequently, the 
 anomaly that, if Henry be a criminal, the English nation was parti- 
 ceps criminis. Henry himself, on the other hand, was saved from 
 the sense of this paralyzing responsibility, by the individualism 
 characteristic of the whole Renaissance. So both parties accepted 
 the sentiment of Louis XIV, L'&tat c'est moi, with this essential 
 difference, however, that the nation stressed the subject of the 
 sentence and the sovereign the predicate. This condition appears 
 but once more in English history, in Henry's daughter Elizabeth. 
 In both cases there is a despotic government, conducted along 
 parliamentary lines, yet the sovereign, both by himself and the 
 nation, is considered to represent the nation. The result in each 
 case was a strong popular government, and, historically, the domi- 
 nance of England. Through the turmoil of that age the nation 
 led by her King passed in almost unbroken calm. The great 
 question of the separation from the Papacy was settled in England 
 without a French Saint Bartholomew, or a German civil strife; 
 through almost continuous years of peace the martial prestige 
 of England steadily grew; and a country which at his birth was 
 rent by innumerable internal dissensions, at his death was strong 
 and unified; the dynasty, started by his usurping father, was so 
 well established by him that his daughter, Mary Tudor, had but 
 to appear to have all England hail her as queen. Without an 
 appreciation of the magnitude of his accomplishment, the litera- 
 ture of his reign seems merely a sporadic development, and with- 
 out an appreciation of the literature of his reign, the great litera- 
 ture of the Elizabethan age, of Shakespeare and of Spenser, is an 
 unrelated, inexplicable phenomenon.
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 
 
 In history the Battle of Bosworth Field marks an epoch. It is 
 the turning of the tide that comes to the full a century later. The 
 disastrous French wars of Henry VI, followed by the still more 
 disastrous civil strife between York and Lancaster, had almost 
 removed England as a factor from European politics. After the 
 accession of Henry VII, however, civil strife dwindled into a few 
 insignificant insurrections, and foreign warfare was negligible. In 
 literature for the same reason the Battle of Bosworth Field marks 
 an epoch. The presence of literature implies not only leisure for 
 the writer, but also leisure for the reader, and England had been at 
 war spasmodically for half a century. Consequently after Lyd- 
 gate there is no uniform literary development, each poem is casual, 
 and the appearance of poetry seems sporadic. During this time 
 there was no English writer who survived as a personality and no 
 book of general interest with the exception of the prose Morte 
 Darthur. When once again the country had returned to a state 
 of equilibrium and again there was a demand for literary pro- 
 duction, writers found themselves without definite literary models. 
 Their effort to adapt medieval or foreign models, or to originate 
 their own, is the subject of this book; their modification of the 
 traditionary English treatment is the subject of this chapter. 
 
 Before proceeding further, it may be well to lodge a caveat. 
 There has been a tendency in recent writers to assume that the 
 Renaissance in England was completely severed from the past. 
 Actually this is not so. In spite of the irregularity and vagueness 
 of the English tradition it is astonishingly strong, due to the ven- 
 detta-like nature of the conflict. Battles, on which the possession 
 of the kingdom depended, were fought with comparatively small 
 armies, and small sections of the country only were involved. Else- 
 where men went about their business as usual. Naturally, as is 
 shown by the Paston Letters, to each man his own affairs bulked 
 large, and the chief interest in the bewildering political changes 
 
 48
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TKADITION 49 
 
 was how they would affect him personally. The life of the nation 
 went on fairly normally. As Gairdner says: * "Education, never- 
 theless, was making undoubted progress, both among high and 
 low. Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, had been 
 founded by Henry VI. . . (in 1479) he (William Paston) sends him 
 (his brother John) also a specimen of his performances in Latin 
 versification. It is not a very brilliant production, certainly, but 
 the fact of his sending it to his elder brother shows that John Paston 
 too had gone through a regular classical training on the system 
 which has prevailed in all public schools down to the present day." 
 And again: 2 "But these letters show that during the century 
 before the Reformation the state of education was by no means so 
 low, and its advantages by no means so exceptionally distributed, 
 as we might otherwise imagine. . . No person of any rank or sta- 
 tion in society above mere labouring men seems to have been 
 wholly illiterate. All could write letters ; most persons could express 
 themselves in writing with ease and fluency. Not perhaps that 
 the accomplishment was one in which it was considered an honour 
 to excel. Hands that had been accustomed to grasp the sword 
 were doubtless easily fatigued with the pen. . . Men of high rank 
 generally sign their letters, but scarcely ever write them with 
 their own hands. And well was it, in many cases, for their cor- 
 respondents that they did not do it oftener. Whether, like Ham- 
 let, they thought it a baseness to write fair, and left such 'yeoman's 
 service' to those who had specially qualified themselves for it; or 
 whether, absorbed by other pursuits, they neglected an art which 
 they got others to practice for them, the nobility were generally 
 the worst writers of the day." But a catalogue, unfortunately 
 much injured, of probably John Paston the younger gives a list 
 of representative books. 3 "His library, or that of his brother 
 John, contained 'the death of Arthur,' the story of Guy of War- 
 wick, chronicles of the English kings from Coeur de Lion to Ed- 
 ward III., the legend of Guy and Colbrand, and various other 
 chronicles and fictions suited to knightly culture; besides moral 
 treatises, like Bishop Alcock's Abbey of the Holy Ghost, and poeti- 
 cal and imaginative books, such as the poems of Chaucer at least 
 
 1 Pcuton Letter*, Gairdner, Introduction, ccclxiv. 
 
 1 Ibid., ccclxiii. 
 
 1 Ibid., ccclxviii. The original inventory, 869, is given Vol. ui, 300.
 
 50 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 his Troilus and Cressida, his Legend of Ladies (commonly called 
 the Legend of Good Women), his Parliament of Birds, the Belle 
 Dame sauns Mercie, and Lydgate's Temple of Glass." Although 
 it is an inventory endorsed "off Englysshe Boks off John. . ." there 
 are four books in Latin, principally Cicero. Exactly what the 
 endorsement means, therefore, is doubtful. If this be a complete 
 catalogue of all his books, the striking feature is the great pre- 
 dominance of English. La Belle Dame in all probability is Ros' 
 English version because in the two cases where it appears on the 
 list it is bound with works of Chaucer. The unavoidable infer- 
 ence is that even but a few years before the accession of Henry VII, 
 English was scarcely influenced by either humanistic or foreign 
 literatures. 
 
 Naturally then, after the political condition had become settled, 
 one would expect an increase in the number of poems following 
 Chaucerian precedent. But there are two reasons why Chaucer 
 was not a good literary model for the sixteenth century writer; 
 first, because his medieval content was not adapted to the renais- 
 sance reader, and secondly, because during the fifteenth century 
 the very language had undergone a striking change. The great 
 peculiarity in Chaucerian versification noticed by the modern 
 reader, is the pronunciation of the final e. In the following passage, 
 the opening lines of the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, this 
 e is italicized. 
 
 Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote 
 The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote. 
 And bathed every veyne in swich licour, 
 Of which vertu engendred is the flour; 
 5 Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth 
 Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 
 The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne 
 Hath in the Ram his lialfc cours y-ronne, 
 And smale fowles maken melodye, 
 10 That slepen al the night with open ye, 
 So priketh hem nature in hir coragcs : 
 Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages . . . 
 
 Read in a modern text, with the final e pronounced, as decasyllabic 
 pentameter couplets, the passage is beautifully fluid. But the 
 modern text represents years of scholarship. The text of the 
 sixteenth century reader was in chaotic condition. And read with-
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 51 
 
 out pronouncing the final e, the effect is justly described by Dryden, 
 "There is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is nat- 
 ural and pleasing, though not perfect." l For example, the second 
 couplet, with the ed sounded, is perfectly regular, but the first 
 line of the passage must be given up as hopelessly impossible, 
 whereas the seventh and the ninth are halting octosyllabics. A 
 fervent imitator of Chaucer, under the impression that such rough- 
 ness was intentional, would conscientiously write bad verse! This, 
 according to Professor Pollard, has been done by the author of 
 the Castell of Labour, a poem which he attributes, mistakenly 
 I think, to Barclay. 2 
 
 Through the disuse of the pronunciation of e-final, and the general clipping of 
 inflexions, the secret of Chaucer's verse within two generations of his death was 
 entirely lost. If any one will turn to either of Caxton's editions of the Canterbury 
 Tales he will find that many lines, as they are there printed, have entirely ceased to 
 be decasyllabics; they can be read hi no other way than as trotting verses of four 
 accents apiece. Other lines, however, in which there were no inflexions to lose, or 
 small words to drop out, remain distinctly decasyllabic, and cannot be compressed 
 into verses of four accents except by a reader with an enormous power of swallow. 
 It was a text like this which drew down on Chaucer the condescending allowance for 
 his " rudeness" of a succession of critics, few of whom possessed a tithe of his music. 
 It was also, I think, the existence of such a text of Chaucer that accounts for the 
 metrical peculiarities which we find in the Castell of Labour. The modern reader 
 who expects to find all the lines of a stanza of equal metrical length, or of different 
 lengths arranged in a fixed order, may look askance at the suggestion that Barclay 
 normally uses lines of four accents, but mixes with them (especially towards the 
 beginning of his poem) others of a slower movement with five. Yet this is what 
 Barclay found when he read Chaucer, as he must have done, in the editions of 
 Caxton, Pynson, or \Vynkyn de Worde, and I believe that he accepted these al- 
 ternations as a beauty, and one which should be imitated. 
 
 It must not be assumed, however, that this change was abrupt. 
 It was a gradual transformation varying with the individual and 
 the dialect, beginning not long after Chaucer's death. It is some- 
 what apparent in Lydgate, and is normal in Sir Richard Ros 
 (circ. 1460). Hawes, (1506) rimes was-passe, 3 Jupiter-farre, 4 
 good-mode, 5 etc; Barclay (1508), chylde-defyled, made-decayed, 
 
 1 Preface to the Fables. 
 
 1 Castell of Labour, for the Roxburgh Club, xl-xli. 
 
 1 Pattimc of Pleasure, Percy Society, p. 5, stanza 3. 
 
 4 Ibid., p. 8, stanza 3. 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 48. stanza Z.
 
 52 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 etc. ; l and by 1547 William Salesbury tells his Welsh compatriots, 2 
 " Similarly E final in English words is melted away, for the most 
 part, from the end of every word in pronunciation. . . " During 
 the first half of the century, however, there seems to have been 
 room for individual preference; certainly so, before the opening 
 of the century. This is illustrated by the following couplet from 
 Caxton's Book of Curtesye (1477-8); 
 
 Your hondes wesshe / it is an holsum thinge 
 Your naylis loke / they be not gety blacke. 
 
 Here the e in hondes must be pronounced to scan the line, whereas 
 the e in loke, coming before the caesura, probably was not. Words, 
 with closed penultimate syllables, such as thinge, tended to re- 
 tain the sound, but there seems no general rule. 
 
 With the language thus steadily changing, the difference be- 
 tween the speech of 1500 and that of 1400 was strongly marked. 
 Not only had the e-final been lost, but inflexions had disappeared 
 and new words had been introduced. The resulting difficulty is 
 best stated in the words of Caxton 3 (1490). 
 
 . . . And whan I had aduysed me in this sayd boke, I delybered and concluded 
 to translate it in-to englysshe. And forthwyth toke a penne & ynke, and wrote a 
 leef or tweyne / whyche I ouersawe agayn to corecte it / And whan I sawe the fayr 
 & straunge termes therin / I doubted that it sholde not please some gentylmen 
 whiche late blamed me, sayeng that in my translacyons I had ouer curyous termes 
 whiche coude not be understande of comyn people / and desired me to vs olde and 
 homely termes in my translacyons. and fayn wolde I satysfye euery man / and so 
 to doo, toke an olde boke and redde therein / and certaynly the englysshe was so 
 rude and brood that I coude not wele vnderstande it. And also my lorde abbot of 
 westmynster ded do shew to me late, certayn euydences wryton in olde englysshe, 
 for to reduce it in-to our englysshe now vsid / And certaynly it was wreton in suche 
 wyse that it was more lyke to dutche than englysshe; I coude not reduce me brynge 
 it to be vnderstonden / And certaynly our langage now vsed varyeth ferre from that 
 wiche was vsed and spoken whan I was borne / For we englysshe men / ben borne 
 vnder the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is neuer stedfaste / but euer wauerynge / 
 wexynge one season / and waneth & dyscreaseth another season / And that comyn 
 englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from a nother. In so moche that 
 in my dayes happened that certayn marchauntes were in a shippe in tamyse, for to 
 haue sayled ouer the see into zelande / and for lacke of wynde, thei taryed atte 
 
 1 Ship of Fools, Jamicson, Vol. 1, p. 37, stanza 3; p. 38, stanza 4. 
 1 William Salesbury, Ellis, part III, Chapter VIII, 777. 
 1 Caxton's Eneydos, Early English Text Society, p. 1.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 53 
 
 forlond, and wente to lande for to refreshe them; And one of theym named shef- 
 felde, a mercer, cam in-to an hows and axed for mete; and specyally he axed after 
 eggys; and the goode wyf answerde, that she coude speke no frenshe. And the 
 marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no frenshe, but wolde haue hadde 
 egges / and she vnderstode hym not / And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he 
 wolde haue eyren / then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstod hym wel / Loo, what 
 sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges or eyren / certaynly it is harde to 
 playse euery man / by cause of dyuersite & chaunge of langage. For in these dayes 
 euery man that is in ony reputacyon in his countre, wyll vtter his commynycacyon 
 and maters in suche manors & termes / that fewe men shall vnderstonde theym / 
 And som honest and grete clerkes haue ben wyth me, and desired me to wryte the 
 moste curyous termes that I coude fynde / And thus bytwene playn rude / & curyous, 
 I stande abasshed, but in my ludgemente / the comyn termes that be dayli vsed, ben 
 lyghter to be vnderstonde than the olde and auncyent englysshe / And for as moche 
 as this present booke is not for a rude vplondyssh man to laboure therein / ne rede 
 it / but onely for a clerke & a noble gentylman that feleth and vnderstondeth in 
 faytes of armes, in loue, & in noble chyualrye / Therfor in a meane bytwene bothe, I 
 haue reduced & translated this sayd booke in to our englysshe, not ouer rude ne 
 curyous, but in suche termes as shall be vnderstanden, by goddys grace, accordynge 
 to my copye. 
 
 But the same difficulty confronted every writer, as Skelton com- 
 plains. 1 
 
 I am but a yong mayd, 
 
 And cannot in effect 
 
 My style as yet direct 
 
 With Englysh wordes elect; 
 
 Our naturall tong is rude. 
 
 And hard to be enneude 
 
 With pullysshed termes lusty; 
 
 Our language is so rusty, 
 
 So cankered, and so full 
 
 Of frowardes, and so dull, 
 
 That if I wolde apply 
 
 To wryte ornatly, 
 
 I wot not where to fynd 
 
 Termes to serue my mynde. 
 Gowers Englysh is olde, 
 
 And of no value told; 
 
 His mater is worth gold. 
 
 And worthy to be enrold. 
 In Chauser I am sped, 
 
 His tales I haue red: 
 
 His mater is delectable, 
 
 Solacious, and commendable; 
 
 1 The Poetical Works of John Skelton, Dyce, 1843, i, 74.
 
 54 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 His Englysh well alowed, 
 So as it is emprowed, 
 For as it is enployed, 
 There is no English voyd. 
 At those dayes moch commended, 
 And now men wold haue amended 
 His Englysh, whereat they barke; 
 And mar all they warke: 
 Chaucer, that famus clerke, 
 His termes were not darke, 
 But pleasunt, easy, and playne; 
 No worde he wrote in vayne. 
 Also Johnu Lydgate 
 Wryteth after an hyer rate; 
 It is dyffuse to fynde 
 The sentence of his mynde, 
 Yet wryteth he in his kynd, 
 No man that can amend 
 Those maters that he hath pende; 
 Yet some men fynde a faute, 
 And say he wryteth to haute. 
 
 There seems even then to have been a desire to modernize the 
 older writers, a tendency that has persisted even to this day, 
 if we may make, with Warton, 1 the not improbable assumption 
 that in the following passage from Barclay the allusion is to 
 Gower's Confessio Amantis. 
 
 Right honorable Master ye me required late 
 
 A Lovers confession abridging to amende, 
 
 And from corrupte Englishe in better to translate . . . 
 
 The conclusion is that during the storm and stress of the fifteenth 
 century not only had the language changed, but the secret of the 
 old versification had been lost. Therefore Middle English writers, 
 of whom Chaucer is the great exemplar, are more intelligible to 
 us with our variorum texts, annotated editions, and elaborate 
 glossaries than they were to the subjects of Henry VIII. Through 
 the imperfections of his texts and the change in the language even 
 Chaucer was no longer available as a literary model. 
 
 It must not be understood, however, that Chaucer was no 
 longer read. The vitality of his reputation under such adverse 
 
 1 History of English Poetry, Thomas Warton, section xxix.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 55 
 
 circumstances is surprising. The precedent of eulogizing him, set 
 by Occleve and confirmed by Lydgate, is followed by the Tudor 
 authors. Caxton's fine apostrophe to him sounds the note of 
 sixteenth century criticism. 1 
 
 O Fader and Founder of eternate eloquence, 
 
 That eluminede all this oure britaigne; 
 To sone we lost his lauriate presence, 
 
 O lusty licoure of that fulsome fountaigne; 
 Cursed deth, why hast thou this poete slayne, 
 I mene Fadir chaucers, mastir Galfride? 
 Alias ! the while, that euer he from vs diede. 
 
 Redith his bokys f ulle of all plesaunce, 
 
 Clere in sentence, in longage excellent, 
 Brefly to wryte suche was his sufifesaunce, 
 What-euer to sey he toke in his entent, 
 His longage was so feyre and pertinent, 
 That seemed vnto mennys heryng, 
 Not only the worde, but verrely the thing. 
 
 Redith, my child, redith his warkys all, 
 
 Refuseth non, they ben expedient; 
 Sentence or langage, or both, fynde ye shall 
 Full delectable, for that fader ment 
 Of all his purpos and his hole intent 
 Howe to plese in euery audience 
 And in oure toung was well of eloquence. 
 
 Hawes, on the other hand, feels it necessary to give a list of the 
 works, perhaps as a proof that he has read them. 2 
 
 The boke of fame, which is sentencyous, 
 
 He drewe hym selfe on hys own invencyon; 
 
 And than the tragidyes so pytous 
 
 Of the xix. ladyes, was his translacyon; 
 
 And upon hys ymaginacyon 
 
 He made also the tales of Caunterbury; 
 
 Some vertuous, and some glad and mery. 
 
 And of Troylus the pytous dolour 
 For his lady Cresyde, full of doublenes, 
 He did bewayle ful well the langoure, 
 Of all hys love and grete unhappines. 
 
 1 Caxton's Book of Curtcxye. Early English Text Society. Extra Series, No. 
 III. p. 34. 
 1 Pattime of Pleasure, Cap. xiv.
 
 56 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 And many other bokes doubtles 
 He dyd compyle, whose godly name 
 In printed bokes doth remayne in fame. 
 
 Eulogy of these two types continues through the sixteenth 
 century, until it culminates in Spenser, with his famous phrase, 
 reminiscent of Caxton's a century earlier, "well of English un- 
 defyled. " But as Chaucer is a master of verse technique, natural- 
 ly more than others he suffered by the change in the language. 
 When the music of his verse had gone, his works were read prin- 
 cipally for their matter. Thus, as in the passage of Hawes just 
 quoted, the important works were apparently the House of Fame 
 and the Legend of Good Women. The Canterbury Tales, although 
 glad and merry, were not profitable to the same degree as moral 
 allegory. Consequently there was a complete failure to distinguish 
 the literary superiority of Chaucer over authors like Gower and 
 Lydgate. And, literature aside, judged purely from a question 
 of morality, his work cannot bear comparison with the unending 
 tedious commonplace of Lydgate. He it is that furnishes the real 
 inspiration and evokes the genuine enthusiasm of the early writers. 
 Compare the vagueness of Caxton's tribute to Chaucer, just 
 quoted, with the fervor of his devotion to Lydgate: 1 
 
 Loketh Also vppon dan lohn lidgate, 
 
 My mastire, whilome clepid monke of bury, 
 Worthy to be renownede laureate, 
 
 I pray to gode, in blis his soule be mery, 
 Synging "Rex Splendens," the heuenly "kery," 
 Among the muses ix celestiall, 
 Afore the hieghest lubiter of all. 
 
 I not why deth my mastire dide envie, 
 But for he shulde chaunge his habite; 
 Pety hit is that suche a man shulde die! 
 But nowe I trist he be a carmylite; 
 His amyse blackc is chaunged into white, 
 Among the muses ix celestiall, 
 Afore the hieghest lubiter of all;" 
 
 Passing the muses all of elicone, 
 
 Where is ynympariable of Annonye, 
 Thedir I trist my mastir-is soule is gone, 
 
 1 Caxton's Book of Curtesye. Op. cit., pp. 36-40.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 57 
 
 The sterrede palays aboue dapplede skye, 
 Ther to syng "sanctus" incessantly 
 
 Among the muses ix celestiall, 
 
 Affore the highest lubiter of all. 
 
 Redith is volumes that ben so large and wyde, 
 
 Souereynly sitte in sadnesse of sentence, 
 Elumynede wyth colouris fresshe on euery syde, 
 Hit passith my wytte, I haue no eloquence 
 To yeue hym lawde aftir his excellence, 
 For I dare say he lef te hym not on lyue, 
 That coude his cunnying suffisantly discreue. 
 
 But his werkes his laude moste nede conquere, 
 
 He may neuer oute of remembrance die, 
 His werkys shall his name conuey and bere 
 Aboute the world all-most eternallie; 
 Lette his owne werkys prayse hym and magnifie; 
 I dare not preyse, for fere that I offende, 
 My lewde langage shuld rather appeyre than amende. 
 
 Hawes also, after showing that he knows Chaucer, is emphatic 
 in stating his preference. 1 
 
 And, after him, my mayster Lydgate, 
 The monke of Bury, dyd hym wel apply 
 Both to contryve and eke to translate; 
 And of vertue ever in especyally 
 For he dyd compyle than full nyally 
 Of our blessed lady the conversacion, 
 Saint Edmunde's life martred with treson. 
 
 Of the fall of prynces, ryght wofully 
 
 He did endyte in all piteous wyse, 
 
 Folowynge his auctoure Bocas rufully; 
 
 A ryght greate boke he did truly compryse, 
 
 A good ensample for us to dispyse 
 
 This worlde, so ful of mutabilyte, 
 
 In whiche no man can have a certente. 
 
 And thre reasons ryght greatly profytable 
 Under coloure he cloked craftely; 
 And of the chorle he made the fable 
 That shutte the byrde in a cage so closely. 
 The pamflete sheweth it expressely; 
 He fayned also the courte of Sapyence, 
 And translated wyth al his dylygence. 
 
 1 Pastime of Pleasure, Cap. XIV.
 
 58 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 The grete boke of the last destruccyon 
 
 Of the cyte of Troye, whylome so famous, 
 
 How for woman was the confusion; 
 
 And betwene vertue and the lyfe vycyous 
 
 Of goddes and goddes, a boke solacyous 
 
 He did compyle, and the tyme to passe, 
 
 Of love he made the bryght temple of glasse. 
 
 Were not these thre gretly to commende, 
 Whyche them applyed such bokes to contryve, 
 Whose famous draughtes no man can amende? 
 The synne of slouth they dyd from them dryve. 
 After theyr death for to abyde on ly ve 
 In worthy fame by many a nacyon, 
 Their bokes theyr actes do make relacyon. 
 
 mayster Lydgate, the most dulcet sprynge 
 Of famous rethoryke, wyth balade ryall. 
 The chefe orygynal of my lernyng, 
 
 What vayleth it on you for to call 
 Me for to ayde, now in especiall; 
 Sythen your body is now wrapte in chest, 
 
 1 pray God to gyve your soule good rest. 
 
 O what losse is it of suche a one! 
 
 It is to grete truely me for to tell; 
 
 Sythen the tyme that his lyfe was gone, 
 
 In al this real me his pere did not dwell; 
 
 Above al other he did so excell, 
 
 None sith his time in arte wolde succede, 
 
 After their death to have fame for their mede. 
 
 But many a one is ryght well experte 
 In this connyng, but upon auctoryte, 
 They fayne no fables pleasaunt and covert, 
 But spende theyr time in vaynful vanyte, 
 Makynge balades of fervent amyte. 
 As gestes and tryfles wythout frutefulnes; 
 Thus al in vayne they spende their besynes. 
 
 I, lytell or nought expert in poetry, 
 Of my mayster Lydgate wyll folowe the trace, 
 As evermore so his name to magnyfy 
 Wyth suche lytle bokes, by Goddes grace, 
 If in this worlde I may have the space; 
 The lytell connyng that his grace me sente 
 In tyme amonge in suche wyse shall be spente.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 59 
 
 And yet nothinge upon presumpcyon 
 
 My mayster Lydgate I wyll not envy, 
 
 But onely is mine entencyon 
 
 With suche labour my selfe to occupy; 
 
 As whyte by blacke doth shyne more clerely, 
 
 So shal theyr matters appeare more pleasaunt 
 
 Besyde my draughtes rude and ignoraunt. 
 
 The first comment to be made upon this passage is that at least 
 we know its exact date. The inscription in the first edition, "This 
 boke, called the Pastime of Pleasure, was made and compyled by 
 Stephen Hawes, one of the gromes of the most honorable chambre 
 of our soverayne lorde Kynge Henry the Seventh, the xxi. yere of 
 his most noble reyne. . .," shows it to have been written by 1506. 
 Here then is a statement of the condition of the literature at the 
 opening of the century by one of those surrounding the King, and 
 even more reliable than Skelton's indications because the personal 
 equation is not so great. There were two distinct literary ten- 
 dencies: first, the desire to continue the long allegorical type of 
 Lydgate, the form stamped with critical approval and confirmed 
 by literary precedent; and second, a reaction against this, "balades 
 of fervent amyte," short occasional poems. This distinction is 
 of primary importance as a guide through the confusion of the 
 work of the Renaissance. The second, obviously an omnibus 
 class, will develop in many directions, into the court poetry of 
 Surrey for example and into the very different, almost doggerel 
 poetry of Skelton; the first persists as formal literature, producing 
 what Lowell l wittily calls "the saurians in English poetry, 
 interminable poems, book after book and canto after canto, like 
 far-stretching vertebrae, that at first sight would seem to have 
 rendered earth unfit for the habitation of man." 
 
 Both of these classes are easily accessible in the Chaucerian 
 apocrypha, a mass of literature collected through the desire of 
 each succeeding editor of Chaucer to present not only all his works, 
 but also, more or less consciously, to include analogous poetry. 
 In this way was preserved a body of fifteenth and even sixteenth 
 century literature. Consequently in the eight editions of Chaucer 
 from 1532 to 1721 there is an anthology of early verse to which 
 some twenty authors involuntarily contributed, in all amounting 
 
 1 J. R. Lowell, Speiuer.
 
 60 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 to about 17,000 lines. Naturally the greater proportion of this 
 material is nearer the time of Chaucer, approximately before 1450. 
 This is not true, however, of some of the pieces. They are not by 
 Chaucer, in Chaucer's time, nor imitations of Chaucer. Thus 
 these editions form a veritable "ingathering" of pre-Renaissance 
 literature. 
 
 The difficulty in discussing this literature is that, since originally 
 the poems appeared under Chaucer's name, the personality of 
 Chaucer is apt to obscure the main issue, so that the discussion 
 tends to show, not what they are, but what they are not. And, as 
 the date of publication is naturally no clue to the date of com- 
 position, criticism of the poems is apt to be involved in linguistic 
 dissertations. Nor is it correct to label them all 'imitations of 
 Chaucer' merely because a later editor added them to his genuine 
 works. Of many of them the chief connection with Chaucer is 
 the accident of publication and the fact that they allude to him 
 in company with Gower and Lydgate. It seems more logical, 
 therefore, in this work, to separate them, and to discuss them, 
 together with other contemporaneous work, in connection with 
 the various tendencies of the coming literature. 
 
 The first group of poems to be discussed, then, belongs to the 
 formal literary tradition. The form used is the rime-royal stanza 
 consisting of seven pentameter lines in the order ababbcc. It was 
 introduced into English by Chaucer and used by him in two of 
 his important single works, The Parlement of Foules, and the 
 Troilus. Later, the Kingis Quair is written in this stanza form. 
 Then Lydgate gives it his critical sanction by using it in his 
 Secrees and the Temple of Glas. During the second half of the 
 fifteenth century it became curiously popular, even appearing in 
 verse letters. 1 It seems to have supplanted the heroic couplet as a 
 narrative medium for serious poetic effort. There are three other 
 characteristics common to the type; the use of the dream structure, 
 the use of allegory, and the use of personifications. All these are 
 due to the French poem, Le Roman de la Rose which had a some- 
 what inexplicable fascination for the whole of the later middle 
 ages. Inaugurated by Chaucer in his translation of La Roman de 
 la Rose and confirmed by him in the Parlement of Foules, this type 
 of poem continues through the middle of the sixteenth century. 
 
 1 Pasion Letters, ed. Gairdner, Letter No. 794.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 61 
 
 Its vitality is remarkable, and still more remarkable is the same- 
 ness of the literary convention. The author is usually reading 
 when he anticipates the reader by falling asleep, the ensuing dream 
 constituting the body of the work. In a dream, he passes through 
 a series of adventures that have an allegorical significance, and 
 he meets with various characters that are personified virtues and 
 vices. The conclusion is that he awakes and writes down his 
 dream. The objection to this scheme is the fundamental one that 
 led Washington to lay down his rule that he would never tell 
 dreams, the sequence of events is not logical; the law of causation 
 does not exist. The waking mind, therefore, in telling the dream, 
 almost invariably injects causation, whereby it ceases to be a 
 dream, without attaining the conviction of reality. It thus falls 
 between two stools. When the case is complicated by the intro- 
 duction of characters that are not characters but abstractions, 
 interest in the narrative has been doubly weakened. There 
 remains, then, only the sweetness of description and an intellectual 
 pleasure in identifying the allegory, akin to that in guessing a 
 riddle. There is also an annoying mannerism to be mentioned, 
 the affectation of self -depreciation. This, although the literal 
 interpretation of it gives the modern critic the pleasure of being 
 witty, is only a convention, comparable to that of Elizabethan 
 poetry, whereby the author promises immortality to the subject 
 of his verse. All these characteristics, however they may have 
 been derived, were passed on to the younger generation by 
 Lydgate. This seems as appropriate a place as any to introduce 
 Ritson's characterization of him, "voluminous, prosaic, and 
 drivelling monk," a phrase without which no article dealing 
 with Lydgate would be admitted to our best encyclopedias. That 
 the first adjective in the indictment be true no one can question. 
 MacCracken has ruthlessly reduced Ritson's list of titles from 
 251 to 160, 1 yet even this is a far from contemptible showing. The 
 other two adjectives, however, represent a purely personal opinion. 
 The point to emphasize here is that the subjects of the early 
 Tudor kings found him the reverse of either prosaic or drivel- 
 ling. And whatever may be the present critical estimate of the 
 aesthetic value of his poems, the fact remains that he is a force 
 to be considered, and that his style is worth comment. 
 
 1 The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, H. N. MacCracken, xi-xxxi.
 
 62 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Naturally, as one would expect in an author so "voluminous," 
 his style is both prolix and careless. 1 Written currente calamo, 
 his sentences are accretions of afterthoughts, illustration piled on 
 illustration and epithet on epithet until the thought is exhausted. 
 In the same way he rims to catalogue. It gives the effect of having 
 been composed impromptu. This is increased by the manner in 
 which, to fill up his verse, he interjects stock phrases, and un- 
 necessary words. In like manner, his scansion is entirely by 
 ear. His accent shifts without much regard for the number of 
 syllables in the line. A peculiar trick is to treat the caesural pause 
 as equivalent to a weak syllable, thus bringing two accented 
 syllables together. As he is also apt to omit the first weak syllable 
 in the line, the effect is one of two short lines. 
 
 " Mirrour of wit, ground of governaunce." 2 
 
 The result of this peculiarity of scansion, in combination with 
 the uncertainty of the language, caused some of his imitators to 
 write little more than rimed prose. 
 
 Following the example of Lydgate writers produced numerous 
 poems with the characteristics mentioned above. " Courts of. . . 
 "Castles of. . . "Temples of. . ." Their genealogy is given by the 
 name. Nor do they deserve individual comment in a work such 
 as this. It is sufficient if the reader recognizes the type and the 
 convention. This is not true, however, of several of these poems 
 that are more widely known than their fellows. Each of these 
 presents its own set of perplexing problems. As they are anony- 
 mous, the question of authorship is open to debate; as they are 
 undated, the question of language is unsettled. Consequently in 
 the long controversy they have been attributed to various writers, 
 beginning with Chaucer, and have been dated at any part of the 
 fifteenth century, occasionally spilling over into the sixteenth. 
 Since to me they all show Lydgate's influence, I place them after 
 1450 and before the end of the first quarter of the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 The first of these, The Flower and the Leaf, has the enviable 
 record of having inspired two poets of dissimilar tastes. It was 
 
 1 The best analysis of Lydgate's peculiarities is in the preface of The Temple of 
 Glas, by J. Schick. E. E. T. S. 
 1 Temple of Glas, ibid., line 754.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 63 
 
 selected by Dryden for translation, under the impression that it 
 was by Chaucer, and Keats has left the following well-known 
 account of his reading it. 
 
 This pleasant tale is like a little copse: 
 
 The honied lines so freshly interlace 
 
 To keep the reader in so sweet a place, 
 So that he here and there full-hearted stops; 
 And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops 
 
 Come cool and suddenly against his face, 
 
 And, by the wandering melody, may trace 
 Which way the tender-legged linnet hops. 
 Oh! what a power has white simplicity! 
 
 What mighty power has this gentle story! 
 
 I, that do ever feel a thirst for glory, 
 Could at this moment be content to lie 
 
 Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings 
 
 Were heard of none beside the mournful robins. 
 
 The story of the poem that thus affected Keats is briefly as follows: 
 the author being unable to sleep, arises at dawn to seek rest in an 
 arbour; first a musical duel takes place there between a nightingale 
 and a goldfinch; then a company of ladies, clad in white, appear, 
 to be followed shortly by a company of white knights; after a 
 joust by the latter, the entire number seek refuge under a tree 
 which they first greet; their place upon the lawn, however, is soon 
 occupied by an equal number of knights and ladies dressed in 
 green; the festivities of this latter group are interrupted first by 
 the heat, then a wind storm, followed by hail; in piteous plight, 
 they are succoured by members of the first party that have been 
 sheltered by the tree. Whereupon the nightingale joins the first 
 party and the goldfinch the second; upon inquiry the author is 
 told that the party of the Leaf represents those that shun delights 
 and live laborious days, while that of the fragile Flower enjoys 
 the moment. The allegory is delicate, and the atmosphere charm- 
 ing. So much so in fact that after being added to Chaucer's works 
 by Speght in 1598, it was generally accepted. Even Tyrwhitt 
 hesitated, and it appears in all the early nineteenth century 
 editions. 
 
 Actually, of course, the language l is not Chaucerian. The use 
 
 1 This has been elaborately discussed by the late Professor Skeat in the seventh, 
 the supplementary, volume of his Chaucer.
 
 64 
 
 of the final e is erratic and grammatical forms have been lost. 
 Still more, it seems a palpable imitation of Lydgate's manner. 
 The stanzas overflow even in the midst of a subordinate clause. 
 The last line of the twenty-third stanza reads, 
 
 Ch&pelets fresh; but there were many tho, 
 and the following stanza continues the sentence. 
 That daunced and eek song ful soberly. 
 You find examples of Lydgate's line, such as, 
 
 Causing the ground, felS tymes and oft l 
 
 And Lydgate's peculiarity of closing with a deprecatory apos- 
 trophe to his "little" book, it must be an affectionate diminutive 
 since the number of lines (and the Fall qf Princes 2 has over 
 thirty-six thousand lines) has nothing to do with it, is faith- 
 fully followed. 
 
 O litel book, thou art so unconning, 
 How darst thou put thy-self in prees for drede? 
 It is wonder that thou wexest not rede, 
 Sith that thou wost ful lyte who shal behold 
 Thy rude langage, ful boistously unfold. 
 
 While none of these characteristics, nor others like them, is con- 
 vincing singly, the total effect seems conclusive that the poem was 
 written after 1450. 
 
 On the other hand, that it is not by Lydgate himself is taken for 
 granted, because it is assumed that the author is a woman. That 
 the ego is a woman is shown in the line in which she is addressed 
 as "My doughter"; but that the author was a woman does not 
 necessarily follow, since there are any number of possible dramatic 
 reasons why a man should write in that character. 3 Not much 
 more convincing is the argument of Skeat drawn from the detailed 
 description of the dresses. In an age when so large a propor- 
 tion of the individual's property was invested in clothes and 
 
 1 Line 5. 
 
 2 " Miscalled by him and others Falls," MacCracken, p. xvi. 
 
 8 Professor Saintsbury, Cambridge History of Literature, suggests that the poem is 
 part of a larger whole. It does not give me that impression.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 65 
 
 distinction in rank was indicated by the garments worn, detailed 
 interest in dress was not peculiar to women. 1 Yet there is a charm 
 and softness about the poem that suggests feminine authorship, 
 and likewise explains Keats' enthusiasm. That he thought it 
 simple, merely argues that he was unfamiliar with the type. Ac- 
 tually it is written in full knowledge of the literary conventions of 
 the day. 
 
 Discussion of the Flower and the Leaf is inextricably bound up 
 with its fellow poem, The Assembly of Ladies, owing to the fact 
 that Skeat hypothesizes the same authorship. This was added to 
 the Chaucerian canon by Thynne in 1532, but was decisively re- 
 jected by Tyrwhitt, with the result that it has not figured so 
 largely in English literature. Nor is it so attractive, largely be- 
 cause it is more conventional. It is the story of a dream told by 
 a lady to a knight. In the dream she goes to the castle of Pleasant 
 Regard where Loyalty is queen. The officers of the court are 
 Perseverance, Diligence, Countenance, Discretion, Acquaintance, 
 Largesse, Belchere, Remembrance, Avysenesse, and Attemperance. 
 Once there, various women present bills of complaint; whereupon 
 Loyalty promises to consider them, and dismisses the audience. 
 And the poem ends, as it began, with the conversation between 
 the lady and the knight. The great point of similarity with the 
 Flower and the Leaf is the feminism displayed. 2 Not only is the 
 ego a woman, but, aside from the first knight, all the characters 
 are women and all the incidents concern women. Also there is 
 the same detailed description of dress. In both poems the char- 
 acters wear garments with embroidered French mottoes, a type 
 of costume also to be found in Lydgate. 3 And still more there are 
 a number of verbal similarities. 4 On the other hand the language 
 of the Assembly of Ladies is certainly later than that of The Flower 
 
 1 There is nothing in the poem more detailed than William Makegyrr's account of 
 the costumes worn at the meeting of Henry VII and Philip of Castile, Paaton 
 Letters, No. 953. 
 
 * " (with the sole exception of the Xutbrown Maid) no English poems exist, as 
 far as I remember, written previously to 1500, and purporting to be written by a 
 woman." Skeat, Supplementary, Vol. LXIII. But verses, endorsed " By a Lady," 
 in the reign of Edward IV are in the Paaton Letters, No. 870. They are also in 
 rime-royal. 
 
 1 Temple of Gloa, 1 . 309-10. 
 
 4 This has been carefully pointed out by Skeat, ibid., Ixiii.
 
 66 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 and the Leaf. Consequently one may choose between the hypoth- 
 eses; either the two poems were written by the same person at 
 different periods, or they were written by two people, one in imi- 
 tation of the other. As no one has been able to name a probable 
 author of either, the question is rather academic. In any case, 
 whether written by the same woman or different women, or men 
 in the name of women, the significant inference to be made is the 
 same. They point to a condition of society when woman was to 
 be considered. The Wars of the Roses had given place to settled 
 life and the court had resumed its social function. Consequently, 
 as in Ariosto, the poet of the Renaissance sings, not only the 
 knights and their feats, but also ladies and loves. 1 
 
 Le donne, i cavalieri, 1'arme, gli amori 
 Le cortesie, 1'audaci impresse io canto. 
 
 This point of view seems to be borne out by the incidental ref- 
 erences in the Assembly of Ladies. It opens in a garden with five 
 ladies, attended by "knightes and squyers many one," walking in 
 the cross-alleys. One thinks of the English love of gardens stressed 
 in the Utopia. The knight is warned, when he begs for the tale, 
 that it is no "litel thing", which seems like a hit at the Lydgate 
 mannerism. The setting proper of the dream is attractive. A 
 whole party had tried to penetrate a maze, exactly as you see it 
 today at Hampton Court, and some, exactly as you see them to- 
 day, had lost both their way and their temper. 
 
 For very wrath, they did step over the rayle. 
 
 The first recorded maze that I can find is that at Hampton Court, 2 
 which is too late for our poem. As Chaucer uses the word, they 
 must have been somewhat common. This maze, in any case, had 
 a fountain, set round with margarettes, forget-me-nots, remember- 
 mes and pansies; certainly it was a "delectable place". Here it 
 is, that while the rest of the party are finding the center, the hero- 
 ine has her dream. In this, the architecture of the palace of 
 Plesaunt Regard suggests strongly what we call Tudor, one of the 
 best examples of which is the Henry VIII wing of Hampton Court. 3 
 
 1 The opening of the Orlando Furioso. 
 1 Archedoffia, VII, 124, 126-127. 
 1 Assembly of Ladies, 158-168.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 67 
 
 Fairer is noon, though it were for a king 
 Devysed wel, and that in every thing. 
 The toures hy ful plesaunt shul ye find, 
 With fanes fressh, turning with every wind. 
 
 The chambers and parlours both of oo sort, 
 With bay-windowes, goodly as may be thought, 
 As for daunsing and other wyse disport; 
 The galeryes right wonder wel y-wrought, 
 That I wel wot, if ye were thider brought, 1 
 And took good hede thereof in every wyse, 
 Ye wold it Ihinke a very paradyse. 
 
 Thus in the account of the building of Hampton Court there are 
 items for the gilding and painting of vanes, a decorative feature 
 lost in the present building. And one feels that Anthony Trollope 
 would have liked Plesaunt Regard with its Tudor bays, because 
 he feels that "no sort or description of window is capable of im- 
 parting half so much happiness to mankind." And the mention 
 of galleries also suggests the Tudor love of pageantry. In the same 
 vague way the gorgeousness of the costuming brings to mind Tudor 
 splendor. 2 
 
 And furthermore, to speke of her aray, 
 I shal you tel the maner of her gown; 
 Of clothe of gold ful riche, it is no nay; 
 The colour blew, of a right good fasoun; 
 In tabard-wyse the sieves hanging doun; 
 And what purfyl there was, and in what wyse, 
 So as I can, I shal it you devyse. 
 
 After a sort the coller and the vent, 
 
 Lyk as ermyne is mad in purfeling; 
 
 With grete perles, ful fyne and orient. 
 
 They were couched, al after con worching, 
 
 With dyamonds in stede of powdering; 
 
 The sieves and purfilles of assyse; 
 
 They were (y-) mad (ful) lyke, in every wyse. 
 
 Aboute her nekke a sort of fair rubyes, 
 In whyte floures of right fyne enaraayl; 
 Upon her heed, set in the freshest wyse, 
 A cercle with great balays of entayl; 
 
 1 1 have changed Skeat's period, here, to a comma. 
 1 Aammbly of Lodiea, ibid., 51&-539.
 
 68 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 That, in ernest to speke, withouten fayl, 
 For yonge and olde, and every maner age, 
 It was a world to loke on her visage. 
 
 To date these poems accurately is manifestly impossible. During 
 the latter half of the fifteenth century the language is too fluctuat- 
 ing to give definite indications, and the handwriting of the manu- 
 script at Cambridge is not a safe guide. But we shall not be far 
 wrong if we assume them to have been written during the reign of 
 Henry VH. 
 
 Another poem of the same type is the much discussed Court of 
 Love. This differs from the previous examples in that, while the 
 language they employ is natural, the language here is consciously 
 archaic. 1 The truth of this important fact has been established by 
 Professor Lounsbury. He has shown that the grammatical errors 
 are due to the author and to his desire to imitate the language of 
 a previous age. 
 
 These are the errors of a man striving to do what he has not the special knowl- 
 edge to accomplish. So large a number of impossible forms and not all have been 
 given cannot be attributed to gross oversight on the part of even the most stupid 
 of scribes. On the other hand, they could not have been changes made inten- 
 tionally. Such changes are introduced to conform to the language of a later time 
 to put something which the copyist understands in the place of what he does not 
 understand. He would be little likely to replace grammatical endings that were 
 unknown to himself by other endings that had never been known to anybody. 
 
 It is this condition of literary forgery that makes the dating of the 
 Court of Love so perplexing. The only extant MS. is in the 
 Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, and it is from this MS. that 
 the poem was taken by Stowe for his Chaucerian apocrypha. But 
 this rejection of the printed copy merely throws us back into 
 the morass of dating by handwriting. According to Professor 
 Skeat, "I suppose most of the pieces are in a handwriting of a 
 later date, not far from 1500;" 2 and again, "the handwriting is 
 later than 1500 ". 3 Later, in his Supplementary Volume, 4 he goes 
 very much farther in the supposition, "that we have here the work 
 of one of the heralds of the Elizabethan poetry, of the class to 
 
 1 Studies in Chaucer, T. R. Lounsbury, i, 497-503. 
 
 1 Skeat, Chaucer, Vol. I, p. 56. 
 
 Ibid., 42. 
 
 4 Supplement to the Works of Chaucer, Ixxvi.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 69 
 
 which belonged Nicholas Grimoald, Thomas Sackville, Lord 
 Surrey, Lord Vaux, and Sir Francis Bryan." Probably it is safer 
 to agree with Professor Neilson, 1 when, after discussing Skeat's 
 arguments he concludes; "Allowing an interval to account for the 
 loss of some of Hawes' inflections, we shall probably be not far 
 astray in fixing the date about the end of the first quarter of the 
 sixteenth century." 
 
 On turning to the context of the poem we find an example of 
 the familiar type of erotic allegory. After a brief apologetic pro- 
 logue the author in the first person, summoned by Mercury, makes 
 a pilgrimage to the Court of Love on Mount Cithaeron. There, 
 guided by a friend, Philobone, he is censured by Love and swears 
 to the twenty statutes of Love. Then he is conducted by Philobone 
 to the presence of the heroine Rosiall, who is finally favorable to 
 his suit. A second tour of the court follows, this time with a num- 
 ber of personifications described. It ends with a parody on a re- 
 ligious service, sung by the birds. The MS. is in poor condition 
 and even with Neilson's suggested emendation of inserting the 
 twelve stanzas (w. 1093-1176) after verse 266, there are bad 
 breaks. From this brief analysis it is obvious that the poem falls 
 into four parts; the prologue, the allegory proper, the statutes, 
 and the Matins and Lauds sung by the birds. 
 
 As might be supposed, the author whom he especially imitates is 
 Lydgate. The poem opens with the stock apologetic explanation. 
 
 With timerous hert and trembling hand of drede, 
 
 Of punning naked, bare of eloquence, 
 
 Unto the flour of port in womanhede 
 
 I write, as he that non intelligence 
 
 Of metres hath, ne floures of sentence: . . . 
 
 In the main body of the poem, Dr. Schick 2 has shown so large a 
 number of similarities between it and Lydgate's Temple of Glas 
 as to prove that the author knew that poem. Particularly is this 
 true with the Statutes of Love, 3 "which recur in a diluted form 
 in the Temple of Glas, mostly in the exhortations given by Venus 
 
 1 The Origin and Source* of the Court of Love, by William Allan Neilson, 1899, p. 2. 
 This is the most careful study of the poem yet made. 
 1 Lydgate'* Temple of Glas, J. Schick, E. E. T. S., 1891. 
 1 Ibid., cxxxL
 
 70 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 to the Knight. " Thus the first, second, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, 
 ninth, tenth, twelfth, fourteenth and eighteenth statutes are 
 suggested by passages in the earlier poem. Curiously enough the 
 versification, however, does not suggest Lydgate. His peculiar 
 broken-backed line, such as 
 
 A crowne of gold, rich for any king * 
 
 is rarely used. It was partly this perfection of the metre that 
 led Tyrwhitt on internal evidence not to reject the poem as by 
 Chaucer. At least the author has used as models Chaucer's Legend 
 of Good Women, Parlement of Foules, Hous of Fame, and Compleynt 
 to Pity, and 2 "the total result gives the impression of a very de- 
 voted disciple." And, as Neilson shows, there is a fair probability 
 that he knew La Messe des Oisiaus of Jean de Conde and the 
 Kingis Quair of James I of Scotland. 
 
 This very enumeration differentiates the Court of Love from the 
 previous poems of the type. Whereas there the authors were 
 writing normally, here the impression is that of a conscious 
 literary artist deliberately reviving a past form. Even the details 
 have precedents. Philobone "caught me by the lap" before the 
 first tour of the Court; so likewise Pandarus starts to leave Criseyde 
 "Til she agayn him by the lappe caughte". . . 3 It is the ac- 
 cumulation of imitative touches that argues against its being the 
 work of an early writer. Any one feature, such as the Statutes of 
 Love, or the Matins of the Birds, may be found in a medieval 
 poem, the peculiarity here is that they are all united. Like so 
 much of modern architecture, it is the excess of the peculiarities 
 of the style that disproves its genuineness. 
 
 That the poem is a Renaissance imitation of a past medieval 
 form is also suggested by occasional details, no one of which taken 
 alone would be conclusive. The architecture, for example, has 
 the Tudor bay 4 and great expanse of windows. 5 The composition 
 of the names, Philobone and Philogenet, as Skeat remarks and 
 Neilson questions, seems to point to a period of the early Greek 
 revival. That the names are badly formed is unquestionable; the 
 remarkable feature is the presence at all of the Greek. Still more re- 
 markable is the impression of what may be termed vaguely the men- 
 
 1 Flower and Leaf, 1.172. * Neilson, ibid., 239. * Troilus, Bk. 2, 1.448. 
 
 4 1.1058. * 1.229.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 71 
 
 tal attitude. The eighteenth statute, for example, inculcates clean- 
 liness and courtesy. The original of this is the detailed catalogue 
 in the Ars Amatoria, i, 513 ff., that the toga should be in good con- 
 dition, the teeth brushed, skin, hair, beard, and nails clean, etc. 
 These eight lines from Ovid are expanded into thirty in the 
 Romaunt of the Rose, where they are elaborately adapted to 
 medieval conditions. Lydgate, on the other hand, omits the 
 physical details to stress courtesy in two lines only. In the Court 
 of Love all either Roman or medieval details have vanished, the 
 Lydgate scarcely stressed, and the whole told with a touch of 
 humor. 
 
 The eighteenth statut, hoolly to commend, 
 To plese thy lady, is, That thou eschewe 
 With sluttishness thy-self for to offend; 
 Be jolif, fresh, and fete, with thinges newe, 
 Courtly with maner, this is all thy due, 
 Gen till of port, and loving clenlinesse; 
 This is the thing that lyketh thy maistresse. 
 
 And not to wander lich a dulled ass, 
 Ragged and torn, disgysed in array, 
 Ribaud in speche, or out of mesure pass, 
 Thy bound exceding; think on this alway: 
 For women been of tender hertes ay, 
 And lightly set their plesire in a place; 
 Whan they misthink, they lightly let it passe. 
 
 The second stanza certainly was not written seriously. Still more 
 so is the case with the very objectionable sixteenth statute, a 
 statute that has not been found in any previous author. When 
 he pleads to Rosiall that this must be modified, she grants his 
 request. 
 
 And softly than her colour gan appeare, 
 As rose so rede, through-out her visage all, 
 Wherefore me think it is according here, 
 That she of right be cleped Rosiall. 
 
 That she should blush is not surprising! Such open discussion of 
 the physical in a poem marked by delicate poetic feeling is only 
 comprehensible if one remembers the antagonism to the Christian 
 ideal brought in by the revival of humanism. Much the same is 
 true of the religious attitude in the poem. Thus in the Temple of 
 Glcu the only monks and nuns who lament are those forced into
 
 72 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 monastic vows in childhood, a legitimate medieval condition. In 
 the Court of Love there is but slight stress on such a limitation. 
 There the religious vow is of no force. 
 
 . . . for truly, there is non 
 
 Exception mad, ne never was nc may. 
 
 Their regrets are stated with Renaissance frankness. 
 
 O why be som so sorry and so sad, 
 Complaining thus in blak and whyte and gray? 
 Freres they ben, and monkes, in good fay: 
 Alas, for rewth; greet dole it is to seen, 
 To see thaim thus bewaile and sory been. 
 
 See how they cry and wring their handes whyte, 
 
 For they so sone went to religion! 
 
 And eke the nonnes, with vaile and wimple plight. 
 
 There thought that they ben in confusion: 
 
 "Alas," thay seyn, 'we fayn perfection, 
 
 In clothes wide, and lak our liberte; 
 
 But all the sin mote on our frendes be. 
 
 For, Venus wot, we wold as fayn as ye, 
 That ben attired here and wel besene, 
 Desiren man, and love in our degree, 
 Ferme and feithfull, right as wold the quene: 
 Our frendes wikke, in tender youth and grene, 
 Ayenst our will made us religious; 
 That is the cause we morne and wailen thus." 
 
 Than seid the monks and freres in the tyde, 
 "Wel may we curse our abbeys and our place, 
 Our statuts sharp, to sing in copes wyde, 
 Ghastly to kepe us out of loves grace, 
 And never to fele comfort ne solace; 
 Yet suffre we the hete of loves fire, 
 And after than other haply we desire. 
 
 O Fortune cursed, why now and wherefore 
 Hast thow," they seid, "beraft us libertd, 
 Sith nature yave us instrument in store, 
 And appetyt to love and lovers be? 
 Why mot we suffer suche adversit, 
 Diane to serve, and Venus to refuse? 
 Ful often sith this matier doth us muse. 
 
 We serve and honour, sore ayenst our will, 
 Of chastit6 the goddes and the quene;
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 73 
 
 Us leffer were with Venus byden still, 
 And have reward for love, and soget been 
 Unto this women courtly, fressh, and shene. 
 Fortune, we curse thy whele of variaunce! 
 There we were wele, thou revest our plesaunce." 
 
 The same impression of slight religious feeling and a cynical 
 attitude toward it is given by the parody on the religious service 
 at the end of the poem. This seems detached from the preceding 
 and complete in itself. While it is true that in Jean de Conde one 
 finds much the same conception, the presumably immediate 
 source is Lydgate's Devotion of the Fowles. This is reverential. 
 It is merely an expansion of the verse from the Benedicite, eng- 
 lished in the Book of Common Prayer, as 
 
 "O all ye fowles of the air, bless ye the Lord: praise him and 
 magnify him forever. " 
 
 On the contrary here the deity addressed is not the Creator of 
 the World, it is the God of Love, and the terms used are 
 identical. 
 
 "Dominus regnavit," seid the pecok there, 
 "The Lord of Love, that mighty prince, y-wis, 
 He hath received here and every-where: 
 Now Jubilate sing:" "What meneth this?" 
 Seid than the linet; "welcome, Lord of blisse!" 
 Out-stert the owl with " Benedicite, 
 What meneth al this mery fare?" quod he. 
 
 "Laudate" sang the lark with voice full shrill; 
 And eke the kite, " admirabilel 
 This quere will throgh myne eris pers and thrill; 
 But what? welcom this May seson," quod he; 
 "And honour to the Lord of Love mot be, 
 That hath this feest so solemn and so high:" 
 "Amen," seid all; and so seid eke the pye. 
 
 The protestant reader must remember that these Latin phrases 
 are the opening words of the Psalms, that they were familiarly 
 employed as titles to the various Psalms, and that as such they 
 were always associated with religion. The irreverent wit consists 
 in using sacred words hi a profane sense. This lack of religious 
 feeling, expressed by the author and expected by the readers, is 
 another argument for a late date of composition. 
 
 If the Court of Lore were written much later than 1500, a sur-
 
 74 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 prising literary condition must be deduced. The author of it is 
 without much question one of the ablest poets between Chaucer 
 and Wyatt. It has much of Chaucer's wit and lightness of touch. 
 Whoever "Philogenet, of Cambridge clerk" may have been, he 
 created a poem that on aesthetic grounds alone may well have been 
 attributed to the master. As an imitator he is more successful 
 than Spenser. But the question arises, why did he attempt this 
 tour de force? The answer is, I think, that without the originality 
 of Skelton, he saw around him no literary models except those of 
 the past. So he tried to turn back the hands of the clock, and was 
 of course foredoomed to failure. The old formal erotic allegory 
 was out of touch with the ideas of the new age, ideas waiting for 
 the proper expression. Consequently the Court of Love is pre- 
 served in a single manuscript, and remained unprinted until Stowe 
 in 1561 included it in his edition of Chaucer. Its day was past. 
 
 Contemporaneous with the erotic allegory, there is a second 
 variant, the moral allegory. While the first aims primarily to 
 amuse, the second aims primarily to instruct. Otherwise there 
 are the same general characteristics, namely the dream-structure, 
 the use of personifications, the allegorical framework, and the 
 rime-royal as verse form. And, again like the first, the master is 
 Lydgate. At the opening of the sixteenth century the great 
 exponent of this form is Stephen Hawes, "one of the gromes of 
 the most honorable chamber of our souerayne lorde Kynge Henry 
 the Seventh." Aside from this statement (whatever that may 
 mean!), which was evidently considered of paramount importance 
 since it appears on the frontispiece of almost all of his works, our 
 knowledge of him is pitiably meagre. The date of his birth, usually 
 given as 1475, seems very doubtful. 1 Nor are the incidental facts 
 
 1 It is based upon the identification of the poet with the hero in the Pastime of 
 Pleasure. In the Percy Society reprint the passage reads 
 
 I thought me past al chyldly ygnoraunce, 
 
 The XXXI. yere of my yonge flourynge aege; Cap. xxvii. 
 
 Unhappily the first edition has "xxi!" I owe this fact to the kindness of Professor 
 A. K. Potter of Brown University, who has collected material for a definitive edition 
 of Hawes. With a generosity as scholarly as it is rare he has allowed me to steal his 
 thunder; the very least that I can do is to acknowledge the voice of Jove. Aside 
 from this doubtful reading, the hero of the Example of Virtue (1504) announces 
 that he is sixty. Dunbar Anthology, 285. Southey's reprint British poets, 1831, 
 however, gives the correct reading of the first edition of The Pastime.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 75 
 
 discovered by modern research much more reliable since the names 
 Stephen and Hawes, or Hawys, are not unusual and the scattered 
 references need not refer to the poet. Aside from certain 
 items in the expense account of the king in regard to court 
 ceremonials, the most interesting are that in 1506 a "Hawse" 
 received "10 s. for a ballet," x and hi 1521 "Mr. Hawse for his 
 play VI XIHs.IIIId." 2 1505-1506 would be the twenty-first 
 year of Henry VII's reign, the time stated in the colophon of the 
 composition of the Pastime of Pleasure, which is elaborately 
 dedicated to the King. Yet to describe this as a "ballad" is 
 possible only on the not improbable assumption that the account- 
 ant had never read it, and ten shillings is certainly not an extrav- 
 agant reward for a poem that extends through forty-five chapters. 
 It was perhaps this experience that made him write, 
 
 Our late souerayne his fader excellent 
 
 I knowe ryghte well some holde oppynyon 
 That to auaryce he had entenddment 
 
 Gadrynge grete rychesse of this his regyon. ... * 
 
 a condition for which he apologizes on the ground that Henry 
 might have been accumulating riches in order to make war on the 
 Turks. What the play was, there is no means of guessing. In 1523 
 there is a will of a Stephen Hawes proved. This probably refers to 
 the poet as in the Controversy between a Lover and a Jay, undated 
 but probably before 1530, he is alluded to in the past tense. The 
 earliest life, that by Bale, 4 consists in pleasant epitaph-like gen- 
 eralizations. The statement, however, that he studied in England, 
 Scotland, and France, when Henry's French predilections are 
 remembered, explains his being the groom of the chamber much 
 more than that he was called to it by the "sole commendation of 
 virtue. " Anthony Wood 5 adds that he studied at Oxford, but 
 without taking a degree. He also is the authority for the horrify- 
 ing statement that "he could repeat by Heart most of our English 
 Poets; especially Jo. Lydgate a Monk of Bury, whom he made 
 
 1 Dictionary of National Biography. 
 
 1 Quoted by Dr. Burkart, Stephen Hawes' Pastime of Pleasure, London, 1899. 
 
 1 A Joyfull Medytacyon, edited for the Abbotaford Club, by David Laing, 1865. 
 
 4 Scriptorum Illustrium Maioris Brytanniae, 1559-L. 63. 
 
 ' Athena Oxonienti*.
 
 76 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 equal in some Respects with Geff . Chaucer. " But we know little 
 more of him than that he was "somtyme grome of ye chambre 
 of our late souerayne lorde kynge Henry ye seuenth. " l 
 
 Without discussing the apocryphal works mentioned by Bale, 
 Hawes is represented in English literature by five poems. As it 
 is his habit to state upon the title page the date of the composition 
 according to the number of years of the reign, it is simple to ar- 
 range them in chronological sequence. 
 
 1. The Example of Virtue, 1504. 2 
 
 2. The Pastime of Pleasure, 1506. 
 
 8. The Conuercyon of Swerers, printed 1509. 
 
 4. A Joyfutt medytacyon to all Englonde of the coronacyon of our maost natural! 
 souerayne lorde kynge Henry the eyght, undated (1509?). 
 
 5. The Comfort oflouers (1512). 3 
 
 As the fifth is inaccessible, and the third and fourth are compara- 
 tively short poems, his poetic reputation rests upon the first and 
 second. That in his own age it was great is shown by the sur- 
 prising number of editions. The Example was reprinted in 1530; 
 the Conuercyon, in 1551, and again undated; and the Pastime 
 again in 1517, 1554, and twice in 1555. 4 Thus whatever may be 
 the modern critical opinion of Hawes as a poet, it must be recog- 
 nized that he satisfied certain demands of his time. 
 
 His theory of poetry, like that of Lydgate, may be traced to 
 Boccaccio. The De Genealogia Deorum gives, as the name imports, 
 the genealogies of the pagan pantheon. As many of the relation- 
 ships among the gods are abominable from a moral point of view, 
 in the fourteenth and fifteenth books, "the first defense of poesy 
 in honor of his own art by a poet of the modern world ", Boccaccio 
 is forced to accept the medieval position of an allegorical inter- 
 
 1 Wynkyn de Worde's colophon to the JoyfuU Medytacyon. 
 
 * The anonymous contributor of the article in the Dictionary of National Biog- 
 raphy, owing to the mutilation of the copy in the Pepysian Library, Cambridge, 
 conjectures the date, 1512. The title, however, reads "the nineteenth year of his 
 (Henry VII) most noble reign." Consequently 1503-1504 is at least the date of 
 composition. 
 
 1 The Comfort of Lovers, never reprinted, exists in an unique copy at Ham House. 
 My transcription is due to the generosity of Professor Potter to whom Lord Dysart 
 gave permission to photograph the volume. 
 
 4 These dates are taken from Burkart.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 77 
 
 pretation. As summarized by Professor Spingarn, 1 the theory 
 is as follows: "The reality of poetry is dependent on its allegorical 
 foundations; its moral teachings are to be sought in the hidden 
 meanings discoverable beneath the literal expression; pagan poetry 
 is defended for Christianity on the ground that the references to 
 Greek and Roman gods and rituals are to be regarded only as 
 symbolic truths. The poet's function, for Boccaccio, as for Dante 
 and Petrarch, was to hide and obscure the actual truth behind a 
 veil of beautiful fictions veritatem rerum pulchris velaminibus 
 adornare." 
 
 This theory was adopted by Hawes and carried to its logical 
 conclusion. The aim of poetry is 
 
 By the laboure of inventyfe busynes, 
 Touchynge the trouthe by covert lykenes 
 To dysnull vyce and the vycious to blame; 2 
 
 the method is so to write that there is both a literal and a symbolic 
 meaning. 3 
 
 It was the guyse in old antiquyte, 
 Of famous poets ryght ymaginatife, 
 Fables to fayne by good auctorite; 
 They were so wyse and so inventife, 
 Theyr obscure reason, fayre and sugratife, 
 Pronounced trouthe under cloudy figures, 
 By the inventyon of theyr fatall scriptures. 
 
 And the author played a stimulating game of catch-as-catch-can 
 with his reader. Not to understand him was to confess your own 
 inefficiency. 4 
 
 But rude people, opprest with blyndnes, 
 Agaynst your fables wyll often solisgyse, 
 Syche is theyr mynde, such is theyr folyschnes; 
 For they beleve in no maner of wyse 
 That under a colour a trouth may aryse. 
 For folysh people, blynded in a matter, 
 Will often erre what they of it do clatter. 
 
 This whole point of view has been so lost that it is necessary to 
 explain it. Our ideas of allegory are formed from the clarity of the 
 
 1 A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, J. E. Spingarn, 1899, p. 9. 
 P. of P.. Cap. VIII. Ibid. 4 Ibid., Cap. IX.
 
 78 
 
 Pilgrim's Progress. With this as the norm, we turn back to the 
 earlier work. By doing this we are unfair. Much of modern crit- 
 icism of the Faerie Queene, for example, would have been regarded 
 by Spenser as irrelevant. As the pleasure consisted in guessing 
 the significance, 1 
 
 Specyally poetes under cloudy fygures 
 Couered the trouthe of all theyr scryptures. 
 
 there was no obligation on the part of the poet to be intelligible. 
 It is for the reader to disperse the clouds. 
 
 The poems of Hawes in whole and in part illustrate this poetic 
 theory. The first, the Example of Virtue, has all the characteristics 
 of the form; the body of the poem is a dream, in which the hero, 
 Youth, conducted by Discretion, after having been instructed by 
 Nature, Hardiness (courage), Fortune, and Wisdom, all person- 
 ified as women, passes the bridge of Purity, resists Sensuality and 
 Pride, and, defended by the armor of St. Paul, defeats the dragon, 
 whose three heads are the World, the Flesh and the Devil; he 
 then marries Cleanliness at a wedding attended by all the apostles, 
 saints, and martyrs. After a brief tour of Hell, they both die, and 
 the poem ends with an apostrophe to the King and the usual apol- 
 ogy. This is clearly the glorified life of the Christian knight. The 
 author is also careful to explain his personifications. First follows 
 a description, for example, of the King of Love (who must have 
 been worth seeing!) and then the "moralization." It is worth 
 quoting as an illustration of his method. 2 
 
 He sat in a Chair right clear and excellent, 
 At the upper end of the Hall above. 
 He sat still, and did not remove, 
 
 Gird(ed) with willows; and might not see 
 
 No manner of thing in his degree. 
 
 He had two wings right large and great, 
 
 And his body also was naked; 
 And a dart in his right hand was set, 
 
 And a torch in his left hand brenned. 
 
 1 He Conuercyon, Prologue. 
 
 1 From the Dunbar Anthology, stanzas 182-188. In fact, the frontispiece of the 
 first edition illustrates this figure; in the second, the 1530 edition, the illustration 
 shows the debate.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 79 
 
 A bottle about his neck was hanged; 
 His one leg armed, and naked the other. 
 Him for to see, it was a wonder. 
 
 Sapience bade me marvel nothing 
 
 For she would shew me the signification 
 Why he so sat, by short reckoning, 
 According to a moralization. 
 Now, of the first to make relation, 
 Love should be gird(ed) fast with stability. 
 Without which love can have no surety. 
 
 This has all the charm found in the exposition of a mathematical 
 problem. For this type of work all that is needed is a little in- 
 genuity and plenty of time. It is quite comprehensible that a man 
 with leisure might amuse himself in constructing such allegorical 
 puzzles, and it is very possible that this poem, like the Conversion 
 of Swearers, "was made to eschewe ydlenesse." 
 
 That something like this was his attitude is shown by the title 
 of his second work, The Pastime of Pleasure. As this is commonly 
 regarded as his masterpiece, I quote Morley's epitome of it com- 
 pletely. 1 
 
 Graund Amoure passed through the fair meadow of Youth, and then came to the 
 choice between two highways of life, the way of Contemplation that was life in a 
 religious order and the way of Active Life. He took the way of Active Life, met 
 Fame with her two greyhounds, Grace and Governaunce, who told him of La Bel 
 Pucell, in whom Hawes represented the true aim of life, only attainable through 
 many labours. Then he first visited the Tower of Doctrine, and was introduced to 
 her seven daughters. These were the seven sciences, arranged of old into three, 
 Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, forming what was called the "Trivium;" and four. 
 Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, Astronomy, which formed the "Quadrivium." 
 When, in his introduction to these seven daughters of Doctrine, Graund Amoure 
 had advanced to Music, he found her playing on an organ in her tower, and it was 
 then that he first saw his ideal, La Bel Pucell. He told his love to her, and danced 
 with her to sweet harmony. This means that the youth who has advanced far 
 enough in the pursuit of knowledge to have ears for the grand harmonies of life, is 
 for a time brought face to face with the bright ideal to be sought through years of 
 forward battle. 
 
 La Bel Pucell went to her distant home; and Graund Amoure, after receiving 
 counsel from Geometry and Astronomy, proceeded to the Castle of Chivalry, 
 prayed in the Temple of Mars, within which was Fortune at her wheel, and on his 
 way to the Temple of Venus met Godfrey Gobilive, who spoke ill of women. This 
 
 1 Morley's English Writer*, 7.73. I prefer this to my own since it will as far as 
 possible eliminate the personal equation from the discussion.
 
 80 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 part is in couplets. They went to the Temple of Venus; but Godfrey was overtaken 
 by a lady named Correction, with a knotted whip, who said that he was False 
 Report, escaped in disguise from his prison in the Tower of Chastity. To that 
 Tower the Lady Correction introduced Graund Amoure. As the adventurer pro- 
 ceeded on his way he fought a giant with three heads, named Falsehood, Imagina- 
 tion, Perjury, and cut his heads off with the sword of Claraprudence. Then he 
 proceeded through other adventures, which carried on the allegory of steadfast 
 endeavour till Graund Amoure saw the stately palace of La Bel Pucell upon an 
 island beyond a stormy ocean. After the water has been crossed, there was still to 
 be quelled a monster against which Graund Amoure could only defend himself by 
 annointing his sword with the ointment of Pallas. The last victory achieved, 
 Graund Amoure was received into the palace by Peace, Mercy, Justice, Reason, 
 Grace, and Memory; and he was married next morning to La Bel Pucell by Lex 
 Ecclesise (Law of the Church). After his happy years with her, Old Age came one 
 day into Graund Amoure's chamber, and struck him on the breast; Policy and 
 Avarice came next. Graund Amoure became eager to heap up riches. Death 
 warned him that these must be left. After the warning, Contrition and Conscience 
 came to him before he died. Mercy and Charity then buried him. Fame wrote his 
 epitaph. Tune and Eternity pronounced the final exhortation of the poem. 
 
 And the poem ends with an apology. 
 
 By a comparison of these analyses the striking similarity be- 
 tween the two poems is at once apparent. In each the young hero 
 is educated by personified abstractions, falls in love with the hero- 
 ine by report, is allowed to see her, is separated from her by water, 
 is armed with the armour of Saint Paul, undergoes trials, slays a 
 dragon or dragons, is married, and finally dies of old age. Both 
 seem equally examples of virtue. 1 Naturally as the second has 
 seven hundred and fifty-five stanzas, with several pages of heroic 
 couplet, in addition to the three hundred of the first, there is a 
 good deal more material. Even then the poverty of his invention 
 is shown by the fact that he duplicates the adventures. In The 
 Example the hero kills one dragon, and in The Pastime two. This 
 is clearly illustrated by a comparison of the two passages describ- 
 ing the armor. 
 
 This is the armour for the soul, 
 
 That, in his Epistle, wrote Saint Paul. 
 
 Good-Hope thy Leg-harness shall be, 
 
 The Habergeon of Righteousness gird(ed) with Chastity, 
 
 1 Professor Murison (Cambridge History of English Literature, 2,259) distinguishes 
 them as follows: "In his two long poems, he has the same didactic aim to portray a 
 man's struggles to attain his ideal; moral purity in the Example of Virtue, worldly 
 glory in the Passetyme of Pleasure ..." I fail to see this distinction.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 81 
 
 The Placard of Business, with branches of Alms-deed, 
 The Shield of Belief, and Meekness for the head. 
 Thy Sword shall be, thee to defend, 
 The Word of God, the Devil to blend! 
 
 The Example of Virtue, stanza 196 
 
 For fyrst, good hope his legge harneys sholde be; 
 
 His habergion of perfyte ryghtwysenes; 
 
 Gyrde faste wyth the gyrdle of chastite, 
 
 His riche placarde should be good besines, 
 
 Brandred with almes so full of larges; 
 
 The helmet mekenes, and the shelde good fayth; 
 
 His swerde Goddes worde, as saynt Poule sayth. 
 
 The Pastime of Pleasure, Cap. XXVII. 
 
 This does not mean that The Pastime is merely an enlarged edition 
 of The Example. The inference is that after he had finished the 
 first poem, he amused himself by constructing the second on much 
 the same lines. 
 
 The fundamental difference between the two poems lies in the 
 treatment of the educational sections. Nearly one half of The 
 Example, one hundred and twenty-seven stanzas, is filled by the 
 debate between Nature, Fortune, Hardiness, and Wisdom as to 
 which of them is most important to mankind; roughly the same 
 proportion of space is used in The Pastime to personify the studies 
 of the formal medieval curriculum. The explanation of this differ- 
 ence is little flattering to Hawes' inventiveness. 1 His intense ad- 
 miration for Lydgate has already been mentioned. In the list of 
 Lydgate's works there enumerated it is stated that 
 
 He fayned also the courte of Sapyence 
 
 This, the earliest attribution of the Court of Sapience to Lydgate, 
 has been denied on internal evidence by MacCracken. 2 Presuma- 
 bly Hawes' admiration for the poem led him to ascribe it to his 
 master. The hero of this walks through a beautiful meadow, 
 watered by the clear river Quiete. There he meets a beautiful 
 lady, accompanied by her two sisters, from whom he craves 
 
 1 Ten Brink, Englith Literature, 2,297, is extreme in his statement; " Hawes is 
 very far from being able to compete with Lydgate in poetic productivity, yet he 
 excels him, perhaps, in the art of invention and in working out allegorical motives." 
 
 1 Minor Poemi of Lydgate, xxxv.
 
 82 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 instruction. The first book is a disputation between the four 
 daughters of a king (God) named Mercy, Peace, Truth, and Right- 
 eousness, on behalf of a criminal servant (Adam) who is to suffer 
 death. The second book then conducts him to the Court of Sa- 
 pience where he is instructed in the utility of the seven liberal arts. 1 
 Hawe's method of procedure is now obvious. Using as a model 
 the work he admired, in The Example, he copied the scheme of the 
 dream structure and debate of the first book; in The Pastime, the 
 scheme of the Court of Sapience of the second book. Yet as the 
 age did not recognize property rights in ideas, it is somewhat diffi- 
 cult to run down the immediate source of any given detail. Cer- 
 tain conceptions were common to all. Thus, although there is some 
 similarity between the Cuer d' amours epris of King Rene of Anjou 
 and the Theuerdank of Emperor Maximilian and The Pastime, it 
 is a similarity in genre. Still more is this true when arises the ques- 
 tion concerning the origin of any particular part, such as the Tower 
 of Doctrine and the seven personified arts. The main motive for 
 this Courthope finds in Martianus Capella, 2 and Dr. Hans Natter 
 suggests that the "tower" may come from the woodcut in the Mar- 
 garita Philisophica of Reisch of Freiburg. 3 While either of these 
 hypotheses is a possibility, it is yet a far cry from the medieval or 
 the renaissance German. The most probable source, so far as there 
 may be any conceivable importance attached to it, is as Professor 
 Potter suggests, Caxton's version of the Image du Monde,* although 
 Dr. Natter insists that the French original is the "hauptquelle." 
 Against Dr. Natter may be urged certain verbal resemblances and 
 the fact that, as Caxton, the court printer, published two editions, 
 
 1 The Court of Sapience was announced in preparation for the E. E. T. S. by Dr. 
 Borsdorf, but withdrawn. This outline is condensed from Burkart. 
 
 * History of English Poetry, i, 382. 
 
 a Untersuchung der Quellen von Stephen Hawes' ollegorischen Gedichte "Pastime of 
 Pleasure." von Dr. Hans Natter, Passau, 1911. 
 
 4 In order that the reader, if he wishes, may compare the two, the passages de- 
 scribing geometry are subjoined. 
 
 The fythe is called geometrye, the whiche more auaylleth to Astronomye than 
 ony of the vii other; ffor by her is compassed and mesured Astronomye. Thus 
 is by geometrye mesured alle thingis where the is mesure. By geometrye may be 
 knowen ye cours of the sterres whiche alleway go and meue, and the gretenes of the 
 firmament, of the sonne, of the mone and of the erthe. By geometrye may be 
 knowen alle thynges, and also the quantyte; they may not be fo farre, yf they may 
 be seen or espyed with eye, but it may be knowen, Who wel vnderstode geometric,
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 83 
 
 1481 (?) and 1490, Hawes almost certainly was familiar with his 
 translation. In any case he elaborates and expands his material, 
 levying contributions from Lydgate and from other authors. 1 
 Occasional lines suggest vague reminiscenses of Chaucer. Thus 
 the critic is forced to praise his memory at the expense of his 
 originality. 
 
 Another feature that differentiates The Pastime from The Ex- 
 ample is the introduction in the former of the Godfrey Gobilive 
 episode. It there serves as comic relief. The tone is one of very 
 broad comedy of the type of the fabliaux; the language is exceed- 
 ingly coarse. The stories told are of the senile Aristotle and of 
 the enchanter Vergil. Although these are in the Temple of Glas, 
 both were so diffused throughout medieval literature that Hawes 
 may have gotten them almost anywhere. Yet on the weary 
 
 he myght mesure in alle maistryes; ffor by mesure was the world made, and alle 
 thinges hye, lowe and deep. 
 
 Caxton's Mirrour of the World, ed., O. H. Prior for the E. E. T. S.. p. 38. 
 
 My science, she sayd, it is moost profitable 
 Unto Astronomy, for I do it mesure 
 In every thing as it is probable; 
 For I my selfe can ryght well discure 
 Of every sterre, which is sene in ure, 
 The mervaylous gretnes by my mesuring; 
 For God made all at the begynnyng. 
 
 By good mesuryng both the heyght and the depnes 
 
 Of every thing, as I understand, 
 
 The length and brede with all the greatnes, 
 
 Of the firmament so compassing the land; 
 
 And who my cunning list to take in hand, 
 
 In his emyspery of hye or low degre 
 
 Nothing there is but it may measure be. 
 
 Though that it be from us hye and farre, 
 If ony thing fall we may it truely sem, 
 As the sonne or moone or any other sterre, 
 We may thereof know well the quantite. 
 Who of this science dooth know the certaynte, 
 All maysteries might measure perfytely; 
 For geometry doth shew it openly. 
 
 Pastime of Pleasure, Percy Society, p. 100. 
 
 1 For example, Lydgate's Temple of Glcu.
 
 84 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 reader the dominant effect of the passage is that of surprise, sur- 
 prise that it should be there at all, and, after the monotonous 
 rime-royal, the use of the heroic couplet is rather a relief. So, 
 up to this point in the investigation, Hawes may be considered 
 merely as a continuator of the medieval tradition. He is dull, in- 
 coherent, verbose. Dr. Schick quotes Scott as saying that Hawes 
 is "a bad imitator of Lydgate, ten times more tedious than the 
 original," with the grim addendum that it "means not a little!" 
 This opinion is comprehensible since the first parts of both poems 
 have almost no action and consist of interminable disquisitions 
 full of poorly phrased commonplace. 
 
 But this criticism does not apply to the second halves of the 
 same poems. Here the action is rapid, varied and romantic. The 
 reader is hurried from adventure to adventure, each more marvel- 
 lous than the last. And the break between these two divisions is 
 marked by scarcely any transition. In The Example, for instance, 
 after the interminable debate, which has no particular relation 
 with what is to follow, Dame Sapience begins the new part with 
 the unexpected remark that the hero had better get married. And 
 the lack of sequence is still further shown by the fact that only a 
 little later in the poem the hero, again meeting Sapience, has 
 apparently never seen her before. Although in The Pastime the 
 transition is better managed, in neither poem consequently is 
 there any unity. Apparently he composed them as he went along, 
 without much regarding what had preceded and without fore- 
 seeing what was to follow except vaguely. 1 Naturally then it is 
 useless to discuss the proportionate space given to the separate 
 episodes, or the relation between them. And as their sequence 
 is chronological, the composition is of the type familiar to the 
 modern reader in the Morte d' Arthur or The Recuyell of the Histor- 
 yes of Troye, where the charm lies in the quaintness of the language 
 and of the particular incident. 
 
 Unhappily it cannot be said that the episodes here, taken sep- 
 arately, are very attractive. The love passage in the garden be- 
 tween Amoure and Pucel has a certain formal quaintness, but in 
 general Hawes' descriptions consist merely in catalogues of events 
 or of characteristics of persons. Thus night after night he solemnly 
 
 1 In The Pastime, Cap. iv, the hero is shown an arras picturing his future adven- 
 tures; these, however, do not exactly correspond with the presentment.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 85 
 
 puts the hero to bed. Or, when he wishes to impress the reader 
 with the beauty of the heroine, he resorts to an inventory. 1 
 
 Her shining here so properly she dresses 
 Alofe her forehed with fayre golden tresses. 
 
 Her forehead stepe, with fayre browes ybent, 
 Her eyen gray, her nose streyght and fayre, 
 In her whyte chekes the fayre bloud it went 
 As among the whyte the rede to repayre: 
 Her mouth right small, her breth swete of ayre, 
 Her lyppes sof te and ruddy as a rose, 
 No hert on lyve but it wold him appose. 
 
 Wyth a lyttle pytte in her well-favored chynne; 
 Her necke . . . etc. 
 
 The list goes from top to bottom, until he reaches 
 Her fete proper, she gartered well her hose. 
 
 He lacks the saving sense of humor so that when his dragons should 
 be terrible, they are merely ridiculous. 2 
 
 I sawe the dragon . . . 
 I behelde his head with his great body, 
 Which was mishaped ful right wonderly; 
 Of gold so shene was both his head and face; 
 Ful lyke a mayden; it was a mervalyous cace! 
 
 His necke silver, and thicke as a bull; 
 His brests stele, and like an olyphant; 
 His forelegges latyn, and of f ethers full; 
 Ryght lyke a grype was every tallaunt; 
 And as of strength he nothing did want. 
 His backe afore, lyke brystles of a swyne, 
 Of the fine copper did moost clerely shyne. ^ 
 
 His hinder legges was like to a catte, 
 
 All of tynne, and like a scorpion; 
 
 He had a tayle wyth a head thereat, 
 
 All of leade, of plyaunt facion; 
 
 His herte stele, without menission. 
 
 Toward me he came, roring like the thonder, 
 
 Spyttyng out fyre, for to se greate wonder. 
 
 1 P. oj P+ Cap. xxx. * P. of P., Cap. xxxvfl.
 
 86 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Now this is bad art! Surely with 
 
 The marvellous Dragon so greatly stinking * 
 
 bearing down upon him, the knight would have neither time nor 
 inclination to observe all these details. Nor is the date of composi- 
 tion any excuse, because Chaucer, writing a century earlier, could 
 have taught him to omit the non-essential. The reason why he 
 fails to make his creations vital, is primarily because they were 
 not vital to him. For example, he does not see a real knight fight- 
 ing a real dragon, but the scene as worked in tapestry. This is 
 curiously obvious from the fact that from the heads of the dragon 
 curl stanza-long statements in Greek lettering. Standing at ease 
 before the imaginary tapestry, the author deciphers the inscription 
 for the benefit of the reader. But as the effect is that of a descrip- 
 tion of a picture, compared with the vividness of Bunyan, these 
 figures are still and lifeless. 
 
 The third poem, The Comfort of Lovers, to be bracketed with 
 the two just discussed, is yet chronologically the last of the series, 
 since the title tells us it was "made and compyled". . . "in the 
 seconde yere of the reygne of our most naturall souerayne lorde 
 kynge Henry the eight." Perhaps, since this unique copy is 
 practically inaccessible, it will be better to give an abstract of the 
 poem. It opens with an introduction of four stanzas in the rime- 
 royal, stating Hawes' familiar positions, that poets cloak truth 
 "under cloudy figures," that he himself is "lytell or nought experte 
 in this scyence," doing it merely "to devoyde ydlenes;" and 
 ending with the eulogy on Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate, the 
 stress being laid upon the last. In the poem proper the poet is 
 walking in a fair meadow, meditating upon the ways of Providence, 
 when he falls asleep. In his dream he seems to be in the garden 
 of a Tudor palace. There he is met by a lady of goodly age who 
 greets him in a stanza characteristic of the author at his worst. 
 
 To me she sayd / me thynke ye are not well 
 
 Ye haue caught colde / and do lyue in care 
 
 Tell me your mynde / now shortly euerydele 
 
 To layne the trouthe / I charge you to beware . . . 
 
 1 The Example, stanza 222.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 87 
 
 Moved by this poetic appeal, the hero confesses that divers years 
 ago he had secretly loved a beautiful lady. 
 
 I durst not speke unto her of my loue 
 
 Yet under coloure I dyuers bokes dyde make 
 
 Notwithstanding (or on account of?) this, misfortune had come 
 upon him. 
 
 Thretened with sorowe. of many paynes grete 
 
 Thre yeres ago my ryght hande I dyde bynde 
 
 Fro my browes for fere / the dropes doune dyde sweet 
 
 God knoweth all it was nothynge my mynde 
 
 Unto no persone / I durst my her to untwynde 
 
 Yet the trouthe knowynge / the good gretest P 
 
 May me releace / of all my / p / p / p / thre 
 
 After this cryptic complaint, the lady comforts him with common- 
 place proverbs. But to these he rejoins 
 
 Alas madame / unto her then sayd I 
 Aboue XX. woulues / dyde me touse and rent 
 Not longe agone / delynge moost shamefully 
 That by theyr tuggunge / my lyfe here was spent 
 I dyde perceyue / somewhat of theyr entente 
 As the trouthe is knowen / unto god aboue 
 My ladyes fader they dyde lytell loue. 
 
 Apparently to escape these discomforts, he dispraised where he 
 loved best, and turned his thoughts toward God. But he complains 
 
 Som a had wened for to haue made an ende 
 Of my bokes / before he hadde begynnynge 
 But all vayne they dyde so comprehende 
 Whan they of them lacke understandynge 
 Vaynfull was & is theyr myssecontryuynge 
 Who lyst the trouthe of them for to ensue 
 For the reed and whyte they wryte full true 
 
 Assuring him of her appreciation that his books have been written 
 for the high pleasure of the red and white, she conducts him to a 
 resplendent tower. Upon the walls within are three magic crystals, 
 each with its appropriate emblem. In the first he sees his past;
 
 88 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 in the second he sees the plots of his enemies, and he takes the. 
 emblem, the flower of virtue; in the third the Holy Ghost appears 
 as a dove, and he takes the emblem, the sword of prudence and the 
 shield of perception. On again regarding the third crystal, it now 
 shows the heavens with an effulgent star, which he interprets to 
 mean that he will be successful in his quest. In any event he is 
 so, as shortly after his lady appears, with Dame Diligence bearing 
 her train. Then follows a dialogue of twenty-five stanzas, in which 
 Pucel at last refers the case to Venus and Fortune. The poem 
 ends with an apology addressed to ladies. 
 
 This abstract has been purposely made full in order that the 
 modern reader may have the pleasure, intended by Hawes for his 
 contemporaries, of guessing the interpretation. And the modern 
 reader, I think, will feel that Hawes underestimates his power of 
 using "couert termes" and "cloudy figures." Herein lies its chief 
 significance. In this, his last poem, he has rejected the appeals 
 to the interest of his reader by introducing either morality or 
 adventure, nor does he, as in the other two poems, vouchsafe any 
 explanation. With any such meretricious weakness rejected, it 
 is thus an example of this theory of art carried to its reductio ad 
 absurdum. As such it was never reprinted. The age had lost its 
 interest in these forms of intellectual ingenuity, which became 
 degraded into charades and conundrums. Yet by the poet himself 
 it was probably regarded as his masterpiece. At least, it is the 
 most personal of his poems. And it forms a curious nexus between 
 the other two. The heroine, Pucel, is taken from The Pastime; 
 her father, who is unmentioned in The Pastime, is taken from The 
 Example. Thus in a certain sense The Comfort of Lovers may be 
 regarded as the completion and final summation of the art of 
 Hawes. 
 
 The remaining two poems may be passed almost without com- 
 ment. The Conuercyon of Swerers reached the dignity of a third 
 edition probably before fifty years had passed. Its appeal must 
 have been based on the unimpeachable nature of its sentiments, 
 since it consists advowedly in quotations from the early fathers 
 against swearing, indefinitely diluted. And A Joy full medytacyon 
 to all Enqlonde of the coronacyon of our moost naturall souerayne 
 lorde kynge Henry the eyght is chiefly interesting from the complete 
 reversal of one of his prophecies.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 89 
 
 Holy chirche reioyse / with all your lybertees 
 Withouten domage / the kynge wyll ye encreace 
 And be your shelde from all adversytees 
 No wrong shall be but he wyll it soone seace 
 Knyttynge the knotte of fayth loue and peace 
 Bytwene you and hym without dysturbaunce 
 So for to endure by longe contynuance. 
 
 Perhaps it was fortunate that Hawes did not live long enough to 
 see what were the relations between Henry and the Church. 
 
 These two poems are interesting for another reason, from the 
 fact, namely, that being published in facsimile they are the only 
 ones which give the American reader any appreciation of the ac- 
 tual condition of the text. Professor Arber has ruthlessly modern- 
 ized The Example, and Wright's edition of The Pastime, reprinted 
 from one of the latest editions of the sixteenth century, seems 
 hopelessly inaccurate. The fact that he considers it as one of the 
 "monuments of the bad taste of a bad age," is no justification 
 for beginning a chapter in the middle of a sentence. 1 Thus one is 
 never sure whether the blunder is that of the printer or of the 
 poet. 2 Occasionally there is a lilt to the stanza faintly suggestive 
 of Spenser, and usually the lines may be made to scan by an agile 
 reader. Of course, being an admirer of Lydgate, he employs 
 frequently the broken-backed line. And one must be prepared 
 to call in the assistance of the final e. A very favorable example 
 of his verse is given by the following stanza. 3 
 
 O mortall folke ! you may beholde and see 
 
 Howe I lye here, sometime a myghty knyght; 
 
 The end of joye and all prosperite 
 
 Is deth at last, through his course and myght; 
 
 After the day there cometh the derke night; 
 
 For though the day be never so longe, 
 
 At last the belles ringeth to evensonge. 
 
 The last two lines include all that Hawes ever directly contributed 
 to English literature, and even here the expression may not be 
 
 1 The P. of P., Caps, xxxiii, xxxiv. Southey here gives the same reading. 
 
 1 Burkart gives a number of illustrations. Such conditions are necessarily unfair 
 to the author. Sympathetic criticism and a complete understanding must be 
 deferred until the appearance of Professor Potter's edition. 
 
 TheP.o/P.,Cap.xlii.
 
 90 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 his as it figures in Heywood's Proverbs. On the other hand, that 
 Hawes was interested in the technical side of his art is shown by 
 the curious verse experiment in the Conuercyon. 
 
 See 
 
 Ye (kynde 
 
 Be 
 
 Agayne 
 
 My payne (in mynde 
 
 Reteyne 
 
 My swete bloode 
 On the roode (my broder 
 
 Dyde the good 
 
 My face ryght red 
 
 Myn armes spred (thynke none oder 
 
 My woundes bled 
 
 Beholde thou my syde 
 
 Wounded so ryght wyde (all for thyn owne sake 
 Bledynge sore that tyde 
 
 Thus for the I smerted 
 
 Why arte thou harde herted (I thy swerynge as lake 
 
 Be by me conuerted 
 
 Tere me nowe no more 
 My woundes are sore (and come to my grace 
 Leue swerynge therefore 
 
 I am redy 
 
 To graunte mercy (for thy trespace 
 To the truely 
 
 Come nowe nere 
 My frende dere (before me 
 And appcre 
 
 I so 
 
 In wo se se 
 
 Dyde go 
 
 I 
 
 Crye (the 
 
 Hy 
 
 This attempt at so artificial a form makes one question whether 
 in some of his impossible lines we have the poet's own text. 1 
 
 In spite of all that can be said in the way of unfavorable criticism 
 the fact yet remains that his greatest work went through five 
 editions before the reign of Elizabeth. Although the explanation 
 
 1 The peculiarity of Hawes diction is discussed in Chapter 8.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 91 
 
 may be, as has been unkindly suggested, that the age had few 
 books, the probable reason is that, owing to the very composite 
 nature of the book, it appealed to a wide reading public. The 
 long moral disquisitions attracted some; others found humor in 
 the coarsely realistic episode of Godfrey Gobilive; and still others 
 enjoyed the romantic adventures. To the literary historian Hawes' 
 chief significance lies in the fact that to the allegory he joined the 
 romance. The age of Henry VII seemed prosaic; the good old 
 times had passed, the knights and paladins had become extinct, 
 and, as Hawes himself says, the flower of Chivalry had been long 
 decayed. 1 But (especially under Henry VIII), the forms and 
 ceremonies were all the more valued. Thus, while Henry and 
 Francis were mutually trying to out-lie and out-trick each other, 
 their professions were worthy of a Roland and of an Oliver. Jousts 
 and tourneys and gilded armor were the fashion. It was Hawes' 
 good fortune, rather than his literary instinct, that led him to 
 unite the Prioresse and Sir Thopas. Both types of poems had 
 existed separately; it was the union that was the novelty. If 
 Hawes wrote the didactic element to please himself, the romantic 
 part was presumably introduced to please Henry VII. His Welsh 
 blood and predisposition toward French literature would account 
 for the presence of the marvels and the combats. Jack the Giant 
 Killer is a Welsh hero. Yet Hawes himself is not in sympathy 
 with the static ideal of medieval Christianity. When his hero 
 is offered the choice between a life of contemplation and one of 
 activity, and of worldly dignity, it is the latter that is chosen, for 
 Hawes is on the threshold of the Renaissance. 
 
 With modern critics the temptation is to consider Hawes, not in 
 regard to what he is, but in regard to what the type will produce. 
 Thus the phrase, "the Spenser before Spenser" continually appears. 
 The point to remember is that, if this be true, it is also that he is 
 Spenser with Spenser left out. 2 There has been a tendency to 
 exalt him, to read into him beauties, and to excuse deficiencies. 
 Mrs. Browning, who is enthusiastic, regards The Pastime of 
 Pleasure, together with Piers Ploughman, the House of Fame, 
 and the Temple ofGlas, as the "four columnar marbles. . . on whose 
 foundation is exalted into light the great allegorical poem of the 
 
 1 The P. of P., Cap. xxvi. 
 
 1 Hi* effect upon Spenser is reserved (or a later study.
 
 92 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 world, Spenser's Faerie Queene." 1 As Schick points out, the pedi" 
 gree is more probably Martianus Capella Anticlaudianus Court 
 of Sapience Pastime of Pleasure Faerie Queene. At least this 
 gives the significance to Hawes* work. He is known, if known at 
 all, for the better work of other men. And yet it was his fortune 
 to combine the two strongly marked medieval tendencies into one 
 single form. Without a tithe of the poetic faculty of the author 
 of the Court of Love, in literary history he is much more important. 
 He is the gateway between medievalism and the Renaissance. 
 
 Up to this point in the discussion, there has been one character- 
 istic common to all work, namely the lack of definite expression 
 of the personality of the author. In spite of the Comfort of Lovers, 
 Hawes remains a visionary figure. This condition is almost neces- 
 sitated from the fact that each author wrote according to lines laid 
 down by tradition. But such a state belongs rather to the Middle 
 Ages than to the Renaissance. Then, if anything at all was 
 stressed, it was individuality. What seems to the modern reader 
 to be arrant boasting, to the man of that time appeared only the 
 proper recognition of his own ego. In literature the time was at 
 hand when a writer would employ the old formulae, but employ 
 them as a medium for self-expression. 
 
 Practically such a condition is to be found in a poem of John 
 Skelton. Of his life, beyond what may be legitimately, or il- 
 legitimately, deduced from his works, we know curiously little. 
 Since the name Skelton, Schelton, Shelton, or Scheklton, is quite 
 common, at once appears a prolific source of misinformation. In 
 particular a contemporary John Skelton, afterwards knighted, 
 adds to the confusion. Thus his life, a fascinating structure of in- 
 ference and conjecture, is built around only a few definite dates. 2 
 We know neither when nor where he was born, nor who were his 
 parents, nor where he received his education. 3 The first notice 
 
 1 Book of the Poets, 123. 
 
 2 The Life prefixed to the Dyce edition of 1843 is still in great measure the source 
 of all subsequent statements. This may be corrected by the masterly study of 
 Friedrich Brie, Skelton-studien, Englische Studien, 37 abnd, 1-86. As I shall have 
 occasion to differ from certain positions taken by Dr. Brie, I wish here to express 
 my hearty admiration for the skill with which he has brought order out of chaos. 
 
 s One Scheklton, according to Cole's Collections, as quoted by Dyce, received 
 the M. A. at Cambridge in 1484. That this is the poet is questioned in Vol. Ill of 
 the Athence Cantabrigiensis.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 93 
 
 shows him already with an established reputation. In 1490 Cax- 
 ton hi his preface to the Eneydos, after explaining his difficulties 
 with the English language, unexpectedly addresses Skelton. 1 
 
 But I praye mayster lohn Skelton, late created poete laureate in the vnyuersite 
 of oxenforde, to ouersee and correcte this sayd booke, And taddresse and expowne 
 where as shalle be founde faulte to theym that shall requyre it. For hym, I knowe 
 for suffycyent to expowne and englysshe euery dyffyculte that is therin / For he 
 hath late translated the epystlys of Tulle / and the boke of dyodorus syculus, and 
 diuerse other werkes oute of latyn in-to englysshe, not in rude and olde langage, 
 but in polysshed and ornate termes craftely, as he that hath redde vyrgyle / ouyde, 
 tullye, and all the other noble poetes and oratours / to me vnknowen: And also he 
 hath redde the ix. muses, and vnderstande theyr musicalle scyences, and to whom 
 of theym eche scyence is appropred. I suppose he hath dronken of Elycons well. 
 
 This casual remark of Caxton gives the two influences that affect 
 Skelton's work, namely his Latinity and his desire for expression 
 in English. For his Latin we have also other evidence. The first 
 Grace Book of the University of Cambridge gives the entry in 
 1493, 2 Conceditur Johanni Skelton poete in partibus transmarinis 
 atque oxonie laurea ornato ut aput nos eadem decoraretur." Ac- 
 cording to this entry, then, he had been honored with the academic 
 degree of poet laureate, by Oxford, Cambridge, and a foreign uni- 
 versity, probably Louvain. 3 Warton, followed by all subsequent 
 writers, adds another entry, 1504-5. 4 "Conceditur Johi Skelton 
 Poete Laureat, quod possit stare eodem gradu hie quo stetit Oxon- 
 iis, et quod possit uti habitu sibi concesso a Principe." 5 What the 
 "same degree here that he held at Oxford" was I do not know. 6 
 The assumption that it was again the degree of poet laureate seems 
 improbable since that had already been given him at each uni- 
 
 1 E. E. T. S., Gallon's Eneydoa. p. 3. 
 
 1 Athena Cantabrigiensis, Vol. III. 
 
 1 Given by title of verses of Whittington, Dyce 1, XVI. 
 
 * History English Poetry, 1873, iii, 127, note. 
 
 1 This was verified for Dyce, i, xiii, note. On the other hand no such entry is 
 given in the Athene Cant, nor is there any mention of it by Mullinger. 
 
 * For Dyce the Rev. Dr. Bliss searched the archives at Oxford with no result. 
 "No records remain between 1463 and 1498 that will give a correct list of degrees." 
 After 1500 Wood gives no notice of such a degree conferred upon Skelton. The 
 habit is presumably the one alluded to. Dyce, Vol. I, 124 and 197. Arno Thtlra- 
 mcl, Studien Uber John Skelton (Leipzig, 190J). pp. 48-50, appreciates the difficulty 
 but offers no solution.
 
 94 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 versity. It may have been the D. D. as Bale suggests. However 
 that may be, it is the poet laureateship in which Skelton delights. 
 In his curious (and unpleasant) series of mocking attacks upon 
 Garnesche he plumes himself upon this particular degree. 1 
 
 Lytyll wyt in your scrybys nolle 
 That scrybblyd your fonde scrolle, 
 Vpon hym for to take, 
 Agennst me for to make 
 Lyke a doctor dawpate, 
 A lauryate poyete for to rate. 
 . Yower termys ar to grose, 
 To far from the porpoes, 
 To contaminate 
 And to violate 
 The dygnyte lauryate. 8 
 
 And again: 
 
 What eylythe th6, rebawde, on me to raue? 
 
 A kyng to me myn habyte gaue: 
 
 At Oxforth, the vniversyte, 
 
 Auaunsid I was to that degre; 
 
 By hole consent of theyr senate, 
 
 I was made poete lawreate. 
 
 To cal me lorell ye ar to lewde: 
 
 Lythe and lystyn, all bechrewdel 
 
 Of the Musys nyne, Calliope 
 
 Hath pointyd me to rayle on th6. 
 
 It semyth nat thy pylld pate 
 
 Agenst a poyet lawreat 
 
 To take vpon th6 for to scryue . . . 
 
 It ys for no bawdy knaue 
 
 The dignite lawreat for to haue. 1 
 
 In the postils to two poems Skelton is signed as "Orator regius," 
 whatever that may mean. But that he had no definite connection 
 with the court as our modern term implies is proved by the fact 
 that his name does not figure on the rolls. It was an academic 
 degree conferred for proficiency in the composition of Latin verse. 
 The fact that he was so honored in three universities, even with- 
 
 1 Of course this has no connection with the modern office of poet laureate. 
 8 Dyce, i, 122. 3 Dyce, i, 128-129.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 95 
 
 out considering the mysterious second degree, shows that accord- 
 ing to the educational standards of the time he was regarded as a 
 man of great scholarly attainments. 
 
 Given a man with such scholastic antecedents, it was almost inevi- 
 table that he should experiment with a type of poem authorized by 
 literary tradition; given a man with the renaissance craving for in- 
 dividualistic expression, and it was inevitable that the conventional 
 form would be modified, even unconsciously, by his treatment. 
 On the one side there will be careful adherence to the peculiarities 
 of the form; on the other a complete breaking away from the typi- 
 cal mental attitude. So, whereas Hawes in his combination of the 
 chivalric and erotic elements was a conscious innovator, mechani- 
 cally creating a new type by a recombination of old forms, here 
 there will be an unconscious adaptation of the old tradition to form 
 a medium of expression for the new age. Such is the peculiarity 
 of Skelton's poem, The Bowge of Court. The poem is divided into 
 the three conventional sections, the introduction, the poem proper, 
 and the apologetic conclusion. In the first five stanzas, with the 
 typical astronomical opening, the poet in the first person tells us 
 that he wishes to write, 
 
 . . . callynge to mynde the greate auctoryte 
 Of poetes olde, whyche full craftely, 
 
 Under as couerte tennes as coude be, 
 
 Can touche a trouth and cloke it subtylly 
 Wyth fresshe vtteraunce full sentencyously. 
 
 With becoming hesitation, however, he feels a lack of confidence in 
 his ability to be sufficiently obscure. In this mood of doubt he 
 falls asleep, and in his dream 
 
 At Harwyche Porte slumbrynge as I laye, 
 In myne hostes house, called Powers Keye, 
 
 he sees a ship well freighted, called the Bowge of Courte. The aim 
 of the voyagers is to obtain the jewel favor of the owner, dame 
 Sauncepere. Shielded by silk she sits upon a throne over which is 
 the motto Carder le fortune, que est mauelz et bone. Her chief gentle- 
 woman, Danger, repulses him, but another, Desire, urges him on, 
 and advises him to make friends with fortune, who controls the 
 ship.
 
 96 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Whome she loueth, of all plesyre is ryche, 
 
 Whyles she laugheth and hath luste for to playe; 
 
 Whome she hateth, she castcth in the dyche, 
 For whan she frouneth, she thynketh to make a fray; 
 She cheryssheth him, and hym she casseth awaye. 
 
 With the rest, the poet, whose name is Drede, makes his suit to 
 Fortune. Here the prologue ends. The poem proper is an account 
 of the voyage. On board there are seven "full subtyll" characters, 
 Fa veil (Duplicity), Suspecte (Suspicion), Harvy Hafter (a cheat), 
 Dysdayne, Ryotte, Dyssymuler, and Subtylte. Each in turn is 
 characterized, and has an interview with Drede. There is some 
 dramatic action suggested. After the last, fearing for his life, he 
 leaps overboard, and awakes. The "lytyll boke" ends with an 
 apology, ... it is only a dream, but sometimes in dreams truths 
 appear. 
 
 Such is in bare outline the plan of the poem. At once merely 
 by the outline it is apparent that we have here a composition of 
 the type of the medieval tradition. It has all the earmarks, the 
 dream structure, the allegory, the personifications and the rime- 
 royal. Still more, it has the peculiarities of the Lydgate school. 
 The formal astronomical opening, the belief in the necessity of 
 "couert termes," the suggestion of the apostrophe to the "lytyll 
 boke" at the end, and the inevitable apology. You even find an 
 occasional broken-backed Lydgatian line. 
 
 That 1 ne wtste what to d6 was bste 
 
 Up to this point it is a perfect example of the school so worthily 
 represented by Hawes. 
 
 The interesting feature about the poem is, not its similarity to 
 the type, but its unconscious divergence from it. Skelton's per- 
 sonality is too powerful to be confined in any common mould. 
 Seeing life with his own eyes, and not through literary tradi- 
 tion, he becomes concrete. The vague medieval meadow is a 
 definite place, Harwich Port, and a definite inn, Powers' Quai. 
 This becomes strongly marked when he deals with the personi- 
 fications. Instead of Hawes ' pictured figures, here the characters 
 are strongly individualized. The description of Harvy Hafter 
 may serve as an example :
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 97 
 
 Vpon his breste he bare a vereynge boxe; (dicing) 
 His throte was clere, and lustely coude fayne; 
 
 Me thoughte, his gowne was all furred wyth foxe; 
 And euer he sange, Sythe I am no thyng playne. 
 
 To kepe him frome pykynge it was a grete payne; 
 
 He gased on me with his gotyshe berde; 
 
 Whan I loked on hym, my purse was half aferde. 
 
 The last line is a triumph of suggestiveness. And the same 
 brilliant characterization is shown in the speeches. For the sake 
 of continuity Harvy is again chosen for illustration: 
 
 Syr, God you saue! why loke ye so sadde? 
 
 What thynge is that I maye do for you? 
 A wonder thynge that ye waxe not madde! 
 
 For, and I studye sholde as ye doo nowe, 
 
 My wytte wolde waste, I make God auowe. 
 Tell me your mynde: me thynke, ye make a verse; 
 I coude it skan, and ye wolde it reherse. 
 
 But to the poynte shortely to precede, 
 Where bathe your dwellynge ben, er ye cam here? 
 
 For, as I trowe, I haue sene you indede 
 Er this, whan that ye made me royall chere. 
 Holde vp the helme, loke vp, and lete God stere: 
 
 I wolde be mery, what wynde that euer blowe, 
 
 "Heue and how rombelow, row the bote, Norman rowel" 
 
 "Prynces of yougthe" can ye synge by rote? 
 
 Or shall I sayle wyth j r ou a felashyp assaye; 
 For on the booke I can not synge a note. 
 
 Wolde to God, it wolde please you some daye 
 
 A balade boke before me for to laye, 
 And lerne me to synge, Re, my, fa, sol ! 
 And, whan I fayle, bobbe me on the noil. 
 
 Loo, what is to you a pleasure grete, 
 To haue that connyng and wayes that ye hauet 
 
 By Goddis soule, I wonder how ye gete 
 Soo grete pleasyre, or who to you it gaue: 
 Syr, pardon me, I am an homely knaue, 
 
 To be with you thus perte and thus bolde; 
 
 But ye be welcome to our housholde. 
 
 And, I dare saye, there is no man here inne 
 But wolde be glad of your company:
 
 98 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 I wyste neuer man that so soone coude wynne 
 The fauoure that ye haue with my lady; 
 I praye to God that it maye neuer dy: 
 
 It is your fortune for to haue that grace; 
 
 As I be saued, it is a wonder case. 
 
 For, as for me, I serued here many a daye, 
 And yet vnneth I can haue my lyuynge; 
 
 But I requyre you no worde that I saye; 
 For, and I knowe ony erthly thynge 
 That is agayne you, ye shall haue wetynge: 
 
 And ye be welcome, syr, so God me saue: 
 
 I hope here after a frende of you to haue. 
 
 Here we are miles away from the stock epithet of the Lydgate 
 school. Harvy is musical, and sings "Row the boat, Norman, 
 row" * and "Princes of youth." But unhappily he sings by ear 
 only. He is a homely knave and seeks to flatter by stressing the 
 superior attainments of Drede. Yet he is completely insincere, 
 and at another's suggestion is quite willing to throw Drede over 
 board in a picked quarrel. The line, 
 
 Holde up the heIme, loke up, and lete God stere, 
 
 is rather shocking coming from the mouth of such a character. Yet 
 is it not natural for this type of rascal to throw thus the responsibil- 
 ity upon God? Harvy Hafter's easy-going philosophy is here sug- 
 gestive, and it is worth comment that Skelton recognized that such 
 a shifting of responsibility denotes weakness of character rather 
 than strength. Thus each trait is carefully etched in. The result 
 is that for the first time since Chaucer vivid characterization is 
 placed in a framework of definitely conceived dramatic action. 
 
 With such treatment as this, naturally there is no ambiguity in 
 the interpretation of the allegory. Bouge, from the French bouche, 
 is merely the technical term for the table set by the king for the 
 court. 2 As such it had been used half a century before Skelton. 
 Here it is used to typify life at the Court. The conditions there 
 were so unlike the present that it requires an effort of the imagina- 
 
 1 This is an actual song, the music of which is preserved in Chappell's Popular 
 Music of the Olden Time, II, 482. 
 
 1 The reader is refered to Chapter I of the present work.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 99 
 
 tion to realize them. In the sixteenth century court a large number 
 of individuals were brought together without any regard to congen- 
 iality and without very much to do. The duties were trivial. Yet 
 however trivial they might seem abstractly, concretely upon them 
 depended both one's reputation and one's income. The main object 
 of a man's life was to acquire the favor of the monarch. If for any 
 reason good or bad, important or trivial, noble or vile, you attracted 
 the favorable notice of the king, you were successful. Thus all 
 things were reduced to one level; whether you were a skillful 
 statesman, or player on the lute, or a cunning deviser of royal 
 debauch, it was immaterial. On the other hand, failure to obtain 
 this, in the fullest sense of the word, spelled ruin. As the Duke of 
 Norfolk said to More, "by God's body! Mr. More, indignatio 
 principis mors est," and More proved the truth of the statement 
 on Tower Hill. As there was no real dignity back of the life, and 
 as there was no independence of thought, Skelton thinks that to 
 gain this all-important favor of the King is only a matter of chance. 
 And equally, he that possesses it is both flattered and hated by all 
 the rest. The Court is peopled by liars and cheats, by suspicion 
 and disdain. Success there is worse than failure and the honest 
 man jumps over board ! 
 
 If this be the interpretation, only by form does the poem belong 
 to the type represented by the medieval tradition. If on that side 
 it be compared to Hawes, its content recalls Barclay in both his 
 Eclogues and in his Ship of Fools. First there is no question that 
 there was some relation between them. Even granting that Bale's 
 mention of a work by Barclay Contra Skeltonum be mythical, that 
 Barclay did not approve of Skelton is shown in the final stanzas * 
 of the Ship of Fools. There he plumes himself upon his virtuous 
 writings, priding himself that 
 
 It longeth nat to my scyence nor cunnynge 
 For Phylyp the Sparowe the (Dirige) to sing. 
 
 To assume, however, that Skelton's verses good-humoredly 
 advising those that disliked Philip Sparrow to do better them- 
 selves, 2 are a reply to Barclay, is to assume that Barclay was the 
 only critic. Likewise to construe the passage in the Fourth Eclogue 
 
 1 Jamieaon, op. cit., ii, SSI. * Dyce, 1, 412.
 
 100 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 against poet laureates as an attack particularly aimed at Skelton 
 is to state a tempting hypothesis. Of course it may be true, but 
 equally of course it may seem true only because of our lack of data. 
 It is fair, however, to feel that the traditional enmity between the 
 two poets must have had some foundation. 
 
 But if there be any truth in this tradition it is somewhat sur- 
 prising to find Skelton enlisted by modern scholarship as a follower 
 of Barclay. 1 This is almost certainly an error, due to the inclusion 
 among Skelton's work of the Boke of Three Fooles. As this has 
 been shown by Brie 2 to be merely a part of Watson's translation 
 of the Narrenschiffs, all connection of Skelton with Barclay's Ship 
 of Fools is reduced to the fact that they each use the allegory of a 
 boat. But even in English this metaphor is not uncommon. 3 Nor 
 is the employment of it the same. In Barclay the figure of the boat 
 is a mechanism in which to put his innumerable fools; in Skelton 
 the boat itself represents the court. If it be necessary to find an 
 original for the ship of state, the ode of Horace comes at once to 
 mind. 4 Thus, while it may be possible that Locker's version of 
 the Narrenschiffs (1497) suggested the idea, Skelton's employment 
 of it is much more artistic. Much the same may be said of the 
 assumed influence of Barclay's Eclogues, which also attack court 
 life. Barclay's criticisms are after all criticisms of superficial de- 
 tail; Skelton sensed the fundamental wrong. And this superiority 
 of Skelton is due, in the last analysis, to his deeper perception. 
 Barclay is merely an adapter of other men's work, a humanist by 
 courtesy. Skelton, on the other hand, brought from his wide 
 reading a point of view that made him a sharp and original critic 
 of English conditions. 
 
 The importance of this argument lies in the fact that the dating 
 of the poem is based on internal evidence. If it shows the influence 
 of the Ship of Fools unless Skelton saw the manuscript it must 
 have been written after 1509; if it shows the influence of the 
 
 1 Herford, Literary Relations, pp. 354-355; Rey, Skelton's Satirical Poems, p. 51; 
 Koelbing, Zur Charakteristik John Skelton's, p. 69; in the Chapter on Barclay and 
 Skelton in the Cambridge Hist, of Lit., p. 83, written after Brie's Studien had ap- 
 peared, Koelbing recedes from this position, substitutes Brandt for Barclay, and 
 tends to date the poem early. 
 
 2 Brie, op. cit., p. 18. 
 
 1 Koelbing op. cit., p. 76, gives a long list of predecessors. 
 * The Fourteenth Ode of the First Book.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 101 
 
 Eclogues, it must have been composed about 1514. 1 But as it 
 does not in any way show the influence of these works, there is 
 no necessity for so late a date. In fact the cumbrous form, the 
 careful following of the medieval tradition, point rather to very 
 early work. Brie here makes a suggestion, entirely without any 
 foundation, but fascinating in connection with my interpretation 
 of the poem. We know that Skelton had been connected with 
 the Court as tutor to Prince Henry. We know also that in 1498 
 he was ordained successively subdeacon, deacon, and priest. 2 But 
 in 1504 he was Rector at Diss in Norfolk. 3 
 
 It is a not unnatural assumption that he received the rectorship 
 of Diss as a regard for his tutorial services. On the other hand 
 there has never been a reason assigned why a man sufficiently 
 influential to be chosen as tutor to his Prince, and with the 
 reputation of one of the leading scholars of his country, should be 
 willing to bury himself in an obscure country town. Norfolk today 
 is but ninety-five miles from London, but ninety-five miles over 
 sixteenth century roads was a long journey fraught with dis- 
 comfort and danger. 4 Skelton's own answer perhaps is to be 
 found in the Bowge of Court. From a court in which there was 
 not to be found one good man, where wretches plotted against 
 him, he indignantly sought refuge in exile. 3 This is mere hypothe- 
 sis, but it does cover all the few facts of the case. This hypothesis 
 also explains the acidity of the poem. The allegory of the Romaunt 
 of the Rose and of Lydgate has been turned into satire! 
 
 This medieval form, clear and definite, has already been twice 
 modified by the literary necessities of the Renaissance; by Hawes, 
 who combines with it a didactic chivalric romance, and again by 
 Skelton, who forces it into the service of satire. Still another at- 
 
 1 See Chapter IV, p. 167. The latest date with the curious reason is given by 
 Rey, op. cit. 51: "And what is still more concluding for the posteriority of the 
 'Bowge of Court' is the circumstance that it was even written after the 'Garland' 
 which dates, as the title-page indicates, from 1523; as the 'Bowge' does not form 
 part of the list of Skelton's works in the ' Garland,' the assumption of the posteriority 
 of the 'Bowge of Court' seems quite ascertained." As Dr. Rey states that he has 
 used the three volume American reprint of the Dyce, I refer him to Vol. 2, p. 222 of 
 that edition where in the Garland of Laurel he will find the line, "Item Bowche of 
 Court where Drede was begyled" . . . 
 
 Dyce, 1. XX. Ante, pp. 48-49. 
 
 Dyce, 1, XXVI. * Brie, op. cit.. p. 41.
 
 102 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 tempt to use the old formula was made just after the middle of the 
 sixteenth century by John Heywood. 
 
 John Heywood (1497P-1560?) has at least left behind him the 
 tradition of a fairly definite personality, probably due, however, 
 to the fact that he lived well into the reign of Elizabeth. His work 
 belongs to the earlier period, because he remained faithful to 
 his religion, even to the extent of becoming an exile. That 
 he was possessed of tact is shown by his continued existence 
 without changing his religious beliefs, although he was forced once 
 to a public recantation. His marriage with the daughter of Ras- 
 tell the printer, the brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, strength- 
 ened him at the Court, which he had entered in the capacity of 
 "singer." In any case he figures in the Court Expenses of three 
 reigns. Although Wood rates him as an Oxford man, traditionally 
 he was valued "for the myrth and quickness of his conceits more 
 than for any good learning. " l Probably he was concerned with 
 the many masques and entertainments at Court, an occupation 
 in which his wit and humor had full play. That that was his repu- 
 tation is shown by his description of himself. 2 
 
 "Of Heywood." 
 
 "Art thou Heywood, with the mad merry wit?" 
 "Yea, forsooth, master! that same is even hit." 
 "Art thou Heywood that applieth mirth more than thrift?" 
 "Yea, sir! I take merry mirth a golden gift!" 
 "Art thou Heywood that hath made many mad plays?" 
 "Yea, many plays; few good works in all my days." 
 "Art thou Heywood that hath made men merry long?" 
 "Yea, and will, if I be made merry among." 
 "Art thou Heywood that would be made merry now?" 
 "Yea, sir! help me to it now I beseech yow." 
 
 It is unfair to take a man's description of himself too seriously, 
 but he had the reputation of being a mad merry wit. Even in 
 Puttenham's time, anecdotes were current showing his quickness 
 of repartee. This is particularly shown in his plays. It is by them 
 that Heywood maintains his hold upon the attention of the modern 
 reader. Following the French models in substituting characters 
 drawn from real life for the tedious abstractions of the morality 
 
 1 Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, Lib. I, cap. xxxi. 
 
 1 100 of Heywood; The Fifth Hundred of Epigrams. Ed. J. S. Farmer.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 103 
 
 plays, Heywood took a long step forward in the direction of 
 comedy. Hence, in any history of the development of the drama 
 form, Heywood occupies a conspicuous position. 1 
 
 But whatever French influence may be shown in his dramatic 
 works, there is none in his poems. His Epigrams, 2 though founded 
 upon humanistic models, are characterized by their idiomatic 
 English. Still more so is this true of his "Proverbs, " a disquisition 
 on marriage in eleven chapters of dialogue. The peculiarity of 
 the poem, however, is that the narrative avowedly serves but as 
 a frame for "our common plain pithy proverbs old." Although 
 both of these are experiments, they both show Heywood as con- 
 servative rather than as innovator. 
 
 The work of Heywood, however, that concerns us here, is his 
 curious allegory The Spider and the Fly. Not the least curious 
 feature about it is the way it has been tacitly ignored. In bulk 
 it occupies one third of his collected writings. It is perhaps 
 on account of this very bulk that it is so seldom read. It be- 
 longs in the category of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 
 a book that we never find just the leisure to complete. Conse- 
 quently if Ward's objection that only those critics that have read 
 the poem discuss the poem holds, I fear that the name would appear 
 even less often in print. But the main reason for this neglect is 
 to be found, not in the size, but in the obscurity of the poem. It 
 is as Heywood says a "parable." In form it belongs to the 
 type now so familiar. In a morning, the description of which is 
 reminiscent of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the author sees 
 a fly entangled in the web of a spider. The body of the poem, 
 then, is taken up with these characters, a method of introduc- 
 tion very similar to that of The Pastime of Pleasure, except that 
 the author remains always the spectator. When it is added that 
 the story is an allegory, that there are personifications, and that 
 it is written in the rime-royal, it belongs obviously to the group. 
 
 The interest to us lies, however, not in its similarity but in its 
 differences from the type. First and foremost, the characters are 
 not abstractions, such as Danger, Venus, et. al.; they are animals. 
 
 1 As the drama has been the subject of so many and such detailed studies, it is 
 simpler here to refer the reader to Professor Brooke's "The Tudor Drama," where 
 this side of Heywood's work is discussed. 
 
 * These are discussed in Chapter III following.
 
 104 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Thus on one side it is akin to the Second Nun Priest's Tale or 
 Reynard the Fox. Apparently the story breaks into two quite 
 distinct parts. The first twenty-seven chapters consist in the 
 elaborate legal arguments presented by the fly, who has blundered 
 into a spider's web, and the spider's rejoinders. Then arbitrators, 
 an ant and a butterfly, are called. After twenty-two more chapters 
 in which the original issue gets befogged by the introduction of 
 irrelevant issues, the arbitrators leave the case exactly where they 
 found it. Whereupon the spiders retire to their castle in which 
 they are besieged by the flies with the ant as their prisoner. After 
 various fluctuations of the fortunes of war, to save the ant, the 
 spider grants peace but on the condition that the original fly shall 
 die. As this is about to take place, the maid of the house destroys 
 the web with her broom, kills the chief spider, and redresses 
 grievances. 
 
 This poem has been unfortunate in receiving almost universal 
 condemnation. Only twenty-one years after it had been first 
 printed, William Harrison l confessed that Heywood "dealeth 
 so profoundlie, and beyond all measure of skill, that neither him- 
 self e that made it, neither anie one that readeth it, can reach vnto 
 the meaning therof. " This opinion is endorsed by Warton with 
 the comment "sensible." He adds that in his judgment "perhaps 
 there never was so dull, so tedious and trifling an apologue; without 
 fancy, meaning, or moral. . . Our author seems to have intended 
 a fable on the burlesque construction; but we know not, when he 
 would be serious and when witty. " 2 Modern criticism quietly 
 but firmly ignores it altogether. 3 
 
 This opinion is scarcely to be wondered at as the meaning of the 
 poem is undoubtedly obscure. That there is a meaning intended 
 is so stated by the author himself in the Preface. 4 
 
 A Parable: is properilie one thing, 
 That of an other doth conceiuing bring. 
 Yea: (oftentims) as parables are scand, 
 One score of things: by one, be vnderstand. 
 
 1 Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed's Chronicle. Quoted by Warton. 
 1 History of English Poetry, 1871 4, p. 85. 
 
 * There seems to be no reference to it in Ten Brink, in Courthope, or in The 
 Cambridge History. 
 
 4 The Preface, p. 3. Farmer's ed.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 105 
 
 Eche one of all: scanned and vsed well, 
 
 Maie teache the scanner good: to take & tel. 
 
 Contrarilie: scanned and vsed ill, 
 
 Like il likewise, the fruite a mounteth untill. 
 
 Wherfore, before entrance to scanning here: 
 
 In present parable here to appere, 
 
 First to induct (for to conduct) the waie: 
 
 How readers and scanners: redilie maie: 
 
 Right scanning (in right reading) here purchase. 
 
 He goes on to illustrate his position by an anecdote of three women 
 dressing before a mirror. Each could see the errors of the other 
 two while remaining ignorant of her own, and the reader is en- 
 joined to meditate carefully upon the mirror of our actions pre- 
 sented in the picture. The only help to the interpretation is found 
 in the conclusion. The maid is stated to be Queen Mary, the 
 master of the house, Christ, and the mistress the Holy Catholic 
 Church. The matter is scarcely clarified, however, by his state- 
 ments at the beginning of the poem. 1 
 
 I haue, (good readers) this parable here pende: 
 
 (After olde beginning) newly brought to ends. 
 
 The thing, yeres mo then twentie since it begoon. 
 
 To the thing: yeres mo then ninetene, nothing doon. 
 
 The frewet was grene: I durst not gather it than, 
 
 For feare of rotting: before riping began. 
 
 The losse (it on the frewterers hande lying:) 
 
 Had (in that mistery) mard his occupying. 
 
 This worke (among my poore workes) thus hath it past: 
 
 Begon with the first, and ended with the last. 
 
 The poem was printed in 1556. The last part was written not 
 earlier than '55 because there are allusions to the marriage of Mary 
 with Philip of Spain. 2 " Yeres mo then twentie, " subtracted from 
 '56 would practically make it antedate the Pilgrimage of Grace. 
 Consequently, this rules out Professor Ward's interpretation. The 
 presumption is that the first twenty-seven chapters deal with the 
 legal difficulties when Wolsey was Lord Chancellor. There are 
 some, perhaps casual, allusions which seem to support Haber's 
 
 1 Conclusion The Spider and the Fly, p. 450. 
 
 1 In the interpretation of the poem I follow Dr. Jakob Haber Litierarhittoritche 
 Fortchungen, 1900.
 
 106 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 contention that Wolsey is the chief spider; the fly then in this 
 part represents the commons. This view becomes more plausible 
 when Heywood's intimacy with Sir Thomas More is considered. 
 But, after Wolsey's death in '30 this satiric fable in a measure lost 
 its point. Or, even before Wolsey's death Heywood's connection 
 with the court may have made it seem to him inadvisable to pub- 
 lish it. In any case, he allowed it to rest, according to his own 
 statement, for nineteen years. Nineteen plus thirty gives us the 
 year '49, when the Duke of Northumberland, who now becomes 
 the chief spider, marches against the discontented yeomen, who 
 now become the flies. Consequently, in the same poem, with no 
 mark whatever of transition, there is a dual personalty for the 
 spiders and a dual class for the flies. Moreover, as the "new 
 men " during the minority of Edward VI belonged to the reform- 
 ing party, whereas the yeoman were still largely Roman Catholics, 
 there is a measure of truth in the old theory that the spiders are 
 the protestants and the flies the catholics whom Mary supported 
 by the death of the chief spider. Is it any wonder, then, that, 
 when the memory of these events had passed away, a poem so in- 
 consistent with itself should be regarded as unintelligible? 
 
 From our point of view, however, the poem has been unjustly 
 neglected because Heywood's method is very significant. On one 
 side, as has been said, the poem is a specimen of a perfectly fami- 
 liar type, with all the characteristics of that type. On the other, 
 we find the old form changed with an entirely new content. What 
 differentiates it sharply from medieval work is that it is political. 
 Instead of personified abstractions, we find here concrete persons 
 figuring under a thin disguise, and actual contemporary events 
 told as an allegory. As such, it is the progenitor of a number of 
 English works that can scarcely be ignored in the history of the 
 literature. Exactly the same method is used by Spenser in his 
 Mother Hubberd's Tale. And as moreover Heywood's inconsist- 
 ency between the beginning and the end of his poem has been 
 followed by Spenser, there is exactly the same difficulty in mak- 
 ing it intelligible. And Mother Hubberd's Tale is the avowed pre- 
 cedent for Dryden's Hind and the Panther. It is a curious (and 
 unfruitful) speculation whether among the books in Temple's 
 library Swift may not have found a copy of the Heywood, to sug- 
 gest to him his most famous episode in the Battle of the Books.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 107 
 
 If so, he probably did nothing but look at the cuts, in which the 
 fly is the size of a very large bee. Be this as it may, in any case 
 the possible influence of Heywood's poem is an interesting specu- 
 lation. 
 
 The severe condemnation of the critics is not quite justified on 
 the ground of literary treatment. To the general reader the poem 
 is undoubtedly dull, but that is because he is ignorant of the in- 
 terpretation. At the time when all England was vocal with the 
 injustice of the law-courts, when More won his great popularity 
 through remedying the abuses, it would not have been called dull. 
 Heywood's relationship to the great Chancellor seems to imply 
 that he knows his subject. Even today the presentation is not 
 without humor. Not only is it very colloquial, but he aims at an 
 intentionally comic effect by attributing human gesture to his 
 characters. Thus the fly wrings his hands and feet. The young 
 spider begs his father, "for some part of that flesh fly's brain." 
 Whereat the fond mother l 
 
 How say ye to this babe (quoth the mother) 
 Will ye here this vrchin of eyght weekes olde, 
 It is a babling brat aloue all other. 
 
 Human nature is much the same now as in the sixteenth century. 
 When the fly has first blundered into the web, the spider is terri- 
 fied. 2 
 
 Is it the diuell? or is it our dame? 
 
 Or is it the page? or is it the groome? 
 
 Or is it our maide with hmbirchin broome? 
 
 Betwene the diuel, and all these, last and Curst. 
 
 The diuel take me, if I can choose the wurst. 
 
 But ill, woorse, and woorst, diuel, and all togither 
 
 Do me assaute as it (to me) doth sceme, 
 
 Hath fortune wrought my foes at this tyme hither, 
 
 And not so much as warndc me to inisdeeme. 
 
 Now fie on fickle fortune thus extreerae, 
 
 And I defie the garde of suche a guider, 
 
 Alas (this day) I am but a dead spider. 
 
 1 Page 48. Page 87.
 
 108 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 These woordes thus spoken, downe anone he sanke. 
 Kneling a while, deuoutlie on his knee, 
 And then rounde on a heape, to grounde he shranke 
 Like an vrchin vnder an aple tree. 
 
 This is of course the trick used by all fabulists in all times in all 
 languages. It is the main source of humor in the Nonne Prestes' 
 Tale, the one tale that Dryden's modernization renders success- 
 fully. At least then, let Heywood be given the credit for his em- 
 ployment of it. 
 
 There is one more differentiating characteristic of the poem, 
 and one that can be illustrated only by a long quotation. The 
 passage chosen is the speech of the mediating ant. 1 
 
 My masters flies here all in generall: 
 And eche one perticulerlie: I humblie praie, 
 What things I shall touch, generall or special 1: 
 To take to the best. And first that I made: 
 As remembrauncer of your remembraunce, ley 
 One speciall meane forth here: remembred to be, 
 Drawing herers in all things to equite. 
 
 And equite, in all things: to giue or to take: 
 (Among other vertues) is a vertew pewre. 
 Inequite, for wrong, no waie can make. 
 Where equite, is set and setled sewre, 
 For equite in no wise may endure; 
 Balance, to anie one side, cast or dreuine. 
 Equite, equallie; kepth the balance euine. 
 
 Which meane: for which equite to be obteynde, 
 
 Is: that herers: in hereing this mi case 
 
 Se: that diffinitiue Judgement be refreynd, 
 
 In anie part thereof: to take anie place, 
 
 Tyll the whole be hard. Which hering to purchase, 
 
 Is my great sewt. Beseching all to susspende: 
 
 ludgement in euerie part: till all parts take ende. 
 
 First for me: next for you and me: last for you: 
 I sew to be hard. And first for me, marke all. 
 From all offence by me done; to you here now, 
 Syns I cam, in this case that doth here fall, 
 I am clearde. By one vnsuspect for parshall, 
 I meane that worshipfull maister butterflie: 
 Who trieth me: to haue delt here indiffrentlie. 
 
 1 Pp. 235-244.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 109 
 
 He cleerth me sins I cam. And before I cam, 
 Yf any flie (lustlie) to my charge can lay; 
 In anie thing waying the weyght of a dram, 
 By worde, or decde: either open or priuey; 
 That euer I hurt flie: anie maner way, 
 Then let my ponishment here: be so ample. 
 That all ants may therby take an example. 
 
 But being clere sins I cam: and more tauow; 
 Being clere till I cam: from woorde and deede ill, 
 Alas: why will ye kill me, who hurth not yow. 
 Nor neuer did hurt you, nor neuer will. 
 Nor neuer can: though will wold ill fulfill. 
 This: for my slefe leyde (as for my selfe proued, 
 I hope my selfe sure: from harme by you moued. 
 
 Secondly: for you and me both, this meane I. 
 
 Yf ye draw the blood of me: (thus innosent), 
 
 As the los is small, so naught wyn ye therby. 
 
 But (as is saide) infamie of endles extent, 
 
 Which paino fro me: and shame from you to preuent, 
 
 The safe salue for both sides: is this to decre, 
 
 Saue you my life, and that saueth your honesto. 
 
 Third: and last poynt: nought for me, all for you: 
 Prouying me, not only: you no whit to hate, 
 But much to leue: a tale He tell and a vow. 
 Which: you hering and folowing: in stedie state, 
 Shall stedilie stey you, from harme in debate: 
 That hangth ouer your beds: much more than ye se, 
 Wherin for you and not for me (I say), here me. 
 
 Among many presepts philosoficall: 
 
 Geuon to all persons: to take profet by, 
 
 For tyme: place: and case present, aboue all. 
 
 One serueth in sentence most singulerly. 
 
 The woordes short: the matter long: the reason hy. 
 
 Which woordes and matter, on these woordes do depende. 
 
 Ere thou ought begin, haye an eie to the ende. 
 
 This pure presept: as all oft in woordes sey it: 
 If all did do it, in effectuall deede, 
 So that our deeds did it: as our woords wei it, 
 Oh; what commoditee therby shuld proceede. 
 Our full felicitee; shuld thervpon breede. 
 Aa contrarily breedth: in contrary show, 
 Infelicitee; as we feelingly know.
 
 110 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Who wold begin a fray: and his fo therin kill? 
 If he lookt to thend, that shuld hang him therefore. 
 I wene all the world, shuld be kept from all ill; 
 Kept we this lesson well, in practised lore: 
 To thend of beginning; to looke euermore; 
 Before we begin, for when we haue begoon, 
 The loaning of lightly, is not lightly woon. 
 
 Small things begun; without looking to their end, 
 
 Cum oft to ill end: great lesse, and ieoperdee. 
 
 Great things: begoon than: none lie on thend tatend 
 
 At (or ere) their beginning; we must agree; 
 
 To be our much more discommoditee. 
 
 As things: greatter and smaller: differ In sise, 
 
 So diffreth here: discommoditee likewise. 
 
 And of all our great thyngs: no one of more weyght. 
 Nor therby more meets; thend therin to wey; 
 At beginning, then is that better beyght; 
 Of wrechid war. The very locke and key, 
 That lacheth and lookth vs all, from quiet stey. 
 Who that (in rashe roofe) beginneth to contende, 
 He repenth beginning, ere he cum to ende. 
 
 It is a thing: right far be yond an ants reche: 
 
 To blase the plat of peyson; generaly; 
 
 Set a broche by war, but short sum to feche: 
 
 Warres harme: and good, stand bothe vnspeakably. 
 
 Both are (I say) vnspeakable for why, 
 
 War hath done more harme; then tale of toung can holde, 
 
 War hath done no good, and nought can not be tolde. 
 
 War hath wrought such wo: that all flies comunly, 
 And spyders eke. Of which two sortes I speake: 
 Hailing in all times had experiensy, 
 Of rashs beginning of war: the peace to breake, 
 They feeling (in their war) their winning weake, 
 Wolde loose half the good they had: to peace to fall: 
 Rather than ieberd in war: goods life and all. 
 
 And of both sortes in this case, weried in war, 
 
 Flies haye had euer cause; to mislike war moste. 
 
 When spiders and flies; haue falne at this lyke iar, 
 
 For quarels: wherin flies, might most their ryght boste; 
 
 Who suer had the right, the flies the feeld lost. 
 
 To one score spyders sleyne, flies slayne, twentyscore. 
 
 And much of their ofspring, lost for euermore.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 111 
 
 Which showth as spiders calte, that no dedicion; 
 
 Can haue good sucses. In flies inferior: 
 
 By stoburne war, but by humbyll peticion: 
 
 For thing interior, or exterior. 
 
 Flies must sew: to the spider superior. 
 
 They take this as a full hold: not to be remist. 
 
 Well framid flies, wyll suffre and not resist. 
 
 Flies wreks in wars: in time past: yf flies reuolue. 
 How spiders cop webs: flies sepultures haue beene, 
 Your wise quiet retire, shall this war disolue. 
 But yf smart of tune past: be forgotten cleene, 
 Cast lye to parell, at lyre presentlie scene. 
 Vew yonder copweb castell: with endifrent iye: 
 And marke whether ye be macht endifrentyle. 
 
 Behold: the batilments in euerie loope: 
 How thordinance lieth: fliers fer and nere to fach. 
 Behold; how euerie peece: that lith there in groope: 
 Hath a spider gonner: with redy firtd mach. 
 Behold on the wals: spiders waking ware wach. 
 The wach spider: in the towre a larum to strike, 
 At a proch of any nomber, showing war like. 
 
 Se then prenabill fort: in euery border. 
 
 How euerie spider: with his weapon doth stand. 
 
 So thorowlie harnest: in so good order: 
 
 The capitall spider: with weapon in hand. 
 
 For that sort of sowdiers: so manfully mand. 
 
 With cop webs: like casting netts: all flies to quell, 
 
 My hart shake th at the sight: be hold: it is hell. 
 
 Against whose strength there, your weaknes here behold* 
 Sum haue harnes: most haue none: all oft of rey. 
 Capitaynes: practised: politike and bold, 
 Few or none haue ye: this armie to conuey. 
 But eche in others neck: as sheepe start a strey. 
 Ordinance meete for the ship, ye bring to the feelde 
 But force without order: winth victorie seelde. 
 
 And put case: that of you fortie thousand flise: 
 Thirtie thousand : shall scape, and his window win. 
 Yet if ech one of you: in him selfe surmise: 
 That he shalbe one: that shall die entring in, 
 What one flic (of all flies) wil thassaute begin? 
 No one, but that one that from home now come, 
 Shall thinkc him sclfc wisest, that sonest goth home.
 
 112 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 But to die all: and in this window nought geynel 
 Of that: sayde practise of time past: assewrth ye. 
 To venter life, and suffer deth, are thinges tweyne. 
 Ventring of life, tobteyne right, oft as we. 
 But to venter life: where deth hath certente, 
 For these kinds of right: to die: while ye may liue, 
 No wise flie will: but right rather ouer give. 
 
 But if your harms of time past: be forgoten, 
 Warning of present harms: at present time take. 
 Of which two measures: if none may be moten, 
 Time past, nor tune present (of which two I spake). 
 Let the third: time to cum: be meane, thend to make. 
 Weying that in time to cum. The end must cum: 
 To one end of foure, which folow here in sum. 
 
 After this war begoon, either both parts shall: 
 Take ende with con elision: as both parts can gre, 
 Or continew in war, time perpetuall: 
 Or the flies (by the spiders) conquered shalbe, 
 Or the spiders conquered by the flies. Now se: 
 How: in eche one end of these fowre: shall a rise, 
 Paynfull perelus penuries, to all flies. 
 
 First: if ye after a time had in conflickt: 
 Take ende with the spider: by composicion, 
 Beside the flies: that to death shalbe addickt: 
 The suruiuers: shall receyue such condicion: 
 At the spiders hand: as the distribution: 
 Shall make flies at end: bid fie on their winning, 
 And after that end: repent their beginning. 
 
 Second: this war: continuing continualy, 
 
 Euery yere, moneth, weeke, day, howre, euery minute: 
 
 Many flies shall die, and all may feare to dy: 
 
 What flie can besure: one howres life texecute: 
 
 At poyntes of all weapons, euer had in pursute. 
 
 In vndoughted death: and doughtfull deadly life, 
 
 This ende sheweth small difrens, where reason is rife: 
 
 Thirdly: yf the spider do conquere you flise, 
 What so euer flie then: him selfe best he haues: 
 The best and the worste: all in one rate shall rise. 
 Now frank free franklin flies, then all vile bonde slaues. 
 Now flie in light windowse, then sit in darke caues. 
 Flies beginning war: ending thus, they shall clere, 
 Their hell or purgatory, begin euine here.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 113 
 
 The fourth: yf you flies shall the spider conqueare. 
 Then shall all spiders go to wracke first: no doubt. 
 And after shall the flies folow: eueri wheare. 
 When flies haud kild spiders: that stey the rewde rout. 
 Then flie against flie: comun cuthrote moste stout. 
 Foure endes: in this one war: show (thone and thother, 
 The last being worste), ech end wore then other. 
 
 In time past: time present: and in time to come: 
 Sins ye haue woon: do win: nor shall win here ought, 
 Beter wende your ship a loose: and take sea roome: 
 Then roon here on rockes, and to shipwrak be brought: 
 It is to fer fet: and ferder to dere bought: 
 To fet: and bye thinges: with no les los in striues: 
 But with los: both of all your liuinges and Hues. 
 
 Here haue I sayde my minde: vnder principles few. 
 First: desiring you to here me thorowly. 
 Ere ye iudge any part, or what I should shew. 
 And then to iudge me, by equite equaly. 
 Whervnto: for hereing in this case sewde I, 
 First for me, next for you and me, last for you. 
 Of which proses a brigde, brefe pith aprochth now. 
 
 For me: the flies and butterflies tales: I weyde: 
 To my discharge. Sins I cam: of all offence. 
 And before I cam, my discharge my selfe leyde. 
 Wherin: my case being giltles inosence, 
 For you and me, both in reson and consiens. 
 To saue both sides vpright, this counsell I gaue. 
 You to saue my life, your honestie to saue. 
 
 Foryou and not me: in your present quarell, 
 
 On this principle, my hole talke did depende. 
 
 Ere we ought begin: namelie thing of parell, 
 
 Wisdom wilth vs, to haue an lye to the ende. 
 
 In parelus quarelus case: to contende: 
 
 Chieflie this: in time past: present: and to cum, 
 
 How ye sped: and be like to spede, I shoud the sum. 
 
 But to end at beginning: you casting lye, 
 
 At this poore counsell : of poore Antonie ant, 
 
 Of shap and good wit small: of good will great and bye, 
 
 I shall reioyse. Hoping here shall be no want: 
 
 Of equite: in my discharge this instant. 
 
 Which I humbly pray: and so to end to fall, 
 
 I say no more: but the great God saue you all.
 
 114 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 This done: a noyse began of such a buzzing, 
 
 Ech one flie blowing in an other flies ears, 
 
 As if ten milions of flies had ben buzzing. 
 
 And all: by this tale so astonide in feare, 
 
 That most of them: their weapons could scantly beard. 
 
 Thants perswasions: in drede of deth: strake them so, 
 
 That hundreds cride oute, home agayne let vs go. 
 
 With this mounser graund captayne the great bragger: 
 
 Was much a mased, and vengeably vext. 
 
 To se these flies now: so vnstedily stagger, 
 
 So late so redie: to bring their foose perplext. 
 
 This time (thought he) should giue warning to the next. 
 
 Yf he scaped this at all times to be ware, 
 
 With faint fond flies, to fiske agayne a warfare. 
 
 At once upon reading this speech, the intellectual quality be- 
 comes apparent. It may be thus briefly digested. The ant is not 
 partial, or he would not be there. He himself has never hurt a 
 fly, and, since he is of small account, they would gain nothing by 
 killing him. After this introduction he argues that the flies should 
 cease the conflict because (1) it will be they who suffer most by 
 the war; (2) the spiders are fortified; (3) they are well armed; (4) an 
 end must come. This will be either (1) perpetual war, a con- 
 dition which is hopeless; or, (2) the flies will be conquered, and 
 defeat will be hopeless; or, (3) the spiders will be conquered, 
 again undesirable as anarchy will result. There he advised peace. 
 It is a fact that when the Duke of Northumberland was besieged 
 somewhat as in the poem, he did persuade the rebels to disband. 
 The question arises whether he accomplished the result by some 
 such reasoning. The argument as it stands, in its introduction, 
 taking the point of view of the audience, and in its development 
 by use of the dilemma, is worthy of Hawes' goddess of Rhetoric. 
 All possible alternatives are discussed, the inevitable conclusion 
 reached. At once it suggests the speech of Belial in Paradise 
 Lost, said to be a model for parliamentary debate. Still more in 
 its dry intellectual quality does it remind one of Dryden. And it 
 is interesting in an age of formal formlessness to find so rigid an 
 example of pure form. 
 
 One more characteristic of Heywood's verse deserves to be point- 
 ed out, and that is his use of alliteration. He has a marked ten- 
 dency to hunt the letter. Thus
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 115 
 
 He wafted his winges, he wagged his tayle * 
 Another illustration is 2 
 
 Oh sodayne sorowe, from setled solas, 
 For so sat I in solas: as me thought. 
 Oh fortune, false flaterer that euer was, 
 In one moment, and in an other wrought. 
 So furious, that both thaffects foorth brought, 
 Furie, or flaterie . . . 
 
 Such marked liking for alliteration is thoroughly English. The 
 early poetry, of course, was purely alliterative, and it is this char- 
 acteristic of Heywood's verse that has suggested the comparison 
 with Piers Ploiwnan. There is of course no necessity for local- 
 izing it in one poem. It is the common feature of early work. But 
 Heywood's poetry is typically English, curiously unaffected by the 
 foreign influence of his time. As Haber says 3 
 
 Classical antiquity one seeks in him in vain, even so is the knightly bone of the 
 Elizabethan age strange to him; he is very bourgeois and through and through 
 English; his material, his speech, his metre, his treatment, all is English, he is 
 rooted in Chaucer, in the school of Chaucer, in the knowledge and expression of the 
 people. 
 
 But if this be true, the comparatively rapid oblivion that has over- 
 taken his great work needs explanation. The first reason is that 
 it needs too minute a knowledge of temporary conditions to be 
 intelligible. But the second reason is that, even when he wrote, 
 his poem was out of date. He was reproducing a past type, and 
 even his modifications of the type did not save it. By Heywood's 
 time, the humanists had done their part and Wyatt and Surrey 
 had given an Italian color to English letters. From this point of 
 view, the lack of appreciation of the critics is illustrative of the 
 drying up of the purely English source of inspiration. 
 
 In Heywood, then, we find the last modification of the formal 
 poetry of the Middle Ages. With the great changes in the social 
 fabric and in the mental point of view, the adaptation of the alle- 
 gorical poem of the fifteenth century to the needs of the sixteenth 
 presents a curious study. The author of the Court of Love tried 
 
 1 Page 27. Page 29. Ibid., p. 113.
 
 116 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 to impose it intact upon the men of his generation. And in spite 
 of his undoubted genius, he failed. Hawes, combining it with the 
 chivalric romance, produced a hybrid that pleased. Skelton turned 
 it to satire, and then contemptuously abandoned it altogether. 
 And last of all Heywood rather pathetically endeavored to sup- 
 port the tottering structure by personalities and contemporaneous 
 reference. And great was the fall thereof. And yet, all these modi- 
 fications are combined and assimilated by the genius of Spenser 
 into the Faerie Queene. There one finds the personified abstrac- 
 tions of the first, the chivalry of the second, the satire of the 
 third, and the historical allusion, the episode of Burbon for 
 example, 1 of the fourth. So true is this that, without an un- 
 derstanding of the work of the first half of the century, the typi- 
 cal work of the last half must have seemed unintelligible. And 
 without this knowledge, Spenserian critics have been driven far 
 afield in their efforts to justify by literary precedent the varying 
 developments of his poem. Actually the foundations for his struc- 
 ture were laid by obscure writers, each one contributing his quota. 
 The many-sided genius of Spenser took this medieval tradition, 
 combined it with humanism and with the Italian, and the world 
 has forgotten the lesser men. But just as it is illogical to praise the 
 flower and ignore the root, so it is for the literary student of Spen- 
 ser to pass by these contributors to the medieval tradition. 
 
 There is a curious appendix to be placed at the end of this dis- 
 cussion of the medieval tradition; this is some account of the growth 
 of Chaucer's reputation. At the beginning of the century he is 
 named always in conjunction with Gower and Lydgate, and, as 
 we have seen in Hawes and Caxton, with the preference given to 
 Lydgate. He it is that to the writers of the early sixteenth cen- 
 tury is the model and the great exemplar. At the end of the cen- 
 tury, however, both Lydgate and Gower have faded into mere 
 satellites of Chaucer, and it is he that Spenser acclaims as his poetic 
 progenitor. This change may be explained by the growth in lit- 
 erary appreciation, that the genius of Spenser overleaped the 
 centuries to recognize the genius of Chaucer. It is also due to the 
 fact that of the three authors Chaucer's works were alone accessible 
 in a collected edition. Thus, to a student of Chaucer, the Thynne 
 edition, 1532, of the collected works is a fact of great importance, 
 1 Faerie Queene, V, xi.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 117 
 
 although of course a number of the separate works had been printed 
 earlier in a number of editions. This collected edition was reprinted 
 in 1542, and again about 1550. In 1561 appeared the edition called 
 after Stowe the antiquary, and in 1598 the edition of Speght. Thus 
 without there being any collected edition of the works of either 
 Gower or Lydgate, there were five editions of Chaucer's complete 
 works. It is in the second of these that The Plowman's Tale ap- 
 pears for the first time. This was composed by a contemporary of 
 Chaucer about 1395. * Speght's edition was followed by a criti- 
 cism of it from the hand of Francis Thynne, the son of the old 
 editor. In this he tells how his father ransacked the abbeys for 
 Chaucer manuscripts and found another poem, The Pilgrim's 
 Tale. Of this he tells the following curious anecdote. 2 
 
 In whiche his editione, beinge printed but with one coolume in a syde, there was 
 the pilgrymes tale, a thinge moore odious to the Clergye, then the speche of the 
 plowmanne; that pilgrimes tale begynnynge in this sorte: 
 
 "In Lincolneshyre fast by a fenne, 
 Standes a relligious howse who dothe 
 yt kenne," &c. 
 
 In this tale did Chaucer most bitterlye enveye against the pride, state, couetous- 
 nes, and extorcione of the Bisshoppes, their officialls, Archdeacons, vicars generalls, 
 comissaryes, and other officers of the spirituall courte. The Inventione and order 
 whereof (as I haue herde yt related by some, nowe of good worshippe bothe in 
 courte and countrye, but then my fathers clerks), was, that one comynge into this 
 relligious howse, walked vpp and downe the churche, beholdinge goodlye pictures of 
 Bysshoppes hi the windowes, at lengthe the manne contynuynge in that con- 
 templatione, not knowinge what Bishoppes they were, in a large blacke garment 
 girded vnto him, came forthe and asked hym, what he iudged of those pictures in 
 the windowes, who sayed he knewe not what to make of them, but that they looked 
 lyke vnto oure mitred Bishoppes; to whome the olde father replied, "yt is true, they 
 are lyke, but not the same, for oure byshoppes are fair degenerate from them," and 
 withe that, made a large discourse of the Bishopps and of their courtes. 
 
 This tale, when kinge henrye the eighte had redde, he called my father unto hym, 
 sayinge, "William Thynne! I dobte this will not be allowed; for I suspecte the 
 Byshoppes will call the in questione for yt." To whome my father, beinge in great 
 fauore with his prince (as manye yet lyvinge canne testyfye), sayed, "yf your grace 
 be not offended, I hoope to be protected by you: " whereuppon the kynge bydd hym 
 goo his waye, and fcare not. All whiche not withstandinge, my father was called in 
 
 1 This is Skeat's dating. 
 
 1 Thynne 's Animadvernont together with The Pilgrim' * Tale have been edited for 
 the Chaucer Society by Furnival, with a preface by Kingsley.
 
 118 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 questione by the Bysshoppes, and heaved at by Cardinal Wolseye, his olde enymye, 
 for manye causes, but mostly for that my father had furthered Skelton to publishe 
 his 'Collen Cloute' against the Cardinall, the moste parte of whiche Booke was 
 compiled in my fathers howse at Erithe in Kente. But for all my fathers frendes, the 
 Cardinalls perswadinge auctorytye was so greate withe the kinge, that thoughe by 
 the kinges fauor my father escaped bodelye daunger, yet the Cardinall caused the 
 kynge so muche to myslyke of that tale, that chaucer must be newe printed, and 
 that discourse of the pilgrymes tale lefte oute; and so beinge printed agayne, some 
 thynges were forsed to be omitted, and the plowmans tale (supposed, but vntrulye, 
 to be made by olde Sir Thomas Wyat, father to hym which was executed in the 
 firste yere of Quene Marye, and not by Chaucer) with muche ado permitted to 
 passe with the reste, in suche sorte that in one open parliamente (as I haue herde 
 Sir Johne Thynne reporte, beinge then a member of the howse), when talke was had 
 of Bookes to be forbidden, Chaucer had there for euer byn condempned, had yt not 
 byn that his woorkes had byn counted but fables." 
 
 As a matter of fact neither the Plowman's Tale nor the Pilgrim's 
 Tale appears in the 1532 edition. Nor, 1 from its allusions to the 
 Lincolnshire insurrection of 1536 and even by page and line to the 
 Thynne edition of Chaucer, could it have ever been considered in 
 that connection. Nor is Thynne's account of the contents of the 
 tale quite accurate. Probably, as Professor Lounsbury suggests, 
 Thynne confused it with the Plowman's Tale, But the Pilgrim's 
 Tale was printed before 1540. And moreover, whatever may have 
 been the name on the title-page, in the body of the poem not only 
 is Chaucer quoted, but in addition at the end it is intimated that 
 Chaucer's opinions are identified with those expressed there. When 
 it is remembered that Thynne is telling of events that happened 
 half a century earlier, and which confessedly he knows only by 
 report, it is possible that there is the additional confusion of Wol- 
 sey with Cromwell, and that the objector was the Malleus Mon- 
 achorum. In this case, the objection would be purely one of pol- 
 icy. On the other hand the traditional enmity of Wolsey with his 
 father is probably accurate as well as the very interesting reason 
 given for it. Actually the Pilgrim's Tale is an invective against 
 "the Whore of Babylon,*' reiterating the stock charges, and ad- 
 vocating the reading of the Bible. It is the conventional poem of 
 the Reformers. Its verse form is the octosyllabic couplet varied 
 by nineteen stanzas in rime-royal. The significant fact here is 
 that it is Chaucer that is chosen as the literary prototype. The 
 
 1 This was shown by Henry Bradshaw and confirmed by Lounsbury.
 
 THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 119 
 
 very lack of an imitative attempt, the freedom from any pretence 
 at literary archaism, seems to show that Chaucer was valued rather 
 as a propogandist than as a poet. At Oxford, (the author is care- 
 ful to state that he is an Oxonian), as well as in Parliament, Chau- 
 cer's works were read from a religious standpoint. But apparently 
 they were read. And thus in a manner that would surprise no one 
 more than Chaucer himself, his poems were accepted as being 
 those of our first English author, and his influence passed on to 
 the coming generation.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 
 
 The starting point for an understanding of the development of 
 English poetry in the first hah* of the sixteenth century is the fact 
 that the change in the pronunciation of the language between four- 
 teen hundred and fifteen hundred to a measure broke the continuity 
 in the development of the literature. Ordinarily the movement 
 is gradual, each writer introducing modifications in themselves 
 slight, but the cumulative effect of which, after half a century, 
 becomes apparent in what is called a " new school. " At that time, 
 however, not only had the change in the language rendered former 
 authors, such as Chaucer and Lydgate, unavailable as models, 
 but also the demand for literary productions was great. With the 
 Tudors was born a new age. 
 
 The writers of this new age were in a curious situation. They 
 could either adapt forms written in Middle English, which was 
 fast being forgotten, or they could imitate forms used in other 
 languages than English. Naturally the dilemma did not present 
 itself to them as sharply defined as this. In trying to express 
 themselves they took what forms they had, and did the best 
 they could with them. And the form chosen depended both upon 
 what the especial occasion required and upon the knowledge and 
 preference of the writer. They wrote as best they knew. On the 
 other hand, that they were limited to the alternatives of the 
 dilemma, owing to the change in pronunciation, was felt by many 
 of them and is clear to us. No one author, either, was limited 
 to one kind of composition. Skelton, for example, has one poem 
 in accordance with the practice of the medieval tradition, he shows 
 a knowledge of humanism, and yet his characteristic work is in 
 still another field, that of medieval, scholastic Latin; Hawes is 
 affected by the scholastic theory of the "aureate language," but 
 his work is along the lines of the medieval tradition. And so with 
 the others. The condition is what is to be expected in an era of 
 beginnings, when each writer is feeling his way to a manner of 
 
 120
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 121 
 
 expression suitable to his idea. On the other hand, it is also true 
 that each writer had his preferences for the kind of work that he 
 wished to do, preferences sufficiently marked to allow him to be 
 classed with others having the same characteristics. The first of 
 these classes includes poems of the medieval tradition; l the second, 
 those poems written in accordance with the precepts of the Medie- 
 val Latin poetics. 
 
 The difficulty in discussing poems of this second class arises 
 from the fact that the Medieval Latin poetics and the Medieval 
 Latin poems illustrating them have been so largely forgotten. 
 Latin poetry to us means the Latin poetry of Rome, the work of 
 Vergil, or Horace, poems to be scanned according to well-known 
 rules carefully studied by us in school. Today, when we speak 
 of Latin poetry, that is what we mean. Of course we all know of 
 the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, of the invasions of the 
 barbarians, of the emergence of modern nationalities, of the 
 institutions of feudalism, etc., etc., but most of us are ignorant of 
 what happened to the Latin language during this long interval. 
 We still allude to it in the terms of the past as being "monkish" 
 Latin, or "barbarous" Latin, and assume it to have been used 
 only by simple, uncultivated, unlearned men. But however their 
 works may be regarded, they surely cannot be considered "naive." 
 Albertus Magnus, Abelard, Saint Bernard, or Saint Thomas 
 Aquinas can be thought of as unlearned only by those that dis- 
 like their learning. And surely no one now imagines that the 
 great cathedrals were haphazard constructions, or assumes that 
 the architects of them were not acutely conscious of the effect 
 to be produced. The same holds true of the literature. Since 
 literature, more than any other art, expresses the soul of an age, 
 the poetry of the Middle Ages expresses the idealism, the acute- 
 ness, the mysticism and brutality of the men that wrote it. 
 
 The medium through which much of the Middle Ages expressed 
 itself was Medieval Latin. In form it differs radically from 
 classical Latin; its prosody is accentual, not quantitative. In 
 classical Latin the scansion is determined by the length of the 
 syllables; this length, in turn, is in accordance with the complicated 
 rules of prosody. For example, in the phrase "arma virumque 
 cano," the first a is long by position and the second a is short by 
 
 1 Chapter II.
 
 122 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 nature so that, in reading, the first syllable has twice the value of 
 the second. Such rules as these do not hold in Medieval Latin. 
 Here the value of a syllable depends upon the stress. The first 
 line of the most famous medieval hymn is 
 
 Dies ire, dies ilia 
 
 But according to the rules for the scansion of classical Latin the 
 quantities are 
 
 Dies Trie, dies Ilia 
 
 It is clear that the two systems of prosody are so different that 
 poems composed according to one system cannot be scanned 
 according to the other, except in rare cases. When it is added 
 that the Medieval Latin poetry is rimed, a kind of poetry appears 
 that differs fundamentally from that in classical Latin. 
 
 The reason for so radical a change in the system of verse-com- 
 position is a problem for the Latinists. Briefly, it may be said 
 that at one time, before Ennius, the Latin language was both 
 quantitative and accentual, and that Greek influence turned the 
 scale in favor of the quantitative system. In the hands of the 
 great classic writers, verse obeying the rules of quantity is the 
 accepted form. Yet, even in classical times, the Saturnian and 
 Fescennine verses show accentual prosody. To the English 
 reader the situation may be clarified by the analogy in the history 
 of our own literature. The meter of all early English poetry is 
 alliterative, the characteristics of which are that every long line 
 is divided into two short lines or half-lines by a pause; each half- 
 line contains two or more strong syllables; each strong syllable in 
 a line should begin with the same sound and there is no rime. 
 This system can be illustrated by the opening verses of the Pro- 
 logue to Piers Plowman. The rime-letters are italicised. 
 
 In a 6mer .veson whan 6f t was the s6nne, 
 I *A6pe me in *Ar6udes as I a *Aepe we're', 
 In Mbite as an Eremite unA61y of w6rkes 
 W&nt wyde in this ?6rld zc6ndres to he"re. 
 
 About the fourteenth century under continental influences poetry 
 was written according to an accentual rimed prosody. This has 
 superseded the alliterative method of versification so that the 
 latter seems strange to modern readers. Nevertheless, our ears
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 123 
 
 respond to the lure of subtle alliteration, and our poets play with 
 it. Hear the sounds Shakespeare uses to describe Cleopatra's 
 meeting with Anthony : l 
 
 The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, 
 
 Burn'd on the water. The poop was beaten gold; 
 
 Purple the sails, and so perfumed that 
 
 The winds were love-sick with them. The oars were silver, 
 
 Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made 
 
 The water which they beat to follow faster, 
 
 As amorous of their strokes. 
 
 Surely this passage owes it celebrity to a clever repetition of cer- 
 tain letters. Now suppose in the distant future, for reasons 
 impossible to foresee, English prosody should return to an al- 
 literative basis. In that case the analogy with what happened 
 in Latin prosody would be complete. In Latin the return from 
 the quantitative to the accentual prosody came with the fall of 
 Rome and was at least concomitant with the introduction of 
 music in the services of the Church. The fact that the very early 
 chants consist of a series of half notes, terminated by a whole note, 
 renders the quantitative value of each syllable equal. When 
 quarter notes were introduced to quicken the measure, the poets 
 placed the strength where the accent came. With the waxing 
 power of the Church Latin prosody became accentual until the 
 versification of the classic authors was largely forgotten. It was 
 not completely forgotten, since all through the Middle Ages 
 occasionally poems were composed according to the quantitative 
 principles 2 and even in accentual poems quantity was not entirely 
 ignored. In general, however, it must be remembered that a vast 
 amount of poetry was written in Latin according to principles 
 unknown to Horace. 
 
 The amount of the literature shows that this Medieval Latin 
 poetry possessed great influence. When the various vernaculars 
 were in dialectic stages, before any vernacular had established 
 itself as a national expression, men found in the Latin a medium of 
 communication, not only between members of their own nation, 
 but also with men of other nations. Consequently it was universal, 
 
 1 Anthony and Cleopatra, Act II, sc. ii. 
 
 1 The reader is referred for examples to Paetae Latini sEvi Carol ini, edited by 
 Ernestus Duemler.
 
 124 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 as no language is today. Nor was it in any sense a dead language. 
 It was the vital speech of the educated. As such, all the lectures 
 at all the universities were delivered in it, and the Englishman 
 at Paris or at Padua comprehended the speaker as well as if he 
 were in Oxford. This fact explains the possibility of a personal 
 following so great as that of Abelard. It was due to Latin that he 
 was able to make his thought clear to the men of all nations that 
 flocked to hear him in Paris. In Latin he spoke to the Italian, the 
 Spaniard, the German, the Bohemian, the Hungarian, the English- 
 man, and the Frenchman, and by each he was perfectly under- 
 stood. 1 But not only was it the language of the university, it was 
 also the language of the universal Church. And as the Church 
 was the great conservative force, the unchanging center of a 
 changing world, its language was to a very large extent free from 
 earthly transmutations. Thus to the English author of the tenth 
 century writing in Latin, was present the expectation that his 
 work could be read with a fullness of meaning, not only by all men 
 of every nationality of the tenth century, but by all the men of 
 every nationality of all time. 
 
 Under these circumstances it is no matter for wonder that there 
 exists an immense literature written in the Medieval Latin. 
 Through the ages accumulated the hymns of the Church, 2 deal- 
 ing with every variety of religious emotion and religious ex- 
 perience. Among these, there are some compositions in which 
 religious eroticism is scarcely to be differentiated from secular 
 love poetry, so that the passing from the holy to the profane 
 is clearly easy. Certainly that passage was made. The forms 
 and refrains of the ecclesiastical services were copied and parodied 
 in poems whose content does not at all suggest their original 
 models. Bands of wandering students sang the praises of Venus 
 and Bacchus with more enthusiasm than restraint. Still more, 
 the Latin of the Church was used to attack the abuses of the 
 Church and the so-called Goliardic poetry is openly satiric. Con- 
 sequently within the bounds of Medieval Latin literature may be 
 found types of all varieties of composition. 
 
 Fortunately it does not he within the province of this study to 
 
 1 Of course this use of Latin by the University is still remembered in the name, 
 the Latin Quarter. 
 
 2 Dreves' monumental Analecta Hymnica is in half a hundred volumes.
 
 " THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 125 
 
 discuss the origin of this literature or the interaction between it and 
 the various vernaculars during the early centuries. The problem 
 here is quite different. During the fifteenth century, particu- 
 larly during the closing years, the comparison between Medieval 
 Latin and English was very unfair. For, not only was the Latin 
 more copious, but in addition the theory of composition in it 
 had been worked out to the last refinement. For example, the 
 Exempla honestae vitae consciously employs sixty-four rhetorical 
 devices, giving the name to each, such devices as anaphora, 
 epiphora, symploke, antithesis, rhetorical question, polysyndeton, 
 asyndeton, word-play, climax, hyperbole, synecdoche, metaphor, 
 allegory, etc., etc. 1 It is thus a textbook for the use of rhetorical 
 figures, vastly more detailed, however, than even the English 
 rhetorics of a century ago. The fact that the composition dates 
 from the middle of the thirteenth century, while the manuscript 
 is of the fourteenth, is indicative of its popularity. The fourth 
 book of the Laborintus, not earlier than the thirteenth century, 
 gives twenty-eight examples of various stanza-forms. 2 John of 
 Garlandia, 1250, lists forty -four species of stanza-forms. Since it is 
 necessary to realize to what an extent this subject had been con- 
 sidered, I shall quote the summary at the end of his ATS Rithmica. 3 
 
 Ritmus monomicus. 
 Dispondeus. 
 Trispondeus. 
 
 Tetraapondeus bimcmbris. 
 trimembris. 
 quadrimembris. 
 Rithmus iambicus bimcmbris. 
 trimembris. 
 quadrimembris. 
 
 Dispondeus bimembris cum iambica differentia, 
 trimembris 
 quadrimembris " 
 
 antecedens, iambica differentia in secundo. 
 Iambica differentia antecedens dispondaica differentia in secundo. 
 
 1 The Exempla honetUe vita is published with notes and an introduction by Edwin 
 Habel, Romanische Forschungen, xxix, 131-154. 
 
 * I trnitali medievali di ritmica latino, ed. by Giovanni Mari, for the R. Institute 
 Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere, 1899. In this, by giving eight of the poetical 
 tracts, Sig. Mari has made possible careful study. I owe this reference to the kind- 
 ness of Professor H. R. Lang. * Man, op. nt. 451.
 
 126 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Triapondeus bimembris cum iambica differentia in tertio. 
 
 trimembris " quarto, 
 
 quadrimembris " " dyapente. 
 
 antecedens, iambica, differentia subsequens. 
 
 Iambica differentia antecedens trispondaica differentia subsequens. 
 Tetraspondaicus bimembris cum iambica differentia, 
 trimembris 
 quadrimembris " 
 
 antecedens iambica differentia subsequens. 
 Iambica differentia antecedens, tetraspondaica subsequens. 
 Rithmus iambicus bimembris cum spondaica differentia in tertio. 
 " trimembris " quarto, 
 
 quadrimembris " " dyapente. 
 
 antecedeno, spondaicus subsequens. 
 Spondaicus antecedens, iambicus subsequens. 
 Iambicus decasillabus qualis est ille rithmus. 
 
 Dispondaicus bimembris cum consonancia spondaica que facit differentiam. 
 
 trimembris " " " " " 
 
 quadrimembris " 
 
 antecedens, consonancia spondaica subsequens. 
 Trispondaicus bimembris cum consonancia spondaica. 
 trimembris 
 quadrimembris " 
 
 antecedens, consonancia spondaica subsequens. 
 Tetraspondaicus bimembris cum consonancia spondaica. 
 trimembris 
 quadrimembris " 
 
 antecedens, consonancia spondaica subsequens. 
 Rithmus trispondaicus cum iambica differentia subsequente facit, duas species 
 
 tredecim sillabarum. Sic erunt quadraginta quatuor. 
 Perfecto libra sit laus et gloria Christo. Amen. 
 
 In other tracts, the prosody of the line is considered, and the 
 proper vocabulary to be used, or the proper introduction of a 
 quotation, or even the employment of curious verbal tricks. The 
 effect of such treatises as these upon the modern reader is bewilder- 
 ing. The art of verse had become a science; poetry was an affair, 
 not of the heart, but of the head; it is not an emotional outburst, 
 so much as an intellectual exercise. As an intellectual exercise, 
 it was taught in the university, a degree given for proficiency in 
 its practice, and the question debated as to its place in the cur- 
 riculum. Consequently such treatises as we have been discussing 
 were written by serious men for serious men, and the technique 
 of the subject, therefore, received careful consideration.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 127 
 
 At the very least, when a man is equally proficient in two lan- 
 guages, there is a reaction upon his use of each language, even when 
 both languages are hi the same state of development. The Eng- 
 lish of the child born in America of German parents that speaks 
 German as his home tongue, can be clearly distinguished from the 
 norm. Even in this extreme case there is a trace of accent and a 
 tendency toward Teutonic grammatical construction. But in the 
 fifteenth century there was no comparison between the develop- 
 ment of Latin and that of English. On the one side the English 
 language was in a chaotic condition, with but few poems to serve 
 for models, and no systematic theory; 1 on the other, Medieval 
 Latin had a vast and varied literature, a long list of venerated 
 authors, and a fully perfected theory. Moreover, since Medieval 
 Latin is both accentual and rimed, the similarity in structure 
 made it possible to apply the precepts for the composition of verse 
 hi Medieval Latin to the composition of verse in English. 
 
 But it must be remembered that the influence of Medieval Latin 
 on English was on the form only. The situation is confusing, 
 because hi 1500 with the revival of classical Latin, which is called 
 humanism, there is the influence of two literatures on English and 
 yet both of these literatures are in the same language, Latin. Yet 
 they are diametrically opposed, in both form and content. The 
 classical Latin is pagan, quantitative, and unrimed; 2 the Medieval 
 Latin is Christian, accentual, and rimed. And whereas classical 
 Latin is national and local, singing the pride of Rome, Medieval 
 Latin is necessarily without national values, and hymns the pride 
 of the universal Church. Consequently whereas the contact with 
 classical Latin had a very minor effect upon the form of poetry, but 
 did give an immense intellectual stimulus, the contact with Medi- 
 eval Latin gave a minor intellectual stimulus, but immensely affect- 
 ed poetic forms. Nor could it be expected to give a fresh point of 
 view. The men writing in Medieval Latin were the same men 
 writing in the vernaculars, expressing only individual modifications 
 of the common thought. Thus a translation from Medieval Latin 
 
 1 Wilson's The Rule of Reason, 1551; "I take not upon me so cunningly and per- 
 fectile to haue written of the said arte, as though none could dooe it better; But be- 
 cause no Englishman until now, hath gone through with this enterprise, I haue 
 thought meet to declare it may be dooen." His Arte of Rhetorique is two years later. 
 
 1 The influence of humanism is considered in Chapter iv.
 
 128 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 to English bears no mark of a foreign origin. This may be illus- 
 trated easily from the hymnal. Today our churches resound with 
 hymns originally composed to voice the longing of cloistered monks 
 of the Middle Ages, and our modern congregations find in them still 
 a passionate expression of their own perfect faith. It may be ob- 
 jected that this illustration is unfair because it is drawn from re- 
 ligious emotion. The same fact may be shown, however, in purely 
 profane literature. In the time of Charlemagne, the conflictus, 
 a poetic debate between representative, or allegorical, figures 
 became popular. From this time its popularity, since it com- 
 bined in itself the diverse elements of the classical eclogue, the 
 chants de danse, the village fly ting, etc., continued with increasing 
 vigor, 1 until it became a definite type. For example, the first 
 part of Hawes' Example of Virtue belongs to this type. The popu- 
 larity of these conflictus was both very great and long enduring. 
 In the beginning of the ninth century Alcuin composed a conflictus, 
 Veris et hiemis, where in stanzas of three unrimed lines Summer 
 and Winter personified advance their peculiar attractions. 2 In 
 the middle of the reign of Henry VIII Laurens Andrews published 
 The Debate and Stryfe Betwene Somer and Wynter, in four lined 
 monorimed stanzas. 3 Between these dates, in the six hundred 
 years of the life of this conception, besides unknown Medieval 
 Latin redactions, there are three French versions, a Genoese, a 
 Dutch, and a Styrian copy, and presumably this by no means ex- 
 hausts the list. 4 Thus the whole subject of the conflictus is a tangled 
 sleave; it originates in the Latin, developing in the vernaculars, 
 reacting back upon the Latin and re-reacting back upon the ver- 
 naculars, and in the vernaculars influencing one another. The 
 next obvious step was to have a dialogue where the parties gave op- 
 posing views, but were themselves not personified, such as appears 
 in the Thrush and the Nightingale, and Thomas Feilde's Lover and a 
 Jay. Hawes' dialogues between Amour and Pucel are just on the 
 
 1 This has been ably discussed by James Holly Hanford, Romanic Review, ii, 
 no. 1 and 2. 
 
 1 Alcuin's work is published in the Monumenta Germanics Historica, Paeta 
 Latini Medii Aevi, Vol. i; The Canflictus Veris et hiemis is p. 270. 
 
 1 This has been printed by Halliwell, Hazlitt (Early Popular Poetry of England, 
 iii, 29, and by Arber in the Surrey and Wyatt Anthology, p. 206. 
 
 4 I have taken this list from a note of M. Emile Picot, Anciennes Poesies Fran- 
 Daises. X, 49.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 129 
 
 border line, while the Nutbrovme Maid is the extreme development. 
 In the last, dramatic action is almost suggested, a fact that shows 
 the relation of this type of poem to the early forms of the drama. 
 For example, in the Considtatio Sacredotum the question is first 
 posed, twenty men each reply in a stanza, and then the summary 
 is given by the preacher. 1 Obviously this is but one remove from 
 the form of the early dramas. The relation between the Medieval 
 Latin and the English is always close; even through the sixteenth 
 century English versions of these Latin poems, such as the Golias 
 attacks, occasionally appear, and are considered as being products 
 of native genius. 2 Theoretically, therefore, the English writers 
 of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, in search of 
 models would normally turn to the Medieval Latin. 
 
 That this was the actual as well as the theoretic sequence, at 
 least in one case, is shown in the poem The epitqffe of the Moste 
 noble and valyaunt Jasper late Duke of Beddeforde.* It purports 
 to record the lament of "Smerte, maister de ses ouzeaus" on ac- 
 count of the death of the Duke of Bedford (1495). As the sole 
 remaining copy has Pynson's device, its date of publication is 
 probably slightly later. What makes it remarkable is neither the 
 sincerity of the grief, nor the poetic excellence of the phrase; it 
 is due to the fact that the twenty metres employed and the various 
 rhetorical tricks are explained by side-notes, in Latin. As these 
 side-notes refer obviously to rhetorical treatises, the poem may be 
 regarded as a series of experiments, each of which is differentiated 
 and labelled. To comprehend what the author of this poem desired 
 to accomplish it is necessary to refer back to the medieval rhetorics. 
 
 Although it is impossible definitely to state exactly which treat- 
 ises were in use in England in the fifteenth century, this fact is of 
 minor consequence since all the treatises give, under slightly vary- 
 ing phraseology, more or less the same dicta. 4 The immediate 
 problem, then, is first to formulate the principles of the Medieval 
 
 1 Poems of Walter Mapes, Camden Society, ed. Wright, p. 174. 
 
 : Thi.i is shown by the heading of the English translation, "written about the 
 year 1623." "Very ancient rimes of the corrupt estate of the Churche, written by 
 a certaine Englishman not unlearned (as it appears), above 200 yeeres agone, as 
 wee may unjecture by the antiquity of the writing and of the characters." Poem* 
 of Walter Mapet, op. tit., p. 282. 
 
 1 Printed in the App. of Dyce's Skelton, ii, 388. 
 
 Cf . Man, op. cit., p. 374, 3.
 
 130 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Latin, and afterwards to show in each case its application to Eng- 
 lish verse. Of these there are three that need extended comment, 
 the principles of ornamentation, of scansion of the lines, and of 
 the combination of lines into stanza forms. 
 
 By the word ornamentation I have translated the Latin colores, 
 a good Ciceronian word. Thus the Exampla honestae vitae begins 
 
 Rethoricos a me petis, o dilecte, colores; 
 Eloquit phaleras a Cicerone petas. 
 
 The same word is brought into English by Hawes; 
 
 But rude people, opprest with blyndnes, 
 Agaynst your fables wyll often solisgyse, 
 Suche is theyr mynde, such is theyr folyshnes; 
 For they beleve in no maner of wyse 
 That under a colour a trouth may aryse. 
 For folysh people, blynded in a matter 
 Will often erre whan they of it do clatter. 1 
 
 Under this conveniently vague heading, are grouped all figures of 
 speech, such as antithesis, rhetorical question, et al. As, however, 
 such figures of speech are by no means the peculiarity of verse, 
 Nicolo Tibino insists correctly that a consideration of them be- 
 longs properly to rhetoric, not to poetics. 2 As such, there is no 
 need to linger here. The significant fact to be recognized is that 
 in the Latin the Englishman found all of these figures of speech 
 explained and examples of their use. He thus had inherited a 
 most elaborate and self-conscious system of rhetoric. 
 
 With the second variety of colores, however, the modern reader 
 will find himself much less familiar. This consists in the arrange- 
 ment of words so distorted from their natural order that a desired 
 effect may be produced. The simplest form of this is the anagram, 
 where the first letter of the first word in each line spells a name. 
 Such is the Envoy of Alison, 3 or the stanza in the Ship of Foolesf 
 
 1 P. of P. Cap. ix. See page 108 where the passage is cited in full. The N. E. D., 
 giving this passage, explains colour as fiction, allegory; actually the meaning is more 
 "poetic beauty," one of which is allegory. Compare the word colours as used by 
 Wilson in the passage quoted p. 142. 
 
 2 Mari, op. cit., p. 469. Rethorica enim nil plus facit nisi quod orationes variis 
 coloribus ac congruis exornat, prolixas breviando, correptas producendo. 
 
 Skeat's Chaucer, vii, 360. Quoted p. 139. 
 4 Jamieson's edition, ii, 208.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 131 
 
 eulogizing James of Scotland. But really to appreciate what is 
 possible in this type of work, one must turn back to the poetic 
 efforts of the pious monks, where not only the first letters spell a 
 holy thought but the final letters, and by means of careful selec- 
 tion of medial letters, fancy patterns, such as crosses, diamonds, 
 and squares, are outlined in the stanza itself. The amount of 
 ingenuity required predicates a time of infinite leisure. Somewhat 
 higher hi the grade of poetic achievement may be ranked the color 
 repetitio. 1 This repetition may be at the beginning, as in Hawes; 2 
 
 Woe worth sin without repentance! 
 Woe worth bondage without release! 
 
 or it may be at the end, as in Barclay; 3 where four stanzas end, 
 shame doth the ensue; or it may be a combination of them both, 4 
 as in the following instance: 
 
 O sorrowe, sorrowe beyonde all sorowes sure! 
 All son-owes sure surmountynge, lo! 
 Lo, which payne no pure may endure, 
 Endure may none such dedely wo! 
 Wo, alas, ye in wrapped, for he is go! 
 Go is he, whose valyaunce to recounte, 
 To recounte, all other it dyd sunnounte. 
 
 This masterpiece of ingenuity is labelled by Smerte simply " Color, 
 repetico. " The author here had not only to construct his stanza 
 in the rime royal; in addition the final word of each line must 
 begin the succeeding. Naturally he succeeds in little more than 
 merely making sense. Another form, called by Smerte iteracio, 
 that brings in the same idea of repetition, is the traductio dictionix 
 de casu in casum. In the Ciceronian Epistle ad Herennium it is 
 said that traductio is the figure that brings it about, that, when 
 the same word is used frequently, not only it does not offend the 
 mind, but even makes the oration more closely knitted together. 5 
 
 1 John of Garlandia / trnttnti medievali, ed. Mari, op. cit., 420. 
 1 Example of Virtue, Arber, op. cit., 234-5. 
 
 * Jamieaon, op. cit., ii, 164. 
 4 Dyce's Skelton, ii, 389. 
 
 Ad Herenn. IV, 14, 20: Traductio est, quae facit, uti, cum idem verbum cre- 
 brjua ponatur, non modo non offendat animum, sed etiam concinniorem oratiorem 
 reddat.
 
 132 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 This in the Exempla honestae vitae is illustrated as follows: 
 
 Grex illis cedit, gregis hos custodia tangit, 
 Invigilantque gregi multiplicantque gregem. 
 
 Smerte version is: 
 
 Complayne, complayne, who can complayne; 
 For I, alas, past am compleynteJ 
 To compleyne wyt can not sustayne, 
 Deth me with doloure so hath bespraynte. 
 
 The important fact to remember here is that a continuous rep- 
 ition of the same word does not argue an impoverished vocabulary, 
 but that it was regarded as a poetic adornment. 1 One more 
 illustration to show the dependence of these writers on the Latin. 
 Retrograde or transformed verses are such that when read from 
 left to right they mean one thing, and from right to left another. 2 
 A Latin illustration, taken from John of Garlandia, is 
 
 Esse decorem de te, presul, gens provida dicit. 
 This read backward produces 
 
 Dicit provida gens, presul, te dedecorem esse. 
 
 Smerte had also an example of this. 
 
 Restynge in him was honoure with sadnesse, 
 Curtesy, kyndenesse, with great assurance, 
 Dispysynge vice, louynge alway gladnesse, 
 Knyghtly condicyons, feythf ul alegeaunce^ 
 Kyndely demenoure, gracyous vtteraunce; 
 Was none semelyer, feture ne face; 
 Frendely him fostered quatriuial allaunce; 
 Alas, yet dede nowe arte thou, Jaspar, alas! 
 
 1 Tertius modus dicitur equivocatio, et fit quando dictator non poterit invenire 
 dictionem consonantem sue dictioni; recipiat eandem sub equivocationem signifi- 
 cations vel declarationis. Exemplum de primo: si ad hanc dictionem "multa" 
 velis habere consonant iam et non poteris alias, accipias eandem sub equivocatione, 
 "multa" nempe in quantum est nomen adiectivum et collectivum plurale, et in 
 quantum est nomen substantivum, et tune idem est quam "pena" ut in hoc versu: 
 Nos patimur multas, etc., Mari. op. cit., 485. 
 
 * Man. op. cit., 393, 427.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 133 
 
 It would be robbing the reader to anticipate his pleasure in 
 reading this backward! That such poetic curiosities as these 
 that have just been cited were common either in the Latin or the 
 English it is impossible to believe. Their employment would 
 substitute intellectual ingenuity for poetic feeling. But the fact 
 that they are found at all both in the Latin and in the English is 
 significant, because they are so extreme that here there can be no 
 question of vague borrowing, or an indefinable influence. There 
 can be no question that certain peculiarities appear in English 
 verse because they appear in Latin verse, and that to learn to 
 write English they endeavored to adapt the principles taught for 
 Latin composition. And the same reasoning holds true of other 
 colores, the exclamation, the apostrophe, the rhetorical question, 
 the antithesis, etc., etc., that were then, and are now, in ordinary 
 use. The important fact is that, for the English author of the 
 fifteenth century, the rhetorical value of each had already been 
 definitely stated in the Medieval Latin. 
 
 With a relation so close between the two languages it is natural 
 to expect that in English poems Latin would appear. In the 
 latter, it was regarded as an elegance to work in quotations from 
 classical authors. In the Laborinthus the last nine verses of the 
 stanzas of one section consist of lines from Juvenal, Theodulus, 
 and Horace. 1 In England, therefore, particularly in divine poems, 
 Latin lines from the Psalms and phrases from the Vulgate appear. 
 Lydgate's Te Deum will serve as an example; 2 
 
 Te deum laudamus! to the lord sovereyne 
 
 We creaturys knowlech the as creatoure; 
 Te, eternum patrem, the peple playne, 
 
 With hand and herte doth the honoure; 
 
 O ffemynyn fadir funte and foundoure, 
 Magnus et laudabilis dominus, 
 
 In aonne and sterre thu sittyst splendoure, 
 Te laudat omnia apiriiua. 
 
 Or, there may be whole Latin lines completing the English rime- 
 scheme; 3 
 
 1 Man, op. cit., 460-462. 
 
 1 MacCracken's Lydgoie, op. cit., 21. 
 
 1 T. Wright. Percy Society. Vol. 23. Song No. riii.
 
 134 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Salvator mundi, Domine, 
 Fader of hevyn, blessyd thou be, 
 And thi son that commeth of the, 
 De Virgine Maria. 
 
 Or, they are worked in as tags at the end, as in the dull Lamentation 
 of Mary Magdalen, a dramatic monologue presumably written by 
 a nun. 1 
 
 I haue him called, Sed nan respondet mihi, 
 Wherefore my mirth is tourned to mourning 
 O dere Lord Quid malifeci tibi, 
 That me to comfort I find no erthly thing. 
 
 Alas, haue compassion of my crying, 
 
 Yf fro me, Faciem tuam abscondis, 
 
 There is no more, but Consumere me via. 
 
 Associated with religion are the Noels at Christmas-tide; they are 
 secular hymns. It is no matter for surprise to find the Latin 
 carried over into them. 2 
 
 Make we jow in this fest, in quo Christus notus est. 
 
 A patre unigenitus, to a maydyn is cum to us, 
 
 Syng we of hym and sey wolcum, veni, redemptor gentium, 
 
 Agnoscat omne seculum, a bryth stare kyngges mad cum, 
 
 For to take with her presens verbum superum prodiens, etc. 
 
 Or the well-known carol that was so popular that there are at 
 least three versions of it. 3 
 
 Caput apri differo, 
 
 Reddens laudes Domino. 
 The bores heed in hande bring I, 
 With garlands gay and rosemary; 
 I praye you all synge merely, 
 
 qui estis in convivio, etc. 
 
 But with the Latin mingling in the songs of the Church and the 
 Church festivals, the next step would be to find it in poems where 
 
 1 The poem is in English Poets, S. Johnson and A. Chalmers, i, 536; the comment 
 is by Bertha M. Skeat, Cambridge, 1897. 
 
 1 T. Wright, Percy Society, Vol. XXIII, op. tit., xliv. 
 1 T. Wright, Percy Society, Christmas Carols, xviii. 

 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 135 
 
 the connection with the Church has been completely lost. So 
 Smerte in bewailing the death of his lord drops into the phrasing. 
 
 As a prynce penytente and full of contricion, 
 So dyed he, we his seruantes can recorder 
 And that he may haue euerlastynge fruicyon, 
 We the beseche, gloryous kynge and lorde! 
 For the laste leson that he dyd recorde, 
 To thy power he it aplyed, saynge tibi omnes, 
 As a hye knyghte in fidelyte fermely moryd, 
 Angeli cdi et posestatesl 
 Wherewith payne to the hert him boryd, 
 And lyfe him lefte, gyuynge deth entres. 
 
 The next step is to have it used convivially in a drinking song. 1 
 
 The best tre, if ye tak entent, 
 
 Inter ligna fructifera, 
 Is the vyne tre, by good argument, 
 
 Dulcia ferens pon era. 
 Sent Luke seyth in hys gospell, 
 
 Arbor fructu nosdtur. 
 The vyne beryth wyne, as I yow tell, 
 
 Hinc o/tw preponiiur. 
 The first that plantyd the vynnayard, 
 
 Manet in cell gau dio; . . . 
 
 This continues for ninety lines, the alternate riming lines being 
 English and Latin. One more example must suffice. This is 
 apparently a three part song, at least it is headed by the phrase 
 triplex pars, by Raff Drake. As the commonplace book, Appendix 
 58 of the Royal MS., has a number of the songs of the court musi- 
 cian Cornish, Drake probably had some connection with the royal 
 chapel, and the date of the poem is probably in the last ten years 
 of the reign of Henry VII. 2 
 
 ff rere gastkyn wo ye be 
 qui manes hie in pat'a 
 for all yt here supportyth ye 
 ye makyst ye way ad tartara 
 tartara ys a place trewly 
 pro te et consimilibus 
 flor hym yt lyuyth in Apostasy 
 absentyd a claustralibus, etc. 
 
 1 T. Wright, Ronys and Carol*, L. * Printed by Fliegel, Anglia, It, 268.
 
 136 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 And this resembles the macaronic verses of the present day. It 
 must be remembered that all these, and the countless others like 
 them, appeared before the conventional date for the beginning of 
 humanism in England, that therefore they show the close relation- 
 ship between English and Medieval Latin, and that among many 
 authors and for many purposes Latin was used almost inter- 
 changeably with the native tongue. 
 
 In any case, such a condition would have affected the vocabulary 
 of the English tongue to a very large extent. In addition, this 
 influence came at a period when English word formations were 
 shifting and the need of new words was being felt. Still more, it 
 was endorsed by the precepts of the Medieval Latin. Since the 
 effect of such precepts was so great upon the English language, 
 and since also the documents are not accessible to the general 
 reader, an English translation, the first one to my knowledge, 
 may prove of interest. 1 
 
 It now remains to speak of the third section, namely the way to find rimes. Since 
 doubtless the toilsome continuation of this work demands laborious exertion, it is 
 fitting that in some way means should be given by which the ponderosity of this 
 weight may be relieved. In the present chapter I shall declare ways by which rimes 
 and the harmony of phrase may be found more easily. 
 
 1. The first method then of finding rimes is called dictionum debita derioatio, 
 because, if the author in a time of necessity cannot find the necessary rime for a 
 given phrase, let him see whether from another expression a derivative riming to 
 his own expression whose rime he seeks, can be formed whether or not such an ex- 
 pression be known; for example, suppose the author wishes to have a rime for this 
 word "formula"; nor can he find another except this word "norma"; but that does 
 not make a sufficient rime; and therefore let him make from this word "norm" a 
 diminutive "normula" that now rimes to his own expression. But debita dericatio 
 must be used in that way whereby one does not sin against the foundation of rhet- 
 oric, which is grammar. 
 
 2. The second way of finding rimes is called compositia, and that occurs when the 
 writer cannot find the necessary rime to any word; let him form it then by any 
 compound word; for example, any one wishing to find the rime for this word " ficio," 
 not being able otherwise, let him take the compound of this word "facio," as "per- 
 ficio," etc. 
 
 9. The third way is called cquivocatio; it occurs when the writer cannot find the 
 rime for his word; let him take the same word under an equivocation of significance 
 or meaning. Example of the first: if to his word "multa" you wish to have the 
 rime and cannot do otherwise, take the same "multa" in equivocation, for truly 
 
 1 Mari, op. tit., 484. Trattato di Nicold Tibino.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 137 
 
 sometimes it is an adjective and a collective plural, and sometimes it is a substan- 
 tive, and then it is the same as "pena" as in that verse: No* patimur multas, etc. 
 And of the second: anyone wishing to have a rime of this word "flores," if he can- 
 not do otherwise, let him take the same word verbally, and this is used so according 
 to the evidence from various places. 
 
 4. The fourth way is called aliene dictionis iniroductio, and is employed when a 
 rime cannot be found in the ordinary way. Then in the proper case either use the 
 word of another speech, or one formed from it, just as many are accustomed some- 
 times to introduce Greek words, or words formed from the Greek, or from some 
 other language; but nevertheless the formation from the Greek pleases me more, 
 because all Latin is founded on Greek and agrees better with Greek than with the 
 other languages. 
 
 5. The fifth way is none dictionis fictio; this way is used when the riming word 
 cannot be found by the writer; in which case let a new word be formed from the 
 sound or the nature of the subject and that word introduced. But the writer should 
 see to it that in some way such a word be comprehensible and intelligible; otherwise 
 little praise follows, since his word or song cannot be understood. 
 
 6. The sixth way is called transumptio, and occurs when the word necessary for 
 making the rime takes a new significance and in such transumption there is in- 
 herent, or is given, sufficient similarity; for example: if someone wishes to have a 
 rime for the word "videt"; no other is possible except this word "videt," yet be- 
 cause it cannot be used in its own signification, let the same word assume a meaning 
 in this extended significance. 
 
 7. The seventh way is called dictioni similitudinis adjunctio, and takes place when 
 the author cannot find the rime; then he puts in some kind of fitting similitude, as 
 is seen in the example: 
 
 Ut ex spinis crescit rosa, 
 
 in mn in 1 i delictis, 
 semper finis dolorosa 
 
 miscetur cum viciis. 
 
 But this can be done by another color, that is called similitudo. 
 
 8. The eighth way is called contrarii positio. It is when the writer cannot find the 
 riming word; let him use then the phrase of the contrary meaning with the negative 
 sign; as, if from this speech: munera tua surd mala, some one might wish to make 
 a speech harmonizing in rime, let him in the prescribed mode say: tua dona, non 
 sunt bona; so by this device let him make a phrase suitable in meaning, as, if one 
 cannot rime a certain word, let him take its synonym, or its opposite with a negative, 
 as has been shown. 
 
 9. The ninth way is called unius partis orationis pro receptio; this mode is when 
 the writer cannot find in the paradigm the riming word, let him take another un- 
 declinable part, such as an adverb, or a preposition, etc. Let him then take the 
 synonym of that part, giving it the full meaning, and let him make that part de- 
 clinable, as Laborinthus teaches in his de modis egregie loquendi. This is also shown 
 in the following examples:
 
 138 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Qui sunt absque nisi 
 
 Non sunt homines minus visi; 
 
 where this idea "nisi" is placed advowedly for its synonym. 
 
 10. The tenth method is called casuum mutatio, and this is used when the word 
 does not rime in one case, let it then be varied into another riming case, and this is 
 explained in the Viatico dictandi, treatise de commutatione dictionum. 
 
 And I urge you to remember faithfully these said methods of finding rimes; for 
 they are themselves not only valuable for finding rimes, but also for the ornamenta- 
 tion of writing and by them authors induce subtilty. 
 
 The effect upon any language of such precepts as these naturally 
 would be an increase of the vocabulary. Practically the author is 
 told that, if he cannot find a riming word, he is at liberty to coin 
 one; and the practice is advocated not only as a labor-saving device, 
 but as producing that pearl of medieval literature subtilitas. It 
 requires no great knowledge of human nature, as exhibited in the 
 writings of the fifteenth century, to understand that such precepts 
 would be read with avidity by the English authors harassed by 
 linguistic difficulties. That such was the fact is shown by the ex- 
 amples in the poem by Smerte, who not only followed the precepts 
 but in addition noted the fact in the margin. 
 Thus his stanza 
 
 Than, if it be ryghte, most of myght, thy godhed I ac'ise. 
 
 For thy myght contrary to right thou doste gretly abuse; 
 
 Katyffes unkind thou leuest behind, paynis, Turkes, and lewis, 
 
 And our maister gret thou gaue wormes to etc; whereon gretly I muse: 
 
 Is this wel done? answer me sone; make, Lorde, thyn excuse, 
 
 is marked color Introductio. This is the fourth color in the list cited 
 previously, and advocates the introduction of a word of foreign 
 origin. In the stanza the 6 rime is given by accuse. Of the five 
 necessary rimes, three, accuse, Jews, and muse were at hand. There- 
 fore from the French, or possibly Medieval Latin abusare, he in- 
 troduces the word abuse in the sense of to employ improperly, the 
 first use of which as applied to things, recorded by the New Eng- 
 lish Dictionary, is a century later; and his first use of excuse, that 
 which tends to extenuate a fault or offense is dated as 1494. In 
 another stanza, by the fifth color, fictio, he increases the signifi- 
 cance of the word. 
 
 Bydynge al alone, with sorowe sore encombred. . .
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 139 
 
 Encumber in this figurative sense is new with Smerte. Still an- 
 other illustrates the sixth, transumption in the line, 
 
 Youre pleasures been past vnto penalyte. 
 
 This is the first use of penalty given in the New English Diction- 
 ary, with the meaning suffering. And from the fact that Smerte 
 affixes the side-notes it is clear that not only is he conscious of his 
 innovations but he is proudly conscious of them. 
 
 Consequently the fifteenth century is marked by the great num- 
 ber of new verbal coinages, especially from the Latin, although 
 there are a number from the French. Thus was formed the " aur- 
 eate" language. As an example of this, the stanza from the En- 
 voy of Alison may be quoted, the one in which the first letters of 
 the respective lines form an anagram of the name. 1 
 
 Aurore of gladnesse, and day of lustinesse, 
 Lucerne a-night, with hevenly influence 
 Illumined, rote of beautee and goodnesse, 
 Suspiries which I effunde in silence, 
 Of grace I beseche, alegge let your wrytinge. 
 Now of al goode sith ye be best livinge. 
 
 This was written and was accepted as beautiful English. In the 
 Remedy of Love such words as allective, concupiscence, scribable, 
 aromatic, redolence, jeoperdously, sembably, ortographie, ethi- 
 mologie, ramagious, bataylous, and dissonant, (to choose only the 
 more striking) are used in denunciation. 2 The author explains 
 that he was one of the three men flirting with the same woman, 
 who tricked them all. It is to this melancholy incident that the 
 poem is due. The piece belongs clearly to the type of the medieval 
 attack upon women, but its language shows the beginning of the 
 Renaissance. It is interesting, therefore, as showing to what ex- 
 tent even in ordinary verse the English language was affected by 
 foreign importations. 
 
 It is in Hawes, however, that we find both the fullest explana- 
 tion of the theory and the most extreme examples of its practice. 
 His master Lydgate had versified 3 
 
 "The deputed rethoryke in Englysh language." 
 
 1 Skeat's Chaucer, vii, 360. 
 
 1 Chalmers' English Poets, i, 540. 
 
 1 Pastime of Pleantre, Cap. xi.
 
 140 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Consequently the selection of a vocabulary is a serious problem. 1 
 
 "The dulcet speche from the langage rude, 
 Tellynge the tale in terms eloquent, 
 The barbary tongue it doth ferre exclude, 
 Electynge wordes whiche are expedyent. 
 In Latyn or in Englyshe, after the extent 
 Encensyng out the aromatyke fume, 
 Our language rude to exyle and consume." 
 
 If the author neglects this principle, trouble follows. 2 
 
 " For though a matter be never so good, 
 Yf it be tolde wyth tongue of barbary, 
 In rude maner wythout the discrete mode, 
 It is disturbance to a hole company." 
 
 This craving for the "aromatyke fume" in "fewe wordes, swete 
 and sentencious ", a sixteenth century expression of the theory 
 of "le mot propre", results in a vocabulary enriched by such coin- 
 ages as depured, puberitude, sugratif, perambulat, equipolent, bro- 
 bate, solisgyse, habytaile, itarenge, teneorus, consuetude, etc. To a 
 student of Latin the meaning of most of these words, and of others 
 like them, is clear, although personally I confess to a doubt as to 
 the significance of brobate and itarenge. 3 The concrete appli- 
 cation of this theory is terrifying. In the following stanza 4 the 
 knight has won his lady and the effect upon him is described. 
 
 " Her redolente wordes of swete influence 
 
 Degouted vapoure moost aromatyke, 
 
 And made conversyon of complacence; 
 
 Her depured and her lusty rethoryke 
 
 My courage reformed, that was so lunatyke; 
 
 My sorowe defeted, and my mynde dyde modefy. 
 
 And my dolorous herte began to pacyfy." 
 
 The excesses of such a style rendered it innocuous. A reaction 
 against " ink-horn " terms set in and simplicity was sought. This 
 reaction was caused by, or was at least concomitant with, that 
 
 1 Pastime of Pleasure, Cap. xi. 
 
 2 Ibid, Cap. xii. 
 
 * I recognize their fascination, but the New English Dictionary is here reticent. 
 4 Pastime of Pleasure, Cap. xxxviii.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 141 
 
 closer and more sympathetic study of the classical authors that is 
 called humanism. The movement was naturally slow, the nation 
 tending to slough off some excrescences sooner than others. Thus 
 Wilson in his Arte of Rhetorique (1553) feels it necessary to include 
 the "tropes" of a word. These are: 1 
 
 A Metaphore or translation of wordes. 
 
 A word making. 
 
 Intellection. 
 
 Abusion. 
 
 Transmutation of a word. 
 
 Transumption. 
 
 Chaunge of name. 
 
 Circumlocution. 
 
 And the tropes of a long continued speech or sentence, are these; 
 
 An Allegoric, or inuersion of wordes. 
 
 Mounting. 
 
 Resembling of things. 
 
 Similitude. 
 
 Example. 
 
 Such a catalogue as this suggests Ad Herennium as seen through 
 medieval spectacles, much more than the reasoning of Aristotle. 
 That is the medieval side of his work. But it is preceded by an 
 elaborate warning. This is the Renaissance: 2 
 
 Among all other lessons this should first be learned, that wee neuer affect any 
 straunge ynkehorne termes, but to speake as is commonly receiued: neither seeking 
 to be ouer fine, nor yet liuing ouer-carelesse using our speeche as most men doe, 
 and ordering our wittes as the fewest haue done. Some seeke so far for outlandish 
 English, that they forget altogether their mothers language. And I dare sweare 
 this, if some of their mothers were alive, thei were not able to tell what they say: 
 and yet these fine English clerkes will say, they speake in their mother tongue, if a 
 man should charge them for counterfeiting the Kings English. Some farre iour- 
 neyed gentleman at their returne home, like as they loue to goe in forraine ap- 
 parell, so thei wil pouder their talke with ouersea language. He that commeth 
 lately out of Fraunce, will talke French English and neuer blush at the matter! An 
 other chops in with English Italienated, and applieth the Italian phrase to our 
 English speaking, the which is, as if an Oratour that professeth to viler his mind in 
 
 1 1 am quoting from the reprint of the 1560 edition, edited by G. H. Mair for 
 the Clarendon Press 1909, 172. 
 1 Ibid, p. 162.
 
 142 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 plaine Latine, would needes speake poetrie, and farre fetched colours of straunge 
 antiquitie. The Lawyer will store his stomacke with the prating of Pedlers. The 
 Auditor in making his accompt and reckening, cometh in with sise sould, and cater 
 denere, for vi, s. iiii, d. The fine courtier will talke nothing but Chaucer. The 
 misticall wiseman and Poeticall Clerkes, will speake nothing but quaint Prouerbes, 
 and blinde Allegories, delighting much in their owne darkenesse, especially, when 
 none can tell what they doe say. The vnlearned or foolish phantasticall, that smelles 
 but of learning (such fellowes as haue seen learned men in their daies) wil so Latin 
 their tongues, that the simple can not but wonder at their talke, and thinke surely 
 they speake by some reuelation. I know them that thinke Rhetorique to stande 
 wholie vpon darke wordes, and hee that can catche an ynke home terme by the 
 taile, him they coumpt to be a fine Englisheman, and a good Rlietorician. And the 
 rather to set out this foly, I will adde such a letter as William Sommer himsefe, 
 could not make a better for that purpose. Some will thinke and sweare it too, that 
 there was neuer any such thing written: well, I will not force any man to beleeue 
 it, but I will say thus much, and abide by it too, the like haue been made hereto- 
 fore, and praised aboue the Moone. 
 
 A letter deuised by a Lincolneshire man, for a voyde benefice, to a gentleman that 
 then waited vpon the Lorde Chauncellour, for the time being. 
 
 Pondering, expending, and reuoluting with my selfe, your ingent affabilitie, 
 and ingenious capacity for mundaine affaires: I cannot but celebrate, & extol your 
 magnificil dexteritie aboue all other. For how could you haue adepted such il- 
 lustrate prerogatiue, and dominicall superioritie, if the fecunditie of your ingenie 
 had not been so fertile and wonderfull pregnant. Now therefore being accersited 
 to such splendente renoume, and dignitie splendidious: I doubt not but you will 
 adiuuate such poore adnichilate orphanes, as whilome ware condisciples with you, 
 and of antique familiaritie in Lincolneshire. Among whom I being a Scholasticall 
 panion, obtestate your sublimitie, to extoll mine infirmitie. There is a Sacerdotall 
 dignitie in my natiue Countrey continguate to me, where I now contemplate: 
 which your worshipfull benignitie could sone impetrate for mee, if it would like you 
 to extend your sedules, and collaude me in them to the right honourable lord Chaun- 
 celler, or rather Archgrammacian of Englande. You know my literature, you knowe 
 the pastorall promotion, I obtestate your clemencie, to inuigilate thus much for 
 me, according to my confidence, and as you knowe my condigne merites for such 
 a compendious Hiring. But now I relinquish to fatigate your intelligence, with any 
 more friuolous verbositie, and therefore he that rules the climates, be euermore your 
 beautreur, your fortresse, and your bulwarke. Amen. 
 
 Dated at my Dome, or rather Mansion place in Lincolneshire, the penulte of the 
 moneth sextile. Anno Mittimo, quillimo, trittimo. 
 
 Per me loannes Octo. 
 
 What wiseman reading this Letter, will not take him for a very Caulf that made it 
 in good earnest, and thought by his inke pot termes to get a good Parsonage. Doeth 
 wit rest in straunge wordes, or els standeth it in wholseom matter, and apt declaring 
 of a mans minde? Doe wee not speake because we would haue other to vnderstande 
 vs, or is not the tongue giuen for this eiide, that one might know what an other
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 143 
 
 meaneth? And what vnlearned man can tel, what this letter signifieth? There- 
 fore, either we must make a difference of English, and say some is learned English 
 and other some is rude English the one is court talke, the other is countrey speech, 
 or els we must of necessitie banish all such Khetorique, and vse altogether one maner 
 of language. \Vhen I was hi Cambridge, and student in the kings College, there 
 came a man out of the toune with a pint of wine in a pottle port, to welcome the 
 prouost of that house, that lately came from the court. And because he would 
 bestow his present like a clarke, dwelling among the scholers: he made humblie 
 his three curtesies and sayd in this maner. Cha good euen my good Lord, and well 
 might your Lordship vare, vnderstanding that your Lordshippe was come, and 
 knowing that you are a worshipfull Pilate, and keepes abominable house: I thought 
 it my duetie to come incantiuante, and bring you a pottell of wine, the which I 
 besech your Lordship take in good worth. Here the simple man, being desirous 
 to amend his mothers tongue, shewing himselfe not to bee the wisest man that euer 
 spake with tongue. 
 
 An other good fellowe of the countrey, being an officer and Maior of a toune, 
 and desirous to speake like a fine learned man, hauing iust occasion to rebuke a 
 runnegate fellwoe, said after this wise in a great heate. Thou yngrame and vaca- 
 tion knaue, if I tak ethee any more within the Circumcision of my dampnation: I 
 will so corrupt thee, that all other vacation knaues shall take ilsample by thee. 
 
 An other standing in much neede of money, and desirous to haue some helpe, 
 at a gentlemans hande, made his complainte in this wise. I pray you sir be so good 
 vnto me, as forbeare this halfe yeres rent. For so help me God and halidome, we 
 are so taken on with contrary Bishops, with reuiues, and with Southsides to the 
 King, that all our money is cleane gone. These words he spake for Contribution, 
 Releef, and Subside. And thus we see that poore simple men are much troubled, 
 and talke oftentimes they knowe not what for lacke of wit, and want of Latine and 
 French, whereof many of our strange wordes full often are deriued. Those there- 
 fore that will eschue this folly, and acquaint themselues with the best kind of speech, 
 must seeke from time to time such wordes as are commonly receiued, and such as 
 properly may expresse in plaine maner, the whole conceipt of their minde. And 
 looke what wordes we best vnderstande, and knowe what they meane: the same 
 should soonest be spoken, and first applied to the utterance of our purpose. 
 
 Now whereas wordes be receiued, as well Greeke as Latine, to set forth our mean- 
 ing in the English tongue, either for lacke of store, or els because we would enrich 
 the language: it is well doen to vse them, and no man therein can be charged for any 
 affectation, when all other are agreed to followe the same waie. There is no man 
 agreeued when he heareth (Letters Patents) and yet Patentes is Latine, and sig- 
 nifieth open to all men. The Communion is a fellowship, or a comming together 
 rather Latin then English: the kings prerogatiue declareth his power roiall aboue 
 al other, and yet I know no man greeued for these termes, being vsed in their place, 
 nor yet any one suspected for affectation, when such generall wordes are spoken. 
 The folie is espied, when either we will vse such wordes as fewe men doe vse, or 
 vse them out of place, when an other might serue much better. Therefore to auoide 
 such folly, we may learne of that most excellent Oratour Tullie, who in his third 
 booke, where he speaketh of a perfect Oratour, declareth vnder the name of Craasus, 
 that for the choice of words fower things should chefly be obscrued. First that such
 
 144 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 words as we vse, should be proper vnto the tongue wherein wee speake, againe, that 
 they bee plaine for all men to perceiue: thirdly, that they be apt and meete, most 
 properly to sette out the matter. Fourthly, that words translated from one sig- 
 nification to an other (called of the Grecians Tropes) be vsed to beautifie the sen- 
 tence, as precious stones are set in a ring to commende the gold. 
 
 This long extract deserves careful consideration from the fact 
 that Wilson has correctly diagnosed the trouble. He shows the 
 presence of the ink-horn terms, and later, as we have seen, he ex- 
 plains their formation; he points out the tendency of the age 
 towards their misuse; and finally by study of the classics he 
 deduces the correct solution. In the same way it is the hu- 
 manist Ascham that in the Toxophilus (1545) makes the same 
 protest. 1 
 
 He that wyll wryte well in any tongue, muste folowe thys councel of Aristotle, 
 to speake as the common people do, to thinke as wise men do; and so shoulde euery 
 man vnderstand hym, and the iudgement of wyse men alowe hym. Many English 
 writers haue not done so, but vsinge straunge wordes as latin, french and Italian, 
 do make all thinges darke and harde. Ones I communed with a man whiche rea- 
 soned the englyshe tongue to be enryched and encreased thereby, sayinge: Who wyll 
 not prayse, that feaste, where a man shall drinke at a diner, bothe wyne, ale and 
 beere? Truely quod I, they be all good, euery one taken by hym selfe alone, but 
 if you putte Malmesye and sacke, read wyne and white, ale and beere, and al in one 
 pot, you shall make a drynke, neyther easie to be knowen, nor yet holsom for the 
 bodye. 
 
 The total result of the movement was happy. The majority of 
 the words thus hauled into English lost their foreign air and, 
 sometimes with a changed significance, took their places hi the 
 language. The reader may amuse himself by considering, in the 
 letter quoted by Wilson as the extreme of pedantry, how many of 
 those words, perhaps in a derived form and a different meaning, 
 are today quite normal. Adepted as a participle is unusual, but 
 adept as a noun does not shock us; adnichilate terrifies when the 
 humble annihilate leaves us perfectly placid. Thus the English 
 language was sturdy enough to take care of itself; it both threw 
 off the unnecessary and useless additions, and it assimilated the 
 rest. 
 
 In dealing with the question of colores, especially how the 
 
 1 Arber's reprint of the Toxophilus, 18.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 145 
 
 practice of them affected the English language, we are standing 
 on fairly firm foundation. At least beneath us is the massive bulk 
 of the New English Dictionary. The moment, however, we come 
 to the question of pronunciation, the proper scansion of the line, 
 or to the question of prosody, it is quite a different matter. As the 
 syllable value of the final e varies with the individual writer, each 
 line is a problem to us. What is still more unfortunate is the fact 
 that each line was equally a problem to the scribe of the sixteenth 
 century, whose redaction in almost all cases is the only one that 
 has come down to us. Because the possible existence of the final 
 e as a metrical factor was a mystery to him, and because in the 
 sixteenth century the desire for the ipsissima verba was unknown, 
 he conscientiously endeavored to improve the poems by making 
 the lines more regular. The result is that we can never be sure 
 that in any given case we have the words that the author wrote. 
 Therefore we deduce principles from the text, and then correct 
 the text hi accordance with the principles. The result, however, 
 is necessarily unsatisfactory. It is here, then, that we turn 
 to the Medieval Latin theorists to find what is the basis for the 
 scansion. 
 
 In the Medieval Latin, as all the theorists agree, there is one 
 main definition of rithm. This, as stated in the simplest and most 
 primitive of the treatises is that rithm is the harmonious equality 
 of syllables, held within a definite number. 1 Other writers, care- 
 fully following Cicero, explain that the word comes from the 
 Greek pvOfjuk, equivalent to the Latin numerus. This is, then, 
 the basic point. Lines are classified primarily by the number of 
 syllables contained in each. The limitation of this definition is 
 at once apparent because, according to it, all the syllables will be 
 of equal value. Verse composed according to this scheme would 
 have the unaccented characteristic of French poetry. Although 
 this is untrue either in Latin or in English verse, in the early 
 ecclesiastical chants, where the music consists in a succession of 
 hah* notes terminated at the end of the line by a whole note, such 
 a definition fairly covers the facts. Equally of course when 
 quicker measures were introduced, to follow the musical analogy 
 the definition had to be modified. This was done by prolonging 
 
 1 Man op. oil., 383. Rithmus eat consonant paritas sillabarum sub certo numero 
 comprehenaarum.
 
 146 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 some syllables and shortening others, thus recognizing accent. 1 
 In this way are feet formed, the names of which are taken from 
 the quantitative system. Thus an iambus is formed by a word 
 accented upon the ultimate, and a spondee by a word accented 
 upon the penult. 2 For example, delight forms an iambic foot, 
 and mother a spondaic foot. The line then takes its name from the 
 last foot in it and the syllables are counted backward. An 
 octosyllabic line with a feminine ending would then be termed a 
 tetraspondaic line; with a masculine ending, a tetraiambic line. 
 Aside from the nomenclature, this needs no comment in regard to 
 English verse composition. It would produce lines as faultlessly 
 regular as those of the eighteenth century. In actual practice, 
 however, this theoretical regularity was modified by opposing 
 tendencies. Of these, undoubtedly the most important was the 
 old national system of versification, according to which poems 
 were still composed in the fifteenth century. The numerous 
 manuscripts of the Vision of Piers Plouvman attest the popularity 
 of the type. But there, versification is based upon stress, and the 
 exact number of syllables to a foot is unimportant. To the ear 
 trained in such a system, therefore, an occasional extra syllable 
 in the line was a matter of indifference. There was thus a strong 
 tendency to scan the line by the number of accents, rather than 
 by the number of syllables. This native tendency received also 
 subconscious strength from the nomenclature, borrowed from 
 classical versification. Naturally, in an accentual system of 
 prosody, spondees, dactyls, or anapests exist largely by courtesy. 
 But as in the classical system a dactyl, or an anapest, is the metri- 
 cal equivalent of a spondee, so in a five-accented ten-syllabic line 
 it was easy to explain the introduction of extra syllables on the 
 ground of the substitution of a dactyllic or anapestic foot for a 
 regular spondaic. Still more, the Medieval Latinists claimed the 
 license of slurring syllables, at least for the sake of rime, so 
 
 1 Mari, op. cit., 470. Propter quod nota quod per accentum non intelligo plus 
 quam prolongationem et breviationem sillabarum, idest acutam et brevem ipsarum 
 prolationem, ita quod per prolongationem sillabe singnatur acutus vel elevatus 
 sonus, per breviationem gravis suspensio. Istud autem Laborintus exprimit per 
 iambicum et spondaicum seu spondicum, volens per iambicus breviationem sillabe 
 et per spondaicum prolongationem. 
 
 1 Of course this is not a true spondee, which is rare in English the terms cover 
 all trochees.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 147 
 
 mommona could be scanned as momma, secida as secla, 1 etc. And 
 the result of these three factors was that the author composed 
 freely by ear, so that while theoretically a five-accented line had 
 ten syllables, and only ten, actually, provided that the accents 
 were correct, the exact number of syllables was immaterial. In 
 the following passage, for example, Barclay is writing the heroic 
 couplet, although few of the lines have only ten syllables. 
 
 Nay, there hath the sight no maner of pleasaunce, 
 
 And that shall I prove long time or it be night. 
 
 Some men deliteth beholding men to fight, 
 
 Or goodly knightes in pleasaunt apparayle, 
 
 Or sturdie souldiers in bright harnes and male, 
 
 Or an army arayde ready to the warre, 
 
 Or to see them fight, so that he stande afarre.* 
 
 It is this freedom in the number of syllables and the placing of 
 the accents, as well as the enjambment, that technically differen- 
 tiates the couplet of the Elizabethans from that of the Age of Anne. 
 Marlowe's line, 3 
 
 The barbarous Thracian soldier, mov'd with nought 
 
 is consequently strictly consonant with English usage. On the 
 other hand the versification of Pope where 
 
 And ten low words oft creep in one dull line 
 
 shows the effect of the French, a really syllabic, prosody. And 
 although not with Pope, at least in the hands of his imitators, 
 verse became mechanical, a mere matter of counting syllables. 
 But as the Medieval Latin, like the English, was accentual, such 
 danger was not incurred by English imitators; at the same time 
 the syllabic basis of prosody was insisted upon. 
 
 In dealing with the question of the grouping of lines into stanza 
 forms, we have definite data. For, not only is there the summary 
 of John of Garlandia, written about the middle of the thirteenth 
 century (quoted entire on pages 125-6) but in addition we have the 
 
 1 Man, op. cit., 472. 
 
 1 Barclay, Second Eclogue. 
 
 1 Hero and Leander. First Sestiad, 81.
 
 148 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 fourth book of the Laborinthus, written probably a century later, 1 
 in which twenty-eight of the possible forty-four combinations are 
 illustrated. An examination of these two documents shows that 
 Medieval Latin prosody is interesting not only for what it contains, 
 but also for what it omits. With the exception of the ten syllable 
 iambic line, the longest line possible is octosyllabic. But even 
 this lambicus Decasillabus is qualified by the clause, qualis est 
 ille rithmus. The importance of this qualification is apparent 
 when the verse form is studied. 
 
 Diri patris infausta pignora, 
 ante ortus damnati tempora; 
 quia vestra sic iacent corpora, 
 mea dolent introrsus pectora. 
 
 If this were read 
 
 Diri patris infausta pignora 
 
 it would be a normal five accented line. Really, however, as John 
 of Garlandia confesses, it is iambic only by courtesy, since the last 
 foot is dactylic. This is shown by a quotation from the same poem, 
 Lamentatic Oedipi, given in another tract (circ. 1150) to illustrate 
 a triple rime. But this reduces the verse to one of four accents 
 only. If this be true, the iambic pentameter line, the line of blank 
 verse, the sonnet, the heroic couplet, the rime-royal, and the Spen- 
 serian stanza do not appear. When one realizes the effect on 
 English literature of the disappearance of all poems written in 
 these and allied forms, the limitation of the Medieval Latin is at 
 once apparent. And the second striking omission is that there is no 
 provision for an intricate rime-scheme. You may have a couplet, 
 triplet, quadruplet, hi a line of two, three, or four accents closing 
 in a b rime, you may have a quatrain with the second and fourth 
 lines alone riming, the first and third and the second and fourth, 
 or the first and fourth and second and third, but there is no 
 prototype of such a form as the ballade or the rondeau. These 
 rime-schemes, aab and abab, with their variations, thus form the 
 staple of Medieval Latin poetry. In contrast with the wire-drawn 
 verbal ingenuity of later work, the effect of the rime-schemes upon 
 the reader is one of simplicity. Compare with these perfectly 
 obvious forms, the rime-scheme of such a piece as the Lycidas, 
 
 1 Mari, op. cil., Prefazione, 8.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 149 
 
 for example, where the ear is tantalized by the appearance or 
 omission of the rime, each equally unexpected. Here the rimes 
 appear with an obvious regularity; the accents fall with the tick 
 of the clock. 
 
 Meum est proposition 
 
 In tabrena mori; 
 Ubi vina proxima 
 
 M orient is ori: 
 Tune cantabunt laetius 
 
 Angelorum chori: 
 "Deus sit propitius 
 
 Isti potatori." 1 
 
 This is really two mono-rime couplets of thirteen syllables. The 
 form of this celebrated old drinking song is typically obvious. 
 When the forms used by the English poets between Lydgate 
 and Wyatt are examined, these same characteristics are to be 
 found. Aside from the rime-royal, the " Monk's Tale " stanza and 
 the heroic couplet, both belonging to the Chaucerian tradition, 
 dignified by the use of Lydgate, and continued as the vehicle 
 for formal literary effort, poetic forms are marked by short lines 
 and simple rime-schemes. While all these are not necessarily bor- 
 rowed from the Medieval Latin, it is worthy of notice that the 
 majority are to be found discussed in the Medieval Latin treat- 
 ises. Of these in the English the popular forms are aab-ccb, aab- 
 ccd, aaab-cccb, and aaab-cccd for lyrics, and lines riming in coup- 
 lets, tercets, or quadruplets for serious poems, both usually 
 iambic. To illustrate the extent to which the English stanza- 
 forms are taken from the Medieval Latin, the simplest method 
 will be to list several of the poems in accessible collections under 
 the appropriate heading. 
 
 Two iambics, bimembris, with three iambic differentia. 
 
 I was not past 
 Not a stones cast 
 
 So nygh as I could deme, 
 But I dyd see 
 A goodly tree 
 
 Within an herbor grene. 1 
 
 1 Conjunct Goliardi, from Carmina Clericorum, Heilbronn, 1876. 
 
 1 Hazlitt, Early Popular Poetry, iii, 187. Armonye of Byrdes, Third stanza.
 
 150 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Two iambics, trimembris, with two iambic differentia. 
 
 In an arbcur 
 Late as I were, 
 The fowls to hear 
 
 Was mine intent. 
 Singing in fere, 
 With notes clear, 
 They made good cheer, 
 
 On boughes bent. 1 
 
 Three iambics, trimembris, with three iambic differentia. 
 
 In this tyme 6f Christmas 
 Bytwyxte an oie and an asse 
 A mayden delyuered was 
 
 Of Christ her dere son dire. 
 The husband 6f Mary 
 (Saint) Jdseph stdode her by 
 And saide he was ready 
 
 To sSrue her if nede were. 1 
 
 Four iambics, bimembris, with three iambic differentia. This is 
 the very common narrative stanza, used in Sir Thopas. 
 
 Pope, kyng, and emperoure, 
 Byschope, abbot, and prioure, 
 
 Parson, preste, and knyght. 
 Duke, erle, and ilk baron 
 To serve syr Peny are they boune, 
 
 Both be day and nyght. 3 
 
 The spondaic forms are much rarer, but as an example of dispond- 
 eus trimembris with iambic differentia, there is that of Anthony 
 Wydville, Lord Rivers. 4 
 
 Somewhat musing, 
 And more mourning, 
 In remembering 
 
 The unstead fast ness; 
 
 1 Arber, Dunbar Anthology, 193, Thomas Feilde's Lover and a Jay. 
 
 1 Anglia, xii, 588. The accents are my own. 
 
 Hazlitt, op. cit., i, 161. 
 
 * Arber, Dunbar Anthology, 180.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 151 
 
 This World being 
 Of such wheeling, 
 Me contrarying, 
 What may I guess? 
 
 I fear, doubtless. 
 Remediless, 
 Is now to cease 
 
 My woeful chance! 
 For unkindness, 
 Withouten less, 
 And no redress, 
 
 Me doth advance. 
 
 With displeasance, etc. 
 
 This last is interesting not only as being spondaic in movement 
 but from the fact that the rime in the differentia becomes the a in 
 the succeeding verse. This peculiarity is called cum consonantia 
 sequente immediate, 1 or caudati continentes. 2 This same device 
 is used in the Justes of the Moneths of May and June. 
 
 The moneth of May with amorous beloued 
 Plasauntly past wherein there hath been proud 
 Feates of armes and no persones reproued 
 That had courage 
 
 In armoure bryght to shewe theyr personage 
 On stedes stronge sturdy and corsage 
 But rather praysed for theyr vasellage 
 As reason was 
 
 In whiche season thus fortuned the cace 
 
 A lady fayre moost beautyuous of face 
 
 With seruauntes foure brought was into a place staged about 
 
 Whereon stode lordes and ladyes a grete route . . etc. 1 
 
 As this poem describes the jousts held by Charles Brandon, Giles 
 Capell and William Hussey in May and June, 1507, according to 
 
 1 Mari, op. cit., 460. 
 
 1 Man, op. rit., 404. Caudati autem continentes dicuntur cum cauda praece- 
 dentia cum consonanciis sequentis concordat per omnem rithmorum seriem. 
 * **"''** op. cit., ii, 113.
 
 152 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the title, it shows that also in the sixteenth century the Medieval 
 Latin influence persisted. But the use of the pentameter indicates 
 the anglicization of the measure. And the popularity of this type 
 may be indicated by the fact that the majority of the poems in the 
 Songs and Carols, edited by Wright, is in this category. 
 
 Two variants of the type may be worth the mentioning, although 
 both are obvious at a glance. The first is rithmus cum duplici 
 differentia, where, instead of a single line cauda, the differentia is 
 double. 1 
 
 Vita iusti gloriosa, 
 more ut esset preciosa, 
 
 apud Deum meruit; 
 
 et qui sibi viluit 
 a datore gratiarum 
 cum fine miseriarum 
 
 gratiam obtinuit, 
 
 et decorem incluit. 
 
 And the second is where the differentia, either single or double, is 
 repeated as a refrain. This is usual in carols and songs. In Eng- 
 lish examples of these are found as late as in the Lusty Juventus 
 (circ.1540). Juventus makes his entrance singing. 2 
 
 In a Berber grene, a sleepe where as I lay. 
 
 The byrdes sang sweete in the myddes of the day 
 
 I dreamed fast of myrth and play 
 
 In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure, 
 
 Me thought as I walked stil to and fro. 
 
 And from her company I could not go, 
 
 But when I waked it was not so, 
 
 In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure. 
 
 Therefore my hart is surely pyght, 
 
 Of her alone to haue a sight, 
 
 Which is my ioy and hartes delyght, 
 
 In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure. Finis. 
 
 This is quite clearly iambic tetrameter, trimembris, with duplici 
 differentia, repeated. So true is this, that it enables us to reject 
 the foot a sleepe in the first line, as an intrusion of the typesetter. 
 
 1 Mari, op. cit, 426. 
 
 1 The text of these two songs is taken from Mr. Wever's edition in the Tudor 
 Facsimile Texts series.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 153 
 
 The text of the second song in the play, is, however, in a still 
 worse condition, suggesting cynical deductions concerning the 
 state of affairs in the printing establishment of John Awdely 
 dwelling in little Britayne strete without Aldersgate. 
 
 Why should not youth fulfyll his owne minde 
 As the course of nature doth him binde, 
 Is not euery thing ordained to do his kinde? 
 Report me to you, report me to you. 
 Do not the floures spring fresh and gay, 
 Pleasant and swete in the month of May? 
 And when their time commeth they fade away. 
 Report me to you, reporte me to you. 
 Be not the trees in wynter bare? 
 Like unto their kind, such they are, 
 And when they spring their fruites declare 
 Reporte me to you, report me to you. 
 What should youth do with the fruits of age, 
 But Hue in pleasure in this passage, 
 For when age cometh his lustes will swage 
 Reporte me to you, report me to you. 
 ! 
 
 The first stanza, here, requires considerable adjustment before 
 it returns to the original state. As blame for these errors should 
 not lie with the author, but with the printer, these poems furnish 
 interesting examples of the charm and melody of the medieval 
 form in a late state. And, as has been said before, the content is 
 simple and the medium obvious. The Medieval Latinist com- 
 posed with major chords. 
 
 Fortunately there is summed up in one poem most of the 
 characteristics of the type, so that it may be considered as an 
 epitome of Medieval Latin influence, the Nutbrowne Mayde. Like 
 so much of the work that we have been discussing, it is anonymous. 
 Skeat assumes that it was written by a woman, largely because it 
 differs from much of medieval work in presenting the woman's 
 side of the case. But as the author in the debate assumes the male 
 part, reasoning from the effect of the poem as a whole does not 
 seem conclusive. Rather there is a renaissance feeling of the im- 
 portance of woman. Nor is the cause for its composition any 
 clearer. It appears as an insertion for the first time in Arnold's 
 Chronicle (circ. 1502), a curious collection of miscellaneous informa- 
 tion, between an account of the tolls to be paid by English mer-
 
 154 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 chan'cs sending goods to Antwerp and a statement of the differences 
 of English and Flemish currencies. No comment is offered. Natur- 
 ally it is to be found again in the second edition of the Chronicle, 
 1520. It must, however, have circulated in a separate form, as on 
 February 17th., 1520, John Dome sold a copy of it for one penny. 
 During the eighteenth century it was published several times, 
 probably owing to the celebrity it received from Prior's imitation 
 of it, Henry and Emma. The result has been that it is one of the 
 best known, if not the most read, poems of the period. Mr. A.R. 
 Waller speaks of it as "in itself sufficient, in form and music and 
 theme, to 'make the fortune' of any century." * 
 
 Probably part of the enthusiasm aroused by the poem is due to 
 the mystery surrounding the accident of its birth. Douce, in his 
 edition of the Chronicle in 1811, conjectured that it was a trans- 
 lation from the German. This conjecture has a measure of plausi- 
 bility because, as Arnold traded with the Low Countries, he might 
 have found a version there. The great objection to it is that, since 
 Douce's suggestion a hundred years ago, no such German original 
 has been found. Nor should the source be sought in popular 
 literature, Teutonic or otherwise. As Gummere says emphati- 
 cally: 2 "The famous Nut Brown Maid, for example, a spirited 
 and charming dramatic poem long ago laid to the credit of some 
 woman as her oratio pro domo, her plea for the constancy of the 
 sex, has not the faintest claim to its position in many a collection 
 of popular traditional verse." And an analysis of the poem will 
 justify Gummere's conclusion. 
 
 In content the Nut Brown Maid gives a late medieval view 
 of the perfect woman, belonging to the same class as does the 
 Clerkes Tale of Chaucer. There, it will be remembered, patient 
 Griselda serves as a model for all rebellious wives. The woman 
 of the Proverbs is outdone ! The Marquis of Saluzzo, after marry- 
 ing a woman of low degree, determines to try her fortitude. Thif 
 he does by depriving her of her children, by announcing that he 
 will take a new wife, by driving her from the palace in only her 
 smock, and finally by demanding that she prepare all things in 
 joyous preparation for her supposed successor. Through it all 
 Griselda passes triumphant. 
 
 1 Cambridge History of Eng. Lit. ii, 486-7. 
 * Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit., ii, 463.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 155 
 
 Men speke of lob and most for his humblesse, 
 As clerkes, whan hem list, can wel endyte, 
 Namely of men, but as in soothfastnesse, 
 Though clerkes preyse wommen but a lyte, 
 Ther can no man in humblesse him acquyte 
 As womman can, he can ben half so trewe 
 As wommen been, but it be falle of-newe. 1 
 
 Much the same trials, although purely imaginary, does the Nut 
 Brown Maid experience. Her lover tells her that he will fly to 
 the greenwood to be an outlaw, that if she follows him she will 
 lose her reputation, that she will be in danger, that she will suffer 
 hardships, and finally that he has a mistress there already. Since 
 none of these affect her constancy, the result is 
 
 Thus haue ye wone 
 
 An erles son/ 
 
 And not a banysshyd man. 
 
 Of course the immediate original may be a Teutonic piece, but as 
 the original of the Chaucer is from Petrarch, and as Petrarch had 
 an European vogue, in the case of so similar a conception there 
 is no need to limit the hypothetic source to one nationality, or 
 even to assume that the present poem is not the first. 
 
 But whatever may have been the nationality of the original 
 author, the presumption is, provided that the English version 
 represents it fairly, that he was familiar with the Medieval Latin 
 treatises. Whereas Petrarch employs Latin prose narration, the 
 Nut Brown Maid is in the form of the conflictus. The poem is a 
 dialogue between the author and the reader, in which each plays 
 a definite part. The author is the lover, and the audience the 
 Maid. 2 
 
 Than betwene vs 
 Lete vs discusse 
 What was all the maner 
 Betwene them too: 
 
 1 Skeat'i Chaucer, iv. 417. 
 
 The quotations from the Nut Brown Maid are taken from Hazlitt'a Early 
 Popular Poetry of England, ii, 272. II is text Li based on collations from the editions 
 of 150 and 1520. This stanza form is very similar to the famous drinking song in 
 Gammer Qurtoni Needle.
 
 156 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 We wyl also 
 
 Telle all the peyne in fere 
 
 That she was in/ 
 
 Nowe I begynne 
 
 Soo that ye me answere/ 
 
 Wherefore ye 
 
 That present be 
 
 I pray you geue an eare/ 
 
 I am the knyght/ 
 
 I cum be nyght 
 
 As secret as I can/ 
 
 Sayng alas/ 
 
 Thus stondyth the case/ 
 
 I am a bannisshed man. 1 
 
 From here on each alternate stanza presents the man's case, the al- 
 ternating stanzas replying with that of the woman, the final stanza 
 returning to the original narrative position. The stanzas them- 
 selves are iambic dimeters, iambic trimeter differentia. The 
 differentiae rime four times. Thus in both form and content the 
 poem follows the precepts of the Medieval Latin. 2 
 
 As such stanzas as those of the Nut Brown Maid, where there are 
 both the differentia and the refrain, are closely allied to musical 
 forms, the application of the Medieval Latin precepts to the 
 English lyrics seems logical. That it is equally true in the case of 
 the many-rimed, short-lined verse paragraph called the Skeltonian 
 meter, remains to be shown. After dealing with anonymous 
 writers, unknown, unsexed, it is with relief that one turns to the 
 rugged personality of Skelton. Here at least, however much you 
 may dislike the type of work, you are dealing with a man. 
 
 His poem, the Bouge of Court, which belongs to the formal lit- 
 erary tradition, has been discussed, 3 and the suggestion was there 
 made of his relations with the court. It will be remembered that 
 Skelton was praised for his learning by Caxton, and correctly, 
 
 1 As in this stanza the author assumes the masculine part, I fail to see wherein 
 lies the internal evidence for feminine authorship. 
 
 2 The close relation between the Nut Brown Maid and the Latin of the Church 
 is illustrated in the New Nut Brown Maid, where in much the same phraseology and 
 in the same stanza form the dialogue is between the Virgin and the Christ. The 
 first edition is by John Scott, 1537. Reprinted, Ilazlitt, iii, 2. Apparently it is an 
 attempt to utilize a popular piece for pious purposes. 
 
 1 Chapter ii.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 157 
 
 since apparently he had been given degrees by three universities. 
 So far then as there is value in academic recognition, Skelton was 
 quite rightly regarded as one of the learned men of his age. That 
 the poet himself was conscious of these attainments, is equally cer- 
 tain. In reading his poems you are never allowed to forget that 
 the author has enjoyed ah* the advantages that the quadrivium 
 and the trivium could afford. Latin tags, Latin allusions, even 
 Latin reminiscences occur at frequent intervals. In the Garland 
 of Laurel he imagines himself received by the writers of all time. 
 And a curious collection they are ! Quintillian, Theocritus, Hesiod, 
 Homer, Cicero, Sallust, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, Persius, Vergil, Ju- 
 venal, Livy, Aulus Gellius, Terence, Plautus, Seneca, Boethius, 
 Maximianus, Boccaccio, Quintus Curtius, Macrobius, Poggio, 
 Gaguin, Plutarch, Petrarch, Lucilius, Valerius Maximus, Vincent- 
 ius, Propertius, Pisander, and the three English poets, Gower, 
 Chaucer, and Lydgate. A somewhat similar, although not identi- 
 cal, catalogue is given in Philip Sparrow. If this may be considered 
 as a list of reading to any degree typical of academic training it 
 raises curious doubts in the mind of the modern. The extent of 
 his reading is surpassed only by his entire lack of critical discrimi- 
 nation. Poetry, drama, and prose, Greek and Latin, ancient and 
 modern, poets and poetasters are all piled pell mell. And the 
 greater proportion of it is in classical Latin. Greek authors are 
 but slightly mentioned (and these were probably read in transla- 
 tion), of the Italian humanists he knows but three, and there is 
 but one Frenchman. 1 Such was the knowledge of the past at the 
 opening of the sixteenth century. The classics were by no means 
 forgotten. 
 
 On the other hand, however extensive may have been Skelton's 
 knowledge of classical literature, it was surely not intensive. The 
 medley of authors just quoted from the Garland of Laurel by no 
 means shows the nice discrimination of a scholar. It savors of sac- 
 rilege to mention Homer and Virgil in the same breath with Lucilius 
 
 1 Perhaps it ia necessary to point out that to Skelton all these authors wrote in 
 Latin, that he shows no knowledge of the Italian. To the sixteenth century hu- 
 manist, Petrarch was the author of the Africa, etc., Boccaccio of De Qenealogia 
 Deorum, etc., and Poggio of the Facetiae. Forgetting this cardinal fact some mod- 
 ern writers have lamented that he did not imitate Petrarch, the Petrarch of the 
 Rimel
 
 158 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 and Vicentius ! And although Philip Sparrow is a dramatic mono- 
 logue put into the mouth of a young girl, the medieval confusion of 
 scriptural, classical, and imaginary authors and characters seems 
 typical of Skelton himself. He belongs to the former age and is 
 not favorable to the men of the "new learning". At least that is 
 my interpretation of the significant omission of certain names in 
 his list. The Garland of Laurel fortunately may be definitely 
 dated. It is limited on one side from the fact that it was published 
 in 1523; on the other, since Colin Clout and the Magnyfycence are 
 both mentioned, it could not have been composed much before 
 1520. But by 1520 the English humanists were in full flower. 
 Grocyn was dead, Linacre had published his Galen, Colet had 
 founded his school, Lily had been teaching there eight years, 
 More had published his Utopia, and Erasmus had become a world 
 figure. Yet none of these appear. It is impossible that he should 
 not have known them, or at least of them and their work. Lin- 
 acre, for example, was a tutor to Prince Arthur certainly part of 
 the time that Skelton held the same position with Prince Henry. 
 And with the various academic degrees which Skelton held, it is 
 scarcely probable that he was at no time brought into definite rela- 
 tion with some member of the group. But his feeling toward them 
 was apparently the reverse of cordial. Bale records the beginning 
 of some verses attacking Lily, Lily's response to which has been 
 preserved. 1 The test was apparently his attitude toward Greek. 
 He was thoroughly out of sympathy with the contention of Colet 
 and Erasmus that Greek should be studied for its religious value. 
 This at once lends significance to his acclaiming himself the Brit- 
 ish Catullus, without mentioning Horace. 2 He felt, truly enough, 
 that the introduction of Greek into the schools would be the end 
 of the old curriculum. This at least is his attitude in the passage 
 from Speke, Parrot: 3 
 
 "Monon colon agaton,* 
 Quod Parato 
 In Graeco. 
 
 1 Dyce 1, xzzvii. 
 1 Verses cited p. 238. 
 1 Dyce, 2, 8-9. 
 
 4 Does this transliteration of the Greek imply that the first printer of the poem 
 had no Greek font?
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 159 
 
 Let Parrot, I pray you, haue lyberte to prate, 
 
 For aurea lingua Graeca ought to be magnifyed, 
 Yf it were cond perfytely, and after the rate, 
 
 As lingua Latino, in scole matter occupyed; 
 
 But our Grekis theyr Greke so well haue applyed, 
 That they cannot say in Greke, rydynge by the way. 
 How, hosteler, fetche my hors a botell of hay! 
 
 Neyther frame a silogisme in phrisesomorum, 
 
 Farmaliter et Graece, cum media termino: 
 Our Grekys ye walow in the washbol Argdicorum; 
 
 For though ye can tell in Greke what is phormio, 
 
 Yet ye seeke out your Greke in Capricornio; 
 For they (ye?) scrape out good scripture, and set in a gall, 
 Ye go about to amende, and ye mare all. 
 
 Some argue secundum quid ad simpliciter, 
 
 And yet he wolde be rekenyd pro Areopagila; 
 
 And some make distinctions multiplicUer, 
 
 Whether ita were before non, or non before ita, 
 Nether wise nor well lernid, but like hermaphrodite: 
 
 Set sophia asyde, for euery Jack Raker 
 
 And euery mad medler must now be a maker. 
 
 In Academia Parrot dare no probleme kepe; 
 
 For Graece fari so occupyeth the chayre, 
 That Latinum fari may fall to rest and slepe, 
 
 And SyUogisari was drowned at Sturbrydge fayre; 
 
 Tryuyals and quatryuyals so sore now they appayre. 
 That Parrot the popagay hath pytye to beholde 
 How the rest of good lernyng is roufled up and trold. 
 
 Albertut de modo significandi, 
 
 And Donatus be dryuen out of scole; 
 Prisians bed broken now handy dandy. 
 
 And Inter didascolos is rekened for a fole; 
 
 Alexander, a gander of Menanders pole. 
 With Da Consoles, is cast out of the gate, 
 And Da Rationales dare not shew his pate. 
 
 I'lauti in his comedies a chyld shall now reherse. 
 
 And medyll with Quintylyan in his Declamacyons, 
 And Pety Caton can scantly construe a verse, 
 
 With An-tii in Oraceco, and such solempne salutacyons, 
 
 Can skantly the tcnsis of his coniugacyons; 
 Settynge thcyr myndys so moche of cloquens. 
 
 That of theyr scole maters lost is the hole sentens."
 
 160 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 This passage is interesting as defining exactly Skelton's position. 
 He is partly jealous of Greek as affecting the study of Latin and 
 partly he is afraid of it as an instrument of scriptural reform. He 
 is thus necessarily an opponent of the group of English humanists. 
 This is one, then, of the peculiarities of Skelton's position. 
 Although he can, and occasionally does, write humanistic Latin, 
 he is far from being a humanist. 1 The same is true as to his place 
 in the English tradition. His Bouge of Court is an interesting 
 individual modification of the conventional type of court allegory. 2 
 Consequently we find him echoing the conventional criticism in 
 regard to the conventional trilogy of English authors. Gower 
 "first garnished our Englysshe rude," then Chaucer polished it, 
 and Lydgate added the finishing touches. 3 Owing to its early 
 date, Gower's English is useless as a model, however excellent 
 may be the content of his poems; Chaucer, on the contrary, is 
 still available. 
 
 His termes were not darke, 
 
 But pleasaunt, easy, and playne; 
 
 No worde he wrote in vayne. 4 
 
 Lydgate "wryteth after an hyer rate" since it is difficult to under- 
 stand his precise meaning. This is the stock criticism of the early 
 sixteenth century. With a man uttering such views, it is natural 
 to expect the use of the rime-royal as a stanza form. Actually he 
 uses it not only in the longer poems, such as the Bouge of Court 
 and the Garland of Laurel, but also for satire, as in the poems 
 against Garnesche and in Speke, Parrot, for love pieces and poems 
 on meditation. Not so normal are his experiments, where in one 
 poem, The Auncient Acquaintance, he preserves the rime-scheme, 
 although using lines with six accents, or with four accents 
 as in the attack upon Mistress Anne. In this latter form is the 
 dramatic song My darlyng dere, where the short lines lend them- 
 selves to vivid compression and swift narrative. Here, from the 
 dramatic opening to the brutal ending, Skelton's own eulogy of 
 
 1 Cf., Chapter IV. 
 *Cf. Chapter IL 
 
 3 The passage is quoted at length, page 53. 
 
 4 It may be assumed here that Skelton is echoing Caxton's views as expressed 
 in his edition of the House of Fame. The reader is referred to Lounsbury's seventh 
 chapter where the Caxton is quoted.
 
 16J 
 
 Chaucer may be applied to himself, no word he wrote in vain. 
 And this is the more worthy of comment as such work is not in ac- 
 cordance with the usual conception of Skelton's manner. One more 
 characteristic of this division of his poems may be added. Skel- 
 ton is curiously affected by the old English love for alliteration. 
 In the poems against Garnishe, 
 
 Garnyshe, gargone, gastly, gryme, 
 
 it may perhaps be used merely for the comic affect. That certainly 
 cannot explain its appearance, 
 
 I wayle, I wepe, I sobbe, I sigh ful sore, 
 
 in the elegy on the death of the Earl of Northumberland, nor its 
 employment in the attack upon Mistress Anne. 
 
 Womanhod, wanton, ye want; 
 
 Youre medelyng, mastres, is manerles; 
 Plente of yll, of goodnes skant, 
 
 Ye ray 11 at ryot, recheles: 
 
 To prayse your porte it is nedeles; 
 For all your draffe yet and youre dreggys, 
 As well borne as ye full oft tyme beggys. 
 
 While of course it is not the old alliterative measure, such a line 
 as 
 
 What dremyst thou, drunchard, drousy pate 
 
 would need little changing to make it conform to the old measure. 
 It is allowable, I think, to infer that Skelton both knew and was 
 affected by the earlier poetry. 
 
 Actually it is neither the humanistic Latin nor the poetry of 
 the English tradition that is associated with the name of Skelton. 
 His fiery genius found its expression in poems formed on quite other 
 models. What those models were is easily inferred from his biog- 
 raphy. A man very learned, yet born too early for the full tide 
 of humanism to have reached northern Europe, would naturally 
 be learned in the literature of Medieval Latin. When it is added 
 that such a man was enrolled in the ranks of the Church, every 
 indication points to a certain direction. Consequently it is not
 
 162 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 surprising to find that he, like the others, ambidextrously, mixes 
 Latin with his English. 1 
 
 What though ye can cownter Custodi nosf 
 
 As well it becomyth yow. a parysh towne clarke. 
 To syng Sosjritati dedit aegros. . . 
 
 Another example is in Ware the Hawk, 2 
 
 Dir Dominus vobiscum, 
 
 Per aucupium 
 
 Ye made your hawke to cum 
 
 Desuper candelabrum 
 
 Christi crucifixi 
 
 To fede 'pon your fisty: 
 
 Die, inimice cruds Christi, 
 
 Ubi didicisti 
 
 Facere hoc, 
 
 Domine Dawcocke? 
 
 Here the Latin is used interchangeably with the English. 
 
 With this use of Latin one would expect Skelton to show his 
 knowledge of the aureate language. He himself, in a Lydgatian 
 mood, regrets that 3 
 
 My wordes vnpullysht be, nakide and playne, 
 Of aureat poems they want ellumynynge. 
 
 But the reader feels he is unjust to himself. Such a stanza as 
 the following shows that he is quite comparable even to Hawes. 4 
 
 Allectuary arrectyd to redres 
 These feuerous axys, the dedely wo and payne 
 
 Of though tfu 11 hertys plungyd in dystress; 
 
 Refresshyng myndys the Aprell shoure of rayne; 
 Condute of comforte, and well most souerayne; 
 
 Berber enverduryd, contynuall fressh and grene; 
 
 Of lusty somer the passyng goodly quene. . . 
 
 He then compares the lady's features to the topaz, ruby, sapphire, 
 pearl, diamond, emerald, and 
 
 Relucent smaragd, obiecte incomperable. 
 1 Dyce, i, 17. Dyce, i, 164-5. Dyce, i, 11. Dyce i, 25.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 163 
 
 This is all rather quaint, artificial, and affected, unless one realizes 
 that he was writing according to the dictates of his age. In the 
 same way he uses repeticio, as in the Magnyfycence, where eight 
 successive lines begin with the word counterfet. 1 And occasionally 
 he uses actual cryptograms as where he substitutes numbers for 
 letters or makes a jargon by transposing Latin syllables. In 
 general it may be said that his knowledge both of the humanistic 
 writers and the older English poets saved him from the excessive 
 puerility of the worst of the school. Or perhaps there is so much 
 more virility in his work than in that of the others, that the 
 modern reader is more charitable and the puerility passes by un- 
 noticed. 
 
 In the scansion of the line, to follow the former order, Skelton 
 uses the free procedure noticed before. This is easily seen 
 in his most regular poem, the Bouge of Courte. Here as he is 
 writing the iambic pentameter, theoretically each line should have 
 but ten syllables. This is usually the case. 
 
 In autumpne, whan the sonne in Virgine 
 By radyante hete enryped hath our come; 
 
 Whan Luna, full of mutabylyte, 
 
 As emperes the dyademe hath worne 
 
 Of our pole artyke, smylynge halfe in scorne 
 
 At our foly and our vnstedfastnesse; 
 
 The tyme whan Mars to werre hym dyde dres . . 
 
 With the exception of the second line, where radyante was prob- 
 ably a trisyllable, every line has exactly ten syllables. That is 
 not true of the next 
 
 I, callynge to mynde the greate auctoryte, 
 
 nor of 
 
 His hede maye be harde, but feble is his brayne . . .* 
 
 This might be illustrated ad libitum. Obviously he writes by ear 
 and provided tliat the accents fall correctly, he is little troubled 
 by an extra syllable. The fact that the modern reader also is not 
 troubled, shows how completely the old theory has been assimi- 
 lated. 
 
 1 Dyce i. 440. Dyce. i, 31.
 
 164 
 
 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 In stanza forms there is the abundance of short riming lines, 
 characteristic of the Medieval Latin. 
 
 Calliope, 
 
 As ye may see, 
 
 Regent is she 
 
 Of poetes al, 
 Whiche gaue to me 
 The high degre 
 Laureat to be 
 
 Of fame royall, 1 
 
 This is iambic diameter, trimembris, with riming iambic diameter. 
 
 So many pointed caps 
 Lased with double flaps, 
 And so gay felted hats, 
 
 Sawe I never: 
 So many good lessons, 
 So many good sermons, 
 And so few devocions, 
 
 Sawe I never. 2 
 
 This is iambic trimeter, trimembris, with differentia repeated. 
 The addresses to the various ladies in the Garland are attractive 
 studies in the Medieval Latin meters. 3 These are obviously 
 "lyrics" in the sense only that they are short emotional poems. 
 Quite otherwise is it with at least some of the others; they are 
 lyrics in that they were intended to be sung. Certainly that is 
 the inference to be made from the title of the tract in which they 
 are preserved. "Here folowythe dyuers Balettys and Dyties 
 solacyous, deuysed by Master Skelton, Laureat." The poem My 
 darling dere is headed by two lines obviously used as a chorus. 
 But the question passes out of the bounds of inference with the 
 poem Manerly Margery Mylk and Ale, since the music, written 
 by Cornysshe, has been preserved for this. 4 From the music we 
 
 1 Dyce, i, 197. 
 
 2 Dyce, i, 148. 
 
 1 It is unnecessary to quote them since they are easily accessible in the Oxford 
 Book of English Verse (30 and 31) amd similar collections. 
 
 4 Hawkins, History of Music, iii, . Ritson's note, " Since Sir J. Hawkins's 
 transcript was made, the ms. appears to have received certain alterations, occa- 
 sioned, as it should seem, but certainly not authorized, by the over-scrupulous del- 
 icacy of its late or present possessor" is inexplicable because the changes, as re- 
 corded by Dyce, are of the slightest.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 165 
 
 see that it was a three part counterpuntal madrigal. As the second 
 voice supports alternately either the first or third, the poem is a 
 dialogue on seduction, all voices mingling in the refrain. When 
 transposed into modern notation, the music is really very attrac- 
 tive, with a distinct swing in the refrain. 1 The peculiar feature is 
 that to such music should be set a poem dealing so brutally with 
 such a subject. Again, although the treatises explicitly limit the 
 number of single rimes to four, the stanza form here consists of 
 five riming lines and a couplet. As actually, however, medieval 
 Latin songs of the tavern had five or more lines riming together, 
 the presumption is strong that then, as now, popular song-writers 
 overrode academic restraint, and that this, therefore, is a student- 
 enlied rather than a lyric. Although Cornysshe was a member 
 of the Chapel Royal, it seems unlikely that such a song could be 
 sung before a mixed audience, even in the Court of Henry VII. 
 Rather, it must be regarded as a rare example of the popular song 
 of the day. 
 
 But not only does the music help us to a correct distribution 
 of the parts in the dialogue, it is of still greater importance as in- 
 dicating the pronunciation and the scansion. For necessarily the 
 text must be substantially correct. In that case it can be stated 
 positively that the final e was in no instance pronounced. So far 
 as the number of syllables is concerned, the words were read 
 nearly as they are today. In modern spelling the lines in the 
 third verse would read 
 
 By Christ, you shdll not, n6 hardty 
 I will not be" japed bodity. 
 
 They are clearly iambic tetrameter, the last accent falling upon 
 the y rime. But they illustrate, also, the freedom used by the six- 
 teenth century author in the number of his syllables, because, 
 musically, the two short syllables in bodily are equalized with the 
 one long syllable in hardly. The same condition is illustrated, in 
 the extreme, by the fifth line of the first stanza, 
 
 Tolly valy strawe, let be" I say. 
 
 Here the music shows the poet not only begins his line with four 
 short syllables, but he throws his accent. He substitutes a num- 
 
 1 For the transcription I am indebted to Mr. Arthur Hague.
 
 166 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 her of short syllables for the anticipated iambus. And in this, 
 with its musical setting, the modern reader need feel no surprise. 
 Exactly the same thing is done in such a university song as 
 
 Any kind of man can make Alpha Delta Phi 
 Any kind of man makes Psi U, etc. 
 
 But this triple movement is a far cry from the "regularity" of the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 Such poetic forms of Skelton as we have been discussing, how- 
 ever interesting in themselves, are not those by which he is best 
 known. Skeltonical verse, or Skeltoniads as Drayton terms them, 
 may be illustrated by the beginning of Colin Clout. 
 
 What can it auayle 
 To dryue forth a snayle, 
 Or to make a sayle 
 Of an herynges tayle; 
 To ryme or to rayle, 
 To wryte or to indyte, 
 Eyther for delyte 
 Or elles for despyte; 
 Or bokes to compyle 
 Of dyuers maner style, 
 Vyce to reuyle 
 And synne to exyle; 
 To teche or to preche, 
 As reason wyll reche? 
 Say this, and say that, 
 His hed is so fat, 
 He wotteth neuer what 
 Nor whereof he speketh; 
 He cryeth and he creketh, 
 He pryeth and he peketh, 
 He chydes and he chatters, 
 He prates and he patters, 
 He clytters and he clatters. 
 He medics and he smatters, 
 He gloses and he flatters; 
 Or yf he speake playne. 
 Than he lacketh brayne, 
 He is but a fole; 
 Let hym go to scole, 
 On a thre foted stole 
 That he may downe syt.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 167 
 
 For he lacketh wyt; 
 And yf that he hyt 
 The nayle on the hede, 
 It standeth in no stede; 
 The deuyll, they say, is dede, 
 The deuell is dede. 
 
 The form consists obviously of riming trimeter lines forming a 
 verse-paragraph closed by one diameter line. The origin of so 
 marked a form seems to have puzzled scholars. And the puzzle 
 merely increases when it is found both in French literature, as 
 the fratrasie, and in Italian, as the frotiola. Unless the hypotheses 
 be adopted that either it originated independently in three coun- 
 tries, or that, originating in one, it was borrowed by the other two, 
 a common source must be sought. Clearly this common source is 
 to be found in the Medieval Latin. Still more, in the Renaissance 
 such a form was regarded by the humanists as being characteristic 
 of Medieval Latin. Consequently in the Epistolae Obscurorm 
 Virorum the tetrameter variety was elaborately parodied. M. 
 Petrus Negelinus writes pathetically. . . 
 
 Quamvis valde timeo esse ita audax, quod debeo vobis ostendere unum dictamen 
 a me compositum, qua vos valde artificialis in compositione metrorum et dicta- 
 minorum; . . . Namque ego nondum habeo bonum fundamentum, et non sum 
 perfecte instructus in arte poetria et Rhetorica . . . Quapropter mitto vobis hie 
 unum poema per me compilatum in lauden sancti Petri, et unis componista qui 
 est bonus musicus in cantu chorali et figuralik composuit mihi quattuor voces 
 super illud. Et ego feci magnam diligentiam quod potui its rigmizare, sicut est 
 rigmizatum . . . 
 
 Sancte Petre domine 
 
 nobis miserere, 
 
 Quia tibi dominus 
 
 dedit cum istis clavibus 
 
 Potestatem maximam, 
 
 necnon specialem gratiam 
 
 Super omnes sanctos: 
 
 quia tu es privilegiatus, 
 
 Quod solvis est solutum. 
 
 in terris et per caelum, 
 
 Et quicquid hie ligaveris, 
 
 ligatum est in caelis . . . etc. 
 
 Here this form of writing is obviously bound together with poor 
 latinity. Again and again the authors return to the attack. The
 
 168 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 "Obscure Men*' write verse letters, satires, lyrics, and usually in 
 this rimed form. The conclusion is unavoidable that the eccles- 
 iastical party normally wrote in this way, since otherwise the sat- 
 ire would have lacked point. 
 
 Fortunately the whole development of this type, the original 
 Latin, the translation into English of the fourteenth century, the 
 modification of the translation into the English of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, may be illustrated by a single poem. In the middle of the 
 fourteenth century in his Polychronicon Higden inserted a rimed 
 description of Wales. A few of the opening verses will show the 
 type. 1 
 
 Libtri finis nunc Cambriam 
 Prius tangit quam Angliam; 
 Sic propero ad "VValliain. 
 Ad Priami prosapiam; 
 Ad magni Jovis sanguinem, 
 Ad Dardani progeniem. 
 Sub titulis his quatuor 
 Terrae statum exordior; 
 Primo de causa nominis; 
 Secundo de praeconiis; 
 Tandem de gentis ritibus; 
 Quarto de mirabilibus. 
 Haec terra, quae nunc Wallia, 
 Quondam est dicta Cambria, 
 A Cambro Bruti filio, 
 Qui rexit hanc dominio: etc. 
 
 But in 1387 John Trevesa, at the request of Thomas,Lord Berkeley, 
 translated the whole into English, priding himself upon the exact- 
 ness of the translation. 
 
 "In somme place I shall sette word for worde, and actyf for actyf, and passyf 
 for passif arowe right as it stondeth withoute chaungynge of the ordre of wordes; 
 but in somme place I must chaunge the ordre of wordes and sette actyf for passyf 
 and ay en ward; and in somme place I muste sette a reson for a worde, and telle 
 what it meneth; but for al such chaungyng the menyng shal stande and not be 
 chaunged. ..." * 
 
 1 The text is taken from the Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, Vol. I, pp. 894-897, 
 ed. by Churchill Babington, and published under the direction of the Master of the 
 Rolls, 1865. 
 
 3 Quoted in Babington's ed. of Higden, I, p. Ixi.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 169 
 
 With the duty of a translator so plainly stated, the relation be- 
 tween the Latin and the English is no longer in doubt. 
 
 How }>e book take)? in honcle 
 
 Wales to fore Engelonde; 
 
 So I take my tales 
 
 And wende for)? in to Wales, 
 
 To that noble brood 
 
 Of Priamus his blood, 
 
 Knoweleche for to wynne , 
 
 Of greet lubiter his kynne. 
 
 For to haue in mynde 
 
 Dardanus his kynde. 
 
 In Jris foure titles I fonde 
 
 To telle J>e state of J>at londe. 
 
 Cause of J>e name I schall telle. 
 
 And }>an preise )>e lond I welle. 
 
 Than I schal write wi{> my pen 
 
 Alle J?e maneres of J>e men. 
 
 Then I schal fonde 
 
 To telle mervailes of J>e longe. 
 
 Wales hatte now Wallis, 
 
 And somtyme highte Cambria, 
 
 For Camber, Brutes sone, 
 
 Was kyng, and ]>ere dede won; etc. 
 
 But in 1482, nearly a hundred years later, Caxton brought out the 
 Polychronicon itself with Trevesa's translation. In respect to this 
 last, in his preface he says : 
 
 " I, William Caxton, a symple person, haue endeuoyred me to wryte fyrst ouer 
 all the sayd book of proloconycon, and comewhat haue chaunged the rude and old 
 Englyssh, that is to wete certayn wordes which in these days be neither vsyd ne 
 vnderstanden, and furthermore haue put it in emprynte to thende that it maye be 
 had and the maters therein comprised to be knowen." 1 
 
 In other words, Caxton has modernized the book so that it ac- 
 cords with the standards of his time. 2 
 
 Now this book taketh on honde 
 
 Wales after Englond, 
 
 So take I my tales, 
 
 And wende into Wales, 
 
 To that noble brood 
 
 Of Priamus blood. 
 
 1 Quoted in Babington's ed. of Higden. Vol. I, p. Ixiii. 
 
 * Poemt of Walter Mapu. ed. Th. Wright, Camden Society, p. 849.
 
 170 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Knoleche for to wynne 
 
 Of grete Jupiters kynne, 
 
 For to have in mynde 
 
 Dardanus kynde. 
 
 In thise foure titles I fonde 
 
 To alle the state of that londe; 
 
 Cause of the nam I shall telle; 
 
 And then preyse the lond and welle; 
 
 Then I shall write with my penne 
 
 Alle the maners of the menne; 
 
 Thenne I shall fonde 
 
 To telle mervailles of the londe. 
 
 Of the name, how it is named Walls. 
 
 Wales now is called Wallia, 
 
 And somtyme it heet Cambria. 
 
 For Camber Brutes sone 
 
 Was prince, and there dyde wone, etc. 
 
 But this English of the end of the fifteenth century is very like the 
 "doggerel" of Skelton, the French of the fratrasie, or the Italian 
 of the frottola. 
 
 If the reasoning be right, it goes far to explain the contemptuous 
 attitude toward Skelton on the part of his contemporaries. In the 
 vulgar tongue Skelton was reproducing forms and points of view 
 that were associated in the mind of his age with lack of dignity 
 and restraint. Thus Barclay writing the full-sailed rime-royal, a 
 measure sustained by the great literary tradition, goes out of his 
 way to sneer at Skelton's performance: 
 
 It longeth nat to my scyence nor cunnynge 
 For Phylyp the Sparowe the (Dirige) to synge. 
 
 This might easily be interpreted as a personal fling at the author 
 by Barclay; yet Skelton himself witnesses that this was a suf- 
 ficiently ordinary attitude. 
 
 Of Phillip Sparow the lamentable fate, 
 
 The dolefull deteny, and the carefull chaunce, 
 
 Dyuysed by Skelton after the funerall rate; 
 
 Yet sum there be therewith that take greuaunce, 
 And grudge thereat with frownyng countenaunce; 
 
 But what of that? hard it is to please all men; 
 
 Who list amende it, let hym set to his penne. . . . 
 
 Garland of Laurd, 11. 1254-1260.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 171 
 
 Yet Philip Sparrow is a perfectly inoffensive poem, and written 
 before the great satires. This disdain must have been due, then, 
 not to the poem itself, but to the type to which it belonged, a type 
 associated with the unruly side of university life. It is noticeable 
 that the Garland of Laurel, Skelton's apologia pro vita sua, is itself 
 composed in rime-royal. But as if in defiance of his critics, im- 
 mediately after the passage quoted follow one hundred and fifteen 
 lines in defense of Philip Sparrow in the Skeltonical measure ! And 
 that passage is itself broken by a conscious parade of four Latin 
 hexameters. Here Skelton shows that he appreciates the force of 
 the criticism, that he has the necessary learning to write in the 
 manner of the age, and that he does not care to do so. 
 
 With an author of so dominant a personality as that of Skelton, 
 the poems would differ also in content from conventional work. 
 Before realism was invented he would look out on life with an eye, 
 shrewd, perhaps jaundiced. With a courage such as his, he would 
 speak out plainly. At all events that is clearly what Skelton did ! 
 The result is a long series of attacks and refutations. Nor is the 
 sympathy of the modern reader always on the side of the author. 
 Thus, one need not hold a brief for the Court of Henry VII with- 
 out refusing to believe that it was peopled exclusively by such 
 characters as those of the Bouge of Court. More did not find it so 
 with Archbishop Morton. Nor did Skelton agree better with the 
 scholars. He quarreled with Lily, with Barclay, with Gaguin (one 
 of whose pieces Barclay translated). 1 None of these have sur- 
 vived, and from the list in the Garland, avowedly incomplete, we 
 learn of others besides those that have come down to us. His 
 attack seems to have been both general and particular, both na- 
 tional and individual, both jovial and bitter. As his poems against 
 Garnesche are endorsed "By the kynges most noble commaund- 
 ment", that was apparently a jesting match; and his epitaphs on 
 John Clarke and John Jayberd, in however poor taste, were still 
 intended to cause a smile. Quite otherwise is his exultation over 
 the Scotch for the defeat at Flodden Field. In an entirely different 
 vein is his Ware the Hawke, where, like a hawk, he pounces upon 
 a parson for the truly objectionable practice of bringing his falcon 
 
 1 Defatuit mundanii, Englished by Barclay as Of I'olys that ar ouer iwrW///, Jamir- 
 aon, ii, 317. Brie notes, p. 31, that the last is perhaps preserved in B. C. 165b ms. 
 at Trinity Coll. Cambridge.
 
 172 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 into the church at Diss. 1 What he apparently considered his 
 chief work, the poem beginning, 
 
 "Apollo that whirllid vp his chare," * 
 
 has been lost. This was so bitter that Skelton himself wished to 
 suppress it, as when Occupacyoun mentions it, the poet comments: 
 
 "With that I stode vp, half sodenly afrayd; 
 
 Suppleyng to Fame, I besought her grace, 
 And that it wolde please her, full tenderly I prayd, 
 
 Owt of her holds Apollo to rase. 
 
 Nay, sir, she sayd, what so in this place 
 Of our noble courte is ones spoken owte, 
 It must nedes after rin all the worlde aboute. 
 
 God wrote, theis wordes made me full sad; 
 
 And when that I sawe it wolde no better be. 
 But that my peticyon wolde not be had, 
 
 What shulde I do but take it in gre? 
 
 For, by Juppiter and his high mageste, 
 I did what I cowde to scrape out the scrollis, 
 Apollo to rase out of her ragman rollis." 
 
 Although the poem be lost, it is possible, to guess its con- 
 tents. A side note reads: Factum est cum Apollo esset Cor- 
 inthi: Actus Apostolorum." The Vulgate gives the reference. 3 
 Apollo was a certain Jew, eloquent, mighty in the scriptures, and 
 fervent in the spirit. Presumably Skelton, taking him as an ex- 
 emplar, spoke his mind freely on the condition of the Church in 
 
 1 This peculiar vice is noticed also by Barclay: 
 
 "Another on his fyst a Sparhauke or fawcon 
 Or else a Cokow, and so wastynge his shone 
 Before the auters he to and fro doth wander 
 With euyn as great deuocyon oas a gander" 
 
 Ship of Fools, Jamieson, i, 221. 
 
 1 Dyce in his note on the passage, ii, 334 takes this as the line from Chaucer, 
 the first line of the third part of the Squire's Tale. My suggestion is that Skelton 
 is punning on it. Chare is a piece of work. 
 
 3 Judaeus autem quidam, Apollo nomine, Alexandrinus genere, vir eloquens, 
 devenit Ephesum, potens in scripturis. Hie erat edoctus viam Domini; et fervens 
 spiritu loquebatur, et docebat diligenter ea, quae sunt Jesu, scions tantum baptisma 
 Joannis. Acts XVIII, 24-5.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 173 
 
 England. According to his own account the effect of his remarks 
 was pronounced : 
 
 "That made sum to snurre and snuf in the wynde; 
 It made them to skip, to stampe, and to stare, 
 Whiche, if they be happy, haue cause to beware 
 In ryming and raylyng with hym for to mell, 
 For drede that he lerne them there A, B, C, to spell." * 
 
 And the last lines certainly suggest that the poem was inspired by 
 eloquence other than that of St. Paul teaching the doctrine of 
 the Christ. 2 
 
 It must be confessed that such is his mental attitude, at least 
 in the poems we have. Skelton is much more interested in smiting 
 the enemy hip and thigh than he is in preaching the doctrine of 
 heavenly love. He is a mighty warrior before the Lord. His Latin 
 reading had not only given him a point of view from which to criti- 
 cise English conditions, it had also furnished him models for ex- 
 ceedingly plain speaking. 
 
 "The famous poettes saturicall, 
 As Percius and luuynall, 
 Horace and noble Marciall," * 
 
 at least with the exception of Horace, were not restrained. Mar- 
 tial's satires certainly are characterized by keen merciless dissec- 
 tion of conditions, extreme expression of his results, and a com- 
 plete disregard of the consequence to himself. 4 Of course to the 
 modern reader the poems pay the penalty of all satire, namely that 
 they are unintelligible without notes. A realization of the ques- 
 tions at issue, whether the poem be Absalom and Achitophel, or 
 
 1 Dyce, 5, 419-20. 
 
 1 In this interpretation I differ radically from Brie, op. n't., 72: "muss eine satir 
 auf zeitgenossische dichter (Barclay?) gewesen, sein, in der ihire werke verspottet 
 wurden." 
 
 1 Dyce i, 180. 
 
 4 Thus Why Come Ye not to Court avowedly follows Juvenal, 1207-11; 
 
 " I am forcebly conatrayned, 
 At luuynals request, 
 To wryght of this glorious gest, 
 Of this vayne gloryous best, ..."
 
 174 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the Dunciad, or British Bards and Scotch Reviewers, is first essen- 
 tial before the reader can appreciate the brilliancy of the attack. 
 Immediate success, gained by allusion to contemporaneous per- 
 sons and events, is succeeded by increasing oblivion, as those per- 
 sons and events recede into the past. Byron's bitterness toward 
 Scott is still comprehended by the general reader, because the gen- 
 eral reader still knows Scott, but who now cares for Pope's dunces? 
 To a very large degree, Shadwell and Settle survive only because 
 Dryden attacked them, and his scathing lines on Buckingham and 
 Shaftesbury are most read in books of familiar quotations. To 
 this general law of satire, in Skelton's case is added the particular 
 disqualification that there is no general agreement in regard to the 
 facts and that feeling still runs high. The literary value is 
 consequently ignored in the heated controversy as to the truth 
 of his accusations. On one side he is regarded as a coarse buffoon 
 blaspheming in doggerel verse; on the other as an author who 
 bears witness to the truth. Neither of these views concern us here. 
 The only questions are, how far he believed what he said and to 
 what extent he was able to give expression to his own convictions. 
 And whatever opinion may be held as to the dignity of his manner, 
 or the justification of his procedure, at least he must be credited 
 with having produced work that by any criterion of literary crit- 
 icism cannot be ignored. 
 
 Of this type of political poem there are five, thus listed in the 
 edition of Dyce: A replycacion agaynst certayne yong sealers ab~ 
 iured of late, &c.\ Colyn Clout; Speke, Parrot; Why come ye nat to 
 Courte; and Howe the douty Duke of Albany, &c. The most salient 
 characteristic of these poems taken as a group is the obscurity. 
 For this there are three reasons. The first is that to some extent 
 this obscurity was intentional. As has been seen in the Bouge of 
 Court, Skelton on one side belongs to the school representing the 
 medieval tradition, one of whose critical tenets was that the use 
 of " covert terms " acted as a stimulant to the reader. But whereas 
 a conventional poet, such as Hawes, merely resorts to allegory, 
 Skelton refines the theory into cryptogram. 
 
 Loke on this tabull, 
 Whether thou art abull 
 To rede or to spell 
 What these verses tell.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 175 
 
 Sicculo lutueris est colo buraara 
 Nixphedras uisarum caniuter tuntantes. 1 
 
 Henry Bradley, by recombining chosen syllables, has resolved 2 
 the lines into 
 
 Sic velut est Arabuiu phenix avis unica tantum. 
 
 Another illustration may be found in the Garland, where the letters 
 in the name of his adversary are indicated by their numerical posi- 
 tion in the alphabet. With a mind inclined naturally to such 
 ingenuity, the temptation to deal in riddles must have been over- 
 powering in those cases where the actions of powerful men were 
 criticised. Such a method would be both profound and safe. On 
 the other hand, in inverse proportion to the profundity of the 
 poem would be its effect. Consequently Skelton is torn between 
 two desires, first the natural wish to escape the consequences of 
 too obvious expression of opinion, and secondly, the impulse to 
 cast the weight of his influence on the side of the right. When one 
 remembers both the power of Wolsey and his elaborate system 
 of espionage, it is hard to restrain a thrill of admiration for this 
 literary David. The end was of course inevitable. Goliath fell, 
 it is true, but Skelton did not live to see the catastrophe he had 
 helped to produce. In the sanctuary of St. Margaret at West- 
 minister he dies beaten, his last words a confession of failure as he 
 surrenders to the enemy dedicating with fulsome superlatives his 
 last work to the Cardinal. 3 
 
 Another reason for the present difficulty in understanding the 
 poems in their entirety arises from the first, and yet is distinct 
 from it. As we do not know the exact date at which any poem 
 was composed, or even published, we are never sure to what politi- 
 cal event reference is made. With the exception of a copy of the 
 Garland of Laurel, 1523, all of the early copies of the single poems 
 are undated. As the first edition with a date, that of Thomas 
 Marshe, 1568, is long posterior to the composition of the poems, 
 there is very little external evidence. It is a happy chance that the 
 one poem preserved in a dated issue is the Garland of Laurel, 
 
 1 Ware the Hauke, Dyce, i, 168. 
 * The Academy, Aug. 1, 1896. 
 Dyce i, 206.
 
 176 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Inpryntyd by me Rycharde faukes . . . The yere of our lorde god. 
 M. CCCCC. XXIII. The. Hi. day of October. In this long poem 
 to justify the poetic laurel awarded him by the Countess of Surrey, 
 is enumerated "sum parte of Skeltons bokes and baladis with 
 ditis of pleasure, in as moche as it were to longe a proces to re- 
 herse all by name that he hath compylyd." Here, then, we have 
 a list of poems, although admittedly not exhaustive, that is 
 authentic and the poems of which must have been composed be- 
 fore October 3rd, 1523. Yet, of the five poems grouped above, 
 two only are mentioned. There is little external evidence to 
 guide us. 
 
 There is yet another reason that invalidates the dating from 
 the mention of the poems in the Garland, namely Skelton's manner 
 of composition. It is inferentially probable that at least three of 
 the poems are composites, formed from fragments written at 
 different times. Consequently, while there is a certain unity in 
 tone throughout any poem, the references to persons and events 
 seem confused. An illustration of this difficulty is Speke, Parrot, 
 a poem usually regarded as unintelligible. A cursory glance shows 
 that, instead of a single poem, there is a group of short poems, 
 several of which seem to be dated. Thus one section ends with 
 the line "Penultimo die Octobris, 33;" another, "In diebus Nov- 
 embris, 34;" another, "15 kalendis Decembris, 34," etc. That 
 these figures may refer to the year of the century is impossible, 
 because Skelton died in 1529; that they may refer to the year of 
 the reign of Henry VII is equally impossible, because he was on 
 the throne but twenty-three years. Yet, since for years Skelton 
 had been an official of the Court of Henry VII, and as such must 
 have dated all his official papers from the accession of the King, 
 it seems probable that for sentimental reasons or for the purpose 
 of concealment he continued the reckoning. "Penultimo die 
 Octobris, 33" becomes merely October 30th, 1517. If this be 
 true, Speke, Parrot forms a running commentary on the events in 
 the years 1517 and 1518. Naturally at the time when they were 
 written they were perfectly comprehensible to the court, for whom 
 they were intended. So much was this the case that, in order to 
 protect himself against a charge of treason, he uses nomenclature 
 borrowed from the Book of Judges, with the result that to the 
 modern reader unable to date the poems accurately, the whole
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 177 
 
 seems a farago of nonsense. 1 Likewise it seems probable that 
 Colin Clout also was composed at different times, and that upon a 
 poem, written on general conditions, he grafted later additions 
 attacking Cardinal Wolsey. The chronological order of the five 
 satires probably is Speke, Parrot, 1517-1518; Why Come Ye not to 
 Court, 1521-23; The Duke of Albany, 1523; Colin Clout, 1525; 
 and the Replycacion, 1527. 2 
 
 With these approximate dates for the composition of the poems, 
 it is possible to show Skelton's conceptions developing through 
 the ten years. First, his position must be remembered. In the 
 Skelton of the apocryphal Merle Tales we have lost the real 
 Skelton, chosen to be tutor to a prince of the blood royal, praised 
 by Erasmus for his learning, and patronized by the great house of 
 Howard. 3 A priori such a man would naturally be conscious of 
 the existence of evil conditions and yet conservative in applying 
 a cure. Naturally also he is intensely loyal to his former pupil, 
 the King. 
 
 Cryst saue Kyng Henry the viii, our royall kyng, 
 The red rose in honour to florysh and sprynge! 
 
 With Kateryne incomparable, our ryall quene also, 
 That pereles pomegarnet, Chryst saue her noble grace! 
 
 Speke, Parrot, 11. 36-39 
 
 Six years later his loyalty is as intense and more voluble. 
 
 But nowe will I expounde 
 What noblenesse dothe abounde. 
 And what honour is founde, 
 And what vertues be resydent 
 In our royall regent, 
 Our perelesse president, 
 Our kyng most excellent: 
 
 In merciall prowes 
 Lyke unto Hercules; 
 In prudence and wysdom 
 Lyke vnto Salamon; 
 
 1 For a detailed interpretation, see Mod. Lang. Notes, Vol. zxx. 1915. 
 * Publications of the Modern Language Association, December, 1914. 
 1 Henry Bradley speaks of Skelton as "that extraordinary windbag." Academy, 
 August 1, 1896.
 
 178 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 In his goodly person 
 
 Lyke vnto Absolon; 
 
 In loyalte and foy 
 
 Lyke to Ector of Troy; 
 
 And his glory to incres, 
 
 Lyke to Scipiades; 
 
 In royal mageste 
 
 Lyke vnto Ptholome, 
 
 Lyke to Duke losue, 
 
 And the valiaunt Machube, 
 
 That if I wolde reporte 
 
 All the roiall sorte 
 
 Of his nobilyte, 
 
 His magnanymyte, 
 
 His animosite, 
 
 His frugalite, 
 
 His lyberalite, 
 
 His affabilite, 
 
 His humanyte, 
 
 His stabilite, 
 
 His humilite, 
 
 His benignite, 
 
 His royal dignyte, 
 
 My lernying is to small 
 
 For to recount them all. 
 
 Duke of Albany, 11., 423-458. 
 
 This appreciation of the royal virtues does not err on the side of 
 understatement. 
 
 But this enthusiasm for the King does not extend to conditions 
 in the kingdom. In an age of change he is unable to adjust himself 
 to the new ideas. This feeling of protest finds expression if so 
 cryptic an utterance may be called expression, in the group of 
 poems, Speke, Parrot. The first part of it was obviously written 
 in the medieval manner. The verse-form is the rime-royal; he 
 triumphantly announces that it is an allegory. 
 
 But that metaphora, allegoria with all, 
 
 Shall be his protectyon, his pauys, and his wall. 1 
 
 Here, as we have seen, he objects to the study of Greek on the 
 ground that it is both useless and dangerous. Yet he does not 
 stop at this point. He passes on to the really dangerous topic of 
 
 1 Dyce, ii, 10.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 179 
 
 state affairs. Thus whatever appearance of unity there is is due 
 to the device of putting widely different subject matters, written 
 at different times, into the mouth of a parrot, which occasionally 
 makes confusion worse confounded by talking nonsense. The 
 value of this device is at once clear; it enabled the author to string 
 together whatever he chose, and also to shirk the responsibility 
 for the interpretation of any part. The reader sees dangerous 
 discussion of high polity; the author grins that he sees too much, 
 that it is only a parrot speaking. The conclusion is inevitable 
 that the events on which these poems form a commentary and 
 the personalities alluded to under scriptural names, were so well- 
 known to the public that the poet feared to be more open. The 
 key precedes the cypher. Speke, Parrot, then, marks a farther 
 step than the Bouge of Court away from the medieval type. 1 
 
 It must be confessed that the resemblance between such work 
 as Speke, Parrot, and this type of medieval poetry has become 
 exceedingly tenuous. The complete severance is made in the next 
 poem, Colin Clout. Here the dream-structure is abandoned in 
 favor of a single dramatic ego; personification and allegory change 
 to direct statement; and the rime-royal is abandoned in favor 
 of the Skeltonical verse. The scheme of the poem is very 
 simple. Under the name of Colin Clout, the author purports 
 merely to repeat what is being said : 
 
 "Thus I, Colyn Cloute, 
 As I go about, 
 And wandrynge as I walke, 
 I here the people talke." * 
 
 Consequently he does not guarantee the truth of what he hears: 
 
 " And eyther ye be to bad, 
 
 Or else they ar mad 
 
 Of this to reporte. . . " J 
 
 And he is filled with indignation that they are so loose- tongued : 
 
 " But, under your supporte, 
 
 Tyll my dyenge day 
 
 I shall both wryte and say, 
 
 1 For further discussion, cf. Mod. Lang. Notes, vol. xxz (1915). 
 1 Lines 287-290. 
 1 Lines 504-506.
 
 180 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 And ye shall do the same, 
 Howe they are to blame 
 You thus to dyffame: 
 For it maketh me sad 
 Howe that the people are glad 
 The Churche to depraue. . ." 1 
 
 Nor should he be blamed because his motives are the best: 
 
 "Make ye no murmuracyon, 
 Though I wryte after this facion; 
 Though I, Colyn Cloute, 
 Among the hole route 
 Of you that clerkes be, 
 Take nowe vpon me 
 Thus copyously to wryte, 
 I do it for no despyte. 
 Wherefore take no dysdayne 
 At my style rude and playne; 
 For I rebuke no man 
 That vertuous is: why than 
 Wreke ye your anger on me?" * 
 
 It would be difficult to conceive a framework at once more flexible 
 and more irritating than this. He is the friend that brings you 
 unpleasant rumors about yourself, because he feels that you should 
 know what is being said. And, as we have all found to our sorrow, 
 there is no reply possible. One cannot argue he does not say 
 that he believes what he says nor can you object to him he 
 tells you with the kindest of motives. You gnash your teeth in 
 silent fury while he exhorts you to patience. Even in the con- 
 ception of the mechanism of his poem Skelton is clever. 
 
 Not only is the mechanism irritating, it is also flexible. As he 
 pretends only to report, he is enabled to discuss matters in any 
 order. In an incoherent way he takes up the condition of the whole 
 Church. To any thoughtful observer the situation during the 
 second decade of the sixteenth century seemed full of danger. The 
 pretensions of the Church, as voiced by the Pope, to supremacy 
 in non-ecclesiastical affairs, however logical from medieval pre- 
 cedent, ran counter to the growth of national feeling that tended 
 to exalt the monarchical idea. This was not peculiar to England. 
 
 1 Lines 507-515. * Lines 1081-1093.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 181 
 
 Previously the conflict between Louis XII of France with the 
 papacy indicated the same condition; but a few more years were 
 to pass until Rome itself was to be given to be sacked by the 
 troups of the Spanish Charles. Skelton is an acute diagnostician 
 in selecting this as the root of the trouble. 
 
 "For, as farre as I can se, 
 
 It is wronge with eche degre: 
 
 For the temporalte 
 
 Accuseth the spiritualte; 
 
 The spirituall agayne 
 
 Dothe grudge and complayne 
 
 Vpon the temporall men: 
 
 Thus eche of other Mother 
 
 The tone agayng the tother; 
 
 Alas, they make me shoder! 
 
 For in hoder moder 
 
 The Church is put in faute. . . ." * 
 
 And it is the Church for which Skelton, as a member of the Church, 
 is loyally fighting. 
 
 In the conflict between these two parties, the Church and the 
 State, Skelton counsels that the Church should give way. It is 
 here that, like Erasmus, he shows his humanistic bias. His learn- 
 ing gives him sufficient perspective to perceive that while both 
 are in the wrong, the onus lies more heavily upon the Church. And 
 with steady scalpel he exposes the corruptions. The first criti- 
 cism of the Church is that it has become parasitic. 
 
 "Laye men say indede 
 
 How they take no hede 
 
 Theyr sely shepe to fede. 
 
 But plucke away and pull 
 
 The fleces of theyr wull. . . 
 
 All to haue promocyon, 
 
 There is theyr hole deuocyon. 
 
 With money, if it wyll hap. 
 
 To catche the forked cap (mitre) . . ." * 
 
 "And surely thus they say, 
 Bysshoppcs, if they may, 
 Small houses wolde kepe, 
 Theyr soules lene and dull, 
 
 1 Lines 59-70. * Lines 75-88.
 
 182 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 But slumbre forth and slope, 
 And assay to crepe 
 Within the noble walles 
 Of the kynges halles, 
 To fat theyr bodyes full, 
 Theyr soules lene and dull, 
 And haue full lytell care 
 How euyll theyr shepe fare. l 
 
 Thus moved by an ambition, little spiritual, they are cowardly 
 false to their trust, 
 
 How be it they are good men, 
 Moche herted lyke an hen. . . 2 
 
 And they have forgotten the lessons St. Thomas & Becket gave 
 them! They sell the grace of the Holy Ghost! The result is the 
 total disorganization of the Church. 
 
 And howe whan ye gyue orders 
 In your prouinciall borders, 
 As at Sitientes, 
 Some are insufficientes, 
 Some parum spaientes, 
 Some nihil intelligentes, 
 Some valde negligentes, 
 Some nullum sensum habentes, 
 But bestiall and vntaught; 
 But whan thei haue ones caught 
 Dominus vobiscum by the hede, 
 Than renne they in euery stede, 
 God wot, with dronken nolles; 
 Yet take they cure of soules, 
 And woteth neuer what thei rede. 
 Paternoster, Ave, nor Crede; 
 Construe not worth a whystle 
 Nether Gospel nor Pystle; 
 Theyr mattyns madly sayde, 
 Nothynge deuoutly prayd; 
 Theyr lernynge is so small, 
 Theyr prymes and houres fall 
 And lepe out of theyr lyppes 
 Lyke sawdust or drye chyppes. 
 I speke not nowe of all, 
 But the moost parte in generall. * 
 
 1 Lines 121-131. 2 Lines 168-169. Lines 222-447.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 183 
 
 And the ignorance of the clergy is both wide-spread and appalling, 
 due primarily to the fact that the candidates are not selected 
 with care. 
 
 In you the faute is supposed, 
 
 For that they are not apposed 
 
 By just cxaminacyon 
 
 In connyng and conuersacyon; 
 
 They haue none instructyon 
 
 To make a true constructyon: 
 
 A preest without a letter, 
 
 Without his vertue be gretter, 
 
 Doubtlesse were moche better 
 
 Vpon hym for to take 
 
 A mattocke or a rake. 
 
 Alas, for very shame! 
 
 Some can not declyne their name; 
 
 Some can not scarsly rede, 
 
 And yet he wyll not drede 
 
 For to kepe a cure, 
 
 And in nothyng is sure; 
 
 This Dominus vobiscum, 
 
 As wyse as Tom a thrum, 
 
 A chaplayne of trust 
 
 Layth all in the dust. l 
 
 On account of this demoralization the laity feel that the clergy 
 cannot be trusted. Here Skelton does not hesitate to put into 
 words accusations that we are told today originated with the 
 Reformers: 
 
 Of prebendaries and deanes, 
 Howe some of them gleanes 
 And gathereth vp the store 
 For to catche more and more; 
 Of persons and vycaryes 
 They make many outcryes; 
 They cannot kepe theyr wyues 
 From them for theyr lyues; 
 And thus the loselles stryues, 
 And lewedly sayes by Christ 
 Agaynst the sely preest. * 
 
 The inevitable result is the Reformation. 
 
 And some haue a smacke 
 Of Luthers sackc. 
 1 Lines 66-286. * Lines 568-78.
 
 184 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 And a brennyng sparke 
 
 Of Luthers warke, 
 
 And are somewhat suspecte 
 
 In Luthers secte; 
 
 And some of them barke, 
 
 Clatter and carpe 
 
 Of that heresy arte 
 
 Called Wicleuista, 
 
 And deuelysshe dogmatista; 
 
 And some be Hussyans, 
 
 And some be Arryans, 
 
 And some be Pollegians, 
 
 And make moche varyans 
 
 Bytwene the clergye 
 
 And the temporaltye . . . l 
 
 In this passage Skelton is a loyal son of the Church. That it is 
 possible for men to be seduced by the truth of the hideous heresies 
 of Luther and Wycliff never enters his mind. The sole reason that 
 he can conceive for such backsliding is that the evil lives of the 
 clergy have rendered their Church contemptible. 
 
 And the responsibility for this wretched condition rests upon 
 the bishops. Through pride, vain-glory and hypocrisy they have 
 ceased to be "lanterns of light." They are of the world, worldly, 
 forgetting the lessons of their Master. 
 
 Chryst by cruelte 
 Was nayled vpon a tre; 
 He payed a bytter pencyon 
 For mannes redemcyon, 
 He dranke eysell and gall 
 To redeme vs withall; 
 But swete ypocras ye drynke, 
 With, Let the cat wynke! 
 
 1 Lines 542-558. 
 
 J Colin Clout, 452-59. That Skelton is not alone in his opinion, is shown by Hawes, 
 Contercyon of Swerers: 
 
 My wordes my prelates vnto you do preche . . . 
 The worlde hathe cast you in suche blyndnes 
 Lyke vnto stones your hertes hathe hardnes. . . 
 Wo worthe your hertes so planted in pryde 
 Wo worthe your wrath and mortall enuye 
 Wo worthe slouth that dothe with you abyde 
 Wo worthe also inmesurable glotony 
 Wo worthe your tedyus synne of lechery, etc. etc.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 185 
 
 Let them come forth at large, preach so simply that they may be 
 understood, and all will be well. Thus Skelton is at one with 
 Erasmus. He feels no need for reformation outside of the Church; 
 it is reformation within the Church that is needed imperatively 
 and rapidly. Therefore is he writing, not against the Church, but 
 in behalf of the Church, and as a lover of the Church he cries out 
 against those that defile Her sacraments. This attitude explains 
 the bitterness of the poems, the point of view of one that feels 
 his cause betrayed, of the soldier abandoned by his general. The 
 attack is also an appeal. And it is exactly this attitude that 
 renders his criticisms significant. Personally he had nothing to 
 gain and everything to lose. The heads of the Church, those from 
 whom preferment was to be expected, were those that would be 
 most antagonized. He is driven to speak by the force of his 
 conscience. Nor is he an insignificant, peevish, unknown person, 
 he is one of the powers of the Church himself, and the greatest 
 writer in England. Therefore naturally in these poems there is 
 very real force. 
 
 The inevitable result of Skelton's analysis is that he tends more 
 and more through these years to focus his invective upon Wolsey. 
 To Skelton, Wolsey became more and more of the type that, by 
 sacrificing the interests of the Church to those of the State, was 
 betraying the Church. To him Wolsey did not have the prestige 
 given by birth or education. When Skelton was at court Wolsey 
 was a domestic chaplain, and, as a political factor, completely 
 unknown. And as Wolsey, although Oxford B. A. and M. A., 
 had never proceeded to the higher degrees, to the academic poet 
 he seemed almost uneducated. 1 
 
 But how euer he was borne, 
 Men wolde haue the lesse acorne, 
 If he coulde consyder 
 His byrth and rowme togeder. 
 And call to his mynde 
 How noble and how kynde 
 To him he hathe founde 
 Our souereyne lorde, chyfe grounde 
 Of all this prelacy. 
 And get hym nobly 
 
 1 Why Come!, 492-582.
 
 186 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 In great auctoryte, 
 
 Out from a low degre, 
 
 Whiche he can nat se: 
 
 For he was parde 
 
 No doctor of deuinyte, 
 
 Nor doctor of the law, 
 
 Nor of none other saw; 
 
 But a poore maister of urte, 
 
 God wot, had lytell parte 
 
 Of the quatriuials, 
 
 Nor yet of the triuials, 
 
 Nor of philosophy, 
 
 Nor of philology, 
 
 Nor of good pollycy, 
 
 Nor of astronomy, 
 
 Nor acquaynted worth a fly 
 
 With honorable Haly, 
 
 Nor with royall Ptholomy, 
 
 Nor with Albumasar, 
 
 To treate of any star 
 
 Fyxt or els mobyll; 
 
 His Latyne tonge dothe hobbyll, 
 
 He doth but cloute and cobbill 
 
 In Tullis faculte, 
 
 Called humanyte; 
 
 Yet proudly he dare pretende 
 
 How no man can him amende: 
 
 But haue ye nat harde this, 
 
 How an one eyed man is 
 
 Well syghted when 
 
 He is amonge blynde men? 
 
 To us, to whom the Shakespearean play has invested the fall of 
 Wolsey with the sublimity of a great catastrophe, it is difficult 
 to get the point of view of Skelton, to whom Wolsey was merely 
 an ill-educated upstart that was criminally ruining his own order, 
 that by pleasing a young king he might maintain himself in 
 power. To Skelton there is no dignity, merely devilish ingenuity, 
 in the career of Wolsey. 
 
 It is with this point of view that, from his coign of vantage in 
 Norfolk, Skelton watched the rise of Wolsey. The beginning of 
 the new reign was a period of storm and stress for the Church. 
 To appreciate the questions at issue, it must be remembered that 
 the Church was an entity, distinct from the State. Its independ-
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 187 
 
 ence had been established by the sacrifice of the life of St. Thomas 
 at Canterbury. The situation has been well summarized by 
 Professor Van Dyke: 1 
 
 American ecclesiastical establishments are entirely voluntary, they have al- 
 most no endowments, and this puts them so entirely in the hands of the laity when- 
 ever they choose to use their power, that it is difficult for an American to appreciate 
 the situation in England at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The clergy 
 were a corporate body, freed from the ordinary jurisdiction of the common law, 
 deciding matters connected with marriage and wills by courts constituted by them- 
 selves, having sanctuaries where the criminal who entered was free from arrest, 
 enjoying an income two and a half times that of the Crown, owning real estate 
 estimated at one-third the total of the kingdom, casting in the persons of the twenty- 
 six bishops and the twenty-seven mitred abbots almost two-thirds of the votes in 
 Henry VIII's first House of Lords, and able as great landed proprietors to exert 
 influence on elections to the House of Commons. And this formidable body con- 
 fessed supreme allegiance to a ruler living in Rome whose predecessors had repeat- 
 edly claimed the divine and unquestionable right to dictate to kings and nations 
 about the conduct of their affairs. 
 
 But while theoretically the line of cleavage is thus distinct, prac- 
 tically action was usually unified, because the high officials of the 
 Church were also apt to be high officials in the State. Yet ob- 
 viously so complicated a situation would give rise to numerous 
 complaints, and naturally the sympathy of the laity would be 
 on the side of the State. This was shown by the law passed 
 February 4th, 1513, that, for one year, the benefit of the clergy 
 should be denied to all robbers and murderers, except such as 
 were within the holy orders of a bishop, priest, or deacon. As 
 such a law was a direct impingement by the State on the preroga- 
 tives of the Church, in 1515 it was attacked by the Abbot of 
 Winchcomb. In turn the law was defended by Standish, Provin- 
 cial of the Franciscans, who by this action naturally angered the 
 clergy. He was therefore summoned to appear before the Con- 
 vocation, a summons that he evaded by an appeal to the King. 2 
 
 Ultimately the judges determined that all the Convocation who had taken part 
 in the proceedings against Dr. Standish were subject to prcemunire; that the King 
 could hold a parliament by himself and the temporal lords and commons, without 
 the spiritual lords, who had no place there, except by reason of their temporal 
 
 1 Renatcence Portrait*, by Paul Van Dyke, 1905, 183-4. 
 * Letter* and Paper*, Vol. , Part 1. # 1313.
 
 188 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 possessions. Then the judges and councillors, spiritual and temporal, assembled 
 before the King at Baynard's castle, when the Archbishop of York, Cardinal, knelt 
 before the King and said, in behalf of the clergy, that none of them had intended to 
 do anything in derogation of the royal prerogative, and that for his part he owed 
 his advancement solely to the King, and would never assent to anything in deroga- 
 tion of his authority; nevertheless that this matter of the convention of clerks before 
 the temporal judge seemed to all the clergy to be against the liberties of the Church, 
 which they were bound by oath to preserve. He therefore prayed the King that 
 the matter might be determined by the Pope and his council at Rome. The King 
 answered, " We think Dr. Standish has sufficiently replied to you in all points." . . . 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury said, that hi former days many holy fathers had 
 resisted the law of the land on this point, and some had suffered martyrdom in the 
 quarrel. . . . On this the King said, "We are, by the sufferance of God, King of 
 England, and the Kings of England in times past never had any superior but God; 
 know, therefore, that we will maintain the rights of the crown in this matter like 
 our progenitors; . . . You interpret your decrees at your pleasure; but as for me, 
 I will never consent to your desire, any more than my progenitors have done." 
 
 It is difficult to overstate the importance of this extraordinary 
 trial; in theory the principle of the reformation is here enunciated 
 as it was afterwards in fact. No wonder Skelton feels that * 
 
 O causeles cowardes, O bar ties hardynes! 
 
 O manles manhod, enfayntyd all with fere! 
 O connyng clergye, where ys your redynes 
 
 To practise or postyll thys presses here and there? 
 
 For drede ye darre not medyll with suche gere, 
 Or elles ye pynche curtesy, trulye as I trowe, 
 Whyche of yow fyrste dare boldlye plucke the crowe. 
 
 When, from the point of view of a churchman, the gravity of 
 the issue is considered, the action taken by Wolsey cannot be 
 termed courageous, with his assertion "that for his part he owed 
 his advancement solely to the King, and would never assent to 
 anything in derogation of his authority. " To Skelton, it seemed 
 that the champion of the Church had betrayed the Church to the 
 State. For, in Wolsey in 1514 were united almost the highest 
 powers of each; on September 10th, he had been created Cardinal, 
 and on December 24th, Lord Chancellor. The Parrot bitterly 
 laments that 
 
 He caryeth a kyng in hys sieve. 
 
 1 Dyce, ii, 19.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 189 
 
 Nay more, he is king ! l 
 
 Jupiter ut nitido deus eat veneratus Olympo; 
 
 Hie coliturque deus. 
 Sunt data thura Jovi, rutilo solio resident!; 
 
 Cum Jove thura capit. 
 Jupiter astro rum rector dominusque polorum; 
 
 Anglica sceptra regit. 
 
 With all this power he might have saved the Church! He did not 
 rise to his opportunity because he himself was beneath contempt. 2 
 
 So myche raggyd ryghte of a rammes borne; 
 
 So rygorous revelyng in a prelate specially; 
 So bold and so braggyng, and was so baselye borne; 
 
 So lordlye of hys lokes and so dysdayneslye; 
 
 So fatte a magott, bred of a flesshe flye; 
 Was nevyr suche a ffylty gorgon, nor suche an epycure, 
 Syns Dewcalyons flodde, I make the faste and sure. 
 
 So myche preuye wachyng in cold wynters nyghtes; 
 
 So myche serchyng of loselles, and ys hymselfe so lewde; 
 So myche coniuracions for elvyshe myday sprettes; 
 
 So many bullys of pardon puplysshed and shewyd; 
 
 So myche crossyng and blyssyng, and hym all beshrewde; 
 Suche pollaxis and pyllers, suche mvlys trapte with gold; 
 Sens Dewcalyons flodde in no cronycle ys told. 
 
 Dixit, quod Parrot. 
 
 Unhappily, on his secular side, no more than on his ecclesiasti- 
 cal, did Wolsey act to the satisfaction of Skelton. It may be possi- 
 ble, perhaps, to infer jealousy, as an unconscious motive, on the 
 part of the former tutor that saw another so firmly fixed in the 
 affections of the quondam pupil. But also his very admiration 
 for the King made him protest against the assumption of authority 
 on the part of the minister. The story is told in Guistinian's De- 
 spatches, 8 that Francis I, on being told that Henry devoted him- 
 self to pleasure and solace, and left the cares of state to the Cardi- 
 nal, rejoined, "By my faith, the Cardinal must bear him little 
 good will; for it is not the office of a good servant to filch his mas- 
 
 1 Dyce, ii, 20. 
 1 Dyce, ii, 44. 
 ' Quoted by Brewer, Letters and Papers. Vol. 3, Part I, xxxii.
 
 190 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 ter's honor." It is the old complaint of the ego et meus rex. To 
 us, with our appreciation of Henry's character and knowledge of 
 Wolsey's downfall, this may seem trivial; to them, the Cardinal's 
 power as attested by his magnificence overshadowed that of the 
 King himself. So Skelton asks in bitterness * 
 
 Why come ye nat to court? 
 
 To whyche court? 
 
 To the kynges court, 
 
 Or to Hampton Court? 
 
 Nay, to the kynges court: 
 
 The kynges courte 
 
 Shulde haue the excellence 
 
 But Hampton Court 
 
 Hath the preemynence, 
 
 And Yorkes Place, 
 
 With my lordes grace, 
 
 To whose magnifycence 
 
 Is all the conflewence, 
 
 Sutys and supplycacyons, 
 
 Embassades of all nacyons. 
 
 Strawe for lawe cannon, 
 
 Or for the lawe common, 
 
 Or for lawe cyuyll! 
 
 It shall be as he wyll: .... 
 
 He dyggeth so in the trenche 
 
 Of the court royall, 
 
 That he ruleth them all, 
 
 So he dothe vndermynde, 
 
 And suche sleyghtes dothe fynde, 
 
 That the kynges mynde 
 
 By hym is subuerted, 
 
 And so streatly coarted 
 
 In credensynge his tales, 
 
 That all is but nutshales 
 
 That any other sayth; 
 
 He hath in him suche fayth. 
 
 Such faith, in itself a lovely thing, would not be dangerous if, 
 as Skelton remarks, the object of the trust were worthy. This, 
 however, according to Skelton, he was not. As Chancellor of 
 State, his foreign policy was a failure. His expedition to Calais, 
 July-November, 1521, in which he attempted to mediate between 
 
 1 Why Come Ye Nat to Court, Dyce, ii, 39-40.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 191 
 
 Francis and the Emperor had made England only ridiculous. The 
 truce between England and Scotland, September 11, 1522, sur- 
 rendered the advantages gained, with a net loss; l 
 
 Our mony madly lent, 
 And mor madly spent: . . . 
 Our armye waxeth dull, 
 With, tourne all home agayne, 
 With never a Scot slayne. 
 
 The wardens of the East and West Marches, and the Earl of North" 
 umberland, are standing by idle. The explanation for this con- 
 dition is not the inefficiency of either the troops or the command- 
 ers, because the good Earl of Surrey terrified the French. The 
 fault is not with them, it is with the man higher up; the Cardinal 
 was bribed; 2 
 
 But yet they ouer shote vs 
 
 Wyth crownes and wyth scut us; 
 
 With scutis and crownes of gold 
 
 I drede we are bought and solde; 
 
 It is a wonders warke: 
 
 They shote all at one marke, 
 
 At the Cardynals hat, 
 
 They shote all at that; 
 
 Oute of theyr stronge townes 
 
 They shote at him with crownes; 
 
 With crownes of golde enblased 
 
 They make him so amased, 
 
 And his eyen so dased, 
 
 That he ne se can 
 
 To know God nor man. 
 
 And in accusing John Meautis, the King's French Secretary, of 
 treachery, he insinuates that Wolsey himself is in the pay of 
 France. 3 
 
 To explain why the chief minister of England should thus sell 
 himself Skelton argues his notorious need for money. Even houses 
 of ill fame are protected openly by the Cardinal. This is not sur- 
 prising, since he is a man notoriously immoral. He 4 
 
 'Lines 140-1; 147-9. 
 1 Lines 166-180. 
 
 'On March 15th, 1623, Brian Tuke is appointed secretary "vice John Meau- 
 ties" but I do not know whether for the reason Skelton alleges. 
 Lines 222-223.
 
 192 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Spare th neither mayde ne wyfe: 
 This is a post els lyfe! 
 
 But what could you expect from his birth? * 
 
 How be it the primordyall 
 
 Of his wretched original!, 
 
 And his base progeny, 
 
 And his gresy genealogy, 
 
 He came of the sank royall, (sang royal) 
 
 That was cast out of a bochers stall. 
 
 Yet it is this wretched creature, without birth, without education, 
 that dares affront the old nobility of England! 2 
 
 Our barons be so bolde. 
 Into a mouse hole they wolde 
 Rynne away and crepe, 
 Lyke a mayny of shepe; 
 Dare nat loke out at dur 
 For drede of the mastyue cur, 
 For drede of the bochers dogge 
 Wold wyny them lyke an hogge. 
 
 For and this curre do gnar, 
 They must stande all a far, 
 To holde vp their hande at the bar. 
 For all their noble blode 
 He pluckes them by the hode, 
 And shakes them by the eare, 
 And brynge [sj them in suche feare; 
 He bayteth them lyke a bere, 
 Lyke an oxe, or a bull: 
 Theyr wyttes, he saith, are dull; 
 He sayth they haue no brayne 
 Theyr astate to mayntayne; 
 And maketh them to bow theyr kne 
 Before his maieste. 
 
 Consequently the only explanation he can find for the continued 
 favor of the King toward the Cardinal is witchcraft, and he gravely 
 cites a precedent in the time of Charlemagne! A more tempt- 
 ing precedent, however, occurs to him in the career of Cardinal 
 Balue, who, like Wolsey, betrayed his king. 3 
 
 1 486-491. Lines 289-310. * Lines 736-740.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 193 
 
 Wherefore he suffred payn, 
 
 Was hedyd, drawen, and quarterd, 
 
 And dyed stynkingly marterd. 
 
 Lo, yet for all that 
 
 He ware a cardy nals hat. 
 
 In hym was small fayth . . . 
 
 Such in substance is Skelton's indictment against the great 
 Cardinal, poured forth in lines that tumble over one another with- 
 out order. He returns to the charge, repeats accusations, his 
 allusions refer to events in an unchronological order, and there is 
 no regular procedure. The probability is that the various sections 
 of the poem were composed at quite different times. Thus at 
 line 393, only a little beyond one quarter of the completed work, 
 he remarks: 
 
 Thus wyll I conclude my style, 
 And fall to rest a whyle, 
 And so to rest a whyle, &c. 
 
 The natural result is that the poem is powerful only in detail. As 
 a whole it has the incoherence of anger. It is not worth while, 
 therefore, to discuss the historical accuracy of the accusations; 
 in fact, with the able championing of Brewer, the modern reader 
 in his admiration for the great qualities of Wolsey is apt to forget 
 that there may be another side. What concerns us here is purely 
 literary. As literature, its main characteristic is its audacity. 
 In an age of privilege, the boldness with which the poet dares to 
 express his scandals and the vigor of the expression are astounding. 
 It is no wonder that half apologetically he shields himself behind 
 the example of Juvenal. Its great merit is that it is a scathingly 
 frank expression of personal opinion. And that, too, is its great 
 weakness, that it is the expression of merely personal opinion. 
 This may explain why Wolsey could afford to overlook, provided 
 he ever saw it, this attack upon his foreign policy and the personal 
 invective accompanying it. The first was misunderstood and the 
 second greatly exaggerated. And neither much interested the 
 country at large. The average Englishman had not the materials 
 at hand to enable him to discuss matters of state polity, and the 
 vices of rulers tend toward enhancing their popularity with the 
 common man by making them more human. In any case Wolsey's
 
 194 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 birth, manner, education, and morality were equally well known 
 to the King, who alone was the judge. Consequently, although 
 it is not probable that he read Why Come Ye not to Court with 
 pleasure, or that he liked its author, it is conceivable that he may 
 have regarded Skelton as the pestiferous gadfly awakened by his 
 own success. 
 
 But such reasoning scarcely holds with Skelton's most famous 
 poem, Colin Clout, more widely known than the rest, perhaps 
 because from it Spenser borrowed his nom de plume. Of no poem, 
 however, is the question of dating more difficult. In the enumera- 
 tion in the Garland, while naturally its companion piece, Why Come 
 Ye not to Court, is omitted, Colin Clout is listed as a "trifle" of 
 "honest mirth" in the same category with Elinor Humming, and 
 the Latin side-note reads: "They smile more pleasantly at seri- 
 ous matters when described as jests." The inevitable inference 
 is that the satire is general and not particular. On the other 
 hand exactly the contrary, that the satire was directed at Wolsey 
 and not in general, was the opinion of the poet's contemporaries. 
 For example, Francis Thynne, writing long after of his father's 
 difficulties, remarks: * 
 
 .... wherevppon the kinge bydd hym goo his waye, and feare not. All whiche 
 not withstandinge, my father was called in questione by the Bysshoppes, and 
 heaved at by Cardinall Wolseye, his olde enymye for manye causes, but mostly for 
 that my father had furthered Skelton to publishe his ' Collen Cloute ' againste the 
 Cardinall, the moste parte of whiche Booke was compiled in my fathers howse 
 at Erithe in Kente. 
 
 Aside from the immaterial error of the place of composition, 2 this 
 testimony is of the highest value. The father of the writer had 
 been injured, because it was believed that he had aided in the com- 
 position of a particular poem. It is scarcely conceivable that the 
 son should have been confused about so important an event in his 
 family history. That Thynne was not mistaken is shown by the 
 fact that among the Lansdowne MSS. 3 lines 462-480 of Colin Clout 
 
 1 Francis Thynne a Animadversions upon Speghfs first (1598 A. D.) Edition of 
 Chaucer's Workes, Chaucer Society, 1876, p. 10. 
 
 1 The house at Erith was not purchased by the elder Thynne until two years after 
 Skelton's death. The entire passage is quoted in Chapter II, p. 117. 
 
 1 Dyce, i, 329.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 195 
 
 appear as an independent poem, entitled "The profecy of Skelton, 
 1529," and the passage prophesying 
 
 A fa tall fall of one 
 
 That shuld syt on a trone, 
 
 And rule all thynges alone. . . 
 
 can refer only to Wolsey. Another witness that in this poem Skel- 
 ton is attacking Wolsey appears in William Bullein. 1 In 1564, 
 if not earlier, 2 he wrote a Dialogue against the Feuer Pestilence, 
 in which he thus mentions Skelton : 
 
 Skelton satte in the corner of a Filler with a Frostie bitten face, frownyng, and is 
 scante yet cleane cooled of the hotte burnyng Cholour kindeled againste the can- 
 kered Cardinall Wolsey; wrytyng many sharpe Distichous with bloudie penne 
 againste hym, and sente them by the infernal riuers Styx, Flegiton, and Acheron by 
 the Feriman of helle, called Charon, to the saied Cardinall. 
 
 How the Cardinall came of nought, 
 And his Prelacie solde and bought; 
 And where suche Prelates bee 
 Sprong of lowe degree, 
 And spirituall dignitee, 
 Farewell benignitee, 
 Farewell simplicitee, 
 Farewell good charitee! 
 
 Thus paruum lit crat us 
 Came from Rome gatus, 
 Doctour dowpatus, 
 Scante a Bachelaratus: 
 
 And thus Skelton did ende 
 With Wolsey his friende. 
 
 The obvious inference from such scattered references is that not 
 only was Colin Clout read with reference to the Cardinal, but also 
 that it circulated in fragments. 
 
 E This inference, made from external evidence, is corroborated 
 
 by the internal evidence of the poem itself. Allusions are made to 
 historic events that happened after the composition of the Gar- 
 
 I land. One illustration, that shows also the detailed nature of the 
 
 attack, will suffice. 
 
 1 Early English Text Society, Extra Series, LIT, 16. 
 * The earliest edition reads "newly corrected."
 
 196 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Buyldyng royally 
 
 Theyr m&ncyons curyously, 
 
 With turrettes and with toures, 
 
 With halles and with boures, 
 
 Stretchynge to the starres, 
 
 With glasse wyndowes and barres; 
 
 Hangynge aboute the walles 
 
 Clothes of golde and palles, 
 
 Arras of ryche aray, 
 
 Fresshe as flours in May; 
 
 Wyth dame Dyana naked; 
 
 Howe lusty Venus quaked. 
 
 And howe Cupyde shaked 
 
 His dart, and bent his bowe 
 
 For to shote a crowe 
 
 At her tyrly tyrlowe; 
 
 And howe Parys of Troy 
 
 Daunced a lege de moy, 
 
 Made lusty sporte and ioy 
 
 With dame Helyn the quene; 
 
 With suche storyes bydene 
 
 Their chambres well besene; 
 
 With triumphes of Cesar, 
 
 And of Pompeyus war, 
 
 Of renowne and of fame 
 
 By them to get a name: 
 
 Nowe all the worlde stares, 
 
 How they ryde in goodly chares, 
 
 Conueyed by olyphantes, 
 
 With lauryat garlantes, 
 
 And by vnycornes 
 
 With their semely homes; 
 
 Vpon these beestes rydynge, 
 
 Naked boyes strydynge, 
 
 With wanton wenches winkyng. 
 
 Nowe truly, to my thynkynge. 
 
 That is a speculacyon 
 
 And a mete meditacyon 
 
 For prelates of estate, . . . l 
 
 These lines apparently describe, as was pointed out by Ernest 
 Law, 2 a definite set of tapestries at Hampton Court. "Of these 
 
 1 Colyn Chute. Lines 936-974. 
 
 8 A History of Hampton Court Palace, 2nd ed. 1890, i, pp. 63-65. As sketches 
 of the designs are here given, the reader may see for himself the accuracy of Skel-
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 197 
 
 six triumphs (Wolsey having duplicates of those of Time and Eter- 
 nity), we at once identify three, namely, those of Death, Renown, 
 and Time, as still remaining at Hampton Court in Henry VTII's 
 Great Watching or Guard Chamber; while the other three of 
 Love, Chastity, and Eternity, or Divinity, complete the set of 
 six designs, which were illustrative, in an allegorical form, of Pe- 
 trarch's Triumphs. ... In each piece a female, emblematic of the 
 influence whose triumph is celebrated, is shown enthroned on a 
 gorgeously magnificent car drawn by elephants, or unicorns, or 
 bulls, richly caparisoned and decorated; while around them throng 
 a host of attendants and historical personages, typical of the tri- 
 umph portrayed. Thus, in the Triumph of Fame or Renown, we 
 have figures representing Julius Caesar and Pompey; and in the 
 first aspect of the Triumph of Chastity we see Venus, driven by 
 naked cupids, and surrounded by heroines of amorous renown, 
 attacked by Chastity. The reader will now recognize how pointed 
 is the reference to these tapestries in the following lines of Skelton's 
 satire. . . ." Unless there chanced to be in England and familiar 
 to Skelton another set of tapestries allegorically representing Pe- 
 trarch's triumphs an hypothesis that does not seem probable 
 Skelton's lines refer to these. They appear in Wolsey's in- 
 ventory as "hangings bought of the 'xecutors of my lord of Dur- 
 ham anno xiiii Reg. H. viii." But as Ruthall, Bishop of Durham, 
 died February 4, 1523, the passage is either an attack upon Ruth- 
 all, or the list in the Garland was written at the earliest only eight 
 months before it was published by Hawkes. Neither alternative 
 seems very probable. Although Ruthall caused to be built the 
 great chamber at Bishop Aukland, the expression " royally " seems 
 overdone to apply to that; nor does eight months' intermission 
 between the composition of a poem and the publication of it seem 
 in accordance with the leisurely methods of printing used in the 
 16th century. The simplest explanation of the difficulty, therefore, 
 is the assumption that there were two versions of the poem. The 
 first was a general attack upon ecclesiastical conditions, and as 
 such was alluded to in the Garland. Skelton then added passages 
 specifically attacking Wolsey, although not by name. Both ex- 
 ternal and internal evidence show that in a poem criticising 
 
 ton's description. Mr. Law, however, gives no indication of the difficulty in the 
 dating caused by his discovery.
 
 198 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 general conditions of the clergy, he inserted individual poems at- 
 tacking Wolsey in particular, erasing the lines of cleavage. 1 
 
 But the result of this condition, namely the joining of parts 
 definitely attacking Wolsey upon parts that originally had little 
 reference to him, is that the sixteenth century, not unnaturally, 
 read Wolsey into the whole poem, that a satire upon a general 
 condition became a satire upon a single individual. Wolsey is thus 
 pilloried as the traitor to the Church. Whether or not this effect 
 was intended consciously is impossible to say, although it may be 
 argued that after the personalities in Why Come Ye not to Court 
 there were no bounds to Skelton's audacity. Colin Clout becomes 
 a passionate appeal to both the clergy and the laity to rebel. And 
 the allusions are to events that, although now forgotten, at that time 
 stirred all England. In 1523 the clergy of the Convocation, sum- 
 moned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the first day of its 
 meeting in St. Paul's were cited to appear before Wolsey in West- 
 minster. There on June 2nd a war tax was voted "being no less 
 than fifty per cent, income tax, to be paid by installments in five 
 years." 2 Great was the indignation of the clergy over this asser- 
 tion of the legatine power, "whiche was never sene before in Eng- 
 land, wherof master Skelton a mery poet wrote. 
 
 ' Gentle Paule laie doune thy swearde: 
 
 For Peter of Westminster hath shaven thy beard.' " * 
 
 Colin Clout if not so "mery" is at least more outspoken: 4 
 
 But they are loth to mell, 
 And loth to hang the bell 
 Aboute the cattes necke, 
 For drede to haue a checke; 
 They ar fayne to play deuz decke, 
 They ar made for the becke. 
 
 1 Thus the lines, quoted by Bullein, 
 
 How the Cardinall came of nought 
 
 And his Prelacie solde and bought 
 becomes (Dyce lines 585-6) 
 
 Howe prelacy is solde and bought, 
 
 And come vp of nought. . . 
 J Brewer, Reign of Henry VIII, i, 494. 
 
 * Hall, King Henry the VIII, ed. by Charles Whibley, i, 287. 
 4 Dyce, i, 817-318.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 199 
 
 How be it they are good men, 
 Moche herted lyke an hen: 
 Theyr lessons forgotten they haue 
 That Becket them gaue: 
 Thomas manum mittit adfortia, 
 Spernit damna, spernit opprabria, 
 Nvtta Thomam frangit injuria. 
 But nowe euery spiritual! father. 
 Men say, they had rather 
 Spende moche of theyr share 
 Than to be combred with care: 
 Spende! nay, nay, but spare; 
 For let se who that dare 
 Sho the mockysshe mare; 
 They make her wynche and keke. 
 But it is not worth a leke: 
 Boldnesse is to seke 
 The Churche for to defend. 
 
 The clergy of Henry II, typified by St. Thomas a Becket, were 
 willing to die to defend the rights of the Church against the State, 
 and the Church won; the clergy of Henry VIII, typified by Wolsey, 
 weakly voted to surrender the possessions of the Church to the 
 State, and had rather spend much of their share than to be en- 
 cumbered with care. The biting antithesis is forced home! In 
 1524 WoLsey had procured from Clement VII bulls to enable him to 
 found Cardinal College at Oxford and to endow it with the funds 
 arising from the suppression of a number of small monasteries. 
 Whatever may be the opinion of posterity concerning Wolsey's 
 action in the matter, concerning the relative value of Cardinal 
 College on the one hand and of the small monasteries on the other, 
 to the sixteenth century it was a high-handed outrage. 1 To them, 
 since by no possible latitude of construction could Wolsey be con- 
 sidered as carrying out the wishes of the donors, it seemed a mis- 
 appropriation of funds. Skelton here is the mouthpiece of popular 
 indignation: 2 
 
 Relygous men are fayne 
 
 For to tourne agayne 
 
 In secula seculorum, 
 
 And to forsake theyr corum. 
 
 1 James Gairdner, The English Church, p. 81. 
 1 Dyce, i, p. 325-327.
 
 200 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 And vagabundare per forum, 
 
 And take a fyne meritarum. 
 
 Contra regulam morum. 
 
 Aid blacke monackorum. 
 
 Ant canonicorum, 
 
 Aut Bernardinorum, 
 
 Aut cmcifixorum, 
 
 And to synge from place to place, 
 
 Lyke apostataas. 
 
 And the selfe same game 
 Begone ys nowe with shame 
 Amongest the sely nonnes: 
 My lady nowe she ronnes, 
 Dame Sybly our abbesse, 
 Dame Dorothe and lady Besse, 
 Dame Sare our pryoresse, 
 Out of theyr cloyster and quere 
 With an heuy chere, 
 Must cast up theyr blacke vayles, 
 And set vp theyr fucke sayles, 
 To catche wynde with their ventales 
 What, Colyne, there thou shales! 
 Yet thus with yll hayles 
 The lay fee people rayles. 
 
 And all the fawte they lay 
 On you, prelates, and say 
 Ye do them wrong and no ryght 
 To put them thus to flyght; 
 No matyns at mydnyght, 
 Boke and chalys gone quyte; 
 And plucke awaye the leedes 
 Evyn ouer theyr heedes, 
 And sell away theyr belles, 
 And all that they haue elles: 
 Thus the people telles, 
 Rayles like rebelles, 
 Redys shrewdly and spelles, 
 And with foundacyons melles, 
 And talkys lyke tytyuelles, 
 Howe ye brake the dedes wylles, 
 Turne monastcris into water milles, 
 Of an abbay ye make a graunge; 
 Your workes, they saye, are straunge; 
 So that theyr founders soules 
 Haue lost theyr beade rolles, 
 The mony for theyr masses 
 Spent amonge wanton lasses;
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 201 
 
 The Diriges are forgotten; 
 Theyr founders lye there rotten, 
 But where theyr soules dwell, 
 Therwith 1 wyll not mell. 
 What coulde the Turke do more 
 With all his false lore. 
 Turke, Sarazyn, or Jew? 
 I reporte me to you, 
 O mercyfull Jesu, 
 You supporte and rescue, 
 My style for to dyrecte, 
 It may take some effecte! 
 
 Such quotations show wherein Colin Clout is more successful 
 than its companion piece Why Come Ye not to Court. The latter 
 is coarse, personal invective based on malignant gossip ; the former 
 appparently deduces its attacks from incontrovertible facts. In 
 the first, the tone is that of a private quarrel; in the second, Skelton 
 speaks with the nation behind him. And herein lies the power of 
 the poem. The average man cared little for what did not im- 
 mediately concern him, but in every act of his life the Church did 
 concern him. When he saw her in danger, when the monks and 
 nuns went wailing through the countryside, his anger was kindled. 
 Thus whereas Why Come Ye not to Court presents the case of the 
 Cardinal vs. the King, Colin Clout is Cardinal vs. the People. And 
 no one was more keenly alive to the fact that his government was 
 essentially popular than Henry himself. The popular discontent 
 found its spokesman and its champion in the one poet that had 
 both the courage and the ability to express it to the full. In Skel- 
 ton the nation found its voice. 
 
 The explanation of such daring utterance as Colin Clout is 
 fortunately given us by Skelton himself in his next poem, A 
 Replycacion agaynst Certayne Yong Scolers Abiured of Late, &c. 
 This poem must have been composed after December 8th, 1527, 
 because it was on that date l that the young scholars, Thomas 
 Bilney and Thomas Arthur, abjured. And it is almost a certainty 
 that the reference is to them. The first part of it consists of in- 
 vective in mingled verse and prose. Then follows, with a sub-title, 2 
 
 A confutacion responayue, or an ineuytably prcpensed answere to all waywarde 
 or frowarde altercacyons that can or may be made or obiected agaynst Skelton 
 laureate, deuyser of this Replycacyon, &c. 
 
 1 This was first shown by Brie. * Dyce, 5, p. 219.
 
 202 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Apparently the poet feels that he may be criticised on the ground 
 that it is none of his affair. To answer this objection he explains 
 the function of the poet. If his opponents object that poetry 
 "maye nat flye so hye" as to deal with matters appertaining to 
 theology and philosophy, they are requested to remember the 
 example set by David, whom Jerome (and the passage is cited at 
 length with an English translation), calls prophet of prophets, and 
 poet of poets. Thus with the functions of the poet are combined 
 those of the prophet. Consequently for the poet he claims divine 
 inspiration. 
 
 Howe there is a spyrituall, 
 
 And a mysteriall, 
 
 And a mysticall 
 
 Effecte energiall, 
 
 As Grekes do it call, 
 
 Of suche an industry, 
 
 And suche a pregnacy, 
 
 Of heuenly inspyracion 
 
 In laureate creacyon, 
 
 Of poetes commendacion, 
 
 That of diuyne myseracion 
 
 God maketh his habytacion 
 
 In poetes whiche excelles, 
 
 And soiourns with them and dwelles. 
 
 By whose inflammacion 
 Of spyrituall instygacion 
 And diuyne inspyracion, 
 We are kyndled in suche facyon 
 With hete of the Holy Cost, 
 Which is God of myghtes most, 
 That he our penne dothe lede, 
 And maketh in vs suche spede. 
 That forthwith we must nede 
 With penne and ynke precede, 
 Somtyme for affection, 
 Somtyme for sadde dyrection, 
 Somtyme for correction, 
 Somtyme vnder protection 
 Of pacient sufferance, 
 With sobre cyrcumstance, 
 Our myndes to auaunce 
 To no mannes anoyance. . .* 
 
 1 Dyce, i, p. 222.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 203 
 
 Such a passage, coming as it does in the dawn of the Renaissance, 
 is interesting as being so extreme an expression of a theory of 
 poetics afterwards elaborated by Sidney and still current today. 
 According to this theory, the poet as vates is only the medium 
 through which the Divine Will expresses itself. Consequently, 
 and Skelton does not hesitate to affirm the inevitable deduction, 
 the responsibility for that expression rests, not upon the poet, but 
 upon God. 
 
 But this passage, coming in the context where it does, seems 
 curiously apologetic. It is not quite clear for what he is apologiz- 
 ing. The body of the poem is an assertion of orthodoxy on the 
 part of the poet and of virulent condemnation for those asserting 
 the right of individual judgment contrary to the decrees of the 
 Church. For this, surely, there would be no need to invoke the 
 doctrine of plenary, poetic inspiration. The striking peculiarity 
 of this situation becomes emphasized when taken in connection 
 with the dedication of the poem. 
 
 Honorificatissimo, amplissimo, longeque reverendissimo in Christo patri, ac domino, 
 domino Thomas, &c. tituli sanclcs Ceciliae, sacrosanctoe Romance ecclesice presbytero, 
 Cardinali meritissimo, et apostolicce sedis legato, a latereque legato superillustri, 
 <tc., Skeltonis laureatus, ora, reg., humillimum dicit obsequium cum omni debita 
 reverentia, tanto tamque magnifico digna principe sacerdotum, totiusque justifies cequa- 
 bilissimo moderalore, necnon praesentis opusculi 'fautore excellentissimo, &c., ad cujus 
 auspicatiasimam contemplationem, sub memorabili prelo gloriosce immortalitatis, 
 praesens pagdlafelicitatur, &c. 
 
 When one realizes that the very honorable, very great and by 
 far the most reverend father in Christ is the same Cardinal Wolsey 
 to whom but two or three years before Skelton was alluding in 
 terms the reverse of complimentary, the question arises what is 
 the explanation of such an astounding change of front. The 
 situation presupposes both a moral obloquy on the part of the 
 author and a general obtuseness on the part of the Cardinal. The 
 obvious solution is, by denying Skelton's authorship, to put the 
 blame upon the printer. However true this may be of the other 
 three similar dedications, 1 it certainly docs not hold here. Al- 
 though printed by Pynson without date, yet as Pynson died in 
 1530, only a year after Skelton himself, the publication of the poem 
 
 1 The other three dedications of Skelton's poems appear long after his death, 
 and may perhaps be interpolations.
 
 204 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 must have been at the extreme only three years after its com- 
 position, and probably was during the poet's lifetime. Under 
 these conditions the motive that might cause Pynson in Skelton's 
 name to forge a dedication to the poet's avowed enemy seems in- 
 explicable. Consequently the inference seems unavoidable that 
 here the dedication is genuine. And as there is no record of any 
 act of Wolsey to justify such a change of opinion, the explanation 
 must be sought in the life of Skelton himself. Although in all this 
 we are wandering in a maze of inference and guesswork, the 
 answer to the question seems to have been found in a discovery 
 of Dr. SeBoyar. 1 In a report of the visitation of Bishop Nicke to 
 the Cathedral of Norwich, 1526, he brought to light the fact that 
 a Dominus Johannes Shelton has been accused of gravia crimina 
 et nephanda peccata. The identification of this Dominus Johannes 
 Shelton with the poet, whose name was sometimes so spelled, and 
 who at this time was in the diocese of Norwich, seems to fill all the 
 conditions. Traditionally it was with Bishop Nicke that his 
 trouble arose. 2 The difficulty came from his disordered life hi 
 general, and in particular from his having a concubine. But that 
 this was the charge does not seem probable. When Wolsey's own 
 laxity in such matters is considered, to him as judge it could not 
 have been a serious charge. On the other hand, at a time when 
 heresy was a capital offense, such extreme denunciation against 
 the officers of the Church might easily be construed as an attack 
 upon the Church itself. And if it be true that in 1526 he was 
 arrested on a charge of heresy, both the Replycacion and the 
 dedication are explained. In the poem he shows himself a zealous 
 follower of the doctrines of the Church, severely censuring those 
 that asserted the right of individual judgment, and cleverly adding 
 an apology for the freedom of his poetic utterance; he then dedi- 
 cates it to the Cardinal as an appeal for justice, as one totius jus- 
 titice cequabilissimo moderatore. If this be the explanation, the 
 appeal failed, and Wolsey's resentment was stronger than his 
 sense of justice, because on June 21st., 1529, Skelton died in the 
 sanctuary of Westminster. Four months later, his great enemy 
 
 1 Modern Language Notes, December, 1913. 
 
 1 In the Merie Tales of Skelton and in A. C. Mery Talys, although the precise 
 anecdotes may be apocryphal, there must be a broad outline of fact. The parts re- 
 lating to Skelton in both of these are reprinted in Dyce, i, Ivii-lxxiiii.
 
 205 
 
 also died, and in disgrace. To say that Skelton's satires caused 
 the disgrace of Wolsey is absurd; to say that Skelton's satires, 
 however, by powerfully stating popular discontent, and by this 
 very expression increasing it, form an appreciable factor in the 
 catastrophe is credible. As in the case of the humanistic prose, 
 so out of English poetry was forged a weapon of attack, and the 
 power of the press became potent. From this point of view in the 
 dedication there is an element of pathos. With the battle almost 
 won, the poet surrenders in a sequence of fawning superlatives. 
 Honorificatissimo, amplissimo, longeque reverendissimo in Christo 
 patri! 
 
 This analysis of Skelton's satires becomes justifiable, when it 
 is realised that he is interesting, not merely in himself, but as a 
 type of many unknown writers. By his relations with the Court 
 and, probably by his personal idiosyncrasies, his personality was 
 dominant at the time and has come down through the ages. But 
 the form that he used was not peculiar to himself. "Skeltonic" 
 verse was not his invention. Such an adaptation of the Medieval 
 Latin was normal with the pre-humanistic Churchman. And as 
 such poems were satiric, naturally they were anonymous. 1 Pro- 
 vided the arrow struck, it was immaterial from which bow it 
 came. Written to attack an institution or a person, at a time when 
 such an attack involved the author in peril of his life, printed, if 
 at all, in the form of a broadside, it is literature for the day and 
 hour. The wonder is that so much of it has survived. To us, ig- 
 norant of the local conditions, much of it is necessarily obscure 
 and time has blunted its edge. But as these poems are classed 
 together because of the form, and as the form was the common 
 inheritance of the age, there is no necessary similarity in content 
 between them. For example, the Vox popidi is an attack upon the 
 economic conditions in the reign of Henry VII, and, as such, may 
 be profitably compared with the first book of More's Utopia; the 
 Genealogy e of Heresy e, as the name implies, is against the reformers; 
 and the Image of Ipocrysy is against the Church. Especially is it 
 
 1 It is to be remarked in passing that, as the first collected edition of Skelton's 
 works, that of 1568, was forty years after his death, the canon of his writings is 
 far from being settled. All that he wrote is not included in the Dyce edition, nor 
 is all in the Dyce edition by him. A modern critical edition of Skelton is, there- 
 fore, greatly to be desired !
 
 206 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 evident that, in the struggle following the Reformation, the same 
 form was used by writers of both parties, because they had the 
 same antecedents. And equally today such poems are interesting 
 only to the antiquarian. In form they are characterized by the 
 use of short riming couplets, or tercets, or even more, and by the 
 fact that the poem is divided into verse paragraphs. In form, 
 then, they resemble Skelton's satires. This is the simple type. 
 Unfortunately for the purpose of the analyst, as authors are 
 moved not by one but by several impulses, their works are rarely 
 representative of one force only. This is the difficulty of the class 
 that we have now to consider. With a measure of propriety they 
 might be discussed under Medieval Latin influence, under human- 
 ism, and under Germanic influence. The stanza forms employed 
 are both the rime-royal and the tetrameter stanza riming abbacc; 
 they are polemic dialogues, and many are printed, if not actually 
 written, in Germany. On the other hand, the Germanic factor is 
 due to the effect of political difficulties. They were written by 
 Englishmen, largely concerning English affairs, and with the de- 
 sire that they should be read in England. Therefore, the Ger- 
 manic element is reduced to the lowest fraction. 1 The fact that 
 they belong to the group of polemic dialogues shows the human- 
 istic influence. It is true that in Medieval Latin, one finds the 
 conflictus, a debate between personages representing antithetic 
 points of view. The peculiarity here, however, is, as in so many of 
 the Colloquies of Erasmus, that the characters combine to present 
 a single impression. The dialogue is used for exposition and for 
 attack. But there is nothing surprising in this combination of the 
 three factors, the Germanic influence, humanism and the Medieval 
 Latin. It belongs to the period. The cleavage between the Catho- 
 lics and the Reformers has now become world-wide. The tone on 
 each side has become contemptuous and bitter. No longer is it 
 possible, as it was for Skelton and Erasmus, both to love the Church 
 and to criticise her because of that love. The criticism, now, is 
 generated by hate. But the methods by which the humanists 
 had made effective their criticism had not been forgotten; their 
 weapons were reforged for a more deadly battle. And if the Church 
 had been restive under the well-intentioned satire of Erasmus and 
 the State under the plain-speaking of Skelton, it was inevitable 
 1 The reader is requested to refer to pp. 381 f. for a detailed discussion.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 207 
 
 that neither England nor any Catholic country would have been 
 safe for these new writers, that reformed Germany was of ne- 
 cessity their refuge. 
 
 But these writers were not Germans and they were not human- 
 ists; dominantly they belong among those influenced by the Med- 
 ieval Latin tradition. Although the majority of the early "mar- 
 tyrs " mentioned by Foxe belonged to the lower class, clearly some, 
 such as Bilney, Barnes, Roy, Barlow, Frith and Tyndale, were 
 educated in accordance with the theories of the order. 1 And it was 
 these men who voiced the feelings of their party. In them, the 
 Reformation became articulate. However much they might be 
 influenced by other forces, logically one would expect to find their 
 work characterized by the peculiarities of the Medieval Latin. The 
 illustration of this reasoning may be found in A Proper Dyaloge 
 between a Gentillman and a husbandman eche complaynynge to 
 other their miserable calamite through the ambicion of the clergye, 
 published at Marburg 1530. 2 Just at this time Tyndale was there 
 translating the New Testament, and it was presumably from a 
 member of the group associated with him that the dialogue em- 
 anated. As, on October 24, 1526, Tyndale's New Testament had 
 been publicly burned at St. Paul's Cross, at Marburg the ques- 
 tion of an English version of the Scriptures, it may be assumed, had 
 paramount importance. The Roman Catholic party, according to 
 More, did not object to an English version; they did object to that 
 particular version on account of the numerous changes. The 
 Reformers believed, or affected to believe, that any English ver- 
 sion was forbidden. 
 
 Yf the holy gospell allege we shuld 
 
 As stronge heretikes take vs they would 
 
 Vnto their churche disobedient. 
 For why they haue commaunded straytely 
 That none vnder great payne be so hardye 
 
 To haue in englishe the testament. 
 Which as thou knowest at London 
 The bisshop makinge ther a sermon 
 
 With shamefull blasphemy was brent.* 
 
 1 Cf. J. S. Brewer's, Calendar of State Papers, Vol. IV, Introduction, page del. 
 * This has been reprinted by Arber in the same volume with Rede me and be not 
 wrothe in his English Reprints series, p. 125. 
 1 Op. cit., 146-7.
 
 208 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 It would be difficult to find a more striking illustration of the folly 
 of publicly prohibiting a book than this, the burning of Tyndale's 
 version. The real motive was, of course, not understood, and the 
 imputed motive given wide currency. The poem argues that the 
 English version was forbidden, because the Church was afraid 
 to have the people read it, since in life and dogma the Church had 
 so departed from the teaching of the Christ; and that this had been 
 the case for generations. Consequently Sir John Oldcastle and 
 Duke Humphrey of Gloucester are cited as previous sufferers. To 
 drive home the continued contumacy of the clergy, in the middle 
 of the poem is inserted a prose tract "made aboute the tyme of 
 kynge Rycharde the seconde." The main interest today in the 
 piece is due to its curious composite nature. The first twenty-three 
 stanzas are in the rime-royal; then follows the dialogue in the 
 conventional scheme aabccb. The late date of composition is in- 
 dicated, however, by the fact that the couplets are in pentameter 
 and the differentia in tetrameter. Then follows the prose inser- 
 tion. This significant sequence shows the natural development of 
 the form for propagandist purposes, first the long and clumsy 
 rime-royal, then the dialogue in stanzas, and finally verse entirely 
 discarded for prose. Of literary value there is little. It was writ- 
 ten for a particular time, and for a particular occasion. In so far as 
 it met the exigencies of that time and of that occasion the author 1 
 was satisfied without considering the possiblejcommendation of pos- 
 terity. At least he may be praised for having kept his attack upon 
 a definite intellectual level and free from violent personal abuse. 
 
 Much the same general situation confronts us in the more 
 celebrated satire Rede me and be nott wrothe, For I saye no thinge 
 but trothe. 2 This title is obviously ironic; in fact, whatever celeb- 
 rity it enjoys is presumably due to its virulence. Although it was 
 issued anonymously, as early as 1529 More in his Supplycacyon 
 of Soidys 3 definitely names the authors as Friar Roy and Friar 
 Jerome. This is in a measure confirmed by Tyndale in his Preface 
 to the toycked Mammon. 
 
 1 This is often attributed to either Roy or Barlow. 
 
 2 This was reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, in facsimile, by Charles Whit- 
 tingham, Chiswick, in 1845, and by Arber in his Reprints. The facts concerning its 
 authorship are given by Arber. 
 
 J Quoted by Arber in his introduction.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 209 
 
 A yere after that and now xii monethes before the pryntinge of this worke/came 
 one lerom a brother of Grenewich also/thorow wormes to Argentine sayenge that 
 he entended to be Christes disciple an other whyle and to kepe (as nye God wolde 
 gyue him grace) the profession of his baptim/and to gett his lyuing with his handes 
 and to lyuve no longer ydely and of the swete and laboure of those captyues whiche 
 they had taught/not to byleue in Chryst: but in cuttshowes and russet coetes. 
 Which lerom with all diligence I warned of Royes boldnesse and exhorted hym to 
 bewarre of hym and to walked quyetly and with all pacience and longe sofferinge 
 acordinge as we haue Chryste and his apostles for an ensample/which thinge he 
 also promysed me. Neuerthelesse when he was comen to Argentine William Roye 
 (whose tonge is able not only to make foles sterke madde/but also to disceyue the 
 wisest that is at the fyrst syght and acquayntaunce) gate him to hym and set him 
 a werke to make rymes/whyle he hym selfe translated a dialoge out of laten in to 
 Englysh/in whose prologe he promyseth moare a greate deal than I fere me he wyll 
 euer paye. 
 
 More's attribution is stated as a fact in Bale's life, the whole of 
 which is here translated. 1 
 
 William Roye, a not unlearned man of his age, wrote in his native language: 
 Between a Christian Father and his Obstinate Son 
 
 A Christian Dialogue Bk. 1. It is not unknown to you, dearest. 
 
 Against Cardinal Wolsey Bk. 1. Go forthe lytell treatous nothynge. 
 
 And certain others. He flourished Anno Domini 1530. 
 
 Such are the facts. 
 
 It seems worth while to me thus to state in extenso the original 
 authorities, to show how very slender is the foundation of fact 
 upon which has been reared the mountain of assertion. Nor is 
 this peculiar to this one case. Such works were almost of necessity 
 published anonymously, the authorship was known to but few, 
 and the modern attribution is based upon a casual reference. 
 
 But if it be granted that More has reason for his belief, that the 
 authors of the poem were the two friars William Roy and Jerome, 
 from the Calendar of State Papers it becomes easy to identify them, 
 because both appear in the political correspondence of the time. 
 Roy has been sufficiently characterized by Tyndale, albeit some- 
 what unfavorably; again on the authority of More, it is supposed 
 that he was burned as a heretic in Portugal. 2 The Friar Jerome 
 associated with him in the State Papers is Jerome Barlow. The 
 
 1 Scriptarum Britannia, 1559, p. 102 in the section In Ipsa Brytannia Nati. 
 In translating the Latin I have used the actual English words of the poem. 
 1 More's Confutacyon, quoted by Arber.
 
 210 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 most vivid picture of the pair is given in a letter to Wolsey from 
 John West and John Lawrence, Observant Friars, dated June 12, 
 1529. 1 
 
 From information given by John Stanleye, sometime the familiar of our convent 
 at Richmond, we have made diligent inquiry for Roye in the Grey Friars in the 
 town of Yarmouth, but can obtain no knowledge of him. A schoolmaster of the 
 same town spake and drank with Roye betwixt Lestoe (Lowestoft) and Yarmouth, 
 in Ascension week, and showed us the features and the secret marks of his face, 
 the manner of his speaking, his apparel, "and how he does speak all manner of lan- 
 guages." On asking Roye whence he came and where he was going, he said he came 
 from over sea, and would go to the North parts; so we took our journey from Yar- 
 mouth to Norwich, supposing to gain more knowledge of him. But coming to 
 Langley Abbey we met a young man, come out of the North parts, from Lincoln- 
 shire, and we asked if he had seen such a person, and he said that two days before 
 he had met the said person a little beyond Attellbryge on the way to Lyne, and an- 
 other with him, who had a red head, which by all likelihood should be Jerome Bar- 
 lowe, his companion. When they approached his company, Roye left the highway, 
 and hid his face, but the fellow with the red head demanded of this young man the 
 way to Lyne, and then they made great speed, which made the young man suspect 
 that they had done some mischief. 
 
 From this time Jerome Barlow disappears completely from view. 2 
 We leave him with his red head still going north. 
 
 In form, the work which gives to these two writers their preca- 
 rious reputation is simple enough. The main body is a "brefe" (?) 
 dialogue in two parts between the priest's servants, named 
 Watkyn and Jeffray. The stanza is the octosyllabic aabccb, 3 
 broken by occasional insertion of "ballads " in the rime-royal. But 
 this is preceded by a series of introductions. The first three stanzas 
 of rime-royal satirize bitterly the Cardinal. Then follows a prose 
 
 1 Calendar of State Papers, Vol. IV, Part 3, p. 2503. 
 
 2 It seems unnecessary to remark that there should be no confusion between 
 Jerome Barlow, the Observant Friar, and William Barlow, the Augustinian canon, 
 who afterwards became Bishop of St. Asaph, were it not that such confusion has 
 been made in the Dictionary of National Biography. The only characteristic in 
 common between them is that each wrote dialogues. 
 
 8 This is a common stanza form in Medieval Latin, i. e., 
 
 Tales regunt Petri navem, hi nos docent, sed indocti, 
 
 tales habent Petri clavem, hi nos docent, et nox nodi, 
 
 ligandi potentiam; indicat scientiam. 
 
 De Ruina Romae, Walter Mapes, ed. Wright, p. 220.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 211 
 
 letter to P.G.N.O. of five pages written in the conventional 
 evangelical style. Fourteen stanzas in rime-royal succeed, forming 
 a dialogue between the Author of the Work and the Treatise; this 
 is an expansion of the "go little book" convention. This intro- 
 ductory matter is closed by thirty-four stanzas of a mock lamenta- 
 tion on the decease of the mass. These stanzas have the rime- 
 scheme of the rime-royal but vary from it, owing to the fact that 
 the last two lines form a refrain, and the last line is always an 
 octosyllabic, "Nowe deceased/alas alas." So far as the mere form 
 is considered, it is what might normally be expected from the date 
 and the authors. The bulk of the work shows the influence of 
 Medieval Latin, the writers had been Observant Friars, but 
 the dialogue is humanistic in its exposition of a single point of 
 view, and the use of the rime-royal shows the influence of the 
 English tradition. Thus, although there is novelty in the com- 
 bination, each of the composing elements is familiar. 
 
 The novelty in the content, however, consists in that portion 
 which caused More to allude to the work as "the blasphemouse 
 boke entytled the beryeng of the masse. " Here the Mass is per- 
 sonified and announced as dead. 1 But this is only a small fraction 
 of the whole. The suggestion that the power of the gospel will 
 compel the English clergy to bury the dead Mass, leads to an 
 attack upon the Bishop of London for the burning of Tyndale's 
 New Testament. And this, in turn, leads to an attack upon 
 Cardinal Wolsey. From this point for page after page follows a 
 succession of attacks upon the Church in England and her minis- 
 ters. Clearly written for propaganda, for this purpose there is no 
 insinuation too base, no slander too vile. They do not even spare 
 the order of which they were formerly members ! As it was written 
 merely for the reading public of that age, the allusions require 
 today a special knowledge of the period. 2 They state that Hunn 
 was murdered, that Standish is a Judas, and that Erasmus for 
 writing his De Libero Arbitrio was paid by a pension from Henry. 
 Naturally it is Wolsey who receives the full measure of their 
 hatred. Every possible scandal is raked together to anathematize 
 
 1 For a discussion of Herford's theory of the German origin of this conception 
 ( f. p. 441. 
 
 1 To understand the work, Park's notes in the Harleian Miscellany, Vol. IX, are 
 almost necessary.
 
 212 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the great minister. Except for the royal family, Henry, Katherine 
 and Mary, everyone connected with the Church and the orders 
 of the Church is most foully dealt with. If there were any desire 
 to present the truth, the work would be interesting as throwing 
 light upon persons and conditions in a transition period; if the 
 work represented even the opinions of a party, there would be an 
 historic value. However wrong we might think them, we would 
 be glad to know what people thought at the time. On neither of 
 these counts does the piece seem to me to have much value. 
 Written anonymously and circulated secretly, it is an underground 
 sewer of vile, corrupted matter. To call it a satire is to justify 
 billingsgate, since whatever power it may have arises from the 
 fact that the two authors lack any restraint in making their nasty 
 accusations. The plea may be made that they felt that in fighting 
 against the party in power any method was justifiable, and that 
 by their writing they were running the risk of their lives. However 
 convincing this may be as an explanation of the motive, it does 
 not alter the fact that the result is disgraceful. 1 
 
 But poetry of this type in the Medieval Latin was not limited 
 to the satiric. With Latin the common medium, naturally the 
 poetic measures used by the Church were also employed to express 
 all varieties of secular matters. At the taverns university students 
 carolled the charms of Bacchus and Venus; lovers extolled the 
 delights of their mistresses, and travellers wrote accounts of their 
 experiences. But through them all runs an element of the im- 
 promptu. It is this that gives the poems their charm. The writers 
 do not take themselves seriously, they are weighed down neither 
 with literary dogma, nor with conventional morality. They 
 breathe immortal youth, with its joyousness, its passion, and its 
 unrestraint. To this type, perfection of form and a nicely co- 
 ordinated balance of parts is foreign. There is no total unity and 
 no logical development. Here, in despite of the axiom, the parts 
 are greater than the whole. This condition it is that has caused 
 such a variance of opinion concerning Skelton's poem, Phillip 
 
 1 As I have expressed my opinion emphatically, it is only fair to quote Arber's 
 judgment: "Intrinsically it is one of the worthiest Satires in our language. Its 
 spirit is excellent. / say no ihinge but trothe is its true motto. It is more salt 
 than bitter: and where bitter, it is more from its facts than its expression." 
 P. 7.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 213 
 
 Sparrow. It is long, rambling, and incoherent. Its thirteen 
 hundred and eighty- two lines are broken into three distinct parts; 
 first a dramatic monologue, secondly, a commendation of the 
 suppositious author of the first part, and thirdly, a protest against 
 criticism. Between the three there is no organic relation. Over 
 hah* of the whole is occupied by the dramatic monologue from 
 which the entire collection takes its name. This purports to be 
 the lament of Joanna Scroupe, staying with the black nuns at 
 Carowe, for the loss of Phillip, her sparrow, 
 
 Whom Gyb our cat hath slayne. 1 
 
 On this thin theme are strung descriptions of the sparrow, in- 
 vectives against the cat, a long disquisition on literature, a mock 
 mass of the birds, etc. The form employed is riming couplets 
 of short lines. Even by this short analysis, the poem obviously 
 belongs to the type found in Medieval Latin. 
 
 But the fact that Phillip Sparrow is modelled after the neo- 
 Latin form, does not argue on the part of the poet ignorance of 
 classical poetry. Although for his purpose he preferred this 
 form, he both wrote humanistic Latin and read classical authors. 
 His Poeta Skelton Laureatus Libellum suum Metrice Alloquitur is 
 in regular elegiacs; his allusions to classical authors have already 
 been mentioned. And he proclaimed himself the British Catullus. 
 Therefore, those scholars that have seen in this poem a desire to 
 imitate the second and third poems of Catullus are merely stating 
 the case too strongly. Probably the fact that the Roman writer 
 has previously bewailed the loss of a sparrow may have made the 
 subject more attractive to the Englishman. Still more, certain 
 similarities are suggestive. The lines, 
 
 It had a veluet cap, 
 
 And wold syt vpon my lap. 
 
 And seke after small wormes, 
 
 And somtyme white bred crommes; 
 
 And many tymes and ofte 
 
 Betweene my brestes softe 
 
 It wolde lye and rest; 
 
 It was prop re and prest, 1 
 
 Line 27. Lines, 12O-7.
 
 214 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 have a certain resemblance to the Latin 
 
 nee sese a gremio illius movebat, 
 
 sed circumsiliens modo hue modo illuc 
 
 ad solam dominam usque pipiabat. 
 
 Not unnaturally, in so loose a form as that which he had chosen, 
 there was a tendency to put in any reminiscence or allusion that 
 seemed germane to the subject. Since he knew the classics, that 
 knowledge occasionally appears. 
 
 But the value of the poem is not due to classical influence. That 
 lies in the manner in which it mirrors the age and, also, the per- 
 sonality of the poet. The poem is read today partly because it 
 furnishes so much information concerning literary conditions 
 early in the sixteenth century. His struggle with the language, 
 his estimation of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, his account of 
 the books then read, all combine to create a legitimate, although 
 scarcely a literary, interest. From this point of view it is regarded, 
 not so much as a poem, as a document, and as such is often quoted, 
 just as in the present work there has been occasion to quote from 
 it. Useful as this may be, it is by no means the only interest in 
 this "exquisite and original poem," as Coleridge calls it. Skelton 
 is a "merry" poet. Written before his mind was occupied with 
 the turmoil of the age, he flings himself into whimsicalities 
 and fantasies. It becomes an intensely personal expression. 
 Dignity, reserve, restraint are cast aside and the poet and the 
 reader talk face to face. And this is the merit of the chosen form. 
 Dignity, reserve, restraint are not characteristics of tavern inter- 
 course. But the use of concrete detail is thus characteristic. By 
 means of it, the situation is completely realized, Joanna Scroupe 
 and her sparrow are sharply placed before the reader, and for the 
 moment time has lost its power. 
 
 Somtyme he wolde gaspe 
 Whan he sawe a waspe; 
 A fly or a gnat, 
 He wolde flye at that; 
 And prytely he wold pant 
 Whan he saw an ant; 
 Lord, how he wolde pry 
 After the butterfly! 
 Lorde, how he wolde hop 
 After the gressop !
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 215 
 
 And whan I sayd, Phyp, Phyp, 
 Than he wold lepe and skyp. 
 And take me by the lyp. 
 Alas, it wyll me slo, 
 That Phillyp is gone me fro! 
 
 Such a passage as this, in its concreteness, strikes the keynote of 
 the whole, half humor and half pathos. The reader smiles at 
 the grotesque catalogue and yet sympathizes with the little girl. 
 It is not a great tragedy, but after all it was her sparrow. It is not 
 a great tragedy, yet the woe of the child will today find response 
 from those that love animals. Compared to it, Gray's Ode on a 
 Favorite Cat seems hard and unfeeling. Both are jeux d' esprit, 
 but Skelton's poem has more of the heart. The result of a 
 Renaissance personality, familiar with the great classical tradition, 
 thus deliberately writing in a medieval form and with a medieval 
 point of view, is to produce a poem unlike anything in the pre- 
 ceding literature. 
 
 It has been possible to show in the cases of the Bouge of Court, 
 the satires, and Phillip Sparrow, from whence each derived the 
 form and how that form was modified. The first derives from the 
 medieval English tradition, the others from the medieval Latin. 
 To the second group belongs the Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng, 
 a poem rather notorious than known. 1 Yet it persisted in litera- 
 ture for two centuries, 2 and more than all the rest of the poems 
 put together explains the opprobrium Skelton's reputation re- 
 ceived in the eighteenth century. After an introduction of ninety 
 lines, describing Elinor Rumming, a disreputable aleswife, seven 
 sections follow in which a series of scenes in the bar are presented. 
 Not only is the subject itself a study of low life, the treatment, 
 also, is realistic to the extreme. As a medium sample of the 
 descriptive treatment, the following passage will serve. 
 
 With, Hey, dogge, hay, 
 Haue these hogges away ! 
 With .Get me a staffe, 
 The awyne eate my drafTe! 
 
 1 Roacoe's comparison of it with / Beoni of Lorenzo d' Medeci is misleading 
 except in ao far as the subject matter is concerned. The Italian poem is a jocose 
 parody of the Divina Commedia and is in terza ritna. 
 
 - It is included in a modern form in the 1687 edition of Cleveland's Works.
 
 216 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Stryke the hogges with a clubbe, 
 
 They haue dronke vp my swyllynge tubbe! 
 
 For, be there neuer so much prese. 
 
 These swyne go to the hye dese. 
 
 The sowe with her pygges; 
 
 The bore his tayle wrygges. 
 
 His rumpe also he frygges 
 
 Agaynst the hye benche! 
 
 With, Fo, ther is a stenche! 
 
 Gather vp, thou wenche; 
 
 Seest thou not what is fall? 
 
 Take vp dyrt and all, 
 
 And bere out of the hall: 
 
 God gyue it yll preuynge, 
 
 Clenly as yuell cheuynge! l 
 
 This is realism. In his effort to set before us the degradation and 
 squalor of Elinor's habitation, the poet shrinks from no detail 
 however disgusting, from no expression however coarse. The 
 same is true equally of the characters both of Elinor herself and 
 her clientele. 
 
 Another brought a spycke 
 
 Of a bacon flycke; 
 
 Her tonge was verye quycke, 
 
 But she spake somewhat thycke: 
 
 Her fellow did stammer and stut. 
 
 But she was a foule slut, 
 
 For her mouth fomyd 
 
 And her bely groned: 
 
 Jone sayne she had eaten a fyest; 
 
 By Christ, sayde she, thou lyest, 
 
 I haue as swete a birth 
 
 As thou, wyth sham full deth! * 
 
 In sharp hard lines disgusting details are thrust upon the dis- 
 gusted reader. If truth be beauty, and only then is this beauti- 
 ful, because it is faithful to fact. But in its grotesque fidelity it 
 is vital, with a vitality similar to that in the pictures of Jan Steen 
 and the Dutch school. In both the reader is convinced that he 
 is perceiving life as lived in the sixteenth century. So, compared 
 to them, Guido Reni's simpering madonnas become insipid, and 
 Hawes's allegorical fantasies fade away. And however unpleas- 
 
 1 Lines 16&-86, 2 Lines 335-46.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 217 
 
 ant may be the impression, yet such an impression is given that 
 it is impossible to forget. 
 
 Yet however unforgettable the impression, its unpleasantness is 
 obvious even to the writer. He feels, himself, that he has gone 
 rather far. 
 
 I baue wrytten to mytche 
 Of this mad mutumynge 
 Of Elynour Rummynge 1 
 
 It is with this feeling, perhaps, that he adds to the work an 
 apology. 
 
 Ebria, squalida, sordida foemina, prodiga verbis 
 
 Hue currat, properet, veniat ! Sua gesta libellus 
 
 Iste volutabit: Paean sua plectra sonando 
 
 Materiam risus cantabit carmine rauco. 2 
 
 It is thus a curious mingling of morality and humor. On the one 
 side, like Barclay, he is a medieval preacher. He feels justified 
 in descending into the depths that from them he may tell others 
 to keep out. On the other, the reader has the unwilling conviction 
 that descriptions written with such gusto show a familiarity with 
 disreputable resorts unexpected in a scholar, and an enjoyment 
 in them undesirable in a Churchman. Such a poem as this has 
 done more to justify the epithet "merry" in an equivocal sense 
 than the apocryphal Tales of Skelton. The coarse colloquialisms of 
 Elinor Rumming, however strongly may be urged the excuse of 
 morality, never would have come from the mouth of a "gentle" 
 poet. They belong to the tavern, not to the cloister. 
 
 And his art, in its most characteristic phases, belongs to the 
 tavern, not to the university. Although the impromptu nature 
 of the work belongs to the type, Skelton's overflowing spirits know 
 nothing of academic restraint. The poems as units are without 
 form and void. When his mind is started upon one line of thought, 
 he is unable to select; he goes on and on. This is the explanation 
 of those wearisome catalogues. The funeral of Phillip Sparrow is 
 attended by sixty-six birds. Joanna Scroupe's list of reading em- 
 braces all the books the poet knew. But this means that Skelton 
 had not learned the value of emphasis. Elynour Rummyng consists 
 
 1 Lines 019-41. * Dyce i. p. 115.
 
 218 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 of a series of descriptions of the various customers. And his satires 
 are built upon a number of invectives, in which a concentric plan 
 has been seen. Actually I question whether there was such a 
 "concentric" conception in the mind of the poet, whether on the 
 contrary the poems were not written each part by itself, without 
 much regard to the relation of each part to the total work. At 
 least there is no total effect. 
 
 Such considerations as these explain to some extent the con- 
 temptuous attitude toward Skelton's work adopted by his con- 
 temporaries, since contemptuous it surely is. In an age from which 
 so little even of the literature has survived, lack of comment con- 
 cerning a work means nothing; the surprising feature about Skel- 
 ton is that so much criticism has come down to us and that it is 
 all unfavorable. The greatest personal force in literature of his 
 age, he yet pleases no one. Churchman and courtier, scholar and 
 humanist, all deny him. And these comprise the reading public 
 of his day. This is the situation that requires explanation. Yet 
 that explanation is simple. To the Churchman and to the court- 
 ier he figured as the great opponent of their respective institutions. 
 And however true and however forceful abstractly may be either 
 Colin Clout or the Bouge of Court, exactly in proportion as they 
 are true and forceful, to the members of neither organization could 
 they have proved agreeable reading. To the scholar his work 
 brought the unrestraint of the unruly side of university life; to 
 the humanist he was perpetuating the Medieval Latin forms 
 against which humanism was marshalled as enemy in chief. That 
 Skelton did not sympathize with the humanists is clear from his 
 work; that the humanists disliked Skelton might almost be posited 
 a priori. To them Skelton's models, the Medieval Latinists, 
 were simply ignoramuses. They never tired of ridiculing the false 
 quantities, and the jingling rimes. 1 And since to them even the 
 propriety of writing in English at all was questionable, the im- 
 propriety of writing English based upon such models was be- 
 yond a doubt. Naturally, then, Lily closes his epigram against 
 Skelton by saying, 
 
 Et doctus fieri studes poeta; 
 Doctrinam nee babes, nee es poeta. * 
 
 1 Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum, passim. J Dyce, i, p. xxxviii.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 219 
 
 This from the humanistic standpoint was the simple fact. Ac- 
 cording to the new learning, Skelton neither had the method, 
 nor was he a poet. But unfortunately for Skelton, the new learn- 
 ing stamped its impress upon the Renaissance, even to our age 
 hi so far as we are part of the great movement. Consequently 
 while the great authors of antiquity are now read and their man- 
 ner studied, the Latinists of the Middle Ages are largely forgotten. 
 In proportion as they were forgotten, Skelton became transformed 
 from a powerful mordant satirist to a rjotous buffoon. To the 
 later Elizabethans he was a comic figure. Puttenham calls him 
 a "rude rayling rhymer" belonging to the uncultivated stage hi 
 our language before it was polished by the introduction of Italian 
 models. Meres adds that " Skelton . . . applied his wit to scurrili- 
 ties and ridiculous matters, such as among the Greeks were called 
 Pantomimi, with us Buffoons." Pope's epithet " beastly " goes only 
 one step farther. Even in 1871 Carew Hazlitt, in re-editing War- 
 ton, thinks it a "strange notion" that Skelton wrote English well! 
 Judgments such as these are based upon a natural misconception 
 of the type of work Skelton aimed to produce. Instead of being 
 a wild, fantastic, literary figure, actually he wrote in the manner 
 of a past age. 
 
 In this manner naturally he was not the only writer, and his 
 seeming predominance is certainly due, although primarily of 
 course to the vigor of his personality, in some degree, to the efforts 
 of I. S. who newly collected his works, for Marshe's edition of 
 1568. As the poems apparently were in most cases issued 
 separately, and as these separate issues survive if at all only hi 
 a single copy, were it not for his efforts, Skelton would be a much 
 less imposing figure. Owing to his efforts, to the very bulk of the 
 work, Skelton has imposed himself upon the imagination of the 
 succeeding generations as sui generis at the expense of contempo- 
 rary writers, and his reputation has swallowed theirs. But if it is 
 clearly understood that he is only the most prominent of those 
 writers following the precedents of the Medieval Latin and that 
 his work is, therefore, typical of a class, generalizations drawn 
 from this particular are sound. In such poems the lines are short, 
 rarely more than octosyllabic; the rime-scheme is simple, either 
 in riming couplets, triplets, etc., or in a stanza form aabccb. In 
 content, in contrast to the humanistic fondness for abstractions)
 
 220 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 they are concrete; in contrast with the artificiality of the Petrarchan 
 convention, they are realistic. With this recognition of the type 
 there ceases to be the necessity of enumerating the poems that be- 
 long to it. Of these there are quite a number that survive, and that 
 is probably but a small proportion of those that were written. 
 They are usually anonymous, they were published separately, and 
 today they appear either in single issues as curiosities, or in collec- 
 tions like the Harleian Miscellany, Arber's anthologies, Hazlitt's 
 Early Popular Poetry, etc. In each case the editor feels that he 
 has discovered a curious record of the past, a fragment of the "pop- 
 ular" poetry of the age. Of course such poems are not popular 
 in the sense that the ballad is popular. The authors were highly 
 educated according to the standards of the time, and the con- 
 ventions by which they wrote were definite. In so far as the con- 
 tent is realistic, they approach satire. And their concreteness 
 gives pictures of scenes in more or less low life. They thus form 
 a class by themselves. 
 
 Although this recognition of the type saves us from a weari- 
 some catalogue, or perhaps it is better to say it enables the student 
 to make his own wearisome catalogue, two poems demand attention 
 from their notoriety. The first is London Lickpenny, long attrib- 
 uted to Lydgate. This attribution is due to the fact that Stow 
 in his Survey of London states that it is by him, and a late MS. 
 (1600?) is headed "A Ballade compyled by Dan John Lydgate 
 monke of Bery about yeres agoe, and now newly ou'sene and 
 amended"! External evidence of the late sixteenth century con- 
 cerning poems of the fifteenth may be discounted at once. For 
 internal evidence Miss Hammond's conclusion must be accepted. 
 " In this matter of internal evidence, there is not a shred to render 
 Lydgate's authorship probable . . . That a series of reprints, begin- 
 ning with the year 1775, should have firmly connected this poem 
 with Lydgate's name, is but one of the freaks of literature; the 
 existence of such a series of reprints does not, however, add a jot 
 to the evidence for Lydgate as author of the poem. " x With the 
 traditional author thus removed, the problem of authorship is 
 thrown back upon the manuscripts. Unhappily of these there are 
 two, both hi poor condition and differing widely. The well-known 
 
 1 Miss Eleanor P. Hammond (Anglia 20, 404), has very ably given the facts. 
 In the MS. a blank space is left between about and yeres.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 221 
 
 version (MS. Harley 367) in a seven-line stanza is probably a recen- 
 sion of an eight-line version (MS. Harley 542), and this in all proba- 
 bility is inaccurate. Apparently a scribe endeavored to modernize 
 the poem by reducing the "Monk's Tale" stanza into the rime- 
 royal, although keeping the octosyllabics. The other alternative 
 is that both are recensions of an older original, conceivably by 
 Lydgate. With such lack of data there is no value in conjecture 
 as to authorship. Nor is the question of the dating much clearer. 
 The situation of the hero of the poem, his difficulties with the law, 
 suggest the chaotic conditions around 1500, a date partially 
 sustained by the mention of Flemings in the poem. And the fact 
 that the stanza form belongs to the English tradition, although 
 in octosyllabics, argues a transition period. The value of the poem 
 lies in the concrete detail, the casual pictures of old London, the 
 stock in the shops, the roguery in the courts, etc. As the refrain 
 is 
 
 But for lack of money I might not speed, 
 
 the satiric element is evident. 
 
 It is to be noted, however, that this satiric element is only in- 
 directly satiric, since the satire consists merely in the selection of 
 disagreeable details. Thus there is no impetus of personal attack 
 as in Rede Me and Be Not Wrothe and Why Come Ye Not to Court, 
 no accusations hurled against an order as in Colin Clout, The aim 
 is rather a cynical exposure of the social conditions. But in doing 
 this the author found himself confronted by the necessity of mak- 
 ing a list of social evils with little connection between them. Some 
 device was necessary to tie the heterogeneous matter together. In 
 London Lickpenny the obvious method is adopted of writing in the 
 first person, of having the ego experience a series of adventures 
 and then by binding the whole into a semblance of unity by the 
 use of the refrain. This is the simplest way. In the Bouge of Court 
 Skelton employs the elaborate allegorical machinery of the Eng- 
 lish tradition. 1 This may have suggested to him the advantage 
 of reversing the former conception, namely, instead of having 
 one person go to many places, to have many persons come to one 
 place. By this means he achieved what is called in the drama 
 unity of place. This is the method of procedure in Elynour Rum- 
 
 1 Cf., p. 95-96.
 
 222 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 myng. Here the stage is set and the various characters personi- 
 fying the various evils of drunkenness are brought before the reader. 
 The great example of this type in European literature is the 
 Narrenschiff of Sebastian Brandt. 1 In 1494 he brought out in 
 dialectic German a long poem in which the unity was furnished 
 by the concept of putting his characters on board a boat. This 
 was rewritten in Latin by Locher in 1497 and that in turn 
 translated into English by Barclay in 1508; although it is possible 
 that Brandt's work may have been the parent of all these various 
 modifications, his work, either in the original German, or the Latin, 
 or the English versions, differs from the poems we have been dis- 
 cussing in that the dramatic framework is scarcely used. In the 
 Narrenschiff, the ship is merely the receptacle of the fools who are 
 then described. But there is no definite relation between them and 
 the boat, and no action between the fools themselves. Whereas 
 in the English type there is distinct dramatic action and a sug- 
 gestion of dialogue. 
 
 This distinction has a concrete application in the consideration 
 of Cocke Lorrelles Bote. z It survives in a unique copy in the Gar- 
 rick Collection, British Museum. Unhappily this copy is muti- 
 lated and probably badly printed. Half of it is in the stanza form 
 aabccb, but for no apparent reason it drops into couplets, many of 
 which are really monorime. The scansion is very irregular, but 
 apparently the lines are octosyllabic. Both forms, then, are the 
 normal Medieval Latin measures. And the Medieval Latin is 
 also suggested by the repetition of words. 3 So far as the form 
 alone is concerned, it quite clearly represents the Medieval Latin 
 strain. 
 
 As the poem has come down to us, the fragment begins a little 
 before the middle. 4 Cock Lorell, the captain, is receiving recruits. 
 These are first characterized. 
 
 1 Cf. p. 248. 
 
 2 This was reprinted for the Roxburge Club in 1817, in an edition limited to 
 thirty-five copies; an edition of forty copies in 1841 with an introduction by James 
 Maidment; in 1843 for the Percy Society with an introduction by Edward F. Rim- 
 bault; and again in an edition of one hundred and one copies in 1884 with an intro- 
 duction by J. P. Edmond. 
 
 3 Color Repeticio; twelve successive lines begin with some. 
 
 4 The six A pages are lost, the poem beginning with B i. The text that I am using 
 is that published by J. and J. P. Edmond & Spark, Aberdeen, 1884.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 223 
 
 The nexte that came was a coryar 
 
 And a cobeler his brother 
 
 As ryche as a newe shorne shepe 
 
 They offred Cocke a blechynge pot 
 
 Other Jewelles they had not 
 
 Scant shoes to theyr fete 
 
 The coryer dresseth so well his lether 
 
 That it would drynke water in fayre weder 
 
 Therfore he hath many a crystes curse 
 
 And tho the cobeler for his cloutynge 
 
 The people blesseth hym with euyll cheuynge 
 
 To knytte faste in his purse * 
 
 Very quickly, however, this passes into a mere catalogue. 
 
 There is taylers tauerners and drapers 
 Potycaryes ale brewers and bakers 
 Mercers fletchers and sporyers 
 Boke prynters peynters bowers 
 Myllers carters and botyll makers, etc. 2 
 
 for eighty-eight lines. This part closes with the statement, in 
 which the weary reader is inclined to put trust, that 
 
 Of euery craft some there was 
 
 Shorte or longe more or lasse 
 
 All these rehersed here before 
 
 In Cockes bote eche man had an ore. 3 
 
 They then joyously cruise about London and, when night comes, 
 extend their voyage over the whole of England. It is evidently 
 in the nature of a vision, because suddenly an ego appears, 
 
 The bote swayne blewe his whystell full shryll 
 And I wente homwarde to mowe shame stere. 4 
 
 Very curiously on his return he meets with a company of persons 
 of both sexes in the Church who are vainly seeking Cock Lorell! 
 And the poem ends with a pious ejaculation. 
 
 Although undated, since it was printed by Wynkyn de Worde 
 it must have been done before 1534 when he died. A more 
 definite indication of the dating is the fact that the five illustra- 
 
 1 Page 2. Page 10. Page 14. Page 17.
 
 224 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 tions are free imitations of the originals in the Narrenschiff. 1 But 
 as Barclay's adaptation of The Ship of Fools was printed by Pynson 
 in 1509, it scarcely seems probable that Wynkyn de Worde would 
 have thus copied his rival. It is more likely that for his English 
 poem he copied illustrations from the Latin edition of Locher. 
 The dating of the poem, then, would be around 1500. But if this 
 be true, the similarity between Cock LorelVs Bote and the Narren- 
 schiff becomes very slight. Professor Herford thinks that the 
 first was suggested by the chapter Das schluraffen schiff of the 
 latter and quotes the lines from Barclay to show the resemblance. 2 
 
 Here shall Jacke charde, my brother Robyn hyll 
 With Myllers and bakers that weyght and mesure, hate 
 All stelynge taylers: as soper; and Manshyll 
 Receyve theyr rowme. 
 
 But these lines are in neither the German nor the Latin! Nor 
 has the chapter, a curious Odyssey in classic seas, much resem- 
 blance to the vividly local voyage of Cock Lorell. Whatever 
 similarity may be found in such passages, then, is probably due 
 rather to the omnivorous Barclay than to the anonymous author 
 of Cock LorelVs Bote. 
 
 But the moment this conception that Cock LorelVs Bote is an 
 English modification of a foreign idea is abandoned, the poem ap- 
 pears as the Medieval Latin type and its characteristics become nor- 
 mal. There is nothing surprising in its incoherence, its cataloguing, 
 or its concreteness. They all belong to the type* Nor when judged 
 in comparison with others of the same sort does it seem noteworthy. 
 Surely it lacks the swing of London Lickpenny, and the author 
 has not a tithe of the power of Skelton. Even the last character- 
 
 1 Herford, Literary Relations op. cit., 342. "All the five woodcuts in the Cock 
 Lorell's Bote are free imitations of originals in the Ship of Fools. None stand in very 
 obvious relation to the text. That at B ii., (a Fool, with outstretched tongue, 
 standing before a tree up which a magpie is ascending to her nest) is from the chap- 
 ter Of to much speaking or balling. That at B iii., (the hunter whose dogs are divided 
 between the attractions of two hares running in opposite directions) is taken from 
 the illustration to the chapter Of him that together would serve two masters. Those 
 at B.v. and C ii, are identical, and are freely adapted from the Universal Ship 
 (Schluraffenschijf). That on C iii, (four Fools playing cards round a table) is also 
 freely adapted from the chapter on Card players and dyaers" I quote Professor 
 Herford's note as I have never seen the original. 
 
 1 Ibid, page 347.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 225 
 
 istic, the use of concrete detail, has been overstressed. There is, 
 of course, an antiquarian interest in allusions to old London. 
 
 There came suche a winde fro wynchester 
 
 That blewe these women ouer the ryuer 
 
 In wherye as I wyll you tell 
 
 Some at saynt Katcryns stroke a grounde 
 
 And many in holborne were founde 
 
 Some at saynt Gyles I trowe 
 
 Also in aue maria aly and at westmenster 
 
 And some in shordyche drewe theder 
 
 With grete lamentacyon. [Page 8.] 
 
 Naturally in comparison with the humanistic moralizations of 
 Barclay, this seems startling. In comparison, however, with the 
 vividness of Elynour Rummyng it is quite simple. The reader 
 finds also the list of fools after Lydgate, the pre-Reformation 
 joking on religious immorality, and the characteristic indirect 
 satire. It is in fact so definite a specimen of the type that, were 
 it not for the notoriety it has obtained from the mis-classification, 
 the amount of space here given to the discussion could not be 
 justified. 1 Its conformity to the type seems to imply an early 
 dating. 
 
 At least, in poems of the middle of Henry's reign the reader is 
 conscious of a mingling of elements. The Hye Way to the Spiital 
 Hotis, compiled and printed by Robert Copland, by its allusion 
 to the Act of 22nd Henry Eighth 2 and its mention of false popery 3 
 must have been written in 1535. Here then we shall find the late 
 development of this type. It opens with twelve stanzas of rime- 
 royal, the body of it is in the heroic couplet, and it closes with the 
 
 1 A question, quite apart from the literary one, arises concerning the historicity 
 of Cock Lorell. Samuel Rowlands in 1610 states that he was a tinker and lived 
 until the year 1533. Unhappily, aside from the date, he seems to have gathered 
 his information from a tract printed by John Awdely in 1566, in which Cock Lorell 
 is a character. I can find no historical allusion to such a person, and the name, 
 Chief Knave, is a priori, against such historicity. On the other hand Cock Lorell 
 is alluded to by Feylde, Controversy between a Lover and a Jay (ante 1530), in Hye 
 Way to the Spyttel Hous (1535?), Doctor Double Ale (1545?), Heywood, Proverbs 
 (1556), Gascoigne, Adventures of Master F. I. (1577), and by Ben Johnson, Gypsies 
 Metamorphosed. As this wealth of allusion through the century cannot be explained 
 either from the historical standpoint or from the popularity of the particular poem, 
 we must be dealing here with a lost proverb. 
 
 *V.S76. V.551.
 
 226 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Lydgatean apology. In its cataloguing it suggests the Order of 
 Fools. So far it follows the lines of the English tradition. Yet 
 instead of the expected allegory, or the conflictus, there is a 
 humanistic dialogue. But instead of the humanistic point of view, 
 there follows a realistic description of vagabondage in London. 
 The poem proper opens with the conventional astronomical be- 
 ginning, to change suddenly into the concrete. 1 
 
 But playnly to say, even as the tyme was. 
 
 About a fourtenyght after Halowmas, 
 I chaunced to come by a certayn spyttell, 
 
 Where I thought best to tary a lyttell, 
 
 And vnder the porche for to take socour, 
 
 To abyde the passyng of a stormy shour; 
 
 For it had snowen, and frosen very strong, 
 
 With great ysesycles on the cues long, 
 The sharp north wynd hurled bytterly, 
 
 And with black cloudes darked was the sky. 
 Lyke as, in wenter, some days be naturall 
 
 With frost, and rayne, and stormes ouer all. 
 
 While standing there he enters into conversation with the porter 
 of the hospital in regard to the type of person aided by it. This 
 hospital refuses the professional beggar, the false soldier, the false 
 priest, and the false student of medicine. Incidentally these are 
 all characterized and their tricks exposed. 2 This occupies five 
 hundred and sixty-two lines. Here comes a distinct break. 
 
 Tell me shortly of all folke in generall, 
 That come the hye way to the hospytall. 
 
 Then follows roughly five hundred lines more of condensed 
 cataloguing of the various evil doers. Suggesting the scholastic 
 tradition, Latin appears in the verse, but instead of the accentual 
 Medieval Latin it consists of Biblical quotations, or humanistic 
 verse. The power of the poem lies in its concrete detail. The 
 professional beggars have their haunts 3 where 
 
 1 1 am using the text in Hazlitt's Early Popular Poetry, 1866, IV, 126. 
 
 2 These characterizations may be compared with those of the beggar, the soldier 
 and the priest in Mother Hubberd's Tale. 
 
 1 It will be remembered that two hundred years later the unsavory crowning of 
 Shadwell as Mac Flecknoe took place in the Barbican.
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 227 
 
 Close to the Walls which fair Augusta bind, 
 (The fair Augusta much to fears inclin'd) 
 An ancient fabrick raised t'inform the sight, 
 There stood of yore, and Barbican it hight: 
 
 Mac Flecknoe, 64-7. 
 
 In the Berbycan and in Turnmyll strete, 
 In Houndesdyche and behynd the Flete. . .* 
 
 This particularization may be illustrated in another way, in the 
 long account of the fraud perpetrated by the rogue physician. 
 In company with his servant he arrives at a farm house. As he 
 feigns that he cannot speak English, 
 
 With, me non spek Englys by my fayt: 
 My seruaunt spek you what me sayt, 1 
 
 his servant conducts the conversation, all of which tends to the 
 glorification of his master's skill. While they talk, the rogue dis- 
 covers a "postum" in the stomach of the child. He will cure it, 
 but he will take no pay. And these two depart. The trap being 
 thus baited, the third member of the gang arrives the next day, 
 makes the same diagnosis, praises the "doctor" in whose favor 
 in any case the family is now prejudiced because he took no money, 
 and the gang live upon the family for a fortnight. Each step in 
 the process thus outlined is developed with definite detail. We 
 are told what the hostess said, the servant said, the doctor said. 
 The last apparently speaks French with Italian reminiscences. 
 For example, 
 
 Dys infant rumpre vng grand postum,* 
 
 Viginti solidi pour fournir vostre coffre, 4 
 
 Non, poynt d'argent, sayth he, pardeu, ie non cure. 1 
 
 A description such as this of the "clewners" 6 gives the difference 
 
 1 Vv. 241-2. 
 1 Vv. 439-40. 
 
 V. 467. 
 4 V. 482. 
 *V. 484. 
 
 This variety of rogue is not listed in Harman's Caveat or Warning for Common 
 Curriiors, 1573.
 
 228 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 between the scholastic tradition and the humanistic attitude. 
 Whereas humanism tended to stress generalizations and abstrac- 
 tions, scholasticism tended to stress the individual. That is the 
 change made by Locher in re-writing the scholastic Narrenschi/, 
 and when Barclay in accordance with his scholastic training in- 
 troduced the English specific detail, he produced quite uncon- 
 sciously the effect of the original German. Consequently between 
 the Ship of Fools and the Hye Way there is a puzzling resemblance, 
 the difference consisting only in the amount of stress. In a 
 humanistic original Barclay interpolates scholastic detail; to a 
 scholastic treatment Copland adds the humanist's love for gen- 
 eralizations. 
 
 If the resemblance of the first hah* of the Hye Way is to the 
 Ship of Fools, the second hah* suggests Cock Lorelles Bote. Instead 
 of a general crowd of knaves, "The thyrde persone of Englande, " * 
 coming to the boat, an unestimated, but innumerable, crowd of 
 fools seek refuge in the hospital. The beneficiaries are more 
 numerous than the guests of Cock Lorell, because the latter are 
 expressly included. 2 In any case, the number would be greater, 
 since all are reckoned that may come to this sad end, vicious 
 priests, and clerks, bailiffs, stewards, provision-buyers, renters, 
 paymasters, creditors, negligent receivers, lazy farmers, merchants 
 of poor judgment, thriftless craftsmen, penniless courtiers, knaves, 
 taverners, etc., etc., even to the husband and wife that quarrel. 
 Thus, while the Bote enumerates all the rogues of England, the 
 Hye Way lists also all the unfortunate. By this method the author 
 gives a vivid and sinister picture of social conditions during the 
 middle of Henry's reign. 
 
 This vivid but sinister view of society may be said to be both the 
 literary contribution and the limitation of this type. On the one 
 side it may be argued that there is a very real value in having thus 
 thrust upon the reader the fact that life in those days was not all 
 beer and skittles. With the sporadic popularity of the swash- 
 buckler novel, with its romantic love and clashing sword-play, the 
 
 1 Cocke Lorelles Bote . . . fifth line from the end. 
 
 The Hye Way, 1058-60. 
 
 Copland. Come ony maryners hyther of Cok Lorels bote? 
 
 Porter. Euery day they be alway a flote: 
 
 We must them receyue, and gyue them costes fre. . .
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION 229 
 
 realization that life then was real and, to the majority, somber, 
 justifies the existence of such works. Its limitation is equally 
 obvious. While the reader feels convinced that Elinor Rumming 
 existed, and that frauds and cheats abounded, it does not make for 
 pleasant reading. Necessarily there is, and can be, no elevation. 
 So he puts down the work with the feeling that it is not worth 
 the effort, that it is too late to reform, and that ignorance 
 is bliss. There is enough that is sordid around us without the 
 accumulation of past centuries. Such poems, not only in form but 
 even in content, have been relegated to the special student. For 
 since each age has its own problems and is equally careless of the 
 sufferings of the past, so this type gradually passed away without 
 having a definite effect upon the following literatures. Skelton's 
 saturnine personality alone survived the wreck, although in a 
 distorted shape, while kindly oblivion has overtaken the others 
 of the school.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HUMANISM 
 
 At the same time that some men of the Renaissance were try- 
 ing to create a new literature by reviving and modifying old medi- 
 eval forms of verse, others turned to foreign literatures in search 
 of models. This is what was to be expected. In literature there 
 is no protection for the native product; that must compete with 
 foreign importation and is often driven out. Such a catastrophe 
 had fallen upon the alliterative verse forms of Early English poetry; 
 in the fourteenth century they had succumbed before continental 
 verse-forms, which, in turn, had become naturalized, and become 
 English just as the Norman conquerors had become English, and 
 the assimilation was complete. The contest between the estab- 
 lished poetry and the foreign, although continuous, is rarely so 
 apparent as in the reign of Henry VII and that of his son. Owing 
 to the break in literary continuity, due to the wars of the fifteenth 
 century, not only were the traditional poetic forms obsolete, but 
 even the very language in which they were written, had changed. 
 When the country was again in a sufficiently peaceful condition 
 to permit of much writing, the question was put to each author 
 what forms to use. Some revived the medieval tradition; 1 others 
 experimented in adapting those from the Medieval Latin; 2 still 
 others turned to classical Latin for their models. And as the classi- 
 cal Latin writers were pagan, rather than Christian, and dealt with 
 mundane affairs rather than with "divine" theology, their imi- 
 tators and followers were called humanists. 
 
 Humanism may be defined as a revival of interest in classical 
 life and in classical literature. Such an interest may manifest itself 
 in various ways. Some humanists advocated the substitution of 
 Latin for the vernacular as a literary medium. Others felt that 
 English written according to classical principles would be the ideal 
 condition. Still others were satisfied with assimilating the classical 
 attitude toward life. And there were some writers whose human- 
 1 Chapter 2. * Chapter 3. 
 
 280
 
 HUMANISM 231 
 
 ism went little farther than the use of names and allusions drawn 
 from classical stories. 
 
 It is not possible to date accurately the beginning of the 
 movement. The statement is not true that Latin was not read 
 during the Middle Ages. So far as the language is concerned, it 
 was always known, because it was the language employed in the 
 services of the Church. Consequently as every clerk must know 
 Latin, and as the greater proportion of the educated was to be found 
 among the Clergy, the use of Latin in a book not only did not 
 hinder its circulation, but it was actually an aid, since it freed the 
 thought from the limitations of the vernacular. Consequently, 
 from the very earliest times and aside from any merely ecclesiasti- 
 cal use, books were written in England and by Englishmen in the 
 Latin language. 
 
 Yet during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there was a 
 shifting of emphasis from the spiritual to the literary interest in 
 the classics. It is one thing to read Ovid as a possible precursor 
 of Christianity, and quite another to read him as an erotic poet. 
 This change is shown by contrasting the proportion of theology 
 and literature in such a list as that of the library of Oriel 
 College in 1379, with the books sold in Oxford by John Dome in 
 1520. The first lists almost exclusively works dealing with theo- 
 logy; the second has a large proportion of literature. In 1379 the 
 library of Oriel had but one hundred and twenty books. These 
 were the result of painful hours of weary scribes. They were 
 written, page after page, in longhand, and the initials were illumi- 
 nated and inclosed minatures of the Virgin and the saints. Each 
 volume bore witness to an age when time was of little value and 
 when readers were few but earnest. Thus the dream of the Clerk 
 of Oxenford in Chaucer's Prologue is to have 
 
 Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed, 
 Of Aristotle and his philosophye. 
 
 When one has the instincts of a scholar and but twenty books, it 
 follows that those books are studied carefully. It follows also that 
 one is quite careful in choosing them. And Aristotle was regarded 
 as the best mental discipline to prepare one for studying theology. 
 But by 1520 with the great decrease in price came an increase in 
 the number of books and a corresponding decrease in the im-
 
 282 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 portance of any one book. Thus if one had to choose between 
 the Bible and Shakespeare, presumably we should all choose the 
 Bible; if, however, we might have both, the result would be an 
 extension of Shakepeare's influence. Automatically, without 
 considering other factors, the invention of printing worked in 
 favor of literature. 
 
 But while the invention of printing with movable type accele- 
 rated the development of the humanistic impulse by making the 
 classical authors accessible, the actual transition was by no means 
 instantaneous, nor is it so marked as the name, re-birth, seems to 
 imply. Naturally, with Latin as the universal medium of com- 
 munication during the Middle Ages, there was no time when the 
 classical authors were not read and their verse-forms studied. Con- 
 sequently in medieval authors, such as John of Salsbury, allusions 
 to them are frequent. And John of Garlandia appends a series 
 of hymns in the meters of the Odes of Horace to his Art of Riming. 
 Again in the medieval treatises can be found careful explanations 
 of the quantitative foot. It must be remembered that, although it 
 was the Medieval Latin that was normal, classical Latin was 
 not forgotten. 
 
 The best illustration of this condition is to be found in the work 
 of Skelton. He had received his training in the medieval manner 
 at three universities, and his reputation was that of one of the 
 learned men of his age. It is in this guise that he appears in the 
 first notice we have of him, namely that by Caxton. But that 
 the poet himself was conscious of these attainments is equally 
 certain. Latin tags, Latin allusions, even Latin reminiscences 
 occur at frequent intervals. In his satire Juvenal and Martial 
 are his shield and his buckler. Over and over again he insists that 
 their plain speaking justifies his plain speaking. And it may be 
 remarked in passing that the practice of Martial would serve as a 
 precedent for any amount of foul personalities ! In Skelton's list 
 of authors, the great majority belong to classical literature. Nor 
 did he refrain from versifying in imitation of classical Latin models. 
 In 1512, according to the date given in the title of the poem, he 
 wrote twenty -four lines of elegiacs celebrating the virtues of the 
 late king. As he quaintly remarks, they were written at the request 
 of Islip, Abbot of Westminster; perhaps it is hypercritical, then, 
 to object that they show no personal feeling. Like so much of
 
 HUMANISM 233 
 
 humanistic verse, they seem artificial. The same classical tendency 
 is apparent when in his own person he apostrophizes his work: 
 
 Itc, Britannorum lux O radiosa, Britannum 
 Carmina nostra pium vestrum celebrate Catullum! 
 
 Dicite, Skeltonis vaster Adonis erat; 
 
 Dicite, Skeltonis vester Homerus erat. 
 Barbara cum Latio pariter jam currite versu; 
 Et licet est verbo pars maxima texta Britanno, 
 
 Non magis incompta nostra Thalia patet, 
 
 Est magis inculta nee mea Calliope. 
 Nee vos poeniteat livoris tela subire, 
 Nee vos poeniteat rabiem tolerare caninam, 
 Nam Maro dissimiles non tulit ille minas, 
 
 Immunis nee enim Musa Nasonis erat. 1 
 
 Naturally, therefore, he practiced the gentle art of Latin verse. 
 To those pieces that have come down to us, conventional elegies 
 on court subjects, Warton gives the epithet "elegant." More to 
 our purpose, however, is the fact that he felt sufficiently at home 
 in the language to write jocosely and easily poems which show a 
 mastery of the medium. 
 
 This side of his work deserves careful consideration because 
 the originality and vigor of his highly individual manner in his 
 English poems tends to cause it to be ignored. It must be strongly 
 stated that Caxton's enthusiasm was for Skelton, the Latinist. 
 In the same way, there is nothing in Whitington's eulogy that 
 suggests that Skelton wrote in English. However apt we may 
 think the following criticism as applied to the Latin verses, it 
 is comically inappropriate if it is intended to characterize the 
 intentionally rough-and-tumble effect of the English. 2 
 
 Rhetoricum sermo riguo fecundior horto, 
 
 Pulchrior est multo puniceisque rosis, 
 Unda limpidior, Parioque politior albo, 
 
 Splendidior vitro, candidiorque nive. 
 Mitior Alcinois pomis, fragrantior ipso 
 
 Thureque Pantheo, gratior et violia . . . etc. 
 
 And of course it was because of this reputation as a Latinist that 
 he received the greatest honor of his life, the appointment as tutor 
 
 1 Garlande of Laurell. Lines 1521-32. * Dyce, 1, xvi-xix.
 
 234 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 to Prince Henry, later Henry VIII. Together with the poet 
 laureate-ship, this is his great rebuttal against Garnesche. 
 
 The honor of Englond I lernyd to spelle, 
 In dygnyte roialle that doth excelle: 
 Note and marke wyl thys parcele; 
 I yaue hym drynke of the sugryd welle 
 Of Eliconys waters crystallyne, 
 Aqueintyng hym with the Musys nyne. 
 Yt commyth the wele me to remorde, 
 That creaunser was to thy sofre(yne) lorde: 
 It plesyth that noble prince roialle 
 Me as hys master for to calle 
 In hys lernyng primordialle. 1 
 
 That this was the fact, we have unexpectedly the testimony of 
 Erasmus. His visit to the children of Henry VII is too well known 
 to need comment. In the preface to the poem, De Laudibus 
 Britannice, which he wrote on his return home, occurs the state- 
 ment: "domi haberes Skeltonum, unum Britannicarum literarum 
 lumen et decus," and in the poem itself the verse, 
 
 Monstrante fonteis vate Skeltono sacros. 
 
 That here Erasmus with his limited knowledge of English was 
 referring to Skelton's English poems, and this position is some- 
 times taken, is inconceivable. There is no patronizing attitude. 
 Erasmus was a poor foreign scholar, with his reputation yet to 
 make, who was then looking for a position and a patron. Skelton 
 was a famous scholar, tutor to a prince. Under these circumstances 
 there is no exaggeration in the statement. Nor is there any avoid- 
 ing the inference that it was the Latinity of Skelton that gave him 
 his early reputation. 
 
 But with all this, it yet remains that Skelton not only was not a 
 humanist, but he was a bitter opponent of humanism and the group 
 in England supporting it. The touchstone differentiating the two 
 groups is to be found in the attitude taken toward Greek. When 
 the "Greeks" vanquished the "Trojans" at Oxford, humanism 
 had arrived. The beginning of the movement, of which this was 
 an incident, may be localized in Italy and personified by Petrarch. 
 The Italian language is a natural outgrowth of the Latin; Italy 
 
 1 Dyce, i, p. 129.
 
 HUMANISM 235 
 
 was the home of the Latin Church; and wherever you go in Italy 
 the mind is recalled to the greatness of Rome by the greatness of 
 the surviving monuments. Arenas, gateways, arches, temples, not 
 only in the City of Rome but throughout the peninsula, memorial- 
 ized the time when Italy was Rome and Rome was the world. 
 Even through the Middle Ages the spirit of the past and reverence 
 for Vergil as the poet of that past survived, although in an imag- 
 inative and grotesque form. 1 It is Vergil that leads Dante on his 
 pilgrimage, and it is Vergil that Petrarch took as his model. Pe- 
 trarch stands at the parting of the ways. His allegorization of 
 the &neid is medieval; his enthusiasm for the artist Vergil is 
 prophetic of the coming age. 
 
 When Petrarch, as an old man, began the study of Greek, the 
 new age had begun. Greek thought and Greek literature, lost in 
 western Europe, had been preserved by the Byzantine scholars. 
 But as the Greek Church declined and the Greek Empire was un- 
 able to withstand the attacks of the Turks, the old causes of 
 rivalry, in a measure, disappeared, and little by little scholars 
 with a knowledge of Greek penetrated western Europe. Italy 
 from its geographical situation was first affected. Greek was 
 welcomed with avidity. It was not that here and there an isolated 
 scholar, a pedantic bookworm, turned to it; the whole educated 
 class felt its fascination. The situation was paradoxical and un- 
 paralleled. Not only the gentle aesthete but the hardened man of 
 action was equally enthusiastic. 2 
 
 The situation is epitomized in the story of the finding of the em- 
 balmed body of Julia, a Roman woman. According to the tale, 
 the enthusiasm for her more than modern beauty, the extreme 
 laudation that did not hesitate to institute invidious comparisons 
 between it and that of the saints of the Church, and finally the 
 quiet suppression of the body by the fearful Pope, all typify in 
 one dramatic episode the new age. 
 
 It is not necessary here to discuss humanism in Italy. The 
 substitution of the pagan for the Christian ideal of life, of Plato 
 for Aristotle in the domain of thought; the great stimulus that 
 came from the contact for the first time with the great Greek 
 literature, all this has been done again and again. It is suffi- 
 
 1 See Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages. 
 
 1 J. A. Symonda, Renaiitance in Italy, The Age of Despots, pp. 134-135.
 
 236 
 
 cient here, if it be recognized that the effect was to make of Italy 
 a center of world culture. As the characteristic medieval in- 
 stitution of feudalism had never there obtained a firm foothold, 
 so that there was less to destroy, plus the advantage of nearness 
 to Constantinople, in the progress of the new spirit Italy was 
 nearly a hundred years in advance of the northern nations. The 
 petty despot of a petty Italian town, without morals and stained 
 with crime, arrogated to himself claims of equality with the kings 
 of the untutored barbarians, and had his claims allowed. Are- 
 tino, an unscrupulously clever blackguard, is decorated with a 
 golden chain by Francis of France, and dedicates a volume of his 
 letters to Henry of England. To the modern reader, used to the 
 dominance of England, it is all inexplicable. He will never under- 
 stand the sixteenth century until he makes a mental reversal; it 
 is Italy, not England, that is dominant in the first hah* of the six- 
 teenth century. 
 
 That England should have lagged so far behind was her mis- 
 fortune, not her fault. There is the dawning of the Renaissance 
 in Chaucer. The lovely tradition that relates the meeting between 
 him and Petrarch, a tradition that, if it be not true, we all feel 
 ought to be true, represents dramatically the entrance of the 
 new age into England. In the next generation the character of 
 the " Good " Duke Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in its general 
 outlines recalls the Italian prince. The library given by him to 
 Baliol, in contrast with the library of Oriel, has a surprising per- 
 centage of mere literature. Unhappily the development to be ex- 
 pected from such a gift was retarded by the Wars of the Roses. A 
 state of unrest continued until the establishment of Henry Tudor. 
 Then with the settled condition of the country, there grew up more 
 and more a band of scholars studying the Latin, and especially 
 the Greek. Perhaps due directly to the gift of Duke Humphrey 
 the first humanistic studies centered at Oxford. Grocyn, Linacre, 
 Colet, Lily, Sir Thomas More, formed a group, the like of which 
 could scarcely be found in any one place in Europe, and has justi- 
 fied the well-known enthusiasm of Erasmus. These men, however, 
 were the first generation. Groscyn and Linacre had studied under 
 Chalcondylas and Politian at the Florentine court of Lorenzo. It 
 was from Italy they brought back the first great enthusiasm for 
 the new learning.
 
 HUMANISM 237 
 
 The effect of this enthusiasm for the Latin and Greek languages, 
 the desire to improve the native vernacular, differed in poetry and 
 prose. The fact that the Latin poetry is quantitative, rendered 
 the classics less available as models. At first what English poetry 
 gained from the study of classical poetry, (while theoretically stress- 
 ing serenity and broadness of outlook,) actually is shown since 
 the faults are best imitated by the frippery and artificiality of 
 the English. It is, therefore, no matter of surprise, however much 
 it may be a matter of regret, that the first poetic effort should be 
 to naturalize the most absurdly artificial of all forms, the pastoral 
 eclogue. 
 
 The life of Alexander Barclay is still largely enveloped in shadow. 
 In all probability he was a Scotchman, but he had lived a long 
 time in England. Connected with the Church, he had the leisure 
 to write, and connected with the court, he had the inclination. In 
 1514 the dating is due to internal evidence he brought out the 
 first five eclogues in English. The publication of these must have 
 been irregular. Bale, writing in 1550 to 1552, credits him with ten; 
 this must be an error. The first three appeared first, the fourth 
 and fifth straggled along later, but the prologue, which assumes 
 that they were all written at the same time, was affixed to the 
 edition containing the first three only. The three, as stated on 
 the title-page, were "gathered out of a booke named in Latin, 
 Miseries Curialium, compiled by Eneas Siluius Poet and Oratour." 
 The selection of ^Eneas Silvius (1405 1464) is not hard to ex- 
 plain. A thorough man of the world and a voluminous writer, 1 on 
 becoming Pope under the name of Pius II, he issued his rhetorical 
 apology, which heads his works. And as Pope he tried to unite 
 Christendom against the Turks. Thus he pleased both parties; 
 the sinners by his writings and the saints by his retraction. The 
 De Curialium Miseriis, that Barclay elected to versify, is a letter 
 to John Aich of sixteen pages of Latin prose. After an anecdote 
 showing his father's dislike of courts, he gives three orders of 
 fools; those who do not know what they wish; those who wish the 
 harmful; and those who, to attain their desires, seek the wrong 
 way. To one of these belongs the courtier who seeks honor, fame, 
 power, riches, or pleasure from a king. His life while at court is 
 not agreeable, and, when abroad, he suffers the inclemency of the 
 1 The edition of Basel, 1551, which I have used, contains 1086 folio pages.
 
 238 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 weather. This dilemma he proves by extremes, ignoring the ter- 
 tium quid. From the Ciceronism of the style, it is quite clearly 
 an academic exercise, a pleasing paradox. 
 
 This jeu d'esprit, written thirteen years before he became Pope, 
 was apparently taken by Barclay as having the full papal authority. 
 He stresses his author over and over again. 
 
 So writeth Pius (whom some Eneas call) 1 
 
 These be the wordes of Shepherde Stiuiua (sic) * 
 Which after was pope, and called was Pius. 
 
 No, but harke man what sayth the good pope Siluius. 1 
 
 This is justified by the fact that the main part of the first three 
 eclogues, (which fill twenty -seven large folio pages), is taken from 
 ^Eneas Silvius. The First Eclogue deals with the subject in gen- 
 eral; the Second with the life at court; and the Third with the 
 life abroad. From the second come the very realistic descriptions 
 of court-life, which are worth quoting for a counter-reaction 
 against the usual romantic impression. They are paraphrases 
 from the Latin, but at the same time in Barclay's mind they ap- 
 plied to English life. 
 
 Condon, forsooth it is as thou doest say, 
 
 But these be thinges most chiefe and principal!, 
 
 Onely reserued for greatest men of all: 
 
 As for other clothes which seme the commontie, 
 
 Suche as I tolde thee or els viler be, 
 
 And still remayne they vnto the planke cleuing, 
 
 So blacke, so baudie, so foule and ill seming, 
 
 Of sight and of cent so vile and abhominable, 
 
 Till scant may a man discerne them from the table. 
 
 But nowe heare what meat there nedes eate thou must, 
 
 And then if thou mayst to it apply thy lust 4 
 
 Thy meate in the court is neyther swanne nor heron, 
 
 Curlewe nor crane, but course beefe and mutton, 
 
 Fat porke or vele, and namely such as is bought 
 
 For easter price when they be leane and nought. 
 
 Thy fleshe is restie or leane, tough and olde, 
 
 Or it come to borde unsauery and colde, 
 
 1 Certayne Egloges by Alexander Barclay, 1570; Spenser Society, 1885, p. 11. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 7. 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 7. 
 
 4 By a misprint, this line is repeated in 1570 ed.
 
 HUMANISM 239 
 
 Sometime twise sodden, and cleane without taste, 
 
 Saused with coles and ashes all for haste, 
 
 When thou it eatest it smelleth so of smoke 
 
 That euery morsell is able one to choke. 
 
 Make hunger thy sause be thou neuer so nice, 
 
 For there shalt thou finde none other kinde of spice. 
 
 Thy potage is made with wedes and with ashes, 
 
 And betwene thy teeth oft time the coles crashes, 
 
 Sometime halfe sodden is both thy fleshe & broth, 
 
 The water and hearbes together be so wroth 
 
 That eche goeth aparte, they can not well agree, 
 
 And ofte be they salte as water of the sea. 
 
 Seldome at chese hast thou a little licke, 
 
 And if thou ought haue within it shall be quicke. 
 
 All full of magots and like to the raynebowe, 
 
 Of diuers colours as red, grene and yelowe, 
 
 On eche side gnawen with mise or with rattes, 
 
 Or with vile wormes, with dogges or with cattes, 
 
 Uncleane and scoruy, and harde as the stone, 
 
 It looketh so well thou wouldest it were gone. 
 
 If thou haue butter then shall it be as ill 
 
 Or worse then thy chese, but hunger hath no skill. 
 
 And when that egges halfe hatched be almost 
 
 Then are they for thee layde in the fire to rost. 
 
 If thou haue peares or apples be thou sure 
 
 Then be they suche as might no longer endure, 
 
 And if thou none eate they be so good and fine 
 
 That after diner they serue for the swine. 
 
 Thy oyle for frying is for the lampes mete, 
 
 A man it choketh the sauour is so swete, 
 
 A cordwayners shop and it haue equall sent, 
 
 Suche payne and penaunce accordeth best to lent, 
 
 Suche is of this oyle the sauour perillous, 
 
 That it might serpentes driue out of an house, 
 
 Oftetime it causeth thy stomake to reboke, 
 
 And ofte it is ready thee sodenly to choke. 
 
 Of fishe in some court thy chefe and vsed dishe 
 
 Is whiting, hearing, saltfishe and stockfishe, 
 
 If the daye be solemne perchaunce thou mayst fele 
 
 The taste and the sapour of tenche or ele, 
 
 Their muddy sapour shall make thy stomake ake. 
 
 And as for the ele is cosin to a snake, 
 
 But if better fishe or any dishes more 
 
 Come to thy parte it nought was before, 
 
 Corrupt, ill smelling, and fiue dayes olde, 
 
 For sent thou canst not n-ccyue it if thou would.
 
 240 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Thy bread is blacke, of ill sapour and taste, 
 
 And harde as a flint because thou none should wast, 
 
 That scant be thy teeth able it to breake, 
 
 Dippe it in potage if thou no shift can make, 
 
 And though white and browne be both at one price, 
 
 With broune shalt thou fede least white might make thee nice, 
 
 The lordes will alway that people note & see 
 
 Betwene them and seruauntes some diuersitie, 
 
 Though it to them turne to no profite at all, 
 
 If they haue pleasour the seruaunt shall haue small. 
 
 Thy dishes be one continuing the yere, 
 
 Thou knowest what meat before thee shall appeare, 
 
 This slaketh great parte of luste and pleasour, 
 
 Which slaketh daynties moste diuers of sapour, 
 
 On one dishe dayly nedes shalt thou blowe, 
 
 Till thou be all wery as dogge of the bowe, 
 
 But this might be suffred may fortune easily, 
 
 If thou sawe not sweter meates to passe by, 
 
 For this vnto courtiers moste commonly doth hap, 
 
 That while they haue broune bread & chese in their lap. 
 
 On it faste gnawing as houndes rauenous, 
 
 Anone by them passeth of meate delicious, 
 
 And costly dishes a score may they tell, 
 
 Their greedy gorges are rapt with the smell, 
 
 The deynteous dishes which passe through the hall, 
 
 It were great labour for me to name them all, 
 
 And Condon all if I would it were but shame 
 
 For simple shepheardes suche daynties to name. 
 
 With broune bread and chese the shepheard is content. 
 
 And scant see we fishe paste once in the lent, 
 
 And other seasons softe chese is our food, 
 
 With butter & creame then is our diner good. 
 
 And milke is our mirth and speciall appetite, 
 
 In apples and plommes also is our delite. 
 
 These fill the belly although we hunger sore, 
 
 When man hath inough what nedeth him haue more, 
 
 But when these courtiers sit on the benches idle, 
 
 Smelling those dishes they bite vpon the bridle, 
 
 And then is their payne and anger felt as gall 
 
 When all passeth by and they haue nought at all. 
 
 What fishe is of sauour swete and delicious 
 
 While thou sore hungrest thy prince hath plenteous 
 
 Rosted or sodden hi swete hearbes or wine, 
 
 Or fried in oyle moste saporous and fine, 
 
 Suche fishe to beholde and none thereof to taste, 
 
 Pure enuy causeth thy heart nere to brast, 
 
 Then seing his dishes of fleshe newe agayne,
 
 HUMANISM 241 
 
 Thy mlnde hath torment yet with muche great payne, 
 
 Well mayst thou smell the pasties of a hart 
 
 And diuers daynties, but nought shall be thy parte. 
 
 The crane, the fesant, the pecocke and curlewe, 
 
 The partiche, plouer, bittor and heronsewe, 
 
 Eche birde of the ayre and beastes of the grounde 
 
 At princes pleasour shalt thou beholde abounde, 
 
 Seasoned so well hi licour redolent 
 
 That the hall is full of pleasaunt smell and sent. 
 
 To see suche dishes and smell the swete odour, 
 
 And nothin to taste is vtter displeasour. 
 
 That can Amintas recorde and testify, 
 
 But yet is in court more payne and misery. 
 
 Brought in be dishes the table for to fill, 
 
 But not one is brought in order at thy will. 
 
 That thou would haue first and louest principal! 
 
 Is brought to the borde oft times last of all. 
 
 With breade and rude meate when thou art saciate, 
 
 Then commeth dishes moste sweete and delicate. 
 
 Then must thou eyther despise them vtterly, 
 
 Or to thy hurt surfet, ensuing gluttony. 
 
 But if it fortune, as seldome doth befall, 
 
 That at beginning come dishes best of all, 
 
 Or thou haste tasted a morsell or twayne, 
 
 Thy dish out of sight is taken soone agayne. 
 
 Slowe be the seruers in seruing in alway, 
 
 But swifte be they after, taking thy meate away. 
 
 A speciall custome is vsed them among, 
 
 No good dish to suffer on borde to be longe. 
 
 If the dishe be pleasaunt, eyther fleshe or fishe. 
 
 Ten handes at once swarme in the dishe. 
 
 And if it be fleshe, ten kniues shalt thou see 
 
 Mangling the flesh and in the platter flee: 
 
 To put there thy handes is perill without fayle, 
 
 Without a gauntlet or els a gloue of mayle. 
 
 Among all these kniues thou one of both must haue, 
 
 Or els it is harde thy fingers whole to saue: 
 
 Oft in suche dishes in court is it scene, 
 
 Some leaue their fingers, eche knife is so kene. 
 
 One finger gnaweth some hasty glutton, 
 
 Supposing it is a piece of biefe or mutton. 
 
 Beside these in court mo paynes shalt thou see, 
 
 At borde be men set as thicke as they may be. 
 
 The platters shall passe oft times to and fro, 
 
 And oucr the shoulders and head shall they go.
 
 242 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 And oft all the broth and licour fat 
 
 Is spilt on thy gowne, thy bonet and thy hat. 
 
 Sometime art thou thrust for litle rowme and place, 
 
 And sometime thy felowe reboketh in thy face. 
 
 Betwene dish and dish is tary tedious, 
 
 But in the meane time thogh thou haue payne greuous, 
 
 Neyther mayest thou rise, cough, spit, or mese, 
 
 Or take other easement, least thou thy name may lese. 
 
 For such as this wise to ease them are wont, 
 
 In number of rascoldes courtiers them count. 
 
 Of meate is none houre, nor time of certentie, 
 
 Yet from beginning absent if thou be, 
 
 Eyther shalt thou lose thy meat and kisse the post, 
 
 Or if by fauour thy supper be not lost, 
 
 Thou shalt at the least way rebukes soure abide 
 
 For not attending and fayling of thy tide. 
 
 Onions or garlike, which stamped Testilis, 
 
 Nor yet sweete leekes mayst thou not eate ywis. 
 
 These passages, all from the Second Eclogue, illustrate Barclay's 
 method. They are "gathered" out of the Latin. Aside from the 
 inevitable dilution that comes from translating prose into verse, 
 they follow the Latin almost line by line. But not quite. Even 
 here Barclay wishes to adapt his material to his English reader. 
 Therefore he omits the various citations from classical authorities 
 that ^Eneas Silvius felt necessary. And in Italy, evidently, vege- 
 tables formed a large part of the diet. Among the ruined dishes 
 in the Latin is included a list of cabbages, turnips, pulse, peas, 
 beans, and lentils. But as they did not figure largely in the Eng- 
 lish diet, Barclay passes on to cheese and eggs. In regard to the 
 extreme anecdote of the finger in the pie, ^Eneas Silvius is quite 
 careful to report it as a story that "they say" once happened to a 
 Florentine dining at the table of an Archbishop of Stirgonia (Gran, 
 Hungary). The Italian gave it as a possible occurrence in a far 
 country. Barclay for the uncultivated English audience has no 
 hesitation in telling it as the usual happening at an English court. 
 
 When one considers the content of these eclogues, realistic if not 
 satiric, the pastoral form seems ideally unfortunate. It is neither 
 the classical conception, "toying with Amaryllis in the shade," 
 nor does it reflect the actual conversation of shepherds. There is 
 something grotesque in the thought that it is in such work that the 
 pastoral eclogue makes its appearance in English literature! The
 
 HUMANISM 243 
 
 reason for the employment of the pastoral form may be due to the 
 example of Octovien de Saint-Gelays, Bishop of Angouleme in 
 whose La Chasse et le Depart d' Amours, 1509, is included the Debat 
 du Seigneur de court et du Seigneur des champs. 1 On a spring morn- 
 ing, the author, leaving Paris for Tours, meets a group of cavaliers. 
 Among them are two, the Lord of the Court, and the Lord of the 
 Country, who in a dialogue discuss the respective advantages 
 of each locality. If two writers at about the same time happened 
 to translate the Latin prose into a dialogue in verse, the coin- 
 cidence is at least striking. The probability seems to me that 
 Barclay, in choosing the particular piece for his verse experiment, 
 followed episcopal precedent. 
 
 The main source of his form, however, is quite another person. 
 In his Prologue, after mentioning Theocritus and Vergil as writers 
 of eclogues, he continues: 2 
 
 And in like maner nowe lately in our dayes 
 Hath other Poetes attempted the same wayes: 
 As the moste famous Baptist Mantuan 
 The best of that sort since Poetes first began. 
 
 Baptista Spagnolo, usually called Mantuanus (1448-1516) was 
 the General of the Carmelite Order. His ten Eclogues, first printed 
 in 1498, achieved an immediate popularity, which they held for 
 a century. 3 With no more intimation than 
 
 But to the Reader nowe to returne agayne, 
 First of this thing I will thou be certayne, 
 That fiue Egloges this whole treatise dothe holde, 
 To imitation of other Poetes olde. 
 
 he proceeds to graft Mantuan upon the first three eclogues and to 
 combine others of his to form the last two. 4 As an illustration 
 
 1 As I have never seen this, I judge of it solely from the thesis on Octovien de 
 Saint-Gelays, by L'Abb6 H. J. Molinier, 1910. From the few verses cited, the 
 resemblance between it and the Barclay is no more than would come from versifying 
 a common source. 
 
 1 Certayne Eglogen, ibid., p. 1. 
 
 1 They have been edited by W. P. Mustard, Professor in Johns Hopkins Univer- 
 sity, with an excellent preface. Professor Mustard has placed all students of Eng- 
 lish in his debt by tracing the sixteenth century imitations of Mantuan. 
 
 4 " Barclay's fourth is a paraphrase of Mantuun's fifth; his fifth is a paraphrase of 
 Mantuan's sixth, with the insertion of a long passage taken from Mantuan 'a
 
 244 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 of his method, the First Eclogue will serve. The first thirty-seven 
 lines from Mantuan's Third Eclogue are here expanded to one hun- 
 dred and eight lines. In reply to the question, of what crime are 
 we guilty, the reply is the single line 
 
 lurgia, furta, ire Venus, et mendacia, rixse. 
 This hi Barclay's version becomes eight lines. 
 
 Nowe trust me truly though thou be neuer so wroth, 
 I nought shall abashe to thee to say the troth: 
 Though we shepheardes be out of company, 
 Without occasion we Hue vnhappely, 
 Seke well among vs and playnly thou shalt see 
 Theft, braiding, malice, discorde, iniquitie, 
 Wrath, lechery, leasing, enuy and couetise, 
 And briefly to speake, truly we want no vice. 
 
 Poor Barclay ! "Briefly to speake " was out of his power ! The next 
 three hundred lines are original, and then seven and a half pages 
 are adapted from ^Eneas Silvius. Thus the First Eclogue is a 
 curious composite of three quite different materials. 
 
 But it must be said that all the three are assimilated into an 
 unity, and that, the unity of an English poem. This is accom- 
 plished by the interjection of local detail, and personal references, 
 even in the midst of the translated portions, and especially by the 
 long transitional passages that are entirely English in tone. The 
 first of these may be illustrated from the First Eclogue; the Latin 
 says that a man is a fool, if he choose the worse rather than the 
 better route to Rome; for Rome, Barclay gives a wide range of 
 choice. 
 
 As if diuers wayes laye vnto Islington, 
 
 To Stow on the Wold, Quaueneth or Trompington, 
 
 To Douer, Durham, to Barwike or Exeter, 
 
 To Grantham, Totnes, Bristow or good Manchester 
 
 To Roan, Paris, to Lions or Floraunce. 
 
 seventh (9-56). . . . The beginning of the first is due to the beginning of Man- 
 tuan's third (1-37), and the punning allusion to Bishop Alcock (p. 5) is adapted 
 from Mantuan's allusion to Falcone de' Sinibaldi (ix, 213 ff.) The beginning of the 
 second repeats a passage from Mantuan's second (1-16); the beginning of the 
 fourth reminds one of Mantuan's ninth (117-119) and tenth (137-141, 182-186); 
 and toward the close of the fifth (p. 45) there is a passage which comes from Man- 
 tuan's second (66-78)." Professor Mustard's Introduction, p. 48. Then he com- 
 ments on the resemblance between the riddles in the Prologue.
 
 HUMANISM 245 
 
 Twelve English towns are here given, three French, and but one 
 Italian, and Rome itself is unmentioned. ^Eneas Silvius makes an 
 exception of the courts of good princes, (and he names a x list), end- 
 ing with his particular prince. Barclay carefully copies this list, 
 ending, however, with an English reference. 
 
 Of suche could I count mo then a twentie score. 
 Beside noble Henry which nowe departed late, 
 Spectacle of vertue to euery hye estate, . . . 
 And Henry the eyght moste hye and triumphant. 
 No gif te of vertue nor manlines doth want, . . . 
 But while I ought speake of courtly misery. 
 Him with all suche I except vtterly. 1 
 
 And equally the same effect is gained by his use of peculiarly 
 English idioms and very vulgar English words. Thus in the Fifth 
 Eclogue he illustrates with a huckster, a costermonger, a hostler 
 and a barmaid named Bess, all of whom had learned to cheat hi 
 the city. 
 
 "What needeth more processe, no craft of the Citie 
 Is, but is mingled with fraude and subtiltie: 
 Saue onely the craft of an Apoticary, 
 That is all fraude and gilefull pollicy. 2 
 
 Naturally the poems read as though they were original composi- 
 tions. 
 
 This effect is increased by the insertion of long portions that 
 are not translations. In the Fourth Eclogue there are four eight- 
 line stanzas on sapience, and thirty-nine stanzas of lamentation 
 on the death of Sir Edward Howard. There is a casual allusion 
 to Colet. 3 
 
 I tell thee Codrus, this man hath won some soules 
 
 This device is still more apparent in the long eulogy of Bishop 
 Alcock of Ely, in the First and the Third Eclogues. It is really a 
 discussion of the condition of the English Church. Morton, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, "which woned in Mortlake," and 
 Alcock, Bishop of Ely, have died. 4 The first is praised for his 
 patronage of "thinges pastorall," and the second particularly 
 
 1 Page 6. * Page 44. Page S3. They both died in 1500.
 
 246 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 for his care for Ely Cathedral. But he adds that this cock l was a 
 protection against the foes of the Church. 
 
 And while we slumbered he did our foldes kepe, 
 No cur, no foxes, nor butchers dogges wood 
 Coulde hurte our fouldes. . . 
 This cocke was no more abashed of the foxe, 
 Then is a lion abashed of an oxe. 
 
 The difficulty in discussing an allegory is that there is a danger 
 of reading into it more than is intended. Yet the punning on the 
 name Alcock, suggests that by the "fox" may be meant Richard 
 Fox, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Privy Seal. The story is 
 told of him by Erasmus, who learned it of Sir Thomas More, that 
 he raised a loan from the clergy. Those who were finely dressed, 
 he argued, could afford to pay; to those poorly clad, however, he 
 declared that, as they must be saving money, they also could 
 afford to pay. This tale is dated by Fowler 2 in 1504. And if 
 this be true, the "butcher dog" may be aimed at Wolsey who by 
 1507 was 3 " intimate with the most powerful men at court, espe- 
 cially with Richard Foxe. " This seems rational in spite of Ward's 
 protest. 4 How far there may be other allusions concealed under 
 the cloak of the allegory awaits an answer by the special student 
 of the poems. 
 
 But upon the identification of these allusions depends also the 
 dating. Externally there is no help because none of the five early 
 editions have any date. As one, however, is by Pynson, who died 
 in 1530, they must be before that year. And as Alcock and Morton 
 died in 1500, they must follow that year. These are the two 
 limits. In his Prologue Barclay himself gives this account. 
 
 So where I in youth a certayne worke began, 
 And not concluded, as oft doth many a man: 
 Yet thought I after to make the same perfite, 
 But long I missed that which I first did write. 
 
 1 It is unnecessary here to see an imitation of Mantuan as does Professor Mustard 
 (op. cit., 493). Alcock himself was accustomed thus to pun upon his own name. 
 
 2 Dictionary of National Biography, Fox. 
 
 3 James Gairdner, Dictionary of National Biography, Wolsey. 
 
 4 "Little is known as to his relations to Cardinal Wolsey, an allusion to whom has 
 been very unreasonably sought in the mention of " butchers dogges wood (mad)." 
 Dictionary of National Biography, Barclay.
 
 HUMANISM 247 
 
 But here a wonder, I fortie yere save twayne, 
 
 Proceeded in age, founde my first youth agayne. 
 
 To finde youth in age is a probleme diffuse, 
 
 But nowe heare the truth, and then no longer muse. 
 
 As I late turned olde bookes to and fro, 
 
 One litle treatise I founde among the mo: 
 
 Because that in youth I did compile the same, 
 
 Egloges of youth I did call it by name. 
 
 And seing some men haue in the same delite, 
 
 At their great instance I made the same perfite, 
 
 Adding and bating where I perceyued neede. 
 
 This is so like Mantuan's prose prologue to his Eclogues that 
 coincidence is out of the question. 1 But here again, it is not the 
 similarity that is important; it is the difference. Whereas Mantuan 
 was fifty years old, Barclay is careful to state accurately that he 
 was but thirty -eight; Mantuan found his book with a friend, and 
 Barclay his among his papers, etc. The reason why these petty 
 details are of importance is that they show that in all probability 
 Barclay is telling what did happen. As has been said, the 
 Eclogues is a compilation. There were probably certain separate 
 works, such as the Alcock passages, the proverbs of Solomon, the 
 Towre of Vertue and Honor to Sir Edward Howard, and the 
 versification of the Miseries Curalium. To these from internal 
 references varying dates may be attached. The Alcock passages 
 allude to dates from 1500-07; the ^Eneas Silvius portions around 
 1509; the Towre must be after 1513. Then later, just as he says, 
 he re-wrote the entire mass in the framework adopted from 
 Mantuan, although the ./Eneas Silvius portion had probably 
 previously existed in the form of a dialogue. Thus there are 
 inconsistencies. Alcock and Morton are spoken of in terms that 
 suggest that their deaths are comparatively recent (1500); then 
 Henry VII has apparently but lately died (1509); and he 
 bewails the death of Sir Edward Howard (1513). Also there are 
 minor discrepances. A character, Faustus, tells him a fact that, 
 
 1 "Audi, O Pan, aenigma perplexum quod (Edipodes ipse non solveret. ego quin- 
 quagenarius ct iam canescens adulesccntiam mean repperi, et habeo adulescentiam 
 simul et senectam . . . anno praeterito, cum Florentia rediens Bononiam per- 
 venissem, intcllexi apud quendam littcrarium virum esse quendam libellum meum 
 quern olim ante religionem, dum in gymnasio Paduano philosophari inciperem, 
 Iml'-ns excuderam et ab ilia setate Adulescentiam vocaveram. . . ." Mantuan, 
 Mustard's ed., p. 62.
 
 248 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 word for word, is taken from ^Eneas Silvius, and yet in the same 
 eclogue he quotes ^Eneas Silvius by name. It seems clear that 
 in his 
 
 Adding and bating where I perceyued neede, 
 
 he did not always succeed in eliminating the lines of the addition. 
 As to the time when this final revision was made, there is no 
 means of determining. As by 1521 he had published a French 
 beginner's book, and as Pynson also published other works 
 attributed to him, it seems probable that he must have given the 
 Eclogues their final form not long after 1514. But the important 
 fact is that they represent a combination of the works of his 
 youth, and that these separate works were very free translations, 
 or rather adaptations from Latin authors. 
 
 It is this same union of translation and originality that marks 
 Barclay's chief work, The Ship of Fools, and which makes it per- 
 plexing. Yet the genesis of it is clear. In 1494 Sebastian Brandt, 
 the professor of jurisprudence in the new University at Basel, 
 published his poem Narrenschiff. His mind was bourgeois in 
 type, positive, narrow, and prejudiced in favor of the status quo. 
 In this respect he was typical of the majority of his contemporaries. 
 These qualities are reflected in the 3517 octosyllabic couplets of 
 the poem. The name comes from the symbolism of a boat, laden 
 with all sorts and varieties of fools, arranged in categories. Al- 
 though written in Allemaine German, its colloquial and proverbial 
 style rendered it extremely popular. 1 The next step was to free 
 it from dialectic limitations in order to appeal to an European 
 public. With Brandt's concurrence and under his direction, Jacob 
 Locher adapted the poem, as Barclay phrases it, "to the Vnder- 
 stondinge of al Christen nacions where Laten is spoken. " 2 But 
 this joint production is far from being merely a translation from 
 the German. Locher (Philomusus) later became an opponent of 
 scholasticism; even in 1497 his feeling for classical culture led him 
 to modify and to soften the original. In general he changes the 
 stress from Biblical to classical characters, and omits and expands 
 in deference to his humanistic audience. Consequently, to speak 
 
 1 There were nine German editions before 1500. 
 
 2 For a detailed discussion of the relations of these three editions, the reader is 
 referred to an article by the present writer in The Modern Language Review, Vol. 
 VII. No. 3, July 1913.
 
 HUMANISM 249 
 
 of Locher's work as a translation is scarcely accurate; founded 
 upon the German, and in most cases preserving the ideas and 
 illustrations of the German, it is yet an independent work. The 
 colloquial vivacity has been crushed into sonorous Latin. The 
 importance of this distinction lies hi the fact that it is Locher's 
 version, not the original, that Barclay avowedly imitates. 
 
 But the Locher is only the basis of Barclay's translation. The 
 fact that his readers had the verses of his Actour before their eyes 
 apparently made him feel free to add on whatsoever additional 
 matter he saw fit. Occasionally he reverts to the German original. 
 Often, however, he adapts the amplification of the French. For 
 example, from the same chapter of "Disordered Love," the Latin 
 dismisses the Anthony and Cleopatra story in four lines. The 
 details, filling thirty lines in the English are taken from Riviere. 
 And he feels quite at liberty to add his own material. The Envoy 
 of the Actour, Vol. 1, p. 174 has the first verse literally trans- 
 lated, as is indicated; the second, however, is original, without 
 any indication. The same is true, to a still more confusing degree, 
 of the Prologue. Here four pages are translated from Locher, 
 and then without any indication he adds two pages in the first 
 person, using his own name. With the Latin, it would be perfectly 
 clear; without the Latin, it credits him with many opinions on 
 satire. The same is true of the Argument. It opens : 
 
 Here after foloweth the Boke named the Shyp of Poles of the world: translated 
 out of Laten, French and Docke into Englysse in the Colege of saynt Mary Otery 
 By me Alexander Barclay. . . 
 
 and without any indication the rest of the page is taken from 
 Locher. Naturally readers of the Jamieson have seen a personal 
 reference in such sentences as: 
 
 For I haue but only drawen into our moder tunge, in rude langage the sentences of 
 the verses as nere as the parcyte of my wyt wyl suffer me, some tyme addynge, 
 somtyme detractinge and takinge away suche thinges a semeth me necessary and 
 superflue wherefore I desyre of you reders pardon of my presumptuous audacite 
 trustynge that ye shall holde me excused if ye consyder ye scarsnes of my wyt and 
 my vnexpert youthe. I haue in many places ouerpassed dyuers poetical digressions 
 and obscurenes of Fables and haue concluded my worke in rude langage as shall 
 apere in my translacion." ' 
 
 1 Sensus enim duntaxat notasque vernaculi carminis simplici numero latrine 
 transtulimus. Quapropter et veniam prsesumptse nostrae audutue ab omnibus 
 lectoribus nos consecuturos confidimus si prius ingenii nostri mediocritatem : et
 
 250 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Actually it is but a free version from the Latin. And the next 
 sentence : 
 
 But the speciyl cawse that mouethe me to this besynes is to auoyde the exe- 
 crable inconuenyences of ydilnes . . . and to the vtter derision of obstynat men 
 delitynge them in folyes and mysgouernance. 
 
 is taken from the French. 1 The following sentences are rather 
 vaguely suggested by Riviere, and the end is original. Thus the 
 Argument is not a bad epitome of the whole. The basis is the 
 version of Locher, which was printed immediately before, but upon 
 it Barclay felt at liberty to add whatever he either found in other 
 versions, or invented. 2 
 
 As this method of composition, or translation, is followed also 
 in the Mirror of Good Manners (1520?) from Mancinus, it is pos- 
 sible to discuss Barclay's use of material. In the first place, the 
 basis of the poem, whichever it may be, is a foreign original. This 
 is emphasized apparently, when the fame of the author will give 
 weight to the admonitions. Nevertheless, the actual translation 
 is but part of the whole, and Barclay's own additions (with the 
 exception of some of the envoys in the Ship of Fools) are not 
 indicated. Sometimes this additional matter is merely dilution. 
 Such, for example, is his rendition of the one line of Mancinus, 
 
 Nil melius latiis portat mercator ab oris, 
 into 
 
 No merchaundise better in Martes mayst thou finde 
 Then this little Booke within it doth conteyne, 
 No better thinge bringeth the marchaunt out of Inde, 
 From Damns or Turkic, from Damiate or Spaynge, 
 From costes of Italy, from Naples or Almaygne. 
 In all other Nations most forayne, far and straunge, 
 Can man finde no better marchaundise nor chaunge. 
 
 teneros lanuginis annos considerauerint. poeticas nempe egressiones: et fabulosam 
 obscuritatem studiose prseterii: nudisque et natiuis verborum structuris: facilique 
 sententiarum iunctura: opus absolui. Locher, 1497. 
 
 1 Fraustadt. 
 
 1 Ship of Fools, Jamieson, 1, 146. 
 
 The great foly, the pryde, and the enormyte 
 Of our studentis, and theyr obstynate errour 
 Causeth me to wryte two sentence-* or thre 
 More than I fynde wrytyn in myne actoure.
 
 HUMANISM 251 
 
 Usually, however, it is not simple expansion. The fact that in the 
 early editions the Latin text paralleled the English, made him feel 
 at liberty to add his own reflections, to drive the point home by 
 local allusions, by comments on his contemporaries, or by illus- 
 trations drawn from English literature. 
 
 .... for why my wyll is gode 
 
 Men to induce vnto vertue and goodnes 
 
 I wryte no lest ne tale of Robyn hode 
 
 Nor sawe no sparcles ne sede of vyciousnes 
 
 Wyse men loue vertue, wylde people wantones 
 
 It longeth nat to my scyence nor cunnynge 
 
 For Phylyp the Sparowe the (Dirige) to synge. 1 
 
 Or he may enlarge the point in gnomic, antithetic phrases. 
 
 What difference betweene a great theife and a small, 
 Forsooth no more but this to speake I dare be bolde, 
 The great sitteth on benche in costly furres of pall, 
 The small thiefe at barre standeth trembling for colde, 
 The great thieves are laded with great chaynes of guide, 
 The small thiefe with yron chayned from all refuge, 
 The small thiefe is iuged, oft time the great is Judge. 2 
 
 Naturally this stylistic peculiarity allows him to work in a large 
 number of proverbs, a feature that for some reason seems to be 
 counted unto him for righteousness. The effect of such treatment 
 is to make the poems read like original compositions. The foreign 
 material, German, Latin, or French, whichever it may be, has 
 been thoroughly assimilated, and adapted to his English audience. 
 Therein lies his art. He is not a poet but a preacher, taking and 
 adapting to his purpose whatever he thinks may improve the 
 morals of his readers. Thus his works are no more satires than is a 
 sermon. These are sermons versified. It was suggested to him that 
 he modernize a "Confession of Lovers" (Gower's Confessio Aman- 
 tis?) ; whereupon he produced the Mirror of Good Manners, which 
 
 Much briefly conteyneth foure vertues cardinal, 
 In right pleasant processe, plaine and commodious. 
 With light fote of meter, and stile heroicall, 
 Rude people to infounne in language maternall. 
 
 1 Skip of FooU. II, 331. 
 
 * Mirror of Goode Manners, Spenser Society, p. 34.
 
 252 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 To whose understanding maydens of tender age, 
 And rude little children shall find easy passage. 1 
 
 History is silent on the comments made by his patron, when he 
 learned of the substitution. Even Gower is light reading compared 
 to Barclay ! And purely for his readers' good, without a thought 
 of self-advertisement, we find him 
 
 Exhorting and praying the dwellers of Englande, 
 This new and small treatise to reade and understande.* 
 
 To the same reformatory spirit are due the Eclogues. In his own 
 mind, there is little pretence of a literary interest. 
 
 But if that any would nowe to me obiect 
 
 That this my labour shall be of small effect, 
 
 And to the Reader not greatly profitable, 
 
 And by that maner as vayne and reprouable, . . . 
 
 If any suche reade my treatise to the ende 
 
 He shall well perceyue, if he thereto intende, 
 
 That it conteyneth both laudes of vertue, 
 
 And man infourmeth misliuing to eschue, 
 
 With diners bourdes and sentences morall 
 
 Closed in shadowe of speeches pastorall. 3 
 
 The reader of the Ship of Fools is admonished 
 
 Amende your lyfe and expelle that vyce away. 
 Slomber nat in syn. Amende you whyle ye may. 4 
 
 Naturally therefore, disdaining "Clio nor olde Melpomene" 5 he 
 hopes for 
 
 The glorious sight of God my sauiour. 6 
 
 Obviously the "light fote of meter and stile heroicall" is merely 
 the literary sugar to the moral pill. 6 
 
 1 Mirror of Goode Manners, Chap, on Prudence. 
 
 2 Ibid, Prologue. 
 
 1 Certain Egloges, ibid, Prologue. 
 4 Ship of Fools; Exhortation. 
 6 Certain Egloges, ibid. 
 
 6 No name I chalenge of Poete laureate. . . . 
 Then who would ascribe, except he were a foole, 
 The pleasaunt laurer vnto the mourning cowle. 
 
 Certain Eglogues, Prologue.
 
 HUMANISM 253 
 
 Not only is he a preacher, but even in the dawn of the Renais- 
 sance he is still medieval. His only advance seems to be in his 
 objection to the excessive use of the syllogism, then in vogue. In 
 other respects, he stands still. At a time when, for better or for 
 worse, the human intellect was convulsed in the pangs that were 
 to result in the birth of our present age-spirit, in the age of human- 
 ism, he tells us: l 
 
 There is yet in prudence another fault and crime. 
 And that is, when people agaynst good reason 
 Wasteth and spendeth in vayne study longe time, 
 Searching things exceeding their dull discretion. 
 For some thinges harde be in inquisition, 
 Requiring great study, long time and respite, 
 Yet graunte they no profite, no pleasure nor delight. 
 
 In the age of Copernicus, he asks 
 
 What profiteth it man to search busily 
 
 The courses of the stars hye in the firmament. 
 
 What helpeth this study, here is time mispent. 
 
 And in the age of Columbus, he questions 
 
 Whereto dost thou study to purchase or obteyne 
 The science of artes or craftes innumerable? 
 Or to recount the countries and landes variable 
 Over all the worlde, where both the lande and water 
 Had their first beginning and situation? 
 
 Thus his influence is curiously negative. The Ship of Fools with 
 its detailed discussions of the minutia of life is the longest book of 
 don'ts in existence. Like all such categories it is dispiriting. It 
 is retrogressive in that the aim is to hold back the whirl of the 
 world. 
 
 His form, like his content, belongs to the past age. In his long- 
 est poem, The Ship of Fools, the Latin elegiacs, which were adapted 
 from the German octosyllabic couplets, are expanded into the 
 seven line rime-royal. Heroic couplets are used for the Eclogues 
 and couplets of sixes for the Mirror of Good Manners. For the 
 envoys to the chapters of the Ship of Fools he is apt to use the 
 
 1 Mirror of Goode Manners, ibid; Prudence.
 
 254 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 stanza form of the French ballade riming ababbcbc; sometimes 
 the stanzas are joined by a definite refrain. 1 The French origin, 
 if in this case it be not a translation or adaptation, is shown by the 
 fact that one refrain is entirely in French. 2 One envoy is a met- 
 rical tour de force of five stanzas with but three rimes and with 
 a refrain. 3 Even his verse-forms, as well as his conceptions, 
 carry over into the Renaissance medieval conditions. 
 
 Such, then, is the significance of his work. In comparison with 
 the poems of the English tradition, he brings to the coming litera- 
 ture a satiric force, a downright plainness, and a concreteness that 
 was lacking. He trades in personal allusions and undignified il- 
 lustrations. Like a popular preacher, all he asks is that his au- 
 dience get his point. 
 
 And ye Jentyl wymen whome this lewde vice doth blynde 
 
 Lased on the backe: your peakes set a loft. 
 
 Come to my Shyp. forget ye nat behynde. 
 
 Your Sadel on the tayle: yf ye lyst to sit soft. 
 
 Do on your Decke Slut: if ye purpos to come oft. 
 
 I mean your Copyntanke: And if it wyl do no goode. 
 
 To kepe you from the rayne. Ye shall haue a foles hode. 4 
 
 This is not literature in the sense that the Court of Love is lit- 
 erature, nor has it the humor of Heywood. Yet it has a boisterous, 
 rough, colloquial vigor. There is strength here, but no subtlety. 
 This, then, is the earliest poetic attitude of humanism; preserving 
 somewhat the form and somewhat the content, yet without at- 
 tempting to transfer either the form or the content, Barclay writes 
 an original English poem. 
 
 In the same category and contemporaneous with Barclay, whom 
 he mentions, is Henry Bradshaw. 5 The date of his death, 1513, is 
 given by a ballad which appears in the first edition (by Pynson) 
 in 1521. Inferentially he died young, an inference that is fur- 
 ther supported by his reference to Barclay, none of whose work 
 
 1 Jamieson 1, 284. Thus his Balade of the translatour in the honoure of the blessyd 
 Virgyn Mary, moder of god has two refrains. 
 
 2 llz sont toutz mortz ce monde est choce vayne, 1, 268. 
 1 Lerne to lyuve by the rede Rose redolent, 2, 16. 
 
 4 1, 38. The punctuation is so obviously wrong that it is not misleading. 
 6 His poem, The Life of Saint Werburge, has been edited for the E. E. T. S. by 
 Dr. Carl Horstmann.
 
 HUMANISM 255 
 
 antedates 1500. His only poem is a life of the patron saint of Ches- 
 ter, Saint Werburge, in 789 stanzas of the rime-royal. Like 
 the Ship of Fools, the main interest of this lies in the evidence it 
 affords of the close union of the English tradition with early hu- 
 manism. In form it closely follows the precedent of Lydgate. 
 It opens with the usual astronomical allusion, followed by medi- 
 tations upon the mutability of fortune, and it ends with the usual 
 apology. Instead, however, of invoking Chaucer, Gower and Lyd- 
 gate, Bradshaw omits Gower and substitutes Barclay and Skelton. 
 The body of the poem is a rimed chronicle. 
 
 On the other hand, exactly as in Barclay's poems, the original 
 is a Latin work. In this case, it is the passionary preserved then 
 in the monastery and since lost. 
 
 For as declareth the true Passyonary, 
 A boke wherein her holy lyfe wryten is 
 Whiche boke remayneth in Chester monastery 
 I purpose by helpe of Ihesu, kynge of blys, 
 In any wyse to reherse any sentence amys, 
 But folowe the legende and true hystory, 
 After an humble style and from it lytell vary. 1 
 
 But again like Barclay, he grafted other material. 
 
 Vnto this rude werke myne auctours these shalbe: 
 Fyrst the true legende and the venerable Bede, 
 Mayster Alfrydus and Wyllyam Maluysburye, 
 Gyrarde Polycronycon and other mo in deed. * 
 
 The result is a compilation of early English history, the genealogy 
 and life of the Saint, her miracles and the miracles of her shrine. 
 As the whole of these works are in Latin, not unnaturally there are 
 stanzas where, as the English has failed him, Latin is substituted 
 and the vocabulary is aureate. 3 Yet in spite of the mongrel nature 
 of its origin, the poem has a certain narrative ability and a naive 
 faith that explain, if they do not justify, the eulogy of its editor. 
 The uncertainty of scansion, which evokes the wrath of Professor 
 
 1 Book I. Stanza 100. 
 1 Book I. Stanza 19. 
 
 1 Dr. Horstman gives a long list of such words as pudical, odible, etc. Introduc- 
 tion, pp. xxxviii-xxxix.
 
 256 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Saintsbury, is sufficiently illustrated in the quotations given. As 
 in Barclay, the spirit of humanism is lacking; the author is a medi- 
 eval monk, grimly versifying the acts of his saint for the moral 
 edification of mankind. The poem is therefore only a more ex- 
 treme example of the type represented by Barclay. Its interest 
 lies hi the late date of its composition; its significance lies hi the 
 beginnings of humanism shown in it. 
 
 Much the same pseudo-humanism is shown in the Epigrams l 
 of John Heywood. 2 His reputation for "mad merry wit" is 
 sufficiently attested by Camden, whose illustrations scarcely 
 impress the modern reader. 3 Of more importance is his statement 
 that Heywood was the "first" epigrammatist. To his immediate 
 successors, at least, his epigrams were the most widely known of 
 his work. They were first published in 1562. Yet it seems prob- 
 able that, as in the case of the Spider and the Flye, many of them 
 were written during the middle years of the reign of Henry VIII. 
 Still more the tradition, credited to Gabriel Harvey and followed 
 by Fuller and Wood, asserts that in his verses he has copied the 
 wit of Sir Thomas More. This is rendered possible by the fact 
 that he had married Eliza Rastell, the niece of More. Probably 
 his epigrams are not strictly original, they are a re-coining of 
 the sayings of many men. Thus the thirty-fifth epigram of the 
 Fifth Hundred, joking on the fact that Gloria patri precedes Sicut 
 erat in principio, resembles somewhat the bonmot of Stephen 
 Gardiner made in 1532. 4 Although either might have made the 
 remark independently, the coincidence seems to justify an early 
 date. 
 
 The early dating is also borne out by the type of humanism 
 represented by these epigrams. As was recognized by Puttenham 
 in 1589, Martial "was the cheife of this skil among the Latines." 5 
 Early printed editions made him accessible to English readers. 
 That actually he was known is proved by Surrey's translation of 
 
 1 These have been reprinted by the Spenser Society, 1867; and by the Early 
 English Drama Society, Vol. ii, 1900, edited by Farmer. The third volume with 
 the announced "terminal essay" has never appeared. 
 
 1 The reader is referred back to p. 121. 
 
 1 Remains concerning Britain by William Camden; J. R. Smith, 1870, p. 814. 
 
 * Camden, ibid, 299. 
 
 5 The Arte of English Poesie, Arber Reprint, 1895, p. 68.
 
 HUMANISM 257 
 
 the forty-seventh epigram of the Tenth Book to Julius Martial, 1 
 beginning 
 
 Martiall, the thinges that do attayn. 
 The happy life, be these, I finde. 
 
 It would be natural, therefore, to expect in Heywood imitations 
 and suggestions from the obvious Latin model. The actual fact 
 is exactly the contrary. Martial's epigrams are both personal 
 and local. He celebrates events interesting principally to his 
 contemporaries and to antiquarians; his personalities, written 
 for a limited Roman circle, must have been read with attempted 
 guesses at the identity of the persons described. If they were, 
 many of them are so foul that they would justify murdering him. 
 Their brevity, their wit, and in Saintsbury's phrase, a "certain 
 virility and gusto" alone reward the student. In all these points 
 save brevity Heywood is not only not imitative, but is even 
 antithetical. Heywood's epigrams have all the universality of 
 the phrases, which are their foundations. For example, the 
 expression, to turn tippet (i. e. turncoat), has fifteen variants. 
 His verses are apt to be little more than a punning expansion of a 
 colloquialism. Naturally then there can be no personal reference. 
 And this especially he disavows: 2 
 
 In all my simple writyng neuer ment I, 
 
 To touche any priuate person displeasantly. 
 
 Nor none do I touche here: by name, but onely one. 
 
 Which is my selfe: whom I may be bolde vpbn. 
 
 Nor does he any more follow the example of Martial in the freedom 
 of his language. 3 
 
 Than in rough rude termes of homelie honestie 
 
 (For vnhonest terme ( I trust) there none here soundes) 
 
 Wherin fine tender eares shal offended bee. . . 
 
 1 Warton alludes to this epigram as Martialis ad Seipsum, a blunder that is 
 followed even by Padelford. 
 
 1 Preface to the Fifth Hundred. 
 
 * Preface to the First Hundred. It is this attitude that renders incomprehen- 
 sible Sharman's comment (Proverbs of Heywood, Introduction, xlvii): "Of his 
 best (epigrams) we will only say that they are as puerile as the worst of Martial's, 
 and nearly as indelicate."
 
 258 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 And unless such conscious refusal to follow the precedent set by 
 the great Latin exemplar be considered to argue a familiarity 
 with Martial, there is no allusion to the Latin poet. 
 
 In fact, Heywood's significance lies exactly in his thoroughly 
 English content. Whenever the allusion becomes temporal or 
 local, the reference is always to English conditions and for the 
 English reader. There is no classical value to the nineteenth of 
 the Fifth Hundred: 
 
 Whens come great breeches? from little wittam. 
 Whens come great ruffes? from small brainfoorth they cam. 
 Whens come these round verdingales? from square thrift. 
 Whens come deepe copped hattes? from shallow shift. 
 Whens come braudered gardis? from the towne of euill. 
 Whens come vncomde staryng heades? from the deuill. 
 Whens come these womans scarfs? from folly lohn. 
 Whens come their glitterying spanges? from much wanton. 
 Whens come perfumde gloues? from curiositee. 
 Whens come fyne trapt moyles? from superfluitee. 
 Whens come comde crooked toes? from short shapen shoone. 
 Whens come wylde hie lookers? from midsomer moone. 
 Whens come fayre painted faces? from peinters tooles. 
 Whens come all these? from the vicar of sainct fooles. 
 
 In another he plays with the proper names of Huntingdon and 
 Hammersmith and in still another with the quaint names of the 
 streets of old London. In general, it must be confessed, they form 
 rather dreary reading. Puttenham's comment, 1 "lohn Heywood 
 the Epigrammatist who for the myrth and quicknesse of his con- 
 ceits more then for any good learning was in him, " still holds true. 
 Modern ears are too delicate to enjoy his attack upon the heavy 
 stuffed breeches of the men, or the thick ruffs of the women, made 
 from the standpoint of a louse. The hundred and seventeenth 
 of the Epigrammes vpon proverbes y 
 
 A cat may looke on a kyng, and what of that. 
 When a cat so lookth: a cat is but a cat. 
 
 is a fair example of his wit, and one that time has not affected. 
 It illustrates also the great service that he rendered. His homely 
 terms preserved and made fashionable the vast quantity of the 
 
 1 Puttenham, ibid, p. 74.
 
 HUMANISM 259 
 
 mother-wit of his ancestors. Naturally there is no invention here. 
 His work is merely a convenient reservoir, from which Shake- 
 speare and the dramatists drew so much. Thus, while the sugges- 
 tion must have come from humanism without which such a com- 
 pilation would have not been made, yet the resultant is pure 
 English, without any apparent intermingling of classical manner 
 or thought. 
 
 Such a writer as Barclay or Heywood, it may be granted, is 
 connected with the humanistic movement by slight ties. This is 
 not the case with the group of men now to be discussed. In spite 
 of such men as Duke Humphrey and Worcester, humanism may 
 be said to make its appearance in England when Chandler, Warden 
 of New College, Oxford, invited the Italian Vitelli to give lectures 
 there on Greek, at the beginning of the fourth quarter of the fif- 
 teenth century. While it is impossible to trace a direct connection 
 between Vitelli and the English humanists, some connection is 
 inferential, since Oxford became the center of the movement and 
 the location of a remarkable group of students. Such groups star 
 the history of English literature, men whose friendships bring out 
 the best in each one, men strongly individual, and yet who are 
 all so associated in a common group that to mention one brings 
 to mind the others. Their lives are bound together by a fine 
 reticulation of the same hopes and the same aspirations. And the 
 influence they exert is rather communal than individual. In the 
 early sixteenth century, such a nucleus is to be found in the friends 
 of Grocyn, "the friend and protector of us all" as Erasmus calls 
 him; Linacre, the great physician; Latimer, professor of Greek at 
 Oxford; Colet the Dean of Pauls; Lily, the grammarian; More, 
 the Lord Chancellor; and the brilliant visitor, Erasmus. The 
 enthusiasm of Erasmus may be best illustrated in his own words. 1 
 
 But how do you like our England, you will say. Believe me, my Robert, when I 
 answer that I never liked anything so much before. I find the climate both pleasant 
 and wholesome; and I have met with so much kindness, and so much learning, not 
 hacknied and trivial, but deep, accurate, ancient, Latin and Greek, that but for the 
 curiosity of seeing it, I do not now so much care for Italy. When I hear my Colet, I 
 seem to be listening to Plato himself. In Grocin, who does not marvel at such a 
 perfect round of learning? What can be more acute, profound, and delicate than 
 the judgment of Linacre? What has Nature ever created more gentle, more sweet, 
 
 1 Epistles of Erasmus, translated by F. M. Nichols, 1901, Vol. i, p. 226.
 
 260 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 more happy than the genius of Thomas More? I need not go through the list. It is 
 marvellous how general and abundant is the harvest of ancient learning in this 
 country, to which you ought all the sooner to return. 
 
 Although Erasmus lived to change his opinion of the climate, the 
 estimate then expressed of his English friends never seriously was 
 altered. This judgment is endorsed also by the great Venetian 
 printer, Aldus, in his preface to Linacre's translation, Proclus De 
 Sphaera. 1 
 
 ... so that from the same Britain whence formerly a barbarous and unlearned 
 literature made its way to us, occupying and still holding our Italian citadel, we 
 who are now learning to speak in Latin, and as becomes men of learning, shall re- 
 ceive a knowledge of true science, and, having with British aid put barbarism to 
 flight, win back our citadel. We shall thus recover it by the use of the very weapons 
 which caused the disaster. Admiring the Latinity and the eloquence of these men, I 
 have thought it well to subjoin a certain learned and elegant letter which William 
 Grocyn, a man of exceeding skill and universal learning, even in Greek, not to say 
 Latin, has sent me. I have inserted it in order that he may shame our philosophers 
 out of their barbarous and unskilful mode of writing, and that in emulation of the 
 Britons, they I do not say the older men (grandaem) yepovriov yap i/arraKos 
 ap.fX.etoKVTaX.Tjv but all the rest, may, in Latin, and armed with the requisite 
 learning, deal with philosophy. 
 
 After such typical eulogies one turns to the work that justified 
 them. At once the student is confronted by one of the startling 
 facts concerning the early Tudor humanists, namely that there 
 is very little work. Aside from More, and of course Erasmus, 
 their contributions to literature are almost nil. Grocyn survives 
 only in his letter referred to by Aldus, and a very doubtful epi- 
 gram quoted by Bale and Fuller; Linacre's work is largely a trans- 
 lation into Latin of the Greek medical works of Galen; Colet, prin- 
 cipally in a convocation sermon given in Knight's Life; 2 Linacre 
 also, and Lily, composed Latin grammars. But so far as either 
 literature or scholarship is concerned, there is very little. One 
 is tempted to explain their present celebrity by the frequent ref- 
 erence to them in the letters of Erasmus. Yet, in spite of the pau- 
 
 1 Quoted by Burrows, Memoir of William Grocyn, Oxford Historical Society, 
 Collectanea, Second Series, p. 350. 
 
 * The Life of Colet, by the Rev. J. H. Lupton, is the standard. At the end of The 
 Influence of Dean Colet upon the Reformation of the English Church, Dr. Lupton 
 gives a list of Colet's works.
 
 HUMANISM 261 
 
 city of the remains, that they had a significant influence upon the 
 future of English is a fact. 
 
 To determine exactly what was that influence is a difficult prob- 
 lem with the scarcity of data. There is the inevitable temptation 
 to put too much stress upon the individual detail. The fact re- 
 mains, however, that in comparison with the genuine humanism 
 of Italy, English humanism seems forced and artificial, rather of 
 the head than of the heart. The Epigrammata (1520) of More 
 and Lily suggest in their frigidity school exercises. The majority 
 of them are commonplaces, translated fron the Greek into the 
 Lathi, on mediocrity, the shortness of life, sleep, death, etc. Those 
 by More alone dealing with contemporary subjects, such as the 
 coronation of the king, or the epitaph on a singer Abingdon, have 
 much the same tone. It is all an intellectual pastime that the 
 author plays solemnly with himself. Consequently the poems 
 are compressed and antithetic. They are brilliant and hard. 
 
 But English humanism, being this artificial intellectual atti- 
 tude, is moral. There is not only nothing of the fluency of Politian, 
 the fire of Marullus, nor the sensuosity of Pontanus, but in addi- 
 tion the English humanists reacted against them. As Beatus 
 Rhenanus expressly states it in his preface to More's Epigrams. 1 
 
 Indeed among the epigram-writers today in the first rank Italy admires Pontanus 
 and Marullus: but may I perish if in this (book) there is not as much nature, indeed 
 more utility, unless indeed anyone feels himself greatly helped when Marullus 
 celebrates his Neaera, and chants her in many (verses), following a certain Heracli- 
 tus, or when John Pontano gives us the vileness of the old epigrammatists, than 
 which nothing may be more unworthy the reading of a good man, I will not say of a 
 Christian. 
 
 This passage suggests the line of cleavage between the types of 
 humanism developed south and north of the Alps. In Italy, the 
 model accepted was Catullus. He it is that Pontano, Politian, 
 and Marullus aim to follow, rather than Horace. The reason may 
 
 1 lam inter epigrammatographos Pontanum & Marullum inprimis hodie miratur 
 Italia: at dispeream, si non tantundem in hoc est naturae, utilitatis vero plus, nisi si 
 quis inde magnopere se credi iuvari, dum suam Neaeram celebrat Marullus & in 
 mult Is omTTtTeu, Heraclitum quendam agens, aut dum lo. Pontanus veterum 
 nobis epigrammatistarum nequitias refcrt, quihus nihil sit frigidius & boni viri 
 lectione magis indignum, nc dicam christiani. Beatus Rhenanus, Basle, 1520.
 
 262 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 be, as has been suggested to me, that, while Horace was an old 
 story, the comparatively recent finding at Verona of a manu- 
 script of Catullus put an exaggerated value upon his work. It is 
 also due, however, to the nature of that work. The fire and pas- 
 sion of Catullus found a congenial soil in Italy. On the other hand 
 his very freedom of expression tended to alienate him from the 
 northern nations. The cold, restrained, northern nature felt more 
 at ease with the philosophy of Horace. This is shown by the 
 fact that while the first northern edition of Horace appears in 
 1488, and by 1515 there were at least twenty-three editions, of 
 Catullus, Graesse lists only two before 1518, and those come from 
 the Italianate city of Lyons. In the list of books in Colet's school, 
 there is a Horace 1475, but no Catullus. In 1520 John Dome sold 
 nine copies of various works of Horace and none of Catullus. He 
 sold two copies of Politian's introduction to the Analytics of 
 Aristotle and one of his Opera, but none of either Pontanus, or 
 Marullus. It is significant of this English attitude, that half of 
 the books of Grocyn should deal with theology and philosophy, 
 and that in a library having Cicero, Plautus, Lucretius, Caesar, 
 Livy, Vergil, Tacitus, Suetonius, Juvenal, Persius, Asconius, Apul- 
 eius, Valerius, Maximus, and Aulus Gellius, neither Horace, nor 
 Catullus should find a place! In Tudor England, humanism was 
 a serious, moral, reflective force. 
 
 In considering the humanism of the early Tudors, then, these are 
 the two salient characteristics, their sterility and their morality. 
 The first becomes obvious by a glance at the lists of early printed 
 books. Caxton's books are almost entirely either translations 
 from the French, or issues of early English works, such as Chaucer 
 or Lydgate. It is this that gives him his importance in literature. 
 His press served to bridge the gap of the fifteenth century. In 
 the dawn of the Renaissance, books typical of the Middle Ages 
 were thus brought prominently forward. Caxton's work, there- 
 fore, and the weight of his influence, from the standpoint of the 
 humanist, are retrogressive. Wynkyn de Worde and his contem- 
 porary Pynson, Caxton's successors, naturally followed Caxton's 
 policy, with the variance that they printed also more contempo- 
 rary works. Thus Wynkyn de Worde publishes Hawes, and Pyn- 
 son, Barclay. There is also a number of Latin grammars for Eng- 
 lish readers. But there also begins the issue of Latin texts. In
 
 HUMANISM 263 
 
 1497, Pynson brought forth six plays of Terence, and in 1512, 
 Wynkyn de Worde, the Bucolics of Vergil. Slightly earlier, Rood 
 had issued Aristotle's Ethics and an oration of Cicero. Before 
 the first quarter of the century, some of Seneca and the Commen- 
 taries of Caesar had appeared. Before the first hah* of the century 
 had passed, probably as many as fifty editions of Latin writers 
 had been published by English printers. But when this is con- 
 trasted with the publications of the single Venetian house of Aldus, 
 the result seems meagre in the extreme. 
 
 This is the paradox confronting the student of English humanism. 
 Here is a group of men, celebrated for their learning, that nei- 
 ther produced much themselves, nor apparently stirred others to 
 produce. The first obvious explanation is that, so far as the crea- 
 tion of a new or an authoritative text of any classic author is con- 
 cerned, the materials were largely absent, because the majority 
 of early manuscripts were not in England. Almost necessarily 
 such work could be better done by European scholars and their 
 editions would be accessible in the English markets. Somewhat 
 the same is true of scholarly commentary. Linacre's translation 
 of Galen stands as an exception, yet Linacre's residence abroad 
 must be remembered. After all, with this group, English scholar- 
 ship was of the first generation. As such, it was introductory and, 
 presumably, by word of mouth to college classes. It was as real, 
 although not so obvious, as that of European scholars. And the 
 Englishmen themselves preferred foreign publishers. Linacre sent 
 his manuscript to Venice, More his Utopia to Louvain, and his 
 Epigrammata to Basel. Such a preference is readily understand- 
 able without reflecting upon the conditions in England. The book 
 was written in Latin in order that it might have an audience not 
 limited to any one language. Naturally to a European public 
 a book gained in prestige by coming from a great European pub- 
 lishing firm. Moreover, the reasons were not purely commercial. 
 At a time when the author could not correct his proofs, he was 
 greatly at the mercy of the education of the typesetter. Conse- 
 quently Erasmus went personally to Basel to superintend the pub- 
 lication of his Jerome. In the output of a firm issuing large num- 
 bers of similar books, typographical errors would be less frequent, 
 and the variety of fonts of type much greater. A striking illus- 
 tration of this is that the first words printed in England in Greek
 
 264 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 characters appear as late as 1519. 1 An English writer, by chance 
 using a Greek expression, and this was by no means uncommon, 
 from that very fact was forced to depend upon foreign publishers. 
 Yet, whatever deductions may be made for books written by Eng- 
 lishmen and printed abroad, the contribution of the early human- 
 ists to European scholarship remains singularly small. 
 
 The real explanation of the apparent sterility of the English 
 humanists however, lies rather in the nature of their humanism. 
 As has been said, in contrast with Italian humanism, in England 
 it was moral, Christian rather than pagan. Greek to them was 
 rather the language of the New Testament, than the language of 
 Plato. Colet lectures on the Pauline Epistles and urges Erasmus 
 to the publication of his New Testament." But by that very fact 
 they became involved with the great movement that we call the 
 Reformation. Fortunately the history of the Reformation does 
 not come within the scope of these studies. For the sake of its 
 effect upon literature, the general outline of it may be given, and 
 given as presented to Charles V in a dumb play at Ausburg. 3 
 "A man in a doctor's dress brought in a bundle of sticks, some 
 straight, some crooked, laid them on the hearth, and retired. On 
 his back was written 'Reuchlin. ' Another followed who tried to 
 arrange the sticks side by side, could not do it, grew impatient, 
 and retired also. He was called Erasmus. An Augustinian monk 
 came next with a burning chafing-dish, flung the crooked sticks 
 into the fire, and blew into it to make it blaze. This was Luther. 
 A fourth came robed as an emperor; he, seeing the fire spreading, 
 tried to put it out with his sword, and made it flame the faster. 
 He, too, went off, and then appeared a figure in pontifical robe 
 and with triple crown, who started at the sight of the fire, looked 
 about, saw two cans in the room, one full of water and the other 
 of oil, snatched the oil by mistake, poured it on, and raised such 
 a blaze that he fled in terror. This was Leo X." In this con- 
 temporary by-play, it is to be noticed that Erasmus, after trying 
 to reconcile the parties, gives up the task in disgust. It was just 
 
 1 Typographical Antiquities, Dibdin, Vol. ii, p. 181. 
 
 1 Colet's Enarratio in Epistolum S. Pauli ad Romanos was edited by the Rev. 
 J. H. Lupton, 1873; the following year the same editor brought out the Enarratio 
 in Puinam Epistolam S. Pauli ad Corinthos. 
 
 3 Life and Letters of Erasmus, Froude, p. 380.
 
 HUMANISM 265 
 
 here that the English humanists were unable to follow his example. 
 In England the crisis was so acute that they could not give it up. 
 In spite of themselves they were involved and the intellectual 
 interest in scholarship was exchanged for a vital interest in pol- 
 itics. While the movement was still young and while it was still 
 gaining headway, it was fated that persons whose station, interests, 
 and philosophy were as far separated as the poles from the station, 
 interests, and philosophy of the Oxford men should arise to deflect 
 the current and turn it into an entirely unexpected direction. And 
 it is impossible to believe that the protagonists of the political 
 drama had any conception of the momentous consequences of 
 their action, or for a moment looked beyond their own petty 
 interests. Katherine was nearly six years older than Henry. But 
 the disparity between them was greater than is shown by their 
 ages. "Katherine's health had never been robust; and at the age 
 of thirty-three, after four confinements, she had lost her bloom. 
 Disappointment and suffering, added to her constitutional weak- 
 ness, was telling upon her, and her influence grew daily smaller. 
 The gorgeous shows and frivolous amusements in which her 
 husband so much delighted palled upon her, and she now took 
 little pains to feign enjoyment in them, giving up much of her 
 time to religious exercises, fasting rigidly twice a week and saints' 
 days throughout the year, in addition to the Lenten observances, 
 and wearing beneath her silks and satins a rough Franciscan nun's 
 gown of serge. As in the case of so many of her kindred, mystical 
 devotion was weaving its grey web about her, and saintliness of 
 the peculiar Spanish type was covering her as with a garment. 
 Henry, on the contrary, was a full-blooded young man of twenty- 
 eight, with a physique like that of a butcher, held by no earthly 
 control or check upon his appetites, overflowing with vitality and 
 the joy of life; and it is not to be wondered at that he found his 
 disillusioned and consciously saintly wife a somewhat uncomfort- 
 able companion. " l The torch was applied to the pile when three 
 or four years later the King became infatuated with Anne Boleyn, 
 sixteen years younger than his wife. There was nothing of course 
 in the easy morality either of the time or of the lady to prevent 
 his making her his mistress. In fact, Lady Tailebois was the 
 mother of the boy whom he recognized as Duke of Richmond, 
 
 1 Wivea of Henry the Eighth, Martin Hume, pp. 89-90.
 
 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the title borne by his own father. Still more it is highly probable 
 that Anne's sister Mary Boleyn had already enjoyed the dubious 
 honor of having been the King's mistress. What complicated the 
 situation was the King's desire for a legitimate male heir. Kath- 
 erine was the mother of a daughter only, Mary Tudor, and, with 
 the questionable exception of Matilda, no queen had ever held 
 the English throne in her own right. It may well have seemed 
 to Henry, conscious of the recent origin of his own dynasty and 
 mindful of the horrors of civil war, that a male heir was imperative. 
 Divorce was not uncommon upon such grounds. The Pope had 
 granted dispensation to Louis XII of France for much the same 
 reasons, and Henry's own brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, Duke 
 of Suffolk, had set aside two previous marriages before he mar- 
 ried the King's sister. On the other hand, by 1527, Rome had 
 been sacked by the Spanish troops, the Pope, Clement VII, was 
 terrorized by Charles V, and Charles was Katherine's nephew. 
 The result was long procrastination and debate, and a long public 
 trial that aroused all England, until Henry's passion finally forced 
 him to break with the Papacy. In the welter and confusion of 
 this transition, appeal must be made to the people, not of Europe, 
 but of England. For this the Latin language was thrown aside in 
 favor of vigorous homely English, and the subtilties of intellectual 
 conceptions in favor of sledge-hammer invective. 
 
 It cannot have been cheering to the humanists to realize that 
 they themselves had been, to a measure, the agents of their own 
 downfall. Such a change in religious conception as is involved 
 in the denial of papal supremacy, such a change in religious form 
 as that involved in the substitution of English for Latin, and such 
 a change in the social structure as that involved in the suppression 
 of the monasteries and the religious orders, could not be made in 
 the face of the united opposition of a whole people. Henry may 
 have been a "tyrant", but he was a tyrant without a standing 
 army, and with no force to overawe the nation except that derived 
 from the nation itself. He could be despotic only so far as such 
 despotism did not long run counter to the will of the nation. 1 
 In modern phrasing, although by no means to the extent of the 
 meaning today, Henry was governed by public opinion. Public 
 opinion, in turn, had been affected by the humanistic criticisms and 
 1 This is the position most ably, if partially, supported by Froude.
 
 HUMANISM 267 
 
 theories carried broadcast by the newly invented press. An analogy 
 may be found in the relations of Rousseau to the French Revolu- 
 tion. That Marat would have guillotined Rousseau, and Rousseau 
 repudiated Marat, does not alter the fact that Rousseau's theories 
 are precursors to the Reign of Terror. In like case, to call these 
 men "Oxford Reformers" * is misleading. That they wished re- 
 form is undoubted; that their point of view prepared the way for 
 reform is certain ; but that they in any way anticipated or approved 
 the cataclysmic upheaval that actually took place is impossible 
 to believe. 2 
 
 The effect of humanism upon English literature, then, is double; 
 it may be divided into its effect upon the poetry and upon the 
 prose, and cross-divided by its effect upon the form and the con- 
 tent of each. As the importance of the subject is more clearly 
 shown by the content of the prose, that question will be first dis- 
 cussed. 3 But the effect of one civilization upon an individual 
 belonging to another civilization is rather difficult to analyze, 
 although not to appreciate. To an American, the value of a 
 European sojourn is not that, on his return, he has seen Europe, 
 but rather that he sees America from a fresh point of view. His 
 visit has given him a basis for comparison. Intellectually, it has 
 stimulated him to more careful consideration of familiar condi- 
 tions. For such a consideration of Christian civilization the 
 value of an intimate acquaintance with the literatures and 
 life of Greece and Rome is at once obvious. To the sixteenth 
 century reader they presented the spectacle of civilizations 
 more advanced than his own, yet antithetical in almost every 
 particular. He returned, therefore, from his mental journey with 
 a consciousness of the advantages and the disadvantages of 
 his own epoch. 
 
 In the little group of humanists that we are discussing you find 
 the intellect burning at white heat. Of them by far the best 
 known, in fact the only one known to the modern reader, is 
 Sir Thomas More. For this condition many reasons combine. 
 His life, so rarely beautiful that in 1886 he was beatified by Roman 
 
 1 The Oxford Reformert of U98 by Frederic Secbohm, 1867, is a standard study of 
 Colet, Erasmus, and More. 
 
 1 The Eve of the Reformation, F. A. Gasquet, p. 7. 
 
 1 The effect of humanism upon the form of prose is reserved for a later study.
 
 268 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Curia, quickly passed into a legend. The contemporary belief in 
 his justice as Chancellor is preserved in the rhyme : 
 
 When More sometime has Chancellor been 
 
 No more suits did re in; tin; 
 
 , The like will never more be seen 
 
 Till More be there again. 
 
 It was largely upon his reputation that Rastell later popularized 
 the traditional hump-back of Richard the Third. With Skelton, 
 he is one of the figures to bolster up the tale of Long Meg of West- 
 minster. The tragedy of his death, personified in his daughter 
 Margaret Roper, still haunted Tennyson : 
 
 Morn broaden'd on the borders of the dark, 
 
 Ere I saw her, who clasp'd in her last trance 
 Her murder'd father's head. 1 
 
 In truth, as one sees him through the eyes of his son-in-law, his 
 life was so perfect and his death so pitiful, that all men of all creeds 
 must rise up to call him "blessed ". What such a man wrote should 
 theoretically have a wide appeal! Then another reason for his 
 renown is the comparative lack of work of the other members of 
 the group. The result is that, while the rest are known to scholars, 
 Sir Thomas More is known to the world. 
 
 The previous remarks on the effect of the Reformation on Eng- 
 lish humanism find illustration in the literary work of More. That 
 may be divided sharply into two classes; that written under the 
 humanistic impulse in Latin, and that written in English. As a 
 humanist, he was brilliant, broad-minded, and tolerant; writing in 
 the vernacular the same man shows himself retrogressive, and 
 almost insensible to the new forces raging around him, a vigor- 
 ous and scurrilous opponent of Luther and Tyndale, a determined 
 partisan anxious only to preserve that status quo. The tracts, 
 containing acute reasoning and clever invective, are yet without 
 form, hopelessly voluble and digressive. The Utopia on the other 
 hand is brilliantly compressed, with the parts definitely related 
 to the whole, and to each other. The execution, as well as the con- 
 ception, is masterly. It may well be with the works of More in 
 mind that in the next generation Ascham wrote: 2 
 
 1 Dream of Fair Women. 
 
 1 The English Works of Roger Ascham, by James Bennet, p. 57.
 
 HUMANISM 269 
 
 And as for the Latine or Greeke tongue, everye thinge is so excellentlye done 
 in them, that none can do better: In the Englishe tongue, contrary, everye thinge in 
 a maner so meanlye both for the matter and the handelinge, that no man can do 
 worse. 
 
 The natural result, which yet seems contradictory, is that, whereas 
 the English works in English are unknown, that in Latin is famil- 
 iar to the entire English speaking race. This statement is so para- 
 doxical that figures are needed to justify it. Although two vol- 
 umes of selections from the English works were published during 
 the nineteenth century and, since 1800 there have been seven 
 separate pieces, usually published for learned societies, the first 
 edition of the completed works, that of 1557, is yet the last. Of 
 the Utopia within the twenty years 1890-1910, twenty issues have 
 been made in the Latin and the various English versions. 1 In 
 fairness it must be added that in some editions of the Utopia the 
 Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation is included. With all de- 
 ductions made, however, the fact remains sufficiently striking. 
 As a writer of English, More may be ignored; it is only as a hu- 
 manist that he is a world-figure. 
 
 It is on the humanistic side that More's work needs here to be 
 considered. 2 The origin of Utopia is definitely known. While 
 More was on an embassy in Antwerp, staying at the home of 
 Peter Giles, a friend of Erasmus, he amused himself by planning 
 an ideal community. The Second Book, the one describing the 
 conditions hi Utopia was written first. On his return to England 
 he wrote the First Book, dealing with English conditions, to lead 
 up to and prepare for the Second. The reader, therefore, reverses 
 the order in which the ideas were conceived. The Second Book is 
 primarily creative, and the First Book primarily critical. The 
 whole is set in the framework of an imaginary conversation held 
 in the garden of Peter Giles. By this means the author, dispens- 
 ing with any formal arrangement, is at liberty to treat the various 
 topics in any order he chooses, without connection between them. 
 The Second Book consists of a number of essays dealing with con- 
 ditions in an ideal community, each clearly marked by a separate 
 title, De Magistratibus, De Artificiis, etc. The ideas contained 
 
 1 For these Bgures I have used the Bibliography in the Utopia, edited by George 
 Sampson, 1910. 
 
 1 More u a writer of English prose will be discussed later.
 
 270 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 in these essays are not always consistent. For example, the point 
 is made that, because there is no parasitic class, the total work of 
 the commonwealth is accomplished with the minimum amount 
 of labor of six hours per day per man. Later on, however, the 
 reader finds two classes of bondsmen who are forced to labor much 
 in excess of this amount. 1 More himself never co-ordinated these 
 separate conceptions. His aim is not to present a carefully thought- 
 out social system; it is rather a series of reflections on the various 
 component parts of a state. 
 
 The fundamental, and (to the sixteenth century) revolutionary 
 conception is that the state is the creation of the individuals and 
 exists for their benefit. And the individuals are all equal. In a 
 modern state, the ideal of equality is destroyed by the universal 
 desire for property and the consequent respect paid to those pos- 
 sessing it. According to More, the solution for the present problem 
 is to strike at the root of the matter, the love of money. 2 
 
 Thus I doe fullye persuade me selfe, that no equall and juste distribution of 
 thinges can be made, nor that perfecte wealthe shall ever be among men, onles this 
 propriety (private ownership) be exiled and bannished. But so long as it shal con- 
 tinew, so long shal remaine among the most and best part of men the hevy, and 
 inevitable burden of poverty and wretchednes. Whiche, as I graunte that it maye 
 be sumwhat eased, so I utterly denye that it can wholy be taken away. For if there 
 were a statute made, that no man should possesse above a certeine measure of 
 grounde, and that no man shoulde have in his stocke above a prescripte and ap- 
 pointed some of money: if it were by certein lawes decreed, that neither the King 
 shoulde be of to greate power, neither the people to haute and wealthy, and that 
 offices shoulde not be obteined by inordinate suite, or by brybes and gyftes: that 
 they shoulde neither be bought nor sold, nor that it shoulde be nedeful for the 
 officers, to be at any cost or charge in their offices: for so occasion is geven to theym 
 by fraude and ravin to gather up their money againe, and by reason of giftes and 
 bribes the offices be geven to rich men, which shoulde rather have bene executed 
 of wise men: by such lawes I say, like as sicke bodies that be desperat and past cure, 
 be wont with continual good cherissing te be kept and botched up for a time: so 
 these evels also might be lightened and mitigated. But that thei may be perfectly 
 cured, and brought to a good and upryght state, it is not to be hoped for, whiles 
 every man is maister of his owne to him selfe. 
 
 1 The stringency of the laws in the sixteenth century and the social conditions, 
 which are discussed in the First Book of the Utopia, made a large criminal class. 
 Cf. Chapter I. 
 
 1 The quotation is taken from Ralph Robison's translation (1551), since it is the 
 version familiar to the modern public. Yet I do so somewhat unwillingly because 
 the quaintness of the phrase and the individuality of the spelling by no means render 
 to the modern ear the effect of More's Latin.
 
 HUMANISM 271 
 
 Consequently in the ideal republic there are no property rights; 
 the houses are all owned in common; the food is stored in common 
 storehouses, and served in common dining-halls; and even the 
 children, who hi the sixteenth century were regarded as property, 
 are brought up by the state. The Utopians have literally no use 
 for money. Their clothes, taken from the common stock, are 
 chosen simply with regard to convenience. Gold and jewels, the in- 
 signia of wealth and station elsewhere, are there treated with con- 
 tempt. To confirm the public in this opinion, golden chains are 
 associated with marks of degradation and jewels are the play- 
 things of children. They are used, however, to hire mercenaries 
 for war, since the Utopians do not fight their own battles. In 
 their philosophy they are hedonists, but, as each member of a com- 
 munity can enjoy the highest pleasure only when every other mem- 
 ber of that community is equally satisfied, the result is the practice 
 of the golden rule. As the working day is only six hours, the great 
 amount of leisure is used in attending lectures and is devoted to 
 general cultivation, although curiously enough, aside from music, 
 there is no appreciation for art in Utopia. Thus the abstraction, 
 the state, called into being by the individuals, assumes a paternal 
 attitude, regulates their working and their leisure hours, controls 
 their marriages and their offspring, and directs each detail, not 
 only of public but also of private life. 
 
 Such in brief outline are the main positions of More's famous 
 book. Numberless volumes have been written discussing it from 
 the point of view of the philosophy of the state. From this point 
 of view criticism is easy. 
 
 It is also irrelevant in the present discussion. The value of the 
 book does not lie in those schemes which have bred the adjective 
 "Utopian", but rather in the still larger number of ideas that in 
 the progress of the years have been realized. To say "There is 
 hardly a scheme of social or political reform that has been enunci- 
 ated in later epochs of which there is no definite adumbration in 
 More's pages" l is expressing it too broadly. Yet it is true that in 
 very many ways More has anticipated modern movements by 
 years and by centuries. The description of Amaurote, suggest- 
 ively paralleled to London in the marginal note, is curiously mod- 
 ern. The provision for wide streets, careful sanitation, public 
 1 Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century, Sidney Lee, 1904, p. 33.
 
 272 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 hospitals, slaughter-houses, without the city limits, the stressing 
 of gardens both for light and air, and also for fruit, the glass in the 
 windows, the fire-proofing of the roofs, etc. etc. had little reality 
 in the London of 1516. * Nor is the modernity confined to the 
 merely physical. Social conceptions, unrealized for centuries 
 appear in these pages. More argues that criminality is usually 
 the effect of environment, and that, therefore, the boy should be 
 carefully guarded; that capital punishment for theft is illogical, 
 that the prisoner should be reformed, not killed, 2 and advocates a 
 "trusty" plan; and that marriages should be conducted upon 
 eugenic principles. The most famous anticipation of present con- 
 ceptions is, however, the passage wherein is advocated religious 
 toleration. 
 
 There be divers kindes of religion not only in sondrie partes of the Ilande, but also 
 in divers places of every citie. . . . He as soone as he was baptised, began against 
 our willes, with more earneste affection, then wisedome, to reason of Christes 
 religion: and began to waxe so hote in his matter, that he did not onlye preferre our 
 religion before al other, but also did utterly despise and condempne all other, calling 
 the prophane, and the folowers of them wicked and develish, and the children of 
 everlastinge dampnation. When he had thus longe reasoned the matter, they 
 laide holde on him, accused him and condempned him into exile, not as a despiser of 
 religion, but as a sedicious person and a raiser up of dissention amonge the people. 
 For this is one of the auncientest lawes amonge them: that no man shall be blamed 
 for resoninge in the maintenaunce of his owne religion. 
 
 Today such a passage is read without comment. To understand 
 even vaguely the astounding fact that it was published in 1516, it 
 must be remembered that only twenty-four years before the Jews 
 had been expelled from Spain. The results of that expulsion can 
 be best given in Symonds' words: 3 
 
 Vainly did the persecuted race endeavour to purchase a remission of the sentence 
 by the payment of an exorbitant ransom. Torquemada appeared before Ferdinand 
 and his consort, raising the crucifix, and crying: "Judas sold Christ for 30 pieces of 
 silver; sell ye him for a larger sum, and account for the same to God! " The exodus 
 began. Eight hundred thousand Jews left Spain some for the coast of Africa, 
 where the Arabs ripped their bodies up in the search for gems or gold they might 
 have swallowed, and deflowered their women some for Portugal, where they 
 bought the right to exist for a large head-tax, and where they saw their sons and 
 
 1 For comparison the reader is referred to p. 25 of the present work. 
 1 Until 1827 certain forms of theft in England were punished by death. 
 3 Renaissance in Italy, J. A. Symonds, Vol. 1 (Age of Despots) 313-314.
 
 HUMANISM 273 
 
 daughters dragged away to baptism before their eyes. Others were sold as slaves, or 
 had to satisfy the rapacity of their persecutors with the bodies of their children. 
 Many flung themselves into the wells, and sought to bury despair in suicide. The 
 Mediterranean was covered with famine-stricken and plague-breeding fleets of 
 exiles. Putting into the port of Genoa, they were refused leave to reside in the 
 city, and died by hundreds in the harbour. Their festering bodies bred a pestilence 
 along the whole Italian sea-board, of which at Naples alone 20,000 persons died. 
 Flitting from shore to shore, these forlorn spectres, the victims of bigotry and 
 avarice, everywhere pillaged and everywhere rejected, dwindled away and disap- 
 peared. Meanwhile the orthodox rejoiced. Pico della Mirandola, who spent his 
 life in reconciling Plato with the Cabala, finds nothing more to say than this: "The 
 sufferings of the Jews, in which the glory of the Divine justice delighted, were so 
 extreme as to fill us Christians with commiseration." With these words we may 
 compare the following passage from Senarega: "The matter at first sight seemed 
 praiseworthy, as regarding the honour done to our religion; yet it involved some 
 amount of cruelty, if we look upon them, not as beasts, but as men, the handiwork of 
 God." A critic of this century can only exclaim with stupefaction: Tantum reliffio 
 potuit suadere malorum! 
 
 And fifty-six years after More had written this passage occurred 
 the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; the Spanish Inquisition; the fires 
 of Smithfield; the German wars; and this passage was printed 
 in 1516! 
 
 In trying to explain the mere fact of the existence of such a 
 book as the Utopia at such a time, there is one tendency to be 
 guarded against. We, with the accumulated experience of the 
 past four hundred years, read into the sentences vastly more than 
 the author intended. Ideas that to More's mind were very nebu- 
 lous and undefined, to us are perfectly clear cut. This may be 
 most conveniently illustrated by a trifling detail. To show the 
 advanced state among the Utopians we are told : 
 
 They brynge up a greate multitude of pulleyne, and that by a mervaylouse 
 policye. For the hennes dooe not sytte upon the egges : but by keepynge theym in a 
 certayne equall heate they brynge lyfe into them, and hatche theym. The chykens, 
 as sone as they be come oute of the shel, follow men and women in steade of the 
 hennes. 
 
 But incubators were not made practical until 1870! On the other 
 hand artificial incubation was practised by the ancient Egyptians, 
 and preserved as a secret. More, reading an account of their re- 
 sults in some classic author, merely adopted it for the benefit of 
 his Utopians, without, however, having a clear conception of how 
 it was done. But to the modern reader, perfectly familiar with all
 
 274 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the mechanical details of artificial incubation, More's words seem 
 to imply an equal familiarity. In the same way, the assumption 
 that in many cases of his uncanny fore-knowledge he either knew 
 how to bring about the desired conditions, or what would be the 
 result if brought about, is incredible. 
 
 Yet, granting that we today read more than the author wrote, 
 the essential modernity, the very possibility that we can read 
 more than was intended, is remarkable. The reason for it, how- 
 ever, is obvious. The Utopia is the result of wide reading in classic 
 authors. The whole conception was suggested by the Republic 
 of Plato, and by occasional marginal notes the reader is referred 
 back to him. Yet it is by no means copied from Plato. The 
 various opinions are gathered from almost the whole range of 
 classic literature. It is not of much value to endeavor to trace 
 back any detail to its peculiar source. 1 Usually the idea expressed 
 is a modification of, and sometimes a reaction from, the possible 
 original. This is but another way of saying that More's mind had 
 assimilated and made its own the product of the past. And that, 
 also, is the condition of modern culture. The similarity between 
 many of More's ideas and those of the man of today is due to the 
 fact that the roots of both reach down into the same past. The 
 Utopia is a striking example of the advantages of a classical edu- 
 cation as expounded by Newman. The unique position of the 
 early Tudor humanists is due to the fact that they put into practice 
 Newman's arguments four hundred years ago. 
 
 But if the Second Book of the Utopia be remarkable for its 
 creative ability, the First is no less so for its analysis of the eco- 
 nomic conditions of sixteenth century England. This is introduced 
 to prepare by contrast for the Second Book. It purports to be an 
 abstract of a discussion held at the palace of Cardinal Morton, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Chancellor of Henry VII. 
 The question was propounded why, in spite of the severity of the 
 laws, there are so many thieves. The answer is; first, that there 
 is a portion of the population whose means of livelihood are so 
 uncertain that in self-defense they may become beggars, namely 
 old retainers and soldiers; secondly, that there is a desire for 
 illicit pleasures; and thirdly, that, because farms have been turned 
 
 1 In Platonismus in der englischen Renaissance (Berlin, 1907) Kurt Schroeder tries 
 to define the exact influence of Plato upon More.
 
 HUMANISM 275 
 
 into pasturage on account of the profit to be made in wool, many 
 of the farm-laborers have been turned adrift. The result of this 
 last is an increase in price of food-stuffs, on account of the lessened 
 production although, owing to a corner in wool, the price on that 
 has not decreased. For these, by implication, the king is not 
 responsible, but his councillors. Those, who advise debasing the 
 coinage, the revival of obsolete laws for taxation, and the selling 
 of privileges in order to enable the king to accumulate treasure, 1 
 are harmful since his "honoure and safetye is more and rather 
 supported and upholden by the wealth and ryches of his people, 
 then by his owne treasures." For the good king is the shepherd 
 of his people. 
 
 Let him lyve of hys owne, hurtinge no man. . . . Let him restreyne wyckednes. 
 Let him prevente vices, and take awaye the occasions of offenses by well orderynge 
 hys subjectes, and not by sufferynge wickednes to increase afterward to be pun- 
 yshed. Let hym not be to hastie in callynge agayne lawes, whyche a custome hathe 
 abrogated: specially suche as have bene longe forgotten, and never lacked nor 
 neaded. And let hym never under the cloke and pretence of transgression take 
 suche fynes and forfaytes, as no Judge wyll suffre a private persone to take, as 
 unjuste and ful of gile. 
 
 This conception of a limited monarchy and of the responsibility 
 of the king, "that the comminaltie chueseth their king for their 
 owne sake and not for his," would have kept the head of Charles I 
 upon his shoulders, and, in the person of James II, have preserved 
 the throne to the Stuarts. To one interested in the condition of 
 England in the early sixteenth century the First Book of the 
 Utopia may be recommended for careful study. 
 
 That humanism by sheer effort of the intellect lifted itself 
 out of the sixteenth century is its greatest triumph; it is also its 
 greatest failure. The trouble is that it is nothing but sheer 
 intellectualism. Apparently the thoughts and the lives of these 
 men moved on separate planes. As humanists they were willing 
 to follow any position to its logical sequence. The anecdote, pre- 
 served by Froude as a "Chelsea tradition," 2 will illustrate this. 
 
 1 By More's contemporaries this must have been interpreted as a criticism of 
 the well-known avarice of Henry VII. P. 52 of this work. 
 
 1 Froude, ibid, p. 109. This " tradition " must consist only in applying the tale 
 to More and Erasmus since the tale itself is to be found in the Jests of Scoyin, 
 Shakespeare Jest-Books, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt, 95. Here the anecdote is in Eng- 
 lish prose.
 
 276 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 According to the tale, Erasmus having borrowed a horse of More, 
 instead of returning it sent the following lines. 
 
 Quod mihi dixisti 
 
 De corpora Christi 
 
 Crede quod edas et edis; 
 
 Sic tibi rescribo 
 
 De tuo palfrido 
 
 Crede quod habeas et babes. 
 
 If there be any truth in the tradition, it shows to what extent both 
 the love of a joke and intellectual toleration could be carried! 
 Even the mysteries of the Mass were subjects for discussion. It 
 was not objective truth, so much as mental exercise that More 
 sought. It is this that Erasmus emphasizes: 1 
 
 The history of his connection with me was this. In his early life he was a ver- 
 sifier, and he came to me to improve his style. Since that time he has written a 
 good deal. He has written a dialogue defending Plato's community of wives. He 
 has answered Lucian's "Tyrannicida." He wanted me to take the other side, that 
 he might better test his skill. His "Utopia" was written to indicate the dangers 
 which threatened the English commonwealth. The second part was written first. 
 The other was added afterwards. You can trace a difference in the style. He has a 
 fine intellect and an excellent memory; information all arranged and pigeon-holed 
 to be ready for use. He is so ready in argument that he can puzzle the best divines 
 on their own subjects. Colet, a good judge on such points, says More has more 
 genius than any man in England. 
 
 That More personally believed in a "community of wives" is 
 grotesque; his defense of it was valued as an example of mental 
 agility. So the Utopia is a collection of conceptions, some positive 
 and some negative. For example, he tells us of Utopian education : 
 
 But as they in all thinges be almoste equal to oure olde auncyente clerkes, so 
 oure newe Logiciens in subtyl inventions have farre passed and gone beyonde them. 
 For they have not devysed one of all those rules of restrictions, amplifications, and 
 suppositions verye wittelye invented in the small Logicalles, whyche heare oure 
 children in every place do learne. Furtheremore they were never yet hable to 
 fynde out the seconde intentions: insomuche that none of them all coulde ever see 
 man himselfe in commen, as they cal him, thoughe he be (as you knowe) bygger 
 than ever was annye gyaunte, yea and poynted to of us even wyth our finger. 
 
 Here he is obviously merely laughing at medieval logic with its 
 infinite refinements, and at the doctrine of the realists. But there 
 
 1 Erasmus to Hutten.; abridged by Froude, p. 107.
 
 HUMANISM 277 
 
 is no attack here. If it were written to ** indicate the dangers which 
 threatened the English commonwealth," that was a bye-product. 
 Its aim was to afford the opportunity for pleasant speculation. 
 It is a dream, and considering it as a dream he thus comments 
 upon its success in a letter to Erasmus : 1 
 
 Master Tunstall has lately sent me a letter full of the most friendly feeling; his 
 judgment about our Republic, so frank, so complimentary, has given me more 
 pleasure than an Attic talent! You have no idea how I jump for joy, how tall I have 
 grown, how I hold up my head, when a vision comes before my eyes, that my Uto- 
 pians have made me their perpetual sovereign. I seem already to be marching 
 along, crowned with a diadem of wheat, conspicuous in a Greyfriar's cloak, and 
 carrying for a sceptre a few ears of corn, surrounded by a noble company of Amau- 
 rotians; and with this numerous attendance meeting the ambassadors and princes of 
 other nations, poor creatures in comparison with us, inasmuch as they pride them- 
 selves on coming out, loaded with puerile ornaments and womanish finery, bound 
 with chains of that hateful gold, and ridiculous with purple and gems and other 
 bubbly trifles. But I would not have either you or Tunstall form an estimate of me 
 from the character of others, whose behaviour changes with their fortune. Even 
 though it has pleased Heaven to raise our humility to that sublime elevation, with 
 which no kingdom can in my judgment be compared, you shall never find me 
 unmindful of that old familiarity, which has subsisted between us while I have 
 been in a private station; and if you take the trouble to make so small a journey as 
 to visit me in Utopia, I will effectually provide, that all the mortals who are sub- 
 ject to our clemency, shall show you that honour, which they owe to those whom 
 they know to be dearest to their sovereign. I was proceeding further with this most 
 delightful dream, when the break of day dispersed the vision, deposing poor me 
 from my sovereignty, and recalling me to prison, that is, to my legal work. Never- 
 theless I console myself with the reflection, that real kingdoms are not much more 
 lasting. 
 
 It is with this idea of game that the book is furnished with the 
 elaborate epistles; the request of the Vicar of Croydon to be allowed 
 to be appointed first bishop to Utopia; the imaginary alphabet; 
 and the "windy" verses of the Anemolius poet laureate. That, 
 in such an era of discovery, when Columbus' voyages were still 
 remembered, and the Cabots were still sailing, it may have fooled 
 some, would but lend spice to the jest. To the learned, the Greek 
 names would be intelligible, and it was for the learned that it was 
 written. To More and to them all it was clever fooling. 
 
 1 The Epittle* of Eramu*, Francis Morgan Nichols, Vol. 2, p. 442-443. The 
 same point of view is also given in Erasmus* letter to Whitford, Vol. 1, p. 406. 
 But from Erasmus' correspondence innumerable examples might be cited to show 
 that, to gain suppleness of mind, the humanists resorted to such mental exercise.
 
 S78 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 That some of his jests struck near the truth cannot be denied, 
 yet to insist upon reading his theories into his life is illogical. It 
 is to accuse him of inconsistency, because, in the letter quoted 
 above, he speaks of "chains of that hateful gold, " whereas Holbein 
 paints him wearing a heavy chain of that same abominable metal. 
 Consequently the intellectual conceptions expounded in the Utopia 
 apparently did not affect More's practical workaday life. In that, 
 he argues for religious toleration; actually he hated heretics. In 
 his epitaph, written by himself, he tells us so. Whether this hatred 
 took the form of actual torture, and to what extent, are questions 
 beside the mark. The apparent paradox remains. The man that 
 argues for perfect equality and abstract justice was in life content 
 to accept the status quo. Still more, he that pleads for sweetness 
 and light narrowly escaped the extremes of asceticism, and ac- 
 tually wore the penitential haircloth shirt. Between these two 
 aspects of More's character there is this apparently irreconcilable 
 antagonism. On one side he is dominantly medieval; on the other 
 he is a protagonist of the Renaissance. In More, the two currents 
 of the sixteenth century are clearly visible; influenced by human- 
 ism, he conceives a Utopia; influenced by medieval tradition, he 
 sacrifices himself for papal supremacy, and his life closes with the 
 tragedy of Tower Hill. But of the two it is the mystical, medieval, 
 conservative element that dominates. Considered from the point 
 of view of the Utopia, the indignation that thrilled Europe at the 
 news of his death is comprehensible to every modern reader; con- 
 sidered from the point of view of the English works, equally 
 comprehensible is the logical necessity for that sacrifice. The 
 essential unreality of Tudor humanism, veneering rather than 
 showing the grain, however lovely in itself, is the explanation of 
 the paradox. 1 
 
 From such reasoning as this it follows that the chief figure of 
 English humanism is not an Englishman. The center of the stage 
 
 1 That the same paradox was felt even by his contemporaries is witnessed by 
 Hall in his comment upon his execution; (Henry VIII by Edward Hall, edited by 
 Charles Whibley, Vol. ii, p. 265) "I cannot tell whether I shoulde call him a 
 foolishe wyseman, or a wise foolishman, for undoubtedly he beside his learnyng, 
 had a great witte, but it was so myngled with tauntyng and mockyng, that it seemed 
 to them that best knew him, that he thought nothing to be wel spoken except he 
 had ministred some mocke in the communicacion."
 
 HUMANISM 279 
 
 is occupied by the cosmopolitan Erasmus. 1 And no man ever 
 better deserved the adjective. Although born in Holland, his 
 patriotism is nil. When it was suggested by his friend, the Abbot 
 of Steyn, that he live there, he emphatically refused; 2 
 
 You wish me to fix upon a permanent residence; a course also suggested by ad- 
 vancing age. And yet the wanderings of Solon and Pythagoras and Plato are com- 
 mended. The Apostles were wanderers, especially Paul. St. Jerome, monk as he 
 was, is now found at Rome, now in Syria, now in Africa or elsewhere, and in old 
 age is still pursuing sacred Letters. I am not to be compared with him, I admit; 
 but I have never changed my place, unless either forced by plague, or for the sake 
 of study or health; and wherever I have lived (perhaps I shall speak too arrogantly 
 of myself, but I will say the truth), I have been approved by those most 
 approved and praised by those most praised. And there is no country, whether 
 Spain, or Italy, or England, or Scotland, which has not invited me to its 
 hospitality. . . . 
 
 I have explained to you the whole scheme of my life, and what my ideas are. I 
 am quite ready to change even this mode of life, if I see anything better. But I 
 do not see what I can do in Holland. I know I shall not find either the climate or 
 the food agree with me; and I shall draw all eyes upon me. I shall return old and 
 grey to the place I left when young; I shall return an invalid. I shall be exposed 
 to the contempt of the lowest people after being accustomed to be honoured by the 
 greatest. I shall exchange my studies for drinking parties. And whereas you prom- 
 ise your assistance in finding me a place where I may live, as you say, with a good 
 income, I cannot think what that can be, unless you would quarter me upon some 
 convent of nuns, where I should be a servant to women, after having declined to 
 serve Archbishops and Kings. 
 
 But just as he refused to be bound by the ties of place, so did he 
 refuse to be bound by the ties of service. The wearisome com- 
 plaints that fill his letters arise from the fact that he was unwilling 
 to perform any definite labor from which he might expect a regular 
 income, and yet he did expect the income. He insisted upon being 
 absolutely free. Nor would he be limited by the confines of 
 
 1 The two most modern lives of Erasmus are those of Froude and Professor Emer- 
 ton of Harvard. And the idealism of the first is corrected by the caustic quality of 
 the second. Froude's Life is irritating through its inaccuracy and carelessness for 
 detail, so irritating that scholars are apt to disregard its wonderfully vivid por- 
 traiture. One value, at least, of ita author is shown by the fact that the two most 
 notable recent additions to Erasmiana, The Epistle* by Nichols, and the EpistoUs 
 by Allen, both acknowledge his inspiration. 
 
 7 This is accepted as genuine by Allen, and somewhat reluctantly by Nichols. 
 The translation is taken from Nichols, Vol. ii, pp. 144, 149.
 
 280 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 language. Notwithstanding his various residences in England, 
 in one case of five years, and in spite of the fact that he was given 
 the benefice of Aldington, he never learned to speak English. 
 "He could not preach the word of God to his parishioners in 
 English or hold any communication with them in their own tongue, 
 of which he is entirely ignorant" is Warham's confession. 1 Nor 
 is there much reason to assume that he knew any other modern 
 language better. His sole means of communication was the Latin 
 language. Nor did he wish it otherwise. The knowledge of 
 English, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, or even Italian was 
 local. Latin, on the contrary, was familiar to every cultivated 
 man in Europe. With Latin, Erasmus was a denizen, not of one 
 country, but of the world. As Professor Saintsbury exclaims, 
 what a misfortune had Erasmus written in Dutch! Actually, 
 Lathi saved him from the limitations of any one nationality. 
 
 As Erasmus was by profession a writer to the universe, so was his 
 appeal universal. The tales of his incredible popularity, (tales 
 that, it must be confessed, Erasmus himself circulated with true 
 Renaissance modesty), seem founded upon fact. At least, the 
 sale of his books was enormous. 2 With all selections and all un- 
 dated editions omitted from the list, the following compilation 
 gives the number of editions of his more important works from the 
 respective dates of the first edition through the year 1550. The 
 Adagia (1500) has ninety -eight editions; Enchiridion Militis Chris- 
 tiani (1503), seventy-seven; Encomion Morice (1511), forty-nine; 
 De Copia ((1511), ninety; De Constructione (1514), seventy-two; 
 Novum Testamentum (1516), one hundred and forty; and Collo- 
 quia (1516), one hundred and two. Even although the number 
 of copies in any edition was probably not large, yet the number of 
 readers must have been very great. 
 
 The immediate problem here, however, is not the effect upon 
 Europe, so much as the result of his writing upon English thought. 
 England had a peculiar claim upon him. His first regular income 
 was a pension of 20 from Lord Mountjoy, and to the end of his 
 life he received help from England. Warham proved a generous 
 patron, and apparently he was aided by Colet and the rest. While 
 
 1 Emerton's Erasmus, p. 185. 
 
 1 These figures are taken from the Bibliotkeca Erasmiana, compiled by the Direc- 
 tion de la Bibliotheque de 1'Universite de 1'fitat, a. Gand, 1893.
 
 HUMANISM 281 
 
 still at an impressionable age, he studied Greek at Oxford, and may 
 have taught it at Cambridge, where he held an endowment. Still 
 more important are the mental and spiritual aids he received. His 
 friendships with the Oxford group have already been mentioned. 
 His admiration for them, especially More, was unbounded. It is 
 possible that Colet by his precepts and by his example gave the 
 determining impulse to his whole life. Erasmus, by his devotion 
 to the cause of morality, belongs definitely to the English group. 
 It is no cause to wonder that his popularity, in England, was great. 
 How great it was is shown by the Day-book of John Dome. 1 John 
 Dome was an Oxford book-seller, and in 1520 he listed each day 
 the books sold with their prices. It is an unemotional record of 
 the literary demands of the Oxford public for that year. During 
 that period, he sold 2383 books. The books in English are man- 
 uals, ballads, etc. English literature is practically unrepresented. 
 There are three ballads of Robin Hood, Lydgate's Stans Puer ad 
 Mensam 2 , and probably Caxton's translation of the Mneid; 3 
 yet Chaucer, Gower, Occleve, Hawes, Malory, and Skelton are 
 unrepresented. 4 On the other hand, classical literature appears in 
 thirty-seven copies of various works of Cicero, thirty-seven of 
 Terence, thirty of Aristotle, twenty-nine of Vergil, twenty-three 
 of Ovid, fourteen of Lucan, twelve of Aristophanes, nine of Lu- 
 cian, eight of Horace, eight of Pliny, six of Sallust, three of Aulus 
 Gellius, one of Tacitus, and one of Persius. The English humanists 
 are represented by one copy of Linacre's Galen and three of More's 
 Ejristolce ad Eduardum Lei, There is no copy of the Utopia. Of 
 Italian humanism, twenty-nine copies of Sulpitius were sold, 
 twenty-two of Valla, and three of Politian. French humanism 
 is indicated by twenty-nine copies of various works of Jacobus 
 Faber, the friend of Budaeus and the antagonist of Erasmus, and 
 for the German there were two copies of the Epistola; Obscurorum 
 Virorum. But the startling feature of the list is that of Eras- 
 mus one hundred and fifty -four copies were sold, without counting 
 
 1 Part iii of the First Series of Collectanea, edited by C. R. L. Fletcher, and printed 
 for the Oxford Historical Society. 
 
 1 Although in the last line of the poem Lydgate is stated to have been the author, 
 his authorship has yet been doubted. It is accepted by MacCracken. 
 
 ' Caxton's Eneydoa is medieval, not classical. 
 
 4 Barclay appears in a work incapable of identification.
 
 282 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 twenty-six copies of works of which he was the general editor. l Un- 
 less, therefore, it be shown either that Oxford, on account of its 
 academic atmosphere, was very unusual as a book-market, or that 
 the year 1520 was very unusual, it necessarily follows that more 
 Englishmen then wished to read the works of Erasmus than the 
 works of any other author, living or dead ! It is impossible to ig- 
 nore his influence upon English literature. 
 
 The works of Erasmus most in favor with John Dome's patrons 
 in 1520 are the following, arranged in the order of their sales: 
 Colloquia; De Constructione; Copia Verborum et Rerum; Enchiridion 
 Militis Christiana; Adagia; Novum Testamentum; Paraphrasis on 
 various parts of the New Testament; Encomion Morice (The 
 Praise of Folly) ; and the dialogue, usually attributed to Faustus 
 Andrelinus, Julius Exclusus. 2 Since obviously the sale of any 
 particular work would depend on the length of time it has been 
 before the reading public, and also upon the fluctuations of local 
 interest, little value can be gained from an analysis of the number 
 of copies sold of any work. In general it may be said that the 
 popularity of the second and the third needs no explanation. The 
 De Constructione is a good Latin grammar; the Copia a good rhet- 
 oric; as such, the sale of them is interesting only as showing a 
 natural interest in Latin as a medium of expression. Somewhat 
 the same may be argued for the Adagia, a collection of quotations 
 from classic authors, and, perhaps, with the early editions of the 
 Colloquia, the appeal may have been to the study of conversational 
 Latin. But just as the Colloquies are vastly more than merely 
 model conversations, so is Erasmus himself quite other than a mere 
 grammarian. To understand the significance of his immense 
 popularity requires a careful analysis of his work. 
 
 Unless the readers of his day differed radically from the readers 
 of today, to re-state his popularity in other terms is to say that 
 
 1 My counting seems to differ from that of the Rev. Dr. Lindsay, Cambridge 
 History of Literature, iii, 21-22; my figures, although smaller, are yet sufficiently 
 surprising. 
 
 2 The much debated authorship of this dialogue is given to Erasmus by Froude, 
 Nichols and Allen (Vol. II, p. 418). In 1516 More writes him: "Lupsetus restituit 
 mihi aliquot quaterniones tuas quas olim apudse tennerat. In his est lulii Genius 
 . . . , tua manu omnia." Although Erasmus may have made a manuscript copy 
 of another's work, his subsequent equivocal denials are so obviously motivated 
 that the probability seems strong that he was the author.
 
 HUMANISM 283 
 
 they found him interesting. And the interest of so many readers 
 is due to the wideness of his appeal. Thus the Adagia, a collection 
 of proverbs from the classics, was bought as a handy vademecum; 
 while the Morice was enjoyed by those that liked intellectual play. 
 The Colloquies, on the other hand, in an age when light reading 
 was rarely obtainable, would in a measure represent both our 
 drama and our novel. The realism of the Naufragium or the humor 
 of the Diversoria had no real competition except in the Italian 
 novelle. Fiction was represented in English and French, either by 
 cumbrous allegorical poems or collections of anecdotes like the 
 Hundred Mery Talys. Here Erasmus may be regarded as the six- 
 teenth century prototype of the novelist. His sense for dramatic 
 situation, his handling of the dialogue form, his wit, and his daring, 
 (illustrated in such a doubtful situation as that in the Adulescens 
 et Scorium), go far to explain the number of his readers. 
 
 Yet the significance of Erasmus does not lie here. In English 
 literature neither the drama, nor the novel, owe any great debt 
 to Erasmus. What might perhaps have been the literary develop- 
 ment was stopped by the Reformation, leaving Erasmus with 
 Lucian on the far side of the gulf. The effect of Erasmus on his 
 own generation was due, not to his form, but to his content; not 
 to the manner in which he delivered his message, but to the mes- 
 sage itself; not to his objective creations, but to his own person- 
 ality. 1 As a scholar he was perhaps the best known of his genera- 
 tion. With his collaboration the printing house of Froben at Basel 
 ranked as the leading publishers of Europe. He has the scholarly 
 conscience, the desire to find the ipsissima verba of his author. 
 It was this desire that caused the sensation of his edition of the 
 New Testament. The fact that he had neither the critical appara- 
 tus, nor the critical training, to enable him to make a text that 
 approximates modern standards is of little importance; the impor- 
 tant factor is that he had the desire. While the Church admitted 
 the value of tradition and of historic dicta, of course the basis of 
 all dogma was the New Testament itself. The text, authorized by 
 the Church, was that of the Vulgate, a version prepared by St. 
 Jerome about 400 A. D. And in the lapse of centuries this version 
 had become accepted as the actual Word of God. Upon its phras- 
 ing the schoolmen liad constructed their elaborate theses. To 
 1 The effect of Erasmus on form will be discussed later.
 
 284 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 question its phrasing seemed sacrilege. This position is illustrated 
 by a letter of Martinus Dorpius to Erasmus l 
 
 But I also understand, that you have corrected the New Testament, and written 
 notes on more than a thousand passages, not without profit to Theologians. This 
 is another matter, upon which in all friendship I have longed to convey a warning to 
 a friend. . . . 
 
 You are proposing to correct the Latin copies by the Greek. But if I show that 
 the Latin version has no mixture of falsehood or mistake, will you not admit that 
 such a work is unnecessary? But this is what I claim for the Vulgate, since it is un- 
 reasonable to suppose, that the Universal Church has been in error for so many 
 generations in her use of this edition, nor is it probable that so many holy Fathers 
 have been mistaken, who in reliance upon it have defined the most arduous ques- 
 tions in General Councils, which, it is admitted by most theologians as well as 
 lawyers, are not subject to error in matters of faith. 
 
 Consequently the cry of heresy arose. And yet Erasmus had ded- 
 icated his work by permission to the Pope. It is with surprised 
 irritation that Erasmus justifies himself to Henry Bullock. 2 He 
 has been told that the book has been forbidden in one of the Cam- 
 bridge colleges. What kind of man is it, he exclaims, that is so 
 exceedingly irritable that he is angered by works that would 
 tame even wild beasts ! No work can be approved by the General 
 Councils, until it has been placed before them. Nor is it proved 
 that the Vulgate may not have been changed by some scribe. 
 
 Again, let them clear up, if they can, this dilemma. Do they allow any change 
 to be made in the sacred text, or absolutely none at all? If any, why not first ex- 
 amine whether a change is rightly made or not? If none, what will they do with 
 those passages where the existence of an error is too manifest to be concealed? 
 
 Nor is that any reason why a method applied to profane learning 
 should not be employed upon the sacred Text. 
 
 What is it then, that these people find deficient in me? I have not been the first 
 to take this matter in hand; I have not done it without consideration; and I have 
 followed the rule of the Synod. If anyone is influenced by learning, my work is 
 approved by the most learned; if by virtue, it is approved by the most upright; 
 if by authority, it is approved by Bishops, by Archbishops, by the Pope himself. 
 Nevertheless I do not desire to obtain any advantage from their support, if it be 
 found that I have solicited the favour of any of them. Whatever support is given, 
 has been given to the cause, and not to the man. 
 
 1 The Epistles by Nichols, ii, 169. 
 
 1 Nichols, ii, 824-332, gives extracts; the whole letter is in Allen ii, 321.
 
 HUMANISM 285 
 
 Read in the light of future events this letter is amusing. Of course 
 those that wished to keep matters exactly as they were were right 
 in protesting! By thus throwing the matter open to individual 
 judgment Erasmus was undermining the authority of the Church. 
 The situation is somewhat analogous to that created by Darwin 
 with his evolutionary theory, and is paralleled by the amount of 
 theological invective it evoked. Erasmus had no desire to attack 
 the dogmas of the Church; merely as a scholar he wished to lay 
 before the world the actual Scriptures. 
 
 His motive in doing so, however, was that he wished a moral 
 reform. Here we see most clearly the English influence. The 
 novelty of Colet's lectures on the Pauline Epistles lay in inter- 
 preting them as human documents and in applying them to the 
 conditions of his own day. That is exactly the position of Erasmus. 
 His annotations to the New Testament drive home the scriptural 
 truths by modern applications. The same attitude appears in 
 the Enchiridion sixteen years earlier. Obviously with the parable 
 of the ten talents in mind he thus comments : 1 
 
 The more is committed and lent to thee, the more art thou bound to thy brother. 
 Thou art rich, remember thou art the dispenser, not the lord: take heed circum- 
 spectly how thou entreatest the common good. Believest thou that property or 
 impropriation was prohibited and voluntary poverty enjoined to monks only? 
 Thou art deceived, both pertain indifferently to all Christian men. ... So greatly 
 Christ is coming into contempt to the world, that they think it a goodly and excel- 
 lent thing to have nothing to do with him: and that so much the more every man 
 should be despised, the more he were to him. Hearest thou not daily of the lay 
 persons in their fury, the names of a clerk, of a priest, of a monk, to be cast in our 
 teeth, instead of a sharp and cruel rebuke, saying, that clerk, thou priest, thou monk, 
 that thou art: and it is done, utterly with none other mind, with none other voice 
 or pronouncing, than if they should cast in our teeth incest or sacrilege. I verily 
 marvel why they also cast not in our teeth baptism, why also object they not against 
 us with the sarazyns the name of Christ as an opprobrious thing. If they said, an 
 evil clerk, an unworthy priest, or an unreligious monk, in that they might be suf- 
 fered as men which note the manners of the persons, and not despise the profession 
 of virtue. But whosoever counteth praise in themselves the deflowering of virgins, 
 goods taken away in war, money either won or lost at dice, or other chance, and 
 have nothing to lay against another man more spiteful or opprobrious or more 
 to be ashamed of, than the names of a monk or a priest. Certainly it is easy to 
 conjecture what these, in name only Christian men, judge of Christ. 
 
 >The Enchiridion translated 1533, republished 1905 by Methuen & Co.. 
 215-17.
 
 286 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Throughout his work his aim is to put his scholarly attainments 
 to the service of right living. It is this moral standpoint that is 
 stressed in the letter to Servatius. 1 
 
 I will now say something about my books. I think you have read the Enchiri- 
 dion, by which not a few confess themselves to have been inflamed to a love of 
 piety. I claim no merit of my own, but rejoice with Christ, if by his gift through 
 my means any good has been done. I do not know whether you have seen the Book 
 of Adages, as it has been printed by Aldus. It is not a theological work, but one 
 that is useful for every branch of learning, and cost me incalculable nights of toil. 
 I have published a book on Copiousness of matter and language, which I dedicated 
 to my friend Colet, a useful work for persons preparing to preach, though such stud- 
 ies are scorned by those who despise all good Letters. During the last two years, 
 beside other employments, I have corrected the Epistles of Jerome, distinguishing 
 with dagger-marks the spurious additions, and illustrating the obscure passages 
 with notes. I have also corrected the New Testament from the collation of ancient 
 Greek manuscripts, and annotated more than a thousand places, not without 
 profit to theologians. I have begun a commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul, 
 which I shall finish, when I have published what I have already mentioned. For 
 I have resolved to give up my life to Sacred Literature. 
 
 It is only fair to state that this letter is apologetic, that he care- 
 fully avoids mentioning the Moria, and yet there is no reason to 
 suppose that it does not> truly reflect his philosophy. And it is 
 the point of view of his English friends, morality rather than 
 literature. 2 
 
 This very English emphasis upon the moral aspect of literature, 
 joined with the discipline derived from his scholarly pursuits, led 
 him to stress only the essentials. But not satisfied with this, he 
 attacks what he considers the non-essentials, which yet confuse 
 mankind. To discriminate between what is essential and what 
 non-essential, he applies commonsense, thereby becoming an 
 apostle of rationalism. In the Encomion Morice, folly is all that 
 is not dictated by the intellect. All emotional states are therefore 
 foolish. Love, patriotism, war, all that has inspired the bards 
 of all ages, is foolish. That this, like the Utopia is only a jeu d'es- 
 prit, and that it should not be taken seriously, is of course obvious. 
 All Erasmus means is, that tested by pure intellect life is a divine 
 comedy. And it is impossible to believe that, finished in More's 
 house and dedicated to him, it does not reflect the views of that 
 
 1 Nichols, ii, 146-7. 
 
 s This is expanded in Knight's Life of Colet and Seebohm's Oxford Reformers.
 
 HUMANISM 287 
 
 group. Erasmus, in this work, humorously develops even the 
 modern sceptical spirit. 1 
 
 The next to be placed among the regiment of fools are such as make a trade of 
 telling or inquiring after incredible stories of miracles and prodigies: never doubting 
 that a lie will choke them, they will muster up a thousand several strange relations 
 of spirits, ghosts, apparitions, raising of the devil, and such like bugbears of super- 
 stition, which the farther they are from being probably true, the more greedily 
 they are swallowed, and the more devoutly believed. And these absurdities do not 
 only bring an empty pleasure, and cheap divertisement, but they are a good trade, 
 and procure a comfortable income to such priests and friars as by this craft get their 
 gain. To these again are nearly related such others as attribute strange virtues 
 to the shrines and images of saints and martyrs, and so would make their credulous 
 proselytes believe, that if they pay their devotion to St. Christopher in the morning, 
 they shall be guarded and secured the day following from all dangers and mis- 
 fortunes: if soldiers, when they first take arms, shall come and mumble over such 
 a set prayer before the picture of St. Barbara, they shall return safe from all en- 
 gagements: or if any pray to Erasmus on such particular holidays, with the cere- 
 mony of wax-candles, and other fopperies, he shall in a short time be rewarded with 
 a plentiful increase of wealth and riches. The Christians have now their gigantic 
 St. George, as well as the pagans had their Hercules; they paint the saint on horse- 
 back, and drawing the horse in splendid trappings, very gloriously accoutred, they 
 scarce refrain in a literal sense from worshipping the very beast. 
 
 There is no argument here. It is assumed that the absurdity be- 
 comes evident by the mere statement. To a mind familiar with 
 pagan gods and pagan superstitions, and to pagan objections 
 to both, certain aspects of Christian civilization presented 
 evident analogies. Human nature is human nature, and whether 
 the particular manifestation of its aberration is worship directed 
 to St. George or to Hercules is accidental. 
 
 This rational point of view when turned upon revealed religion, 
 which by hypothesis is irrational because beyond the human 
 reason, led Erasmus into attacks upon the abuses of the Church. 
 This natural sequence is shown in the paragraphs immediately 
 following the one just quoted: 
 
 What shall I say of such as cry up and maintain the cheat of pardons and in- 
 dulgences? that by these compute the time of each soul's residence in purgatory, 
 and assign them a longer or shorter continuance, according as they purchase more 
 or fewer of these paltry pardons, and saleable exemptions? Or what can be said 
 bad enough of others, as pretend that by the force of such magical charms, or by the 
 
 1 1 am using the anonymous translation issued by Reeves, 1876 and re-Lssued 
 by Gibbing & Co.. 1900.
 
 288 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 fumbling over their beads in the rehearsal of such and such petitions (which some 
 religious impostors invented, either for diversion, or what is more likely for advan- 
 tage), they shall procure riches, honour, pleasure, health, long life, a lusty old age, 
 nay, after death a sitting at the right hand of our Saviour in His kingdom; though 
 as to this last part of their happiness, they care not how long it be deferred, having 
 scarce any appetite toward a-tasting the joys of heaven, till they are surfeited, 
 glutted with, and can no longer relish their enjoyments on earth. By this easy 
 way of purchasing pardon, any notorious highwayman, any plundering soldier, 
 or any bribe-taking judge, shall disburse some part of their unjust gains, and so 
 think all their grossest impieties sufficiently atoned for; so many perjuries, lusts, 
 drunkenness, quarrels, bloodsheds, cheats, treacheries, and all sorts of debauch- 
 eries, shall all be, as it were, struck a bargain for, and such a contract made, as 
 if they had paid off all arrears, and might now begin upon new score. 
 
 And what can be more ridiculous, than for some others to be confident of going 
 to heaven by repeating daily those seven verses out of the Psalms, which the devil 
 taught St. Bernard, thinking thereby to have put a trick upon him, but that he was 
 over-reached in his cunning. . . . 
 
 From the same principles of folly proceeds the custom of each country's chal- 
 lenging their particular guardian-saint; nay, each saint has his distinct office al- 
 lotted to him, and is accordingly addressed to upon the respective occasions: as 
 one for the toothache, a second to grant an easy delivery in child-birth, a third to 
 help persons to lost goods, another to protect seamen in a long voyage, another to 
 guard the farmer's cows and sheep, and so on; for to rehearse all instances would 
 be extremely tedious. 
 
 There are some more catholic saints petitioned to upon all occasions, as more 
 especially the Virgin Mary, whose blind devotees think it manners now to place the 
 mother before the Son. 
 
 And of all the prayers and intercessions that are made to these respective saints 
 the substance of them is no more than down-right Folly. . . . 
 
 Such frankness of discussion may be explained, as in the anal- 
 ogous case of the Utopia, by stressing the undoubted fact that the 
 aim here is to amuse. The Moria, an intellectual pastime, is 
 more interesting as an example of the writer's agility than as a 
 record of his personal opinions. To call him to account for 
 paradoxes uttered in the name of Folly is doubtless foolish. The 
 same condition, however, scarcely holds with his most popular 
 work, the Colloquia. In origin it was a series of model conver- 
 sations in Latin, a Latin Ollendorf. What quickly differentiates 
 it from any other book of this type is both the dramatic nature 
 of the conversations and the extraordinary subjects of them. It 
 is really a series of discussions, in the form of dialogue, of the 
 vital questions of the sixteenth century. Inevitably the authority 
 of the Church over the individual is argued. This, at a time when
 
 HUMANISM 289 
 
 the Reformation was developing in Germany, the Huguenots were 
 forming in France, and England was trembling in the balance, was 
 above all the most difficult and the most interesting question 
 before Europe. In the celebrated 'I%#vo<a7ia a fishmonger and 
 a butcher open the discussion by questioning the papal prohibition 
 of flesh on certain days in favor of fish. As, of course, there was 
 no refrigeration in the sixteenth century, the question was not an 
 academic one, nor are the terms used in discussing it academic. 
 But it quickly passed into the distinction between the commands 
 of God and the laws of the Church, and then into the typical 
 Erasmian position of emphasis upon the essential in contrast to 
 the mere observance. 1 
 
 But. What a mighty Crime is it accounted for any one to receive the Sacrament, 
 not having first wash'd his Mouth! when, at the same Time, they do not stick to 
 take it with an unpurified Mind, defiled with vile Affections. 
 
 Fish. How many Priests are there, that would die before they would participate 
 the Sacrament in a Chalice and Charger, that has not been consecrated by a Bishop, 
 or in their every-Day Clothes? But among them all that are thus nice, how many 
 do we see that are not at all afraid to come to the Lord's Table, drunk with the last 
 Night's Debauch? How fearful are they, lest they touch the Wafer with that Part 
 of the Hand that has not been dipp'd in consecrated Oil? Why are they not as 
 religious in taking Care that an unhallow'd Mind does not offend the Lord himself? 
 
 But. We won't so much as touch a consecrated Vessel, and think we have been 
 guilty of a heinous Offense, if we shall chance so to do; and yet in the mean Time, 
 how unconcern'd are we, while we violate the living Temples of the Holy Spirit? 
 
 Fiih. Human Constitutions require that no Bastard, lame, or one that hath but 
 one Eye, be admitted to any sacred Function; how nice are we as to this Point? 
 But in the mean Time, Unlearned, Gamesters, Drunkards, Soldiers, and Murder- 
 ers, are admitted every where. They tell us, that the Diseases of the Mind lie not 
 open to our View; I don't speak of those Things that are hidden, but of such as are 
 more plain to be seen than the Deformity of the Body. 
 
 Here Erasmus' objection is not to the forms and ceremonies in 
 themselves, but to the fact that they have superseded the sub- 
 stance. Exactly similar is his attitude toward confession. In the 
 following passage between Erasmus and Gaspar, the latter is a 
 .stalking horse for Erasmus' own opinions. 2 
 
 / '-. I am of your Mind; but how do you stand affected as to Confession? 
 Ga. Very well; for I confess daily. 
 Er. Every Day? 
 
 1 1 uae Bailey's translation of 1723. * The Child" t Piety.
 
 290 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Ga. Yes. 
 
 Er. Then you ought to keep a Priest to yourself. 
 
 Ga. But I confess to him who only truly remits Sins, to whom all the Power is 
 given. 
 
 Er. To whom? 
 
 Go. To Christ. 
 
 Er, And do you think that's sufficient? 
 
 Ga. It would be enough for me, if it were enough for the Rulers of the Church, 
 and receiv'd Custom. 
 
 Er. Who do you call the Rulers of the Church? 
 
 Ga. The Popes, Bishops and Apostles. 
 
 Er. And do you put Christ into this Number? 
 
 Ga. He is without Controversy the chief Head of 'em all. 
 
 Er. And was he the Author of this Confession in use? 
 
 Ga. He is indeed the Author of all good; but whether he appointed Confession 
 as it is now us'd in the Church, I leave to be disputed by Divines. The Authority 
 of my Betters is enough for me that am but a Lad and a private Person. This is 
 certainly the principal Confession; nor is it an easy Matter to confess to Christ; 
 no Body confesses to him, but he that is angry with his Sin. If I have committed 
 any great Offence, I lay it open, and bewail it to him, and implore his Mercy; I 
 cry out, weep and lament, nor do I give over before I feel the Love of Sin throughly 
 purged from the Bottom of my Heart, and some Tranquility and Chearfulness of 
 Mind follow upon it, which is an Argument of the Sin being pardoned. And when 
 the Time requires to go to the holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ; 
 then I make Confession to a Priest too, but in few Words, and nothing but what I am 
 well satisfy'd are Faults, or such that carry in them a very great Suspicion that 
 they are such; neither do I always take it to be a capital or enormous Crime, every 
 Thing that is done contrary to human Constitutions, unless a wicked Contemptuous- 
 ness shall go along with it: Nay, I scarce believe any Crime to be Capital, that has 
 not Malice join'd with it, that is, a perverse Will. 
 
 Confession is merely a form, useful only as it follows the true con- 
 fession to the Christ; absolution also is merely a form, useful only 
 as it represents the true absolution given alone by God. 
 
 One more illustration of this new rationalism, born of humanistic 
 study, must be given. In 1513-14 Erasmus went on a pilgrimage 
 to the shrines of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk and of St. 
 Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. In the relics shown, there and 
 elsewhere, Erasmus expresses complete unbelief and in his Pere- 
 grinatio religionis ergo ridicules the whole system mercilessly. 
 He is shown the middle joint of the finger of St. Peter. 
 
 I then took Notice of the Bigness of the Joint, which was large enough to be taken 
 for that of a Giant. Upon which, said I, Peter must Needs have been a very lusty 
 Man. At this one of the Company fell a-laughing.
 
 HUMANISM 291 
 
 The Virgin's house transported in the air, like the Holy House 
 at Loretto, the fragments of the True Cross, which if gathered 
 together "would seem to be sufficient Loading for a good large 
 Ship;" the Virgin's Milk, authenticated by the statement of an un- 
 known nun to Matthew of Paris, on account of which indulgences 
 are given, and the treasures of the place are each in turn held up 
 to scorn. In the second pilgrimage they are shown the immensely 
 valuable possessions of the shrine of St. Thomas. 1 His friend 
 "Gratian Pullus, " "a Man of Learning and Piety, but not so well 
 affected to this Part of Religion as I could wish he were, " inter- 
 rupted the performance : 
 
 My Friend Gratian lost himself here extremely. After a short Prayer, he says 
 to the Assistant of him that shew'd us the Reliques, Good Father, is it true, as I 
 have heard, that Thomas, while he liv'd, was very charitable to the Poor? Very 
 true, replies he, and began to relate a great many Instances of his Charity. Then, 
 answers Gratian, I don't believe that good Inclination in him is changed, unless 
 it be for the better. The Officer assented. Then, says he again, if this holy Man 
 was so liberal to the Poor, when he was a poor Man himself, and stood in Need of 
 Charity for the Support of his own Body, don't you think he would take it well now, 
 when he is grown so rich, and wants nothing, if some poor Woman having a Family 
 of Children at Home ready to starve, or Daughters in Danger of being under a 
 necessity to prostitute themselves for want of Portions, or a Husband sick in Bed, 
 and destitute of all Comforts; if such a Woman should ask him Leave to make bold 
 with some small Portion of these vast Riches, for the Relief of her Family, taking it 
 either as by Consent, or by Gift, or by Way of Borrowing? The Assistant making 
 no Answer to this, Gratian being a warm Man, I am fully persuaded, says he, that 
 the good Man would be glad at his Heart, that when he is dead he could be able to 
 relieve the Necessities of the Poor with his Wealth. Upon this the Shewer of the 
 Re-licks began to frown, and to pout out his Lips, and to look upon us as if he would 
 have eaten us up; and I don't doubt but he would have spit in our Faces, and have 
 tura'd us out of the Church by the Neck and Shoulders, but that we had the Arch- 
 bishop's Recommendation. 
 
 From such passages and others like them, the easy inference 
 is that Erasmus is an out-and-out reformer, that he but waited 
 for the flag to be unfurled to join the ranks. Actually nothing is 
 farther from the truth. He lived a good Romanist, and at the 
 end of his life received 600 ducats from the Papacy with the 
 intimation that he was to be made a cardinal. The usual ex- 
 
 1 Compare Chapter 1, p. 17. A modern analogue to this is the shrine of San 
 Carlo Borromeo at Milan, and Gratian's disgust is duplicated by that of the modern 
 Protestant visitor.
 
 292 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 planation of this anomalous situation is expressed in Pope's 
 antithesis, "the glory of the priesthood and the shame." At the 
 worst, he is represented as, although a reformer at heart, afraid 
 to join the ranks, lest he lose the flesh-pots of the Papacy; at the 
 best, that he was by nature a "trimmer." Neither extreme of 
 these opinions does justice to the bias of his mind, trained by 
 humanism. Exactly the same faculties, which made him a critic 
 of the abuses of the Church, exposed to him the dangers of the new 
 movement. His attitude is shown in a letter of 1529 : 1 
 
 In such times as ours it is better to call on the Lord than to trust in princes and 
 armies. We must pray to Him to shorten these days. Alas! Christianity has sunk 
 so low that scarce a man knows now what calling on the Lord means. One looks 
 to cardinals and bishops, another to kings, another to the black battalions of monks 
 and divines. What do they want? What do they expect from protectors, who care 
 nothing for Catholic piety, and care only to recover their old power and enjoyments? 
 We were drunk or asleep, and God has sent these stern schoolmasters to wake us up. 
 The rope has been overstrained. It might have stood if they had slackened it a 
 little, but they would rather have it break than save it by concession. The Pope 
 is head of the Church, and as such deserves to be honoured. He stretched his au- 
 thority too far, and so the first strand of the rope parted. Pardons and indulgences 
 were tolerable within limits. Monks and commissaries filled the world with them 
 to line their own pockets. In every Church were the red boxes and the crosses and 
 the papal arms, and the people were forced to buy. So the second strand went. 
 Then there was the invocation of saints. The images in churches at first served for 
 ornaments and examples. By-and-by the walls were covered with scandalous pic- 
 tures. The cult ran to idolatry; so parted a third. The singing of hymns was an 
 ancient and pious custom, but when music was introduced fitter for weddings and 
 banquets than for God's service, and the sacred words were lost in affected intona- 
 tions, so that no word in the Liturgy was spoken plainly, away went another. What 
 is more solemn than the mass? But when stupid vagabond priests learn up two 
 or three masses and repeat them over and over as a cobbler makes shoes; when no- 
 torious profligates officiate at the Lord's table, and the sacredest of mysteries is 
 sold for money well, this strand is almost gone too. Secret confession may be 
 useful; but when it is employed to extort money out of the terrors of fools, when an 
 institution designed as medicine for the soul is made an instrument of priestly vil- 
 lany, this part of the cord will not last much longer either. 
 
 Priests who are loose in their lives and yet demand to be honoured as superior 
 
 1 The Collected Works of Erasmus, Froben (1540) Tomus 3, 935-40. Froude's 
 abridgement (op. cit. 363) which I here cite, taken from the Leiden edition seems 
 to me, by slight turns in language, to overemphasize Erasmus' position. The 
 Leiden Edition, 1703-1709, contains matter not written by Erasmus, according to 
 the title-page, but such matter is not differentiated in the body of the work. This 
 fact misled Froude into quoting passages that are at best only doubtful.
 
 HUMANISM 293 
 
 beings have brought their order into contempt. Careless of purity, careless what 
 they do or how they live, the monks have trusted to their wealth and numbers to 
 crush those whom they can no longer deceive. They pretended that their clothes 
 would work miracles, that they could bring good luck into houses and keep the devil 
 out. How is it at present? They used to be thought gods. They are now scarcely 
 thought honest men. 
 
 I do not say that practices good in themselves should be condemned because 
 they are abused. But I do say that we have ourselves given the occasion. We have 
 no right to be surprised or angry, and we ought to consider quietly how best to 
 meet the storm. As things go now there will be no improvement, let the dice fall 
 which way they will. The Gospellers go for anarchy; the Catholics, instead of re- 
 penting of their sins, pile superstition on superstition; while Luther's disciples, if 
 such they be, neglect prayers, neglect the fasts of the Church, and eat more on fast 
 days than on common days. Papal constitutions, clerical privileges, are scorned and 
 trampled on; and our wonderful champions of the Church do more than anyone to 
 bring the Holy See into contempt. There are rumors of peace. God grant they 
 prove true. If the Emperor, the Pope, and the Kings of France and England can 
 compose their differences and agree on some common course of action, evangelical 
 religion may be restored. But we must deserve our blessings if we are to enjoy 
 them. When princes go mad, the fault is often in ourselves. 
 
 This letter defines the position of the humanists. Of course the 
 Church had abuses. But that, on account of them, one should 
 go to the other extreme of the anarchy of private judgment or 
 the fatalism of Luther's Augustinianism was to jump from the 
 frying pan into the fire. Therefore he was exactly as much an op- 
 ponent of the dogmatism of Luther, of the Protestant excesses, of 
 the bibliolatry of the reformers, and of the religious debauches 
 carried on in the name of the Spirit, as he was of the abuse of the 
 confession, of pilgrimages and relic-worshipping, etc. The result 
 was that Erasmus pleased neither party. In the time of conflict 
 the golden mean has no friends. Erasmus called loudly for reform 
 but insisted that reform should come from within the Church. The 
 Catholics denied the first half of the proposition and the Protest- 
 ants the latter. Consequently the term Erasmian has become one 
 of reproach, of Laodicean indifference. Yet surely it is conceiva- 
 ble that, if Erasmus might have had his way, if the Church might 
 have sloughed off the undoubted evils without the world paying 
 the penalty of the English schism, of the German wars, of the 
 Massacre of St. Bartholomew, we might have arrived at the pres- 
 ent state of grace without the inherited scars. That it was not 
 possible, that the golden mean is static and not dynamic, is a con- 
 fession of human weakness. Therefore ii is Luther, not Erasmus,
 
 294 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 that is the protagonist of the Reformation. Erasmus was too 
 "academic." With the same clearness of vision that he saw the 
 errors of the present Church, he foresaw the difficulties of the fu- 
 ture. Hamlet-like, 
 
 the native hue of resolution 
 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; 
 And enterprises of great pith and moment, 
 With this regard, their currents turn awry, 
 And lose the name of action. 
 
 The value of this analysis of Erasmus' position lies in the fact 
 that to a large extent he is the mouth-piece of English humanism. 
 As has been said, John Dome's day-book shows the immense 
 popularity of his works. Wynkyn de Worde issued three editions 
 of the Colloquia and by 1549 Challoner translated them into Eng- 
 lish. The heretical attitude toward relics, as shown in the extract 
 quoted above, apparently is that of Colet himself, who actually 
 was the Gratian Pullus of the dialogue. Even the Moria with its 
 brilliant irreverence was defended by More, and Erasmus calls 
 More his "twin spirit." And if this be so, the apparent failure of 
 the English humanists is explained. Their intellectual perception 
 certainly opened the way for the man of action in Cromwell. But 
 when their academic speculations became metamorphosed into 
 facts, in terror they threw themselves back upon the sure author- 
 ity of the Church, 1 repudiated their idle thoughts, and endeavored 
 to counteract the harm already done. For this reason, aside from 
 their immediate friends, they left no school and no inheritors. 
 This is the explanation of the apparent anomaly that, between 
 1500 and 1530, such a group of writers existed, writers like bea- 
 cons of modern thought washed on all sides by the waves of bigotry, 
 superstition, and ignorance. The total effect upon English thought, 
 cumulative through the centuries, is incalculable. Although in its 
 immediate effect humanism was primarily destructive and, as 
 such, played its part in the separation of England from the Papacy, 
 today only the specialist knows or cares for the temporal issues, 
 and the works are read for their serenity and their poise. 
 
 Somewhat the same paradox exists in the relation of humanists 
 toward the great educational questions of the age. Here there is 
 
 1 More in his Dialogue of Images explicitly accepts the dogmatic authority of the 
 Church.
 
 HUMANISM 295 
 
 the same mingling of destruction and of construction, and the 
 same problem of the effect of the Reformation. Consequently, 
 there is the same difficulty in arriving at an impartial estimation 
 of the relative proportion of the various factors, especially since 
 the chief witnesses were also the chief actors, and therefore biassed. 
 In general it may be stated that the old scholastic system was de- 
 ductive. From a combination of Biblical and Aristotelian pre- 
 cepts it was held that all truth may be deduced, even that of the 
 greatest problems, the existence of God, the personality of the 
 Trinity, and the relation of the Divine to humanity. Thus the 
 system of St. Thomas Aquinas implies the harmony of faith and 
 reason. But very early the age-long conflict between reason and 
 faith showed itself. Already in St. Thomas certain tenets are re- 
 moved from the domain of reason to be placed with those belonging 
 to the province of faith. Still others were added by Duns Scotus, 
 and in his pupil Occam the separation of theology and philosophy 
 is practically completed. But, just as education is now controlled 
 and regulated by the State, so then education was controlled and 
 regulated by the Church. The effect, therefore, of removing from 
 education the theological speculations that gave it vitality, was 
 to deaden the whole system. The method of deductive reasoning 
 that had stimulated creative thought in the great schoolmen, dur- 
 ing the closing years of the fifteenth century, was utilized only in 
 discovering the non-essential, and the emphasis was laid upon the 
 form, not upon the results. In the revered syllogism it was the 
 correctness of the deduction rather than the truth of the premises 
 that was stressed. It is this mental attitude that is ridiculed in 
 the Epistolce Obscurorum Virorum. 1 
 
 Our host, therefore, who is a humanist of parts, fell to some discourse on Poetry, 
 and greatly belauded Julius Caesar, as touching both his writings and his valorous 
 deeds. So soon as I heard this, I perceived my opportunity, for I had studied 
 much, and learned much under you in the matter of Poetry, when I was at Cologne, 
 and I said, " Forasmuch as you have begun to speak concerning Poetry, I can there- 
 fore no longer hide my light under a bushel, and I roundly aver that I believe not 
 that Ccesar wrote those Commentaries, and I will prove my position with argument 
 following, which runneth thus: Whosoever hath business with arms and is occupied 
 in labour unceasing cannot learn Latin; but Coesar was ever at War and in labours 
 
 1 Epiitola Obtcurorum Virorum, The Latin Trxt with an English Rendering, 
 Notes, and an Historical Introduction by Francis Griffin Stokes, London, Chatto 
 & Windus, 1009, p. 371.
 
 296 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 manifold; therefore he could not become lettered and get Latin. In truth, therefore, 
 I believe that it was none other than Suetonius who wrote those Commentaries, for I 
 have met with none who hath a style liker to Caesar's than Suetonius." 
 
 After I had thus spoken, and much else which here, for brevity's sake, I set not 
 down since, as you know from the ancient saw, "The moderns delight in brev- 
 ity" Erasmus laughed, but said nothing, for I had overthrown him by the subtilty 
 of my argument. 
 
 The significance of the burlesque here lies in the attack upon the 
 syllogism; the fact that the book was by some accepted at its 
 face value shows that this attack was in a measure deserved. 
 At least in the opinion of the humanists, the end achieved by the 
 educational methods was in itself undesirable. 
 
 As Von Hutten here uses Erasmus as the contrasting figure to 
 scholasticism, it may be interesting to quote his attack in the En- 
 comion Moriae, where he pays his equivocal respects to the theolo- 
 gians, the finest flower of the educational system. 1 
 
 It is true, no men own a less dependence on me (Folly), yet have they reason to 
 confess themselves indebted for no small obligations. For it is by one of my prop- 
 erties, self-love, that they fancy themselves, with their elder brother, Paul, caught 
 up into the third heaven, from whence, like shepherds indeed, they look down upon 
 their flock, the laity, grazing as it were, in the vales of the world below. They 
 fence themselves in with so many surrounders of magisterial definitions, conclu- 
 sions, corollaries, propositions explicit and implicit, that there is no falling in with 
 them; or if they do chance to be urged to a seeming non-plus, yet they find out so 
 many evasions, that all the art of man can never bind them so fast, but that an 
 easy distinction shall give them a starting-hole to escape the scandal of being 
 baffled. They will cut asunder the toughest argument with as much ease as Alexan- 
 der did the gordian knot; they will thunder out so many rattling terms as shall 
 fright an adversary into conviction. They are exquisitely dexterous in unfolding 
 the most intricate mysteries; they will tell you to a tittle all the successive proceed- 
 ings of Omnipotence in the creation of the universe; they will explain the precise 
 manner of original sin being derived from our first parents; they will satisfy you 
 in what manner, by what degrees, and in how long a time, our Saviour was con- 
 ceived in the Virgin's womb, and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer how acci- 
 dents may subsist without a subject. Nay, these are accounted trivial, easy ques- 
 tions; they have yet far greater difficulties behind, which notwithstanding they 
 solve with as much expedition as the former; as namely, whether supernatural 
 generation requires any instant of time for its acting? whether Christ, as a son, 
 bears a double specifically distinct relation to God the Father, and his virgin mother? 
 whether this proposition is possible to be true, the first person of the Trinity hated 
 the second? whether God, who took our nature upon him in the form of a man, 
 
 1 Erasmus in Praise of Folly, London, 1876, pp. 121-129.
 
 HUMANISM 297 
 
 could as well have become a woman, a devil, a beast, a herb, or a stone? and were 
 it so possible that the Godhead had appeared in any shape of an inanimate sub- 
 stance, how he should then have preached his gospel? or how have been nailed to 
 the cross? whether if St. Peter had celebrated the eucharist at the same time our 
 Saviour was hanging on the cross, the consecrated bread would have been tran- 
 substantiated into the same body that remained on the tree? whether in Christ's 
 corporal presence in the sacramental wafer, his humanity be not abstracted from his 
 Godhead? whether after the resurrection we shall carnally eat and drink as we do in 
 this life? There are a thousand other more sublimated and refined niceties of no- 
 tions, relations, quantities, formalities, quiddities, hsecceities, and such like ab- 
 strusities, as one would think no one could pry into, except he had not only such 
 cat's eyes as to see best in the dark, but even such a piercing faculty as to see through 
 an inch-board, and spy out what really never had any being. Add to these some of 
 their tenets and opinions, which are so absurd and extravagant, that the wildest 
 fancies of the Stoicks which they so much disdain and decry as paradoxes, seem in 
 comparison just and rational; as their maintaining, that it is a less aggravating 
 fault to kill a hundred men, than for a poor cobbler to set a stitch on the sabbath- 
 day; or, that it is more justifiable to do the greatest injury imaginable to others, 
 than to tell the least lie ourselves. And these subtilties are alchymized to a more 
 refined sublimate by the abstracting brains of their several schoolmen; the Realists, 
 the Nominalists, the Thomists, the Albertists, the Occamists, the Scotists; and these 
 are not all, but the rehearsal of a few only, as a specimen of their divided sects; in 
 each of which there is so much of deep learning, so much of unfathomable difficulty, 
 that I believe the apostles themselves would stand in need of a new illuminating 
 spirit, if they were to engage in any controversy with these new divines. St. Paul, 
 no question, had a full measure of faith; yet when he lays down faith to be the sub- 
 stance of things not seen, these men carp at it for an imperfect definition, and would 
 undertake to teach the apostles better logic. Thus the same holy author wanted 
 for nothing of the grace of charity, yet (say they) he describes and defines it but very 
 inaccurately, when he treats of it in the thirteenth chapter of his first epistle to the 
 Corinthians. The primitive disciples were very frequent in administering the holy 
 sacrament, breaking bread from house to house; yet should they be asked of the 
 Terminus a quo and the Terminus ad quern, the nature of transubstantiation? the 
 manner how one body can be in several places at the same time? the difference 
 betwixt the several attributes of Christ in heaven, on the cross, and in the conse- 
 crated bread? what time is required for the transubstantiating the bread into flesh? 
 how it can be done by a short sentence pronounced by the priest, which sentence is a 
 species of discreet quantity, that has no permanent punctumf Were they asked (I 
 say) these, and several other confused queries, I do not believe they could answer so 
 readily as our mincing school-men now-a-duys take a pride to do. They were well 
 acquainted with the Virgin Mary, yet none of them undertook to prove that she was 
 preserved immaculate from original sin, as some of our divines very hotly contend 
 for. St. Peter had the keys given to him, and that by our Saviour himself, who 
 had never entrusted him except he had known him capable of their manage and 
 custody; and yet it is much to be questioned whether Peter was sensible of that 
 subtilty broached by Scotus, that he may have the key of knowledge effectually 
 for others, who has no knowledge actually in himself. Again, they baptized all
 
 298 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 nations, and yet never taught what was the formal, material, efficient, and final 
 cause of baptism, and certainly never dreamt of distinguishing between a delible 
 and an indelible character in this sacrament. They worshipped in the spirit, follow- 
 ing their master's injunction, God is a spirit, and they which worship him, must 
 worship him in spirit, and in truth; yet it does not appear that it was ever revealed 
 to them how divine adoration should be paid at the same time to our blessed Saviour 
 in heaven, and to his picture here below on a wall, drawn with two fingers held out, 
 a bald crown, and a circle round his head. To reconcile these intricacies to an ap- 
 pearance of reason requires three-score year's experience in metaphysics. Farther, 
 the apostles often mention Grace, yet never distinguish between gratia, gratis data, 
 and gratia graiificans. They earnestly exhort us likewise to good works, yet never 
 explain the difference between Opus operans, and Opus operatum. They very 
 frequently press and invite us to seek after charity, without dividing it into infused 
 and acquired, or determining whether it be a substance or an accident, a created or 
 an uncreated being. They detested sin themselves, and warned others from the 
 commission of it; and yet I am sure they could never have defined so dogmatically, 
 as the Scotists have since done. St. Paul, who in other's judgment is no less the 
 chief of the apostles, than he was in his own the chief of sinners, who being bred at 
 the feet of Gamaliel, was certainly more eminently a scholar than any of the rest, 
 yet he often exclaims against vain philosophy, warns us from doting about ques- 
 tions and strifes of words, and charges us to avoid profane and vain babblings, and 
 oppositions of science falsely so called; which he would not have done, if he had 
 thought it worth his while to have become acquainted with them, which he might 
 soon have been, the disputes of that age being but small, and more intelligible 
 sophisms, in reference to the vastly greater intricacies they are now improved to. 
 But yet, however, our scholastic divines are so modest, that if they meet with any 
 passage in St. Paul, or any other penman of holy writ, which is not so well modelled, 
 or critically disposed of, as they could wish, they will not roughly condemn it, but 
 bend it rather to a favorable interpretation, out of reverence to antiquity, and 
 respect to the holy scriptures; though indeed it were unreasonable to expect any- 
 thing of this nature from the apostles, whose lord and master had given unto them 
 to know the mysteries of God, but not those of philosophy. If the same divines 
 meet with anything of like nature unpalatable in St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. 
 Hierom, or others of the fathers, they will not stick to appeal from their authority, 
 and very fairly resolve that they lay under a mistake. Yet these ancient fathers 
 were they who confuted both the Jews and Heathens, though they both obstinately 
 adhered to their respective prejudices; they confuted them (I say), yet by their 
 lives and miracles, rather than by words and syllogisms; and the persons they thus 
 proselyted were downright honest, well meaning people, such as understood plain 
 sense better than any artificial pomp of reasoning: whereas if our divines should 
 now set about the gaining converts from paganism by their metaphysical subtilties, 
 they would find that most of the persons they applied themselves to were either so 
 ignorant as not at all to apprehend them, or so impudent as to scoff and deride 
 them; or finally, so well skilled at the same weapons, that they would be able to 
 keep their pass, and fence off all assaults of conviction : and this last way the victory 
 would be altogether as hopeless, as if two persons were engaged of so equal strength, 
 that it were impossible any one should overpower the other.
 
 HUMANISM 299 
 
 And Folly ends by recommending that all such divines should be 
 sent on a crusade against the Turk. In so far as Folly here speaks 
 with the voice of Erasmus and his humanist brethren, the conclu- 
 sion is inevitable that they were in complete reaction against the 
 products of the medieval system of education. 
 
 Disliking the results achieved, the humanists also disliked the 
 methods by which those results were produced. The whole sys- 
 tem of medieval education, founded upon the " dispute " as a means 
 to promote intellectual subtlety, seemed to them an abomination. 
 Since the object was not truth but mental agility, the result was 
 wrangling over the non-essential. As Vives expresses it: l 
 
 Even the youngest scholars (tyrones) are accustomed never to keep silence; they 
 are always asserting vigourously whatever comes uppermost in their minds, lest 
 they should seem to be giving up the dispute. Nor does one disputation or even two 
 each day prove sufficient, as for instance at dinner. They wrangle at breakfast; 
 they wrangle after breakfast; before supper they wrangle, and they wrangle after 
 supper. ... At home they dispute over their food, in the bath, in the sweating- 
 room, in the church, in the town, in the country, in public, in private; at all times 
 they are wrangling. 
 
 And this training was carried on even into the advanced stages 
 of education. In the following passage, it is no longer the voice of 
 Folly, it is Erasmus speaking. 2 
 
 . . . the principal part of this evil seems to me to arise from the public schools, 
 which they now ambitiously term universities, as tho nothing pertaining to good 
 discipline were wanting; then from the monasteries, especially those in which they 
 are taught evangelical doctrine, such as are the Dominicans', the Franciscans', and 
 the Augustinian monasteries. For in these the students, after scarcely three 
 months had been given to a study of grammar, are incontinently hurried away to 
 sophistry, dialectics, suppositions, amplifications, restrictions, expositions, and 
 solutions of unsolvable questions, such as concerning griffins and the Labyrinth; 
 from thence immediately into the mysteries of divinity. Such students, when they 
 have come to those authors who excell in the eloquence of both classic languages, 
 how blind they were, how ignorant, how they thought themselves in another world. 
 
 That such statements are extreme is clear at a glance from the 
 authors read by the scholastic Skelton, whose knowledge of classi- 
 cal literature is curiously comprehensive 3 ; yet it is significant that 
 
 1 J. L. Vives, Dialogue* of a Tudor Schoolboy (Linguae Latinos Exercilatio) trans- 
 lated by Foster Watson, Preface. 
 
 1 Erasmus, Dialogue de Pronuniiatione. 
 1 Chapter iii, pp. 156-7.
 
 300 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 a man of Erasmus' position in a serious work should dare make 
 them at all, in that it shows to what a depth the scholastic sys- 
 tem has sunk in popular estimation. 
 
 But whatever may have been the actual condition, so long as 
 the humanists professed such an estimate of scholastic education, 
 clearly one of their chief aims would be to replace that system by 
 one more in accordance with their ideals, and to provide schools 
 in which it might be practiced. It is, therefore, perfectly normal 
 that the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century should 
 see the establishment of the first of the new type of school, Dean 
 Colet's celebrated foundation of St. Paul's. The most author- 
 itative description of this is given us by Erasmus. 1 
 
 Upon the death of his father, when by right of inheritance he was possessed of a 
 good sum of money; lest the keeping of it should corrupt his mind, and turn it too 
 much toward the world, he laid out a great part of it in building a new school in the 
 churchyard of St. Paul's, dedicated to the child Jesus: a magnificent fabric; to which 
 he added two dwelling-houses for the two several masters: and to them he allotted 
 ample salaries, that they might teach a certain number of boys, free, and for the 
 sake of charity. He divided the school into four apartments. The first, viz. the 
 porch and entrance, is for catechumens, or the children to be instructed in the prin- 
 ciples of religion; where no child is to be admitted, but what can read and write. 
 The second apartment is for the lower boys, to be taught by the second master, or 
 usher: the third for the upper forms, under the headmaster: which two parts of the 
 school are divided by a curtain, to be drawn at pleasure. Over the master's chair 
 is an image of the child Jesus, of admirable work, in the gesture of teaching; whom 
 all the boys, going and coming, salute with a short hymn: and there is a representa- 
 tion of God the Father, saying, Hear ye him; these words being written at my sug- 
 gestion. The fourth or last apartment is a little chapel for divine service. The 
 school has no corners or hiding places; nothing like a cell or closet. The boys have 
 their distinct forms, or benches, one above another. Every form holds sixteen; and 
 he that is head or captain of each form has a little kind of desk by way of preemi- 
 nence. They are not to admit all boys of course, but to choose them in according to 
 their parts and capacities. The wise and sagacious founder saw that the greatest 
 hopes and happiness of the commonwealth were in the training up of children to 
 good letters and true religion: for which noble purpose he laid out an immense sum 
 of money: and yet he would admit no one to bear a share in this expense. Some 
 person having left a legacy of one hundred pounds sterling toward the fabric of the 
 school, dean Colet perceived a design in it, and, by leave of the Bishop, got that 
 money to be laid out upon the vestments of the church of St. Paul. After he had 
 finished all, he left the perpetual care and oversight of the estate, and government 
 of it, not to the clergy, not to the bishop, not to the chapter, nor to any great 
 minister at court; but amongst the married laymen, to the company of mercers, 
 
 1 Quoted in Knight's Life of Colet, pp. 98-101.
 
 HUMANISM 801 
 
 men of probity and reputation. And when he was asked the reason of so committing 
 this trust, he answered to this effect: That there was no absolute certainty in human 
 affairs; but for his part, he found less corruption in such a body of citizens, than in 
 any other order or degree of mankind. 
 
 Following Colet's example, during the reign of Henry VIII forty- 
 eight grammar schools were founded, and, before Elizabeth's, many 
 of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge came into being. 1 In Ox- 
 ford, Corpus Christi was founded in 1516; Christ Church, in 1526; 
 Trinity, in 1554; St. John's, in 1555; and in Cambridge, Christi, 
 in 1506; St. John's, in 1511; Magdalen, in 1542; Trinity, in 1546; 
 Gonville and Caius, in 1557. Such facts as these just quoted are 
 impressive, but it should be remembered that in very many cases 
 with the transference of the educational burden from the Church 
 to the state, they represent merely a transformation. Nor is the 
 inference justified that they show an increase in learning. As 
 Benson shows, 2 exactly the reverse was true, because while in 1535 
 in Oxford one hundred and eight men graduated, in 1536 the 
 number had fallen to forty-four, and up to the end of Henry's 
 reign the average was but fifty-seven. At Cambridge Fuller 
 quaintly confesses: 3 
 
 There was now a generall decay of students, no Cottedge having more scholars 
 therein then hardly those of the foundation, no Volunteers at all, and only persona 
 pressed in a manner by their places to reside. Indeed on the fall of Abbeys fell the 
 hearts of all Scholars, fearing the ruin of learning. 
 
 Such a condition seems comprehensible. The destructive force 
 of humanism, combined with the destructive force of the Reforma- 
 tion was greater than the constructive. While the old had been 
 swept aside, the new conceptions were more than the country 
 could assimilate. It is what would be naturally expected from so 
 complete a reversal of educational ideals. 
 
 The whole program of the humanists is expressed in the phrase 
 in Erasmus' account of Colet, that Knight renders "good letters 
 
 1 These 6gures are quoted from Cornelie Benndorf, Die Englische Pddagogik im 
 16. Jahrhunderl, Wien, 1905. 
 
 J The Rev. R. H. Benson, Chapter iii, Vol. iii of the Cambridge History of English 
 Literature. 
 
 * The History of the University of Cambridge, 1655; this appears as a sort of an 
 appendix to his Church History. Page 121.
 
 302 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 and true religion," bonis rationibus. 1 Clearly Knight has read 
 into the indefinite ratio of Erasmus what were to be the two 
 fundamentals of English education. If the phrase be extended to 
 classical literature and the Protestant religion, a zeugma foreign 
 to Colet's intentions, the development of the schools will be 
 indicated. For here, also, as in so many other places, the 
 humanists unconsciously paved the way for the Reformation. 
 Back of the whole Renaissance movement there was a subtle shift- 
 ing of emphasis from the claims of the next world to those of 
 this, and a development of the rationalistic point of view. 2 With 
 the greater claims of the world upon the human faculties the 
 educational ideals in which the study of theology was paramount 
 gave place to an education both more broad and less intense. 
 More attention was given to holy living than to holy dying. Partly 
 in reaction from the former ages, and partly from necessity, the 
 humanists preached the paradox that the ideal training for a 
 Christian life is given by an intimate knowledge of pagan authors. 
 As a result, in the first half of the sixteenth century the English 
 race threw aside the accumulated experience of a millenium, 
 the methods of the schoolmen were discarded as futile, and their 
 language branded as barbarous. The wind whirled the leaves 
 of Duns Scotus through the courts of Oxford, and gothic became a 
 term of reproach. Latin was the gateway of learning, a knowl- 
 edge of Horace the stamp of the educated gentleman, and famil- 
 iarity with classical literature the aim of the scholar. 
 
 Of the three great northern scholars at the beginning of the 
 sixteenth century, Erasmus, Budaeus, and Vives, 3 it was the 
 last that formulated the coming pedagogy. Erasmus' Institutio 
 Prindpis Christiani (1527) gives rather general advice and rules of 
 conduct, 4 and Budaeus' De I' Institution du Prince (1547) comes 
 
 1 The entire sentence in Latin is Vidit illud vir perspicacissimus, in hoc esse prceci- 
 puam reipubliae spem, si prima oetas bonis rationibus institueretur. 
 
 2 This is stated, certainly as strongly as I have, by Pontanus, Opera, Basel, 
 1566, T. 1, pp. 981-982. 
 
 3 The sequence, humanism producing rationalism and rationalism producing the 
 Reformation, is illustrated by these three men. To each, although a good Roman- 
 ist, was imputed heretical opinions, and some of the works of each at some time 
 were placed on the Index. 
 
 4 The difference between Erasmus and Vives is best illustrated by a comparison 
 of the Colloquia with the Linguae Latinos Excrcitatio. Although the advowed aim of
 
 HUMANISM 303 
 
 too late to have much effect upon the first half century. It is curi- 
 ous that of the three, two should have been connected with Eng- 
 land. In 1523 the young Spaniard Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540) 
 came to England, was made D.C.L. at Oxford, lectured there, 
 and was appointed to superintend the education of the Princess 
 Mary. In 1528, apparently on account of the partisanship with 
 which he espoused the cause of Queen Katherine, he was im- 
 prisoned for six weeks, and finally banished from the country. 
 During these five years his published works, De ratione studii 
 puerilis (Oxford 1523), consisting of two outlines of study, 
 the first written for the Princess Mary giving the studies for 
 girls and the second written for Charles Montjoy giving the 
 studies for boys, and the Introductio ad sapientiam (Bruges 1524), 
 a series of aphorisms, practically gave the foundations of his 
 educational theories. These he elaborated into the great De 
 disciplinis (1531), in which the system is explained and defended. 
 Consequently in 1523, at Oxford, the theory of humanistic edu- 
 cation was first enunciated. 
 
 In general, Vives' aim is the attainment of both the heavenly 
 and the earthly ideal. 1 Thus the central doctrine of his peda- 
 gogical theory is based upon virtue and upon practical excellence 
 gained by Christian education and by logical development. What- 
 ever does not serve this end is worthless; nothing should be striven 
 for except the paths of wisdom. Harmonious upbuilding of soul 
 and body, in theory and in practice, in developing the mentality 
 and in imparting material knowledge, is the way by which this 
 end is to be attained. He therefore substitutes for the scholastic 
 deductive method practically an inductive method, in which 
 both teacher and pupil work together. Consequently there is 
 a similarity between his theories and those of Bacon. 2 The 
 materials to be used in this soul development are to be found 
 in the Latin writers. Necessarily therefore the ability to read 
 
 each is to teach Latin, Erasmus develops a dramatic dialogue; Vives remains only 
 a school book. Although the Colloquia is, therefore, perpetually interesting, as a 
 school book the Exercitatia is more successful. 
 
 1 I am here practically quoting from Franz Kuypers, Vivet in inner padagogik, 
 Kiel, 1897. 
 
 1 Cf. Rudolf Gdnther, Invxiweit hat Ludicig Viva die Idem Bacons von Vendam 
 vorbeTcileff Leipzig, 1912.
 
 304 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Latin fluently is to be attained as early as possible. To accomplish 
 this, Latin should be used both in speaking and in original com- 
 position, correctness being gained by hearing it correctly spoken 
 and studying it correctly written rather than by memorizing 
 grammatical rules. Thus simultaneously with the acquiring of 
 the language the pupil is learning virtuous precepts, the language 
 being valued only as the medium of imparting moral precepts. 
 At the same time the body should be exercised (mens sana in 
 corpore sand) that both may grow into an harmonious whole. 
 
 Since Vives belongs to the Oxford group and was a friend of 
 Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, Linacre, and others, the revolutionary 
 theories which he put forward even as early as 1523 may be con- 
 sidered as representing their views. In any case the next publica- 
 tion of this type belongs to this group. This is the Governour of 
 Sir Thomas Elyot. 1 The son of a barrister, he was apparently 
 educated at home, for in the proheme to the Castell of Helth he 
 gives the following accounts of his studies : 2 
 
 For before that I was twentie yeres olde, a woorshipfull physicion, and one of the 
 moste renoumed at that time in England, preceyuing me by nature enclyned to 
 knowledge, radde vnto me the workes of Galene of temperamentes, natural! facul- 
 ties, the introduction of Johanncicius, with some of the Aphorismes of Hippocrates. 
 And afterwards by mine owne studi, I radde ouer in order the more parte of the 
 workes of Hippocrates, Galenus, Oribasius, Paulus Celius, Alexander Trallianus 
 Celsus, Plinius the one and the other, with Dioscorides. Nor I dyd omitte to read 
 the long canones of Auicenna, the commentaries of Auerroys, the practises of Isake, 
 Haliabbas, Rasis, Mesue, and also the more parte of them whiche were their ag- 
 gregatours and followers. And although I haue neuer bene at Mountpillier, Padua, 
 nor Salern, yet haue I found some thing in physicke, wherby I haue taken no littell 
 profile concerninge myne owne helth. 
 
 Not only is this passage interesting as showing the breadth and 
 amount of reading of a young man of twenty, it is also the basis 
 
 1 The definitive edition of The Boke named the Gouernour, is that edited by Henry 
 Herbert Stephen Croft, 1883. Mr. Croft has not only given the authoritative text, 
 he has included so many parallel passages from other authors that his edition is 
 almost a compendium of the entire movement. 
 
 2 The Castett of Helth corrected and in some places augmented, by the first author 
 thereof, sir Thomas Elyot knight the yere of our lord 1541. This title, in the copy in 
 the Yale Library, is in a frame on which is the date 1534. For the explanation of 
 this curious discrepancy, cf . Croft, Vol. I, p. cvi. It is to be noted, however, that 
 the text differs from that quoted by him, p. xxxix.
 
 HUMANISM 305 
 
 for the assumption that he studied with Linacre. 1 Fortunately 
 we have more definite information concerning his relationship 
 with another of the group, Sir Thomas More. Aside from Staple- 
 ton's statement that both Elyot and his wife attended the school 
 of More for literary studies, a statement that represents prob- 
 ably the literary tradition of a hah* century 2 rather than a 
 fact, in Elyot 's letter to Cromwell, to be dated probably in 
 1536, we have the following sentence. 3 
 
 I therefor beseche your goode lordship now to lay apart the remembraunce of the 
 amity betwene me and sir Thomas More, which was but usque ad aras, as is the 
 proverb, consydering that I was never so moche addict unto hym as I was unto 
 truthe and fidelity toward my soveraigne lorde as godd is my juge. 
 
 Without attempting to define the exact meaning of the phrase 
 "but usque ad aras y " we may at the least infer that his friendship 
 with More was sufficient to call into question his loyalty to his 
 king. 4 Another inference may be made, namely, that English 
 humanism has now identified itself with the "true religion. " This 
 is the transitional stage to the third, to be found in Ascham, 
 where such identification has become both complete and passion- 
 ate. 
 
 The rapidity of the growth of the movement is indicated by the 
 fact that, although there is an interval of eight years between the 
 appearance of Vives' work (1523) and the Gouernour (1531), actu- 
 ally the authors were contemporaries, while Ascham (b. 1515) pub- 
 lished his Toxophilus only thirteen years after the Gouernour; again, 
 although the Scholemaster is ostensibly due to a conversation held 
 in 1563, and confessedly modified by the views of John Sturm, 
 the precepts in it are based upon the teachings of Cheke and 
 
 1 To me this seems improbable. The passage was written to justify Elyot's right 
 to authorship of a book on medicine. As Linacre had been appointed royal physi- 
 cian, and as his reputation was very great, surely, had Elyot studied with him, he 
 would have emphasized that fact here. Since he does not, certainly the assumption 
 is contrary to the usual statement. 
 
 1 Stapleton's Tret Thomce was published in 1588. 
 
 * Croft, op. cit., p. cxxx et seq., where a discussion of this point may be found. 
 
 4 In the Chiliadit Teriiae Centuria, Erasmus's comment on the phrase is: Ad- 
 monet prouerbium, nonnunque, quo consulamus amicorum commodis, eorumque 
 uoluntati morem geramus, fas uideri paululiim a recto deflectere, uerum eatenua, 
 ne propter hominem amicum numinU reucrcntiam uiolcmus.
 
 306 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the Cambridge men, and reflect the educational theories of the 
 second half of the reign of Henry VIII. As More was executed 
 while Ascham was still studying at Cambridge, the personal 
 relation between these two was practically nil. Yet, as it was he 
 that was chosen by More's daughter, Margaret Roper, to be the 
 instructor of her children, the inference is allowable that she 
 regarded Ascham as the one that best continued her father's 
 theories. Not a matter of inference is his acquaintanceship with 
 Elyot, since he himself tells us that "I was ones in companye 
 wyth syr Thomas Eliot Knight, which surelie for his lerning in 
 all kynde of knowlege bringeth much worshyp to all the nobilitie 
 of Englande. ... " l The continuity is thus unbroken, and it 
 is possible to deal with the collective results. 
 
 It is possible to deal with the collective results because in a cer- 
 tain sense the humanists did not pretend to originality. In fact, 
 as they conceived it, their mission lay in transmitting to England 
 the culture that had been lost. Their work was in building fresh 
 constructions from bricks mellowed by time. The numerous cita- 
 tions from classic authors were not primarily due to intellectual 
 honesty, but rather to intellectual pride. This is the attitude shown 
 in the passage already quoted from Elyot's Castell of Helth. His 
 justification for having written such a book was not that by care- 
 ful experiment he had arrived at the conclusions given, but that 
 he had studied the matter in a number of authorities. His books 
 are the result of his reading exactly as his Latin-English diction- 
 ary is the result of his reading, and for the same purpose of help- 
 ing others. His attitude and his method is most clearly seen in 
 the preface to The Image of Gouernaunce: 2 
 
 As I late was serchinge amonge my boks, to fynde some argument, in the read- 
 ynge whereof I mought recreate my spyrytes, beynge almost fatigate with the longe 
 studye aboute the correctynge and ampliatyng of my Dictionarie, of Latin and 
 Englyshe, I happened to fynde certeyne quayres of paper, whiche I had wrytten 
 about nine yeres passed: wherein were conteigned the actes and sentences notable, 
 of the moste noble Emperour Alexander, for his wysedome and grauitie called 
 
 1 Toxophilus, Arber's Reprints, p. 86. 
 
 * The Image of Gouernaunce compiled of the actes and sentences notable, of the most 
 noble emperour Alexander Seuerus, late translated out of Greke into Englyshe, by Sir 
 Thomas Elyote knyght, in thefauour of Nobilitee. Anno. M. D. LVI. By William 
 Seres.
 
 HUMANISM 307 
 
 Seuerus, whiche boke was fyrst wrytten in the Greke tonge by his secretarie named 
 Eucolpius, and by good chaunce was lente unto me by a gentill man of Naples called 
 Pudericus. In readinge whereof I was maruailouselie rauysshed, and as it hath been 
 euer mine appetye, I wysshed that it hadde been publyshed in suche a toungue, 
 as moe men mought understande it. Wherefore with all diligence I endeuoured my- 
 self e whiles I had leysour, to translate it into englyshe: all be it I coulde not so 
 exactly performe mine enterprise, as I mought haue done, if the owner had not im- 
 portunately called for his boke, whereby I was constreigned to leaue some part of 
 the worke untranslated: whiche I made up, as well as I coulde, with some other 
 Auctours, as well latines as greekes. . . , l 
 
 He does not in any way feel the necessity of indicating the differ- 
 ence between the translation of the original Greek manuscript and 
 the additions gathered indiscriminately from classical literature. 
 The same is true of the more celebrated Gouernour. Upon a basis 
 taken from De Regno et Regis Insiitutione of Francesco Patrizi 
 he grafted what he thought appropriate from Erasmus and Pon- 
 tanus. 2 In the same way, although not perhaps to the same degree, 
 Ascham's Scholemaster is a compendium of educational theory 
 drawn from Cheke, Sturm, and the Italian humanists. 3 Surely, 
 there is nothing surprising in this ! The modern writer is supposed 
 to know "the literature of his subject." Scholarship consists 
 in first ascertaining the facts and then in re-combining them. As 
 now, so then, with the sole difference that they did not feel it 
 essential, as we, to indicate the derivation of every detail. In a 
 new age the stress was laid, not upon the component parts, but 
 upon the completed work. 
 
 In discussing the theory of the northern humanists, it must be 
 remembered that the goal was right living. Whereas in Italy the 
 pedants had claimed a personal freedom, lives exempt from the 
 traditional Christian prejudice, in the north the whole educational 
 superstructure was based upon morality. Their mission was to 
 bring the world to a better, higher, more moral state. To the 
 attainment of this ideal they bent all their energies; this is the 
 
 I The truth of this statement of the origin and composition of the book was ques- 
 tioned by Wotton and Hoby, unjustly as is shown by Croft, cxlv-clxi. 
 
 I 1 make this statement wholly upon the authority of Croft, as I have never 
 aeen the Patrizi. 
 
 * In his letter to Sturm xcix, in The Whole Works of Roger A.icham by the Rev. 
 Dr. Giles, 1804, Vol. 1, p. 181, Ascham elaborately justifies himself by citing prece- 
 dents.
 
 308 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 motive for writing their books; and this is the reason for their 
 insistence on certain types of educational training. Thus Vives 
 
 writes: 
 
 A man of himself is neither good nor evil, but yet through the first fault he is more 
 inclined and prone to evil, and cometh unto it by example of many, the which have 
 conspired together to sin and to do much mischief, for a man can turn his eye to no 
 place but he shall see the evil that he may ensue and follow. First, he is provoked by 
 their exhortations that seem to counsel him well, as Poets, for such things as they 
 indite and make, are received and sung without respect of things. And school- 
 masters the which do teach and instruct youth, are not far from the opinion of the 
 common people; for with them they praise nobility, riches, honour, vengeance, and 
 to these things they exhort and instruct youth. 
 
 Fathers and other parents esteem the name of virtue as vain, and accustom their 
 children to those things that flatter and delight the senses, and not to rigorous and 
 hard honesty, as men that look to creep no hig er, but to live with the vulgar and 
 rude sort, and yet would be an example of living to all other. There are in like 
 manner, parents, which are grave men and well learned, and yet abhor that virtue 
 should associate and accompany their children, the which persuade them to follow 
 pleasure, love and solace, inasmuch that Quint ill ian, seeing that honesty and virtue 
 is so convenient and meet for our nature, doth marvel that there are so few good 
 men, but he should rather have marvelled that there are any good at all, considering 
 their institution and bringing up to be so evil. But if by actual inclination, and by 
 the comfort and authority of great and learned men, we be enforced to evil, not 
 drawn from it by some good doctrine, what hope is there of any goodness? All 
 shall come to mischief, and through the custom of sin, we shall hate all honesty, and 
 learn to contemn the goodness of the mind, and to hate virtue. We should stir up 
 by the figure and strength of reason, and receive the love of virtue, and give the 
 precepts of wisdom against the corruption of false opinions, and by assuefaction and 
 use, resist our natural proneness and inclination to vice, continually to the utmost 
 of our power, striving with the same. 
 
 It is exactly for the reasons given in the last sentence that Elyot 
 became an author, as he himself confesses : 2 
 
 Yet am I not ignorant, that dyuers there be, whiche doe not thankfully esteme 
 my labours, dispraysyng my studies as vayne and unprofitable, saying in derision, 
 that I haue nothyng wonne therby, but the name onely of a maker of bokes, and 
 that I set the trees, but the Printer eateth the fruites. In deede although disdeigne 
 and enuie dooe cause them to speake it, yet will I not denie, but that they saie 
 
 1 De Officio Mariti, Chapter 111. Quoted from Foster Watson, Vives and the 
 Renascence Education of Women, p. 197. The translation is that of Thomas Paynell, 
 1550. Since Vives has become so little known, Professor Watson has rendered very 
 real service in thus making accessible English versions of his various writings. 
 
 2 Image of Gouernaunce, op. cit., Aiii.
 
 HUMANISM 309 
 
 truely: for if I wolde haue emploied my studie aboute the increase of my priuate 
 commoditie, whiche I haue spent in wrytynge of bokes for others necessitee, fewe 
 men double (I suppose) that dooe knowe me, but that I shulde haue atteygned ere 
 this tyme to haue byn muche more welthy, and in respecte of the worlde in a more 
 estimation. But to excuse me of follie, I wyll professe without arrogaunce, that 
 when I consydered, that cunnynge continueth when fortune flytteth, huuing also 
 ringynge alwaye in mine eare, the terrible checke that the good maister in the 
 gospell gaue to his idell seruant, for hyding his money in a cloute, and not dyspos- 
 ynge it for his maisters aduantage, those twoo wordes, Seme nequam so steerred my 
 spyrites, that it caused me to take more regarde to my laste reckenynge, then to 
 anye rychesse or wordely promocion. And althoughe I dooe neyther dyspute nor 
 expounde holy scrypture, yet in suche woorkes as I haue and entende to sette 
 foorth, my poore talent shall be, Godde wyllinge, in suche yse bestowed, that noe 
 mans conscyence shall be therewyth offended, my boke called the Gouernour, in- 
 structynge men in suche vertues as shall be expedyente for theym, whiche shal haue 
 auctoritie in a weale publike. The Doctrinall of Prynces, whiche are but the coun- 
 sayles of wyse Isocrates, inducynge into noble mennes wyttes honest opinions. The 
 Edcacion of childrene, whiche also I translated out of the wyse Plutarche, makynge 
 men and women, whiche wyll folowe those rules, to be well worthy to be fathers and 
 mothers. The lyttle Pasquill, althoughe he be mery and playne, teachynge as well 
 seruantes howe to be faythfull unto theyr maysters, as also maisters howe to be 
 cyrcumspecte in espying of flatterers. Semblablie the office of a good counsaylour 
 with magnanimitie or good courage in tyme of aduersitie, maye bee apparauntly 
 founded in my boke called, Of the knoweledge belongynge to a wyse man. In read- 
 ynge the sermon of sainct Cyprian by me translated, the deuout reader shall finde no 
 lyttle comforte in plagues or calamities. The Bankette of Sapience is not fastidi- 
 ouse, and in lyttle roume sheweth out of holie scryture many wyse sentences. The 
 Castell of health beynge truely read, shall longe preserue men (beyng some phisi- 
 cions neuer so angrie) from peryllouse syckenesse. My lyttle boke called the de- 
 fence of good women, not onely confoundeth vyllainous reporte, but also teacheth 
 good wyves to knowe wll theyr duitees. My Dictionarie declarying Latine by 
 Englyshe, by that tyme that I haue performed it, it shall not onely serue for chil- 
 dren, as men haue excepted it, but also shall be commodious for them, which per- 
 chaunce be well learned. And this persent boke, whiche I haue named the Image of 
 Gouernaunce, shall be to all theim whiche wyll reade it sincerely, a veraie true 
 paterae, wherby they maye shape all theyr procedynges. And in none of these 
 woorkes I dare undertake, a man shall fynde any sentence against the commaunde- 
 mentes of God, the true catholike faieth, or occasion to steere men to wanton 
 deuises. Wherfore I trust unto God, mine accompt shall of hyin bee fauourable 
 accepted: . . . 
 
 Thus in both method and motive Elyot suggests a comparison 
 with Barclay. The medievalism of the latter is due to a reliance 
 upon the traditions of the Church, which he illustrates by examples 
 from contemporary experience; the Renaissance appears in Elyot's 
 rationalism, which he, likewise, illustrates by examples drawn
 
 310 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 from classical literature. Both are actuated, however, by the 
 same moral enthusiasm. That the same is true of Ascham, no 
 one at all familiar with the Scholemaster needs to be told. There 
 his insistence upon the ways of righteousness is the keynote: * 
 
 Learning therefore, ye wise fathers, and good bringing vp, and not blinde and 
 dangerous experience, is the next and readiest waie, that must leede your Children, 
 first, to wisdom, and than to worthinesse, if euer ye purpose they shall cum there. 
 
 And to saie all in shorte, though I lacke Authoritie to giue counsell, yet I lacke not 
 good will to wisshe, that the youthe in England, speciallie lentlemen, and namelie 
 nobilitie, shold be by good bringing vp, so grounded in iudgement of learninge, so 
 founded in loue of honestie, as whan they shold be called forthe to the execution of 
 great affaires, in service of their Prince and contrie, they might be liable, to vse and 
 to order, all experiences, were they good were they bad, and that, according to the 
 square, rule, and line, of wisdom, learning, and vertue. 
 
 Clearly in the minds of these men, the development of both body 
 and mind was subservient to the one great aim of moral well-being. 
 For this was first stressed the care of the body, not for its own 
 sake but for the sake of the soul. But such recognition of the claims 
 of the body constitute an educational innovation of far-reaching 
 importance. While naturally in the sixteenth century the ascetic 
 ideals of the fourth were no longer in men's minds, there was yet 
 left the feeling that there was something akin to virtue in self- 
 denial. The paunch-proud prelate, however common a figure, 
 was never the ideal type. It, therefore, behoved the student to 
 live laborious days, uncontaminated by soul-destroying luxuries. 
 Conversely, the lean and scrawny youth, pale and emaciated, 
 was presumably he that profited much from his studies. With all 
 allowances made for the personal equation of Erasmus, for his 
 tendency to feel abused and for his delicate health, his description 
 of the College Montaigu 2 suggests the wide divergence between 
 the scholastic and humanistic point of view. In the dialogue the 
 Fishmonger, like Erasmus, has been to Montaigu College, where, 
 
 1 The most scholarly edition of the Scholemaster is that of John E. B. Mayor, 
 London, 1863. As, however, that in Arber's Reprints is probably more accessible 
 to American readers, my references will refer to that. This passage is taken 
 from p. 63. 
 
 2 The famous passage in the Colloquium ' \\0vofyvy UL. Professor Emerton 
 suggests Rabelais's attack is merely an echo of this of Erasmus. Cf. op. cit. 
 p. 289.
 
 HUMANISM 311 
 
 according to report, the very walls teach divinity. He thus de- 
 scribes the conditions. 1 
 
 You say very right; but as for me, I brought nothing out of it but my Body full of 
 gross Humours, and my Clothes full of Lice. But to go on as I began: At that Time 
 one John Standoneus was President, a Man whose Temper you would not mislike, 
 and whose Qualifications you would covet; for as I remember, in his Youth, when 
 he was very poor himself, he was very charitable, and that is much to be com- 
 mended; and if he had still supply 'd the Necessities of young Persons, as he found 
 them Materials for going on with their studies, he would not have had so much 
 Money to have spent lavishly, but would have done Praise- worthily: But what with 
 lying hard, by bad and spare Diet, late and hard Studies, within one Year's Space, 
 of many young Men of a good Genius, and very hopeful, some he kill'd, others he 
 blinded, others he made run distracted, and others he brought into the Leprosy, 
 some of whom I know very well; and in short, not one of them but was in danger 
 by him. . . . Neither did this Cruelty only destroy mean Persons, but many Gen- 
 tlemens Sons too, and spoil'd many a hopeful Genius. It is, indeed, the Part of a 
 Father, to hold in Youth that is apt to grow lascivious, by Restraint. But in the 
 very Depth of Winter, here's a Morsel of Bread given them when they ask for their 
 Commons; and as for their Drink, they must draw that out of a Well that gives bad 
 Water, unwholesome of itself, if it were not made the worse by the Coldness of the 
 Morning: I have known many that were brought to such an ill state of Health, that 
 they have never got over it to this Day. There were Chambers on a Ground-Floor, 
 and rotten Plaister, they stood near a stinking House of Office, in which none ever 
 dwelt, but he either got his Death, or some grievous Distemper. I shall say nothing 
 of the unmerciful Whippings, even of innocent Persons. This they say is to break 
 their Fierceness, for so they call a sprightly Genius; and therefore, they thus cow 
 their Spirits, to make them more humble in the Monasteries: Nor shall I take No- 
 tice how many rotten Eggs were eaten; nor how much sour Wine was drank. Per- 
 haps these Things may be mended now; but however, 'tis too late for those that are 
 dead already, or carry about an infected Carcass. Nor do I mention these Things 
 because I have any ill Will to the College, but I thought it worth While to give this 
 Monition, lest human Severity should mar inexperienc'd and tender Age, under the 
 Pretence of Religion. 
 
 This is the extreme statement for the plaintiff; and to generalize 
 from a single particular creates a most dangerous logical fallacy. 
 Yet Erasmus here is speaking for the humanists, and in his mind 
 such neglect of the body was associated with the medieval method. 
 From this angle, clearly it is the final sentence that deserves notice; 
 it is Erasmus' motive for introducing the foregoing disgusting 
 details. These are not due primarily to poverty, but to a be- 
 lief that by disregarding the body the soul was held in higher 
 
 1 Bailey's Translation of the Colloquies, ii, S04-305.
 
 312 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 regard. It is unnecessary to point out how diametrically opposed 
 is such a theory to that held in classical times. The anthropomor- 
 phism that embodied the gods in beautiful human forms reacted 
 in the feeling that corporeal beauty is itself godlike. This, in its 
 extreme form is thus expressed by Spenser: l 
 
 Thereof it comes, that these faire soules, which haue 
 The most resemblance of that heauenly light, 
 Frame to themselues most beautifull and braue 
 Their fleshly bowre, most fit for their delight. 
 And the grosse matter by a soueraine might 
 
 Tempers so trim, that it may well be scene, 
 
 A pallace fit for such a virgin Queene. 
 
 So euery spirit, as it is most pure, 
 
 And hath in it the more of heauenly light, 
 
 So it the fairer bodie doth procure 
 
 To habit in, and it more fairely dight 
 
 With chearefull grace and amiable sight. 
 For of the soule the bodie forme doth take: 
 For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make. 
 
 Therefore where-euer that thou doest behold 
 A comely corpse, with beautie faire endewed, 
 Know this for certaine, that the same doth hold 
 A beauteous soule, with faire conditions thewed, 
 Fit to receiue the seede of vertue strewed. 
 
 For all that faire is, is by nature good; 
 
 That is a signe to know the gentle blood. 
 
 But with this Platonic conception of the identity of beauty and 
 truth, clearly the corporeal half of the human duality receives 
 an emphasis that was theoretically denied it in the scholastic 
 system. Thus following the lead of the Italian Platonists, Eng- 
 lish humanists advocated an educational theory diametrically 
 opposed to the older conception. 
 
 As hi the other cases, although it is an error to assume that this 
 theory is original with any one writer, the first propagandist is 
 Vives. But just as the care for the body is rather implicit than ex- 
 plicit in Plato, since to the Greek there was no necessity of urging 
 so obvious a duty, so in Vives it is more assumed than definitely 
 
 1 1 have used the text, Foure Hymnes, London, 1617. Of course the same position 
 may be illustrated from Sidney, etc.
 
 HUMANISM 313 
 
 stated in any given passage. Yet the impression gained from read- 
 ing his works, a sentence here and a sentence there, grows into a 
 definite belief. 1 He discusses what one should eat and what one 
 should drink, and especially advocates frequent bathing. This 
 should be done primarily for health, not for pleasure. 2 For this 
 reason he also advocates sports as a relaxation for the weary mind 
 as well as to develop the growing body. 3 Consequently in his 
 Exercitatio Linguce Latinae he discusses when, to what extent, with 
 whom, how, and what sports the lad shall pursue, and advocates 
 those in which both honor and enjoyment are united. In modern 
 phrase, he believes in a 'gentleman's game.' As Vives' works not 
 only circulated but were translated into English for the benefit of 
 the unlearned, and as the Exercitatio itself was the medium by 
 which so many learned their Latin, the importance of his opin- 
 ion on the value of exercise is clear. 
 
 Naturally, then, it is no matter for surprise to find Elyot with 
 this same conception. 4 
 
 All thoughe I haue hitherto aduanced the commendation of lernyng, specially in 
 gentil men, yet it is to be considered that continuall studie without some maner of 
 exercise, shortly exhausteth the spirites vitall, and hyndereth naturall decoction and 
 digestion, whereby mannes body is the soner corrupted and brought in to diuers 
 sickeness-is, and finallye the life is therby made shorter: where contrayrye wise by 
 exercise, whiche is a vehement motion (as Galene prince of phisitions defineth) the 
 I it -It In- of man is preserued, and his strength increased: for as moche the members by 
 meuyng and mutuall touching, do waxe more harde, and naturall heate in all the 
 body is thereby augmented. More ouer it maketh the spirites of a man more 
 stronge and valiant, so that, by the hardnesse of the membres, all labours be more 
 tollerable; by naturall hete the appetite is the more quicke; the chaunge of the sub- 
 stance receiued is the more redy; the nourisshinge of all partes of the body is the 
 more sufficient and sure. By valiaunt motion of the spirites all thinges superfluous 
 be expelled, and the condutis of the body densed. Wherfore this parte of phisike is 
 nat to be contemned or neglected in the education of children, and specially from 
 the age of Xiiii yeres upwarde, in whiche tyme strength with courage increaseth. 
 
 1 Kuypere, op. cit., p. 5, has collected a number of these scattered references and 
 from them made his generalizations. 
 
 * Intr. Sap. 4, 86. Tola corporu curatio ad sanitatem referenda est non ad colupta- 
 tem. 
 
 1 Exercitatio, dial. Leges Ludi: homo propter res seriaa eat conditus, non propter 
 nugot et lusiu; lustns autem reperti ad reficiendum animum lassum a seriit . . . simid 
 animum reficiat, et corpus exerceat. 
 
 4 The Gouemour, Chapter XVI.
 
 314 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 As this passage ends with eulogy of Linacre's translation of 
 Galen, and is itself merely a composite of several extracts from 
 Galen, both the agreement with Vives and the omission of his name 
 is comprehensible. Vives had only transmitted the general human- 
 istic theory; Elyot here is passing it on to England. Naturally, 
 under these circumstances we expect to find Ascham presenting 
 the same point of view. 
 
 And, I do not meene, by all this my taulke, that young lentlemen, should alwaies 
 be poring on a booke, and by vsing good studies, shold lease honest pleasure, and 
 haunt no good pastime, I meene nothing lesse: For it is well knowne, that I both 
 like and loue, and haue alwaies, and do yet still vse, all exercises and pastimes, 
 that be fitte for my nature and habilitie. . . . Therefore, I wold wishe, that, be- 
 side some good time, fitlie appointed, and constantlie kepte, to encrease by read- 
 unge, the knowledge of the tonges and learning, yong ientlemen shold vse, and de- 
 lite in all Courtelie exercises, and lentlemanlike pastimes. 1 
 
 It is possible, I think, in these extracts to see a certain progression. 
 Whereas Vives recommends only such exercise as may be necessary 
 to enable the mind to perform its functions, Elyot argues in favor 
 of good health for its own sake, and Ascham for sport for sport's 
 sake. As he says : 
 
 For the Muses, besides learning, were also Ladies of dauncinge, mirthe and 
 ministrclsie: Apollo, was god of shooting, and Author of cunning playing vpon 
 Instrumentes: Pallas also was Laidie mistres in warres. Wherbie was nothing else 
 mcnt, but that learninge shold be alwaise mingled, with honest mirthe, and cumlie 
 exercises: and that warre also shold be gout-rued by learning, and moderated by 
 wisdom. . . .* 
 
 In the interval of time between Vives and Ascham athletics has 
 become a definite part of the educational system. 
 
 Much the same progression can be indicated in the forms of 
 exercise enumerated by the several writers. Vives mentions al- 
 most casually ball playing or running races, merely as a fitting 
 interlude to serious work. Elyot feels it necessary to discuss quite 
 elaborately wrestling, running, swimming, fencing, riding, and the 
 various forms of hunting. To him the best exercise, beyond com- 
 pare, is to be found in archery, in shooting with the long bow. In 
 comparison with that, football 3 
 
 1 The Scholemaster, Arber's Reprints, pp. 63-64. 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 64. 
 
 8 The Governour, Everyman's Library, p. 113.
 
 HUMANISM 315 
 
 wherin is nothinge but beastly furie and exstreme violence; wherof precedeth 
 hurte, and consequently rancour and malice do remaine with them that be wounded: 
 
 is " to be put in perpetual silence." Ascham also gives much the 
 same list. 1 
 
 Therefore, to ride cumlie: to run faire at the tilte or ring: to plaie at all weaponss: 
 to shote faire in bow, or surelie in gon: to vaut lustely : to runne: to leape: to wrestle: 
 to swimme: To daunce cumlie: to sing, and playe of instrumentes cunnyngly: to 
 Hawke: to hunte: to playe at tennes, and all pastimes generally, which be 
 ioyned with labor, vsed in open place, and on the day light, containing either some 
 fitte exercise for warre, or some pleasant pastime for peace, be not onelie cumlie and 
 decent, but also verie necessarie, for a Courtlie lentleman to vse. 
 
 But, equally with Elyot, these are not ideal for scholars. 2 
 
 Therfore to loke on all pastymes and exercises holsome for the bodye, pleasaunt 
 for the mynde, comlye for euery man to do, honest for all other to loke on, profitable 
 to be sette by of euerye man, worthie to be rebuked of no man, fit for al ages persons 
 and places, onely shoting shal appeare, wherein all these commodities maye be 
 founde. 
 
 And he writes a whole book to prove it, in which the arguments 
 used by Elyot are expanded and enforced by multitudes of classi- 
 cal examples. There is something very English in the stress on 
 sport; one feels that however much the continental humanists may 
 have fathered the idea, the development of it in England would 
 have startled a thinker such as Erasmus. The general theory has 
 been adapted to local conditions. Certainly is this true in re- 
 gard to dancing. To Vives, it was exceedingly illogical. 3 
 
 What good doth all that dancing of young women, holden up on men's arms, 
 that they may hop the higher? What meaneth that shaking unto midnight, and 
 never weary, which if they were desired to go but to the next church, they were 
 not able, except they were carried on horse back, or in a chariot? Who would not 
 think them out of their wits? I remember that I heard upon a time said, that 
 there were certain men brought out of a far country into our parts of the world, 
 which when they saw women dance, they ran away, wonderfully afraid, crying out 
 that they thought the women were taken with a strange kind of frenzy. And to say 
 good sooth, who would not reckon women frantic when they dance, if he had never 
 seen women dance before? 
 
 1 The SchoUmatUr, Arber's Reprints, p. 04. 
 
 * Toxophilus, ibid., p. 47. 
 
 * Hyrde's translation of Vives' Instruction of a Christian Woman, edited by 
 Foster Wataon, p. 103.
 
 316 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 But when Henry's love of masking and dancing is remembered, 
 such a preachment, however convincing in theory, was not accept- 
 able in fact. Consequently Elyot is placed in a most unpleasant 
 position. He extricates himself by showing with a vast parade 
 of learning that while idolatrous and lascivious dancing was un- 
 doubtedly correctly reproved by the Church, not only in itself 
 is it excellent exercise, but in addition symbolizes the moral vir- 
 tue, Prudence. Consequently dancing l 
 
 whiche diligently beholden shall appiere to be as well a necessary studie as a 
 noble and vertuouse pastyme, used and continued in suche forme as I hiderto haue 
 declared. 
 
 After that "to daunce cumlie" is accepted by Ascham without 
 comment as an essential accomplishment of the courtier, for even 
 dancing has its moral value. 
 
 Just as the humanists believed that all the powers of the body 
 should be trained to a moral end, so they felt that all the powers 
 of the mind should be so cultivated. Neither the one nor the 
 other should be prostituted to mere pleasure. Consequently the 
 growing pupil was to be familiarized as soon as possible with the 
 wisdom of the ages. At first it was to be administered in tabloid 
 form. Vives, in 1524, prepared a Satellitium for the Princess Mary 
 in which the Latin proverbs were expanded and explained. Thus 
 generositas virtus, non sanguis is paraphrased: 2 
 
 We shall see how this works out if we make use of an induction in this matter. 
 Which horse is noble? which dog? Is it not the best (optimus) and so in other 
 animals and stocks: therefore also the noble man is none other than the best man 
 morally. 
 
 For this purpose the Copia of Erasmus is recommended. In all 
 countries works appeared under the titles of precepts, aphorisms, 
 sentences, and the like. 3 But with this desire to inculcate morality, 
 the humanists in their recoil from scholastic tradition consciously 
 referred back to classic civilization. From their illustrations the 
 reader might make the deduction that since the coming of Chris- 
 
 1 The Gouemour, ibid., p. 107. 
 
 2 Watson, Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, 155. 
 
 * The same principle is sometimes used today in teaching writing, where the 
 pupil laboriously copies a moral platitude.
 
 HUMANISM 817 
 
 tianity there have been no good men! In every respect, appar- 
 ently, the human race has degenerated. Ascham makes this plain : * 
 
 Athens, by this discipline and good ordering of yougthe, did breede vp, within 
 the cireute of that one Citie, within the compas of one hondred yeare, within the 
 memorie of one mans life, so manie notable Capitaines in warre, for worthinesse, 
 wisdome and learning, as be scarce matchable no not in the state of Rome, in the 
 compas of those seauen hondred yeares, whan it florished moste. 
 
 And bicause, I will not onelie saie it, but also proue it, the names of them be 
 these. Miltiades, Themistodes, Xantippus, Pericles, Cymon, Alcybiades, Thrasybu- 
 lus, Conon, Iphicrates, Xenopkon, Timotheus, Theopompus, Demetrius, and diuers 
 other mo: of which euerie one, maie iustelie be spoken that worthie praise, which 
 was geuen to Scipio Africanus, who, Cicero douteth, whether he were, more noble 
 Capitaine in warre, or more eloquent and wise councelor in peace. 
 
 This point of view has caused the pages of English literature to be 
 sprinkled with classical allusion, so that the heroes of antiquity 
 are known by us all. 
 
 But to be inspired properly to emulation of the great classical 
 heroes, so to live our lives that we may risk comparison with Alci- 
 biades or Conon, or merit the praise given Scipio Africanus, clearly 
 a firsthand knowledge of the literatures of Rome and Greece is 
 essential. Consequently in the humanists we find long lists of 
 authors, whose works are the portals to a good life. Here also it 
 is possible to see the progression. Vives is willing to give credit to 
 the early Christian writers. 2 
 
 Also the poets of our religion should be read, Prudentius, Prosper, Paulinus, 
 Servilius, Juvencus, and Aratus, who, whilst they discuss matters of the highest 
 kind, for the salvation of the human race, are neither crude nor contemptible in 
 speech. They have many passages in which, by their eloquence and charm of 
 verse, they vie with the ancients. Some even think they surpass them. 
 
 These authors, however, are omitted in Elyot, although he occa- 
 sionally cites the church fathers as authoritative. He advocates 
 reading the Italian humanists, such as Pontanus and Politian, and 
 Erasmus. In turn, these are much less stressed by Ascham, who 
 urges the student to go back to the originals. The same trend 
 may be seen in the attitude toward Greek. To Vives, Greek 
 seems almost a luxury; Latin a necessity. 3 
 
 1 Rcholcmaster, ibid., 59. 
 * Wataon, op. eil., 246. 
 1 Wataon, op. cit., 150.
 
 318 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 To the one who has acquired the knowledge of the Greek tongue, the fountains 
 of all branches of learning stand open, for these have issued from the Greeks. He is 
 admitted to the knowledge of the greatest minds in which Greece was always so 
 prolific. Moreover, his copiousness of Latin speech is deeper founded, both because 
 the Latin people sought from Greece the schemes and figures of speech and colours 
 of subject-matter, and also because, when the Latin vocabulary is not at hand for 
 signifying a thing, a term can be borrowed from the Greek, which is so full of words. 
 Nay, also, the Latin authors after the time of Cicero were so studious of Greek, or 
 such displayers of their knowledge, that a great part of their idioms were poured 
 across into Lathi. 
 
 Elyot holds the balance much more equally, enjoining a careful 
 study of the authors in each language, Homer as well as Vergil. 1 
 
 But aboue all other, the warkes of Plato wolde be most studiously radde whan the 
 iugement of a man is come to perfection, and by the other studies is instructed in the 
 fourme of speakynge that philosophers used. Lorde god, what incomparable 
 swetnesse of wordes and mater shall he finde hi the saide warkes of Plato and 
 Cicero; wherin is ioyned grauitie with dilectation, excellent wysedome with diuine 
 eloquence, absolute vertue with pleasure incredible, and euery place is so infarced 
 with profitable counsaile, ioyned with honestie, that those thre bokes be almoste 
 sufficient to make a perfecte and excellent gouernour. 
 
 In Ascham the "perfect Grecians" have come to their own. In 
 a letter to Brandesby, dated from Cambridge 1542-53, he thus 
 gives the condition: 2 
 
 Aristotle and Plato are now read by the boys in the original language, but that 
 has been done among us at St. John's for the last five years. Sophocles and Euripi- 
 des are now more familiar to us than Plautus was when you were here. Herodotus, 
 Thucydides, and Xenophon are more read now than Livy was then. They talk now 
 as much of Demosthenes, as they did of Cicero at that time. There are more 
 copies of Isocrates to be met with now than there were of Terence then. Yet we 
 do not treat the Latin writers with contempt, but we cherish the best of them who 
 flourished in the golden age of their literature. 
 
 This change, the shifting of emphasis from the Latin to the Greek, 
 Ascham attributes definitely to the influence of Sir John Cheke. 
 That any one individual can be held directly responsible for it, is 
 probably untrue, but the situation as given by Ascham is surpris- 
 ing. The former generation had known Plato, but they saw him 
 through the eyes of Pico della Mirandola and Ficino, Benivieni and 
 the Italian humanists, who believed that their function lay in 
 
 1 The Gouernour, 417. 
 
 * Giles' Edition of the Works of Ascham, i, xxxvii.
 
 HUMANISM 319 
 
 reconciling Platonism with Christianity. This conception, cer- 
 tainly, tinged the early English writers. But by 1540, evidently 
 humanism had passed into its second stage, Latin was but a step 
 on the road to Greek, and the Greek authors were read hi the orig- 
 inal and for their own sake. 
 
 This method of teaching morality by means of the classical au- 
 thors is open to the obvious objection that their morals were not 
 our morals, and that a sympathetic study of Juvenal, Martial, Pe- 
 tronius, etc., whatever cultural value it might have, would scarcely 
 be helpful from the purely moral point of view. Quite naturally 
 some pages of almost every classical author have references and 
 allusions to customs and manners that in English dress would be 
 considered abominable. Even Vergil and Horace are among the 
 number, while Catullus is distinctly frank. Moreover the Italian 
 humanists, in openly copying the classical lack of restraint, had 
 confounded culture with indecency to such an extent that the 
 northern humanist was appalled. In England the logical solution 
 for the dilemma was found in selection. The pupil was to be urged 
 and encouraged to read Latin and Greek, the classical literatures 
 were to be held up before the eyes as the most precious of posses- 
 sions, but there were to be certain parts he was not to touch, cer- 
 tain works he was not to know. This position, although it is to be 
 said that he is writing for women here, Vives clearly states: l 
 
 But whereto should I speak of foolish and ignorant writers, seeing that Ovid 
 would not, that he that intendeth to fly unchaste manners should once touch the 
 most witty and well learned poets of the Greeks and Latins that write of love? 
 What can be told more pleasant, more sweet, more quick, more profitable, with all 
 manner of learning than these poets, Callimachus, Phileta, Anacreon, Sappho, 
 Tibullus, Propertius, and Callus? Which poets all Greece, all Italy, yea, and all the 
 world setteth great price by, and yet Ovid biddeth chaste folks let them alone, say- 
 ing in the second book of the Remedies of Love: 
 
 Though I be loath, yet will I say. 
 
 With wanton poets thou do not mell. 
 Ah ! mine own virtues now I cast away. 
 
 Beware Callimachus, for he teacheth well 
 To love and Cous also well as he. 
 
 And old Anacreon writeth full wantonly, 
 And Sappho eke often hath caused me 
 
 To deal with my lady more liberally. 
 
 1 Watson, Vivet. op. cit., 60-fll.
 
 820 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Who can escape free, that readeth Tibullus, 
 
 Or Propertius, when he doth sing 
 Unto his lady Cynthia? Or else Callus? 
 
 And my books also sound such like thing. 
 
 They sound so indeed, and therefore was he banished, nothing without a cause of 
 that good prince. Wherefore I praise greatly the sad manners either of that time, 
 or else of that prince. But we live now in a Christian country, and who is he that is 
 anything displeased with makers of such books now-a-days? Plato casteth out of 
 the commonwealth of wise men which he made, Homer and Hesiod the poets, and 
 yet have they none ill thing in comparison unto Ovid's books of Love, which we 
 read and carry them in our hands, and learn them by heart, yea, and some school- 
 masters teach them to their scholars, and some make expositions and expound the 
 vices. Augustus banished Ovid himself, and think you then that he would have 
 kept these expositors in the country? Except a man would reckon it a worse deed to 
 write vice than to expound it, and inform the tender minds of young folk therewith. 
 We banish him that maketh false weights and measures, and [him] that counter- 
 feiteth coin, or an instrument, and what a work is made in these things for small 
 matters! But he is had in honour, and [ac] counted a master of wisdom, that cur- 
 rupteth the young people. 
 
 Vives here condemns whole works as beyond the pale. The logical 
 step was, however, not to condemn the entire work, but to select 
 only portions of it to be read. This step is taken by Elyot. 1 
 
 But they whiche be ignoraunt in poetes wyll perchaunce obiecte, as is their maner, 
 agayne these verses, sayeng that in Therence and other that were writers of com- 
 edies, also Guide, Catullus, Martialis, and all that route of lasciuious poetes that 
 wrate epistles and ditties of loue, some called in latine Elegiae and some Epigram- 
 mata, is nothyng contayned but incitation to lechery. 
 
 First, comedies, whiche they suppose to be a doctrinall of rybaudrie, they be 
 undoubtedly a picture or as it were a mirrour of man's life, wherin iuell is nat taught 
 but discouered; to the intent that men beholdynge the promptnes of youth unto 
 vice, the snares of harlotts and baudes laide for yonge myndes, the disceipte of 
 seruantes, the chaunces of fortune contrary to mennes expectation, they beinge 
 therof warned may prepare them selfe to resist or preuente occasion. Semblably 
 remembring the wisedomes, aduertisements, counsailes, dissuasion from vice, and 
 other profitable sentences, most eloquently and familiarely shewed in those com- 
 edies, undoubtedly there shall be no litle frute out of them gathered. And if the 
 vices in them expressed shulde be cause that myndes of the reders shulde be cor- 
 rupted: than by the same argumente nat onely enterludes in englisshe, but also 
 sermones, wherin some vice is declared, shulde be to the beholders and herers like 
 occasion to encreace sinners. . . . 
 
 Also Ouidius, that semeth to be moste of all poetes lasciuious, in his mooste 
 wanton bokes hath righte commendable and noble sentences; . . . 
 
 1 The Gouernour, op. tit., 58-60.
 
 HUMANISM 321 
 
 Martialis, whiche, for his dissolute wrytynge, is mooste seldome radde of men of 
 moche grauitie, hath nat withstandynge many commendable sentences and right 
 wise counsailes. . . . 
 
 I coulde recite a great nombre of semblable good sentences out of these and other 
 wanton poets, who in the latine do expresse them incomparably with more grace 
 and delectation to the reder than our englisshe tonge may yet comprehende. 
 
 Wherfore sens good and wise mater may be picked out of these poetes, it were no 
 reason, for some lite mater that is in their verses, to abandone therefore al their 
 warkes, no more than it were to forbeare or prohibite a man to come into a faire 
 gardein, leste the redolent sauours of swete herbes and floures shall meue him to 
 wanton courage, or leste in gadringe good and holsome herbes he may happen to be 
 stunge with a nettle. No wyse man entreth in to a gardein but he sone espiethe 
 good herbes from nettiles, and treadeth the nettiles under his feete whiles he gadreth 
 good herbes. Wherby he taketh no damage, or if he be stungen he maketh lite of 
 it and shortly forgetteth it. Semblablye if he do rede wanton mater mixte with 
 wisedome, he putteth the warst under foote and sorteth out the beste, or, if his 
 courage be stered or prouoked, he remembreth the litel pleasure and gret detriment 
 that shulde ensue of it, and withdrawynge his minde to some other studie or exercise 
 shortly forgetteth it. ... 
 
 So all thoughe I do nat approue the lesson of wanton poetes to be taughte unto 
 all children, yet thynke I conuenient and necessary that, whan the mynde is be- 
 come constante and courage is asswaged, or that children of their naturall disposi- 
 tion be shamfaste and continent, none auncient poete wolde be excluded from the 
 leesson of suche one as desireth to come to the perfection of wysedome. 
 
 However justifiable from the point of view of the morality of the 
 student, no course could be more safely recommended to insure a 
 false estimation of classical culture. To select such traits as seem 
 admirable, to suppress other traits, of which you cannot con- 
 scientiously approve, in each case avowedly being guided by 
 the standard of morality of the present, seems the ideal method 
 to produce a distorted impression both of the author and his age. 
 By such a method, however, a world may be constructed of 
 valiant men and of noble women, more valiant men and more 
 noble women than do exist, or did exist. So, the "glory that was 
 Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" is apt to be denomi- 
 nated, appropriately, as the "golden" age. 
 
 While thus positively the humanists aimed at presenting an 
 imaginary classical past as the ideal, negatively they wished to 
 remove all traces of native influence. The term gothic became 
 synonymous with barbarous, and was liberally applied to the 
 history, art, and letters of all Christian nations. 1 Whatever was 
 
 1 This use of golhic, according to the N. E. D. begins with Dryden; actually
 
 322 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 classical was, by hypothesis, good; whatever was Christian was, 
 conversely by hypothesis, bad. Even God was mythologized. 
 The ideal of the Christian church became a pagan temple, Leon 
 Battista Alberti remodelled the Tempio of the Malatesta at Rimini, 
 and Palladio hid Catholicism behind a classical pediment. In Eng- 
 land, the destruction of ecclesiastical architecture went on at an 
 appalling rate. Of the great monastic establishments on the 
 Thames, Westminster alone survives through the accident that 
 it had been chosen for royal burial; Chertsey, Reading, Abingdon, 
 Osney, remain only as names, and are today located by the care- 
 ful antiquary by an occasional arch or a bit of stone wall. And 
 this happened all over England; to the south Battle Abbey sur- 
 vives in a gate-house, to the north Fountains, exquisitely lovely, 
 is a mass of broken arches, to the east Lindisferne and Whitby are 
 piles of crumbling masonry, to the west Glastonbury, Tintern, 
 and Furness are pathetic fragments. Here, again, is the inter- 
 relation between the humanistic movement and the Reformation. 
 The latter was political, it aimed to destroy the power of the 
 abbots, to sequester their property, but it had no animus against 
 the buildings themselves. There was none of the fanatic hatred 
 that was shown later by Cromwell's soldiers against all "rags of 
 popery. " Therefore, so far as the Reformation is concerned, the 
 great abbeys of England might well have come down to us as has 
 Westminster. 1 That they have not is due rather to the change 
 in taste. It was not that they were destroyed; they were merely 
 not preserved. Humanism had so thoroughly done its work that 
 Tudor England never conceived the possibility that to future 
 generations such buildings might seem lovely in form, or valuable 
 through association. They were only disregarded. The materials 
 were carted away, when they were needed for other constructions; 
 otherwise they were left. It was a process of disintegration 
 through the ages, not a single act of vandalism. Reading Abbey 
 was still a habitation until the Civil Wars. From this point of 
 
 Ascham implies it by his opprobrious epithets, whenever he mentions the Hunnes 
 and Gothians. 
 
 1 1 am trying here to differentiate between fanaticism and the purely mercenary 
 motive. Naturally this last, when the king determined to suppress the monasteries, 
 was a fearfully destructive agent. Cf. F. A. Gasquet's very able Henry VIII. 
 and the English Monasteries, ii, Chap. X.
 
 HUMANISM 323 
 
 view the monastic ruins scattered over England cry aloud the 
 triumph of humanism. 
 
 Architectural ruins, since the contrast is poignant between 
 what they were and what they are, afford a striking illustration 
 of this change. But the same force was operating in literature. 
 In favor of the writings of Greece and Rome all work referring 
 to a Christian past was to be contemned. Vives here is quite 
 clear. 1 
 
 What a custom is this, that a song shall not be regarded, unless it be full of filthi- 
 ness! And this the laws ought to take heed of, and of those ungracious books, such 
 as be in my country in Spain, the Amadis, Florisand, Tristan and Celestina the bawd, 
 mother of naughtiness; in France, Lancelot du Lac, Paris and Vienne, Ponthus 
 and Sidonia, and Melusine; and here in Flanders, the histories of Flor and Blanche- 
 fleur, Leonella and Canamorus, Pyramis and Thisbe. In England, Parthenope, 
 Genarides, Hippomadon, William and Melyour, Libius and Arthur, Guy, Bevis, and 
 many other. ... As for learning, none is to be looked for in those men, which 
 saw never so much as a shadow of learning themselves. And when they tell aught, 
 what delight can be in those things that be so plain and foolish lies! One killeth 
 twenty himself alone, another killeth thirty, another wounded with a hundred 
 wounds, and left dead, riseth up again, and on the next day made whole and strong 
 overcometh two giants, and then goeth away loaden with gold and silver, and 
 precious stones, mo than a galley would carry away! What madness is it of folks 
 to have pleasure in these books? Also there is no wit in them, but a few words of 
 wanton lust, which be spoken to move her mind with whom they love, if it chance 
 she be steadfast. I never heard man say that he liked these books, but those that 
 never touched good books. 
 
 Elyot, to be sure is not so scornful, and even alludes to the romance 
 of Bevis without expletives, but in Ascham we find the same 
 moral indignation. In 1545 he felt that the old romances promul- 
 gated an evil combination of lust and Catholicism, and that they 
 were a barbarous product of a benighted age. 2 
 
 Englysh writers by diuersitie of t vine, haue taken diuersc matters in hande. In 
 our fathers tyme nothing was red, but bookes of fayned cheualrie, wherein a man 
 by redinge, shuld be led to none other ende, but onely to man-slaughter and baudrye. 
 Yf any man suppose they were good ynough to passe the time with al, he is de- 
 ceyued. For surelye vayne woordes doo woorke no smal thinge in vayne, ignoraunt, 
 and younge mindes, specially yf they be gyuen any thynge thervnto of theyr owne 
 
 1 Watson, Vivet, op. cii., 58-9. The English books mentioned in this quotation 
 are not in the Vives; they were added by Hyrde. 
 * Toxophilut, op. cit., 19.
 
 324 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 nature. These bokes (as I haue heard say) were made the moste parte in Abbayes, 
 and Monasteries, a very lickely and fit fruite of suche an ydle and blynde kinde 
 of lyuynge. 
 
 But here in the Toxophilus he not only quotes Chaucer, he even 
 recommends the reading of the Pardoner's Tale, for its side-lights 
 on the perils of popery. 1 In the Scholemaster, even Chaucer is 
 bracketed with Petrarch as pernicious, while his opinion of the 
 romances has altered only for the worse. 2 
 
 In our forefathers tyme, whan Papistrie, as a standyng poole, couered and ouer- 
 flowed all England, fewe bookes were read in our tong, sauyng certaine bookes 
 Cheualrie, as they sayd, for pastime and pleasure, which, as some say, were made 
 in Monasteries, by idle Monkes, or wanton Canons: as one for example, Morte 
 Arthure: the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open 
 mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye: In which booke those be counted the noblest 
 Knightes, that do kill most men without any quarrell, and commit fowlest aduoul- 
 teres by sutlest shiftes: as Sir Launcelote, with the wife of king Arthure his master: 
 Syr Tristram with the wife of king Marke his vncle; Syr Lamerocke with the wife of 
 king Lole, that was his own aunte. This is good stuffe, for wise men to laughe at, 
 or honest men to take pleasure at. Yet I know, when Gods Bible was banished the 
 Court, and Morte Arthure receiued into the Princes chamber. What toyes, the 
 dayly readyng of such a booke, may worke in the will of a yong ientleman, or a 
 yong mayde, that liueth welthelie and idlelie, wise men can iudge, and honest men 
 do pitie.* 
 
 The whole weight of the humanistic movement was directed, 
 constructively in favor of the classical literatures and destructively 
 against the survivals of the vernacular literatures. 
 
 Through the centuries, in proportion as this theory became 
 more firmly established, the effect was cumulative. Originally, 
 as we have seen, it was applied to the old romances; later it 
 condemned Shakespeare. Addison supports his admiration for 
 Paradise Lost by careful parallelism with Vergil. And, when Gray 
 substitutes English names for the classical examples in the cele- 
 brated stanza in his Elegy, it marks a new literary epoch. On this 
 
 1 Cf. Chapter II, pp. llft-119. 
 
 1 Scholemaster, op. cit., 80. 
 
 3 Professor Crane, Mod. Lang. Pub. XXX No. 2, regrets that there has been no 
 systematic study of the history of the romance during the sixteenth century. One 
 of the reasons for the change in taste by which they suffered is shown in such a 
 passage as this by Ascham. The pupil was taught to regard them as both childish 
 and immoral.
 
 HUMANISM 325 
 
 subject, there are two comments to be made that seem antithetical. 
 First, that the result was to make the English nation, like Vanity 
 Fair, without a hero. Today the English army marches to a tune 
 the words of which are 
 
 Some talk of Alexander, 
 
 And some of Hercules, 
 Of Hector, and Lysander, 
 
 And such great names as these. 
 
 At least it may be said of Guy of Warwick, or Bevis of Hampton 
 that they were Englishmen! The second is that the old heroes 
 persisted, and in spite of the critics, the literature was read. Arthur 
 is the hero of the Faerie Queene, Chevy Chase thrilled Sidney, 
 Milton meditated a poem on the Arthurian legend, Dryden 
 modernized the Flower and the Leaf, and Addison saw pathos in 
 the old ballads. The explanation of this apparent anomaly reveals 
 the most unhappy result of humanism. The tendency of the 
 revival of learning was to divide the nation into two separate 
 camps, the learned and the unlearned. For the learned, there grew 
 up an esoteric, exotic literature, whose roots never reached down 
 into the national life. Of this, the extreme example is the pastoral. 
 However beautiful to the trained ear, and however delightful to 
 the cultivated taste, is the Lycidas, its appeal is definitely limited. 
 To go a step farther, to expect Windsor Forest to be read with 
 enjoyment by the shepherd, it is the reductio ad absurdum. The 
 answer is that neither Milton nor Pope expected the poems to be 
 read by the shepherd! They were consciously writing for highly- 
 trained audiences; and in so far as they were doing so, they were 
 consciously limiting their appeal. Such poems are literature of 
 the clique, not of the country. Neither in their own age, nor in 
 any subsequent time have they been truly national. But by this 
 fact nine tenths of the nation were deprived of trained writers. 
 Naturally they also had their poems and their poets, who equally 
 lacked the ability to appeal to the cultivated. The humanistic 
 theory thus clove the nation in twain. Not until the reaction 
 against the whole idea became dominant was it possible to have a 
 single writer, such as had been Chaucer, that could epitomize his 
 epoch. 1 For two centuries and a half English literature is the 
 
 1 Of course this is not true of the drama, which by the necessity of box receipts 
 had to cater to, and thereby represent, the groundlings. Imagine the immense loss
 
 326 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 record of curiously local writers, with the occasional emergence of 
 a book such as Pilgrim's Progress, or of a man, such as Burns, 
 who makes a wide appeal. 1 Literature is essentially democratic, 
 and the sin of humanism was pride of the intellect. 
 
 That this most unhappy condition was begun by the humanists 
 with the best of motives is quite clear. They are nothing if not 
 moral. Believing as they did that the true exemplars for right 
 living were to be found in classical times, they naturally stressed 
 the knowledge of reading Latin and Greek. But their Latin was 
 quite different in principle from that of the scholastics. As they 
 wished to approximate the classical living, they also aimed to ap- 
 proximate classical expression. Therefore the vital, expressive 
 Latin of the Middle Ages was exchanged for a speech that was 
 frigidly correct. So Vives instructs Mountjoy in the art of conver- 
 sation: 2 
 
 Speak yourself as you hear the instructed speak, or as you read in Latin writers. 
 Shun the words which you consider of doubtful value both in speech and in writing, 
 unless first you have got to know from your teacher that they are Latin. With 
 those who speak Latin imperfectly, whose conversation may corrupt your own, 
 rather speak English or any other language in which there is not the same danger. 
 
 Much the same position is that taken by Elyot: 3 
 
 Lorde god, howe many good and clene wittes of children be nowe a dayes perisshed 
 by ignorant schole maisters. Howe litle substancial doctrine is apprehended by the 
 fewenesse of good gramariens? ... I call nat them gramariens, whiche onely can 
 teach or make rules, wherby a childe shall onely lerne to speake congrue latino, or 
 to make sixe versis standyng in one fote, wherin perchance shal be neither sentence 
 nor eloquence. But I name hym a gramarien, by the autoritie of Quintilian, that 
 speakyng latine elegantly, can expounde good autours, expressynge the inuention 
 and disposition of the mater, their stile or fourme of eloquence, explicating the 
 figures as well of sentences as wordes, leuyng nothyng, persone, or place named by 
 the autour, undeclared or hidde from his scholars. Wherfore Quintilian saith, it is 
 nat inough for hym to haue rad poetes, but all kyndes of writyng must also be 
 sought for; nat for the histories only, but also for the propretie of wordes, whiche 
 communely do receiue theyr autoritie of noble autours. More ouer without musike 
 gramer may nat be perfecte; for as moche as t her in muste be spoken of metres and 
 
 to literature, if the whole of Shakespeare's productivity had been forced to flow in 
 the channels of the poems and the sonnets! 
 
 1 The sceptic may be safely referred to the authors entombed in Johnson's Poeta. 
 
 2 Watson, Vives, op. cit., 244. 
 
 1 The Gauernour, op. cit., 69-71.
 
 HUMANISM 327 
 
 harmonies, called rythmi in greke. Neither if he haue nat the knowlege of sterres, 
 he may understande poetes, which in description of times (I omitte other things) 
 they traicte of the risinge and goinge downe of pianettes. Also he may nat be 
 ignorant in philosophic, for many places that be almooste in euerye poete fetched 
 out of the most subtile parte of naturall questions. These be well nighe the wordes 
 of Quintilian. 
 
 After this, one is not surprised at bis remark that there are few 
 grammarians of this sort in England, nor at his attack upon the 
 contemporary state of learning. Then he continues with another 
 summary from Quintilian, to the effect that such education should 
 be gained when young. Naturally we find Ascham following the 
 tradition : l 
 
 All this while, by mine aduise, the childe shall vse to speake no latine; For, as 
 Cicero saith in like matter, with like wordes, loquendo, male loqui discunt. And, that 
 excellent learned man, G. Budaeus, in his Greeke Commentaries, sore complaineth, 
 that whan he began to learne the latin tonge, vse of speaking latin at the table, and 
 elsewhere, vnaduisedlie, did bring him to soch an euill choice of wordes, to soch a 
 crooked framing of sentences, that no one thing did hurt or hinder him more, all the 
 daies of his life afterward, both for redinesse in speaking, and also good iudgement 
 in writinge. 
 
 In very deede, if children were brought vp, in soch a house, or soch a Schole, 
 where the latin tonge were properlie and perfitlie spoken, as Tib. and Ca. Gracci 
 were brought vp, in their mother Cornelias house, surelie, than the dailie vse of 
 speaking, were the best and readiest waie, to learne the latin tong. But now, com- 
 monlie, in the best Scholes in England, for wordes, the right choice is smallie re- 
 garded, true proprietrie whollie neglected, confusion is brought in, barbariousnesse 
 is bred up so in yong wittse, as afterward they be, not onelie marde for speaking, but 
 also corrupted in iudgement: as with moch adoe, or neuer at all, they be brought to 
 right frame againc. 
 
 Yet all men couet to haue their children speake latin: and so do I verie earnestlie 
 too. We bothe, haue one purpose: we agree in desire, we wish one end: but we 
 differ somewhat in order and waie, that leadeth rightlie to that end. Other would 
 haue them speake at all aduentures: and, so they be speakinge, to speake, the Master 
 careth not, the Scholer knoweth not, what. This is, to seeme, and not to bee: except 
 it. be, to be bolde without shame, rashe without skill, full of wordes without 
 witte. . . . For, good vnderstanding must first be bred in the childe, which, 
 being nurished with skill, and vse of writing (as I will teach more largelie here- 
 after) is the onelie waie to bring him to iudgement and readinesse in speakinge: 
 and that in farre shorter time (if he follow constantlie the trade of this litle lesson) 
 then he shall do, by common teachinge of the common scholes in England. 
 
 In such passages as these, the reaction against the colloquial 
 Medieval Latin is manifest, and also the change from the vital 
 
 1 The Schalemuter, op. eii., S-9.
 
 328 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 spoken language to the point of view that to speak Latin was 
 primarily a polite accomplishment. The appeal is now to the eye 
 rather than to the ear, since the language has become a medium 
 of communication, not with the living, but rather with the mighty 
 dead. 1 But partly due to this fact, to the very honest belief that 
 in communion with the classic spirit lay the hope for modern 
 regeneration, and partly due to the personal influence of Erasmus, 
 "the honour of learning of all oure time," 2 little stress was put 
 upon grammar in the narrow sense, and still less upon Ciceronian- 
 ism. To this extent the Latin of the English humanists, by 
 their insistence upon content rather than upon form, during the 
 sixteenth century was saved from the mummification that speedily 
 overtook it in Europe. As their aim was the perfect life, and as 
 examples of such living were to be found in the Greek, Latin was 
 considered rather as a means to that end, than as valuable for it- 
 self. The mechanism of the language, therefore, was merely a 
 means of reaching the moral ideal. 
 
 With the realization of this guiding principle, two corollaries 
 follow from it logically. The first is the emphasis placed upon 
 having proper teachers, men that shall teach through love, not 
 fear. They must be such that to the pupil they seem the embodi- 
 ment of the classical ideal. He must be drawn, not driven, to the 
 wells of inspiration, by the practical example of the tutor. Thus 
 Vives explains to young Mountjoy: 3 
 
 The teacher is no less to be loved, esteemed, revered than a father. Truly 
 teachers bear a certain image of our fathers to us, for you can receive no greater 
 kindness than that of being made more scholarly (eruditus) and better morally 
 for to these two gifts nothing in life can be compared. Add to this, if you love 
 your teacher, you learn more easily. You will then never despise what he says, 
 nor neglect his behests. Always in your mind accord dignity to the teacher, 
 
 1 This is of course implied in the emphasis upon Greek. The Schdemaster, 60: 
 
 " Now, let Italian, and Latin it self, Spanishe, French, Douch, and Englishe bring 
 forth their lerning, and recite then- Authors, Cicero onelie excepted, and in one or 
 two moe in Latin, they be all patched cloutes and ragges, in comparison of faire 
 wouen broade cloathes. And trewelie, if there be any good in them, it is either 
 lerned, borowed, or stolne, from some one of those worthie wittes of Athens." 
 
 But Greek was never generally used as a spoken language. This is Skelton's 
 objection to it. Cf. passage cited Chapter III. 
 
 * The Schdemaster, op. cit., 61. 
 
 1 Watson, Vives, op. cit., 242.
 
 HUMANISM 329 
 
 and treat his words as oracles. Do not merely love him, but strive to be loved 
 in return by him that so he will teach you the more diligently. By obeying his 
 precepts closely and modestly, and by observing, honouring him in all he says 
 or does, or esteems in life or speech, so act that he will feel that you also approve 
 it. If he disapproves anything, then do you also shun it. Listen to him in- 
 tently to his words, his forms of speech, note down his opinions, and make your- 
 self as far as possible, like him; take him for example, because when the teacher 
 shall see this he will take pains that you shall not possibly receive from him any- 
 thing which would be unworthy of imitation. 
 
 In these extreme statements Vives here has outlined the main con- 
 tentions of the humanists. After this, it is not surprising to find 
 Elyot lauding the profession of teacher, bemoaning the little 
 respect paid to it, and claiming that avaricious parents select a 
 servant for their horses more carefully than a tutor for their 
 children. The tutor l 
 
 . . . shulde be an auncient and worshipfull man, in whom is aproued to be 
 moche gentilnes, mixte with granitic, and, as nighe as can be, suche one as the 
 childe by imitation folowynge may growe to be excellent. 
 
 Such careful selection is essential because there is to be no forcing 
 the pupil to learn. 2 
 
 Therfore that infelicitie of our tyme and countray compelleth us to encroche 
 some what upon the yeres of children, and specially of noble men, that they may 
 sooner attayne to wisedome and grauitie than priuate persones, consideryng, as 
 I haue saide, their charge and example, whiche, aboue all thynges, is most to 
 be estemed. Nat withstandyng, I wolde nat haue them inforced by violence to 
 lerne, but accordynge to the counsaile of Quintilian, to be swetely allured therto 
 with praises and suche praty gyftes as children delite in. 
 
 Ascham follows in the same strain with almost the same phrases. 
 The teacher must have "this gentle nature" because the children 
 are to be "allured to learning." Fear must be banished from the 
 school. 3 
 
 If your scholer do misse sometimes, in marking rightlie these fun-said sixe thinges, 
 chide not haatelie: for that shall, both dull his wittc, and discorage his diligence: 
 but monish him gentelie: which shall make him both willing to amende, and glad 
 to go forward in loue and hope of learning. 
 
 1 The Gouernour, op. cit., 23. 
 
 * Ibid, 81. 
 
 1 The Schdemtuter, op. cit., 81.
 
 330 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 And the very reason for writing the Scholemaster was due to a 
 conversation starting from the statement that scholars were 
 running away from Eton for fear of beatings, and that Sackville 
 himself felt that the punishments inflicted upon him in his youth 
 had been a detriment to his learning. To avoid such a calamity 
 to his own son, he turned to Ascham. Clearly this position of the 
 humanists represents a reaction from the medieval theory and 
 practice. Nor did it conquer easily. Even in 1563, 1 
 
 Haddon was fullie of M. Peters opinion, and said, that the best Scholemaster 
 of our time, was the greatest beater, and named the Person. 
 
 On the other hand, as Watson points out in his preface to 
 the Gouernour, the metaphor of the gardener coaxing his plants 
 as applicable to teaching is afterwards used by Pestalozzi and 
 Froebel. This theory is thus curiously modern, and is but an- 
 other example of the anticipation on the part of the humanists of 
 the trend of modern thought. 
 
 The other corollary follows logically from the first. If the pupil 
 is to be so allured to learning, and if Latin is to be kept in the state 
 of pristine purity, clearly some means of communication, beyond 
 dumb-show, must exist between the teacher and the pupil. If 
 Latin may not be used, some other language must be substituted. 
 Therefore the humanists were driven into advocating the study 
 and the use of the vernacular. This was done first by Vives: 2 
 
 Let the teacher know the mother-tongue of his boys, so that by that means he 
 may with the more ease and readiness teach the learned languages. For unless 
 he makes use of the right and proper expressions in the mother-tongue, he will 
 certainly mislead the boys, and the error thus imbibed will accompany them 
 persistently as they grow up, and as men. Nor can boys understand anything 
 sufficiently well in their own language unless the words are said with the utmost 
 clearness. Let the teacher preserve in his memory all the old forms of vernacular 
 words, and let him develop the knowledge not only of modern forms but also of 
 the old words and those which have gone out of use, and let him be as it were the 
 guardian of the treasury of his language. Unless this be so, when any language 
 undergoes numerous changes, books written a hundred years ago will not be under- 
 stood by succeeding generations. It was for this reason that many things in the 
 Twelve Tables escaped the knowledge of Cicero and many jurisconsults; so, too, 
 many things become unknown in the current speech of living languages. 
 
 18. 
 
 * Quoted, together with the Latin, in the Preface of Watson's edition of the 
 Gouernour, op. cit., XXV and XXVI.
 
 HUMANISM 331 
 
 Much the same purport is to be found in Elyot: * 
 
 But to retourne to my purpose, hit shall be expedient that a noble mannes 
 sonne, in his infancie, haue with hym continually onely suche as may accustome 
 hym by litle and litle to speake pure and elegant latin. Semblably the nourises 
 and other women about hym, if it be possible, to do the same: or, at the leste way, 
 that they speke none englisshe but that which is cleane, polite, perfectly and 
 articulately pronounced, omittinge no lettre or sillable, as folisshe women often 
 times do of a wantonnesse, whereby diuers noble men and gentilmennes chyldren, 
 (as I do at this daye knowe) haue attained corrupte and foule pronuntiation. 
 
 It would be hard to overestimate the value of this endorsement of 
 the English language by the humanists. With the more general 
 spread of the humanistic theory through the centuries was bound 
 up a careful respect for the vernacular. Academic prestige and 
 critical approval were hereby bestowed upon the mother-tongue. 
 It may well be considered a factor of no mean importance. 
 
 On the other hand, eulogies on the subject have usually gone 
 too far. It is to be noticed that the endorsement of the humanists 
 was solely of the language; nothing is said or implied of the litera- 
 ture. Nor was the language studied for itself. In the passage 
 quoted, Vives is explicit that he regards a knowledge of English 
 merely as a helpful pedagogic device for teaching Latin. 2 This 
 is more clearly shown by another passage of the De Tradendis 
 Disdplinis: 3 
 
 The scholars should first speak in their homes their mother tongue, which is 
 born with them, and the teacher should correct their mistakes. Then they should, 
 little by little, learn Latin. Next let them intermingle with the vernacular what 
 they have heard in Latin from the teacher, or what they themselves have learned. 
 Thus, at first, their language should be a mixture of the mother-tongue and Latin. 
 But outside the school they should speak the mother-tongue so that they should 
 not become accustomed to a hotch-potch of languages. . . Gradually the develop- 
 ment advances and the scholars become Latinists in the narrower sense. Now 
 must they seek to express their thoughts in Latin, for nothing serves so much to 
 
 1 The Gouernour, op. cii., it. 
 
 * Kuypers, op. tit., 54 thus summarizes Vives' position: Wenn auch auf pflege 
 und reinhaltung der muttersprache ein sehr groszes gewicht gelegt und vom lehrer 
 verlangt wird, dasz er nicht blosz jeden verstosz gegen dieselbe corrigiere, sondern 
 sogar eine grllndliche kenntnis der entwicklungsgoschichte der muttersprache 
 besitze, so iat sie doch noch nicht aclbst&ndiges unterrichtxfoch, sondern nur ein 
 hilfsmittel zur verdeutlichung. The italics are his own. 
 
 3 De Trodendi* Diaciplinis, Bk. iii. Cap. 3; the translation is taken from 
 Foster Watson's Dialogues of a Tudor Schoolboy, xlvii.
 
 332 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the learning of a language as continuous practice in it. He who is ashamed to 
 speak a language has no talent for it. He who refuses to speak Latin after he 
 has been learning it for a year must be punished according to his age and circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Elyot is equally definite in his preference for the Latin; since this 
 is scarcely practical in the early years, the best way is to insure 
 good English that later the pupil may not become confused. But 
 in the minds of neither is there any parity between the languages. 
 And this is, of course, the point of view of Ascham in his celebrated 
 apology: l 
 
 If any man woulde blame me, eyther for takynge such a matter in hande, or 
 els for writing it in the Englyshe tongue, this answere I may make hym, that whan 
 the beste of the realme thinke it honest for them to vse, I one of the meanest sorte, 
 ought not to suppose it vile for me to write: And though to haue written it in 
 another tonge, had bene bothe more profitable for my study, and also more honest 
 for my name, yet I can thinke my labour wel bestowed, yf with a little hynderaunce 
 of my profyt and name, maye come any fourtheraunce, to the pleasure or commod- 
 itie, of the gentlemen and yeomen of Englande, for whose sake I tooke this matter 
 in hande. 
 
 The motive here for writing in English is frankly unselfish, and 
 the author claims the merit of sacrifice. This differs in toto from 
 the Lydgatian apology, the lament for lack of cunning implies that 
 such cunning is possible. He does not write English, as did Skel- 
 ton, because he enjoys it, nor, as does More, because he is driven 
 to it. Much less does he choose English, as Bembo does Italian, 
 because he thinks it the proper medium for artistic expression. 
 On the contrary he feels that what he has to impart is so necessary 
 for the well-being of his readers, that even to his own disadvantage 
 he is willing to stoop to conquer. And again it is hard to estimate 
 the exact result brought about by this view. We have all of us, 
 in England more than in America, inherited a prejudice in favor 
 of classical study and against study in the vernacular. The proof 
 of this statement may be found in the lack of scholars, between 
 1550 and 1850, that have devoted themselves to the study of 
 English and also have been connected professionally with our uni- 
 versities. 2 Coincident with this is the further fact that the great 
 scholarly work on English subjects was considered rather an avo- 
 
 1 Toxophilus, op. ail., 18. 
 
 2 Thomas Warton is, of course, the great exception.
 
 HUMANISM 333 
 
 cation than a vocation, and was done by men trained for the 
 Church or the bar. One result certainly is that in the academic 
 field the study of English, either of the language or the literature, is 
 a recent entrant, and as such is not yet quite clear as to its function. 
 Historically there is no precedent. Perhaps largely for this reason, 
 there has been a tendency towards the development of extreme in- 
 dividualism. There has been no Delia Crusca and no Academy 
 to offset the influence of the single author, so that the history of 
 English literature is truly the record of its great men. And we 
 have the "dictators of literature," Ben Jonson, Dry den, Pope, 
 and Dr. Johnson. Negatively, this attitude has been somewhat 
 responsible for the chaotic orthography and the distorted grammar 
 of the English language; criticism has tended to be merely the ex- 
 pression of personal prejudice, and scholarship the collection of 
 biographic detail. Perhaps it is unfair to throw the whole of 
 this load upon the shoulders of humanism, but it is not doubtful 
 that the theories propounded by the humanists, and eventually 
 accepted by the nation, played no little part in the paradoxical 
 attitude maintained toward the study of English by the English- 
 speaking races. 
 
 One more result of the doctrine of humanism remains to be 
 mentioned, namely its effect upon the education of women. Again 
 one is conscious in the attitude of the humanists of a recoil against 
 the medieval practice. At best the Christian theory of education 
 for women is based on the heart rather than on the head. The 
 Christian ideal woman is a combination of Mary and Martha, of 
 faith and good works. The perfect woman of the Proverbs would 
 seem to have but little time for the cultivation of learning, and the 
 wisdom with which she openeth her mouth is presumably gained 
 only from personal experience. Consequently the Christian saint 
 was distinguished for humility like Santa Clara, for aspiration 
 like Santa Teresa, for acuteness like Santa Caterina of Siena, and 
 for action like Joan of Arc, but learning is not one of her attributes. 
 Vives, when he wishes to cite examples of female erudition, is 
 rather hard put to it: * 
 
 And in St. Jerome's time all holy women were very well learned. Would God 
 that nowadays, many old men were able to be compared unto them in cunning. St. 
 Jerome writeth unto Paula, F-.-i-t.-i, Eustachia, Fabiola, Marcella, Praia, Demetriaa, 
 
 1 Wataon, Vices, op. cit., p. 52.
 
 334 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Salma, Hierontia. St. Ambrose unto other; St. Augustine unto other: and all 
 marvellous witted, well learned and holy. Valeria Proba, which loved her hus- 
 band singularly well, made the life of our Lord Christ out of Virgil's verses. Writers 
 of chronicles say that Theodosia, daughter to Theodosius the younger, was as 
 noble by her learning and virtue, as by her empire: and the makings that be taken 
 out of Homer, named Centones be called hers. I have read epistles and cunning 
 works of Hildegarde, a maid of Almaine. . . 
 
 Compare with the almost unknown persons of this list the famous 
 women of antiquity, famous alike for their beauty and for their 
 wit, the Sapphos, Aspasias, Cornelias, Zenobias, and the contrast 
 is evident. Equally evident is it also that many of these same 
 women were more blest with learning than with conventional 
 morality. " Phryne, with her beauty bare " is scarcely the ideal of 
 the New Testament. The problem of the humanists was, there- 
 fore, here also, to reconcile pagan culture with Christian ideals. 
 
 This attempt was, for the English public, first made in Vives' 
 De Institutione Foemince Christiana, written for the Princess 
 Mary and dedicated to Katharine of Aragon in 1523. l The aim 
 of the book advowedly is to preach virtue. 2 
 
 Moreover, though the precepts for men be innumerable: women yet may be 
 informed with few words. For men must be occupied both at home and abroad, 
 both in their own matters and for the common weal. Therefore it cannot be 
 declared in few books, but in many and long, how they shall handle themselves, 
 in so many and divers things. As for a woman, she hath no charge to see to, but 
 her honesty and chastity. Wherefore when she is informed of that, she is suffi- 
 ciently appointed. Wherefore their wickedness is the more cursed and detest- 
 able, that go about to perish that one treasure of women: as though a man had 
 but one eye, and another would go about to put it out. 
 
 A great proportion of the tract consists in passages dealing with 
 daily life, customs, and manners in which the tone differs not at 
 all from that of a sermon. One such will sufficiently illustrate. 3 
 
 But here some man would say: What, wouldst thou have women to be filthy 
 and sluttish? Nay, verily, I would not have them so, nor my precepts be not 
 
 Published at Antwerp 1523; Basle, 1538, 1540; Basle, 1541 (circ.); Hanover, 
 1614. Translated into English by Richard Hyrde, London, Berthelet, probably 
 1540, republished 1541, 1557, 1592, and represented by extracts of the significant 
 portions in Watson's Vives and the Renascence Education of Women, 1912, from 
 which these facts are taken. 
 
 1 These quotations are taken from Hyrde's translation, as modernized by Wat- 
 son, 34. Vives' Preface. 
 
 1 Watson, op. cit., 82-83.
 
 HUMANISM 335 
 
 so unclean, nor I like not sluttishness. And what manner a ones they should 
 be, St. Peter and St. Paul, two defenders of the Church, teach in two short pre- 
 cepts. St. Peter saith: Let not the outward apparel of women be decked with 
 the braiding of her hair, nor with wrapping of gold about it, or goodly clothing, 
 but the mind and the conscience, that is not seen with eyes, if it be pure and quiet, 
 that is a goodly thing, and excellent afore God. And St. Paul saith: Women 
 in their array should apparel themselves with shamefastness and soberness and 
 not with braids of their hairs, or gold, or pearls, or precious clothing, but as women 
 ought to do, let them show virtue by good works. When the Apostles say these 
 words, they bid not women be sluttish and slubbered, nor foul with dirt and 
 clouts, but they counsel them from superfluous raiment, and will them to use 
 mean clothing, and such as is easy to come by. For measureableness hath his 
 cleanness, and that far more pure than the great excess hath, as it is more easy to 
 keep a little vessel than a great many. Let her not be clothed with velvet, but 
 with woollen; nor with silk but linen, and that coarse. Let not her raiment shine. 
 Let it not be sluttish. Let it not to be wondered on, nor let it be to be loathed. 
 As for the wearing of gold or silver, pearl or precious stones, I see not what it is 
 good for, saving that the virtue of some stones is more set by than the show, as 
 coral or emerald, if at least ways, those little things have so much virtue in them 
 as men say, but now mo seek them for vanity that they may seem more rich, than 
 for the virtue. 
 
 Nor let her not paint nor anoint her face, but wash it, and make it clean; nor 
 dye her hair, but comb it cleanly, nor suffer her head to be full of scurf. Nor let 
 her not delight to wash it in sweet savours, nor to keep it stinking, nor look in a 
 glass to paint her, or trim her gaily by, but to have away if any foul thing or un- 
 comely be on her head that she could not else see, and then let her array herself 
 thereby, lest anything be in her face to defile her, being else chaste and sober. 
 
 Such admonitions as the foregoing have been the stock platitudes 
 from the beginning of the Church and have furnished the basis 
 for sumptuary laws throughout history. Both the preacher and 
 the lawyer, although often at odds, are here united in blessed 
 harmony in denouncing feminine extravagance. Age cannot 
 stale its infinite iteration. And here, as always, the aim is plain 
 morality. 
 
 However much this aim may be common to Christian thinking, 
 the novelty imported by the humanists was that woman should be 
 fortified against temptation by learning. This is the point of the 
 dialogue of Erasmus between the Abbot and the Learned Woman, 
 where the Abbot's conventional objections are ridiculed and over- 
 thrown. Vives also states it emphatically. 1 
 
 1 Vives, De Officio Mariti (1529), translated by Thomas Paynell (1550). Watson, 
 op. cit., 200.
 
 336 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 I by experience have seen and known the contrary, and that all lewd and evil 
 women are unlearned and that they which be learned are most desirous of honesty, 
 nor I cannot remember that ever I saw any woman of learning or of knowledge 
 dishonest. Shall not the subtle and crafty lover sooner persuade it pleaseth him 
 the ignorant, than her that is fortified with wit and learning. This is the only 
 cause, why all women for the most part, are hard to please, studious and most 
 diligent to adorn and deck themselves, marvellers of trifles, in prosperity proud 
 and insolent, in adversity abject and feeble, and for lack of good learning, they 
 love and hate that only, the which they learned of their unlearned mothers, and 
 examples of the evil, leaning to that part only, that the ponderous and heavy body 
 is inclined and given unto. 
 
 Hyrde, also, in his preface to Margaret Roper's translation of one 
 of the tracts of Erasmus gives much the same train of reasoning. 1 
 
 And the Latin and the Greek tongue I see not but there is as little hurt in them, 
 as in books of English and French, which men both read, themselves, for the 
 proper pastimes that be written in them, and for the witty and crafty conveyance 
 of the makings: And also can bear well enough, that women read them, if they 
 will, never so much, which commodities be far better handled in the Latin and 
 Greek, than in any other language. And in them be many holy doctors' writings, 
 so devout and affectuous, that whosoever regardeth them must needs be either 
 much better or less evil, which every good body, both man and women, will read 
 and follow, rather than other. But as for that, I hear many men say for the 
 greatest jeopardy in this matter, in good faith to be plain, im-think it is so foolish 
 that scantly it is worthy, either to be rehearsed or answered unto, that is, where 
 they say, if their wives coulde Latin or Greek, then might they talk more boldly 
 with priests and friars, as who saith, there were no better means (if they were ill 
 disposed) to execute their purposes than by speaking Latin or Greek; other else, 
 that priests and friars were commonly so well learned, or that they can make their 
 bargain so readily, which thing is also for contrary, that I suppose nowadays a 
 man could not devise a better way to keep his wife safe from them, than if he 
 teach her the Latin and Greek tongue, and such good sciences as are written in 
 them: the which now, most part of priests, and specially such as be nought, abhor 
 and fly from: yea, as fast in a manner as they fly from beggars, that ask them 
 alms hi the street. And where they find fault with learning, because they say 
 it engendreth wit and craft, then they reprehend it, for that that it is most worthy 
 to be commended for, and the which is one singular cause wheref or learning ought 
 to be desired, for he that had leaver have his wife a fool than a wise woman, I 
 hold hun worse than twice frantic. Also reading and studying of books so occu- 
 pieth the mind that, it can have no leisure to muse or delight in other fantasies, 
 where in all handiworks that men say be more meet for a woman, the body may 
 be busy in one place, and the mind walking in another: and while they sit sewing 
 and spinning with their fingers, may cast and compass many peevish fancies hi 
 
 1 Watson, op. cit., 165-167.
 
 HUMANISM 337 
 
 their minds, which must needs be occupied either with good or bad, so long as 
 they be waking. And those that be evil disposed will find the means to be nought, 
 though they can never a letter in the book, and she that will be good, learning 
 shall cause her to be much the better. For it sheweth the image and ways of 
 good living, even right as the mirror sheweth the similitude and proportion of 
 the body. And doubtless the daily experience proveth that such as are nought 
 are those that never knew what learning meant. For I never heard tell, nor 
 read of any woman well learned that ever was (as plenteous as evil tongues be) 
 spotted or infamed as vicious. But on the other side, many by their learning 
 take, such increase of goodness that many may bear them witness of their virtue, 
 of which sort I could rehearse a great number, both of old tune and of late. 
 
 It is obvious here, and in pleas like this, that a knowledge of clas- 
 sical literature is not recommended for its cultural value. However 
 great that may be, it is disregarded; here, as in masculine educa- 
 tion, a knowledge of Greek and Latin is desired, because in the 
 books written in those languages are to be found the best examples 
 of good living. When Vives chooses the authors for the girl to 
 study, he quite frankly makes his selection for this reason. 1 
 
 The authors in whom she should be versed are those who, at the same time, 
 cultivate right language and right living: those who help to inculcate not only 
 knowledge, but living well. 
 
 The list that follows is a mixture of Latin and Greek authors, 
 classical, Christian, and humanistic, with especial emphasis upon 
 the New Testament. But with the curious exception of Vergil, 
 the list is much the same as that recommended for boys. 2 It 
 therefore marks a new conception of the position of woman. The 
 medieval conception that she is the handmaid of the devil and 
 that in her person are embodied the wiles of Satan has given way 
 to the modern point of view, that each sex has its own function. 
 There is an essential parity. So Vives urges that a man's wife is 
 his best friend, 3 and Elyot writes in defense of good women. 4 It 
 is the modern conception. 
 
 However modern this idea may be, it is interesting to note that 
 it was derived not merely from theory, but also from life. The 
 
 1 Wat.son. op. cii., 146. 
 
 * A somewhat different list is given in De Officio Mariii, where grammar, logic, 
 history, statesmanship, mathematics, and, apparently, poetry are reserved for 
 men. Watson, op. cii., 204 -206. 
 
 Watson, op. cil., 210. 
 
 WuLsoii, op. cit., 211.
 
 338 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 origin of Vives' conceptions may be traced probably first to his 
 mother. Still more important for the Englishman is it that the 
 actual working out of these ideas he found in the household of 
 Sir Thomas More. He himself was conscious of this. 1 
 
 Now if a man may be suffered among queens to speak of more mean folks, I 
 would reckon among this sort the daughters of S T M Kn M, E, C, and with them 
 their kinswoman Margaret G, whom their father not content onely to have them 
 good and very chaste, would also they should be well learned, supposing that by 
 that mean they should be more truly and surely chaste. Wherein neither that 
 great wise man is deceived, nor none other that are of the same opinion. 
 
 And Hyrde, the translator of Vives, was himself a member of 
 More's household. He it is that introduces Margaret Roper's 
 translation of Erasmus' treatise on the Lord's Prayer, with a 
 eulogy in favor of learning for women. Like Vives, he draws his 
 most telling argument from More's family, in particular from 
 Margaret. 2 
 
 Sauyng that I will be content, as for now, with one example of our own country 
 and tune that is: this gentlewoman, which translated this little book, hereafter 
 following: whose virtuous conversation, living, and sad demeanour may be proof 
 evident enough what good learning doth, where it is surely rooted: of whom other 
 women may take example of prudent, humble and wifely behaviour, charitable 
 and very Christian virtue, with which she hath, with God's help, endeavoured 
 herself, no less to garnish her soul than it liked his goodness, with lovely beauty 
 and comeliness, to garnish and set out her body: and undoubted is it that to the 
 increase of her virtue, she hath taken and taketh no little occasion of her learning, 
 besides her other manifold and great commodities, taken of the same; among 
 which commodities, this is not the least, that with her virtuous, worshipful, wise 
 and well learned husband, she hath by the occasion of her learning and his delight 
 therein, such especial comfort, pleasure and pastime, as were not well possible 
 for one unlearned couple, either to take together, or to conceive in their minds, 
 what pleasure is therein. 
 
 In fact, although naturally there were other women equally learned 
 and equally virtuous, More's family seems to have been accepted 
 as a sort of standard since in 1550 we find Ascham writing. 3 
 
 1 Watson, op. cit., 53. With the names inserted the passage reads "the daugh- 
 ters of Sir Thomas More Knight Margaret, Elizabeth, Cecelia, and with them 
 their kinswoman Margaret Giggs." 
 
 2 Watson, op. cit., 167-168. 
 
 8 Giles, edition of Ascham, ov. cit., i, Ixii.
 
 HUMANISM 339 
 
 There are many honourable ladies now who surpass Thomas More's daughters 
 in all kinds of learning. 
 
 Just as More himself by the accidents of his life and his spectacular 
 death became the typical English humanist, so his family also, 
 partly from the fact that it was his family, became the type of 
 English humanism. However cultivated and charming was 
 Margaret Roper, and More's letters to her show very real love 
 and very real pride, her claim to fame, then as now, was that 
 she was the daughter of Sir Thomas More. 
 
 The probability that this feeling that More's family typified 
 what might be accomplished by humanistic education was due 
 rather to priority of time and accidents of fortune is strengthened 
 by a consideration of the growth of the movement. With the 
 next generation learning had become a fashion among women. 
 To read Latin and Greek was apparently a polite accomplishment; 
 knowledge of the classics was careful and genuine among the high- 
 born ladies of the English court. Ascham's account of finding 
 Lady Jane Grey immersed in Plato, while the rest of the company 
 were out hunting, is too well known for quotation. It is so well 
 known, however, that the implication seems to be that Lady Jane 
 was peculiar. Actually the same condition was true of many of 
 the Court circle. Ballard in his Memoirs of several Ladies of Great 
 Britain who have been celebrated for their writings or skill in the 
 learned languages, arts and sciences gives a curious list of twenty- 
 four noblewomen, from Queen Katharine of Aragon to Queen 
 Elizabeth, that had distinguished themselves in their studies. 
 Four of them, Katharine of Aragon, Lady Jane Grey, Mary Tudor, 
 and Elizabeth were by position the highest in the realm. In an 
 age of caste, when personality is valued according to social position, 
 to have learning in the high places had a direct effect upon litera- 
 ture. Particularly is this true of the last named. As it was 
 Elizabeth's destiny to give her name to a literary epoch, Ascham's 
 letter to Sturm (1550) in which he describes her education becomes 
 a literary document. After the remark just quoted, concerning 
 the daughters of Thomas More, he continues : 
 
 . . . but among all of them the brightest star is my illustrious Lady Elizabeth, 
 the king's sister; so that I have no difficulty in finding subject for writing in her 
 praise, but only in setting bounds to what I write. I will write nothing however
 
 340 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 which I have not myself witnessed. She had me for her tutor in Greek and Latin 
 two years; but now I am released from the Court and restored to my old literary 
 leisure here, where by her beneficence I hold an honest place in this University. 
 It is difficult to say whether the gifts of nature or of fortune are most to be admired 
 in that illustrious lady. The praise which Aristotle gives wholly centres in her 
 beauty, stature, prudence, and industry. She has just passed her sixteenth 
 birthday, and shows such dignity and gentleness as are wonderful at her age and 
 in her rank. Her study of true religion and learning is most energetic. Her 
 mind has no womanly weakness, her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and 
 her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up. She talks French and Italian 
 as well as English : she has often talked to me readily and well in Latin, and moder- 
 ately so in Greek. When she writes Greek and Latin, nothing is more beautiful 
 than her hand-writing. 1 She is as much delighted with music as she is skilful 
 in the art. In adornment she is elegant rather than showy, and by her con- 
 tempt of gold and head-dresses, she reminds one of Hippolyte rather than of Phaedra. 
 She read with me almost all Cicero, and great part of Titus Livius; for she drew 
 all her knowledge of Latin from those two authors. She used to give the morning 
 of the day to the Greek Testament, and afterwards read select orations of Isoc- 
 rates and the tragedies of Sophocles. For I thought that from those sources 
 she might gain purity of style, and her mind derive instruction that would be of 
 value to her to meet every contingency of life. To these I added Saint Cyprian 
 and Melanchthon's Common Places, &c., as best suited, after the Holy Scriptures, 
 to teach her the foundations of religion, together with elegant language and sound 
 doctrine. Whatever she reads she at once perceives any word that has a doubt- 
 ful or curious meaning. She cannot endure those foolish imitators of Erasmus, 
 who have tied up the Latin tongue in those wretched fetters of proverbs. She 
 likes a style that grows out of the subject; chaste because it is suitable, and beauti- 
 ful because it is clear. She very much admires modest metaphors, and com- 
 parisons of contraries well put together and contrasting felicitously with one an- 
 other. 2 Her ears are so well practised in discriminating all these things, and 
 her judgment is so good, that in all Greek, Latin, and English composition, there 
 is nothing so loose on the one hand or so concise on the other, which she does not 
 immediately attend to, and either reject with disgust or receive with pleasure, 
 as the case may be. I am not inventing anything my dear Sturm; it is all true. 
 
 It may be granted that it is always easy to see excellence in 
 princes and that Ascham's eyes were peculiarly keen, when the 
 
 1 For the American reader the most accessible method of comparing Elizabeth's 
 handwriting with that of her contemporaries is by the holograph facsimiles in 
 the International Manuscripts. The letter of Elizabeth is in English and dated 
 1603. For Ascham's reputation as a judge of chirography it is to be devoutly 
 hoped that her skill had degenerated in her old age, since the specimen there, 
 compares most unfavorably with that of Lady Jane Grey. 
 
 2 On reading this, the modern student instinctively remembers the style of 
 Lyly and wonders whether this may not be part explanation of its origin and also 
 of its popularity.
 
 HUMANISM 341 
 
 princess was also of the true religion, and even that the Queen did 
 not show a particularly Hippolyte-like contempt for head-dresses, 
 yet his facts, as contrasted with his impressions, show that in two 
 years she had done a very fair amount of heavy reading, much more 
 than is required for college entrance today. Although the intel- 
 lectual productivity of any epoch is governed by forces far beyond 
 the control of any one individual, yet at the time when the human 
 mind was almost at its highest creative point, the character of its 
 literary output was influenced by the preference of Elizabeth. To 
 a degree, the extent of which it is difficult for the modern reader 
 to realize, her favor was synonymous with fortune and reputation. 
 To the public of her day she was the court of last appeal, and the 
 critic whose judgment was final. We are apt to forget that Spenser 
 wrote personally for the Queen, that his phrases were formed for 
 her immediate eye, and that his fortune lay in her approval. That 
 her training, founded upon the great classic tradition, had been 
 such that she could discriminate, made for the glory of English 
 literature. Therefore, not the least of the many results of the 
 humanistic theory was that in Elizabeth and the women of her 
 Court may be found the inspiration of Elizabethan literature. 
 
 Thus, although it may be granted that, to the casual reader, 
 such writers, as Vives, Elyot, or Ascham, are tiresome, it must also 
 be granted, I think, that they are important. Actually, the very 
 fact that they are tiresome is merely another way of stating their 
 importance, since it is a confession that we have so assimilated 
 their thoughts that we find little new. The quaintness, such as 
 there is, is largely a matter of expression. Usually we find only our 
 own ideas poorly developed and badly phrased. But this is the 
 fate of all great innovators. To borrow an illustration from another 
 field, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, I suppose, marks an epoch 
 in the study of economics; yet to the modern economist there is 
 little but historic interest in the book. So also with the three 
 writers we have been considering. Vives is scarcely a name even 
 to the specialist. Of Elyot, Hallam remarks : 
 
 He seems worthy, upon the whole, on account of the solidity of his reflections, to 
 hold a higher place than Ax-ham, to whom, in some respects, he bears a good deal 
 of resemblance. 
 
 But if the "higher place" is dependent upon interest, no judgment 
 1 Literature of Europe, 4th ed., i. 400.
 
 342 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 could be more unfortunate. The solidity of his reflections is 
 now necessarily commonplace, whereas Ascham by the vivacity of 
 his personality, his diatribes against Italy, his enthusiasm for the 
 Protestant religion is always sure of a certain number of readers. 
 He is so sure of his outrageous opinions that we forgive him for 
 being very often right ! Of course, the real reason is that, whereas 
 in Elyot the combination of elements has not yet been perfectly 
 assimilated, in Ascham, the next generation had fused and made 
 those thoughts its own. And consequently the personality of the 
 writer has free play. Ascham is saved both by his likes and his 
 prejudices, and, while the Scholemaster is no longer accepted as a 
 standard of pedagogy, it is read for a vivid and entertaining pre- 
 sentation of certain points of view. As such, it has maintained its 
 position as an exposition of the theory of the humanists. 
 
 But the effect of humanism was not limited to the production 
 of poems in Latin, intellectual stimulation, or educational theory. 
 In fact, the natural result of all these three combined would be 
 shown in the output of English verse. Contact with the great 
 classical literature would breed emulation, and, in English dress, 
 humanism would appear either in the point of view or in the form 
 of the poem. Here, however, we are confronted by a curious lack 
 of data. Puttenham tells us : " In the latter end of the same kings 
 raigne sprong vp a new company of courtly makers. . . . " * but 
 of those courtly makers we have almost no evidence. A priori 
 we might have deduced their existence. In the elaborate court 
 life of a king with the cultivation of Henry VIII, the existence of 
 such a company would be posited. But also, as such pieces would 
 be written for the immediate circle, and as the approval sought 
 would be that of the king and his friends, the author had nothing to 
 gain by publication. Autograph and manuscript copies would suf- 
 fice for the limited circulation desired. That such was the situation 
 is the complaint of Puttenham. He has been discussing why poetry 
 was at so low an ebb. One of the reasons is that the art is not 
 sufficiently recompensed by princes. Consequently, as there is no 
 reward, even those who write do not publish: 2 
 
 "Now also of such among the Nobilitie or gentrie as be very well scene in many 
 laudable sciences, and especially in making or Poesie, it is so come to passe that they 
 
 1 Arber's Reprints, The Arte of English Poesie, 74. 
 1 Puttenham, Arber's Reprints, p. 37.
 
 HUMANISM 343 
 
 haue no courage to write and if they haue, yet are they loath to be a knowen of their 
 skill. So as I know very many notable Gentlemen in the Court that haue written 
 commendably and suppressed it agayne, or els suffred it to be publisht without 
 their owne names to it: as if it were a discredit for a Gentleman, to seeme learned, 
 and to shew him selfe amorous of any good Art." 
 
 Thus it is only by accident that any of the court poetry has come 
 down to us. That some has come down is due to the custom that, 
 when a man heard or read a poem that pleased him, he copied it 
 into his commonplace book, each person forming, as it were, his 
 own anthology. Two such collections are those published by 
 Fliigel, 1 one of which, the Royal MS., was originally in the pos- 
 session of Henry VIII. Still another is that possessed presumably 
 by Surrey and the Howard family. 2 And scattered through the 
 British Museum and manuscript books in private hands there are 
 still in existence a goodly number of unprinted verses of this time. 
 Yet the very fact that they have never been printed, that their 
 circulation must have been limited to from hand to hand, explains 
 the unique importance attaching to the collection about to be con- 
 sidered, commonly known from the name of the publisher as TotteVs 
 Miscellany. This importance is due, not only to the fact that 
 it is the first published anthology in English, 3 nor that the poems 
 contained in it are in themselves excellent, but, from the very fact 
 of its having been the only printed collection, it is the gateway 
 through which the courtly poetry of Henry VIII passed on to the 
 Elizabethans. However faulty may be the text, uncritical the 
 selections, and casual the arrangement, yet necessarily the earlier 
 writers were known almost entirely from its pages. By 1557 
 Richard Tottel, then in the fourth year of his business, had issued 
 eighteen books. These may be divided into law books, humanistic 
 books, and books dealing with English literature. He had already 
 issued More's Dialogue of Comfort, Lydgate's Fall of Princes, and 
 Hawes' Pastime of Pleasure. It was, therefore, quite in accord 
 with his policy to bring out a collection of the poetry of the last 
 generation. On June 5th, as the eighteenth book from his press, 
 this was issued with the title: Songes and Sonettes, written by the 
 
 1 Anglia, 11, 228. 
 
 1 A. K. Foxwell, Study of Sir Thomas Wyati, 125-135. 
 
 1 It may be objected that the 1532 Chaucer is really an anthology, although 
 that is scarcely its object.
 
 344 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward late Earle of Surrey, and other. 
 There is but one known copy of this. Of the 271 poems included, 
 forty were by Surrey, ninety-six by Wyatt, forty by Nicholas Grim- 
 aid, and ninety-five by "uncertain auctours. " But the very strik- 
 ing feature is that by July 31st, fifty-six days only after he had fin- 
 ished printing the first edition, a second appeared from which thirty 
 of the forty poems by Grimald disappeared, their places being sup- 
 plied by thirty-nine new poems given to the "uncertain auctours. " 
 Of this edition there are but two copies known, and textually they 
 do not agree! Apparently at once after finishing setting the type 
 for the first edition, at full speed he remodelled it, working so 
 rapidly that he changed readings, even as the second edition was 
 passing through the press. And between these two editions, on 
 June 21st, he had published Surrey's translation of the Second and 
 Fourth Books of the Mneid. These are the facts. To explain 
 them, each is at liberty to construct his own hypothesis. 1 As we 
 have Wyatt's autograph manuscript, 2 we know that Tottel had 
 neither a complete collection of Wyatt's poems, nor a correct text. 
 The presumption is, therefore, that Tottel's authority is one of the 
 commonplace books, and that the second edition is due to an- 
 other commonplace book, which, for some unknown reason, he 
 preferred. In any case this double-barrelled arrangement gives 
 us 310 poems from which to judge the court poetry of the age. 
 
 These poems fall into four parts, corresponding to their authors. 
 As Surrey will be discussed later, 3 the present concern is with 
 Wyatt. His poems fill the bulk of the collection, being more nu- 
 merous than the poems of any other two combined. As he was a 
 Cambridge man with two academic degrees, it is natural to look 
 for strong humanistic influence in his work, and, as he imitates 
 very closely, there should be little doubt in determining the 
 amount of it. The amount is unexpectedly small. Of the ninety- 
 six poems, there are but two eight-line epigrams imitated from 
 Ausonius and the Renaissance humanist Pandulpho respectively, 
 
 1 Arber reasons that Grimald must have been the editor because he had had 
 Tottel publish his translation from Cicero four years before, and because they are 
 his poems that are dropped. It is a testimony to Professor Arber's estimate of the 
 modesty of the average editor. 
 
 * Egerton MS. 2711 British Museum. 
 
 1 Surrey's use of blank verse is discussed later in this same chapter; his general 
 humanism in Chapter VI.
 
 HUMANISM 345 
 
 and two satires freely taken from Horace. 1 And as in these last 
 he has adopted the Italian verse form, the terza rima, the infer- 
 ence is that even here he is following Italian precedent. If Wyatt's 
 work be at all a fair sample of the court poetry, the possibility of 
 finding humanism there, as an energizing force, may safely be 
 abandoned. 
 
 That Wyatt's verse is not a fair sample, however, is evident not 
 only from the obvious humanism in Surrey, but also from the work 
 of the "Uncertain Auctours." Under this caption are included 
 one hundred and thirty-four pieces, of all sorts and kinds. From 
 allusions two poems have been attributed to Thomas, Lord Vaux, 
 and one to Heywood. Actually, however, from other allusions, un- 
 fortunately less definite, we know that Bryan, Rochford, Church- 
 yard, Cornysshe, and William Grey wrote verses and probably 
 had a share in the miscellany. In spite of Warton's remark," From 
 palpable coincidences of style, subject, and other circumstances, 
 a slender share of critical sagacity is sufficient to point out many 
 others, " the identification has never been made; 2 nor does it seem 
 a very hopeful undertaking when so many of the names signed to 
 the pieces in the Royal MS. are of persons otherwise unknown; 
 nor can the question of the dating be more definitely settled. The 
 date of publication is of course no guide, since in 1557 Wyatt had 
 been dead fifteen years and Surrey ten. Still more, the collection 
 includes some of Wyatt's earliest verse. On the other hand, Vaux's 
 poem / lothe that I did love is headed in a manuscript in the Brit- 
 ish Museum as "in the time of the noble Queen Mary. " 3 The as- 
 sumption is that the hypothetical commonplace book received 
 entries for nearly half a century. If this is true, then, since the 
 possible known contributors are all connected with the court, it 
 may be accepted as a compendium of typical court poetry. 
 
 If the miscellany is typical, it cannot be said that many of the 
 courtiers were strongly gifted poetically. The level of achieve- 
 ment is low. The only one that has survived to our time is that 
 by Lord Vaux, and by the fact that in a garbled form it is sung 
 by the grave-digger in Hamlet. For the modern reader, the only 
 interest is to be found in the testimony that it bears to the literary 
 
 1 This indebtedness was originally pointed out, 1 think, by Warton and Nott. 
 1 Warton, 1871, iv, 59. 
 1 Warton, ed. 1871, iv, 59.
 
 346 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 tendencies of the time. Of these it is at once evident that human- 
 ism is not the least. Allusions to classical stories, to Troy, to 
 Ulysses, to the various loves of the gods, presuppose an audience 
 familiar with classical learning. Occasionally there is transla- 
 tion. In the Epistle of Penelope to Ulysses Ovid is said to make 
 his first appearance in English verse. 1 But the favorite author 
 is Horace. As Nott notes, 2 there are three distinct renderings of 
 the Tenth Ode of the Second Book. 3 The Seventh Ode of the 
 Fourth Book appears under the caption, All worldly pleasures 
 fade. 4 As an illustration of the sea-change in Horace the com- 
 parison between the Latin and the English is valuable. 
 
 Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis 
 
 arboribusque comae; 
 mutat terra vices et decrescentia ripas 
 
 flumina praetereunt; 
 Gratia cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus audet 
 
 ducere nuda chores. 
 Immortalia ne speres, monet annns et almum 
 
 quae rapit hora diem: 
 frigora mitescunt Zephyris, ver preterit aetas, 
 
 interitura simul 
 pomifer autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox 
 
 bruma recurrit iners. 
 Damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae: 
 
 nos ubi decidimus 
 quo pater Aeneas, quo Tullus dives et Ancus, 
 
 pulvis et umbra sumus. 
 Quis scit an adiciant hodiernae crastina summae 
 
 tempora di superi? 
 Cuncta manus avidas f ugient heredis, amico 
 
 quae dederis animo. 
 Cum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos 
 
 fecerit arbitria, 
 non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te 
 
 restituet pietas. 
 Infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum 
 
 liberat Hippolytum, 
 nee Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro 
 
 vincula Pirithoo. 
 
 1 Warton, ed. 1871, iv, 65. 
 * Nott, Works of Surrey, 1815, 329. 
 
 1 As one of the versions is by the Earl of Surrey, a consideration of the three is 
 reserved for Chap. VI, page 526. * Arber's reprint of Tottel, 160.
 
 HUMANISM 347 
 
 The winter with his griesly stormes no lenger dare abyde, 
 
 The trees haue leues, ye bowes don spred, new changed is the yere. 
 
 The plesant grasse, with lusty grene, the earth hath newly dyde. 
 
 The water brokes are cleane sonke down, the pleasant bankes apere 
 
 The spring is come, the goodly nimphes now daunce in euery place 
 
 Thus hath the yere most plesantly of late ychangde his face. 
 
 Hope for no immortalitie, for welth will weare away, 
 
 As we may learne by euery yere, yea howres of euery day. 
 
 For Zepharus doth mollifye the colde and blustering windes: 
 
 The somers drought doth take away ye spring out of our minds. 
 
 And yet the somer cannot last, but once must step asyde, 
 
 Then Autumn thinkes to kepe hys place, but Autumn cannot bide. 
 
 For when he hath brought furth his fruits and stuft ye barns with corn, 
 
 The winter eates and empties all, and thus is Autumn worne: 
 
 Then hory frostes possesse the place, then tempestes work much harm, 
 
 Then rage of stormes done make all colde which somer had made so warm 
 
 Wherfore let no man put his trust in that, that will decay, 
 
 For slipper welth will not continue, plesure will weare away. 
 
 For when that we haue lost our lyfe, and lye vnder a stone, 
 
 What are we then, we are but earth, then is our pleasure gon. 
 
 No man can tell what god almight of euery wight doth cast, 
 
 No man can say to day I Hue, till morne my lyfe shall last. 
 
 For when thou shall before thy iudge stand to receiue thy dome, 
 
 What sentence Minos dothe pronounce that must of thee become. 
 
 Then shall not noble stock and blud redeme the from his handes, 
 
 Nor surged talke with eloquence shal lowse thee from his bandes. 
 
 Nor yet thy lyfe vprightly lead, can help thee out of hell, 
 
 For who descendeth downe so depe, must there abyde and dwell. 
 
 Diana could not thence deliuer chaste Hypolitus, 
 
 Nor Theseus could not call to life his frende Periothous. 
 
 It is clear at once that in form the English is much longer than 
 the Latin, not only in the number of the lines, but, in addition, in 
 the number of words to each line. With .the brevity goes also the 
 elegance of Horace. The attempt has been made to render the 
 First Archilochian Strophe by a quatrain of seven-line verses; 
 even this breaks down and the poem continues in couplets. As 
 the caesura is usually placed after the fourth foot, each line sepa- 
 rates into two. If each couplet were printed as a quatrain, fours 
 and threes, with alternate rimes, the result would be familiar as 
 the common hymn measure. And the same criticism would apply 
 here as there, namely, that the intensity of the accent renders the 
 effect sing-song. It is a form almost ideally unsuited to reproduce
 
 848 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the delicacy of Horace. In content, at first glance it seems almost 
 literal translation. On second inspection, the definitely classical 
 touches have been removed and the typically Christian points 
 emphasized. By this slight shifting of the stress, Horace's gentle 
 admonition to live while yet we may has been changed into a 
 monody on the imminence of death. Even the Calvinistic doc- 
 trine of predestination finds expression in the final word of the line. 
 
 Nor yet thy lyfe vprightly lead, can help thee out of hell. 
 
 The total result is that in both form and content the English ver- 
 sion is unlike the Latin original. 
 
 This single example would be of slight significance, were it not 
 that it is typical of the appeal made by Horace to the Englishmen 
 of the first half of the sixteenth century. It is not the fiery Catul- 
 lus, but the philosophical Horace that is chosen as the exemplar; 
 it is not even Horace in his lighter, lyric, and erotic moods, it 
 is the Horace singing the shortness of life and the coming of death. 
 That this is not the classical Horace needs not to be argued; it 
 is the Horace that they wished to see. 1 Particularly is this true of 
 his doctrine of the "golden mean, " that happiness lies in the avoid- 
 ance of extremes. Among the pieces of the uncertain authors 
 there are three poems on this thought. 2 Although not identical, 
 in each there is the same trend of thought, that riches do not bring 
 contentment, nor power pleasure, nor hopes fulfillment, nor am- 
 bition ease. But none of these three poems, however much they 
 may suggest portions of Horace, is taken from his odes. Appar- 
 ently the conditions of the age were such as to make these re- 
 flections congenial, and, unless by chance the three are by one 
 common author, ideas like these must have been not unusual. Such 
 a point of view must have been engendered by the tragedies of the 
 times. As the aim of the early Tudor kings was to exalt the power 
 of the crown, to be high in place was in itself a dangerous position, 
 and precedence was a doubtful prerogative. Buckingham, Wol- 
 sey, More, Cromwell, illustrations come easy to hand, 3 even the 
 
 1 Cf. page 261-2. 
 
 1 They of the meane estate are happiest, 129; The means estate is best, 154; The pore 
 estate is to be holden for best, 164. 
 
 3 Cf. page 29, where the fates of those attending the baptism of Queen Elizabeth 
 are given.
 
 HUMANISM 349 
 
 Earl of Surrey, the poet of the age, is executed for the crime of 
 having royal blood in his veins. Thus the most casual considera- 
 tion of the noble tragedies of the first half of the sixteenth century 
 would lead to an appreciation of the blessings of social mediocrity. 
 This opinion finds an apt illustration in the third of the poems men- 
 tioned. 
 
 E xperience now doth shew what God vs taught before, 
 
 D esired pompe is vaine, and seldome dothe it last: 
 
 W ho climbes to raigne with kinges, may rue his fate full sore. 
 
 A las the wofull ende that comes with care full fast, 
 
 R eiect him dothe renowne his pompe full lowe is caste. 
 
 D eceiued is the birde by swetenesse of the call 
 
 E xpell that pleasant taste, wherein is bitter gall. 
 
 S uch as with oten cakes is pore estate abides, 
 
 O f care haue they no cure, the crab with mirth they rost, 
 
 M ore ease fele they then those, that from their height downe slides 
 
 E xcesse doth brede their wo, they faile in scillas cost, 
 
 R emainyng in the stormes till shyp and all be lost. 
 
 S erue God therfore thou pore, for lo, thou Hues in rest, 
 
 E schue the golden hall, thy thatched house is besT. 
 
 The poem contains in anagram Edwarde Somerset, the name of 
 the author according to Arber. 1 Although this is possible, it seems 
 more probable that the poem should be regarded as a meditation 
 upon the career of Edward, first Duke of Somerset. Born of a 
 knightly but not highly distinguished family, he came into promi- 
 nence by the marriage of his sister Jane to Henry VIII. Toward 
 the end of Henry's life, he had become the recognized leader of the 
 party of the "new men" in opposition to Norfolk, whose imprison- 
 ment left him the most powerful noble in the kingdom. By the 
 king's will he became one of the executors, then Protector of the 
 young King, and finally assumed almost royal authority. But 
 
 Who climbes to raigne with kinges, may rue his fate full sore, 
 
 he was unable to control the turbulent elements among the nobles, 
 and he was brought to the block in January 1552, and his estates 
 
 1 Tottel's Miscellany, 164. This suggestion has not received the endorsement of 
 A. F. Pollard: . . . "and his (Somerset) nearest approach to an artistic accom- 
 plishment was his gift of eloquence and mastery of good English prose." England 
 under Protector Somerset, 321.
 
 350 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 were forfeited. The moral of his career would be that "the pore 
 estate is to be holden for best. " So the assimilation of one phase 
 of Horace was complete. These poems serve to illustrate, also, 
 both how much the English poets had to learn and where they 
 sought to learn it. We are so familiar with the oft-repeated state- 
 ment that Petrarch was the master of the sixteenth-century writers, 
 that we tend to forget that he was not the only master. The 
 school in which they studied had many instructors, not the least of 
 whom were the classical authors, from whom Petrarch also had 
 learned his art. Therefore, one of the functions of humanism was 
 to hold up poetic ideals to the new age. 
 
 But among the contributors to the Miscellany, the chief rep- 
 resentative of humanism is not Wyatt, Surrey, nor any one of 
 the "Uncertain Auctours"; it is Nicholas Grimald. According 
 to Bale, he was the author of twenty-nine separate works. The 
 uncritical nature of Bale's method of compilation is well known. 
 The final list is a combination of various different lists received 
 from friends. It represents little more than the bibliographical 
 gossip of the time. This appears in his note book where the per- 
 sons giving the information are tabulated. 1 The interesting fea- 
 ture in the case of Grimald is that, in several places, he seems to 
 have supplied Bale with first-hand information. Certainly, then, 
 the greater part of his work was unprinted and is lost. In fact, 
 even in the Miscellany he is a vanishing quantity, since of the forty 
 poems in the first edition, signed Nicholas Grimald, but ten re- 
 main in the second edition with the abbreviated signature N. G. 
 But, as the interval between these two editions is only fifty-six 
 days, an interval too short to allow the supposition that the supply 
 had been exhausted by any normal demand, it seems rational to 
 infer that Grimald had become persona non grata. The explana- 
 tion may perhaps be found in the tale that after having been a 
 protestant, he recanted under Mary, "not without some becking 
 and bowing (alas) of his knee unto Baal, " 2 with the result that 
 it was feared that his name might injure the sale of the book. This 
 possible hypothesis is somewhat supported by the fact that all 
 of his poems with any personal allusion are carefully removed and 
 for his name the unincriminating initials substituted. Owing to 
 
 1 Index Britannia Scriptorum, ed. by R. L. Poole, Oxford, 1902. 
 
 2 Ridley's Works, Parker Society, p. 391.
 
 HUMANISM 351 
 
 this suppression in the second and all subsequent editions Grimald 
 was almost unknown to the next generation. 
 
 The various problems of his life fortunately do not concern the 
 literary historian. The one fact that needs stress here is that he 
 belongs not to the court, but to the university circle. He was a 
 Cambridge man, taking his degree there in 1540. Apparently 
 there he made sufficient reputation as either a scholar, or a writer, 
 or both, that Gilbert Smith, Archdeacon of Peterborough lured 
 him to Oxford. 1 He was elected probationer fellow of Merton in 
 1541, incorporated B. A. in 1542, M. A. in 1544, and "1547, when 
 the Coll. of King Hen. 8 (Christ Church) was to be settled and 
 replenished with Students, he was put in there as a Senior, or Theol- 
 ogist, (accounted then only honorary) and the rather for this rea- 
 son, because he about that time did read a public Lecture to the 
 Academians in the large refectory of that place. " ; Bale's epithet 
 "scholasticorum sui temporis non infimum decus," 3 is certainly 
 not exaggerated. 
 
 Naturally the mass of his work, to judge from the titles given 
 by Bale, is purely academic in its nature. He translates from the 
 Greek, he writes songs and epigrams, congratulatory poems, and 
 familiar epistles. His paraphrases on the Georgics have come down 
 to us, and his English translation of the De Offidis of Cicero (1553). 
 More interesting are his "school dramas" the Archipropheta and 
 the Christus Redivivus. The reason for the dramatic form is again 
 scholastic. 4 It is an extension of the same idea embodied in Eras- 
 mus' Colloquia. At a time when it was essential that Latin should 
 be learned as a spoken language, the Latin play developed as a 
 pedagogic device. Consequently not only were Terence and Plau- 
 tus studied and performed, but even modern plays, modelled upon 
 them, were written. Thus the Christus was avowedly modelled 
 upon Plautus and was played by the students of Merton before 
 the townspeople. Such plays are purely classical in form. 
 
 Naturally, in the fragment of his verse preserved, even unwill- 
 
 1 " . . . uehcmcter hortante te et pecunias ultrd suppeditante. ..." Epistola 
 Nunxpatoria to Christus Redivitus. 
 
 J Wood, Athen. Ox. i, 178. 
 
 1 Bale, Scriptorum Brytanniee, 1557, p. 701. 
 
 4 The question of the school drama is discussed by James L. McConaughy, The 
 School Drama including Palgraves Introduction to Acolaatus, Columbia University, 
 1913.
 
 352 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 ingly, by Tottel, the humanistic note is dominant. His allusions 
 are all drawn from ancient times. Thus, in a poem on the not un- 
 common subject of friendship be bursts forth: 
 
 O frendship, flowr of flowrs: O liuely sprite of life, 
 
 O sacred bond of blissfull peace, the stalworth staunch of strife: 
 
 Scipio with Lelius didst thou conioyn in care, 
 
 At home, in warrs, for weal and wo, with egall faith to fare. 
 
 Gesippus eke with Tite, Damon with Pythias, 
 
 And with Menclus sonne Achill, by thee combined was. 
 
 Euryalus, and Nisus gaue Virgil cause to sing: 
 
 Of Pylades doo many rymes, and of Orestes ring. 
 
 Down Theseus went to hell, Pirith, his frend to finder 
 
 O yat the wiues, in these our dayes, were to their mates so kinde. 
 
 Cicero, the frendly man, to Atticus, his frend, 
 
 Of frendship wrote : such couples lo dothe lott but seldom lend. 
 
 Even when he tries to tell of his grief over the death of his mother, 
 he becomes involved in a catalogue of classical instances: 
 
 Martius to vanguish Rome, was set on fire: 
 
 But vanquisht fell, at moothers boon, his ire. 
 
 Into Hesperian land Sertorius fled, 
 
 Of parent aye cheef care had in his hed. 
 
 Dear weight on shoulders Sicil brethren bore, 
 
 While Etnaes gyant spouted flames full sore. . . . 
 
 There are eighteen lines of this to reach the conclusion, 
 
 And should not I expresse my inward wo, 
 When you, most louyng dam, so soon hence go! 
 
 From a man who carries such a load of learning one naturally ex- 
 pects a poem on the golden mean, and his is adorned by illustra- 
 tions from Phaeton, Julius Caesar, Nero, Augustus, Cato, and 
 Antonius. The names of the old gods and heroes fall trippingly 
 from his pen whether he be in love, or in sorrow, and his poems 
 have all the fire of a classical dictionary. If Tottel had not added 
 the additional poems of the "Uncertain Auctour," one would be 
 tempted to explain the omission of three quarters of Grimald's 
 work from the second edition as being merely an unexpected mani- 
 festation of critical good sense. 
 
 If such pedantry were all that humanism meant to English 
 poetry, the value would be slight. Pedants we have always with 
 us and Gabriel Harvey in the next age could have supplied all
 
 HUMANISM 353 
 
 that was then essential. But not only were these men, of whom 
 Grimald is an extreme example, struggling for that compression 
 and dignity of Latin verse, they were also studying its form. Not 
 yet does one find the elaborate, and sometimes fantastic, experi- 
 ments in English verse constructed on the rules of Latin prosody 
 but there is one attempt in this line that merits more than passing 
 notice. There are three possible explanations of the origin of 
 blank verse. First, it might have evolved from the earlier English 
 verse forms. Blank verse is Chaucer's iambic pentameter "riding 
 rhyme" without the rimes. It is conceivable that in some manu- 
 script the scribe by changing the final word of every other line in 
 some passage unconsciously created blank verse. If this were done, 
 and if it could be shown that in the sixteenth century both Grim- 
 aid and Surrey knew that particular manuscript, the explanation 
 would be found. As no such manuscript has been found, this 
 possibility may therefore be dismissed. In this connection, however, 
 it is to be remarked that, as Guest showed as early as 1838, the first 
 part of the Tale of Melibeus, although stated to be a " litel thing 
 in prose," has almost the cadence of blank verse. Obviously 
 Chaucer, in attempting to write prose, carried over the cadence 
 of the heroic couplet. But as Chaucer considered the passage 
 to be prose, and as it was printed as prose, to assume that the Tudor 
 men realized its real character is to credit them with superhuman 
 critical sagacity. 
 
 The second possibility, that it was borrowed consciously from 
 the Italians, is the explanation usually accepted. 1 Before 1550 
 both Ruscellai and Trissino had used it for drama; and Alamanni 
 in the 1532 edition of his Opere Toscane, dedicated to Francis I, 
 had employed it in a narrative poem, II Dilvuvio Romano. More- 
 over, both Surrey and Alamanni were present in 1532 at the meet- 
 ing of Henry VIII and Francis I. The assumption is that Ala- 
 manni then incited Surrey to make analogous experiments in 
 English. 2 
 
 1 "It would, of course, be gratuitous futility to argue that, as a matter of fact, 
 Surrey did not take this pattern also from the Italians, who were then the only 
 nation and language in Europe that hud made considerable attempts at it." Saints- 
 bury, Hist, of English Prosody, i, 314. 
 
 * This view is stated most clearly in The French Renaissance in England, Sidney 
 Lee, 1910, pp. 110-117.
 
 354 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 That before Surrey's death blank verse in Italy had gone be- 
 yond the experimental stage, is not open to question. By 1515 
 both Trissino and Ruscellai had used it for drama; by 1520 Ala- 
 manni wrote a number of narratives in it; l the Api of Ruscellai 
 in blank verse was published in 1539; and in 1541 had appeared 
 a translation into blank verse of the Second Book of the ^Eneid, 
 under the name of the Cardinal Hippolito de Medici, yet contem- 
 poraneously attributed to Molza. 2 And it had been propounded 
 as a theory by Felice Figliucci, who illustrated his principles by 
 verses. 3 What concerns us here, however, is not so much the 
 fact as the motive. This was due to humanism. The guiding 
 principle in the Poetica (1529) of Trissino is that modern poetry 
 should become natural by a return to classical models. Thus the 
 A pi of his friend Ruscellai is a derivative from the Georgics. Still 
 more is this true of Alamanni, who has curiously enough become 
 the protagonist of modern theories. Of the ten elegies in the First 
 Book, eight are translations from Theocritus and Bion. More- 
 over he defends this use of blank verse by an appeal to the classical 
 usage. 4 In Italy, then, blank verse originated in the desire to 
 approach more nearly the system of classical versification, starting 
 naturally with translations from classical authors and extend- 
 ing into other matters, such as II Diluvio Romano. The trans- 
 lation into versi scolti of the Second Book of the yEneid is perfectly 
 normal. Therefore, to insist upon the Italian origin of English 
 blank verse is merely to remove humanism one degree. 
 
 There are two difficulties, however, with that hypothesis. The 
 first is that there is no connection shown between Surrey and the 
 Italian humanists, except that in 1532 both he and Alamanni were 
 present at a court function in France. Surrey was at that time 
 a young man of about fifteen or sixteen. Alamanni was thirty- 
 seven years old. While, even in that age of caste, it is not im- 
 
 1 This dating is taken from Luigi Alamanni, sa vie el son ceuvre, by Henri Hau- 
 vette, Paris, 1903, p. 218. 
 
 2 Ortensio Lando, Paradossi, Paradox 23. 
 
 3 I know this only from Warton. Tiraboschi scarcely mentions him. (I suspect 
 Warton's knowledge is limited by Ascham's reference). 
 
 4 " Con piii ragion sarebbe che i primi inventori delle rime si scusasser coi Greci 
 et coi Latini, dai quali fur del tutto damnate et fuggite, che io con loro." Quoted 
 by Hauvette, op. cit., p. 219. The copy of the Opere Toscane, 1542, in the Yale 
 Library lacks the Dedicatory Epistle; so that I have not verified the quotation.
 
 HUMANISM 355 
 
 possible that the chosen companion of the son of the King of Eng- 
 land should hold literary conversation with a Florentine exile 
 twice his age, it is inconceivable that the latter should not have 
 left some comment upon such an auspicious event. And among all 
 the verses flattering Francis and his court, there is not a line that 
 suggests that he had even heard of a young poet of the blood royal 
 of England. The second of the difficulties with this assumption 
 is that it fails to provide for Grimald. The further assumption, 
 entirely without proof, must be made that he was the imitator 
 of Surrey. In the first edition of Tottel, dated June 5, 1557, two 
 poems by Grimald in blank verse, The Death of Zoroas, and Mar- 
 cus Tullius Ciceroes death appear. Sixteen days later, Tottel 
 published Surrey's translation of the Second and Fourth Books 
 of the ^Eneid. Unless there be a prior issue of the Surrey, 1 to 
 
 1 The fourth boke of Virgil, intr eating of the love between Dido (and Mneas) 
 translated into English and drawne into a straunge metre by Henrye, late Earle 
 of Surrey, worthy to be embrased. Printed by John Day for Win. Owen at the 
 Sign of the Cock. n. d. Of this edition a single copy remains, in the Christie- 
 Miller collection at Britwell Court. As it has never been collated it forms the 
 doubtful x in any discussion of the origin of blank verse. In spite of the courteous 
 efforts of Dr. A. W. Pollard, as yet I have no facts in regard to it. The records 
 show that it was sold in 1824 and in 1858. In my complete ignorance of the 
 book, there is first the possibility that it may be a forgery. The date, 1824, is 
 suggestively near the Collier forgeries. If this were proved true, it would ex- 
 plain the curious and unique addendum "drawn into a straunge metre." It seems 
 odd that the sixteenth century editor should have thus stressed the medium of 
 the translation, since clearly that would not help the sale of his book; on the other 
 hand, as the sole interest in 1824 lay in the fact that it contains the earliest ex- 
 ample of the great English blank verse, equally clearly it is explicable why the 
 forger should emphasize this fact upon the title page. Thus that the book is 
 sham is a sinister possibility. 
 
 If, on the other hand, it be shown to be genuine, the question of the dating be- 
 comes imperative. Unhappily there are no data. It was printed for William 
 Owen "at the Sign of the Cock"; Owen appears (Arber's Registers) in 1562 out- 
 side of Paul's, but where he was previously is unknown. The condition is summa- 
 rized by Rudolf Imelruann (Surreys Acneis IV in ursprtinglicher GestaU, Jahrbuch 
 der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, Band XLI, 82, note 1) where he posits 
 the date 1554. The sole indication is the fact that Owen dedicates the work to 
 "Thomas, Duke of Norfolk." Clearly Hazlitt's date 1548 is untenable, since in 
 that year the Duke of Norfolk, Surrey's father, was an attainted prisoner in the 
 Tower. Under these circumstances no bookseller in his senses would have 
 headed a book with his name. If he l>e the Duke of Norfolk of the dedication, 
 the time is narrowed from August 3, 1558, when his title was restored to him by
 
 356 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Grimald belongs the honor of the first blank verse published in 
 England. But, as Surrey was executed in 1547, his verse must 
 have been written before that date. On the other hand Warton 
 suggests and the more the period is studied the greater appears his 
 scholarship and the little relative advance made since his work 
 that Grimald's verses were "prolusions or illustrative practical 
 specimens for our author's course of lectures in rhetoric." In 
 that case they would have been written between 1541 and 1547. 
 I know no method of settling the priority of either claimant. But, 
 until that be done, Surrey's supposed indebtedness to the Italians 
 merely explains half the problem. 
 
 Such are the facts. The only hypothesis that includes all the 
 circumstances is that there was a general humanistic impulse in 
 both Italy and England. The leader of that in England was Sir 
 John Cheke. It will be remembered that he was teaching at Cam- 
 bridge when both Ascham and Grimald were studying there. 1 
 Cheke's theory is definitely stated by Ascham. The passage, 
 although so well known, is worth quoting almost entire. 2 
 
 act of Parliament, to August 15, 1554, when he died. But it may refer equally 
 to Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, the grandson of the preceding and the son 
 of the poet, and it would be as appropriate. This, however, would make the 
 date much later. During the sixties Norfolk lived in London, enjoyed great 
 popularity and was so inclined toward learning that in 1566 he gave money to 
 restore the buildings of Magdalen College, Cambridge. Against so late a date 
 Fest (Uber Surrey's Virgiluberselzung, Palaestra XXXIV, 10) objects that Owen 
 would not have printed the Fourth Book alone subsequent to Tottel's edition 
 of both books in 1557, and Imelmann adds that Tottel was privileged. Both of 
 these objections seem based rather upon modern copyrighted editions, than 
 on the conditions of publishing of the sixteenth century. If the Tottel edition 
 were small, in a decade it may have been forgotten, Owen may never have 
 seen it, or he may have obtained possession of a manuscript of the Fourth Book 
 which he regarded as superior. This position receives some slight support from 
 the fact that Ascham writing late in the sixties, (The Scholemaster, Arber's Reprint, 
 147), knows only this edition, and the "drawn into straunge metre" is compre- 
 hensible when it is realized that Gascoigne, who had himself used the meter, does 
 not even discuss it in his Certayne Notes of Instruction 1575. Until the unique 
 existing copy be carefully studied, I see no way to settle this question. As the 
 later date is surely equally plausible, until the question be answered all arguments 
 on the origin of blank verse must be regarded as tentative. 
 
 1 The avoidance by Ascham of any mention of Grimald is perhaps explainable 
 on the same grounds that caused Tottel to expurgate him from the second edition 
 of the Miscellany. 
 
 2 Ascham, Scholemaster, Arber's Reprints, pp. 144-149.
 
 HUMANISM 357 
 
 "This matter maketh me gladly remember, my sweete tyme spent at Cam- 
 bridge, and the pleasant talke which I had oft with M . Cheke, and M . Watson, of 
 this fault, not onely in the olde Latin Poets, but also in our new English Rymers 
 at this day. They wished as Virgil and Horace were not wedded to follow the 
 faultes of former fathers (a shrewd marriage in greater matters) but by right 
 Imitation of the perfit Grecians, had brought Poetrie to perfitnesse also in the 
 Latin tong, that we Englishmen likewise would acknowledge and vnderstand 
 rightfully our rude beggerly ryming, brought first into Italic by Gothea and Hunnes, 
 whan all good verses and all good learning to, were destroyed by them: and after 
 caryed into France and Germanic: and at last receyued into England by men of 
 excellent wit in deede, but of small learning, and lesse iudgement in that be- 
 halfe. 
 
 But now, when men know the difference, and haue the examples, both of the 
 best, and of the worst, sureh'e, to follow rather the Gothea in Ryming, than the 
 Greekes in trew versifiyng, were euen to eate ackornes with swyne, when we may 
 freely eate wheate bread emonges men. In deeds, Chaucer, Th. Norton, of Bristow, 
 my L. of Surrey ,M. Wiat, Th. Phaer, and other lentlemen," in translating Ouide, 
 Palingenius and Seneca, haue gonne as farre to their great praise, as the copie they 
 followed could cary them, but, if soch good wittes, and forward diligence, had bene 
 directed to follow the best examples, and not haue bene caryed by tyme and 
 custome, to content themselves with that barbarous and rude Ryming, emonges 
 their other worthy praises, which they haue iustly deserued, this had not bene 
 the least, to be counted amonges men of learning and skill, more like vnto the 
 Grecians, than vnto the Gothians, in handling of their verse. 
 
 In deed, our English tong, hauing in vse chiefly, wordes of one syllable which 
 commonly be long, doth not well receiue the nature of Carmen Heroicum, bicause 
 dactylus, the aptest foote for that verse, conteining one long and two short, is 
 seldom therefore found in English: and doth also rather stumble than stand vpon 
 Monasyllabis. Quintilian in hys learned Chapiter de Compositione, geueth this 
 lesson de Monosyllabic, before me: and in the same place doth iustlie inuey against 
 all Ryming, if there be any, who be angrie with me, for misliking of Ryming, may 
 be angry for company to, with Quintilian also, for the same thing: And yet 
 Quintilian had not so iust cause to mislike of it than, as men haue at this day. 
 
 And although Carmen Exametrum doth rather trotte and hoble, than runne 
 smothly in our English tong, yet I am sure, our English tong will receiue carmen 
 lambicum as naturallie, as either Greke or Latin. . . . 
 
 This mislikyng of Ryming, beginneth not now of any newfangle singularitie, 
 but hath bene long misliked of many, and that of men, of greatest learnyng, and 
 deepest iudgement. And soch, that defend it, do so, either for lacke of knowl- 
 edge of what is best, or els of verie enuie, that any should performe that in learn- 
 yng, whereunto they, as I sayd before, either for ignorance, can not, or for idle- 
 nes will not, labor to attaine vnto. . . . 
 
 The noble Lord Th. Earle of Surrey, first of all English men, in translating 
 the fourth booke of I'irgill: and Gonaaluo Periz that excellent learned man, and 
 Secretarie to kyng Philip of Spaine, in translating the Vlissea of Homer out of 
 Greke into Spanish, haue both, by good iudgement, auoyed the fault of Ryming, 
 yet neither of them hath fullie hit(t)e pcrfite and trew versifying. Indeed,
 
 358 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 they obserue iust number, and euen feete: but here is the fault, that their feete: 
 be feete without ioyntes, that is to say, not distinct by trew quantitie of sillabes: 
 And so: soch feete, be but nurame (benummed) feete: and be, euen as vnfitte 
 for a verse to turne and runne roundly withall, as feete of brasse or wood be 
 vnweeldie to go well withall. And as a foote of wood, is a plaine shew of a mani- 
 fest maime, euen so feete, in our English versifing, without quantitie and ioyntes, 
 be sure signes, that the verse is either, borne deformed, vnnatural and lame, and 
 so verie vnseemlie to look vpon, except to men that be gogle eyed them selues. 
 
 The spying of this fault now is not the curiositie of English eyes, but euen the 
 good iudgement also of the best that write in these dayes in Italic: and namelie 
 of that worthie Senese Felice Figlincci 1 . . . 
 
 And therefore, euen as VirgUl and Horace deserue most worthie prayse, that 
 they spying the vnperfitnes in Ennius and Plautus, by trew Imitation of Honker 
 and Euripides, brought Poetrie to the same perfitnes in Latin, as it was in Greke, 
 euen so those, that by the same way would benefite their tong and contrey, de- 
 serue rather thankes than disprayse in that behalfe. 
 
 And I rejoyce, that euen poore England preuented Italic, first in spying out, 
 than in seekyug to amend this fault in learynng. 
 
 This passage, though written twenty-five years later, avowedly 
 refers to the conditions at Cambridge. It is to be remarked that, 
 as he states in the last sentence, it is a matter of pride that Eng- 
 land in her classical revival was not at all influenced by Italian 
 leadership. His testimony, and it would be hard to find a better, 
 at least for the Cambridge writers is that unrimed iambic 
 verse is due to humanism. Naturally owing to the familiarity 
 of the pentameter line in English ears, that unrimed iambic 
 verse became pentameter. In other words, that is what we call 
 blank verse. 
 
 Ascham is the theorist of the movement, Grimald is the expo- 
 nent. Possibly it was for this reason that the Archdeacon of Peter- 
 borough persuaded him to go to Oxford. In any case his poetry is, 
 such as it is, humanistic. Even in the case of Surrey, if we must 
 have unsupported hypotheses, it is surely as probable that he was 
 influenced by such a man as Cheke, as by Molza. 2 Happily we 
 are not reduced to such alternatives. Humanism evolved blank 
 verse from the nature of its being in both countries. And the Eng- 
 lish writers were encouraged to persevere by the Italian precedents. 
 
 1 Of course a misprint in Arber for Figliucci. 
 
 2 " Still, it is most likely that it was from Italian poetry (possibly Molza's 
 translation of Vergil, 1541) that Surrey immediately drew the idea." Harold 
 H. Child, Cambridge Hist, of Lit., iii, 200.
 
 HUMANISM 859 
 
 But without the Italian the result would probably have been 
 the same. 
 
 The very poems themselves in the construction of their sen- 
 tences show the Latin background. In Grimald's verses, On the 
 death of Zoroas, said by Steevens to be a translation from 
 thirteenth century Latin, 1 the subject is apt to follow the verb, 
 and the adjective the governing noun. 
 
 Now clattering arms, now ragyng broyls of warr 
 
 Gan passe the noyes of tara tan tars clang: 
 
 Shrowded with shafts, the heuen: with clowd of darts 
 
 Couered, the ayre; against fulfatted bulls, 
 
 As forceth kindled ire the Lions keen: 
 
 Whose greedy gutts the gnawing hoonger pricks: 
 
 So Macedoins against the Persians fare. 
 
 Now corpses hide the purpurde soyl with blood: 
 
 Large slaughter, on ech side: but Perses more 
 
 Moyst feelds bebledd; their herts, and noombers bate. 
 
 Fainted while they giue back, and fall to flight: 
 
 The lightning Macedon, by swoords, by gleaus, 
 
 By bands, and trowps, of fotemen with his garde, 
 
 Speeds to Darie: but him, his nearest kyn, 
 
 Oxate preserues, with horsemen on a plump 
 
 Before his carr: that none the charge could giue. 
 
 This, in spite of Warton's epithet of "classical" and "elegant" 
 cannot be said to be great poetry! Surrey, for the very reason 
 that he was so imbued with the Latin, is much better. 2 And 
 it may also be stated that owing to Grimald's ill-repute as well 
 as to Surrey's romantic career, whatever may have been the 
 actual priority, Surrey is really the father of blank verse. Yet, 
 whoever may have been the hypothetical model for Surrey, 
 without question it was the study of classical literature, as 
 taught by Cheke at Cambridge, and by Grimald at Oxford, that 
 prepared the educated reader to applaud his efforts. Thus, in 
 the conflicting currents affecting sixteenth-century literature, that 
 of humanism is seen to be not the least. In prose, it produced a 
 spirit of rational criticism; in poetry a form of verse big with fu- 
 
 1 From part of the Latin Alexandreu of Philip Gualtier de Chatillon, bishop 
 of Megala, who flourished in the thirteenth century. Steevens Shaktp. vii, 377, 
 ed. 1808. Note by Park in Warton, op. cit., 52. 
 
 1 Surrey's humanism is discussed in Chapter VI.
 
 360 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 ture triumphs. Fortunately for English literature the humanists 
 did not succeed; in that case the Augustan Age would have re- 
 placed the Elizabethan and dramas like Cato would have been writ- 
 ten instead of Macbeth and Hamlet. But equally fortunate is it 
 that they attained the success that they did, because, otherwise, 
 Elizabethan literature would not have been the glory that it is.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURES OF SPAIN, 
 GERMANY, FRANCE, AND ITALY 
 
 The influences affecting the English author of the Renaissance 
 in his search for models was by no means limited to those of the 
 English tradition, the Medieval Latin, or humanism. The in- 
 fluences exerted by the contemporary literatures on the Continent 
 remain yet to be considered. For, however insular may have been 
 the position of England, and however difficult may have been the 
 passage of the Channel, the fact is nevertheless that the Channel 
 was crossed repeatedly. In one aspect it may be argued that the 
 long party wars of the fifteenth century tended to isolate the na- 
 tion from the normal literary development of the sister nations. 
 On the other hand, since at varying times a large number of the 
 nobility was forced into exile on the Continent, many of them 
 were brought into contact with foreign literature and foreign 
 culture to a degree that would have been impossible if they had 
 remained quietly at home. Thus the Yorkists found an asylum 
 always open to them at the court of Mary of Burgundy, and the 
 Lancastrians, more or less spasmodically at the court of France. 
 Under Henry VII there were both the political and matrimonial 
 alliances with Spain. And behind all, was Italy radiating culture 
 from her many courts and typifying the Renaissance in her many 
 princes. To ignore the possibility of the influence of any of these 
 literatures upon English would be an obvious error. But since the 
 influence of any contemporary literature depends to a large ex- 
 tent upon variable factors, such as political alliance, sentimental 
 interest, and national sympathy, and even a literary clique respon- 
 sive to the appeal of that particular type of literature, the exact 
 literary epoch in England must be clearly distinguished; to esti- 
 mate the amount of any such influence, to distinguish the influence 
 emanating from one country from that emanating at the same 
 time from others, and finally to analyze the reasons for such a con- 
 
 301
 
 362 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 dit ion, is difficult. Yet an understanding of Tudor literature re- 
 quires such an analysis. 
 
 Of the four literatures, Spanish, German, French, and Italian, 
 that might have affected England in the first half of the sixteenth 
 century, at first sight one would expect to find Spanish strongly 
 represented. At intervals during three centuries England and 
 Spain had been united by having one common foe in France. This 
 traditional friendship was given visible expression when in 1501 
 Katharine, the daughter of Ferdinand "and Isabella, became the 
 wife of Arthur, Prince of Wales, and in 1509 Queen of England as 
 the wife of Henry. Naturally, as a result of this, Henry's ambassa- 
 dors to Spain numbered such well known men as Lord Berners, Sir 
 Thomas Boleyn, Dr. Sampson, Cuthbert Tunstall, Sir Richard 
 Wingfield, Dr. Edward Lee, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Edmund Bon- 
 ner. 1 Spain, on her side, sent not only the retinue of Katharine, 
 but also the tutor of the Princess Mary, Juan Luis Vives. Still 
 more, many of the men in Dorset's ill-fated expedition to aid Spain 
 in 1512 remained there as a link between the two countries. With 
 them there was constant communication. So with Spaniards in 
 England and Englishmen in Spain, with the two countries in close 
 political alliance, one would be justified in positing a strong Span- 
 ish influence on English literature, 
 
 Actually such an influence is slight upon early Tudor literature. 
 "With possibly a single exception, the Spanish books which were 
 read in London in the days of Henry VIII and Edward VI were 
 obtained through the French or the Latin." 2 Here again is il- 
 lustrated the danger in the study of literature of deducing from a 
 priori probability. Before 1550, certainly not more than a dozen 
 books had been translated into English, or adapted for English 
 readers, from the Spanish and Portuguese. 3 Concerning these 
 there are two generalizations to be made : first, that they are usu- 
 ally taken via the Italian or the French ; and second, that they are 
 
 1 With pleasure I acknowledge my very great obligations in this portion of my 
 work to Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudars, by John Garrett Under- 
 bill, 1899. As I had independently come to the same general conclusion as Dr. 
 Underbill, I am joyously using his illustrations. For a more thorough treatment, 
 I refer the reader to his work. 
 
 * Underbill, op. tit., 342. This is, however, an extreme position. 
 
 * Underbill, op. tit., 375, lists only seven, aside from occasional tracts.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 363 
 
 all in prose. The significance of the first statement is that it shows 
 that the relation between the countries was political, rather than 
 popular. Spain was separated from England on the water side 
 by the Bay of Biscay, and on land by France and the Pyrenees 
 Mountains. With the Spanish cities thus inaccessible, there was 
 no paramount reason for visiting them. Even the pilgrimage to 
 Saint James of Compostella, during the religious inertia preced- 
 ing the Reformation, had fallen from favor; after the Reformation 
 naturally it was rare. On closer scrutiny, this geographic inaccessi- 
 bility was not overcome by the influence of any personality. The 
 nexus between England and Spain was undoubtedly Katharine. 
 Yet the history of Katharine in England consisted largely of humil- 
 iations. During the lifetime of Henry VII she was held as a host- 
 age for the payment of her dower. Her letters during this period 
 form a series of striking complaints. She was unable to pay her 
 servants and even had to pawn her jewels to provide herself with 
 the necessities. Under such conditions clearly she was not in a 
 position to stimulate writers. Equally clearly from 1518 on, when 
 the tragedy of her life begins to take form, she ceases to be a pos- 
 sible center for strong literary influence. Not even the language 
 was domesticated in England. On Katharine's arrival, Henry VII 
 communicated with her suite through the medium of Latin. Henry 
 VIII, himself, is said, by the Venetian Ambassador, to know 
 Spanish, 1 but apparently it did not spread through his court. At 
 least, words of Spanish origin are rarely encountered. In fact the 
 whole tragedy of Katharine's life lay in the fact that she was an 
 exile, in a foreign country, in which her customs and language were 
 unknown. She felt, and gave free expression to her feelings, that 
 she was in arms against a court hostile both to her and to her coun- 
 try. So, in regard to England, Katherine was a political rather 
 than a literary force. 
 
 The other personality, around which a literary group might 
 gather, was Juan Luis Vives, the Tutor to the Princess Mary, and 
 Professor of Philosophy at Oxford. That Vives exercised a dis- 
 tinct influence upon English thought cannot be denied. 2 In Vives, 
 however, the same problem recurs of national influence coming via 
 humanism. To what extent in their literary output is Politian 
 
 1 P. 45. * Chapter IV.
 
 364 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Italian, Erasmus Dutch, Von Hutten German, Bud6 French, More 
 English and Vives Spanish? So far as their works in the languages 
 of the respective nations are concerned, the question is easy; their 
 Latin works, written to appeal to an European audience, were pro- 
 fessedly free from geographic and racial limitations. Yet in 
 any discussion of the effect of one literature upon another the 
 nationality of these men and of their writings is apt to be assumed. 
 Although Erasmus is usually regarded as a humanist rather than 
 a Hollander, Vives is considered to have brought to England Span- 
 ish "influence" pure and undefiled. Actually the lives of the two 
 are not very different. Vives left Spain as a young man to study at 
 Paris, and after his expulsion from England he did not return there. 
 His essentially rationalistic mind naturally felt more at home in 
 the thought-free region of northern Europe than in the Inquisition- 
 ridden Spain. And being thus rationalistic, his turn of mind is 
 out of sympathy with either the mystic exaltation of Saint Teresa, 
 or the superfine chivalric ideals of the Amadis. Consequently 
 the two motifs that were to be given to the world preeminently by 
 Spain were not appreciated by him. Among the "ungracious" 
 Spanish books are the Amadis, Florisand, and Tristan. 1 The fact 
 that these, and Celestina, were eventually rendered into English, 
 surely was not on account of the influence of Vives, but in spite of 
 it. And Vives' "disciples," Hyrde, Moryson, et al., would be more 
 inclined to the furtherance of the humanistic propaganda, as they 
 were, than in promulgating such works as had fallen under the 
 master's disapproval. Consequently it is hard to see in Vives the 
 possible source for an interest in Spanish literature. 
 
 This reasoning implies merely that it is difficult to find a per- 
 sonal focus for Spanish influence, but it does not deny the exist- 
 ence of such an influence. That, aside from casual publications, 
 begins with the English adaptation of the Celestina, a curious dra- 
 matic novel of twenty-one acts in prose. The origin of this piece, 
 signed in anagram by Fernando de Roy as, forms one of the cele- 
 brated cruces of Spanish literature. The author, except for this 
 masterpiece, is totally unknown in literature. The plot tells the 
 story of the love of Calisto for Melebea, which ends in his murder 
 and her suicide. So far it is the conventional moth* of unhappy 
 
 1 The whole passage Is given, p. 323.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 365 
 
 love. The novelty however appears in the introduction of the bawd 
 Celestina whom Calisto hires as a go-between. She is the reverse 
 of the conventional character. Drawn with sharp realism, she 
 and the disreputable scenes in which she figures have the vitality 
 of the Murillo beggar. And just as Murillo idealizes in the Im- 
 maculate Conception and yet with the same brush presents stud- 
 ies of street types, so Royas in this one play gives vivid expression 
 of two extremes. This union of idealism and of realism made for 
 its instant popularity. The first edition was published in 1499, 
 and by 1550 thirty-three editions had appeared in Castilian. 1 
 Nor was its success limited to Spain. At Rome, in 1506, Al- 
 phonso Ordonez translated it into Italian. This translation was 
 reprinted at Milan in 1514, at Milan and at Venice in 1515, and 
 at Venice in 1519 and in 1525. Also there were two French 
 translations in 1527 and 1529, and one German in 1520. 2 Thus 
 in a quarter of a century the Celestina had obtained an Euro- 
 pean reputation. 
 
 Under these circumstances it is not surprising that it should 
 appear in English dress. But in the mystery surrounding its 
 authorship the English version far outdoes its Spanish original. 
 It was published without the name of the author and without the 
 date under the title A new commodye in englysh in maner Of an 
 enierlude ryght elygant &full of craft of rethoryk/ wherein is shewd & 
 dyscrybyd as well the bewte & good propertes of women/ as theyn 
 vycys & euyll condicions/ with a morall conclusion & exhortacyon 
 to vertew. 3 In this cumbrous disguise Celestine, "the bawd, the 
 mother of naughtiness," made her first appearance before the Eng- 
 lish public. It is both more and less than a translation. It is 
 a translation because of the 1088 lines 800 are rendered more or 
 
 1 1 am taking these figures from La Celestina, Tragecomedia de Calisto y Mel- 
 ebea, par Fernando de Royas. Con el estudio eritico de La Cdeslina nuevamente 
 correyido y aumenlado del excmo. Senor L. Marelino Menendez y Pelayo. Vigo. 
 Libreria de Eugcnio Krapf. 1899. 471. 
 
 1 These figures are taken from H. Warner Allen's Celestina, with Introduction 
 on the Picaresque Novel and Appendices, 341. This, so far as the English is con- 
 cerned, is the most careful discussion I know. 
 
 1 This has been published in facsimile by J. S. Farmer 1909; reprinted by Haz- 
 litt, 1874; Farmer, Six Anonymous Plays, 1905, p. 46; Malone Society, 1908; and 
 by H. Warner Allen, in Celestina trans, by James Mabbe, together with an Intro- 
 duction.
 
 366 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 less literally. 1 But the adapter did not translate eight hundred 
 consecutive lines. Parts of the original prologue, Acts I, II, IV, 
 and V compose the English version. As an illustration of the free- 
 dom of his treatment, the episode between Celestina, Sempronio 
 and Elicia in the Spanish here is condensed into a narrative speech 
 by Celestina of fifty-five lines. Aside from this speech, the un- 
 pleasant side of Celestina is scarcely touched upon, since her 
 solicitation to Melebea is outwardly merely for the sake of Calisto's 
 health. This scene, which in the Spanish is the prelude to her 
 machinations, in the English is the culminating point. From here 
 on, the last one hundred and seventy lines are entirely original. 
 The father of Melebea, here called Danio, makes his first entrance 
 complaining of a direful dream. This is interpreted by Melebea 
 as a warning to her, and her confession betrays a knowledge of 
 Celestina beyond any indication given in the English version. 
 The father then turns to the audience and, after a few moral com- 
 monplaces, very unexpectedly discusses English social conditions, 
 a topic that is completely irrelevant to the play in hand. 2 
 
 And ye fadere moders & other which be 
 Rulers of yong folks your charge is dowtles 
 To bryng them up verteously & to see 
 Them occupied styll in some good bysynes 
 Not in idell pastyme or unthryf tnes 
 But to teche them some art craft or lernyng 
 Whereby to be able to get theyr lyffyng 
 
 The bryngers up of youth in this region 
 
 Haue done gret hanne because of theyr neclygens 
 
 Not puttyng them to lernyng nor occupacyons 
 
 So when they haue no craft nor sciens 
 
 And com to mans state ye see thexpience 
 
 That many of them compellyd be 
 
 To beg or stele by very necessite 
 
 But yf there be therefore any remedy 
 The hedys & rulers must furst be dylygent 
 To make good lawes & execute them straytely 
 
 1 H. Warner Allen, op cit., 341. The Spanish is very accessible; the edition 
 I have used is that in the Bibliotheca Romecas 142, 143, 144, 145 with an intro- 
 duction by Finty Holle. 
 
 1 Malone Society reprint, 1058-1100.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 367 
 
 Uppon such maystres that be neclygent 
 Alas we make no laws but ponyshment 
 When man haue offendyd/ but laws euermore 
 Wold be made to preuent the cause before 
 
 Yf the cause of the myscheffs were seen before 
 Whych by coniecture to fall be most lykely 
 And good laws & ordynauncys made therefore 
 To put a way the cause/ yt were best remdedi 
 What is the cause that ther be so many 
 Thefts & robberies/ it is be cause men be 
 Dryuen thereto by nede & pouerte 
 
 And what is the verey cause of that nede 
 Be cause they labur not for theyr lyffyng 
 And trewth is they can not well labour in dede 
 Be cause in youth of theyr ydyll upbryngng 
 But this thyng shall neuer come to reformyng 
 But the world contynually shalbe nought 
 As long as yong pepyll be euell upbrought 
 
 Wherefore the eternal god that raynyth on hye 
 Send his mercifull grace and influens 
 To all gouernours that they circumspectly 
 May rule theyr inferiours by such prudence 
 To bryng them to vertew & dew obedyeus l 
 And that they & we all by his grete mercy 
 May be parteners of hys blessed glory. 
 
 This passage has been cited in full, because it illustrates two pe- 
 culiarities of the piece that are rarely mentioned. First, this 
 "moral conclusion" is clearly inspired by the First Book of the 
 Utopia. More's characteristic and (from the point of view of the 
 sixteenth century) revolutionary ideas that theft is caused by idle- 
 ness and idleness by poor upbringing, and that the laws are destruc- 
 tive rather than constructive, form here the unexpected exhorta- 
 tion to virtue added to a study of Spanish low life. And second, 
 the entire play is written in the rime-royal. In the original the be- 
 ginning of each stanza is marked by the paragraph sign. In con- 
 sideration of the liturgic origin of the drama, the use of the many 
 rimed Medieval Latin forms seems normal, and the use of the he- 
 roic couplet scarcely requires explanation. The rime-royal, how- 
 ever, is a difficult form in which to write, and in a conver- 
 
 1 The u is an obvious misprint for n.
 
 368 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 sation is necessarily so broken that it would be unnoticed by 
 the audience. Yet from the fact that occasionally the speakers 
 address the audience it must have been written to be played. 
 The conclusion seems logical that the author is experimenting 
 for a fit dramatic medium. 
 
 As the play was published anonymously and undated, these 
 particulars may guide our conjectures. Both the influence of 
 More and the continuous use of the rime-royal seem to point 
 to a date a year or two later than the Utopia (1516). This re- 
 ceives unexpected support from the fact that the type used here is 
 identical with that used in another interlude, The Four Elements. 
 In this latter, allusions to the death of Henry VII and to the dis- 
 covery of America roughly place it as toward the end of the second 
 decade of the sixteenth century. Bale, of his own knowledge, as- 
 cribes the authorship of the Four Elements to John Rastell, the 
 brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More. And although it is all guess- 
 work, and the colophon reads Johnes rastell me imprimi fecit, War- 
 ton's suggestion that Rastell was also the author is as plausible as 
 any. And this also would explain why Vives, in his enumeration 
 of the medieval chivalric books, included the Celestina with spe- 
 cial expression of disapprobation. Upon his arrival in England he 
 found Spanish literature represented solely by this "mother of 
 naughtiness ! " 
 
 And it may have been due to Vives that the Celestina in its Eng- 
 lish dress had no greater influence. From the point of view of 
 dramatic evolution, the interlude is vastly superior to anything 
 entirely English, or that was to be produced in England for dec- 
 ades. 1 There is no comparison between it and such work as The 
 Four Elements. But the fact remains that apparently it did have 
 no influence. It exists in a single copy. There is no record of any 
 performance, no allusion to it in any work of the time, 2 and, still 
 more important, its lessons in dramatic construction were entirely 
 unheeded. It stands in curious isolation. As such is the case, it 
 can scarcely be considered as widely disseminating Spanish in- 
 fluence. 
 
 1 This advance in the type of drama is clearly shown by A. S. W. Rosenbach, 
 The Influence of the ' Celestina in the Early English Drama, 1903, reprinted from 
 the Jahrbuch des Deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft, 1903. 
 
 2 1 cannot find it masquerading in any of the Latin titles of Bale.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 369 
 
 In apparent contrast with the uncertainty surrounding this in- 
 terlude is the work of John Bourchier, Lord Berners. As he was 
 a great noble, the facts of his life are quite fully recorded. 1 For 
 about fifty years he lived the active life of a public man, serving 
 his sovereign in various capacities. Then in December, 1520, he was 
 appointed deputy of Calais, a post that he held until his death in 
 March 1533. The assumption is that the enforced leisure of these 
 last years is responsible for his literary production. This was 
 neither little in quantity, nor minimum in quality. Aside from 
 regulations for the garrison of Calais 2 and a comedy Ite in vineam, 
 mentioned by Bale but now lost, his translations included The 
 Chronycle of Syr John Froissart, 3 The Boke of Duke Huon of Bur- 
 deux, 4 The hystory of the moost noble and valyant knyght Arthur of 
 lytell brytayne, the Castell of Love, and the golden boke of Marke Aure- 
 lie emperour. In mere quantity this is a surprising amount to have 
 been accomplished in thirteen years, and it suggests that the duties 
 of the deputy general of Calais were not onerous. But in quality 
 it is still more surprising. Three of the books, the Froissart, the 
 Huon, and the Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius became part of 
 the English inheritance of the sixteenth century. What a rare 
 chance to be able to introduce one's countrymen to books so vital 
 to them ! 
 
 Such happy fortune arouses curiosity concerning the possessor 
 of it, and we find with surprise that the contrast between the Cel- 
 estina and the works of Berners is more apparent than real. Al~ 
 though we know any number of the facts of his life, of the man 
 himself we learn curiously little. Aside from an occasional pref- 
 ace, his work is all translation. And even there he has no initia- 
 tive. The translation of Froissart was suggested by Henry VIII, 
 of Huon by Lord George Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, the Castle 
 of Love by Lady Elizabeth Carew, and the Golden Book by Sir 
 Francis Bryan. The only one that is not definitely stated to be 
 
 1 Hia life has been written by Sir Sidney Lee in the preface to the Huon of 
 Burdeux, E. E. T. S., and in the Dictionary of National Biography, and by W. P. 
 Ker in his suggestive Introduction to the Froissart in the Tudor Translations. 
 
 1 Reprinted by the Camden Society. 
 
 1 Reprinted by Mr. G. C. Macaulay in the Globe Edition and by Mr. Ker in 
 the aeries of Tudor Translations. 
 
 4 Reprinted in 1884-87 for the E. E. T. S., by Sir Sidney Lee.
 
 370 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 due to an impulse other than the translator's is the Arthur of 
 Little Britain, the most insignificant of the lot! And it is the pref- 
 ace of precisely this one that is the most personal piece of his 
 writing. The passage is worth quoting entire. 1 
 
 For as moche as it is delectable to all humayne nature to rede and to here these 
 auncient noble hystoryes of the chyvalrous feates and marciall prowesses of the 
 vyctoryous knyghtes of tymes past, whose tryumphaunt dedes, yf wrytynge were 
 not, sholde be had clene oute of remembraunce; and also bycause that ydelnesse 
 is reputed to be the moder of all vices; wherefore somwhat in eschewynge therof, 
 and in the waye of lowli erudycyon and learnynge, I John Bourghchere knyghte 
 lorde Berners have enterprysed to translate out of Prensshe in to our maternall 
 tongue a noble hystory, makynge raencyon of the famous dedes of the ryght 
 valyaunt knyght Arthur sonne and heyre to the noble duke of Brytayne, and 
 of the fayre lady Florence, doughter and heyre to the myghty Emendus, kynge 
 of the noble realme of Soroloys, and of the grete trouble that they endured, or 
 they attayned to the perfourmance of theyr vertuous amorous desyers; for fyrste 
 they overcame many harde and straunge adventures, the whiche as to our humayne 
 reason sholde seme to be incredible. Wherfore after that I had begon this sayd 
 processe I had determined to have left and gyven up my laboure, for I thoughe 
 it sholde have ben reputed but a folye in me to translate be seining suche a fayned 
 mater, wherin semeth to be so many unpossybylytees. How be it than I called 
 agayne to my remembraunce that I had redde and seen many a sondrye volume 
 of dyverse noble hystoryes wherin were contayned the redoubted dedes of the 
 auncyent invynsyble conquerours and of other ryght famous knyghtes who acheved 
 many a straunge and wonderfull adventure, the whyche by playne letter as to 
 our understandinge sholde seme in a maner to be supernaturall: wherfore I thought 
 that this present treatyse myght as well be reputed for trough as some of those, 
 and also I doubted not but that the first auctour of this boke devysed it not with 
 out some maner of trouthe or vertuous entent. The whyche consyderacyons, 
 and other, gave me agayne audacyte to contynue forth my fyrste purpose tyll 
 I had fynysshed this sayd boke, not presumynge that I have reduced it in to 
 fresshe ornate polysshed Englysshe, for I know myself insufficient in the f acondyous 
 arte of rethoryke, nor also I am but a lemer of the language of Frensshe. How 
 be it, I truste my symple reason hath ledde to the understandynge of the true 
 sentence of the mater, accordinge to the whiche I have followed as nere as I coude, 
 desyrynge all the reders and herers therof to take this my rude translacion in 
 gre, and yf any faute be, to laye it to myn unconnynge and derke ignoraunce, 
 and to mynysshe, adde or augment as they shall fynde cause requysyte. And 
 in theyr so doynge I shall praye to God that after this vayne and transytory lyfe 
 he may brynge them unto the perdurable joye of heven. Amen. 
 
 Of course the tone of this preface is that of the conventional Lyd- 
 gatian apology. He, like Hawes and the rest, is writing to eschew 
 
 1 1 am quoting this from Ker's Froissart, v. i, p. xviii, as I have never seen a 
 copy of the book.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 371 
 
 idleness, and like Hawes and the rest he is not skilled in the "fac- 
 ondyous "art of rhetoric, the very terms are hackneyed ! In two 
 places, however, the real man seems to be speaking, first where 
 he confesses his lack of belief in the romance, and secondly where 
 he acknowledges his limited French. Each of these would seem to 
 imply that the Arthur of Little Britain was written very early in his 
 career, not, as is usually given, after both the Huon and the Frois- 
 sart, since the monstrous incredibilities of the first and the endless 
 pages of the second would surely have given him adequate train- 
 ing in both directions. But, at least, here you seem to hear a per- 
 sonality. And the same is true of his preface to the Froissart. 
 After a number of platitudinous half-truths, he tells us the way 
 he translates. But he tells us curiously little, in comparison 
 with the importance of the work. 
 
 Perhaps the answer to the riddle is that there is no riddle. The 
 face of Lord Berners in the Holbein portrait 1 shows no great in- 
 tellect. Small eyes, large nose, thick lips, heavy jowl, from his 
 appearance no one would judge him a great conscious artist in 
 style. Nor in fact was he. The mastery of his style is due to the 
 complete subordination of his own personality to that of his author. 
 He has no desire for scholarly accuracy, he has no artistic longing 
 for a choice vocabulary, he makes no attempt to reproduce atmos- 
 phere. He is trying literally to translate, to write the book in such 
 English as the author would have used had he been an English- 
 man and contemporaneous. 2 
 
 And in that I have nat folowed myne author worde by worde, yet I trust I have 
 ensewed the true reporte of the sentence of the mater; and as for the true namyng 
 of all manor of personages, countreis, cyties, townes, ryvers, or feldes, whereas I 
 coude nat name them properly nor aptely in Englysshe, I have written them ac- 
 cordynge as I founde them in Frenche; and thoughe I have nat gyven every lorde, 
 knyght, or squyer his true addycion, yet I trust I have not swarved fro the true 
 sentence of the mater. And there as I have named the dystaunce bytwene places 
 by myles and leages, they must be understande acordyng to the custome of the 
 countreis where as they be named, for in some place they be lengar than in some 
 other; in Englande a leage or myle is well knowen; in Fraunce a leage is two 
 myles, and in some place thre; and in other countre is more or lesse; every 
 IKK ion hath sondrie customes. And if any faute be in this my rude trans- 
 
 1 It is reproduced in the E. E. T. S. Huon. 
 1 Preface to the Froitaarl,
 
 372 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 lacyon, I remyt the correctyon therof to them that discretely shall fynde any 
 reasonable defaute; and in their so doynge, I shall pray God to sende them the 
 blysse of heven. 
 
 What a naive confession! Like a child, he sits down to pass the 
 long hours at Calais by turning the French into the English. Oc- 
 casionally he misses the sense of the sentence, and usually he has 
 but the faintest idea of where the places are that he is talking about. 
 But he is writing to eschew idleness, and it does not matter 
 much. This unconsciousness of self, this submergence of the man- 
 ner into the matter, makes of him a channel through which the 
 charm and verve of the original pass with scarcely any let or hin- 
 drance. Thus he succeeds to a degree not possible in a more 
 sophisticated age, or by a more sophisticated man, in transplanting 
 the medieval masterpieces to English soil. 
 
 Of the five books that Berners translated in these thirteen years, 
 although he probably took them all from French versions, two were 
 originally Spanish and so concern us here. A good deal of time 
 has been spent fruitlessly in discussing the motives that led him to 
 choose Spanish books, such as his probable interest in Spain, where 
 he had been as ambassador. But it has yet to be shown that he 
 had any interest in Spain, or even knew the language. The Golden 
 Book, at least, is stated to have been taken "out of Frenche into 
 englysh" without any mention of Spanish. And with this in- 
 terpretation of his character no lengthy explanation is necessary 
 why the particular books should have been chosen. The Castell 
 of Love, translated from the Car eel de Amor by Diego de San Perdo, 
 is a prose allegorical romance of the Romaunt of the Rose type. 
 There is no particular significance to this particular volume ex- 
 cept, perhaps, that the style in which it is written is mannered and 
 artificial. In modern conceited prose the old allegorical romance 
 was revamped for Renaissance readers. We are told that Lord 
 Berners translated it at the instance of his niece, Lady Elizabeth 
 Carew. Here is probably all the motive that he had. It is pre- 
 eminently a lady's book, rather pretty, quaintly conventional, and 
 with a certain long-drawn-out sweetness. Yet it belongs to a 
 past age. The Arcadia of Sannazzaro, with its pastoral settings 
 and with its enamelled descriptions of singing shepherds, equally 
 mannered and equally artificial, was soon to banish these medieval 
 lovers into the Garden of Oblivion, whose portal is Forgetfulness.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 373 
 
 But the Lady Elizabeth was quite within the literary tastes of the 
 day when she asked her uncle to translate it for her. 1 
 
 The other of the two books taken from the Spanish, the Golden 
 Boke of Marc Aurelie is quite another story. It was one of the pop- 
 ular books of the century. The author's edition appeared at Val- 
 ladolid in 1529, by the Franciscan Antonio de Guevara, Bishop of 
 Guadix, Confessor and Chronicler to the Emperor. According 
 to his own account he began it in 1518. Although he kept it as 
 secret as he could, during these years copies went abroad and it 
 was printed at Seville, in Portugal, and in the Kingdom of Na- 
 varre. This spurious version was entitled The Golden Book of Mar- 
 cus Aurelius. It was translated in 1531 by Rene Bertaut and is 
 the immediate original of the Berners. Guevara's own edition is 
 entitled Libro del emperador Marco aurelio con relox de principes: 
 auctor del qual es el obispo de Gaudix: nueuamente reuisto por su 
 seTtoria. And, as the title said, it was revised and enlarged. This, 
 in turn, was translated again by Rene Bertaut in 1540, and this 
 second version is the original of Sir Thomas North's Diatt of Princes, 
 1557. 2 So was it possible to have two books, both translated from 
 the same work and both through the French, that yet differ so mark- 
 edly. Of the Berners there were fifteen editions during the century, 
 and three of the North. Consequently any student of English lit- 
 erature of the sixteenth century must reckon with Guevara. 
 
 Popular though it was with the sixteenth century, it has failed 
 to win the approval of modern critics. "The Golden Book so 
 styled is really a Brazen Calf, of the pattern invented specially 
 for the Renaissance and its idolaters" is Ker's caustic and sum- 
 mary dismissal: 3 Martin Hume characterizes it as "a set of moral 
 apologues, infinitely tedious they seem to us now." Since the 
 matter of the book seems so wearisome, its undeniable popularity 
 has been explained by emphasizing its style, and pages are written 
 discussing the relation of Euphuism to Guevara. 5 This general 
 
 1 My knowledge of the Spanish original and of the English translation is only 
 second-hand. 
 
 1 For this confused bibliography I am indebted to R. W. Bond's edition of Lyly, 
 i. 136, and Underbill, op. cit., 878. 
 
 * Froitsart, op. cit., v. i, p. xxvi. 
 
 4 Spanish Influence on English Literature, by Martin Hume, 1805, p. 55. 
 
 The whole question of the development of prose and the relation of Guevara's 
 style to that development is postponed to a future study.
 
 374 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 reasoning seems fallacious. It may safely be questioned whether 
 any prose at any time was read by many Anglo-Saxons merely for 
 the pleasure of appreciating artistic composition, however possible 
 it may have been for the cinquecento Italian. The average English 
 reader buys a book because he likes what it says; the neat expres- 
 sion of his opinion is a very real, but secondary, enjoyment. Thus 
 he imitates the manner, because he likes the matter, just as a 
 boy copies the personal peculiarities only of those whom he ad- 
 mires. Of course the style is there. At the very end of the book 
 there is an epilogue, presumably written by the printer, 1 which 
 concludes: 
 
 But finally the sauce of the sayd style moveth the appetite. Many bokes there 
 be of substancial meates, but they be so rude and unsauery, and the style of so 
 smal grace, that the fyrste morsell is lothesome and noyfull. And of suche bokes 
 foloweth to lye hole and sounde in lybraries, but I trust this wylle not. 
 
 This is an exact statement. The book must stand or fall by its 
 intrinsic merit; after that, "finally the sauce of the style moveth 
 the appetite." The explanation of the great contemporaneous 
 success lies deeper than in mere tricks of style. 
 
 It is not difficult, I think, to understand why to the sixteenth 
 century the matter of the Golden Book seemed golden. According 
 to Guevara's own account he had found among the books of Cos- 
 imo de Medici at Florence a manuscript, written by three friends 
 of Marcus Aurelius, giving in great detail an account of his char- 
 acter, and his attitude at many representative occasions. The 
 value of it lay in the fact that it professed to be authentic. Actually 
 of course it was a literary forgery. And Guevara could not have 
 known much of Aurelius, since the Meditations were not published 
 until 1558. The worthy bishop regarded profane history as a 
 pastime; the book is a curious farrago of classical reminiscence 
 and pure invention. The character of the emperor is merely a 
 peg upon which he hangs his own moral reflections and into 
 whose mouth he puts his own opinions. When accused of forgery, 
 he retreated behind the imaginary manuscript. To us with our 
 
 1 Sir Sidney Lee (Huan of Burdeux E. E. T. S. ii, 788) says that this epilogue is 
 "almost certainly" from the pen of Sir Francis Bryan. I know no reason for this 
 assumption, except that the book was undertaken at his suggestion and that he 
 himself translated a work of Guevara.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 375 
 
 critical knowledge of ancient Rome, the pretence is clumsily ob- 
 vious. We have few illusions concerning the ancient civilization. 
 But in the sixteenth century it was very different. Then was 
 the floodtide of the Renaissance. 1 In comparison with the civili- 
 zation that they knew, the glories of imperial Rome seemed like 
 a dream. When even Gibbon can state "If a man were called to 
 fix the period in the history of the world during which the con- 
 dition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he 
 would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death 
 of Domitian to the accession of Commodus, " is it any wonder that 
 to them that age should have seemed one of gold? All of mankind 
 were happy. As Lord Berners expresses it, 
 
 This auncient worlde that ranne in Saturnus dayes, the whiche the otherwyse was 
 called the Golden worlde, the whyche was so estemed of them that sawe it, and soo 
 moche praysed of theym that herde the wrytynge thereof, and too moche desyred of 
 them that felt no parte therof, was not golde by the sages that dyd gylte, but by- 
 cause there none yll that dyd ungylte it. 
 
 And with this idealization of the classic age came naturally an 
 idealization of the classic men. 2 They furnished models to be 
 emulated but their moral grandeur could never be attained in 
 modern degenerate days. In the same spirit Elyot wrote his Im- 
 age of Governance to picture forth the perfect man. But the Golden 
 Book was still better. Authenticated by the Bishop of Guadix, 
 it was the real thing! The stage had been set and was ready, and 
 the hero stepped forth! Men, who knew him, told the reader 
 what were his mental processes in the most diverse situations, 
 what he said to his wife when she wished to enter his study, the 
 letters that he wrote on various occasions. This was not hard 
 reading. It was flooded with anecdote, illustration, dialogue, and 
 familiar allusion to all writers of antiquity. To his great delight, 
 he found his own sixteenth-century morality endorsed by the pre- 
 cepts and practices of the great emperor, his own opinions of men 
 and matters confirmed. All this is in an antithetic, epigrammatic, 
 style, easy to remember and pleasant to quote ! What matters it 
 that we, who from the Meditations know the real pagan philosophy 
 and whose morality is quite different from that of the sixteenth 
 
 1 Compare Chapter I of the present work. 
 *Cf. pp. 317 of the present work.
 
 376 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 century, find the matter of the book dull and the style artificial? 
 Sympathetically, at least, we should be able to thrill with the read- 
 er of the sixteenth century. 
 
 But when it comes to discussing what part of the influence of the 
 Golden Book is peculiarly Spanish, the question becomes intricate. 
 The book itself is a product of Spanish humanism, it is true, but 
 still humanism. Perhaps the differentiation may be found in a sug- 
 gestion of Martin Hume of the "orientalism" of Spanish culture. 
 From their contact with the Moors, the Spaniards learned to pre- 
 cede the moral lesson by its concrete application, as is done in the 
 fable. This method of deducing the general moral from the particu- 
 lar case is that which is employed here. The reason for the mass of 
 concrete detail, which naturally gave interest, is not on account of 
 the interest but on account of the lesson to be deduced. With this 
 in mind, the two books of Elyot form an illuminating contrast. 
 The Governor is abstract; it carefully works out its propositions, 
 and then enforces them by illustration. But the Image of Govern- 
 ance is exactly the reverse. By narrating the "actes and sentences 
 notable, of the moste noble Emperor Alexander, for his wysedome 
 and grauitie called Seuerus," * he endeavors to create a governor. 
 While the aim of both books is identical, the methods are diamet- 
 rically opposed. He tells us that it was while writing his diction- 
 ary, 1536-38, that he re-worked some material gathered nine years 
 before. Even assuming, as we have no right to do, that the pres- 
 ent work is identical in form with that of the late twenties, it yet 
 would have been possible for him through Vives and Sir Thomas 
 More to have seen the spurious edition. But in 1531 he was sent 
 as ambassador to the Emperor. There, almost certainly, he would 
 have come into contact with Guevara, or his book. So it seems a 
 fair statement that the difference in treatment between the Gov- 
 ernor and the Image of Governance is due to Guevara. If this be the 
 case, the Bishop of Guadix starts the long line of fictitious biog- 
 raphies for a moral purpose that, not so many years ago, used to 
 sadden Sunday for the Anglo-Saxon youth. 
 
 It will be remembered that the Golden Poke was translated "at 
 the instant desire of his nephewe syr Francis Bryan knyghte." 
 Thus is introduced to literature one of the puzzling figures. As an 
 
 1 The whole passage is quoted, pp. 306-307.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 377 
 
 historical character he is well known. Through the various mar- 
 riages of his grandmother, ne Elizabeth Tilney, he was related to 
 many of the court; shortly after the death of his grandfather, Hum- 
 phrey Bourchier, she married Thomas Howard, first Duke of Nor- 
 folk, by whom she had eight sons and three daughters. Among the 
 descendants of these in the next generation were Queen Anne Bol- 
 eyn, Queen Katherine Howard and the Earl of Surrey. Almost as a 
 matter of course, with such a connection, he was brought up in the 
 court circle. In 1518-19 Hall in his Chronicle notes: 1 
 
 Duryng this tyme remayned in the Frenche court Nicholas Carew Fraunces 
 Brian and diverse other of the young gentelmen of England and they with the 
 Frenche kyng roade daily disguysed through Parys, throwyng Egges, stones and 
 other foolishe trifles at the people, whiche light demeanoure of a kyng was muche 
 discommended and gested at. And when these young gentelmen came again into 
 England, they were all Frenche, in eatyng, drynkyng and apparell, yea, and in 
 Frenche vices and bragges, so that all the estates of Englande were by them laughed 
 at: the ladies and gentelwomen were dispraised, so that nothing by them was 
 praised, but if it were after the Frenche turne, whiche after turned them to dis- 
 pleasure as you shall here. ... In whiche moneth the kynges counsaill secretly 
 communed together of the kynges gentlenes and liberalitie to all persones: by the 
 whiche they perceived that certain young men in his privie chamber, not regardyng 
 his estate nor degree, were so familier and homely with hym, and plaied suche 
 light touches with hym that they forgat themselfes: Whiche thynges although the 
 king of his gentle nature suffred and not rebuked nor reproved it: yet the kyngea 
 counsail thought it not mete to be suffred for the kynges honor, and therfore thei 
 altogether came to the king, beseching him al these enormities and lightnes to re- 
 dresse. . . . Then the kynges counsaill caused the lorde chamberlein to cal before 
 them Carew (and another who yet liveth, and therfore shall not at this time be 
 named) * with diverse other also of the privy chamber, whiche had bene in the 
 French court, and banyshed them the courte for diverse consideracions, laying 
 nothing particulerly to their charges. And they that had offices were commaunded 
 to go to their offices: whiche discharge out of the courte greved sore the hartes of 
 these young menne whiche were called the kynges minions. . . . These young 
 minions which was thus severed from the kyng, had bene in Fraunce, and so highly 
 praised the Frenche kyng and his courte, that in a maner they thought litle of the 
 kyng and his court, in comparison of the other, they were so high in love with the 
 Frenche court, wherefore their fall was litle moned emong wise men. 
 
 This extract is interesting as showing that, at the time when Kath- 
 arine of Aragon was still dominant, Bryan was in the inner court 
 
 1 Whibley's edition of Hall's Henry VIII, op. tit., i. 175; 177-8. 
 * Bryan survived Hall three years.
 
 878 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 circle; the Carew mentioned with him was his brother-in-law. This 
 dubious preeminence in pandering to the disreputable side of 
 Henry's nature later earned for him the epithet "Vicar of Hell." 
 At least he deserved it by his cleverness. Although Carew him- 
 self, and Anne, and Katharine Howard, and Surrey and so many 
 others of the group fell under Henry's displeasure and were exe- 
 cuted, Bryan was chief henchman at his funeral. He himself died a 
 sudden but natural death hi 1550. And the passage quoted is also 
 interesting, as showing that at that time Bryan was preeminently 
 French in his sympathies. The importance of this is that modern 
 writers have assumed in him a Spanish interest to explain another 
 assumption that Guevara was his "favorite" author. Actually 
 nothing is known of his literary tastes. But we do know that, 
 traditionally, Wyatt and Surrey were merely two of a number of 
 "courtly makers," of which Bryan is said to have been one. The 
 first reference to his literary ability, however, is by Meres in 1598, 
 as being, among fourteen others, "most passionate among us to 
 bewaile and bemoane the perplexities of loue." Then Drayton 
 adds his statement. But the curious feature is that in none of the 
 books published in the half-century after his death, such as those 
 by Ascham, Sidney, or Puttenham, is he mentioned. Still more 
 curious is it that he escaped being catalogued by Bale, whose lists 
 are all-inclusive. Theoretically, if a man socially so prominent did 
 anything at all, Bale would know it. Apparently to his contem- 
 poraries he was as unknown as a writer as he was well-known as a 
 leader. In Wyatt's Third Satire, the reference seems to be to him 
 as a critic. 1 
 
 When I remembr this, and eke the case 
 
 Where in thou stondes, I thowght forthwith to write 
 Brian, to thee, who knows how great a grace 
 
 In writing is to cownsell man the right; 
 
 To the therefore, that trottes still up and downe 
 And never restes, . . . 
 
 Yet as a literary figure his outlines are very uncertain. 
 
 1 The Poems of Sir Thomas Wiat, by A. K. Foxwell, London 1913, i, 147. This is 
 the last and by far the most careful edition of Wyatt. The simpler form of spelling 
 the name can certainly be justified, as also in the case of Bryan, but so can the 
 conventional form. And even with the best of intentions, I should probably forget 
 and spell it Wyatt!
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 379 
 
 It is, therefore, with a sense of relief that one turns to a definite 
 fact. In 1548 Graf ton's press brought out A Dispraise of the life of 
 a Courtier and a commendacion of the life of the labouryng man. 
 (Out of Castilian drawen into Frenche by Antony Alaygre and now 
 out of the Frenche toungue into our maternal language by Sir Fraunces 
 Bryant. 1 In spite of Bale and the early critics, this is probably by 
 Bryan, since the re-issue in 1575, with the title A LooJdng-glasse 
 for the Courte adds after the name "one of the priuye chamber in 
 the raygn of K. Henry the eyght." Via the French, this is a trans- 
 lation of Guevara's Menospredo de Corte y Alabanza de Aldea. 2 
 Now, for the Golden Boke it is possible to say a good word, although 
 that word is not often spoken. But for the Dispraise, either in its 
 original form, or in the translations, it is another matter. The 
 original impulse seems to have come from the De Curialium Mis- 
 eriis of ./Eneas Silvius Piccolomini. Although this latter is a rhetor- 
 ical exercise, at least the author knew what he was talking about; he 
 has something to say, and gives a truthful, however exaggerated, 
 account of conditions. It is not the whole truth, but there is some 
 truth there. The Menospredo, on the other hand, was written 
 by a courtier ingrained, who naturally knew nothing, and cared 
 nothing, about the country. Again it is a rhetorical exercise. Gue- 
 vara never comes down to unpleasant details. One gathers that in 
 comparison with the existence of disembodied angels the courtiers 
 are perhaps unfortunate. As in regard to another of Guevara's 
 court manuals an early French commentator remarks : 3 "to con- 
 form to these rules, should more approximate the life of the saints 
 than that of the court, because these instructions are all theolog- 
 ical and holy, more proper for the cloister than the court." The 
 " dispraise " is consequently really a celebration. The " commenda- 
 tion of the life of the laboring man" is equally vague and equally 
 
 1 Supplement to the Catalogue of the British Museum, under Guevara. Sir Sidney 
 Lee, (Dictionary of National Biography) gives as the only edition one issued by 
 Berthelet and anonymous. This I have been unable to trace as none of the 
 catalogues of Berthelet's press lists it. 
 
 1 This has been issued with notes and an introduction by M. Martinez de Burgos, 
 Madrid 1915. The translation I have never seen. 
 
 1 Moyens legitimes pour parvenir a la faueur . . . ou le reveille-nmtin des 
 courtisans. Par Sebastian Hardy, Paris M. DC. XXIII. Tesmoignage d'un 
 autheur celebre de ce temps en la recoiniuundation de Dom Antoine de Gue-
 
 380 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 insincere. The book is written in a style "acute and very clever, 
 but extremely artificial and laden with loathsome verbosity and 
 piquant spices of antithesis, paranomasia, puns, and riming 
 words. . . . He is a very tautological author and even Cicero 
 can pass as a model of sobriety at his side. He drowns his ideas 
 in a sea of words." l It is the worst form of pulpit eloquence, plati- 
 tudinous, insincere and extremely verbose. And it is this book 
 that the "vicar of hell" chose to translate, and it is his sole re- 
 maining literary output! 
 
 The book does, however, represent a tendency of the time. The 
 theory and to a measure the practice of Cardinal Bembo had placed 
 great stress upon the medium rather than on the matter in writing. 
 The Italians valued the number of possible ways in which the 
 thought might be expressed, rather than the thought itself. Con- 
 sequently the employment of a number of words became in itself 
 a virtue. The idea is racked on a framework of synonyms, com- 
 parisons, antitheses, any verbal cleverness. In Italian literature 
 this tendency is represented in the extreme by the religious works 
 of Pietro Aretino, books which were then applauded and which 
 seem so sacrilegious to us now. The worthy Bishop of Guadix 
 was an admirer, evidently, of the divagations of Aretino. Bryan, 
 through the French, brings this type of work to England. For- 
 tunately England was not ready for it. Or perhaps the troublous 
 times of the Regency and Mary did not dispose English readers 
 to the enjoyment of verbal ingenuity. And fortunately, perhaps, 
 Bryan himself died two years later, before his personal influence 
 was able to start the fashion. At any rate the book is " exceedingly 
 rare" now, and was apparently unknown to many of his contem- 
 poraries. 
 
 For the first hah* of the sixteenth century, therefore, Spanish 
 influence is very slight. Spanish authors, indeed, such as Guevara 
 and Vives, were read even in translations, but those authors them- 
 selves represented forces that were not typically Spanish. And 
 the language was not studied. Catharine Parr, for example, read 
 both of these men, and yet was unable to talk to the Spanish am- 
 bassador. Nor did the English ambassadors to Spain gain an in- 
 sight into Spanish literature. It is, therefore, appropriate that 
 
 1 Menosprecio de Carle, by M. Martinez de Burgos, op. cii., 21-22.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 381 
 
 the best known poem dealing with Spain in this period should be 
 Wyatt's epigram Tagus, fare well, 1 which expresses his love for 
 England. 
 
 The same difficulty that has been experienced in disentangling 
 the Spanish influence from the influence of Spanish human- 
 ism, is found in differentiating German influence from that of 
 German humanism. Naturally the northern countries felt the hu- 
 manistic impulse at approximately the same time. Therefore the 
 various presses of Europe poured out writings in Latin based upon 
 the great classical authors. In general, the main characteristics 
 of these are the same wherever found. 2 The glory of humanism 
 was that it was not bound by national limitations, and in conse- 
 quence appealed to an European public. The Utopia was read 
 widely on the Continent and the Colloquia in England was the most 
 widely read book of its age, the nationality of the author having 
 nothing to do with the case. In this concert of Europe, naturally, 
 the German writers took their part. Latin books by German 
 authors were read in England, as were Latin books by Italian, 
 Spanish, French, and Dutch authors. But such books were not read 
 because they gave the national point of view. In fact their appeal 
 to English readers was in inverse proportion to the expression in 
 them of their nationality. 3 For example the reason given by Pal- 
 grave for his translation of the Acolastus of Gnapheus is to teach 
 the Latin by means of English; the reason why that particular 
 comedy was chosen is 4 
 
 not only because I esteem that little volume to be a very curious and artificially 
 compacted nosegay, gathered out of the most excellent and odoriferous sweet 
 smelling garden of the most pure latin authors, but also because the author thereof 
 (as far as I can learn) is yet living, thereby I would be glad to move unto the hearts 
 of your grace's clerks, of which your realm was never better stored, some little 
 
 I The Poems of Sir Thomas Wiat, op. cit., i, 57. 
 
 I 1 have tried to suggest a differentiation between the southern and the northern 
 humanism on pp. 261-262. 
 
 1 The whole question of humanism has been treated in Chapter IV. Here this 
 point needs emphasizing because in the very valuable and very scholarly study of 
 C. H. Herford The Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Cen- 
 tury the sole background for English humanism i.s the German. And at the same 
 time with equal emphasis I wish to express my admiration for his work. 
 
 4 Palgrave's Epistle to the Acolastus, quoted by McConaughy The School Drama, 
 110.
 
 882 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 grain of honest and virtuous envy, which on my part to confess the very truth unto 
 your grace, hath continually in all the time of these my poor labors, accompanied 
 me, and stirred me onward to achieve this manner, in this wise by me attempted. 
 
 Or, this may be illustrated by the transformation of the Narren- 
 schiff into the Ship of Fools. 1 The one product of humanism that 
 both illustrates the German spirit and historically affected the 
 German peoples is the EpistoloB Obscurorum Virorum. Yet this 
 moved no English writer to imitation, although we know that it was 
 read and enjoyed in England. And in this connection it is a sig- 
 nificant fact that the first English translation of it is dated 1909. 
 The conclusion seems unavoidable that the German humanists 
 who affected England did so, not because they were German but 
 because they were humanists. 
 
 To us, familiar with the intellectual power of modern Germany, 
 this seems surprising. It is necessary to reconstruct our ideas. To 
 the gentlemen of the Court of Henry VIII, central Europe from the 
 North Sea to Switzerland and from the confines of Burgundy going 
 indefinitely east was vaguely labelled Almaine. Their knowledge 2 
 of the Flemish cities, with which they had business dealings, was 
 naturally more precise. In addition to these, the Rhine acted as a 
 great highway. And all the inhabitants of the vast central re- 
 gion indiscriminately spoke Dutch. This ignorance of Germany 
 and its people may be illustrated again by the various modifica- 
 tions of the Narrenschi/. In the chapter, Von unnutzen studieren, 
 the fool wanders abroad. As Brandt was teaching at Basel and 
 was writing in German, the universities mentioned are German. 
 
 So sint wir zti Lips, Erfordt, Wien, 
 Zil Heidelberg, Mentz, Basel gstanden. 
 
 Locher, writing in Latin but still at Basel, feels that the list is ade- 
 quate. But the Frenchman Droyn, writing for Frenchman, sends 
 his fool to Vienna, Erfurt, Orleans, Paris, Poitiers, Pavia, Padua, 
 Toulouse, Louvain, and Montpellier, and adds the fact that he 
 has seen the cities of Rome, London, Naples, Milan, and Avignon. 
 For Englishmen Barclay thus renders it. 
 
 One rennyth to almayne another vnto fraunce 
 To parys padway Lumbardy or spayne 
 Another to Bonony, Rome or orleance 
 
 1 P. 248-250. J Tyndale uses German as a substantive in 1530. N. E. D.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 383 
 
 To cayne, to Tolows, Athenys or Colayne 
 
 And at the last retournyth home agayne 
 
 More ignorant, blynder and gretter folys 
 
 I ban they were whan they firste went to the scolys 
 
 In deference to Brandt he mentions Almaine, but the only place 
 in Germany he thinks that his reader will know is Cologne ! 1 Po- 
 litically Germany was not important. It was divided into a num- 
 ber of small principalities, united loosely by the Holy Roman 
 Empire. Not until the Reformation, when there was a prospect 
 of uniting the Protestant princes in a revolt against the Emperor, 
 a policy that gave Anne of Cleves to the list of English queens, 
 did the German nation figure in the schemes of the English states- 
 men. Germany, in anything approaching the modern sense, did 
 not exist in the sixteenth century. 
 
 But from this it must not be inferred that there was no dealing 
 with the Germanic peoples. Quite the reverse is the case. The 
 great English export was wool, to such an extent that, in More's 
 opinion, by limiting agriculture it was harmful to the common- 
 wealth. This wool was largely taken by the Low Countries. Thus 
 the trade relations between Englishmen and the subjects of the 
 Emperor in northern Europe were very close. In London the 
 Steelyard, the home of the German merchants, was one of the great 
 associations, whose prosperity both Wolsey and Cromwell were 
 accused of cherishing at the expense of English interests. And at 
 the reception of Anne of Cleves the German merchants, each with 
 his servant, stood "fyrst nexte to the parke pale in the East syde." ; 
 In fact the commercial ties between England and the Empire 
 were so strong that the King had to reckon with them. War with 
 Charles meant the closing to English ships of the ports of Flanders, 
 with the consequent idleness, penury, and misery at home. Part 
 of Wolsey's undoubted unpopularity was due to his preference for 
 the French alliance, and Anne Boleyn was hated for more than 
 moral reasons. 
 
 With the two races thus brought closely into contact, the nat- 
 ural assumption is that the English literature of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury would be strongly marked by German influence. Actually 
 
 1 Written before 1508, Basel had not yet become famous through the Froebens. 
 1 Haift Chronicle*, ed. Whibley, op. cit., ii, 290.
 
 884 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the reverse is true. An occasional anecdote in a jest-book is bor- 
 rowed from German literature, occasionally an entire book is 
 translated and dies away in a single edition, 1 but the total is sur- 
 prisingly little. The reasons for this are so well summed up by 
 Professor Herford that his words shall be borrowed. 2 
 
 Whether, in this strict sense, Germany, in the sixteenth century, exercised 
 any 'literary' influence at all, is no doubt a 'question to be asked. ' To all appear- 
 ance, no European people was less qualified for the work. To the most strongly- 
 marked literary tendency of the time it gave almost no response. Everywhere 
 else the demand for elegance and harmony of literary form was being raised with 
 continually greater insistence and authority; in Germany, outside the sphere of 
 Humanists, it was a cry in the wilderness, which the most approved literary 
 orthodoxy ignored with impunity. The old court-poetry of Thtiringen and the 
 Upper Rhine was as completely forgotten as that of Provence, and had left scarcely 
 more palpable traces behind; nor did sixteenth century Germany, like France 
 and Spain, and even England, resume the broken continuity at a new point by 
 the aid of Petrarch. No school of Italianate versifiers endangered the popularity 
 of the Narrenschiff, or ruffled the industrious equanimity of Hans Sachs. To a 
 degree unparalleled elsewhere in Europe, literature had become plebeian. The 
 complete decay of the courts as centres of literary culture, a decay against which 
 only here and there a Mathilde of Wlirtemberg raised a forlorn protest, had 
 thrown literature into the hands of a bourgeois class not only itself lacking in the 
 old courtly graciousness and refinement, but indisposed by a century of life and 
 death feuds with the leagued nobility to revive its memory; and the antagonism 
 was heightened by internal revolutions, which, with rare exceptions (as at Nlirn- 
 berg), put every town in the hands of its least cultivated class. It was a litera- 
 ture of the workshop and the stall, a literature of men habitually familiar to 
 brutality, plain-spoken to grossness, drastic in their ridicule, ferocious in their 
 earnestness, not without sterling honesty, but wanting in the grace of good man- 
 ners, in chivalry, in subtle and delicate intellect. 
 
 In such a society the delicate and artificial forms of literature 
 have no place; its innate power finds expression in brutal plain- 
 speaking and in satire. 3 
 
 Yet from such a society came an influence that was to mould 
 English literature and English life from that day to this, the 
 
 1 Caxton's Reynard the Fox (1481) had a second edition 1489 (?) later. The 
 Parson of Kalenborow survives in a single slightly mutilated copy in the Bod- 
 leian. Herford, op. cit., 275. 
 
 1 Herford, op. cit., Introduction, xix-xx. 
 
 1 This phase has been so thoroughly done by Professor Herford that there 
 would be no gain in repetition. The literary values of the Reformation, how- 
 ever, with more discretion than has the present writer, he refuses to discuss.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 385 
 
 Reformation. Such a society, it may be argued, formed a virgin 
 soil peculiarly suitable to the growth of one dominating idea. 
 There was lacking the divergent pull of equal forces (to change 
 the metaphor) that rendered the humanism of Erasmus static and 
 not dynamic. 1 The whole force of the people could be directed 
 along one line. Again, the political condition of the Empire, its 
 division into a number of independent principalities, was advan- 
 tageous to the spread of the new doctrine. Whereas a strong cen- 
 tral authority, naturally inclined toward the old, would have had 
 both the power and the inclination to stamp out the heresy, as 
 was the fate of Lollardism by the constitution of the Empire it 
 was possible for Luther to win each individual unit separately; 
 thereupon, each unit won affected its neighbors. And lastly, 
 throughout their history, the Germans have shown themselves 
 susceptible to an intellectual appeal. With them conviction leads 
 logically to action. A brilliant theorist, like Treitschke, finds his 
 ideas transformed into deeds. For the sake of contrast compare 
 the attitude of the|ltalians towards an equally brilliant thinker. 
 There is very little question that Macchiavelli based the generali- 
 zations in // Principe upon the conduct of the princes around him. 
 Yet, even so, the book affected only the occasional individual; it 
 did not change the philosophy of the nation. The relations be- 
 tween the Medici and the Florentines show no marked influence 
 of one of the most brilliant books ever written. In Germany it is 
 quite otherwise. Luther, alone in his study, could energize a peo- 
 ple; his personality was powerful, because of the people behind 
 him, solely because of the people behind him. The feature of the 
 Reformation in Germany is the readiness of the German people 
 to respond to his appeal. 
 
 In comparison with the German Reformation that in England 
 seems confused and slow in movement. There was no great na- 
 tional impulse toward reform. The process continued through 
 the entire century and seems many times to have been determined 
 by external pressure rather than inward conviction. It is hard 
 to believe that the policy of either Henry or Elizabeth was more 
 than opportunist, yet each was a popular sovereign. Cromwell 's 
 ministry is described as a "reign of terror," but the most serious 
 
 1 Pp. 291-294.
 
 386 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 rebellion in the century, The Pilgrimage of Grace, was directed, 
 not against the king, but against his evil counsellors. To the 
 historian it seems a number of times as though Henry would lose 
 his throne, yet as a matter of fact he died peacefully in his bed, 
 just after having executed the Earl of Surrey and with the great 
 Duke of Norfolk condemned to death. Neither his worst acts 
 of tyranny nor the machinations of Reginald Pole could unite 
 against him an effective opposition. Nor on the other hand could 
 the reformers, even though led by the unscrupulous audacity of 
 Cromwell, force a continuous policy. It was in 1539 that Parlia- 
 ment passed the celebrated Act of the Six Articles, "the Whip 
 with Six Strings," by which in London alone five hundred Protest- 
 ants were indicted. As the external policy favored a rapproche- 
 ment with Spain, or dictated sympathy with the Lutherans, the 
 internal situation was adjusted. The result was continual vacil- 
 lation. 
 
 The composition of the nation was not uniform. Opinions 
 varied from that of Forrest, who believed in the Catholic dogma 
 and in papal supremacy, and was burned in 1538, to that of 
 Frith, who denied both the Catholic dogma and papal supremacy, 
 and was burned in 1533. Between these extremes there was every 
 shade of belief. And the divisions are not mutually exclusive. In 
 all probability the great majority of the nation accepted the doc- 
 trines and the teachings of the Church, but in many cases this was 
 modified by opposing conceptions. The most important of these 
 was the question of papal supremacy, with all which that implies. 
 This was the probable state of mind of the King himself. In his 
 book against Luther, Assertio Septem Sacramentorum 1521, he mus- 
 ters the traditional arguments in favor of the Catholic dogma. 1 In 
 spite of Luther's opinion that the author is Lee, there is little ques- 
 tion that Henry wrote it. Traditionally he was educated for the 
 Church, and he enjoyed theological disputes with Tunstall, Lee, 
 More, etc. The arguments therein used are neither very profound, 
 nor very convincing, nor necessarily original. He was speak- 
 ing for the Church and by the Church he was recognized as De- 
 fensor Fidei. But from this it does not follow that he was not sin- 
 
 1 This has been re-edited (1908),- with an introduction and critical apparatus 
 by Rev. Louis O'Donovan, S. T. L. and with a preface by Cardinal Gibbons of 
 Baltimore.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 387 
 
 cere. What he stated is what the immense majority of educated 
 men believed. And he continued to believe. The Act of the Six 
 Articles, eighteen years later, practically affirms the theological 
 positions of the Asseriio. So far as dogma is concerned, the evi- 
 dence is that Henry lived and died believing in the Roman Catho- 
 lic faith. 1 
 
 But there is part of the Assertio with which later the author 
 could not have been in such agreement. The first two chapters de- 
 nounce Luther in scathing terms for denying the authority of the 
 Pope. 2 It is to such passages that Roper refers in his life of More. 3 
 
 I will not wrong the Bishop of Rome 4 so much, as troublesomely, or carefully 
 to dispute his Right, as if it were a Matter doubtful. . . For he cannot deny, but 
 that all the Faithful honour and acknowledge the sacred Roman see for their Mother 
 and Supreme, nor does Distance of Place or Dangers in the Way hinder Access 
 thereunto. . . Truly, if any will look upon antient Monuments, or read the His- 
 tories of former Times, he may easily find that since the Conversion of the World, 
 all Churches in the Christian World have been obedient to the See of Rome. We 
 find, that, though the Empire was translated to the Grecians, yet did they still own, 
 and obey the Supremacy of the Church, and See of Rome, except when they were 
 in any turbulent Schism. 
 
 More had been summoned before the Councillors. 
 
 But in thende, when they sawe they could by no manner of perswasions re- 
 move him from his former determinacion, then beganne they more terribly to 
 touche him, telling him that the Kinges highnes had given them in command- 
 ment yf they could by noe gentleness wynne him, in his name with his great in- 
 gratitude to charge him; that never was there servant to his sovereygne so vil- 
 lanous, nor subject to his prince so trayterous, as he. For he, by his subtill syn- 
 ister sleyghtes most unnaturally procuringe and provokinge him to sett forthe 
 a booke of the Assertion of the Seaven Sacraments and maynteynance of the 
 Popes Auctoritye, had caused him, to his dishonor throughoute all Christen- 
 dome, to put a sworde in the Popes hande to fight agaynst himselfe. When 
 they had thus layed forthe all the terrors they could ymagine agaynste him, My 
 lordes, quothe he, these terrors be arguments for children and not for me. But 
 to answere to that wherwith you doe chieflye burden me, I believe the Kinges 
 highnes of his honor will never lay that to my chardge, for none is there that 
 canne in that poynte say in my excuse more to me then his highnes himselfe, 
 
 1 For the historical background the student is referred to A History of the 
 English Church in the Sixteenth Century from Henry VIII to Mary, by James Gaird- 
 ner. 
 
 1 0'Donovan's translation, op. cii., 202. 
 
 * Roper's Life, cd. Sampson, op. cit., 246. 
 
 4 For some reason the translation renders Pontifex by the phrase Bishop of 
 Rome; I haw not retained the italics.
 
 388 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 who right well knoweth that I was never procurer nor councellor of his majestie 
 thereunto; but after it was finished, by his graces appoyntment and consent of 
 the makers of the same, I was only a sorter out and placer of the principall mat- 
 ters therein conteyned. Wherin when I founde the Popes Auctoritye highlye 
 advanced and with stronge arguments mightily defended, I sayed unto his grace, 
 I must put your highnes in rememberance of one thinge, and that is this: the 
 Pope as your grace knowethe, is a prince as you are, and in league with all other 
 Christyan princes. It may hereafter soe fall out that your grace and he maye 
 varye upon some poyntes of the league, whereupon may growe breache of amitye 
 and warre betwene you bothe. I think it best therfore, that the place be amended, 
 and his auctoritye more sclenderly touched. Nay, quothe his grace, that shall 
 it not; wee are soe much bounden unto the See of Rome, that we cannot doe too 
 much honor to yt. Then did I further put him in remembraunce of the Statute 
 of Premunyre, wherby a good parte of the Popes pasturall cure here was pared 
 awaye. To that answered his highnes: Whatsoever impediment be to the con- 
 trarye, we will sett forthe that auctorytie to the uttermost; for we receyved from 
 that See of Roome our crowne Emperiall: which, till his grace with his owne mouthe 
 told it me, I never harde of before. 
 
 The contingency foreseen by More of course occurred. Henry, in 
 his desire for a legitimate male heir, wished a divorce from Kath- 
 arine of Aragon, in order to marry Anne Boleyn. This required 
 a papal dispensation. There was nothing unusual in such a re- 
 quest. Permission had been granted in analogous cases, to Louis 
 XII of France, to Suffolk, the King's brother-in-law, and to Mar- 
 garet, his sister. The factor that differentiated Henry's request 
 from the others was that it was Katharine's nephew, the Emperor, 
 that was all-powerful with the Pope. The latter therefore played 
 for time, appointed Campeggio legate to try the case, but withheld 
 from him the necessary authority, and protracted the trial. This 
 conduct, however natural under the circumstances, produced in 
 England results in two different ways. The King under the di- 
 rection, or, as it has been said, at the suggestion, of Cromwell, 
 assumed the headship of the English Church. By a clever but 
 unscrupulous legal fiction, that the clergy had been guilty against 
 the statute of prcemunire, he forced the Convocation both to pay 
 a fine and also to acknowledge his supremacy. In the second place, 
 the nation, as had been foreseen by Wolsey, was offended in its 
 national consciousness at having their sovereign cited to appear be- 
 fore a foreign tribunal. By skillfully fanning the jealousy between 
 the Church and the State, by stressing the imposition of the An- 
 nates and the injustice of the ecclesiastical courts, Cromwell was
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 389 
 
 able to manipulate the Commons. The result was to remove the 
 last constitutional barrier between Henry and despotism. This was 
 gradually accomplished through the decade. In his attack upon the 
 temporal power of the Church in England, Henry at least winked 
 at opinions theologically heretical. Until Tyndale attacked the 
 divorce, he was not persecuted; Barnes was encouraged to return; 
 and there is nothing unlikely in the story that Henry approved 
 of the Supplication of Beggars. We must grant with Lecky that 
 persecution does change opinions ; but to accomplish this the perse- 
 cution must be relentless and continuous. It is also true, however, 
 that persecution, by enabling the persecuted to prove their faith, 
 increases that faith. As Henry in his war with the Church was 
 forced at times to tolerate dissent, it is the latter that was accom- 
 plished in this reign. Consequently the spasmodic attempt to 
 suppress heresy was unavailing. 
 
 The term "heresy" must be understood to mean any opinion 
 not sanctioned by authority. In the sixteenth century the State 
 felt itself intrusted with the preservation of dogma, just as in the 
 twentieth the State feels itself intrusted with the preservation of 
 morality, and this belief was not peculiar to any one nation, party, 
 or creed. Frith's position, that belief in the doctrine of transub- 
 stantiation was the concern of the individual only, is an anachron- 
 istically modern note, quite at variance with the conceptions of the 
 age. The party of the heretics was necessarily composed of indef- 
 inite factions of many shades of opinion. Many of the " martyrs," 
 chronicled by Foxe, seem to the modern reader to belong to that 
 type which is constitutionally opposed to any authority. Some 
 of them call to mind the heretic, whipped by Sir Thomas More, who 
 manifested his zeal for reform by inverting women's skirts over 
 their heads as they knelt in church. In other cases, acts were com- 
 mitted that seem caused by hysteria, induced by the certainty of 
 horrible punishment. All this may be granted. But there was 
 more than this to the reform movement. Lollardism had died out, 
 but it had left at least a predisposition to criticise the Church. 
 Skelton's phrase, "lanterns of light," suggests a connection. 1 Hu- 
 
 1 The iMnthorne of Light was a Lollard publication; yet Skelton was certainly 
 a good Romanist. Cf. passage quoted p. 184. But the phrase was preserved without 
 its religious significance, since Puttenhain (Arber's Reprints, 76) uses it in a 
 purely literary sense.
 
 390 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 manism, also, as it had developed the rationalistic faculty, had 
 accomplished the same result. The attacks of Erasmus on the 
 clergy are as bitter as those of the reformers. 1 Moreover, the 
 Church was open to attack. With the Borgia or Julius II, as 
 Pope, and with Wolsey as Cardinal, religion as a spiritual force 
 was not strong. Granting that the abuses found in the Comperia 
 are grossly exaggerated by scoundrels for mercenary ends, if the 
 condition of the Church were as pure as its present apologists would 
 have us believe, we are confronted with the anomalous situation 
 that corruption in high places had left the lower ranks undefiled. 
 This is contrary to human experience in other matters, and it is 
 contrary also to the opinion of that age as expressed in literature. 
 And it is as much an error to assume that the purity of the Observ- 
 ants and the Carthusians represents the norm as it is to believe with 
 Bale and Foxe that the followers of the Church were a pestiferous 
 brood. Also it must be remembered that in the suppression of the 
 monasteries, an immense amount of property went into the hands 
 of the king and through him to the great nobles. Thus the ques- 
 tions of belief in certain dogmas was bound up together with prop- 
 erty rights among the lords and freedom from ecclesiastical taxes 
 among the commons. The result was that in opposition to the 
 Church the extremes were united, of men fired by a holy love of 
 purity and of men moved merely by a mercenary love of property. 
 
 The literary effect of such a condition was that the whole nation 
 was resolved into a debating union. Each side, firmly believing 
 in the justice of its cause, came into the forum of public opinion. 
 For the first time in the history of English literature the pros and 
 cons were argued at length. No longer was it a question, as with 
 Wycliffe, of answering by suppression. The printing-press had 
 nullified such measures, and the money spent by Tunstall to buy 
 up and destroy Tyndale's Bibles went only to pay for new and 
 better ones. 2 Forcible suppression was also tried, and also failed. 
 In 1521 Leo issued a bull ordering Luther's books to be prohibited. 
 Five years later Tunstall issued the proclamation against Tyndale's 
 New Testament. 3 
 
 1 Cf. p. 35-36. 
 
 2 The story is entertainingly told by Foxe, Acts and Monuments, fourth edition 
 (1583), p. 1019. Unreliable though he may be, Foxe is a mine of information 
 for the writers of this period. 3 Quoted by Foxe, op. cit. t 1017.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 391 
 
 By the duty of our pastoral office, we are bound diligently with all our power, 
 to foresee, prouide for, roote out, and putte away all those things, which seme 
 to tend to the perill & danger of our subiects, and specially the destruction of 
 theyr soules. Wherefore we hailing understanding by the reporte of diuers 
 credible persons, & also by the euident apparaunce of the matter, that many 
 children of iniquity mainteiners of Luthers sect, blinded through extreme wicked- 
 ness wandring from the way of truth and the Catholicke fayth, craftely haue 
 translated the new Testament into our English tongue, entermedling therwith 
 many heretical Articles and erronious opinions, pernicious and offensiue, seducing 
 the simple people attempting by their wicked & peruerse interpretations, to 
 prophanate the maiesty of the Scripture, which hetherto hath remayned un- 
 defiled, & craftely to abuse the most holy word of God, & the true sence of the 
 same: of the whiche translation there are manye bookes imprinted, some with 
 gloses and some without, conteining in the English toung that pestiferous and 
 most pernicious poyson dispersed throughout all our dioces of London in great 
 number: which truly without it be spedely foresene, without doubt, will con- 
 taminate and infect the flocke committed unto us, with most deadly poyson 
 and heresy, to the grieuous peril & danger of the soules committed to our charge, 
 and the offence of Gods diuine maiesty. . . . 
 
 Consequently under the pain of excommunication and of incurring 
 the suspicion of heresy all were urged to deliver up all copies of the 
 New Testament. During the years following appeared lists of 
 prohibited books, consisting of the works of Luther, Tyndale, Fish, 
 and the reformers generally. The constant recurrence of such 
 lists and the increasing length of them is a proof of the failure of 
 such a policy. The third method of combatting the growth of 
 heretical opinion is more interesting in its modernity. By a deed 
 dated March 7th, 1527, l More is given permission to read these 
 forbidden publications in order that he may reply to them in the 
 vernacular. Thus were the conservative forces in England mar- 
 shalled to repel the foreign invader. 
 
 Actually the majority of these works were foreign only in that 
 they were printed in Germany, and it may be granted in that Luth- 
 er's works had inspired analogous thinking. They were written by 
 English exiles, attracted there by the freedom from persecution, 
 but inflamed with love for their native land and with an intense 
 desire to see her in the right way. But they were not by any means 
 mere mouthpieces of Luther. On important dogmas they did not 
 hesitate to differ from him. Tyndale's position in regard to the 
 Sacrament is not the Lutheran consubstantiation, he regards it 
 
 1 Dr. A. I. Taft. the Apology of Sir Thomas More, dates this a year later.
 
 392 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 as being memorial only, and Frith's position is that it is a matter 
 for individual judgment. Nor even is the New Testament merely 
 a translation of Luther's. Tyndale used the Greek of Erasmus, the 
 Latin version of Erasmus, the Vulgate, as well as the Lutheran 
 version, although it is true that the glosses in the first edition are 
 verbatim translated from those of Luther. Consequently there 
 was no uniformity of doctrine. In fact this is one of the points 
 raised by More against the reformers, that on important questions 
 they differed so radically among themselves. Therefore, in speak- 
 ing of the Reformation movement as due to Germanic influence, 
 it must be remembered that it was principally the product of 
 Englishmen who for political reasons were living abroad. 
 
 As was apparent in the prohibition of Tunstall, the first and most 
 important of such works was Tyndale's version of the New Testa- 
 ment in English. 1 The appearance of this book in England gave 
 rise to the most important debate of the period, that between Tyn- 
 dale and Sir Thomas More. The assumption is sometimes made, as 
 for example by Swift in his Tale of a Tub, that the objection was 
 against any English version. But this is emphatically denied by 
 More. 2 
 
 Nor I never yet heard any reason laid why it were not convenient to have the 
 Bible translated into the English tongue; but all those reasons, seemed they never 
 so gay and glorious at the first sight, yet when they were well examined, they 
 might in effect, for aught that I can see, as well be laid against the holy writers 
 that wrote the Scripture in the Hebrew tongue, and against the blessed evangelists 
 that wrote the Scripture in Greek, and against all those in like wise that trans- 
 lated it out of every of those tongues into Latin, as to their charge that would 
 well and faithfully translate it out of Latin into our English tongue. For as 
 for that our tongue is called barbarous, is but a fantasy. For so is, as every 
 learned man knoweth, every strange language to other. And if they would 
 call it barren of words, there is no doubt but it is plenteous enough to express 
 our minds in anything whereof one man hath used to speak with another. Now 
 as touching the difficulty which a translator findeth in expressing well and lively 
 the sentence of his author, which is hard alway to do so surely but that she shall 
 sometime minish either of the sentence or of the grace that it beareth in the former 
 tongue, that point hath lain in their light that have translated the scripture al- 
 ready either out of Greek into Latin, or out of Hebrew in any of them both, as, 
 by many translations which we read already, to them that be learned appeareth. 
 
 I The standard biography of Tyndale is by the Rev. R. Demaus, M. A., pub- 
 lished for the Religious Tract Society. 
 
 I 1 am quoting the modernized version used by Taft, op. eit.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 393 
 
 So according to More, and he is the official mouthpiece of the 
 Roman Church in England, there is no reason in the nature of 
 the language why the Bible should not be translated. He feels, 
 however, that there may be a grave moral danger. 1 
 
 And also though Holy Scripture be, as ye said whilere, a medicine for him that 
 is sick, and food for him that is whole; yet sith there is many a body sore soul- 
 sick that taketh himself for whole, and in Holy Scripture is an whole feast of so 
 much divers viand that after the affection and state of sundry stomachs one may 
 take harm by the selfsame that shall do another good, and sick folk often have 
 such a corrupt tallage in their taste that they most like the meat that is most 
 unwholesome for them; it were not therefore, as methinketh, unreasonable that 
 the ordinary, whom God hath in the diocese appointed for the chief physician 
 to discern between the whole and the sick, and between disease and disease, should 
 after his wisdom and discretion appoint every body their part, as he should per- 
 ceive to be good and wholesome for them. . . . And thus may the bishop order 
 the Scripture in our hands with as good reason as the father doth by his dis- 
 cretion appoint which of his children may for his sadness keep a knife to cut his 
 meat, and which shall for his wantonness have his knife taken from him for cutting 
 of his fingers. And thus am I bold without prejudice of other men's judgment 
 to show you my mind in this matter, how the Scripture might without great peril 
 and not without great profit be brought into our tongue, and taken to lay men 
 and women both, not yet meaning thereby but that the whole Bible might for 
 my mind be suffered to be spread abroad in English. 
 
 That the danger, foreseen by More, of a divided Christendom was 
 real, the history of the succeeding centuries, even to the present 
 year of grace, is eloquent testimony. Such division, doubtless, 
 would have been avoided were the Scriptures to be read only under 
 expert advice, and by readers willing to accept the authorized in- 
 terpretation. So great a sacrifice of individual belief More himself 
 was willing to make, but clearly this was not the attitude of the 
 age. The spirit of rationalism demanded that the reasoning faculty 
 should be satisfied, and where the interpretations of the Church 
 were at variance with the new discoveries, since the Bible was in- 
 fallible, other interpretations must be found. Had the Church 
 been perfectly flexible, adapting its views to the expanding age, 
 More's solution might have been practical. Actually the Church 
 is the most conservative of all human institutions; it glories in 
 traditional points of view. And by the Copernican hypothesis the 
 rational explanation of the astronomical peculiarities in the valley 
 
 1 Taf t, op. eit.
 
 394 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 of Ajalon is quite different from the traditional one, based upon 
 the Ptolemaic system. The natural result of such a condition is 
 that More's supervising bishop would actually have been futile. 
 
 More, moreover, assumed that there is but one correct interpre- 
 tation of the Greek and Hebrew words, namely that sanctioned by 
 the Church. Tyndale naturally denied this and in his translation 
 used others. Equally naturally followed the condemnation of the 
 book and its spectacular burning. This was defended by More. 1 
 
 It is, quoth I, to me great marvel that any good Christian man having drop 
 of wit in his head, would anything marvel or complain of the burning of that 
 book if he know the matter. . . . But now the cause why he changed the name of 
 charity, and of the Church, and of priesthood, is no very great difficulty to per- 
 ceive. For sith Luther and his fellows, among other their damnable heresies, 
 have one that all our salvation standeth in faith alone, and toward our salvation 
 nothing force of good works; therefore it seemeth that he laboreth of purpose to 
 minish the reverent mind that men bear to charity, and therefore he changeth 
 that name of holy virtuous affection into the bare name of love, common to the 
 virtuous love that men beareth to God, and to the lewd love that is between fleck 
 and his make. And for because that Luther utterly denieth the very Catholic 
 Church in earth, and saith that the church of Christ is but an unknown congrega- 
 tion of some folk. . . having the right faith (which he calleth only his own new- 
 forged faith); therefore Hitchens (Tyndale) in the New Testament cannot abide 
 the name of the Church, but turneth it into the name of congregation, willing 
 that it should seem to Englishmen either that Christ in the Gospel had never 
 spoken of the Church, or else that the Church were but such a congregation as 
 they might have occasion to say that a congregation of such some heretics were 
 the church that God spake of. Now as touching the cause why he changed the 
 name of priest into "seniour", ye must understand that Luther and his adherents 
 hold this heresy, that holy order is nothing; and that a priest is nothing else but 
 a man chosen to preach, and that by that choice to that office he is priest by and 
 by without any more ado, and no priest again whensoever the people choose an- 
 other in his place; and that a priest's office is nothing but to preach. For as for 
 saying Mass, and hearing of confession, and absolution thereupon to be given, 
 all this he saith that every man, woman, and child may do as well as any priest. 
 Now doth Hitchens, therefore, to set forth this opinion withal, after his master's 
 heresy, put away the name of priest in his translation as though priesthood were 
 nothing. 
 
 Aside from the rather unpleasant implications, this passage is a 
 fan* statement of the case. It is merely the question of the conno- 
 tations of the words. Tyndale, in the Obedience of a Christian Man 
 and in the Wicked Mammon, consequently retorted that the words 
 
 1 More, Works 1557, The Dialogue, 220-522; modernized by Taft.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 395 
 
 church, charity, priest, etc., had become so perverted in their con- 
 notations by the conduct of the Catholic Church and her ministers, 
 that they failed to give the sense of the Scripture. And he illus- 
 trated his position by violent attacks against the Church. More 
 replied in the very lengthy Confutation in which the first of Tyn- 
 dale's positions was explained and answered. He based his argu- 
 ment for the traditional interpretation upon the doctrine of the 
 "unwritten verities," namely that while all in the Bible is true, all 
 that is true is not in the Bible, that the Christ transmitted to his 
 disciples knowledge not given in the Bible, and that they in turn 
 transmitted this knowledge to the fathers of the Church. Tyndale 
 of course objected, sneered at the "unwritten vanities," and be- 
 lieved that the councils had been called for the purpose of mak- 
 ing "every opinion, that seemed profitable, an article of the 
 faith." The reading of these tracts, and of others like them, filled 
 with abuse and sometimes billingsgate is, it must be confessed, 
 a dreary matter. A man's religion is not a matter primarily of in- 
 tellectual conviction, nor is he apt to be convinced by argument. 
 To the debate each brings his own preconceptions, and is very 
 honestly convinced by the pleader of his own side. Whether Our 
 Lord in giving the keys to Peter contemplated the historic develop- 
 ment of the Papacy is not a question open to a purely rational 
 solution. Consequently both More's English works and those of 
 Tyndale have been relegated to the libraries of the special student. 
 And however vital they may have been then, today they have 
 slight literary interest. It is pathetic to realize that the brain that 
 conceived the Utopia should have been employed in such a task. 
 And it cannot be truthfully said that the effect upon their contem- 
 poraries was commensurate with the labor. England became prot- 
 estant, not because Tyndale out-argued More, but because forces 
 other than spiritual swept the nation somewhat unwillingly in the 
 destined direction. 
 
 But this futility is not true of the original cause of the contro- 
 versy, Tyndale's translation of the New Testament. As with 
 slight modifications and rectifications it became the basis of all 
 subsequent renderings of the New Testament into English, it is 
 impossible to overstate the indebtedness owed to it by general 
 English literature. Tyndale's simple, idiomatic, and dignified 
 English, sounding in the ears of the child until that child had be-
 
 396 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 come an old man, and from one generation to another, set a stand- 
 ard to which all writers have conformed. It is preeminently the 
 link that binds the present to the past and, in space, holds to- 
 gether the far-flung members of the English race. l Even Shake- 
 speare has his seasons and lesser authors vary in corresponding de- 
 grees. It is only the Bible that, in all ages and by all peoples from 
 the king to the peasant, is read. Therefore as a literary force 
 Tyndale's version is one of the great factors in the development 
 of the race. 
 
 But aside from Tyndale's version, the products of the religious 
 controversy belong rather to the historian than to the student 
 of literature. For it must be remembered that the various 
 dogmas were not merely abstract speculations, but that they were 
 of intensely practical interest to the community. The doctrine 
 of "justification by faith" was far-reaching in English life. If 
 man were saved by faith alone, as Luther preached, "good works," 
 represented in the innumerable chantries, monasteries, convents, 
 were supererogation. This deduction did not fail to be drawn. In 
 1529 Simon Fish brought out his little tract, A Supplicacyon for 
 Beggers. 2 In only thirteen pages of modern type Fish succeeds 
 in effectively arraigning the clergy for their immorality and their 
 excessive wealth. Foxe is the sole authority for the two con- 
 tradictory stories of its introduction to the king 's notice by Anne 
 Boleyn and by two merchants. This, however, gives him the op- 
 portunity of crediting to Henry two diverse, but dramatic, scenes, 
 agreeing in the single particular that the reception was favorable. 
 Clearly, if such were the case, the favorable reception was due to 
 its contents, not to its literary qualities. Its cardinal merit is its 
 brevity, and perhaps the vigor of its invective. But also the effect 
 is due to the use of clever literary mechanism, which is given at 
 once in the first paragraph. 
 
 Most lamentably compleyneth theyre wofull mysery vnto youre highnes 
 youre poore daily bedemen the wretched hidous monstres (on whome scarcely 
 for horror any yie dare loke) the foule vnhappy sorte of lepres, and other sore 
 
 1 For an appreciation of the Bible as literature the reader is referred to Pro- 
 fessor Cook's presentation, Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. IV, 
 Chapter 2. 
 
 2 Reprinted as No. 4 in Arber's English Scholar's Library, 1878.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 397 
 
 people, nedy, impotent, blinde, lame, and sike, that live onely by almesse, howe 
 that theyre nombre is daily so sore encreased that all the almesse of all the weldis- 
 posed people of this youre realme is not halfe ynough for to susteine theim, but 
 that for verey constreint they die for hunger. And this most pestilent mischief 
 is comen vppon youre saide poore beedmen by the reason that there is yn the 
 tymes of youre noble predecessours passed craftily crept ynto this your realme 
 an other sort (not of impotent but) of strong puissant and counterfeit holy, and 
 ydell beggers and vacabundes whiche syns the tyme of theyre first entre by all 
 the craft and wilinesse of Satan are nowe encreased vnder your sight not onely 
 into a great nombre, but also ynto a kingdome. These are (not the herdes, but 
 the rauinous wolues going in herdes clothing deuouring the fiocke) the Bisshoppes, 
 Abbottes, Priours, Deacons, Archdeacons, Suffraganes, Prestes, Monkes Chanons, 
 Freres, Pardoners and Somners. 
 
 He then reckons their incomes, discusses their morals, and ends 
 by insinuating that they owe allegiance to another than the king 
 of England. Such briefly is "the most celebrated and perhaps 
 most dangerous attack against the religious orders made in the 
 early sixteenth century." But unless Abb6 Gasquet greatly 
 over-estimates Fish's effort, these superlatives are applicable 
 largely on account of the form employed. 
 
 This was answered in the same year by Sir Thomas More in the 
 Supplication of Souls. The form of this was obviously predeter- 
 mined by that of its predecessor in being a supplication from the 
 souls still in purgatory. Unfortunately it was by no means so 
 effective. Its very bulk (and it is ten times the length of Fish's 
 stinging little tract!) was against it. At length he refuted Fish's 
 calculations of the income and property of the clergy, and at 
 length justified the existence of purgatory. Actually, however, Sir 
 Thomas was here at fault. If the clergy were parasites, as Fish 
 assumed in his first paragraph, the exact amount of their depre- 
 dations was a matter of minor importance; any amount, however 
 small, was too much. And clearly, whether or not there be a 
 purgatory, if we are justified by faith, the efficacy of the ordained 
 clergy is strictly limited to the living. Fish died of the plague 
 the following year, and More tells us 2 
 
 But god gaue hym such grace afterwards, that he was sory for that good zele, 
 and repented hym selfe and came into the chyrche agayne, and forsoke and for- 
 
 1 Henry Vlll. and the English Monasteries, by Francis Aidan Gasquet, 1, 34. 
 'More's Apology, ed. Taft, op. tit., 123.
 
 398 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 sware all the whole hyll of those heresyes, out of which the fountayne of that 
 same good zeale sprange. 
 
 As Sir Thomas is both reliable and had access to sources of in- 
 formation closed to us, the fact need not be questioned; that this 
 conversion was owing to an intellectual conviction due to read- 
 ing the Supplication of Souls is, however, beyond the credulity 
 of the modern reader. 
 
 Of the many propagandist publications, which filled the air be- 
 tween 1530 and 1540, those we have been considering may be taken 
 as fair examples. The others, therefore, need not detain us. Like 
 all work written for a particular occasion they are interesting only 
 to those interested in that event. Just as, while thousands know 
 Gulliver's Travels and the Tale of a Tub, it is the chance student 
 only that knows the Conduct of the Allies, said to be the most 
 effective political pamphlet ever written. So here. The various 
 works have been forgotten with the disputes that called them forth. 
 There is one peculiarity, nevertheless, that deserves a passing con- 
 sideration, namely the predominance among them of the dialogue 
 used for polemic purpose. To so great an extent was this used that 
 it may be said that a new literary type was created. It is quite 
 true, however, that the dialogue had been a favorite form of the 
 Middle Ages, or rather, that the division between the dialogue and 
 the conflictus cannot be sharply drawn. 1 It is equally true that in 
 classical times it had been used for exposition, as in Plato, and for 
 satire, as in Lucian. In both classic and medieval times the 
 function of the work was literary. But when the nation was con- 
 fronted with the grave questions arising from the divorce, interest 
 in the purely literary was lost in the interest in thoughts, vital to 
 the well-being of each individual. Thus the author of the Utopia in 
 Latin spends his strength in the composition of works on local issues 
 and in English. Such a condition occurs but once more in the 
 history of the literature. Between 1640 and 1660 there was very 
 little pure literature produced, because of the intensity of in- 
 terest in actual events. Before that period Milton was writing 
 great poems; after that period he was writing great poems; but 
 for those twenty years he devoted himself to the composition of 
 tracts. These may or may not be of interest to the modern reader, 
 
 1 Chapter III, pp. 128-129.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 399 
 
 but clearly the interest is quite different from that aroused by 
 Paradise Lost. Analogous to this is the situation during the last 
 half of the reign of Henry VIII. The very tracts were written 
 with a passionate desire to convince. Under these circumstances, 
 it is noticeable that so many of them take the form of a dialogue. 
 When Starkey wishes to explain to the nation at large and to the 
 king in particular the attitude of Reginald Pole, he represents 
 him in conversation with Lupset. 1 When Thomas wishes to de- 
 fend the king's marriages, he describes a conversation between 
 himself and various Italian gentlemen. 2 When More wishes to 
 explain the Lutheran heresy of justification by faith, he is inter- 
 viewed by a messenger who represents a doubting friend and wishes 
 More's opinion on the matter. Without prolonging the list 
 of illustrations, it is evident that the dialogue form has been 
 pressed into the service of pamphleteering. 
 
 The reason for this literary fashion is not very clear. Professor 
 Herford seems to attribute it to the German influence. 3 Now, 
 while granting that the original impulse was derived from English 
 contact with German thought, the form seems rather to be de- 
 rived from humanism, and humanism via Erasmus. More, for 
 example, early had translated the dialogues of Lucian. Satire is 
 very close to attack, so that certain of the Colloquia read like work 
 of the reformers. And as the Colloquies were immensely popular, 
 when the reformers wished to attack, the form was ready to hand. 
 It is to be noted, also, that in proportion as the dialogue approached 
 the Platonic, rather than the Aristotelian, form of dialogue, it was 
 less suitable for party purpose. The Messenger in More's Dialogue 
 was felt to have expressed the heretical opinions rather better than 
 the heretics themselves could do. Even More himself seemed to 
 have been conscious of this and consulted advisors. But the liter- 
 ary flavor of Erasmus is exactly this, that all parties in the conver- 
 sation are human. Consequently the nearer the polemic dialogue 
 approached a work of art, the less the ' man of straw' was of straw 
 
 1 Printed in England in the Reign of Henry VIII, edited by J. M. Cowper for 
 the E. E. T. S. 
 
 1 The Pilgrim, ed. by J. A. Froude. 
 
 ' Literary Relation between England and Germany in the 16th. century, op. cit., 
 Chapter 2. The reader is referred there for a very thoughtful discussion of the 
 phenomenon.
 
 400 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 and the more he was human, in equal ratio was the work less 
 fitted for the purpose. Perhaps for that reason, after a vigorous 
 existence, the dialogue was surrendered to uses purely literary, and 
 the controversies at the end of the century, such as the Martin 
 Marprelate and the Nash-Harvey pamphlets take the form of the 
 personal essay. 1 The polemic dialogue remains a distinct and 
 curious development in the history of the literature. 
 
 As the Germanic element in the prose polemic dialogue is so 
 slight, in this vagueness a definite relation is welcomed. This is 
 to be found in Professor Herford's hypothesis that the Rede me 
 and be nott wrothe in part is a derivation from Manuel's Der kran- 
 kheit der Messe? It will be remembered that the Rede me is a 
 polemic dialogue in verse, the first part of which laments the death 
 of the personified Mass and discusses a suitable place for its burial. 
 Tliis conception, perhaps owing to the fact that it is at the begin- 
 ning, caused the poem, as we know from Sir Thomas More, to be 
 familiarly called the Burial of the Mass. In any case, it plays an 
 important part. But this idea seems logically to follow from the 
 immensely popular and very clever dialogue of Niclaus Manuel, 
 the Bernese poet. There the progress of the Reformation in Swit- 
 zerland is typified in the death struggle of the expiring Mass. And 
 it is followed by the last Testament of the Mass. As Strasburg was 
 so closely connected with the strife over the border, it is incredible 
 that so dramatic a situation, handled with so much power and 
 verve, should not have penetrated there. This may be, therefore, 
 the reason that Strasburg figures in the English work. We know 
 that Roy and Barlow were in Germany, just when Der Krankheit 
 der Messe was circulating. The assumption is, therefore, that "as 
 the most effective handle within reach for the elaborate assault 
 upon the English clergy which he (Roy) contemplated, he seized 
 upon it and then came the complaisant and industrious Barlow 
 to give form to his conception." 3 This assumption seems so plaus- 
 ible that one tends to accept it as fact. If it be accepted, it may 
 
 1 This must not be understood as implying that later the dialogue was never used 
 in this form. The Diotrephes (1588) and other works prove the contrary. Yet 
 in the second half of the century the occasional appearance of this type is merely 
 the survival of a past fashion; the usual form was the personal essay. 
 
 2 Cf. pp. 208-212. 
 
 J Herford, op. cii. 43.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 401 
 
 be regarded as epitomizing the whole subject of German influence. 
 When by chance an English author found something to his liking 
 in the German literatures, he simply appropriated it, incorporated 
 it into his own work, and gave it a strictly English setting. Con- 
 sequently there was no German influence as such; it is a record of 
 individual writers purloining the particular feature with which 
 their fancy had become enamoured. 
 
 The best illustration of this appropriation of German work on 
 the part of individuals is to be found in the works of "good" 
 Bishop Coverdale, and at the same time the best illustration of the 
 lack of literary interest. It must be always a matter of regret to 
 the conscientious student of literature that "good" as applied 
 to life and as applied to literature so rarely means the same ! So 
 many bad men write good books and so many bad books are writ- 
 ten by men whose intentions are exemplary. So often the life of 
 the great writer must be considered in the light of a warning to 
 youth, and so often the writings of the great and good must be re- 
 garded as models of what to avoid. To a certain extent these 
 trite meditations apply to the case in hand. Coverdale is a volumi- 
 nous writer, 1 but to a very large extent his works are translations. 
 Of these, one assures him fame, since he made the first translation 
 of the whole Bible into English. On the title page of the 1535 
 edition of this, the statement is made that it was translated "out of 
 Douche and Latin into Englische." Unlike Tyndale, he felt no 
 necessity for a study of the Greek and Hebrew originals. Perhaps 
 for that reason his sentences are more fluid than those of Tyndale 
 and some of his phrases have been retained in the Authorized Ver- 
 sion. With Buffon's statement in mind concerning the man and the 
 style, the contrast between Tyndale's life and work and the life and 
 work of his successor is inevitable, not to Coverdale's advantage. 
 
 But the effect on literature of either Coverdale's Bible, or any 
 of his numerous tracts, is indirect. They were to be judged, and 
 he wished them to be judged, for their religious value. Probably, 
 also, that was his attitude in the attempts at religious verse, his 
 Goostly Psalmes and Spirituall Songes. These are translations and 
 adaptations of Lutheran hymns, 2 as Bale lists Cantiones Wittenber- 
 
 1 Many of his tracts and the Goostly Psalmes have been reprinted by the Parker 
 Society. 
 
 1 The resemblance of Coverdale's hymns to the German was 6rst pointed out
 
 402 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 gensium among his works. And the date of issue must have been 
 before 1546, when, as is shown by the entry of Bishop Bonner, the 
 book was placed upon the prohibited list. Before that time Cover- 
 dale visited the continent at least twice. In 1529 Foxe, with con- 
 vincing detail, states that he was in Hamburg; 1 and after the re- 
 action in 1540 he again fled to Europe. As the Goostty Psalmes 
 was issued without any date, the time of publication and still more 
 the time of composition are purely inferential. 2 The case is com- 
 plicated by three factors, namely; first, that the number of hymn 
 books published both in High German and in the Plattdeutsche are 
 exceedingly numerous, so that it is difficult to determine even what 
 edition Coverdale used; secondly, that his own translations are 
 so free that it is sometimes impossible to decide which of two, or 
 three, hymns is his immediate original; and thirdly, because, ap- 
 parently, he occasionally also wrote with the Latin original in 
 mind. 3 It seems safer, therefore, to assume a dating around 1540. 
 The question of the dating, here, is by no means of mere aca- 
 demic importance, because to a large extent the accomplishment of 
 the purpose for which Coverdale undertook the work is affected. 
 His avowed aim was to substitute, for profane ballads, songs of 
 spiritual content. 4 
 
 by Professor A. F. Mitchell (The Wedderburns and their Work, 1867); in the 'Acad- 
 emy' May 81, 1884, Professor C. H. Herford gave his independent results; June 
 21, in the same publication, Mearns, then working on the Dictionary of Hymno- 
 logy, added to the number; June 28, Mitchell supplemented and criticised the 
 results; 1886, in Literary Relations Herford replied; 1887, H. R. Tedder (D. N. B. 
 article Coverdale) summarizes the controversy; 1892, Mearns published his list 
 in the Dictionary of Hymnology; 1897, Mitchell (The Glide and Godlie Battatis, 
 Scottish Text Society, pp. cxiv ff.) restates the whole matter. 
 
 1 Foxe, Actes and Monuments, ed. 1583, 1077. " Thus having lost by that 
 ship, both money, his copies and time, he (Tyndale) came hi another ship to 
 Hamborough, where at his appoyntment M. Coverdale taried for him, and helped 
 him in the translating of the whole 5 bookes of Moises, from Easter till Decemb. 
 in the house of a worshipfull widowe, Maistres Margaret van Emmerson, Anno 
 1529, a great sweating sickness being the same time in the Towne." 
 
 2 1 take pleasure in acknowledging the assistance given me by Mr. Walter 
 Abel, who is working on this problem. 
 
 * This may be illustrated by a comparison between the English rendering of 
 Christe Qui lux (Parker Society, Works of Coverdale, Remains, p. 584) and the Latin 
 and the German. As Mr. Abel has shown, quite clearly he used both versions. 
 
 4 Coverdale 's Remains, op. cit., 538.
 
 Seeing then that, as the prophet David saith, it is so good and pleasant a thing 
 to praise the Lord, and so expedient for us to be thankful; therefore, to give our 
 youth of England some occasion to change their foul and corrupt ballads into 
 sweet songs and spiritual hymns of God's honour, and for their own consolation 
 in him, I have here, good reader, set out certain comfortable songs grounded on 
 God's word, and taken some out of the holy scripture, specially out of the Psalms 
 of David, all whom would God that our musicians would learn to make their 
 songs; and if they which are disposed to be merry, would in their mirth follow 
 the counsel of St. Paul and St. James, and not to pass their time in naughty 
 songs of fleshly love and wantonness, but with singing of psalms, and such songs 
 as edify, and corrupt not men's conversation. 1 
 
 His pious purpose, however, failed of fulfillment. The book exists 
 in only one copy, 2 and there was no second edition until modern 
 times. The usual explanation of this fact is to be found in Cover- 
 dale's lack of lyric quality. Clumsy as are the hymns, this theory 
 will fail to satisfy anyone familiar with many of the popular ones of 
 our Protestant collection, where the lack of poetic feeling is com- 
 pensated by religious fervor. Apparently, the will is often taken 
 for the deed, and one may be truly successful in a hymn, in which 
 enough faulty rhyming, atrocious meter and vulgar phrasing are 
 combined to make a secular poem a hissing and a reproach. There- 
 fore, however sternly Coverdale's efforts may be judged as poetic 
 compositions, the reason for their failure lies elsewhere. The real 
 explanation is, I think, that they are a foreign importation, foreign 
 in both words and music. What Coverdale was trying to do was to 
 transplant bodily certain portions of the Kirchenlied. In this he 
 was attempting a task much more difficult than that of the original 
 authors. As is well known, the early Lutheran hymns were set to 
 tunes both secular and profane, well known to the German people. 
 To familiar melodies Luther set pale and colorless words with 
 phrases like trumpet calls. But these melodies were not familiar 
 to the English nation. Nor, it must be confessed, does Coverdale's 
 rendering faintly suggest a trumpet. The mere fact that he was 
 forced by his tune to maintain a definite form made his work la- 
 bored. Consequently the English public was confronted both 
 with strange music and strange verse forms. Even so, it is con- 
 ceivable that the attempt might have succeeded had not an Eng- 
 
 1 It is characteristic of the age, rather than of the man, that the good bishop 
 does not feel it m-cessary to say that they ure translations. 
 1 Coverdulc's Remains op. cit., 58.5.
 
 404 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 lish rival appeared upon the scene. Early in 1549, only a few 
 years after Coverdale's work was published, were printed nineteen 
 psalms of Thomas Sternhold. In December of the same year 
 eighteen additional psalms by Sternhold appeared, with seven by 
 Hopkins. This volume, increased little by little, went through edi- 
 tion after edition, and became the standard metrical version of the 
 Psalms. The reason for this preference is easily comprehensible 
 by a comparison between the two. For this I shall cite the first 
 two verses of the Second Psalm, Quare fremuerunt gentes. 
 Coverdale's version is as follows: l 
 
 Werfore do the heithen now rage thus, 
 Conspyrng together so wyckedly? 
 Wherfore are the people so malicious, 
 Vayne thynges to ymagyn so folyshly? 
 The kynges of the earth stonde up together. 
 And worldly rulers do conspyre 
 Agaynst the Lorde and his Christ truly. 
 
 They saye, Let us breake up theyr bondes, 
 
 And let us cast theyr yocke awaye; 
 
 Theyr lawes wyll make us lose oure londes, 
 
 Therfore none soch wyll we obeye. 
 
 But he that in heaven hath residence, 
 
 Shall laugh them to scorne and theyr pretence; 
 
 The Lorde shall mocke them nyght and daye. 
 
 Stemhold's version of the same Psalm runs as follows: 2 
 
 Why did the Gentils tumults raise? 
 
 what rage was in their braine? 
 Why did the Jewish people muse? 
 
 seeing all is but vaine? 
 The kings and rulers of the earth 
 
 conspire and all are bent : 
 Against the Lord and Christ his son, 
 
 which he among us sent. 
 
 Shall we be bound to them say they? 
 
 let all their bonds be broke: 
 And of their doctrine and their law, 
 
 let us reiect the yoke. 
 
 I Coverdale's Remains op. cit., 568. 
 
 I 1 am using the text printed by John Windet in 1601, not because it is good, 
 but because I happen to have it by me.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 405 
 
 But he that in the heauen dwelleth, 
 
 their doings will deride: 
 And make them all as mocking stocks, 
 
 thoughout the world so wide. 
 
 Now, irrespective of any poetic difference between these two, clearly 
 the second is more easily remembered. And whereas Coverdale 
 is forced by his tune into many involved stanza-forms, the Stern- 
 hold and Hopkins has always the same, and that very simple and 
 well known to the English public. Naturally, then, they preferred 
 the latter. The reason for Coverdale's failure is in the last analysis 
 due to the fact that he did depend upon German originals. Con- 
 sequently here also German influence upon English is found to be 
 of the slightest. 
 
 Before dismissing the discussion of the influence of the Germanic 
 literatures upon the English of the first hah* of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury there remains one more phase to be considered. Under 
 the stable government of the two Henrys, coincidently with the 
 decline of the feudal theory, came the rise of the middle class. The 
 merchants became a power, London a great center. State policies, 
 which formerly were directed in accordance with the wishes of the 
 nobility, now were modified by the flow of trade. So in literature, 
 also, this new class must be represented. As the knight found 
 his poetry in Hawes and his recreation in the chivalric romance, 
 and as the humanist turned toward More and Erasmus, so the 
 new merchant class read the jest-books. 1 In general they may 
 be divided into two quite clearly defined types. The first consists 
 of a miscellaneous collection of separate short anecdotes. This 
 main division is subdivided into three stages. The first of these 
 is represented by the Hundred Mery Talys, published in 1526 by 
 John Rastell, the brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More. 2 Here each 
 story has its separate title and closes usually with a moral appli- 
 cation. The addendum suggests the origin. Rastell modelled his 
 collection upon those used by medieval preachers to find illustra- 
 
 1 The best general discussion is in Herford's Literary Relations, Chap. V. 
 
 The general condition is outlined by F. W. D. Brie, Eulenspiegel in England, 
 Palaestra XXVII, 1903, and the special problem of the Eulenspiegel U treated with 
 masterly thoroughness. 
 
 '-"1'h is has been reprinted by Dr. Herman Oesterley, with sources and imita- 
 tions.
 
 406 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 tions for their sermons. 1 But he was not limited merely to the 
 medieval sources; he drew upon the humanists and apparently 
 even upon the life around him. This collection was so successful 
 that a second edition was issued. 2 The second stage is shown in 
 Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answers, published about 
 ten years later. 3 Here the moral application appears, but only 
 rarely. In addition to the tales gathered from the Renaissance 
 humanists, such as Poggio, 4 there are anecdotes, from classical 
 stories, "The Answer of Fabius to Livius, " "The Answer of Poltis 
 the King of Thrace to the Trojan Ambassadors," "The Wise An- 
 swer of Hannibal to King Antiochus, " etc. The trace of the medi- 
 eval origin has almost disappeared. It completely disappears in 
 the last stage, represented by the Sack Full of News, 5 registered in 
 1557. All pretense of either educational or moral value is gone, 
 and the anecdotes are presented at their face value, merely a suc- 
 cession of jokes told against members of the middle class. Although 
 they seem unspeakably dreary to us, there is no harm in them, and, 
 considering social conditions of the time, they are curiously free 
 from offense. In comparison with the humanistic facetiae such as 
 those of Poggio, or Morlini, the Italian novelle, such as those of 
 Bandello, or Fortini, or the French contes, such as the Cent Nou- 
 velles Nouvelles, or those in Le Moyen de Parvenir, they are sur- 
 prisingly moral. It must be granted that they are equally lack- 
 
 1 As a matter of fact, five of the hundred are taken from Bromyard's Summa 
 Prcedicantium, a compilation dating from the end of the fourteenth century. As Oes- 
 terley notes only five, Erie's expression "Wie in den H. M. T. Bromyard vor- 
 herrscht" must be understood only in general. 
 
 2 This is reprinted by W. C. Hazlitt in Shakespeare's Jest Books. As it is un- 
 dated, the question which is the first edition on this side of the ocean is unan- 
 swerable. Faute de mieux I accept Oesterley's opinion. 
 
 3 Reprinted by Hazlitt in Shakespeare's Jest Books. It is undated. I give 
 1535 as the date on the authority of W. W. Greg, Hand-lists of English Printers, 
 Bibliographical Society, Pt. Ill, 1905. I do not understand why Emil Koeppel 
 (Studien zur Geschichte der Italienischen Novelle in der Englischen Litteratur des 
 Sechzehnten Jahrhunderts in Quetten und Forschungen zur Sprach-und Cidturge- 
 schichte der Germanischen Volker Heft 70, p. 77) lists it dated at 1549. 
 
 4 Brie, op. cit., 77, lists seventeen tales from the Facetiae of Poggio. 
 
 5 This was reprinted by J. O. Halliwell, 1861, in an edition of forty copies only, 
 and by Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Jest Books. Hazlitt suppresses two which have 
 "no point" and are "too gross for publication." Unhappily they are all with- 
 out much point and about as gross!
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 407 
 
 ing in any conception of art. The good folk that laughed at them 
 were both honest and dull, living plain homespun lives, and find- 
 ing relish in the mistakes of their servants and jokes on farmers 
 and tradesmen. These stories mirror a fat-witted contented 
 world, without the elevation and emotional stress of high art, and 
 equally removed from the debauchery that attended it in the 
 Renaissance. This deduction seems sound from the fact that the 
 majority of these are translations. Although largely taken from 
 the humanistic Latin, yet as the source was unimportant to the 
 compiler, they are drawn also from the Italian, the French, and 
 the German. But as the French or German in turn had drawn 
 from the Latin or the Italian, the question of the original au- 
 thorship, or even the intermediary, becomes involved. And as 
 the English translator took his own where he found it, and re- 
 wrote it for his English public, it is also difficult even to do more 
 than point analogies. 1 Yet it is certain that for some of the 
 stories the German compilations constitute the immediate source. 
 The criticism against the books of this first type would be that, 
 as there is no connection between the anecdotes, the interest is 
 not cumulative. Obviously a means of increasing the inter- 
 est and of unifying the whole work would be to have all the an- 
 ecdotes center about one personality. Whereas in the first type 
 there would be three separate stories told of a butcher, a baker 
 and a candlestick-maker respectively, the second step would 
 be to have the same stories told, but all told of one person, 
 the Parson of Kalenborowe, or Till Howleglas, or Skelton, or 
 Scoggin, et al. Here each story becomes one manifestation of 
 the hero's activity and thereby contributes to a comprehension 
 of his character. 2 Such an idea of unifying the whole might 
 perhaps have come from the Renaissance versions of the medi- 
 eval conflictus between Solomon and Marcolf. Originally this 
 consisted in an interchange of antithetic gnomic sentences, 
 but through the ages this antithesis was extended from the 
 
 1 Herford notes certain of these. 
 
 1 This method differs from the conventional framework of the nacelle, where 
 a party of men and women, each in rotation, tells a tale. By this means an ap- 
 parent total unity is gained, although each story remains separate. As each 
 story does remain separate, each is necessarily carefully developed, the length 
 is increased, and much more conscious art is employed.
 
 408 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 opinions themselves to the characters of the men who uttered 
 them. Solomon became representative of the court and Mar- 
 coif of the peasant, who indulges in coarse practical jokes. In 
 this form in the Latin and the German it went through a large 
 number of editions. 1 This type of the legend appears in Eng- 
 lish, the Dialogue or communing between the wise king Salomon and 
 Marcolphus, translated from the Dutch and printed by Gerard 
 Leeu of Antwerp. 2 But also there was a French version in which 
 Marcolf 's rejoinders are always based upon the manners of pros- 
 titutes. And this was translated and printed by Pynson. 3 Con- 
 sequently in England there were not only the Latin copies accessi- 
 ble, but also two quite different versions in English. As the Ren- 
 aissance has shifted the emphasis upon Marcolf, and as in this 
 form the legend was so widely distributed, it is quite possible that 
 this work played a part in the development. 
 
 Whatever may be the hypothetical connection of the Salomon 
 and Marcolf legend with the change that we are discussing, the 
 main impulse can be clearly shown to have come from Germany. 
 But whereas a reading knowledge of Latin and, to a less degree, 
 French may be assumed for the English public of the sixteenth 
 century, the same assumption may not be made for the Germanic 
 dialects; in fact, although naturally the dialect would be familiar 
 in proportion as it was spoken by those having trade connections 
 with England, it was not generally read. 4 Consequently with any 
 German work, unlike the Latin, it is necessary first to show the 
 intermediary. Fortunately this is found in the work of Jan van 
 Doesborgh, printer at Antwerp between 1505(?) and 1530. 5 From 
 his press, between these dates, there are known twenty-nine def- 
 inite issues. The remarkable feature of this list is, however, that 
 fifteen of the items are of books printed in English, and still more 
 remarkable is the fact that the books printed by this Dutchman 
 in Antwerp are, not religious tracts as might be supposed, but 
 
 1 In Salomon and Saturn, London 1848, Kemble cites eighteen editions in the 
 Latin alone, about 1500. 
 
 * Edited by E. Gordon Duff, 1892. 
 
 1 Eight characteristic stanzas are quoted by Kemble, op. cit., p. 92. 
 
 4 This is evident from the rarity of words imported from the Teutonic dia- 
 lects. 
 
 6 Here I am indebted to Robert Proctor's Jan van Doesborgh Printer at Antwerp. 
 An Essay in Bibliography. London, 1894.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 409 
 
 pieces pertaining to general literature, such as a reprint of Cax- 
 ton's Longer Accidence, Robin Hood, or the novel Euryalus and 
 Lucretia of ;Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini. Most of them also are 
 translations, and naturally nearly half, seven of the fifteen, are 
 from the Dutch. The first, The Fifteen Tokens, is stated to have 
 been translated by Van Doesborgh himself. It is clumsily done, 
 and evidently by a foreigner. This is not true of most of the 
 others. They were written, if not by an Englishman, by one cer- 
 tainly perfectly at home with the language. In this connection 
 Proctor makes a fascinating suggestion that is unfortunately im- 
 possible to prove. 1 In the prologue to the Wonderful Shape we 
 are told that "Laurens andrewe of the towne of Calis haue trans- 
 lated for Johannes doesborowe booke prenter in the cite of And- 
 warp this present volume deuided in thre parts which was neuer 
 before in no maternall langage prentyd tyl now." But we find 
 this Laurence Andrewe in 1527 setting up himself as a printer in 
 London on Fleet Street, at the Sign of the Golden Cross, where he 
 printed five books, one of which is the debate between Somer and 
 Winter. 12 As Van Doesborgh printed six translations from the 
 Dutch in the years 1518(?)-1520(?) Proctor suggests that Lau- 
 rence Andrewe was his translator for at least five of them. Some 
 color is given to this surmise from the fact that in the first of his 
 books printed in England, a scientific work, he says -."After dyvers 
 and sondry small volumes and tryfles of myrth and pastaunce som 
 newly composed, some translated and of late finished, (I am) now 
 mynded to exercise my pene in mater to the reder som what more 
 profytable. " 3 If there be truth in this conjecture it was the sin- 
 gular fortune of one man to be the chief channel through which 
 Germanic literature entered England. 
 
 Of the translations some are merely from Dutch versions of works 
 in other literatures, and some clearly of only temporal interest. 
 Frederick of Jennen, of which there were apparently at least three 
 editions in England, purports to tell of a merchant's wife that lived 
 disguised as a man. Mary of Nemmegen is still more interesting 
 
 1 Proctor, op. cit., 19. 
 
 1 Cf. p. 128. In connection with this suggestion it would be interesting to 
 see whether the version of this old medieval conflictut did not come from the 
 Dutch. 
 
 1 Quoted from Tedder's article in the D. N. B.
 
 410 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 in that the heroine was the paramour of the devil for seven years. 
 There are two of these translations, however, that cannot be dis- 
 missed in this summary fashion. The Parson of Kalenborowe l is 
 the famous German collection of tales of the tricky Pfarrer Vom 
 Kohlenberg? It exists in a single copy and there was but one known 
 edition. It is a curious fact that the book that was welcomed both 
 in Germany and in France should have been so coldly received in 
 England. Certainly that is not true of the other equally famous 
 collection, namely the Eulenspiegel stories. 3 This was printed in 
 1519(?) under the title Tyll Howleglas* Fifty years later it was 
 reprinted, together with another of Doesborgh's publications, in 
 three editions (1559-ca. 1563) 5 and is a literal reprint with the 
 spelling and punctuation modernized. 6 Here then we have a def- 
 inite example of German influence. Doesborgh's volume was 
 still vital after hah* a century and through Copland 's reprinting be- 
 came absorbed into Elizabethan life. 7 
 
 1 There is some doubt whether this be an issue of Doesborgh's press. Proctor 
 (op. cit., 35) says: "It is remarkable that with the exception of a single cut, none 
 of the ornaments in this book are found in any other of Doesborgh's productions 
 at present known." Brie notes (op. cit., 5, note 4). " Ich selbst hege starke 
 Zweifel, ob das Buch (einziges Exemplar in der Bodl. Library) iiberhaupt aus 
 der Presse Doesborgh's geflossen ist, wie mir auch Proctor selbst seiner Sache 
 nicht recht sicher zu sein scheint." 
 
 2 The name of the parson gave the word calembour to the French language. 
 According to the N. E. D. it does not appear in English until 1830. 
 
 3 This in turn gave French the word espi&glerie which was not introduced into 
 English until Walter Scott. 
 
 4 The only remaining fragment has been reprinted by Brie (op. cit., 1261-38). 
 
 6 This dating, taken from Brie (op. cit., 9), is based on the typographical pe- 
 culiarities. 
 
 8 Reprinted by Frederic Ouvry in 1867 in a very small edition. He com- 
 bines two imperfect copies. To illustrate the close similarity I shall quote the 
 beginning of the wine-drawer episode in each version. Doesborgh (quoted from 
 Brie op. cit., 130) " On a tyme came Howleglas to Lubeke where is very strayght 
 Justyce And whyle yt Howleglas was there abydynge he harde tell of a wyne 
 drawer yt was in a Lordes seller that was very prowde and presumtyouse and 
 sayd that there was no man that culde deseyve hym or passe hym in wysdome. . ." 
 Copland (quoted from Ouvry op. cit., 52). "On a time came Howleglas to Lu- 
 beke, where is very straight Justice, & the while that Howleglas was then abidin, 
 he herd tell of a wine drawer that was in a lordes seler, that was very proud and 
 presumptuous. And it was sayd that there was no man that could deceiue him 
 nor passe him in wisdom. . ." 
 
 7 In the Bodleian copy, facsimiled by Ouvry, is a curious illustration of this in
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 411 
 
 Because the Howleglas was so much read, because it is the best 
 example of the type of literature introduced by Laurence An- 
 drewe(?), and lastly because it is merely the precursor of others, 
 an analysis of the book is here necessary. 1 The book purports to 
 be a compilation of the knavishness and falseness of one Howleglas, 
 who died in 1350. 2 It begins with his christening "in the land of 
 Sassen, in the vyilage of Ruelnige," gives an anecdote of him as a 
 child, as a boy, and as a lad, all in his native village. His mother 
 was glad that he was "so sottele and wyse" as he had apparently 
 shown himself in the previous tales, and suggests that he be appren- 
 ticed to a craft. But "Howleglas would euer fare well and make 
 good cheare but he would not work." He leaves home to wander 
 through Europe from the Baltic to Rome to avoid labor. If hired, 
 he plays some motiveless practical joke that causes him to resume 
 his wanderings. In this phase the usual method is to execute the 
 orders given him by his master literally. The shoemaker, for exam- 
 ple, tells him to cut the leather for shoes "little and great, as the 
 swineherd did drive his beastes," with the result that Howleglas 
 cuts the leather in the shape of the feet of beasts; when told to sew 
 the shoes, the great with the small, he sews them altogether; when 
 told to cut the shoes on one last, he cuts all the leather for shoes of 
 the left foot. He thus wins his discharge. Sometimes there seems 
 
 the form of a note. As I cannot decipher it, I quote Herford's Reading (op. cii^ 
 288, note). " This Howleglasse, with Skoggin, Skelton and Lazarillo, given to 
 me at London, of Mr. Spensar, XX. Dec. 1578, on condition that I would bestowe 
 the reading of them on or before the first of January immediately ensuing; other- 
 wise to forfeit unto him my Lucian in fower volumes, whereupon I was the rather 
 induced to trifle away so many howers as were idely overpassed in running thor- 
 owgh the foresaid foolish bookes; wherein me thought that not all fower togither 
 seemed comparable for false and crafty feates with Jon Miller, whose witty shiftes 
 and practices are reported among Skelton's Tales." Collier, who discovered it, 
 recognised it as the handwriting of Gabriel Harvey and thought it alluded to the 
 poet Spenser. I can do no better than quote Herford's comment: "In any 
 case it is a contemporary testimony, of some interest, assuming of course that 
 it is genuine, a proviso never quite superfluous where Collier is concerned." 
 
 1 For a discussion of the place of the English version in the whole Eulenspiegel 
 cycle, see Brie, op. cit., 47-08. The discussion of the relation of the English to the 
 German version of Murner (?) is irrelevant here. 
 
 * The historicity of the character does not concern us here. I am using the 
 Ouvry reprint of the Copland on the assumption that it fairly correctly supple- 
 ments the fragment of Doesborgh.
 
 412 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 to be some motive, that he is underfed, or in some way feels abused, 
 or is promised a reward, but often the prank seems to be done for 
 the pleasure of it. As after each performance he changes his sit- 
 uation, all classes of society from the duke to the peasant, from the 
 pope to the priest, pass in review. And after a lifetime of practical 
 joking, he dies and perpetrates his last prank by his will. 
 
 The avowed object of the collection was to promote merriment. 
 As Preface states it: "This fable is not but only to renewe ye mindes 
 of men or women, of all degrees from ye use of sadnesse to passe 
 the tyme, with laughter or myrthe, And for because ye simple 
 knowyng persones shuld beware if folkes can see. Me thinke it is 
 better no (to?) passe the tyme with suche a mery Jeste and laughe 
 there at and doo no synne: than for to wepe and do synne." The 
 very characters are represented as being highly amused and full 
 of admiration. "And when that the(y) knewe it then they re- 
 turned home laughing, and praised greatly ye falsenes and suttelty 
 of howleglas." l Now, of all forms of literary composition, works 
 intended for humor are not the least characteristic of the race and 
 age. In the other forms the writer may preserve a false appear- 
 ance; though ignorant, with a little skill he may appear learned, 
 though vulgar, he may ape elegance, and though base, he may 
 preach morality. And the reader, too, may buy the book from a 
 thousand motives. But when a man laughs he loses control 
 of himself, he flings dignity to the winds and shows his own 
 hidden nature. From this point of view the Howleglas be- 
 comes extraordinarily interesting, both for what it contains 
 and for what it omits. In comparison with similar collections 
 of the Latin countries it is strikingly free from the erotic ap- 
 peal. In the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles a large proportion of the 
 stories turn upon the erotic where man is frankly the hunter 
 and woman his game. But the Eulenspiegel came to England 
 originally from the Low Countries and in the English version 
 at least bears witness to a sturdy morality. 2 The English is 
 not at all obscene. But on the other hand it is incredibly and 
 indescribably filthy. A large number of the anecdotes are scatolog- 
 ical. Whatever point there may be seems to consist in the delight 
 in presenting coprolitic detail. In Mackenzie's edition (1860) the 
 
 1 The press work in the Copland editions is abominable. 
 *Cf. pp. 17-18.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 413 
 
 editor speaks of his interest in " the humourous quips and quiddi- 
 ties of the strolling vagabond," but later he confesses to a special 
 duty "viz., that of purification and modification, for it may readily 
 be believed that a book written of the fourteenth century, for the 
 sixteenth century, would abound with homely wit, not quite con- 
 sonant with the ideas of the nineteenth." But there is no ques- 
 tion here of time; it is a question of culture. There are classes 
 today who greet such anecdotes with approving roars, but they 
 are not to be found among the most cultured. So the natural de- 
 duction is that in the sixteenth century such classes formed a large 
 percentage of the readers. Rude and boisterous, the life deadened 
 their sensibilities. Their nerves required strong stimulus to cause 
 them to react. Stink is a good old English word that is now ban- 
 ished from polite society, together with the conditions it implies. 
 Both the word and the fact, as is shown by the Howleglas, were in 
 good standing in the sixteenth century. But they are not "im- 
 moral;" it is "healthy" dirt. On the other hand, if they lack the 
 cynical acuteness of the novella or the naughty cleverness of the 
 conte, it must also be confessed that they lack equally the narrative 
 art of either. The form, the expression, and the substance all 
 alike point to a coarse, uncultivated age. 
 
 Written as these stories were solely for merriment, I fail to see 
 any satire in them. Yet clearly they approach satire. The story, 
 for example, where the crowd collects to see Howleglas fly from the 
 roof of the town-hall only to be told that they are fools to believe an 
 impossibility, or the one of the painting invisible to all except those 
 of pure birth, 1 may be so construed, but, when read in connec- 
 tion with the others, the satire seems merely a bye-product. 2 
 It is almost invariably associated with this type of work. The un- 
 conscious effort of the author of the Enlenspiegel is to achieve 
 humor by showing reality. To do this he paints humanity in its 
 weakness, and stresses the frailty. Consequently the tone is mor- 
 dant and the scene disgusting. There is no elevation, there is no 
 
 1 This has been retold by Hans Christian Andersen. 
 
 1 Thia at least is my interpretation even in those stories dealing with the Church. 
 They were written long before the Reformation. Consequently when Howleglas 
 plays his prank upon the priest and his maiden or palms off an imitation rtlic, 
 there is no indignation at the state of affairs, but an attempt to extract humor 
 from accepted conditions.
 
 414 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 thrill in the reading and there is no desire to imitate. While the 
 chivalric romance may be absurd, there is a fine side to its absurd- 
 ity. On the other hand, while this presentation of life may be dis- 
 gusting, at least it does not shock. Exactly the same point of view 
 may be brought out by a comparison of the Dutch painters. A 
 drunkard by Jan Steen is not ennobling, and there is no satiric 
 effort on the part of the painter, but at least he has caught the vital 
 humanity. Or, to illustrate again, compare the possible treatment 
 of such a subject as the capture of Ganymede by the eagle with 
 that by Rembrandt. The painter might have chosen to bring out 
 the sheer beauty of the male form against the eagle's feathers, or 
 he might have developed repugnant eroticism; actually Rem- 
 brandt's Ganymede, in defiance of all mythology, is a baby, an 
 utterly terrified baby caught up by an eagle. And to show the 
 terror is added an unnecessary touch of realism. It is this love for 
 detail, so often repugnant, and so often vital, that distinguishes the 
 Dutch School, and that has caused such diversity of critical opin- 
 ion. Exactly the same condition is brought into English literature 
 by the translation of Howleglas. As such, it by no means lacks im- 
 portance. At a time when literature under the chivalric tradition 
 presented a life ideal, but out of sympathy with the needs of the 
 age, and when Petrarchan refinement was imposed upon a brutal 
 society, 1 here men found conditions portrayed with perfect frank- 
 ness and with perfect good humor. It is life seen from the under 
 side. Thus it contras <;s sharply with the dreamy idealism of Hawes 
 and the Platonic mysticism of Wyatt, and acts as a needed tonic. 
 Literature was brought down to earth by this brand made in Ger- 
 many. 
 
 The Howleglas thus performs the function of modern realism. 
 Brie is correct in terming it the first realistic novel in English. 2 One 
 personality dominates the whole. Occasional minor characters 
 reappear. Except that the short chapters remain undeveloped, 
 there is a structural similarity to the picaresque rogue stories. It, 
 therefore, is the germ from which much later sprang the novel of 
 indefinite number of incidents, held together by the bond of having 
 a single hero, such as Pickwick Papers. Of course it is the germ 
 only, but it took vigorous hold. During the second half of the cen- 
 
 1 Henry's love letters to Anne Boleyn show no Platonism. 
 
 2 Brie, op. tit., 72.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 415 
 
 tury a number of similar collections appeared, the merry tales 
 of Skelton, of Scoggin, of George Peele, of Tarleton, of Will Som- 
 mers, etc., etc. that bear witness to the popularity of the type. 
 Whether or not this genre might not have arisen spontaneously, 
 is beside the question; the fact is that both in conception and form 
 it came to England from Germany. 
 
 In reviewing as a whole the influence of the Germanic peoples 
 upon the English of the first half of the sixteenth century, among 
 the many vague and shadowy forms only two stand out with def- 
 initeness and distinction, Luther and the anonymous author of 
 the Eulenspiegel. The first impression of this union of Luther 
 and Eulenspiegel is one of horrified amazement. It seems sacrilege 
 to place them thus side by side, that there can be no quality com- 
 mon to them both, that it is a paradox. A second thought, how- 
 ever, gives one pause. Each in utterly different spheres was try- 
 ing to present the truth as he saw it. Before this, all distinctions 
 of caste and rank were as nothing. Money and reputation were 
 not considered. Each is, therefore, eminently virile. They lack 
 the grace of ornament and the power of phrase, academic distinc- 
 tions of form to such men seem trifling. They care only for the 
 essential. And, therefore, their readers to a large measure come 
 from the same class. Foxe's martyrs may be imagined taking their 
 pleasure in the rough foolery of the Howleglas, for there they 
 would find the same defiance of convention and the same hatred 
 of sham. The comparison must not be pushed far, but there is a 
 side in which there is a similarity, at least the reader feels that 
 they belong to the same nation. And this common quality, love 
 of truth, or courage of conviction, call it what you will is the 
 distinguishing mark of the influence of Germany on Tudor Eng- 
 land. 
 
 With Spain and Germany, as the investigator unconsciously as- 
 sumes that there will be no influence upon England, the danger is 
 that he will lose sight of what there is; in the case of France, the 
 danger is exactly the opposite, for of all the nations that have af- 
 fected England during her history France easily takes first place. 
 This is true also in the literary relationship. Literary movements 
 have so often crossed the channel, that the student of English 
 must reckon with France. No student of Pope can ignore Boileau 
 and no student of Hugo can forget Shakespeare. And in these
 
 416 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 literary exchanges it is usually France that has the advantage. 
 Particularly is this true as we go back to the early times. 
 Chaucer acknowledged a debt to the French, while his influence 
 upon the French is almost negligible. The idea that in France we 
 find the starting point for Tudor culture comes therefore inevit- 
 ably. 1 
 
 The first reason for such a conception is to be found in the juxta- 
 position of the two countries. When Brittany was joined to the 
 French crown by the marriage of Charles with Anne in 1491, the 
 French coast paralleled that of England for six hundred miles. Of 
 the three countries that geographically bound England, the ques- 
 tion of Irish influence may be dismissed. By Tudor England, Ire- 
 land was thought of very much as our grandfathers thought of the 
 Great West. English government and English law reigned spas- 
 modically in the Pale; beyond that was a wilderness of savages. 
 The time was not yet when even the Irish race was familiar with 
 its own literary heritage, and that English literature should ever 
 receive inspiration from the Gaelic would have seemed to them 
 incredible. Even Spenser in Ireland always turns his face toward 
 England. Although to a much less degree, the same situation holds 
 in regard to Scotland. The traditional enmity between the two 
 countries, which had been covered by the marriage of Margaret 
 Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII, to James the Fourth, flamed again 
 at Flodden Field. And the incessant forays on the Border, while 
 giving subject matter for ballads, merely intensified the general 
 feeling. The two countries were separated by a sort of no-man's 
 land. And as in addition English culture tended more amd more 
 to center at the court which was situated at London, Scotland was 
 very far away. Moreover the Scottish writers, Henryson, Dun- 
 bar, or Gawin Douglas, however individually brilliant, represent 
 derivatives from Chaucer. As such they brought no new impulse 
 into English, and in cases of similarity represent common inheri- 
 
 1 Sir Sidney Lee (The French Renaissance in England, 1910) has brilliantly 
 expounded this view, so brilliantly in fact that his work is not quite trustworthy. 
 His enthusiasm leads him to see a Frenchman hiding behind every bush. It must 
 be remembered that conditions in the last hah" of the century were different from 
 those in the first hah", and that therefore statements true of the second hah* do 
 not hold for the first. And it may well be that his extensive Shakespearean 
 studies have thus prevented him from considering early Tudor literature im- 
 partially.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 417 
 
 tance rather than literary interchange. 1 Consequently the near- 
 est neighbor to Tudor England lay across the Channel. And, al- 
 though the small vessels were unsafe for long journeys, travel by 
 water was then much more commodious, more expeditious and 
 less dangerous. Naturally from all the English ports to the cor- 
 responding ones on the French side there was a continual va-et- 
 vient. Still more, through the whole of this period (1346-1558) the 
 English owned Calais. Here in times of peace, and especially in 
 times of war, was a port of entry. A large English garrison was 
 stationed there, the commander of which, such as Lord Berners, 
 had the leisure to translate French books. Consequently, from 
 the very nature of the geographical relations of the two coun- 
 tries, the connection was intimate. 
 
 From this geographical situation a close historical relation- 
 ship naturally follows. This is so obvious that it needs no 
 insistence. The battles of Crecy and Poitiers and Agincourt 
 became national glories; on the French side, equally, Jeanne d'Arc 
 the popular national heroine. To Tudor England a foreign war 
 meant the invasion of France. And it is this possibility of the in- 
 vasion of France that is the keynote to the foreign policy of the pe- 
 riod. England 's value to Spain lay in this ability to hamper France ; 
 to France, that it freed her from the danger to her rear when she 
 was engaged with Spain. Consequently both the Tudor kings led 
 expeditions across the Channel, and both threatened many more 
 than they led. There were countless embassies to discuss state 
 policies. Gorgeously gowned envoys passed from capital to 
 capital. Of these the most striking is the celebrated interview 
 between Francis I and Henry VIII in 1520, the "Field of the 
 Cloth of Gold. " However futile from a political standpoint may 
 have been that meeting, or other functions that differed from it 
 only in degree and in gorgeousness, they must have served to bring 
 the great retinues of the contracting parties into close contact 
 socially. A large proportion of the English court must at some 
 time have been in France and have known Frenchmen person- 
 ally. An event, such as the marriage of Mary Tudor, the sister 
 of Henry VIII, to Louis XII of France, affected many more than 
 the bride. Not the least of these was one young woman destined 
 
 1 Brie, Skdton-siudien, op. cit., feels that he has shown a connection between 
 Skelton and Dunbar.
 
 418 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 to play a conspicuous role in the history and consequently the 
 literature of England, Anne Boleyn. With her alone in mind there 
 can be no question of the reality of French influence! 
 
 Much less dramatic than the career of Anne Boleyn, but much 
 more important in a discussion of the influence of French literature 
 upon the English, is the early history of the Duke of Richmond, 
 who in 1485 became Henry the Seventh. At the time of his as- 
 sumption of the English crown, he was twenty-eight. Of these 
 twenty-eight years the last fourteen, half his life up to that time 
 and those years the formative half, had been spent as an exile at the 
 courts of Brittany and of France. Leaving England at the age of 
 fourteen he had thus passed the whole of his young manhood under 
 French influence. Naturally as during this period his eyes were 
 turned always toward England these years did not make him a 
 Frenchman; equally naturally, however, they did predispose him 
 in favor of the French language and French literature. This con- 
 dition was recognized by Bacon. 1 
 
 He was rather studious than learned; reading, for the most part, books wrote 
 in French. Yet he understood Latin, as appears from hence, that Cardinal 
 Hardian, and others who were well acquainted with French, yet always wrote 
 to him in Latin. 
 
 This judgment seems to be borne out by facts. Although Hawes 
 was Groom of the Chamber, the chief court writer seems to have 
 been Bernard Andre, at least if judged by the payments made to 
 him, 2 and he seems to have been the official historiographer. 3 
 Andre is the blind French writer who is the only contemporary 
 authority for the history of the period. He seems to have also 
 taught at Oxford, and was the recipient of several pensions. His 
 French poems have all disappeared, except one incorporated in the 
 body of his Latin annals, and perhaps the anonymous Les douze 
 
 1 Francis Bacon's King Henry VII. 
 
 2 On New Year's Day 1506 he was given 100 shillings, a gift that was repeated 
 annually until 1521. 
 
 * The title of his Life of Henry VII reads Bernardi Andreae Tkolosatis Poetae 
 Laureati, Regii Historiographi . . Memorials of King Henry the Seventh, ed. by 
 James Gairdner in the Rolls Series. Speed is the first to make the confusion 
 between the academic degree of poet laureate in the case of Andr6 with the modern 
 office. All it means is that, like Skelton, he had taken the degree of poet laureate.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 419 
 
 triomphes de Henry VII. Consequently these two are interesting as 
 examples of the sort of literature encouraged at court. The same 
 trend toward French is to be seen in Henry's employment of Roger 
 Machado on the embassy to Spain and Portugal, when the re- 
 ports were written in French. And also his extensive patronage 
 of the Parisian printer Verard is a confirmatory detail. All this 
 merely tells what we should have deduced from Henry's personal 
 history. His long residence on the continent, as one would expect, 
 gave him both facility in reading the French language and an in- 
 terest in French literature. And equally naturally such an in- 
 terest would have affected the court circles. 
 
 The particular person in the court circle primarily affected by 
 this semi-French influence was the most influential one of the com- 
 ing generation, Prince Henry, Duke of York. Andre" was the tutor 
 to his brother Arthur, and may perhaps also have instructed him. 
 In any case Henry was brought up with a speaking knowledge of 
 French. 1 More to the point he apparently essayed French verse. 2 
 To judge from the specimens that survive there is no likelihood 
 of his having been a French poet; but the main point is that he had 
 the inclination. When a king writes French verse it is a safe as- 
 sumption that the courtiers follow suit. Thus there must have 
 been considerable French verse produced at the Court. Cornysshe, 
 the Master of the Royal Chapel, has two poems. And there was 
 a fashion of working in French lines as refrains, and French phrases. 
 Apparently this literary mannerism reflects only the actual habits 
 of the age. The personal rivalry between Henry and Francis 
 showed itself in magnificent embassies in which great numbers 
 participated. Wolsey went to France with a train of six hundred. 
 To build the meeting place of the Field of the Cloth of Gold three 
 thousand workmen were sent from England, and practically the 
 whole court attended the ceremony. A fair proportion of the in- 
 habitants of London, not merely of the Court, must have been fa- 
 miliar to some extent with the French language by having heard 
 it spoken in France. Therefore it is with no surprise that we read 
 that at the entertainment of the French ambassadors the ladies 
 
 1 Cf. p. 44. 
 
 'In Anglia 12, 31 Ewald FlUgcl has published the so-called "royal manu- 
 script" (Add. MS. 31022, British Museum), in which are found two French songs 
 by Henry himself.
 
 420 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 dancing with the strangers spoke French. 1 A quarter of a century 
 later Nisander Nucius states: "Les Anglois se servant presque tous 
 du langage francpis." 2 This is certainly an exaggeration. But 
 without multiplying illustrations ad nauseam, it seems certain that 
 French was quite generally known, probably very much as it is 
 today, in England. It was considered as a polite accomplishment. 
 But whereas today French is paired with German, then it was 
 paramount. After Latin, a speaking and reading knowledge of 
 which was essential to an educated gentleman, French without any 
 doubt was the foreign language best known. 
 
 The most obvious proof of this assertion is to be found in the 
 language used in the writing of the time. According to the pre- 
 cepts of Medieval Latin, it will be remembered, 3 the introduction 
 of a word from a foreign language was regarded as an ornament. 
 Scholastically of course such words were drawn from the Latin, but 
 in court circles a large number were taken from the French. Thus 
 Cavendish, for example, uses such phrases as "for his depeche" 4 
 "their hault brags," 5 although it seemed to others very "difficile" 5 
 and "puissant army." 5 With him the substitution of a French 
 word for its English equivalent imparts a noticeable piquancy to 
 his style. His mannerism is the more interesting because there is 
 no exigency due to the difficulties of meter or rime. The French 
 words are used for their own sakes. It is allowable therefore to as- 
 sume that in the poetry much the same is true. When Skelton, 
 for example, says 6 
 
 Your brethe yt ys so felle 
 And so puauntely dothe smelle, 
 And so haynnously doth stynke. . . . 
 
 he is consciously contrasting the elegant French with the homely 
 English for a comic effect. This use of French to express social 
 distinction may perhaps be better illustrated by Barclay since we 
 have the Latin originals for his Eclogues. JEneas Sylvius is dis- 
 cussing the fine white wheaten bread served to the master. 7 
 
 panem ante dominum niveum ac molli siligine factum aspicies . . . 
 
 1 Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, op. cit., 88. 4 Op. cit., 7. 
 
 1 Travels, Camden Society, 18. 6 Op. cit., 15. 
 
 Cf. section 4, p. 137. 8 Skelton, op. cit., 1, 124. 
 
 7 Barclay, Eclogues, 1, 863, 865. For these illustrations I am indebted to Dr. J. 
 R. Schultz, who has prepared an edition of the Eclogues.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 421 
 
 But for this bread there was no English equivalent. 
 
 When thou beholdest before thy lorde pein mayne. . . 
 If thou our manchet dare handle. . . 
 
 Still more curious is his line l 
 
 For lyse, for fleas, punaiaes, myse and rattes. . . . 
 
 Evidently the bed-bug had not yet been domesticated in England. 
 Clearly for certain nouns the French word was accepted, just as 
 for the table set by the king the usual term was bouche, or as Skel- 
 ton spells it, bowge. This does not show that the individual was 
 importing new words; the custom is too general. For certain 
 things either unknown in England, or associated with France, the 
 French expression was taken over bodily; other expressions were 
 current, when for variety or elegance the French was preferred 
 to the English. In other words, the condition then was similar 
 to that today. We use chauffeur or garage because the automobile 
 was first perfected in France, and we also use joie de vivre, bon 
 voyage, and respondez s'il vous plait for cultural or social reasons. 
 The great difference then and now lies in the fact that our vocab- 
 ulary draws upon so many languages, while then of the modern lan- 
 guages French was vastly predominant. And it is to be remarked 
 that, in contrast to the importations from the Latin, the French 
 words have failed to maintain their place. Either the condition 
 that caused them has disappeared, or the fashion changed. Con- 
 sequently the vocabulary of the first half of the sixteenth century 
 seems to a modern reader curiously Gallic. As such, it testifies 
 to the continual intercommunication between the two countries. 
 Up to this point our researches have yielded definite results. 
 But when we come to discuss the effect of French literature upon 
 the literature of England, the clarity yields place to confusion. 
 Theoretically in literature also, French influence should be at 
 least as evident as it is in the Chaucerian period, or in the Restora- 
 tion. Actually it is not. And the first reason why it is not is due 
 to the fact that the contemporary French literature itself was not 
 unified. There was no dominant critical theory with a definite 
 propaganda, as later is to be found in the Pleiade, in Malherbe, 
 or in Boileau. In France, as in England, it was a period of transi- 
 tion, during which at least three completely different types of 
 
 Barclay, op. cit 3, 78.
 
 422 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 poetry existed side by side, though not in harmony. And at 
 least two of the three affected the English. 
 
 The first of these three types of poetry corresponds to that de- 
 veloped in England by the scholastic tradition. In the discussion 
 of that l there was an attempt to show the development of the 
 Medieval Latin influence upon early English poetry, because, 
 owing to the change in the language, there was no literary con- 
 tinuity. The effect of these theories upon English so far as the 
 present purpose is concerned, was for a comparatively brief period. 
 But in France there was no such break. A theory of poetic com- 
 position naturally similar to the theories of the Medieval Latin was 
 gradually formed, by Deschamps, by Montmerqu6-Didot and 
 by Baudet Herenc. With the growing stability of the monarchy 
 under Louis XI, it would be natural to suppose that there would 
 be an increase in literary output and an increased interest in lit- 
 erary theory. Therefore it is not surprising to find Verard printing 
 such works. 2 In 1493 he issued the Art et science de rhethorique by 
 Henri de Croy(?) and in 1500-1503 the Jardin de Plaisance etfleur 
 de Rethoricque by an unknown, who signs himself L'Infortune. 
 This last was reprinted in 1504. Then in 1521 Fabri published Le 
 Grand et Vrai Art de Pleine Rhetorique, in which the last two are 
 drawn upon. 3 This in turn went through six editions. In Fabri, 
 then, will be found the most complete exposition of the theory of 
 the regular school, previous to Marot, Les grands rhetoriqueurs, 
 Meschinot, Molinet, Cretin, Jean Marot, and LeMaire de Beige. 
 Here this type had developed much farther than the corresponding 
 form in England. The emphasis originally laid upon form had 
 turned poetic composition into a game of verbal ingenuity. Brun- 
 eti&re thus questions them: 4 
 
 Already prosaic with Alain Chattier, poetry with these writers becomes pre- 
 tentiously didactic. Were they alive to the fact themselves; and, being unable 
 to make their poetry beautiful, was it for this reason that they made it " artificial " 
 by overloading it with infinite complications and regrettable ornament? 
 
 1 Chapter III. 
 
 z These bibliographical details are taken from Antoine Verard by John Mac- 
 farlane, printed for the Bibliographical Society, London 1900. 
 
 3 This has been edited with an introduction, notes and glossary by A. Heron, 
 Rouen, 1890. 
 
 4 Manual of the History of French Literature by Ferdinand Brunetiere, authorized 
 translation by Ralph Derechef, p. 32.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 423 
 
 The answer to the question is No! What Brunetiere considers 
 ornament, to them was the essential. Fabri gives elaborate rules 
 by which pleasing verbal curiosities may be produced. As a head- 
 ing to his chapter De plusieurs sortes de rithme, he lists rithme 
 leonine, rithme croisee, rithme enchainee, rithme de basse en- 
 chaineure, anadiplosis ou gradation, epanalepsis, rithme entre- 
 lachee, rithme annexe, rithme couronnee, rithme basse couronnee, 
 and rithme retrograde. Clearly it is the form and not the content 
 that is the object; that is, the writer did not desire to write a poem 
 on Spring in the form basse enchaineure, but he chose to write a 
 poem in the form basse enchaineure and the subject was immaterial. 
 As Fabri was judge at the great poetic competitions held at Rouen, 
 his point of view must be accepted as that commonly held. In 
 such competitions, held in the various literary centers, clearly it was 
 verbal dexterity that won the prize. Or in the numerous bouts- 
 rimes, where the test consisted in composing a poem with all the 
 riming words given, the same is true. But clearly this represents a 
 stage more advanced than that in England. Compared to this 
 elaboration the English writers are mere tyros. Nor is there much 
 possibility of French influence. The English scholastics normally 
 went back to the Medieval Latin; these French subtleties were 
 beyond them. 1 Consequently for the first part of Tudor literature 
 
 1 This is certainly true for the writers of the rime equivoque^ such as Cretin, 
 Jean Marot, and even Clement Marot in some of his early work. In poems of 
 this type the riming words are identical in sound, but differ in sense, a trick 
 in English called a pun and used only for humor. In these men the pun became 
 the basic principle of verse. Cretin "souverain Poe"te Francois," writes to the 
 Bishop of Glandeves (Lea Poesies de Gutilaume Cretin, Paris 1723, p. 245). 
 
 Si IPS escriptz que bons amys trans met tent 
 
 De moys en moys, & d'an en aultre an mettent. 
 
 Amour au cueurs de ceulx oil sont transmis 
 
 Pose encore qu' on y cut quatre ans mys; 
 
 Quant Poste arrive, & porte erre nouvelle, 
 
 L'affection, sans doubter, renouvelle, 
 
 Et au recueil n'entend, fors de viser 
 
 L'amy pensant & 1'amy diviaer, 
 
 Si que souvent en visitant la lettre, 
 
 Visiblement cuyde avoir 1'oeil a 1'estre 
 
 De sa presence, & croit ouyr le son 
 
 Du sien parler, qui retient pour lecon. etc.
 
 424 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the influence of French rhetorical poetry may be regarded as neg- 
 ligible. 
 
 The second type of poetry persisting in France in the early years 
 of the sixteenth century is the allegorical poem. The great medi- 
 
 Jean Marot also has poems of this sort (Oeuvres de Clement Marot el AugmenteSs 
 acec lea Outrages de Jean Marot son Pere . . . A la Haye 1781, Vol. 5, p. 286.): 
 
 Faux detracteurs & langues de lezars, 
 
 Qui de mesdire scavez trop bien les are 
 
 Pensez en vous, & vous trouverez que estes 
 
 Piresque nous, si bien faictes les questes: 
 
 Trop le demonstre vostre cueur faulx & lasche, 
 
 Qui sans cesser de mesdire ne lasche 
 
 Vous qui deussiez nostre honneur maintenir 
 
 A nous blasmer voulez la main tenir 
 
 Centre raison, car les droitz n'ont permis 
 
 Que nostre honneur soit de vous apart mis . . . 
 
 This desire for identity in sound led to the employment of the triple rime, so 
 characteristic of LeMaire. And the importance of this is that these writers are 
 the immediate predecessors and models of the brilliant Clement Marot as he 
 tells us himself. In Complainte V, dated 1543, the famous old Gallic poets are: 
 
 Adonques Molinet 
 
 Aux vers fleuris, le grave Chastellain, 
 Le bien disant en rithme et prose Alain, 
 Les deux Grebans, au bien resonnant stile, 
 Octavian, & la veine gentile, 
 Le bon Cretin aux vers equivoque 1 , 
 Ton Jehan le Maire, entre eulx hault colloque", 
 Et moy, ton pere. . . . 
 
 The natural result was that his early work shows their influence. In his Epistre 
 au Roy (dated by Guiffrey toward the end of 1517 or the beginning of 1518) he 
 shows what he can do : 
 
 En m'esbatant ie fay rondeaulx en rithme, 
 
 Et en rithmant, bien souuent ie m'enrime: 
 
 Brief, c'est pitte d 'entre vous, r i th mail leu rs, 
 
 Car vous trouuez assez de rithme ailleurs, 
 
 Et quand vous plaist mieulx que moy rithmassez: 
 
 Des biens auez & de la rithme assez: 
 
 Mais moy, atout ma rithme & ma rithmaille, 
 
 Ie ne soustiens (dont ie suy marry) maille. 
 
 Or ce me dit (un iour) quelcque rithmart; 
 
 Viens ga, Marot, trouues tu en rithme art 
 
 Qui serue aux gens, toy qui a rithmasse? 
 
 Ouy vrayement (respond ie), Henry Mace. . . . Guiffrey's ed.3, 21.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 425 
 
 eval representative of this is, of course, the Roman de la Rose. 
 From this as a convenient parent may be traced a formal literary 
 tradition in both countries. 1 Naturally there is a strong resem- 
 blance between these literary cousins, and still more naturally the 
 French poem would lend itself to translation. And, since the gen- 
 eral type was common to both languages, it needed only slight 
 adaptation to make the translation read like an original English 
 work. That this is not mere hypothesis is shown by the history of 
 the Castie of Labour. 2 Freed from assumptions, the facts are these. 
 
 In his epigram A un Nomm Charon he has an example of rime enchainee (quant le 
 terme equiuoque termine une ligne et iceluy terms equiuoquement pris recommence 
 la prochaine ligne, Fabri, 2, 41): 
 
 Mets voille au vent, single vers nous, Charon, 
 
 Car on t'attend: puis quand seras en tente, 
 
 Tant et plus boy bonum vinum charum, 
 
 Qu'aurons pour vray: donques (sans longue attente) 
 
 Tente tes piedz & si decente sente 
 
 Sans te fascher, ma is en sois content, tant 
 
 Qu'en ce faisant nous le soyons autant. 
 
 It seems quite clear that as the art in work, of which these are examples, is purely 
 verbal, it is not capable of translation. On the other hand the root of the man- 
 nerism is to be found in the Medieval Latin (ante, pages 124 ff). Conse- 
 quently, when in Tottel (132) we find the poem, 
 
 The lenger lyfe, the more offence: 
 The more offence, the greater payn: 
 The greater payn, the lesse defence: 
 The lesse defence, the lesser gayn. 
 The losse of gayn long yll doth trye: 
 Wherefore come death, and let me dye. 
 The shorter life, lesse count I fynde: 
 The lesse account, the sooner made: 
 The count soon made, the meryer minde: 
 The mery minde doth thought euade. 
 Short lyfe in truth this thing doth trye: 
 Wherefore come death, and let me dye. . . . 
 
 it seems an attempt to apply the old rules rather than copy the French. The 
 characteristic punning of the French verse is here completely lacking. 
 
 1 Cf. pp. 60 ff. for the English development. 
 
 1 The Cantell of Labour, translated from the French of Pierre Oringoire by Alexander 
 Barclay, reprinted in facsimile from Wynkyn de Worde'i Edition of 1506 with the 
 French text of 31 March, 1501 and an introduction by Alfred W. Pollard Edin- 
 burgh Privately printed for presentation to the Members of the Roxburghe Club,
 
 426 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 In October, 1499, a re-working of a fourteenth century poem, 
 Bruyant's Le Chemin de Povrete et de Richesse, was published by 
 Simon Vostre and printed by Philippe Pigouchet. This is signed 
 in the first verse of the last speech of the Acteur by Gringoire. This 
 was reprinted 31 December, 1499, 31 May, 1500, and 5 November, 
 1500, by Jacques le Forestier at Rouen. Thus at the opening of the 
 century there were three Parisian editions and one at Rouen. In 
 the next Parisian edition, 31 March, 1500-1, between the prologue 
 and the poem proper is inserted a long interpolation, (lines 74-655), 
 describing the education of the hero. Antoine Verard, who had 
 already enjoyed the patronage of the English Court, brought out 
 an English translation of this popular French poem, the Castle of 
 Labour. 1 This was reprinted in London by Pynson (c. 1505), by 
 Wynkyn de Worde 1506, and again by de Worde (c. 1510). 2 The 
 poem then was exceedingly popular with five editions in the original 
 French and four in the English translation. So far we are dealing 
 with facts. 
 
 Unhappily that is as far as the facts carry us! The English ver- 
 sion by Verard is both undated and unsigned. For the date there 
 is one indication. The long interpolation, (lines 74-655), although 
 the translation is usually close, in the English edition is omitted. 
 The probable inference is that it was made from one of the first four 
 of the French editions, i. e. before 31 March 1500-01, but it is infer- 
 ential, because considerations of which we know nothing may have 
 dictated the omission. If it be true, it places the date of composi- 
 tion not later than the year 1500. This date practically rules out 
 Alcock as a possible author as he died that year. 3 That a French 
 poem published as late as October, 1499, should have reached an 
 English bishop, be translated by him as he was dying, and be re- 
 turned to France, while not impossible, yet requires proof before 
 it be accepted. The other claimant is Alexander Barclay. Bale 
 
 1905. Sixty copies only printed. One is torn between gratitude towards the Rox- 
 burghe Club that their publications are printed at all, and irritation that the 
 editions are so limited that copies are almost inaccessible. 
 
 1 The fragments were identified by Mr. E. Gordon Duff. 
 
 J In the article on Alcock, D. N. B. Professor Mullinger mentions an edition 
 by de Worde 1536; this must be a misprint for 1506. 
 
 3 Professor Mullinger (article Alcock D. N. B.) states this on the authority 
 of Cooper, Athence Cantabrigiensis, ed. 1858, Vol. 1, pp. 3-4. I do not know 
 Cooper's authority.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 427 
 
 lists it among his works without comment or question. And 
 Pollard's attitude l ' The attribution of the translation to him 
 rests on the statement of Bale, which there is no reason to doubt' 
 expresses the consensus of scholarly opinion. 2 Yet a doubt arises 
 from the implication of his own words. In his dedication of the 
 Ship of Fools, 'translated the yere of our Lorde god, M.ccccc.viii,' 
 he says:' Opus igitur tue paternitati dedicaui: meorum primicias 
 laborum qui in lucem eruperunt* a statement that, if he were the 
 author of a poem which had just gone through four editions, would 
 be a gratuitous falsehood, unexplainable by any lapse of memory. 
 Moreover, as he was at that time serving as chaplain to the Thomas 
 Cornish 3 to whom the Ship of Fools is dedicated, such falsification 
 for the purpose of flattery would be a somewhat dangerous pro- 
 ceeding. On the other hand, Bale's method in compiling his lists 
 is seen in his autograph notebook, 4 taking the items which he 
 gathered from various sources and then striking out apparent 
 duplicates. The uncritical nature of this process in the case of 
 Barclay is shown by the fact that in the final result the Eclogues 
 appear four times as four separate works. That Barclay was the 
 author of the Castle of Labour is given in only one of the original 
 lists. Therefore in opposition to Barclay's own statement this 
 attribution rests upon the unsupported authority of "loannes 
 Alen," of whom we know nothing but that he is twice labelled "a 
 painter." So far as the external evidence of Barclay's authorship 
 be concerned, it is almost negligible. 
 
 Internal evidence is, of course, a more difficult question, since 
 the poem is a translation, quite exact when the difficulty of trans- 
 ferring a complicated stanza-form from French to English is con- 
 sidered. That is what is done here. The rime scheme of the origi- 
 nal is what is called in English the "Monk's Tale" stanza, from 
 
 1 Pollard, op. cit., xxxvii. 
 
 1 Bale has been followed by Dempster, Pitts, Wood, Warton, the Biographia 
 Britannica, Herbert Ames and Dibdin, Jusserand, Ward (in the D. N. B.) and 
 by the last edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. 
 
 1 Thomas Cornish had been Provost of Oriel College, Oxford, 1492/3-1507. 
 and Suffragan to Richard Fox and Hugh Oldham, Bishops of Bath and 
 Wells, with the title Bishop of Tyne 1480-1513. According to the Preface it is 
 on account of the latter dignity that the Ship of Fools was dedicated to 
 him. 
 
 4 Index Britannia Scriptorum, Oxford, 1902.
 
 428 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Chaucer's use of it there. 1 The lines are octosyllabic. In both 
 these respects the translator has followed his original. Naturally 
 although he is unable to preserve all in the French poem, he 
 makes a loyal attempt. The first two stanzas may be cited to 
 show his method. 
 
 Cotemplant vng soir a par moy 
 Euz d'ung prouerbe souuenance, 
 Que qui met vng fol a par soy 
 II pence de luy sans doubtance, 
 Et lors me vint en remembrance 
 Pensant a plusieurs dignitez 
 Que I'homme qui a suffisance 
 Met hors de son cueur vanitez. 
 
 Vous congnoissez bien que ieunnesse 
 Est tres dangereuse a passer; 
 L'ung vit en ioye et en liesse, 
 L'aultre taiche biens amasser. 
 On voit le ieune trespasser 
 Comme le vieil; mort nul ne lache, 
 Pour nostre cas bien compasser. 
 Aussi tost meurt veau comme vache. 
 
 In musynge an euenynge with me was none 
 An olde prouerbe came in me subuenaunce 
 A naturall foole in a house alone 
 Wyl make for hymself shyft or cheuysaunce 
 Than came in to my remembraunce 
 A cyrcunspect of many dygnytees 
 Fro whiche a man hauynge suffysaunce 
 Withdraweth his herte as fro vanytees 
 
 It is ay sene that youthes lustynesse 
 For to subdue is harde and daungerous 
 Some lyue in ioye/ pleasure and gladnesse 
 Fortune to some is ryght contraryous 
 Some dethe tacheth in theyr estate prosperous 
 Whome he ouerthroweth with his mortall blast 
 Thus goeth the worlde/ none is so curous 
 But other must he dye fyrst or last. 
 
 A comparison of these two passages shows clearly that the trans- 
 lator aims to transfer not only the stanza-form and the line, but 
 
 1 A curious fatality has followed this poem ! It is invariably described, if 
 at all, as having been written in seven-lined stanzas.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 429 
 
 even, when possible, the very words. 1 But this is very different 
 from Barclay's manner as we know it from works definitely his. 2 
 If this poem were certainly proved to be his work, it would be an 
 interesting speculation why he so completely changed his theory 
 of translation; as the external evidence is, on the contrary, slight, 
 such a change argues only that John Allen was mistaken, and after 
 him Bale, Dempster, Pitts, Wood, etc., etc. There can be no doubt 
 that Barclay is not the translator of the Castle of Labour. 
 
 But with the phantom Barclay laid to rest, the real question 
 comes to the fore, what is the significance of this poem as an il- 
 lustration of the influence of French literature upon the English. 
 To answer this requires a brief analysis. The ego of the poem, 
 while his wife is asleep beside him in bed, is visited by worries, 
 Poverty, Necessity, Distress, Thought, Heaviness, Discomfort, 
 etc., each personified. A beautiful lady, Reason, puts them to 
 flight, and tells him how to rout them. Then Wisdom comes to 
 give him good advice. Eventually he brings with him Good Heart, 
 Good Will, and Lust To Do Good. They lead him to Business, 
 who guides him to the Castle of Labour, after meeting Pain and 
 Cure. After working in the Castle, he returns to upbraid his wife, 
 first because she was asleep and secondly because she was of no 
 account anyway. Such is the substance of the poem. 
 
 From this digest we are at once conscious of the medieval quality 
 of the poem. As a matter of fact the version by Gringoire is only 
 a re-working of the poem written by Jehan Bruyant in 1342. 3 The 
 story seems medieval, for the excellent reason that it is medieval. 
 But so also is the form. Here is the dream-structure, the allegory, 
 
 1 Pollard, p. xl, comments on the scansion: "The modern reader who expects 
 to find all the lines of a stanza of equal length, or of different lengths arranged in 
 a fixed order, may look askance at the suggestion that Barclay normally uses 
 lines of four accents, but mixes with them (especially towards the beginning of 
 his poem) others of a slower movement with five. Yet this is what Barclay 
 found when he read Chaucer, as he must have/lone, in the editions of Caxton, 
 Pynson, or Wynkyn de Worde, and I believe that he accepted these alternations 
 as a beauty, and one which should be imitated." I question this. These lines 
 become octosyllabic by stressing the accents without regard to the syllables, 
 in accordance with the English adaptation of the principles of the Medieval Latin 
 Cf. pp. 145-147. The French at the close has a number of seven-lined stanzas 
 a characteristic faithfully followed by the English. 
 
 1 P. 849. 
 
 1 For Gringoire's indebtedness to Bruyant see Pollard, op cit., xxvii xxxiv.
 
 430 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 and the personification. This type of poem had persisted in Eng- 
 land for a hundred years. And to make perfectly evident that 
 the translator intended no innovation, instead of translating Grin- 
 goire's final^prayer, he added the conventional Lydgatian apology. 
 
 Go forth small treatyse I humbly the present 
 Unto the redera as indygne of audyence. . . 
 
 After this it is without surprise that we read there is "lacke of 
 eloquence," that he is following the steps of those who write "craft- 
 ely," but that his language is "rude" and that he has smelled 
 the "floures" of "parfyte eloquence." Aside from the fact that a 
 poem of this type was usually written in the rime-royal, there is 
 nothing to suggest that the Castle of Labour was not indigenous. 
 And this probably explains both its translation and its subsequent 
 popularity. Poems such as this were translated, because to the 
 readers they seemed English. They seemed English, because to 
 all intents and purposes they were indistinguishable from exactly 
 similar poems written in England. Consequently, except for the 
 occasional French word introduced, French influence on this 
 count, also, seems slight. 
 
 The third type of French poetry, like the second, derived 
 from the Roman de la Rose, in point of view, though not in 
 form. It will be remembered that the peculiarity of that 
 poem consists in its having been written by two poets and 
 with two antithetic points of view. The first part by Guillaume 
 de Lorris is the allegorical convention. From this come the vari- 
 ous allegorical poems already discussed, 1 of which the Castle of 
 Labour is a specimen. But the second author, Jean de Meung, 
 turned toward satire. Whereas the first part aims at beauty, the 
 second aims at brilliancy, and whereas the first is emotional, the 
 second is intellectual in its appeal. In all probability this com- 
 bination caused the poem to be so immensely popular. But in 
 England it was the first part only that had much effect. That had 
 been translated by Chaucer, and imitated, not only by him, but 
 also by his successors. During the fifteenth century English 
 writers for the most part took themselves and their work seriously; 
 their satire turns to preachments, and their attacks are heavy. 
 The high sententiousness of Lydgate does not lend itself to the 
 
 1 Chapter 2.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 431 
 
 flash of wit. The French origin of the Castle of Labour is indicated 
 by just this combination. In this case it is the medieval contempt 
 for woman, clearly humorous, since his troubles have been in a 
 dream. 
 
 And therefore my welbeloued wyfe 
 Consyder the payne and the trauayle 
 Whiche whyle ye slepte without stryfe 
 Ryght cruelly dyde me assayle 
 But now am I well without fayle 
 Syth I haue escaped this daungere 
 And in your presence may appere 
 
 My wyfe therof cared no thynge 
 But leughe me to derysyon 
 She scorned me and my talkynge 
 For were it wynnynge or perdycyon 
 It was to her all one conclusyon 
 For so she were serued at her desyre 
 She cared not yf I laye in the myre 
 
 She called me fole and cared nought 
 And was nere redy with me to fyght 
 She swore by god that her dere bought 
 She wolde make me remembre that nyght 
 Therfore I went toe bedde euen ryght 
 For the thre foted stole sore fered I 
 To chat with a woman it is but foly. . . . 
 
 This comic element took the form of a mock will in which the 
 testator bequeaths satiric legacies. The germ of this conception 
 is found in the Roman de la Rose l where the royal lover makes 
 his will and bequeaths his heart; 
 
 Ja' ne seront autre mi les. 
 
 The first definite example of the mock will in verse belongs to Eus- 
 tace Deschamps, where his lady is left to the cure, his old trousers 
 and shirt to the Grey Friars, etc. 2 Without enumerating the inter- 
 
 1 Roman de la Rose. ed. Francisque Michel. 1864, 28-31. 
 
 1 For this genealogy the reader should consult the edition of Le Petit Testament 
 of Villon edited with an elaborate introduction by W. G. C. Bijvanck; Colyn 
 BlowboU Testament, edited with an elaborate introduction by Friedrich Lehmeyer; 
 and the bibliography to Chapter V, Vol. Ill of the Cambridge History of English 
 Literature, compiled by Professor Harold V. Routh.
 
 432 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 mediate stages, it will be sufficient to recall the Grand and the 
 Petit Testament of Villon. These poems were so popular that, 
 between the first in 1489 and the edition of Clement Marot in 1533, 
 there were twenty separate editions. 1 As this conception spread 
 also into the Latin and into the Italian, it would be expected to 
 make its appearance in the English. This it does in a rather worth- 
 less jeu d'esprit called Colyn BlowboVs Testament, which existed 
 only in manuscript until published by Park in Nugce Poeticae, 1804. 2 
 The poem opens with a description of Colin Blowbol so ill from 
 drinking that he calls in the priest to make his will, wherein, after 
 various bequests, he founds an establishment, situated in the 
 stews of Southwark and with Mab Sloth as abbess, that shall be 
 devoted to drinkers. It was apparently written for the amusement 
 of a definite group, as certain names, Robert Otwey, Nicholas Ing- 
 lond, Robert Horsley, Robert Cure, William Copyndale, et al., 
 which, as they have no point in themselves, must have been given 
 significance by the fact that the persons were friends of the author. 
 Quite clearly also it must have been written hastily, as it changes 
 from the third to the first person without apparent intention. The 
 author attempts to bring it in line with the conventional form by 
 affixing the Lydgatian apology in rime-royal, although the poem 
 itself is in the heroic couplet. 
 
 Thow litell quayer, how darst thow shew thy face, 
 
 Or com yn presence of men of honest^, 
 
 Sith thow ard rude, and folowist not the trace 
 
 Of faire langage, nor haiste no bewt? 
 
 Wherefore of wysedom thus I councelle the. 
 
 To draw the bake fer out of their sight, 
 
 Lest thow be had in reproof and dispite. 
 
 Conventional as is this ending, after perusing the poem, the reader 
 feels that it probably represents the genuine feelings of the author, 
 or at least it should ! As the broken-backed line, the fourth in the 
 stanza quoted, suggests Lydgate, the date may be placed fairly 
 early in the century. Somewhat later is Jyl of Breyntfords Testa- 
 ment, where a long series of fools are each left the same insult. 3 As 
 
 1 1 am here quoting from the bibliography appended by Auguste Longnon 
 to his Oeuvres Completes de Francois Villon, Paris 1892. 
 
 2 It has also been published in Hazlitt's Early Popular Poetry of England, I, 
 92, and in an annotated edition by Lehmeyer, 1907. 
 
 3 Reprinted by Furnivall for the Ballad Society in 1871.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 433 
 
 this was printed by William Copland, it must have been issued 
 around the decade 1550-1560. The interesting feature of the poem 
 consists in the prologue written by Robert Copland. The tone here 
 is personal and familiar, and there is a perfect command of the me- 
 dium. Jyl of Brentford kept an Inn near Sion House. She was so 
 full of pastime that her name had passed into a proverb. Cop- 
 land had never understood it, until one day having met John 
 Hardlesay to have a drink of good ale at the Red Lion, the proverb 
 was quoted. On his return home he found an old scroll, ragged 
 and rent, antique, broken and defaced, in which the origin of the 
 proverb was explained. Later in a moment of despondency, 
 
 For recreacion I it toke, 
 
 To pas the tyme, ther on to loke; 
 
 And of trouth, oft in the redyng 
 
 It dyd styre me to fall on smylyng, 
 
 Consyderyng the prety pastyme 
 
 And rydycle ordre of the ryme, 
 
 The couert termes, vnder a mery sence, 
 
 Shewyng of many the blynd in-solence, 
 
 Tauntyng of thynges past and to come, 
 
 Where as my selfe was hyt with some; 
 
 And for that cause I dyd intend 
 
 After thys maner to haue it pende, 
 
 Prayeng all them that mery be, 
 
 If it touch them, not to blame me. 
 
 So, in guise of his own experience, Copland gives us the reasons 
 for the popularity, not only of this particular poem, but also for 
 all of its type. Primarily the appeal is to the sense of humor, but 
 there is satire intermingled. There is none of the acuteness, how- 
 ever, nor the unexpected reversal, found in Villon. The English 
 poem is straightforward, broad and coarse. In English there are 
 several more, 1 but, once the differentiating characteristics are 
 clear, they need not be discussed. It is clearly an English adapta- 
 tion of the French form. 
 
 To return a moment to the passage from the Romauni de la 
 Rose, another derivative is possible, namely the convention of 
 the dying lover bequeathing his all to his love. This is so normal 
 that the distortion from it seems due to the brilliance of Villon. 
 
 1 An analysis may l>e found in Lehmryer, op. cti.
 
 434 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Naturally in France a number of love poems were composed along 
 these lines. In English this is represented by a poem among those 
 of "Uncertain Authors" of Tottel's second edition, miscalled 
 The testament of the hawthorne. 1 In a pretty, but artificial manner 
 the poet gives directions for his funeral and his dying wishes. 
 
 And euen with my last bequest, 
 When I shall from this life depart: 
 I geue to her I loued best, 
 My iust my true and faithf ull hart, 
 Signed with the hand as cold as stone: 
 Of him that liuing was her owne. 
 
 The importance of this, as in the case of the mock-will type, is 
 that it shows the persistence of the medieval form in the midst 
 of the Renaissance movement. It must be again reiterated that, as 
 we have but a small part of the poetry presumably composed dur- 
 ing the reigns of the first two Tudors, a single specimen of a cer- 
 tain form probably indicates the existence of many that are at 
 present unknown. If this hypothetical condition be true, we 
 may find here a definite example of French influence. 
 
 The three forms of French poetry that have been discussed all 
 hark back to medieval conditions, that is, conditions quite differ- 
 ent from those at the opening of the Renaissance. In the tumult 
 and distress of the Hundred Years War, chivalry has been lost. 
 Jeanne d'Arc is the last great epic figure, and she was then, as 
 Gaston Paris dares to express it, an anachronism. 2 "While she 
 struggled and while she died, this 'gentil due d'Orleans' whom 
 she so ardently desired to free from his English captivity took that 
 captivity lightly enough, and, entirely occupied in polishing his 
 pleasing rimes, did not find time to send to his martyr a single po- 
 
 1 Tottel's Miscellany, Arber's Reprint, op. cit. 260. 
 The title comes from the first line, 
 
 " I Sely Haw whose hope is past." 
 
 As the poem has nothing whatever to do with the hawthorne, the word haw of the 
 line quoted must signify "a thing of no value" N. E. D. sb. 2, 2, in spite of the 
 fact that under 3 haw is given as equivalent to hawthorn with this particular 
 quotation cited. 
 
 * Gaston Paris, La Pcesie au XV Siede, Deuxieme Serie, 215.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 435 
 
 etic greeting. " In place of the old feudal age with its magnificently 
 impossible ideals, grew up a bourgeois society, stressing realities, 
 without the fine enthusiasms of the past, but also without its 
 foolishness. The poetry of such an age will lack great emotional 
 outbursts; its feet are too solidly planted upon mother earth. 
 There will not be the mysticism and the exaltation of great love; 
 marriage is a serious business and involves pecuniary considera- 
 tions. But there will be, on one side, an acute perception of ac- 
 tuality and a recognition of the individual in his relation to 
 society, as appears in the mordant phrases of Villon, and, on 
 the other, an artistic appreciation of the value of form, as is 
 shown by Clement Marot. There is nothing surprising in this con- 
 dition. A society such as this wishes its ideas clearly cut. Its dis- 
 like of sentimental vagueness, or emotional profundity, is equalled 
 by its horror of obscurity. There must be no romantic half- 
 lights. This merciless clarity entails a respect for form. In pro- 
 portion as the substance of a poem is of less consequence, the 
 presentation must approach an exquisite and elaborate perfec- 
 tion. In justifying the ways of God to man, Milton can afford to 
 disregard the adornment of rime; to celebrate a lady's glove in 
 blank verse would be ridiculous. On the other hand, as the mass 
 of literature is not employed in Miltonic justification, there is 
 space a-plenty for slighter effort and less ambitious attempts. And 
 for these there grew up the involved rime-schemes of the ballade 
 and the rondeau. As the names imply, here there is close union 
 with the music and the dance. Originally of popular origin, by the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century they had been appropriated by 
 the masters of verse technique. Villon's ballades are not the out- 
 pourings of unsophisticated genius; they are artistic masterpieces, 
 and the impression that they give of spontaneity is merely the 
 result of the supreme mastery of his art. But Villon is merely the 
 best known to moderns of a crowd of such writers. When one 
 considers the extreme technical difficulty of the form, it is re- 
 markable to find the large number of poets that can handle it 
 so well. And although in French the proportion of riming words 
 is greater than in English, yet it is surprising that English poets 
 did not attempt to render the ballade. Even Villon's Ballade des 
 Dames du Temps Jadis, which has challenged the skill of so many 
 of our modern poets, remained unimitated, although certainly
 
 436 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 it was easily accessible in the French. 1 As a general negative is 
 the most extreme of positive statements, I dare not risk the re- 
 mark that the ballade was not used in England, but it is a safe 
 position to assert that, when translated, usually the form was 
 changed into one more easily written. The process may be illus- 
 trated by Barclay's envoy to his fifty-first chapter of the Ship of 
 Fools, wherein the typically medieval subject of the inevitability 
 of death is celebrated. 2 
 
 O man that hast thy trust and confydence 
 Fyxed on these frayle fantasyes mundayne 
 Remember at the ende there is no difference 
 Bytwene that man that lyued hath in payne 
 And hym that hath in welth and ioy souerayne 
 They both must dye their payne is of one sort 
 Both ryche and pore, no man can deth refrayne 
 For dethes dart expellyth all confort 
 
 Say where is Adam the fyrst progenytour 
 Of all mankynde is he nat dede and gone 
 And where is Abell of innocence the flour 
 With adamys other sonnes euerychone 
 A: dredfull deth of them hath left nat one 
 Where is Mathusalem, and Tuball that was playne 
 The first that played on Harpe or on Orgone 
 Ilz aont tons mortz ce monde eat choce vayne 
 
 Where is iust Noy and his ofsprynge become 
 Where is Abraham and all his progeny 
 As Isaac and Jacob, no strength nor wysdome 
 Coude them ensure to lyue contynually 
 Where is kynge Dauyd whome god dyd magnyfy 
 And Salomon his son of wysdome souerayne 
 Where ar his sonnes of wysdome and beauty 
 Ilz sont ioutz mortz ce monde est choce vayne 
 
 Where ar the prynces and kynges of Babylon 
 And also of Jude and kynges of Israeli 
 Where is the myghty and valiant Sampson 
 He had no place in this lyfe ay to dwell 
 
 1 Before the edition of Villon by Marot in 1532, there had been twenty printed 
 editions. 
 
 2 Jamieson, op. cit., I, 268. As this is neither in the Narrenschiff, nor the 
 Locher, nor the Riviere, it must be either original with Barclay, or (what is more 
 probable) a translation from an independent French poem, to me, at least, un- 
 known.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 437 
 
 Where ar the Prynces myghty and cruell 
 That rayned before Christ delyuered vs from payne 
 And from the Dongeons of darke and ferefull hell 
 Hz sont toutz mortz ce monde est choce vayne. 
 
 Of worldly worayp no man can hym assure 
 In this our age whiche is the last of all 
 No creature can here alway endure 
 Yonge nor olde, pore man nor kynge royall 
 Unstable fortune tourneth as doth a ball 
 And they that ones pas can nat retoume agayne 
 Wherfore I boldly dare speke in generall 
 We all shall dye: ce monde est choce vayne. 
 
 Ryches nor wysdome can none therf ro defende 
 
 Ne in his strength no man can hym assure 
 
 Say where is Tully is he nat come to ende 
 
 Seneke the sage with Cato and Arture 
 
 The hye Arystotyll of godly wyt and pure 
 
 The glorious Godfrey, and myghty Charlemayne 
 
 Thoughe of theyr lyfe they thought that they were sure 
 
 Yet ar they all dede: ce monde est choce vayne. 
 
 Where ar the Phylosophers and Poetis lawreat 
 
 The great Grammaryens and pleasant oratours. 
 
 Ar they nat dede after the same fourme and rate 
 
 As ar all these other myghty conquerours 
 
 Where ar theyr Royalmes theyr ryches and treasours 
 
 Left to theyr heyres: and they be gone certayne 
 
 And here haue left theyr riches and honours 
 
 So have they proued that this worlde is but vayne. 
 
 So I conclude bycause of breuyte 
 That if one sought the worlde large and wyde 
 Therin sholde be founde no maner of dere 
 That can alway in one case suerly byde 
 Strength, honour, riches cunnynge and bcautye 
 AH these decay, dayly : thoughe we complayne 
 Omnia fert etas, both helth and iolyte 
 We all shall dye: ce monde est choce vayne. 1 
 
 A comparison of this poem on the same subject and similar in treat- 
 ment, Villon's Ballade des Seigneurs du Temps Jadis will show the 
 limitations of French influence in this type. Both are catalogues 
 
 1 It is surely unnecessary to remark that the eccentric punctuation has been 
 retained.
 
 438 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 of names. Yet Villon has condensed his into three stanzas and an 
 envoi of four lines. Barclay, in spite of his " brevity," requires 
 eight full stanzas. And whereas Villon for the total twenty-eight 
 lines employs but three rimes, Barclay in the English fashion 
 changes his rime with the stanza, although he suggests his French 
 original by retaining the refrain, even in the French words. The 
 inference seems to be that the English author is lacking the tech- 
 nical mastery to render the ballade form. But it is not fair to 
 attribute this inability entirely to Barclay's lack of skill. The 
 language, which in the hands of Chaucer had been shown to be 
 capable of elaborate riming, in the early sixteenth century was then 
 in a state of transition. A very possible reason, therefore, for 
 the lack of translations of the ballades is that the English language 
 was not then a sufficiently definite instrument. In any case, 
 whether the poets lacked the ability, or the language lacked the 
 capacity, the fact remains that the French ballade was not do- 
 mesticated in England. 
 
 But the ballade is but one of the forms. With the increasing 
 stability of the throne under Louis XI and his successors, poetry 
 responded to the social demand made upon it. Especially was 
 this true of the court circle. Pieces were written, brilliantly com- 
 pressed and clever in execution, that were suitable to whisper in 
 a lady's ear, or that would attract the attention of a king. Of 
 this type the poet par excellence was Clement Marot. 1 As the 
 son of his father he had a poetic inheritance. Although he began 
 his career with the allegory and verbal tricks of the older school, 
 he quickly adapted himself to his surroundings, so that his verses 
 mirror the gay, witty and licentious court of Francis I. Roman- 
 
 1 Aside from the sixteenth century editions that are difficult to procure here 
 in America, there are three well-known editions of the complete works, (a) 4 vols. 
 ed. by Pierre Jannet 1868-1872; unhappily the editor died before completing his 
 work, so that the last volume was brought out by d'Hericault, who had himself pub- 
 lished a selection of Marot in 1867. (b) the elaborate edition by Georges Guiffrey, 
 Vol. 2 in 1875 and Vol. 3 in 1881; unhappily he also died leaving these two vol- 
 umes as a torso. They include only the Opuscules and the Epistres. Up to 
 the point that Guiffrey carried it, there is adequate discussion of the problems, 
 but he carries it such a short distance. Therefore (c) the best modern (!) 
 edition is that of Lenglet du Fresnoy in 1731. This is in six volumes and con- 
 tains also the poems of Jean and Michel Marot. When possible I cite (a) the 
 Guiffrey, then (b) the Jannet, and lastly (c) the du Fresnoy.
 
 tic chivalric love has been replaced by gallantry. Since the 
 Petrarchan convention has not yet reached France, his attitude 
 is objective. The long diluted medieval poem, also, has been 
 supplanted by epigrammatic terseness, and the verbal play of the 
 Rhetoriqueurs by the flash of wit. For this, the old French stanza- 
 forms are handled en maitre. Before Clement Marot the rondeau, 
 for example, was a name loosely applied to a large number of 
 forms having little more than the use of the refrain in common. 1 
 Some of these forms are fantastic to the last degree, even to the 
 extent of writing enigmas in rondeau form. 2 The only essential 
 is the refrain. As Fabri defines it: 3 "Item he who wishes to make 
 a rondeau, must make it round, that is to say that he must nec- 
 essarily take care that the ends and the sentences of the half, or 
 last, clauses be so skillfully accommodated to the commencement 
 of the first clause that the first clause seems necessary to complete 
 the meaning, and yet that in themselves they be complete and 
 give perfect sense without the addition of the first clause. . . . "It 
 is this twofold aim, namely that the refrain must both be ap- 
 propriate in its place, and also refer back to the first of the poem, 
 that makes the rondeau so difficult to write. Rules for its com- 
 position abound. In the Jardin de Plaisancf, in rondeau form, 
 L'Infortun6 gives his directions: 4 
 
 Par et, pour, mats, donq, par, car, quant, 
 Ne se doibt rondeau commencer. 
 Qui ne scait son faict despenser 
 A bien conclurre et rimacer, 
 Ou de plat fauldra ou de cant. 
 
 Acteura seront celuy mocquant 
 Qui rondeau cuidera passer, 
 Sans bien rentrer et compasser. 
 Par et, etc. 
 
 l Cf. Recherche* sur le Vers Franfais au XV Riedc by Henri Chatelain, 1908: 
 Gaston Raynaud has published Rondeau et Autrcs Poesies du XV Siedc, 1889, 
 from a manuscript in the Biblioteque Nationale; there is also Charuons du XV* 
 Siede, 1875, by Gaston Paris. 
 
 1 Cf. Jean Marot's rondeau L'Homme dupe. 
 
 1 Fabri, op. cit., II, 63. 
 
 4 Quoted by Fabri, op. et/., II. 63.
 
 440 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Plusieurs s'abusent en peasant 
 Que rondeau soil bon pour rentrer, 
 Mais non chascun couplet porter 
 Doibt sens parfaict et suspenser 
 Clos et ouuert non suspensant. 
 Par et, etc. 
 
 Clearly the effect of such precepts was to make the rondeau a 
 purely artificial form. A perfect rondeau was not the result of 
 inspirational frenzy, but of careful deliberation in the choice of 
 both the idea and the expression. Consequently the widespread 
 use of such a form was to develop ability in poetic technique. This 
 is expressed by Clement Marot: 1 
 
 En un rondeau, sur le commencement, 
 Un vocatif, comme "Maistre Clement," 
 Ne peult faillir r'entrer par buys ou porte; 
 Aux plus scavans poetes m'en rapporte, 
 Qui d'en user se gardent sagement. 
 
 Bien inventer vous fault premierement, 
 L'invention deschiffrer proprement. 
 Si que raison et rythme ne soit morte 
 En un rondeau. 
 
 Usez de motz regeuz communement, 
 Rien superflu n'y soit aucunement, 
 Et de la fin quelque bon propos sorte 
 Clouez tout court, rentrez de bonne sorte, 
 Maistre pass6 serez certainement 
 En un rondeau. 
 
 These two rondeaux are interesting both in form and in content. 
 The first is of the "open" type, that is, the refrain is the whole 
 of the first line; the second, on the contrary is of the "closed" 
 type. The rime-scheme of the first is abbba abbR abbbaR; that 
 of the second aabba aabR aabbaR. This latter, a common form 
 in the 15th century, in the 16th century practically supplanted all 
 the others. While by no means peculiar to Clement Marot, his 
 preference for it probably established it as the form for the rondeau. 
 Probably also his practice established the rondeau convention. 
 First there must be a single conception. This must then be pre- 
 
 'Jannet's ed. 2, 127.
 
 sented simply, with no forced rimes and no superfluities, and 
 finally must be keyed by the refrain. But, aside from the refrain, 
 these are the characteristics of a great part of his work. These are 
 true not only of the rondeau, but of the etrenne, the dizain, the 
 epigram, etc. A clever idea neatly phrased is the ideal. There is 
 no great emotional outburst. It is preeminently social, and as 
 such is characteristic of the age. For the ladies and gentlemen of 
 the court he and, to a far greater extent, Melin de Saint-Gelais 
 wrote elegant trifles. To be sure, Marot is a good deal more than 
 that, his versions of the Psalms have a certain elevation of tone, 
 but the sense for form, for moderation, cleverness, such qualities 
 as these, rather than any fine frenzy, are the characteristics of his 
 work and that of his school. 
 
 But these are not the qualities that characterise the exuberance 
 of the Renaissance spirit ! Such calculated cleverness, such perfect 
 control, and such critical acumen are signs of a ripe maturity that 
 needs but a little to be over-ripe. From this point of view, Marot 
 and the school are rather the last of the medievalists than the first 
 of the moderns. In consonance with this conception is that fact 
 that he edited both the works of Villon and the Roman de la 
 Rose. It is not quite correct to say that he " overthrew " the Rh6to- 
 riquers; rather he developed out from them, for his aim, as was 
 theirs, was to please by his wits, only his natural good sense 
 gradually refused their verbal puerilities. Medieval, also, is his 
 attitude towards the classics. 1 His Greek seems to have been 
 secondhand and his Latin little more than a veneer. Born in the 
 provincial town of Cahors and brought up to speak the native 
 dialect, his energy was absorbed in learning French; Greek and 
 Latin went by the board. Naturally in the Court of Francois I er 
 one could not be completely ignorant of classical civilization, nor of 
 classical allusion, but the errors he makes show conclusively that 
 his knowledge of it was only superficial. This lack has been claimed 
 for him as an advantage. 2 But irrespective of the effect upon his 
 own work, such a condition is significant for its effect upon the lit- 
 
 1 Cf. De Faniilnii Clemenlit Maroli Poetae, Henricus Guy, 1898. 
 
 1 d'Hericault, op. cit., xxxiv. Marot le confessc, du reste "Si peu que je com- 
 prisse aux livres latins." II fait cet aveu avec humilit6. Pour moi, je n'hesite 
 pas a dire que cette quasi-ignorance de ('lenient Marot fut la grande cause de sa 
 gloire. II avoit mieux que le latin & apprendre; il avoit a cunnottrc la laiigue
 
 442 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 erature of his age. Rightly or wrongly, the current was setting 
 toward a revival of the interest in the classics that is characteristic 
 of the Renaissance. But in France this movement was retarded by 
 Marot. A comparison of his handling of the Hero and Leander 
 story with that by Marlowe illustrates how slightly he was touched 
 by the Renaissance. In his version there is none of Marlowe's pa- 
 gan sensuosity nor Greek love of beauty. The incidents are the 
 same; the impression completely different. But his mastery of the 
 language was so great that he gathered a school around him. The 
 result was that after his death, when the new movement came, it 
 came in a burst. In 1549 the Pleiade issued the Dejfense et illustra- 
 tion de la langue frangaise, in which the former theories and forms 
 were repudiated ; they illustrated the principles by a rapid publica- 
 tion of poems, and another age had begun. But this sudden change 
 is only explicable on the assumption that the new movement had 
 been accumulating until, figuratively, the dam burst. Thus French 
 literature of the first half of the sixteenth century, as dominated by 
 Marot and his school, was to a very large extent unaffected by the 
 new forces. 
 
 But in discussing the effect of the court poetry of France upon 
 the court poetry of England such literary tendencies need careful 
 consideration. For, a priori, there must have been some effect; 
 the exact amount of it is the baffling problem. Theoretically there 
 would have been a great deal. The personal rivalry between the 
 two kings, the interchange of embassies, and the natural emulation 
 of each court to outshine the other would seem to predicate rela- 
 tionships also literary. Hall tells us that certain courtiers, Carew, 
 Bryan, and others did carry to excess an imitation of French man- 
 ners. 1 Just at this time More was writing his epigrams, among 
 which is one In Anglum Gallicos Linguae Affectatorem. 2 
 
 Amicus & sodalis est Lalus milii, 
 Britanniaque nut us, altusque insula. 
 At cum Britannos Gallise cultoribus 
 Oceanus ingens, lingua, mores dirimant. 
 
 frangoise et a la limer: ce sera, comme il 1'indique, I'occupation du reste de sa 
 vie. 
 
 1 Quoted in full, p. 377. 
 
 2 Epigrammata Clarissimi Disertissimique uiri Thomae Mori Britanni ad 
 emendatum exemplar ispius autoris excusa. Basileam. Froben 1520, 45.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 443 
 
 Spernit tamen Lalus Britannica omnia, 
 
 Miratur, expetitque cuncta Gallica. 
 
 Toga superbit ambulans in Gallica, 
 
 Amatque multum Gallicas lacernulas. 
 
 Zoaa, locello, atque ense gaudet Gallico, 
 
 Filtro, bireto, pileoque Gallico, 
 
 Et calceis, & subligarc Gallico, 
 
 Totoque denique apparatu Gallico. 
 
 Nam & unum habet ministrurn, eumque Gallicum. 
 
 Sed quern (licet uelit) nee ipsa Gallia 
 
 Tractare quiret plus (opinor) Gallice, 
 
 Stipendii nihil dat, atque id Gallice. 
 
 Vestitque tritis pannulis, & Gallice hoc. 
 
 Alit cibo panio, & malo, idque Gallice. 
 
 Lahore raulto exercet, atque hoc Gallice. 
 
 Pugnisque crebro pulsat, idque Gallice. 
 
 In coetu & in uia, & foro, & frequcntia 
 
 Rixatur, obiurgatque semper Gallice. 
 
 Quid? Gallice illud? imo semigallice. 
 
 Sermonem enini (ni fallor) ille Gallicum 
 
 Tarn callet omnem, quam Latinum Psytacus. 
 
 Crescit tamen, sibique nimirum placet, 
 
 Verbis tribus, si quid loquatur Gallicis. 
 
 Aut Gallicis si quid nequit uocabulis, 
 
 Conatur id, uerbis licet non Gallicis, 
 
 Canore saltern personare Gallico, 
 
 Palato hiante acutulo quodam sono, 
 
 Et foeminee instar garrientis molliter, 
 
 Sed ore pleno, tanquam id impleant fabae 
 
 Balbutiens uidelicet suauiter 
 
 Pressis quibusdam literis, Galli quibus 
 
 Ineptientes abstinent, nihil secus, 
 
 Quam uulpe gallus, rupibusque nauita. 
 
 Sic ergo h'nguam ille & Latinam Gallice, 
 
 Et Gallice linguam sonat Britannican. 
 
 Et Gallice linguam refert Lombardicam. 
 
 Et Gallice linguam refert Hispanicam. 
 
 Et Gallice linguam sonat Germnnicam. 
 
 Et Gallice omnem, praeter unam Gallicam. , 
 
 Nam Gallicam solam sonat Britannice. 
 
 At quisquis insula satus Britannica, 
 
 Sic patriam insolens fastidiet suam, 
 
 Vt more simiir laboret fingere, 
 
 Et semulari Gallicas ineptias. 
 
 Ex amne Gallo ego hunc opinor ebrium. 
 
 Ergo ex Britanno ut Gallus csse nititur, 
 
 Sic dii iubete, fiat ex gallo capus.
 
 444 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 It would be natural to expect that by such courtiers as these the in- 
 fluence of Clement Marot, his predecessors and his disciples, would 
 be brought into England. This is supported by the appearance of 
 an occasional French song by an English writer, by an occasional 
 refrain, and certain verse forms. On the other hand, such French 
 influence by its very excess caused a reaction. Lalus may have been 
 a friend of More, as he states, but the tone of contempt through- 
 out the epigram scarcely supports the assertion. Nor was More 
 alone in his feeling, and the others did not expend their energy 
 in epigrams. As Hall tells us, in the passage cited, the opposition 
 became strong enough to banish these "kynges minions" from the 
 Court. In this whole affair Henry's attitude is puzzling. The 
 picture Hall paints of his "gentle nature" is rather at variance 
 with the usual view of his character. If, on the contrary, he re- 
 sented this banishment of his most intimate friends and the implied 
 criticism upon himself, the dislike of France, her language and her 
 customs must have been overwhelming. In line with this, although 
 it may be merely a coincidence, Cloked Colusyon, one of the villains 
 in Skelton's Magnificence, has two speeches in French. The ob- 
 vious conclusion seems to be that, while there were men at Court 
 who were enthusiastic imitators of Gallic culture, the majority were 
 not only not imitators, but in addition were even hostile. Outside 
 of the limits of the Court, owing to the great trade relations with 
 Flanders, French influence was still less. A part of the unpopular- 
 ity in London of both Wolsey and Anne was due to the French 
 alliance. French influence on English literature, broadly speaking, 
 must have been confined to a very definite and very limited circle 
 at the Court. 
 
 Although theoretically it is easy thus to define and limit French 
 influence, actually to produce poems in which such influence is 
 shown is a difficult matter. We are hampered by lack of data. To 
 recapitulate what has been said in another chapter, 1 it must be re- 
 membered that the printing press in England was still compara- 
 tively undeveloped, and that the writers of the court circle felt no 
 need of calling upon its aid to reach their very limited reading pub- 
 lic. An author moved by the moral impulse, such as Hawes, or the 
 desire to attack, such as Skelton, or the controversial spirit, such as 
 More, naturally published. Occasional leaflets, the Nut Brown 
 
 1 342 pp.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 445 
 
 Maid, for example, appeared, and of course longer prose composi- 
 tions whose very length forbade the effort of copying by hand. 
 But the time had not yet come when volumes of short occasional 
 verse were formalized in type. Nor was it necessary. The readers 
 for whom either Wyatt or Surrey wrote could easily be satisfied by 
 copies made by hand. Moreover, in an age of caste it is improbable 
 that the noble writers had the desire to bare their hearts before the 
 ignoble gaze of the London tradesman. 1 From incidental refer- 
 ences we know of a large number of authors whose works survive, if 
 at all, even yet in manuscript. 2 It is this condition that gives the 
 unique importance to the collection known as Totters Miscettany, 
 published in 1557, for to the majority of the Elizabethans the 
 poems included in it of necessity represented the work of the 
 whole of the court circle. Unfortunately we have absolutely no 
 knowledge why Tottel made the selection that he did. Appar- 
 ently it represents the poetry of the previous thirty years at least. 
 But as these years were years of rapid development, the Miscel- 
 lany is not homogeneous. It includes the work of Wyatt and that 
 of Surrey and Grimald, besides a miscellaneous aggregation 
 labelled "Uncertaine Authors." As there is a difference of almost 
 a generation between Wyatt and Surrey, the first period would be 
 represented in the work of Wyatt. 
 
 Some idea of the relation of Tottel's publication to the amount 
 of work composed may be gained by a comparison of his selection 
 in the case of Wyatt. By a rare chance we have what is recognized 
 by experts as Wyatt's autograph manuscript. 3 With this as a 
 
 1 Miss Foxwell in A Study of Sir Thomas Wyatfs Poems, London 1911, p. 8 
 says in regard to the Egerton MS: "That the poems were intended for publication 
 is evident from certain headings in the E Ms." If by publication be meant printed, 
 I doubt very much the correctness of the inference. Aside from Latin works 
 intended for an European public, there is no evidence that a single English author, 
 with the exception of those engaged in controversies, ever prepared his manu- 
 script for printing. 
 
 * A recent collection is Prof. Padelford's Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, in the 
 Belles-Lettres Series, Heath & Co., 1907. The student is referred to the bib- 
 liography there. 
 
 1 Brit. Mus. Egerton No. 2711, purchased in 1889; previously used (but modi- 
 fied) in Nott's edition of 1816; published unchanged by Ewald Fltlgel, Anglia 
 18-19. Fldgel accepts it as being autographic: Endlich sei noch bemerkt, das* 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt's handschrift einen Ziemlich ausgesprochenen charakter hat., 
 so dass es nicht mil zu grosser unsicherheit verbunden ist, seine hand festzustellen.
 
 446 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 basis, other manuscripts increase the number of poems to 191. 
 Of these, only 82 are printed in Tottel. On the other hand there 
 are 14 in Tottel that do not appear hi any manuscript. Conse- 
 quently of the total number of Wyatt's poems, 205, Tottel prints 
 less than one half, 96. Moreover as the text differs considerably, 
 the presumption is that Tottel did not use this manuscript. And as 
 the last entry here consists of the Psalms, still in an unfinished 
 state and with corrections in Wyatt's handwriting, the date is 
 clearly late. The conclusion seems to be that the Egerton manu- 
 script represents Wyatt's own version of his poems. If this be 
 true, why he omitted certain poems, now found in other manu- 
 scripts, has never been explained. In any case, we have a large 
 body of Wyatt's verse so that it is possible to arrive at definite con- 
 clusions. 1 
 
 Equally definite also are the facts of Wyatt's life. The publica- 
 tion of the Calendar of State Papers makes it possible to follow his 
 career year by year. 2 As it is unnecessary to make a biographical 
 excursus, the facts that concern us here are the following : Thomas 
 Wyatt was born, 1503; as his father had been a Lancastrian, he 
 was early connected with the Tudor Court; he received two degrees 
 from Cambridge before he had completed his eighteenth year; in 
 1526 he spent two months at the French court. Three months of 
 the following year he was in Italy; from 1528-32 he was at Calais, 
 apparently the greater part of the time holding the office of mar- 
 
 Anglia 18, 270. But he does not regard it as the best text because Tottel's is 
 "viel glatteren, poetischeren. " Until Tottel's text be proved authoritative, 
 personal preference must be disregarded. 
 
 1 The Poems of Sir Thomas Wiat, edited from the Mss. and early editions, by 
 A. K. Foxwell, M. A. (Lond.) London, 1913. As I am so much indebted to 
 this and to her Study of Sir Thomas Wyatt's Poems, London 1911, I here make 
 general confession. It is noticeable that in her later publication she has changed 
 the spelling of the name. However rational may be the latter form, as the name 
 has been spelled Wyatt for three centuries, it seems futile now to revert to the 
 other spelling. 
 
 2 It is unnecessary, but very human, to express the gratitude every student 
 of the period feels toward this publication! It gives us the facts. These have 
 been gathered by W. E. Simonds in his little book Sir Thomas Wyatt and his 
 Poems, 1889. Professor Simonds' work is limited (a) by the lack of the Egerton 
 MSS.; and (b) by the fact that the Calendar was then brought up only to the year 
 1536. So far as he can go, he quotes the original entries. Miss Foxwell merely 
 summarizes.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 447 
 
 shal; after five years in England, in 1537 he was sent as ambassador 
 to Spain; the following year he was again sent to meet the Emperor 
 at Marseilles; 1539 finds him at Blois with the French Court, 1540 
 in Flanders with the Emperor, 1541 again at Calais. And he dies 
 in 1542 while on another embassy. The mere recital of these dates 
 shows him to have been extraordinarily exposed to foreign in- 
 fluences. 
 
 Definite as is the text and definite as are the facts of his life, dif- 
 ficulty arises when we try to put two and two together; unhappily 
 they do not make four, but x! * Given a poet with such oppor- 
 tunities, the natural expectation would be that his verse would 
 show signs of foreign influence. And as he spent approximately 
 four years at Calais, a place, at least in the case of Lord Berners, 
 favorable to literary composition, two assumptions seem plaus- 
 ible; (1) that a certain amount of his work was done there, and (2) 
 that the work done there would be that in which the foreign influ- 
 ence appears most strongly. Unfortunately, however plausible, 
 these are only suppositions. During this time Clement Marot had 
 become recognized as the dominant French poet. Although his 
 first collected volume, L 1 'Adolescence Clementine was not published 
 until 1532, the poems certainly had circulated before, and even 
 had been printed. 2 Again the natural supposition would be that 
 in the works of Wyatt would be found traces of Clement Marot. 
 
 Such traces would be shown either in form or in content, or in 
 both. Wyatt's poems are indexed under the headings rondeaux, 
 sonnets, epigrams, satires, the Psalms, and miscellaneous poems. 
 So far as merely the form is concerned, the sonnets, satires and 
 psalms may be rejected, leaving French influence to be shown in 
 
 1 This is illustrated by the different dates assigned to individual poems by 
 Professor Simonds and Miss Forwell. The latter believes that the poems in 
 the Egerton MS. are in chronological order of composition. Then by making 
 certain poems refer to definite events it is possible to give "approximate" dates 
 for the entire set. But apparently the order is casual, since later Wyatt himself 
 sorted them into groups. If he had to take the trouble to arrange them chron- 
 ologically in the first place, why did he re-arrange them? 
 
 * Marot's Preface de' Adolescence Clementine: le ne scay (mes treschers Freres) 
 qui m'a plus incit6 a mettre ces miennes petites leuncsses en lumiere, ou vo* 
 continuellea prieres, ou le dcsplaisir que i'ay eu d'en ouyr crier & publier par lea 
 rues vne grande partic toute incorrrctr, mnl imprimee, & plus au pruufBt du 
 Libraire qu'A 1'honneur de I'Autheur. Guiffrey, op. cit., 2, 13-14.
 
 448 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the rondeaux, epigrams and miscellaneous pieces. Of the total, 
 two hundred and five poems, only nine are in the rondeau form. 
 Six have the conventional rime-scheme aabba, aabR, aabbaR, 
 although two of these have octosyllabic lines. The rime-scheme of 
 the fourth is aabba bbaR aabbaR; of the fifth, aabba bbaR bbaabR; 
 and of the eighth, aabbcR ccbR aabbaR. In other words, of the 
 small number of rondeaux over half the number do not follow the 
 type selected by Marot! Of the thirty-one epigrams all but six 
 are in the ottava rima. Of the six, two are in the rime-royal, and 
 the remaining four seem rather curious experiments in riming. The 
 only feature in the miscellaneous section suggestive of the French 
 is the use of the refrain, a feature that is not necessarily French 
 at all. As many of them were written to be sung, the origin 
 of the refrain is obvious. For, the form alone considered, 
 French influence must be regarded as curiously slight. 1 Some 
 there undoubtedly is, but the surprising fact is that there is not 
 more. 
 
 When it comes to discussing the content of the poems, the ques- 
 tion is exceedingly difficult. It was the fashion of the age in France 
 and Italy, as well as in England, to write occasional verses to be 
 given to ladies. As the conditions that called them forth were 
 similar in all three countries, the poems themselves are very similar. 
 It was a social convention without deep feeling. The age of chiv- 
 alry had passed, but there yet remained the literary tradition of 
 the cruel lady and the longing lover. There is little more emotion 
 in these trifles than in the verses for St. Valentine's Day; it was 
 good form to have a bleeding heart. But as the same condition 
 prevailed in all the courts, extensive reading in the literatures is 
 sure to produce analogies. Wyatt, Marot and the Italian Serafino 
 have short poems in which the heart after separation accompanies 
 the loved one. 2 Certain phrases in Wyatt's are suggestive of either 
 
 1 Lee quotes a poem the form of which is identical with one by Marot, (Wyatt, 
 Works, P. 160.). There is some error in the reference, as it is not to be found 
 on p. 160 of Nott's edition (the edition that he apparently used) nor can I find 
 it indexed in any edition. The point is immaterial as it is in the Chaucerian 
 "Monks' Tale" stanza form ababbcbc. 
 
 2 Foxwell 2, 18: "The refrain and setting, however, is influenced by C. Marot's 
 Rondeau, "S'il est ainsy." This Rondeau was first printed by M. Jannet from 
 the MS. FF. 2335, f. 65. This would seem to settle the question ;u a poem 
 Marot himself rejected would probably not be copied by Wyatt, were it not that
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 449 
 
 of the other two. The poems differ in that in both the French and 
 Italian it is the lady that has the lover's heart, whereas in the Wyatt 
 the condition is reversed. It is quite possible, therefore, that fur- 
 ther research may unearth others more alike. The resemblances 
 between Wyatt's poems and those of Marot are all of this type, 
 occasional similarity in the treatment of conventional subjects. 
 
 This may, perhaps, be worth further illustration. One of 
 Marot's celebrated vers de societe is his etrenne A Anne: l 
 
 Ce nouvel an pour estrenes vous donne 
 Mon cueur blesse d'une nouvelle playe, 
 Contrainct y suis, Amour ainsi L'ordonne, 
 En qui un cas bien contraire j'essaye: 
 Car ce cueur la, c'est ma richesse vraye: 
 Le demeurant n'est rien ou je me fonde; 
 Et fault donner le meilleur bien que j'aye 
 Si j'ay vouloir d'estre riche en ce monde. 
 
 The charm of this little New Year's present is clearly due to its 
 brevity; in eight lines the compliment is turned. With this com- 
 pare the analogous poem by Wyatt. 2 
 
 To seke eche where, where man doeth lyve, 
 The See, the Land: the Rocke, the Clyve, 
 Ffraunce, Spayne, and Inde and every where: 
 
 Is none a greater gift to gyve 
 
 Lease sett by oft, and is so lyeff and dere, 
 Dare I well say than that I gyve to yere. 
 
 I cannot gyve browches nor ringes, 
 
 Thes Goldsmithes work and goodly thingea 
 
 Piery nor perle, oryente and clere; 
 But for all that is no man bringes 
 
 Lesser Juell unto his Lady dere 
 
 Dare I well say then that I gyve to yere. 
 
 Nor I seke not to fetche it farr, 
 
 Worse is it not tho it be narr, 
 
 And as it is, it doeth appere 
 Uncontrefaict, mistrust to barr; 
 
 Lest hole and pure withoutcn pere 
 
 Dare I well say the gyft I gyve to yere 
 
 the same rondeau, in a better text, was printed in the 1731 edition. 5. 262, and 
 there attributed to Jean Marot! 
 
 1 Jannet, 2, 199. Lenglet du Fresnoy, on the doubtful possibility that Anne 
 refers to the Duchesse d' Alenc.cn, dates it 1528. 
 
 'Foxwell's ed. 1, 161.
 
 450 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 To the therefore the same retain 
 
 The like of the to have again 
 
 Ffraunce would I gyve if myn it were 
 Is none aly ve in whome doeth rayne 
 
 Lesser disdaine; frely, therefore, to here 
 
 Dare I well gyve I say my hert to yere. 
 
 To place these two poems in juxtaposition is cruel to Wyatt. The 
 conceit is the same, but Marot's graceful eight lines are paralleled 
 by twenty-four with a refrain, composed entirely of monosyllables, 
 that is grammatically clumsy. Fortunately the conceit is so ob- 
 vious that it is not necessary to infer that Wyatt was familiar 
 with the Marot, for, if the Frenchman were the master, it must be 
 confessed that he had a poor pupil. 1 French influence, as repre- 
 sented by the effect of Marot upon Wyatt, is thus unexpectedly 
 slight. 
 
 More definite traces may be found in the connection between 
 Wyatt and Melin de Saint-Gelais. Although older than Clement 
 Marot, Saint-Gelais survived him fourteen years and maintained 
 "la veille tradition gauloise" against the Pleiade. Marot thus 
 apostrophizes him : 
 
 O Sainct Gelais, creature gentile, 
 
 Dont le scacvoir, dont 1'esprit, dont le stile, 
 
 Et dont le tout rend la France honoree,. . . .* 
 
 The verses that Marot greets so enthusiastically lack both the 
 depth and the brilliance of his own. They are light, rather clever, 
 and sometimes rather broad, vers de societe. And as he is with- 
 out Marot's Huguenot inclinations, they probably better reflect the 
 gay court of the time. Saint-Gelais is the typical courtier. As 
 he was continually connected with the court, Wyatt in his various 
 embassies in all probability knew him personally. There are three 
 poems in which the resemblance is striking. A sonnet, "Like to 
 these unmesurable montayns, " an epigram, "Thenmy of liff, 
 decayer of all kynde, " and one in the section of miscellaneous 
 
 1 It is only fair to Wyatt to append Miss Foxwell's comment. In her opinion 
 Wyatt "has not come short of the original." "This is the best instance among 
 the lyrics of Wiat's masterly handling of material, in stamping his own individual- 
 ity upon it." 2, 117-118. 
 
 'Jannet's ed. 1, 211.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 451 
 
 poems, "Madame withouten many wordes. " Of these three 
 the question of the sonnet is the important one, for reasons that 
 do not concern the English. In the Epitre au lecteur, prefixed to 
 Du Bellay's Olive, occurs the phrasing: 
 
 estant la sonnet d' Italian deuenu Francois, comme ie croy, par Mellin de Sainct 
 gelais . . . 
 
 At the time when these words were written Saint-Gelais had pub- 
 lished only one edition, the 1547, and in that there was not but 
 one sonnet, the one in question. Consequently the inference was 
 made, not unnaturally, that this particular sonnet was the first 
 sonnet to be written in French. 1 Then the dating followed, 1536, 
 because in that year Saint-Gelais was in view of the Alps! It is 
 tenuous reasoning that justifies the oft-repeated statement, 
 that the sonnet made its appearance in France in 1536. But this 
 chain of reasoning was overthrown by the discovery of Mr. S. 
 Waddington 2 that the Saint-Gelais sonnet was a translation of 
 one attributed to Sannazaro. 3 As the three sonnets, the Italian, 
 French and English are so very much alike, there is no doubt of 
 translation. It is interesting to note that the general tendency was 
 to infer that the order was, as I have given it, Italian, French and 
 English. This was assumed really without much question. We 
 are so familiar with English dependence upon the French in the 
 eighteenth century, and even in the Elizabethan, that in the early 
 Tudor period, given a resemblance between a French and an Eng- 
 lish poem, we automatically assume that the English is a trans- 
 lation from the French. In this case it is clearly not true, because 
 the English is more like the Italian than is the French. The next 
 position is that the two writers translated from the Italian in- 
 dependently. Even this seems to me untrue. 4 The single sonnet 
 from Sannazaro, translated by both authors, is doubtfully attrib- 
 
 1 Modern scholarship haa shown that Marot published sonnets much earlier. 
 
 * Athenaeum, July 11, 1891. 
 
 * Without knowledge of this note, subsequently Mr. Arthur Tilley, Professor 
 Kastncr and myself each discovered the same fact independently. 
 
 4 This is the subject of a controversy between Professor Kastncr and myself. 
 Modern language Note*, February, 1908; Professor Kastner objected in Modern 
 Language Review, April, 1908; I replied in Mod. Ising. Revictr, January, 1909; as 
 my article was sent to him in proof, he replied in the same number; I responded 
 in Mod. Lang. Notes, January, 1910; to my knowledge there has been no reply 
 to this last.
 
 452 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 uted to him, and, as such, appears in only four of the ten editions 
 previous to 1547; certain expressions in the French seem more 
 like the English than like the Italian; the riming in the French 
 follows the English, not the Italian; and the French terminates in 
 a couplet, the conventional English ending. Any one of these by 
 itself might be accidental, but the cumulative effect is interesting. 
 The solution cannot be proved; it is merely a question which hy- 
 pothesis is preferable. Surely the assumption is more probable 
 that Saint-Gelais knew Wyatt's sonnet than that two men work- 
 ing independently chanced upon the same author, chanced upon 
 one sonnet only, chanced upon the same sonnet, chanced upon a 
 sonnet that appears in but few editions, and chanced upon the 
 same renderings. But this assumption is " startling " not for itself, 
 but for what it implies. And the first implication is that 
 for poems of the early Tudor period one should be very careful of 
 speaking of French "sources." This is applicable to the two 
 other pieces "borrowed" from Saint-Gelais. The first of these is 
 an epigram, the point of which is that the arrow of death striking 
 the arrow of love already in his heart only makes him love the 
 more. 1 It is noticeable that the form Wyatt here employs is the 
 ottava rima. Under the circumstances it seems probable that 
 the original is an unknown Italian poem; further than that it is 
 impossible to go. The other consists of three quatrains: 2 
 
 Madame withouten many wordes 
 
 Ons, I am sure, ye will or no: 
 And if ye will, then leve your hordes 
 
 And use your wit, and shew it so: 
 And with a beck ye shall me call; 
 
 And if of oon that burneth alwaye 
 Ye have any pitie at all, 
 
 Aunswer him faire with ye or nay. 
 If it be ye, I shalbe fayne: 
 
 If it be nay, frendes as before; 
 Ye shall an othr man obtain 
 And I myn owne and youres no more. 
 
 The similarity between this and Saint-Gelais' S'amour vons a 
 donne au cueur en gage is so marked as, I think, to preclude inde- 
 
 1 Identified first by Emil Koeppel, Anglia, 13, 77. 
 
 * Foxwell's ed. 1, 83. Identified first by Miss Foxwell.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 453 
 
 pendent working. The question then arises whether both are 
 taken from a common source, or whether the one is translated 
 from the other. It does not seem to come from the Italian, as the 
 attitude assumed by the lover is quite different from the conven- 
 tional Italian one. And it is not, presumably, due to Wyatt, since 
 the French version is the more polished. Moreover the tone is 
 characteristic of Saint-Gelais, the lightness, the cleverness and the 
 antithesis at the climax: 
 
 Un autre aurez et moy ne pouvant estre 
 Servant de vous, de moi je seray maistre. 
 
 In this case it seems safe to assume that Saint-Gelais is the master 
 and Wyatt the disciple. 
 
 But granting this, we have very little to show altogether for 
 French influence on Wyatt. In form the rondeau, and perhaps a 
 song or two, and in content a single epigram! The poems of the 
 "Uncertaine Authors" produce no more. If, as seems probable, 
 they belong to a generation later than Wyatt it is easy to under- 
 stand this lack. By that time English had settled down to its own 
 development. If this conception have any truth, French influence 
 would be strongest at the beginning of the dynasty, under Henry 
 VII, be strong in the early years of the reign of Henry VIII, and 
 gradually fade away. There are not enough facts to enable us to 
 dogmatize, but what facts there are are covered by this hypothesis. 
 And in a rough way it enables us to give approximate dates. It 
 also explains why there was so curiously little effect. The time, 
 when the French influence upon the literature was the strongest, 
 was when the social conditions were the most unsettled, and 
 when writing would be less done and printing most difficult. By 
 the middle of the sixteenth century, when Tottel printed, an im- 
 mense quantity of the early work must have been lost. It is only 
 the occasional manuscript that has come down, it is only Wyatt 
 that we have in anything like entirety. Consequently the existing 
 literature very possibly is an unfair representative of the amount 
 of French influence that once existed. But surely however much 
 that may have been, it was confined within court circles. The 
 two peoples had been hostile for a century, and their writings 
 express antagonism. But the great reason why even in court cir-
 
 454 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 cles it declined, was due to the rise of the Italian. Consequently 
 by the time that the poems in Tottel's manuscript were collected, 
 French influence scarcely appears. 
 
 A second implication may be made from the history of the San- 
 nazaro-Wyatt-Saint-Gelais sonnet, namely that, so far as it is a 
 question of Italian influence, the English was ahead of the French. 
 This fact is not due to any condition complimentary to the English 
 writers. The reasons for it are two, one negative and one positive. 
 First, there was no writer in England comparable to Clement 
 Marot to perpetuate the old tradition. The authors wrote for 
 cliques, rather than for the nation at large. There was no general 
 sense of form, and apparently no demand for it. Skelton might 
 perhaps have unified the nation, but he wasted his strength in lo- 
 cal issues and lost in breadth what he gained in intensity. And 
 in any case it would have had to be a broader, sweeter, mel- 
 lower Skelton ! And the second reason, dependent upon the first, 
 is that the language was still so unsettled that the very medium 
 was lacking to the great poet. It was an age of innovation, of 
 adjustment. Perhaps necessarily the writers were trying out the 
 various systems of composition, feeling their way, as it were. 
 Under these conditions it need be no matter for surprise that the 
 English writers, especially Wyatt, turned to Italy. 1 
 
 That of the European countries it should have been Italy to 
 which the poets of all nations turned was inevitable under the cir- 
 cumstances. To the modern reader this statement may need a word 
 of explanation; we tend to think of Italy as the location of ancient 
 Rome and of primitive Christianity, a country primarily interest- 
 ing only for what it has been. Even while we are there, the great 
 past obscures the present and we go to modern Naples because it 
 is near ancient Pompeii. 2 The increased use of iron and coal, we 
 are living in literally the Iron Age has transferred the economic 
 power to the northern nations, where these minerals may be found. 
 
 1 For the development of English poetry, Italian influence is here considered; 
 the continuity of the French influence is thus broken, as the effect of French prose 
 will be taken up later. 
 
 2 Even Baedeker remarks: "In historical and artistic interest this part of the 
 Italian peninsula is singularly deficient. The dearth of handsome build- 
 ings and indigenous works of art creates a void, for which Herculaneum and 
 Pompeii with their matchless treasures of antiquity alone in some measure com- 
 pensate." (!)
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 455 
 
 There has been thus a gradual shifting of the center of civilization. 1 
 Today no one would seriously compare Florence, for example, with 
 London, Paris, Berlin, or New York as a world factor. But in the 
 early sixteenth century the reverse was true. The Italian princes 
 felt themselves world-leaders, their courts were the most brilliant, 
 and their cities the most beautiful. The reasons for this condition 
 have been outlined before. Partly it was due to the fact that, ex- 
 cept in the Lombard plain, chivalry never took deep root, so that, 
 in consequence, the communes developed at the expense of the 
 nobility; partly that the remains of ancient Rome, scattered 
 broadly over the peninsula, preserved memories, however inchoate, 
 of another civilization; partly the geographical situation of Italy, 
 so that its people were the first to come again into contact with the 
 Greek thought preserved in Constantinople; and partly, of course, 
 to the susceptibility of the Italians themselves. However ade- 
 quate, or inadequate, may be these reasons and others like them, 
 the fact remains true that while the northern nations were still in 
 the transitional stage, in Italy the mode of life was in many respects 
 modern. For the northerner coming to these cities with their paved 
 streets, their great palaces adorned without and within with artistic 
 masterpieces, to a society, polished, elegant, ordered, it was like 
 the entrance to a new world. 
 
 Into this new civilization Wyatt entered, arriving at Civita 
 Vecchia on the fourth of February, 1527, and reaching Rome on the 
 eighth. On March 2nd, he was dispatched to Venice in place of 
 the ambassador who was ill. Instead of joining the party at Rome 
 via Bologna and Florence, he made a side trip down to Ferrara, 
 on his return from which he was captured by the Spanish troops of 
 the^mperor. In spite of a safe-conduct from the Duke of Ferrara, 
 he was held for a ransom of three thousand ducats. Whether the 
 ransom was paid, or remitted, or whether he escaped is uncertain; 
 all that is known is that on April sixth he appeared at Bologna. 
 Early in May the party returned to England, via Lyons and Paris. 
 The Italy that he had seen in these three months was an Italy dis- 
 tracted by war. The embassy in which he had a part was designed 
 to encourage the Pope, and his journey to Venice was also to bring 
 
 1 It is an interesting speculation whether with the increased use of electricity, 
 which may be generated by water-power from the Apennines, Italy may not again 
 come to the fore.
 
 456 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 together the Confederates. As a matter of fact it was futile, as the 
 army of the Emperor, under the Conntable de Bourbon marched 
 south and on the fifth of May took Rome. In the first assault the 
 Connetable was killed by a ball from an arquebus, fired according 
 to his own story by Cellini himself and the soldiers, left without a 
 leader, put Rome to a sack paralleled only by that of the Goths nine 
 hundred years before. 1 With events of this kind going on, it is hard 
 to imagine a young man of twenty-four talking literature! Al- 
 though it is idle to speculate upon the great and wonderful men he 
 might have met, it is probable that he would bring back an in- 
 tense interest in the country where he had had so many exciting 
 experiences. 
 
 It is certain, in any case, that he brought back an interest in Ital- 
 ian literature. This apparently was the opinion in his own day. 2 
 It certainly was the opinion of the next age. Puttenham, writing 
 in the time of Elizabeth, states this definitely: 3 
 
 In the latter end of the same kings raigne sprang vp a new company of courtly 
 makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat th'elder and Henry Earle of Surrey were the 
 two chieftaines, who hauing trauailed into Italic, and there tasted the sweete 
 and stately measures and stile of the Italian Poesie as noujces newly crept out 
 of the schooles of Dante Arioste and Petrarch, they greatly pollishcd our rude 
 and homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had been before, and for that 
 cause may iustly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and stile. 
 
 Puttenham here brackets together Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch. 
 Of the three, it is Petrarch alone that influenced Wyatt. It is 
 quite possible that in his jaunt to Ferrara Wyatt might have met 
 Ariosto, but this hypothetical meeting has left practically no 
 traces in his work. 4 Of the other two, in spite of the preference of 
 
 1 The celebrated analysis of these events is to be found in the Eighteenth Book 
 of Guiccardini's Historia. Five contemporary accounts have been collected by 
 Carlo Milanesi under the title // Sacco di Roma del MDXXVII, Florence, 1867. 
 
 2 Leland (Naeniae in mortem Thomae Viati equitis incomparabilis, 1542) com- 
 pares him to Dante and Petrarch. 
 
 3 Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie, Arber's Reprint, 74. This common- 
 place would need no emphasis, had not Lee with a vast amount of ingenuity en- 
 deavored to subordinate Italian influence to French. 
 
 4 Koeppel (Romanische Forschungen, 5, 72) sees a resemblance in two epigrams 
 to Ariosto. (a) Epigram 4, "The wandering gadlyng" where the comparison 
 is used of a man who starts aside to avoid treading on a snake; the same com- 
 parison is used in the Orlando C. 1, st. 11 and C. 39, st. 32; but it is surely com-
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 457 
 
 the modern reader, it is Petrarch that was the chosen model of the 
 Renaissance. Dante is serious, mystic, grand, but he is not social. 
 He remains austere, with contemptuous indifference for us little 
 men. And to us his work seems the epitome of the great soul of a 
 long distant past. But medievalism was not long distant to the 
 Renaissance; it was the immediate past that they were endeavoring 
 to outgrow and longing to forget, not the superficial past of tourney 
 and court of love, but the real past of the mind. When it was the 
 fashion to discuss Platonism, and God was mythologized, and the 
 pope was agnostic, what could such a world find sympathetic in 
 the pages of Dante? They admired him, talked about him occa- 
 sionally, sometimes read him, but very rarely imitated him. His 
 great stanza, the terza rima, which we today associate with the 
 terrors of Hell and the blaze of Heaven, in their hands was debased 
 to verse epistles and to obscene capitoli. So the presence of the 
 terza rima in a writer of this period suggests a reading quite the 
 contrary from Dante ! But if Dante summarizes the past, Petrarch 
 begins the present. In his subjectivity, the consciousness of his 
 own individuality, in his eager curiosity, his love of nature, in the 
 very complexity of his desires and the contradictions of his am- 
 bitions, he is modern. During his lifetime he had an immense 
 reputation, he tells us so himself! That reputation was largely 
 based upon his works in Latin, such as his Eclogues and his epic, 
 Africa. In his own mind and in that of his immediate successors, 
 these Latin works constituted his chief claim to fame. For at 
 least a century they carried the name of Petrarch to the uttermost 
 boundaries of Europe. At the same time that he was composing in 
 Latin, he was gradually accumulating poems in Italian, the Rime, 
 or the Canzoniere. 1 This consists of three hundred and seventeen 
 sonnets, twenty-nine canzoni, nine sestine, seven ballate, and four 
 madrigali. It purports to tell of an ideal love lasting twenty years 
 during the life of the Lady Laura and ten years after her death. 
 Interspersed are some occasional pieces, and some attacks. It con- 
 monplace: (b) Epigram 19, "From the hye hilles" where the comparison of love 
 to a flooded river is made; much the same comparison is made in FAegia Quinta 
 v. 7-12. As theae were not published until 1537, either Wyatt's epigram is very 
 late, or he learned it verbally, or it is merely a coincidence. 
 
 1 In the Willard Fiske Collection in the Cornell University Library there are 
 430 editions of the Rime (Cf. Catalogue compiled by Mary Fowler, 1910). The 
 edition I shall use is that by Scherillo, Milan, 1DU8.
 
 458 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 stituted, therefore, a fairly large body of verse from which to draw 
 and one which, moreover, offered models for the types of composi- 
 tion most in demand. Woman was taking her place in society, not 
 that of the lonely medieval chatelaine, but that of the modern 
 hostess. In her presence grossness of expression must be refined 
 and pruriency purged away. And however licentious she may be 
 in reality, convention demands that she be considered chaste as 
 Diana and cold as Penelope. Yet, to her, love is the most interest- 
 ing subject in the world. To such a society it is evident at once how 
 strong an appeal was made by Petrarch's subject-matter. Here all 
 stages and phases of love, delight, desire, despair, regret, are elabo- 
 rately and delicately expressed. The very vagueness in Petrarch's 
 description of Laura was advantageous; he left the face blank, as it 
 were, so that each lover might fill the space with the portrait of his 
 own inamorata. When a man is in love, his lady surely has the 
 begli occhi, and, unless jetty black, the chiome d'oro of Laura. Still 
 more, all this was done in a series of short poems, imitations of 
 which could easily be slipped into the lady's hand or whispered in 
 her ear as she stood in the embrasure of the window. Other sonnets 
 express thanks for gifts received, turn compliments, congratu- 
 late, it is quite comprehensible, I think, Petrarch's vogue during 
 the Renaissance. 
 
 Moreover, Petrarch is not only a great poet, he is also a great 
 artist, a conscious artist. These poems, written in the fire of 
 youth and under the immediate stimulus of the events, were later 
 in his old age carefully reworked and re-arranged. 1 And we have 
 even his own comments upon his sonnets. 2 For example, at the 
 head of sonnet 211 is written: 
 
 Mirum, hoc cancellatum et damnatum, post multos annos casu relegens, ab- 
 solvi, et transcripsi in ordine statim, 1369, junij 22, hora 23, veneris. Non ob- 
 stante, pauca postea, die 27 in vesperis, mutavi fine, et de hoc finis erit. . . . 
 
 On the lower margin of the page in which sonnet 155 appears is 
 written: 
 
 1 This is the celebrated Cod. 3195 in the Vatican. Although only one third 
 of this is in the hand of Petrarch, the whole was revised, corrected, and arranged 
 by him. It is the definite copy of the work. 
 
 *Cod. 3196 in the Vatican.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 459 
 
 Attende quod hos 4 versus venit in animum mutare, ut qui primi sunt essent 
 ultimi, et e converse: sed dimisi propter sonura principii et finis, et quia sonan- 
 tiora erant in medio, rauciora in principio et fine: quod est contra rethoricam. . 
 
 Opposite the beginning of the canzone 268 appears : 
 Non videtur satis triste principium. . . 
 
 Without citing further, these are enough to justify Sig. Finzi's 
 conclusion: l 
 
 Commenced, one may say, with the ardor of a lover, continued with minute 
 care through more than ten lusters, elaborated, corrected, arranged with the 
 feeling of an artist, the Canzoniere is not a collection of historic and psychologic 
 documents on the love of Petrarch for Laura. It is an elaboration, artistic, slow, 
 and manifold, of the motive which dominated poetry for more than a century in 
 Provence and Italy. On this general motive of art, the poet has grafted the per- 
 sonal motive of his love for Laura, melting the two elements into a work which, 
 on account of its perfection, remains one and indivisible, and which cannot be 
 discomposed so that they appear sharply distinct. 
 
 Fortunately the objective reality of Laura does not concern 
 us here. Whether she be an allegorical figure, or the composite of 
 all Petrarch's loves, or the single dominant love of his life, and 
 each of these has been argued by eminent scholars, usually with 
 more heat than light whether the famous note in the Ambros- 
 iana Vergil be a forgery to increase the value of the book (as was 
 believed in the sixteenth century 2 ) or genuine (as is the more usual 
 view today), and what was her name, these questions form a 
 veritable morass of scholarship. It is enough to mark the detour 
 but to keep to the turnpike, namely that the sixteenth century 
 believed the story of the poems. They became interested in the 
 biography of the poet. In 1525 Vellutello published the first elab- 
 orate life, the result of his personal research in Avignon. Whereas 
 the quattrocento writers cared little for the life of Petrarch and 
 
 1 Petrarca, Giuseppe Finzi; Firenze, 1900, 102. 
 
 *"onde noi tegniamo, che tal epist. sia stata posta in esso libro solamente per 
 far credere che stato sia di lui, e tanto maggiormente, per non esser di sua mano, 
 come affermano tutti quelli, che n'hanno hauuto notitia". . Alessandro Vellutello, 
 155 . . and through the century. My own edition happens to be 1550 . . ."onde 
 crediamo non esser del Poeta quclla Epistola, laquale scritla di sua mano in un 
 Virgilio dicono hauer truouato nella libruria di Pauia . . Giovanni Andrea Gesualdo, 
 15S3. My owu edition happens to be that of 1553.
 
 460 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 imitated individual sonnets, the dnquecento discussed elaborately 
 biographical problems and regarded the whole as an unified work 
 of art. There are two sharply differentiated phases in Petrarchan 
 imitation, (a) the quattrocento imitation of separate poems, and 
 (b) the cinquecento imitation of the Rime as a whole. As confusion 
 reigns without this distinction I have tried to mark it by calling 
 the first Petrarchism and by keeping the Italian term Petrar- 
 chismo for the second. 1 
 
 The second need not detain us long, and the reasons for its ex- 
 istence in Italy do not here concern us. 2 The main fact is that un- 
 der the leadership of Bembo, who had edited the first Aldine 
 edition, Petrarch was accepted as the great literary model, 
 and that imitations of his Rime filled the air. But it was not only 
 this. It passed into imitations of imitations; it became an in- 
 sincere literary fashion in which Petrarch figures only as the first 
 of the type. It was this last that spread over Europe the last half 
 of the century. M. Pieri defines it thus: 3 
 
 Petrarchismo is the art of treating cleverly and wittily matters of the heart, 
 of composing love-poems without the emotion in the soul, of feigning passion 
 for an imaginary mistress, and of singing a fiction of amorous intrigue, whose 
 phases and whose stages are fixed, and, as it were, established by an immovable 
 tradition. To succeed in this type our sixteenth-century poets needed only a 
 h'ttle learning and imagination, a great deal of memory, and a certain ability in 
 the art of composition. 
 
 This type is quite familiar to the English reader in the Amoretti 
 of Spenser, the Delia of Daniel, the Idea of Drayton, or any of the 
 other Elizabethan sonnet-cycles. Although Petrarchismo did not 
 affect Wyatt, it is important because it did affect his commen- 
 tators. In the England of the sixteenth century biographic de- 
 tails are very rare. Quite naturally therefore, scholars, not under- 
 standing the nature of the fashion, seized upon such sonnet-cycles 
 as being the outpourings of the heart of various poets. 4 The monu- 
 mental edition of Wyatt by George Fred. Nott was brought out 
 
 1 Cf. Definition of Petrarchismo, Pub. Mod. Lan. Ass. 1909, XXIV, 4. 
 
 1 This has been brilliantly expressed by Arturo Graf, Attraverso il Cinquecento, 
 1888. 
 
 3 Marius Pi6ri, Ptrarque et Ronsard, 1896, 268. 
 
 * Cf. The Preface to Sir. Sidney Lee's Elizabethan Sonnets, or his chapter in 
 the Cambridge History of English Literature 3, 281.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 461 
 
 in 1816 when the romantic movement was at its height. Quite in 
 accordance with the strictest principles of romance, he finds Wyatt 
 involved in a beautiful, but hopeless, passion for Anne Boleyn. 1 
 
 As no regular detail of the history of Wyatt's attachment to Anne Boleyn 
 has been preserved, we must be content to connect the few facts we do know 
 respecting it by conjecture. . . Anne Boleyn's personal charms and manners 
 were such as could not but have attracted Wyatt's admiration, whilst his own 
 were of a nature likely to make an impression upon her youthful and susceptible 
 mind. . . It is true that Wyatt was then a married man; and that he therefore 
 could not aspire to more than Anne Boleyn's confidence and friendship. These 
 she deemed herself at liberty to give. . Thus circumstanced, we may believe 
 Wyatt and Anne Boleyn to have mutually regarded each other with the lively 
 tenderness of an innocent, but a dangerous friendship. Often, I have no doubt 
 did Wyatt make her the subject of his most impassioned strains: and often did 
 she listen with complacency to his numbers, which, while they gratified her love 
 of present admiration, promised to confer upon her charms some portion of 
 that poetic immortality which the romantic passion of Petrarch had bestowed 
 upon Laura's. 
 
 Wyatt's attachment for the Queen "as virtuous as she was beau- 
 tiful " to judge from her portraits this at least is true ! has passed 
 into literary legend. The difficulty with it is that it is confessedly 
 founded upon pure conjecture. Unfortunately I do not know that 
 it can be disproved. It is possible that he did burn with love for 
 Anne, but the facts, as given us by the State Papers, scarcely justify 
 that conclusion. Wyatt must have been married in 1520 or 1521 
 to Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Brooke, Lord Cobham, 2 that 
 is when he was about eighteen years old. As marriages then were 
 arranged by the parents, this does not necessarily mean that he 
 had been in love. He must have just left college. From this date 
 he, and presumably his wife, were at the Court, as entries show 
 that he was employed in "the King's affairs in the north" on three 
 occasions. And on Christmas day, 1525, he took part in a tourna- 
 ment. On the other hand, Anne, born 1503 and educated in France, 
 began her life at the English Court in 1522. 3 Her sister, Mary, at 
 about this time was Henry's mistress. Her interest lay in getting 
 
 1 The Works of Surrey and Wyatt, Geo. Fred. Nott. 1818, . xx. 
 
 * In the inquisition on his affairs dated January 8, 1543, his son is described 
 as being "of the age of twenty-one years and upwards." Nott, 2, Ixxiv. 
 
 1 For the facts in Anne's life consult Friedman's Anne Boleyn, 1884, and Martin 
 Hume, Witet of Henry VIII, 1005.
 
 462 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 married and in 1526 she won Henry Percy, the eldest son of the 
 Duke of Northumberland; but the engagement was broken, per- 
 haps by the order of the King. 1 In March 1526 Wyatt accom- 
 panied Sir Thomas Cheney to France. As for the next six years 
 Wyatt was abroad for the greater part of the time and Anne herself 
 was occupied with the King, the love affair must have occurred 
 either before his foreign travels, or on his return in 1532. If be- 
 fore, Wyatt was superseded not by one rival, but by two. To his 
 contemporaries it would not have been the King that snatched her 
 away; it would have been young Percy, a fact that appreciably 
 lessens the romance. On his return he was present at the coro- 
 nation. Under the date of May 15, 1534, a letter to Lord Lisle, 
 then commandant of Calais, gives the information that Wyatt had 
 been sent to the Fleet prison on account of an "affray" with the 
 sergeants of London, " in which one of the sergeants was slain." 2 
 Up to this time, so far as the records show, there is nothing to con- 
 nect him particularly with Anne. He must have known her, their 
 fathers were friends, and they were both at Court, but even that 
 is inferential. The record shows him to have been a young married 
 man, within the narrowest circle of the Court, and of recognized 
 ability, but turbulent. That is all. 
 
 There are two circumstances, however, that lend support to the 
 traditional theory. The first of these is connected with the exe- 
 cution of Anne Boleyn. Beginning with May-day, 1536, when 
 Cromwell wrung by torture a confession from Mark Smeaton, to 
 May 19, when Anne herself went to her death, all England was 
 vitally interested in the question of the extent of the guilt of the 
 Queen. And this interest was not merely sentimental. The ques- 
 tion affected the legitimacy of Elizabeth and the succession to the 
 throne. Mary, the child of Katherine of Aragon, the hope of the 
 old, the Catholic party, had been rendered illegitimate by the 
 divorce. 3 Although the law of 1534 had declared Elizabeth legiti- 
 mate, a confession of Anne to Cranmer, in alleging some mysterious 
 
 I Cavendish's Life of Wolaey. This is easily accessible in the New Universal 
 Library. 
 
 I 1 am following here Professor Simonds identification. 
 
 8 The word divorce is, of course, misleading; neither Henry, nor Katherine, would 
 have used it according to the one, no marriage had taken place; according to 
 the other, no "divorce" was possible.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 463 
 
 impediment to the marriage, rendered her status doubtful. As the 
 Duke of Richmond died July twenty-second of this same year, and 
 as later only the sickly Edward stood between his half-sisters and 
 the crown, during the sixteenth century the question could never 
 be discussed impartially. To the Catholic party Anne was the 
 object of all abuse, and to the Protestants a belief in her pearl-like 
 innocence was an article of faith. Nor does this stop with the ac- 
 cession of Elizabeth, for the claim of Mary Queen of Scots to the 
 English throne perpetuated the discussion. Consequently the 
 statement of every author of the sixteenth century is biassed by 
 his party views. The question cannot be said to have been settled 
 today. State trials were then largely a matter of form and the 
 guilt of the accused was decided before the trial began. Hearsay 
 evidence was admitted, back-stairs gossip, twisted scandal, casual 
 conversations, and the verdict was pronounced. Whether or 
 not guilty, Anne was sacrificed in the game of high politics. 
 
 The subject concerns Wyatt, since on the tenth of May he was 
 imprisoned in the Tower. The whole problem turns on the ques- 
 tion of the charge. There is no doubt that to the minds of his con- 
 temporaries the reason for his arrest was because, with the others, 
 he was involved with the Queen. A correspondence of John Hus- 
 sey to Lord Lisle proves this, and a note from Chapuis. 1 And 
 this belief was not confined to the Court. 2 Therefore, it is not 
 surprising to find in the partisan accounts, written about 1550 
 when the question of the succession was uppermost, that Wyatt 
 is listed in the number of Anne's criminal lovers, with the actual 
 conversations given and the circumstantial details that are char- 
 acteristic of such publications, and in process of time it passed into 
 a family tradition. Thus there is no difficulty in finding writers 
 that believe firmly in Wyatt 's love, in the last analysis based upon 
 the fact of his imprisonment at this time. But it is quite possible 
 that his being imprisoned at this time was merely a coincidence. 
 As this view is not often expressed it is worth while to state 
 it fully. In the first place this seems to have been the opinion 
 of Wyatt himself! When in 1541 he was again imprisoned on 
 a political charge arising from his embassies, one of the reasoas 
 given for thinking him guilty of treason was his anger on account 
 
 1 These are given in full by Simonds, op. cit., 34. 
 
 * Spanish Chronicle of Henry Vlll, cd. Martin Hume.
 
 464 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 of the imprisonment in 1536. In an "oration" to the judges, he 
 elaborately refutes this : l 
 
 For it is so far from my desire to revenge that I never imputed to the King's 
 Highness my imprisonment; and hereof can Mr. Lieutenant here present testify 
 to whom I did ever impute it. Yea and further; my Lord of Suffolk himself can 
 tell that I imputed it to him, and not only at the beginning but even the very 
 night before my apprehension now last. . . 
 
 This is important because the persons whom he was addressing 
 must have known the true cause, and must have heard the Anne 
 Boleyn story. If, therefore, he was giving the wrong interpre- 
 tation to the former imprisonment, he was making an extremely 
 poor case. But his conception of the reason for the charge is 
 indirectly sustained by the correspondence of his father. 2 On May 
 7th, Sir Henry writes that, as he can do his duty to the King in 
 this dangerous time that his Grace has suffered by false traitors, 
 he desires his son to give the King due attendance night and day. 
 He ends by expressing the pious hope that the false traitors be 
 punished as an example to others. By the eleventh he has learned 
 of the news, apparently from Cromwell: 3 After thanking him he 
 adds: 
 
 And whensoever it shall be the king's pleasure with your help to deliver him, 
 that ye will show him that his punishment that he hath for this matter is more 
 for the displeasure that he hath done to God otherwise, wherein I beseech you to 
 advertise him to fly vice and serve God better than he hath done. 
 
 and in a later letter to Cromwell he tells him that he has enjoined 
 upon Thomas " the leaving of such slanderous fashion as hath en- 
 gendered unto him both the displeasure of God and his master." 
 Now, if Wyatt had been imprisoned on suspicion of complicity 
 of adultery with the Queen of England, such expressions would 
 entitle the correspondence to take rank among the curiosities of 
 literature. If the crime for which four men had just been executed 
 was in Sir Henry's mind merely "vice" and a "slanderous fashion," 
 the mind is awed at the thought of what he would consider crimi- 
 nal! The rational explanation is that in 1536, also, Wyatt had en- 
 
 1 Nott, op. cit., 2, 299-300. 
 
 2 This first letter is quoted from Simonds, op. cit., 32 note. 
 3 Aldine ed. 1866, XX-XXII.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 465 
 
 gaged in an "affray"; this time unfortunately, instead of the mild- 
 mannered cits, he had encountered the retinue of the Duke of 
 Suffolk, so that he found himself in the Tower. It may be thought 
 this conjecture will help in explaining the lacunae in a badly muti- 
 lated letter from Kyngston, Keeper of the Tower, to Cromwell re- 
 porting Anne's behavior. 1 
 
 .... I also sayd Mr. Page and Wyet wase mo than she sayd he ha. ... 
 
 one hys fyst tother day and ys here now hot ma I shall desyre you to 
 
 bayre a letter from me. . . Secretary. . . e hath asked my wyfe whether hony 
 body makes theyr beddes. . . . y wyf ansured and sayd, Nay, I warant you; 
 then she say. . . y might make balettes well now, bot there ys non bot. . . de 
 that can do it. Yese sayd my wyf Master Wyett by. . . . sayd trew. 
 
 Following Professor Simonds, one is tempted to read: "Then 
 she said, he had hit one (with) his fist the other day and is here 
 now, but may soon be released. . ." 
 
 But conjecture aside, the conversation shows on the part of Anne 
 no appreciation of possible danger to Wyatt. Nor was there any 
 danger, since he was shortly released, knighted, and sent on an 
 embassy, surely a curious result to come from an arrest on such a 
 charge and from such a king as Henry VIII. Consequently, while 
 it is possible to explain the stories as arising from the imprison- 
 ment, it seems to me impossible to reconcile the incidental refer- 
 ence in the correspondence with the details of the stories. And of 
 the two we know that the correspondence is genuine. If this be 
 true, we must bid a long farewell to a romantic tale that has stead- 
 ily held its own for tliree centuries. 
 
 In this connection there usually follows, apparently as sort of 
 palliation for Wyatt's presumed relations with the Queen, a state- 
 ment that his marital relations were unhappy. In the Calendar 
 of State Papers the first reference to this is on March 29, 1537, in 
 a letter from Lord Cobham, Wyatt's brother-in-law. 
 
 I beg you will be so good lord to my poor sister Wyatt as to write your favor- 
 able letters to Mr. Wyatt before his departure (appointed to be on Saturday 
 next from Dover) desiring him to remember his poor wife and give her some- 
 thing reasonable towards her living, for Mr. Palmer sent her to me to Cobham 
 Hall, saying Mr. Wyatt would not 6nd her any longer. I used every effort to 
 make him grant her some honest living, but he would promise nothing. I wrote 
 
 1 QuoU-d from Simonds, op. cit., S3 (note).
 
 466 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 to Sir John Russell to speak to him, and he said he would give her something, 
 but soon after told my servant he would not. I also got Sir Wm. Hawte to break 
 the matter to him, and Master Henry Wyld and his brother, but all to no pur- 
 pose. 
 
 It will be remembered that on his return from this embassy he 
 was sent to the Tower "so bound and fettered that one must think 
 ill." Marillac the writer of this, January 18th, 1541, thus con- 
 tinues: 
 
 It is the third time Hoyet has been there, and apparently it will be the last, 
 for this must be some great matter and he has for enemies all who leagued against 
 Cromwell, whose minion he was. The earl of Rotellan, of the house of " Clerence, " 
 his father-in-law, will do his worst, because Hoyet treated his daughter badly, 
 whom he took in adultery and afterwards defamed. Although he is more re- 
 gretted than any man taken in England these three years, both by Englishmen 
 and strangers, no man has the boldness to say a word for him, and by these fine 
 laws he must be judged without knowing why. 
 
 As has already been said, he was pardoned. The conditions of the 
 pardon are told by Chapuys to the Emperor, March 21st. The 
 Queen, by this time it is Katharine Howard, 
 
 took occasion to ask release of Wyatt, which the King granted, though on hard 
 conditions, viz. (1) that he should confess his guilt, and (2) that he should take 
 back his wife from whom he had been separated upwards of 15 years, on pain 
 of death if he be untrue to her henceforth. 
 
 This may have been spontaneous chivalry on Henry's part but an 
 entry, February 9th, of the following year, 1542, casts a rather 
 sinister shadow: 
 
 She to whom, for the time he (Henry) showed most favor and affection was the 
 sister of Lord Coban and the wife whom Mr. Hoyet repudiated for adultery. She 
 is a beautiful girl with wit enough, if she tried, to do as badly as the others. 
 
 As this same year her son was twenty-one she must have preserved 
 her beauty remarkably. And this same year, also, Wyatt died. In 
 spite of his having defamed her, she married again, and died in 
 1560. Apparently in the opinion of the age, adultery was not 
 a serious bar to marital relations, and Wyatt's objections to it 
 were unusual. But under these conditions his attitude was some- 
 what inconsistent, if at the same time he had entered into a simi- 
 lar relation with the wife of his lord and master. Of course the 
 horridness of such a story as this of Wyatt and Anne can never be
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 467 
 
 absolutely disproved. All that can be done is to show the bal- 
 ance of probability. There was then some intimacy. Margaret 
 Wyatt, his sister, accompanied Anne to the scaffold and received 
 from her a book of prayers. Now surely it is scarcely credible that 
 Margaret went with the queen with the expectation shortly of 
 accompanying her own brother to a similar scene on account of the 
 same woman. Trifling as such an incident may seem, it is cer- 
 tainly worth as much in evidence as a detailed account of a con- 
 versation that took place a century before. All things considered, 
 then, it seems as if the weight of evidence was against the tra- 
 ditional story. 
 
 But the main argument against the tradition lies in the charac- 
 ter of the poems themselves. Actually they do not belong to the 
 cinquecento but to the quattrocento; they are examples, not of Petrar- 
 chismo, but of Petrarchism. Even whatever degree of actuality 
 may be in the Elizabethan sonnet-cycles, it is not present here. 
 This is not a scholastic distinction. It means that each poem is a 
 separate translation, or imitation, of an Italian piece, unrelated to 
 those that precede or follow. The importance of this as affecting 
 the romantic tradition is evident at once. Clearly the lover, who, 
 to celebrate the charms of his ideal, turns to translation for inspir- 
 ation, is not much in love. His passion is of the head.oiot the heart. 
 And these poems are translations. Of the one hundred and twenty 
 pieces in the Egerton MS. his most recent editor thinks the 
 " source " has been found for seventy-three. Although I question 
 many of these sources such as the Marot poems for example, the 
 conventionality of Wyatt's efforts is unquestionable. It does not 
 by any means follow that the remaining third were original, that 
 the sources for them may not yet be found. The tale of wreckage, 
 due to finding Wyatt's innermost sentiments in a poem that often 
 turns out to be a mediocre translation from a foreign original, is 
 not yet told! The writers of established reputation that Wyatt 
 found in Italy, the authors of the quattrocento, are unfortunately 
 not well known today. Of few are there modern editions, the early 
 editions are not accessible, and are known only to the Italian 
 specialist. But the Italian specialist is ignorant of Wyatt. II 
 Pistoia (d. 1505) thus lists the great poets: l 
 
 1 Rime di Antonio Cammelli detto II Pistoia, per cura di A. Cappelli c S. Ferrari. 
 LJvorno, 1884, 51.
 
 468 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 In rima taccia ognun, che '1 pregio & dato; 
 
 Dante e Petrarca e quel ch'ogn'altro affrena; 
 Timoteo fa in un anno un verso a pena; 
 arguto & il Tebaldeo, ma poco ornato; 
 
 Serafin solo per la lingua e grato; 
 
 Sasso e un fiume che argento e sterpi mcna; 
 Cortese ha molto ingegno e poca vena; 
 Vincenzo ha un stil da se solo apprezzato; 
 
 II Corregia alti versi ornati e asciutti; 
 Actio Partenopeo culto et ignudo: 
 Jacomo un bel giardin con pochi frutti; 
 
 Cosmico e come lui scabroso e crudo; 
 Carraciol, Cariteo, son vani tutti; 
 Bernardo e un grand d'or net fango nudo. 
 
 Tanto ch'alfin conclude, 
 che nullo vale, e ognun la pal ma aspetta: 
 ma quel sa meglio dir che piu diletta. 
 
 In another sonnet he includes Lorenzo, Pierino, Poliziano, Beni- 
 vieni, Baccio Ugolino, II Lapacino, II Franco, Bellincion, and of 
 course Boiardo. But these are only the most prominent. As he 
 says, 
 
 II serebbe un f racasso 
 
 s'io te volesse dir de tutti quanti, 
 
 bisognaria rifarne un Ognisanti. 
 
 Add to these lists those writers that published in his lifetime, and 
 those also whose poems he may have seen in manuscript, and the 
 number becomes too onerous for the scholar in English. And, 
 moreover, the work would be futile. Even were other sources dis- 
 covered, it would merely confirm the present opinion, for surely 
 enough has been done to justify generalization. And finally it is 
 more important for the student of English to study what he did 
 with the poem when he got it, than to seek for other originals. 
 
 Wyatt's poems then, may be divided into his short pieces, his 
 satires, and his psalms, probably written for the most part in that 
 order. In his manuscript these short pieces are grouped according 
 to the form, rondeaux, sonnets, epigrams, and miscellaneous poems. 
 Even in the first group, where purely French influence might be
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 469 
 
 expected, the subject-matter of the whole of the first rondeau is 
 taken from Petrarch, and the first five lines of the seventh. 1 He 
 seems to have had the notion that in some way the rondeau was a 
 possible equivalent for the Italian madrigal. In the first he makes 
 an attempt to render his author in so far as the form allows; in the 
 second, the Italian merely gives him his start. Apparently the 
 transformation was unsatisfactory. Perhaps for that reason he 
 translates the sonnets in the sonnet form. And he translates them 
 incredibly literally. Anyone who has ever written sonnets will 
 remember the difficulty in handling the form; anyone who has ever 
 tried to translate a sonnet will appreciate the tour de force of the 
 following rendition. It is almost word for word. In order to illus- 
 trate this, I shall break the first sonnet into pieces and interpose 
 the two versions. 2 
 
 Cesare, poi che'l traditor d'Egitto 
 Li fece il don de 1'onorata testa, 
 Celando 1'allegrezza manifesta, 
 Pianse per gli occhi fuor, si come e scritto; 
 
 Cesar, when that the traytor of Egipt, 
 With thonorable bed did him present, 
 Covering his gladnes, did represent 
 Playnt with his teres owteward, as it is writt: 
 
 Et Anibal, quando a 1'imperio afflitto 
 Vide farsi fortuna si molesta, 
 Rise fra gente lagrimosa e mesta, 
 Per isfogare il suo acerbo despitto. 
 
 And Hannyball, eke, when fortune him shitt 
 
 Clene from his reign, and from all his intent 
 Laught to his folke, whom sorrowe did torment, 
 HU cruel dispite for to disgorge and qwit. 
 
 E cost aven che 1'animo ciascuna 
 
 Sua passion sotto '1 contrario manto 
 Ricopre co'la vista or chiara or brtina; 
 
 I In Forwell's Sludy, 76.-7S the original discoverers of all of Wyatt arc care- 
 fully listed. To this table the reader is referred. 
 
 I 1 am using the Scherillo text of Petrarch, the modern edition must carefully 
 following Cod. 3195 Vatican.
 
 470 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 So chaunceth it oft, that every passion 
 The mind hideth, by color contrary, 
 With fayned visage, now sad, now mery: 
 
 Perd, s'alcuna volta io rido o canto, 
 
 Facciol perch'l non ho se non quest'una 
 Via da celare il mio angoscioso pianto. 
 
 Whereby if I laught, any tyme or season, 
 It is: for bicause I have nother way 
 To cloke my care, but under sport and play. 
 
 Clearly there is no question here of vague influence, or even of 
 imitation. It is not only translation, but surprisingly accurate 
 translation. But of the thirty-two sonnets eighteen are practi- 
 cally of this character. And of the eighteen, all but one, the 
 Sannazaro already discussed, are taken from Petrarch. And there 
 are two more where the idea may have come from an Italian 
 source. So far as the sonnet is concerned, there can be no ques- 
 tion that Wyatt went to Italy. 
 
 Of these sonnets there are two usually quoted for their autobio- 
 graphic value. The first is a version of the CCLXIX Sonnet of 
 Petrarch. As this is an extreme case, even at the risk of in- 
 evitable boredom, it is better to quote it entire. 
 
 Rotta e 1'alta colonna e'l verde lauro 
 
 Che facean ombra al mio stanco pensero; 
 
 Perduto ho quel che ritrovar non spero 
 
 Dal borea a 1'autro, o dal mar indo al mauro. 
 
 The piller pearishd is whearto I lent: 
 
 The strongest staye of myne unquyet mynde; 
 
 The lyke of it no man agayne can fynde, 
 
 Ffrom East to West, still seking thoughe he went. 
 
 Tolto m'hai, Morte, il mio doppio tesauro 
 Che mi fea viver lieto e gire altero; 
 E ristorar nol pd terra ne impero, 
 Ne gemma oriental, ne forza d'auro. 
 
 To myne unhappe! for happe away hath rent 
 Of all my joye, the verye bark and rynde; 
 And I (alas) by chaunce am thus assynde 
 Dearlye to moorne till death do it relent.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 471 
 
 Ma se consentimento e di destino 
 
 Che posso io pill se no'aver Talma trista, 
 Umidi gli occhi sempre e'l viso chino? 
 
 But syns that thus it is by destenye, 
 
 What can I more but have a wofull hart, 
 My penne in playnt, my voyce in wofull crye, 
 
 Oh nostra vita ch'e si bella in vista, 
 
 Com'perde agevohnente in un matino 
 
 Quel che'n molti anni a gran pena s'acquista! 
 
 My mynde in woe, my bodye full of smart. 
 And I my self, my self alwayes to hate 
 Till dreadful! death, do ease my dolef ull state. 
 
 There is practically no doubt that the Petrarchan sonnet was 
 written on the events of 1348, when the Cardinal Giovanni Col- 
 onna died, and also Laura. The first line, therefore, opens with a 
 pun. There is no doubt, also, that Wyatt knew this, since all the 
 early commentators carefully explain the allusions. It will be 
 noticed that this is not an exact translation, that all allusions to 
 the laurel and the double treasure are omitted, and the last half 
 of the sextet differs radically. The question then arises whether 
 this sonnet was not written in commemoration of the fall of Crom- 
 well, July 28, 1540. This is almost invariably answered in the 
 affirmative. The general opinion may be illustrated by the note 
 appended by Miss Foxwell: 
 
 LI. 12-14 are original, and though less poetical than Petrarch's conclusion ex- 
 press Wiat's sincere feeling, and show also that he had a definite purpose in writ- 
 ing this Sonnet. It is evidently late, and the sentiment expressed fits in with 
 Cromwell's fall in 1540. 
 
 Since he had in no way been responsible for Cromwell's fate, it is 
 hard to understand why he should hate himself; since Cromwell 
 had been his protector, "whose minion he was," there was every 
 reason for anxiety concerning his own future and his own safety. 
 Under the circumstances if all that he could do was the frigid sonnet 
 with its lame and impotent conclusion, its perishing pillars and 
 the bark and rind of joy one cannot have a high estimation of his 
 poetic ability. If, on the other hand, it be considered a prentice 
 piece, that in the sextet, for instance, he was caught by the rime
 
 472 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 "destiny" and did the best he could, its presumable early date 
 would excuse its lack of either art or feeling. Much the same line 
 of reasoning applies to the other, Sonnet 3: 
 
 Who so list to hount: I know where is an hynde, 
 
 But, as for me: helas, I may no more. 
 
 The vayne travail hath werid me so sore, 
 
 I ame of theim, that farthest cometh behinde 
 Yet, may I by no means, my weried mynde 
 
 Drawe from the Der; but as she fleeth afore 
 
 Faynting I folowe. I leve of therefore: 
 
 Sins in a nett I seke to hold the wynde. 
 Who list her hount: I put him oute of dowbte: 
 
 As well as I : may spend his tyme in vain. 
 
 And graven with Diamonds in letters plain: 
 There is written, her faier neck rounde abowte: 
 
 Noli me tangere for Caesars I ame 
 
 And wylde for to hold: though I seme tame. 
 
 To the modern reader the allegory seems clear; the last two lines 
 can refer only to Anne Boleyn and the King. But, as Nott pointed 
 out a hundred years ago Wyatt's sonnet is only a re-working of a 
 sonnet by Petrarch. 1 Allegorizing the lady as a milk-white hind 
 was usual, 2 and the phrase Noli me tangere quia Caesaris sum was a 
 proverb. Romanello, also, has a sonnet in which, like Wyatt's, both 
 ideas are combined. 3 And the interpretation of the Petrarch sonnet 
 by Wyatt's Italian contemporaries is only that Laura is married. 4 
 But if that be the idea Wyatt is trying to convey, it surely would 
 not apply to Anne, unless it were written after 1532. On the other 
 hand, if the Caesaris sum refers only to the Julian laws of adultery, 
 as the Italian commentators aver, the Wyatt may have been 
 written to any married woman at any time, or it may again be 
 merely an effort at translation. The safer position, surely, is to 
 assume in Wyatt's work no autobiographical value until that value 
 is proved. 
 
 But not only are Wyatt's sonnets for the most part translations, 
 imitations and adaptations of Petrarch, those chosen have proven 
 
 1 Sonnet CXC. 
 
 * Cf . Boccaccio's Decamerone IV, 6. 
 
 3 Romanello's Sonnets are published together with La Bella Mono of Giusto 
 de'Conti, ed. by Mazzuchelli, Verona, 1753. 
 
 4 Petrarca, ed. Leonardo, 1533.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 473 
 
 the least permanent in the Rime. Part of Petrarch's inheritance 
 from the Provencal troubadours was the purely intellectual type 
 of poem wherein a metaphor is first selected and then pursued to 
 its last ramification. For this no poetic feeling is required; the 
 brain is scourged to think out the analogies. And it is this type 
 that Wyatt preferred. This was pointed out, long ago, by Warton, 
 in a passage that has never been bettered. 1 
 
 It was from the capricious and over-strained invention of the Italian poets, 
 that Wyat was taught to torture the passion of love by prolix and intricate com- 
 parisons, and unnatural allusions. At one time his love is a galley steered by 
 cruelty through stormy seas and dangerous rocks; the sails torn by the blast of 
 tempestuous sighs, and the cordage consumed by incessant showers of tears: a 
 cloud of grief envelopes the stars, reason is drowned, and the haven is at a distance. 
 At another, it is a Spring trickling from the summit of the Alps, which gathering 
 force in its fall, at length overflows all the plain beneath. Sometimes it is a 
 gun, which being overcharged, expands the flame within itself, and bursts in 
 pieces. Sometimes it is like a prodigious mountain, which is perpetually weep- 
 ing in copious fountains, and sending forth sighs from its forests; which bears 
 more leaves than fruits; which breeds wild-beasts, the proper emblems of rage, 
 and harbours birds that are always singing. In another of his sonnets, he says, 
 that all nature sympathises with his passion. The woods resound his elegies, 
 the rivers stop their course to hear him complain, and the grass weeps in dew. 
 These thoughts are common and fantastic. 
 
 Of course it is at once obvious that such poems are more easily 
 imitated. When once the original conception, such as the lover, 
 as hunter, chasing the loved one, as deer, who is unapproachable 
 because another's, is adopted, language is no bar; like a geomet- 
 rical problem it may be expressed as easily in English as in Italian, 
 and it cannot be said to have lost in the transference. Owing to 
 the difficulty of the sonnet form certain modifications are almost 
 inevitable, but such modifications neither detract from the poem, 
 nor add to the originality of the poet. Such translation is a game 
 of solitaire, played primarily for amusement, a contest between 
 the writer and the language. For such a purpose poems expressing 
 delicate shades of poetic feeling are too difficult; they defy trans- 
 lation. Perforce the writer must choose such pieces as can be trans- 
 ferred from one language to another. And the ornamentation will 
 consist in balance and antithesis, 
 
 1 Warton, ed. 1840, 3, 45-40. I prefer thus to tho 1871 edition by Hazlitt, since 
 in that the method of editing seems curiously eclectic.
 
 474 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra 
 I fynde no peace and all my warr is done. 
 
 Poetry of this sort abounds in the quattrocento writers, each 
 of whom, the center of his own particular little circle, adapted 
 Petrarch to his own particular needs. They followed him, to be 
 sure, but at a respectful distance. As a group they impress the 
 reader as a serious set of men elaborately grinding out complicated 
 conceits. Yet to speak of them as a group is a mistake; there was 
 little communication between them. The similar literary charac- 
 teristics are due to similar literary demands in the various courts, 
 demands for short complimentary poems, poems to be set to music, 
 light love lyrics, etc., etc. And as Petrarch's work offers models 
 for all such composition, naturally they all accepted him as master. 
 Probably the most popular of these writers was Serafino De'Cimi- 
 nelli, called from his birthplace Aquila, Aquilano. 1 During his 
 short life (14661500), in contrast to most of the other writers, he 
 stayed for some time at each of the various courts, Naples, Rome, 
 Ferrara, Mantua, Milan, Venice, almost all the literary centers, 
 in fact, with the exception of Florence. Consequently these pere- 
 grinations gave him a vogue the length and breadth of Italy. Dur- 
 ing his life he was too much occupied in composition to publish; 2 
 but immediately after his death, beginning with 1502, the press 
 poured forth edition after edition, so that before Wyatt's arrival 
 in Italy twenty-one editions had already appeared. I do not think 
 it is difficult to understand the cause of his popularity. He has a 
 distinct vein of sweetness and a lyric quality that make some of 
 his verses charming. It is quite comprehensible, to a certain de- 
 gree, what his friend Vicentio Calmeta 3 says of him: 
 
 1 The early editions always call him Seraphino; in modern indices he is listed 
 as Aquilano; and sometimes he appears as De'Ciminelli. It may save confusion 
 if it be realized that these are all one and the same poet. 
 
 2 The only modern edition is Le Rime di Serafino DeCiminetti dalT Aquila by 
 Marion Menghini, Collezione di Opere Inedite o Rare, Bologna, 1896. Unfor- 
 tunately only the first volume, containing the sonnets, eclogues and epistles, 
 appeared. Of the early editions I have used the 1508, 1539 (not listed hi Vaganey), 
 1540 and 1550. 
 
 3 This life was published in 1504 in a collection celebrating his praises. It 
 is fortunately, given in full by Menghini, as the lives prefixed to the early editions 
 are merely conde nsations of this, and refer the reader to it.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 475 
 
 Nel redtare de'soi poemi era tanto ardente e con tanto giuditio le parole con 
 la musica consertava che 1'animo de li asscoltanti o dotti, o mediocri, o plcbei, 
 o donne equalmente commoveva. 
 
 He sang, quite literally sang, of the passing of youth and the flight 
 of time, of lady's love and knight's despair, most musical, most 
 melancholy. 
 
 The criticism of his work is given acutely by II Pistoia in the son- 
 net just quoted: 
 
 Serafin 50/0 per la lingua e grato. 
 
 Unfortunately it is true, that Serafino pleases by the words alone, 
 that there is no thought behind them. His love poems sound 
 hollow, because they are empty. Fortunately this is not induc- 
 tive; we are told so. Calmeta naively remarks: 
 
 Non ebbe in soi poemi alcuno pariicolare amore per oggietto, perche in ogni 
 loco dove se trovava faceva piu presto innamoramento che pigliare casa a pisone. 
 
 Nor does the reader feel this limited only to his love poems. Be- 
 hind all the words there seems so little feeling. There is such a 
 small quantity of thought to such a deal of words. They need the 
 music to make us forget how little is said, to justify the constant 
 repetition, to eke out the sense by the sound. 
 
 When Serafino's immense popularity is considered, it was in- 
 evitable that Wyatt should imitate him. Not only were the 
 sonnets set to music, but from Chariteo (according to Calmeta) 
 he learned the strambotto, an eight lined verse in otiava rima, 
 the form in which he achieved his greatest celebrity. These differ 
 from the sonnet in that the restricted form allows even less space 
 for the development of the idea, and the termination in a couplet 
 necessarily gives an epigrammatic close. In some cases Wyatt 
 translates very carefully : 1 
 
 Oogni pungente e venenosa spina 
 se vede a qualche tempo csaer fiorita, 
 crudel veneno posto in medicina 
 Lai uolta torna Ibom da morte uita 
 
 l The text is from the 1508. Wyatt's indebtedness has been largely studied 
 by Koeppel. The same poem, however, is assigned by Carducci to Poliziano 
 (Rime 1912, 606).
 
 476 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 el foco che ogni cosa arde e ruina 
 spesso resana vna mortal ferita 
 cosi spero el mio mal me sia salute 
 chogni cosa che noce ha pur uirtute. 
 
 Venemus thornes that ar so sharp and kene, 
 Sometyme her flowers fay re and fresh of hue: 
 Poyson offtyme is put in medecene, 
 And causith helth in man for to renue; 
 Ffire that purgith allthing that is unclene, 
 May hele and hurt: and if thes bene true, 
 I trust somtyme my harnic may be my helth: 
 Syns evry wo is joynid with some welth. 
 
 In other cases only the idea, or some significant phrases, are taken. 
 Wyatt's " Epigrams " show the country of their birth by both con- 
 tent and form. As has been said before, of the thirty-one epigrams 
 all but six are in the ottava rima. It may be granted at once that 
 all these have not been traced to their sources and that many so- 
 called sources are extremely doubtful, yet enough that can be 
 positively shown to be translation has been found to justify the 
 generalization that here also Wyatt's main function was to intro- 
 duce Italian methods to sixteenth century England. 
 
 If we may for the moment postpone the discussion of the miscel- 
 laneous group and turn at once to the Satires, a new figure is intro- 
 duced upon the scene in the person of Luigi Alamanni. 1 In both 
 life and character he forms a striking contrast to the graceful super- 
 ficial Serafino. Born of a noble Florentine family, he was edu- 
 cated in the refinements of the time, surrounded by classic monu- 
 ments of both art and letters. In particular he belonged to the 
 group meeting at the home of Bernardo Rucellai, or rather in the 
 shade of the Orti Oricellari, a group of which Macchiavelli was a 
 member and Trissino an honored guest, in which the literary 
 discussions recalled memories of the earlier brilliant circle of Lo- 
 renzo. The contrast between these two literary circles shows the 
 development of the Renaissance spirit. Whereas the first was pri- 
 marily interested in classic culture per se, Alamanni and his friends 
 were primarily interested in bringing Italian culture to the classic 
 levels. This ideal assumed suddenly a practical shape when in 1522, 
 
 1 Cf. Luigi Alamanni, par Henri Hauvette, Paris, 1903. To M. Hauvette I 
 am indebted for all the facts of the life.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 477 
 
 following the examples of Harmodus and Aristogiton, they en- 
 tered the plot to restore the liberties of Florence by the assassina- 
 tion of Giulio de'Medici. Unhappily the Cardinal, when the plot 
 was betrayed to him, was unable to appreciate the beauty of classi- 
 cal precedent, and Alamanni escaped into exile with a price upon 
 his head. Until the middle of 1527 he lived a life of enforced lei- 
 sure, indefinite waiting, and postponed hopes. In the spring of 
 1527 he was at Lyons, the French gate to Italy, and in all proba- 
 bility he was there, when Sir John Russell, with Wyatt in his train, 
 passed through. And apparently by that time he had written his 
 satires, which were first published in his Opere Toscane 1532-1533. 
 On the expulsion of the Medici in 1527 he returned to Florence, 
 but shortly, on their return, he is again driven into life-long exile 
 and becomes a pensioner of the French Court. 
 
 The events of this varied and exciting life find their poetical ex- 
 pression in poems that are always dignified, if somewhat ponder- 
 ous. Serafino was predominantly a poet, but a poet without much 
 to say; Alamanni has no lack of subject matter, but not very much 
 poetical afflatus. His early training had taught him the value of 
 classical restraint, and restraint of any kind was the last lesson 
 he needed to learn. He takes himself so seriously! As he writes, 
 one feels him wondering how the Orti Oricellari will like this verse, 
 and how he may justify it. The inevitable result is negative; the 
 absence of faults is balanced by an absence of virtues, the type 
 of work so distressing to critics, wherein all rules are carefully 
 preserved, no blemishes to be condemned, and yet without the 
 impression of the personality to vitalize it. Of all forms of writ- 
 ing where such a negative becomes a positive, the chief is surely 
 the verse-letter. Here a minor writer may be excellent merely 
 by being himself. Consequently Italian literature of the period 
 is flooded by such compositions, call them satires, letters, capitoli, 
 what you will, wherein the end sought is amusement. The one 
 thing necessary is lightness of touch. Unhappily that is the quali- 
 fication that Alamanni did not possess. His satires lack both 
 the grace of Horace, and the sting of Juvenal. They are perfectly 
 good and perfectly commonplace. 
 
 Also unhappily it is Alamanni that Wyatt chose for his model 
 in satire. Again the simpler method will be that of quotation. 1 
 1 The text is taken from the 1542 edition of the Opere Totcane. Satire X.
 
 478 
 
 Questo fa che'l mio regnio, e'l mio thesoro 
 
 Son gli'nchiostri & le carte, & piu ch'altroue 
 Hoggi in Prouenza uolentier dimoro. 
 
 Qui non ho alcun, che mi domandi doue 
 
 Mi stia, ne uada, & non mi sforza alcuno 
 A gir pe'l mondo quando agghiaccia & pioue. 
 
 Quando e'gli e'l ciel seren, quando e gli & bruno 
 Son quel medesmo, & non mi prendo affanno, 
 Colmo di pace, & di timor digiuno. 
 
 Non sono in Francia a sentir beffo & danno 
 S'io non conoscp i uin, s'io non so bene 
 Qual uiuanda e miglior di tutto 1'anno, 
 
 Non nella Hispagnia oue studiar conuiene 
 Piu che nell'esser poi nel ben parere, 
 Oue frode, & menzognia il seggio tiene, 
 
 Non in Germania oue'l mangiare e'l bere 
 
 M'habbia a tor 1'intelletto, & darlo in preda 
 Al senso, in guisa di seluagge fere . 
 
 Non sono in Roma, oue chi'n Christo creda, 
 Et non sappia falsar, ne far ueneni 
 Conuien ch'a ha casa sospirando rieda. 
 
 Sono in Prouenza. . . . 
 
 This maketh me at home to hounte and to hawke, 
 
 And in fowle weder at my booke to sitt; 
 In frost and snowe then with my bow to stawke; 
 
 No man doeth mark where so I ride or goo; 
 
 In lusty lees at libertie I walke; 
 And of these newes I fele nor wele nor woo, 
 
 Sauf that a clogg doeth hang yet at my hele. 
 
 No force for that; for it is ordered so, 
 That I may lepe boeth hedge and dike full well. 
 
 I ame not now in Ffraunce to judge the wyne 
 
 With saffry sauce the delicates to fele. 
 Nor yet in Spaigne where oon must him inclyne 
 
 Rather then to be outewerdly to seme; 
 
 I meddill not with wittes than be so fyne. 
 Nor Fflaunders chiere letteth not my sight to deme 
 
 Of black and white, nor taketh my wit awaye 
 
 With bestlynes; they beestes do so esteme. 
 Nor I ame not where Christe is geven in pray 
 
 For mony, poison and traison at Rome, 
 
 A commune practise used nyght and daie. 
 But here I ame in Kent and Christendome, . . .
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 479 
 
 This is a fair illustration of Wyatt's procedure. In the first place 
 he keeps the meter exactly. 1 The difficulty of the terza rima in 
 English, owing to the scarcity of riming words, is of course due 
 to the triple rime. In Wyatt's attempt to render the meter, the 
 sense of the original is apt to be lost, the value of the phrase usually 
 goes, and sometimes his lines make no sense at all. Inevitably 
 with so difficult a rime-scheme there is dilution. Part of the di- 
 lution may be due to a desire to adapt the original to his own in- 
 dividual conditions. Thus it begins, 
 
 Myn owne John Poynz, 
 
 and runs in occasionally local allusions, such as that to Kent in 
 the passage quoted. Of these the most interesting is the sub- 
 stitution for classical reference in the two lines, 
 
 Praise Syr Thopias for a nobyll tale, 
 
 And skorne the story that the knyght told. . . 
 
 While such deception is not in accordance with modern ethics, in 
 the sixteenth century property rights in poems were not regarded. 
 Such additions were made for a personal application, or, as in the 
 case of Barclay, for a moral purpose. The difficulty here is to 
 distinguish between additional matter put in for the sake of the 
 meter and that put in to give a more intimate tone. This diffi- 
 culty is enhanced by the fact that the Alamanni original is insin- 
 cere; written at a time when he was moving heaven and earth to 
 please Francis I er , platitudes on the wretchedness of court life 
 strongly suggest the fable of the fox and the grapes. And it can- 
 not be said that the facts of Wyatt's life as we know them indicate 
 that he lived on a superior plane, untouched by the baser motives 
 of the common courtier. His intimacy with Sir Francis Bryan 2 
 scarcely argues for a lonely moral isolation. The two other satires 
 
 1 Samtabury (Hist, of Prosody, 1, 311) as quoted by Miss Foxwell (Study, 89) 
 comment*: "the best name for the metre of the remarkable poems ... is prob- 
 ably interlaced heroic couplets". . In a note he adds: "or they may be classed 
 as simply terza rima, unskillfully written, but Wyatt has not got the terza movement 
 at all, indeed quatrains suggest themselves and quintets and almost everything." 
 This remarkable pronouncement must be due to a limiting of the name term rima 
 to the Dantesque manner; but Wyatt's model u the terza rima of the cinque- 
 cento! 
 
 1 Cf . 377-S80.
 
 480 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 follow Horace, but it must be granted that they follow at a re- 
 spectful distance, at such a distance that one is tempted to 
 assume an unknown intermediary, which more suo Wyatt has 
 adapted. 1 But whatever may have been the procedure, these 
 satires form an instructive contrast to the first three of Bar- 
 clay. 2 The vigour of the early writer, due to his use of the con- 
 crete instance, has been lost in elegant generality. On the other 
 hand, the somewhat amorphous couplets of Barclay have been 
 replaced by the elaborate terza rima. What has been lost in 
 force has been gained in form. 
 
 Petrarch, Serafino, and Alamanni, for, although Wyatt imitates 
 others occasionally, these are his chief sources, form a curious 
 group without much in common ; the final touch is to find that he has 
 copied his version of the Penitential Psalms from Pietro Aretino. 3 
 Aretino is one of the most interesting figures of the Italian Re- 
 naissance, because in the midst of sham and convention he dared 
 to be himself. Preeminently he is a realist. Son of a shoemaker, 
 hanger-on of the Papal Court, follower of Giovanni de la Banda 
 Nera, soldier of fortune at Venice, at no period of his active life 
 did he have leisure to learn from books. The world was his school. 
 Although some of his work and of course it is that that is the best 
 known and most often associated with his name! is outside the 
 pale of polite conversation, the vitality of his writing, which gave 
 him honor and riches in his own day, has remained. 4 After 
 1530, the year in which the Doge finally succeeded in obtaining 
 his pardon from the Pope, Aretino began composing religious works 
 from motives of policy. The contrast between his life of open, un- 
 ashamed, boastful licentiousness and these books of a sickly, pious 
 sentimentalism is too extreme; it combines the flaunting of vice and 
 
 1 In the Third Satire, which contains the fable of the town mouse and the coun- 
 try visitor, curiously enough the latter mouse is apparently French. It looks 
 very much as though Wyatt had reversed the process used in the rondeaux and 
 put French content into an Italian form. 
 
 * Lengthy illustrations are given from Barclay's satires, pp. 238-242. 
 
 3 Miss Foxwell attributes this discovery to Mr. Arundell Esdaile of the British 
 Museum. 
 
 4 There is no modern edition of the works of Aretino and there is no writer 
 more misunderstood. For a mass of misinformation the reader is referred to the 
 article in the Encyclopedia Britannica. For a clear and brief summary of his lit- 
 erary position, cf. Arturo Graf, Attraverso il Cinquecento.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 481 
 
 the smirking of hypocrisy. The modern reader, as he turns the 
 pages of the Humanitd di Cmto, is too conscious of the painted 
 faces of the harlots grinning over his shoulder, not to experience a 
 sensation of almost physical repugnance. The literary manner 
 is no more pleasing. It consists in taking the scriptural narrative, 
 or the life of a saint, and retelling it with incredible dilution. In 
 1534, in this way he produced / sette Salmi de la penitentia di David, 
 a wordy prose version of the Psalms, joined together by prologues 
 which give a stage setting. This much may be said in behalf of 
 this production. Any rendition of the Bible into the vulgar tongue, 
 especially if it were uncontaminated by Lutheranism, was a nov- 
 elty, and the Psalms themselves are so fine that even Aretino can- 
 not completely ruin them. As the public is apt to confuse art and 
 morality, perhaps it is not surprising that the book proved popular; 
 there were three Italian editions and one French translation before 
 Wyatt's death. 1 Evidently Wyatt is to be numbered among the 
 admirers of this curious production. He copies the framework of 
 the prologues, translates some of the prologues, and parts of the 
 Psalms themselves. As in the case of his version of Alamanni's 
 satire, he makes no pretence at representing his author faithfully, 
 and, it is interesting to note, it is the early part of the work that 
 shows the most indebtedness. Later he follows the Vulgate. 2 In 
 any case, his main indebtedness to Aretino lies in his conceiving 
 the work from a standpoint purely literary. It is this that differ- 
 entiates his production from the Psalms of Coverdale, or Sternhold, 
 or Clement Marot. Those were written to be sung. As they were 
 sung, the tendency was to replace the authorized hymns of the 
 Church by them. Moreover, this was the intention of the hereti- 
 cal authors. But there is no such purpose as this in Wyatt. His 
 
 1 In 1741 Mazzuchelli thus comments: Di tutte 1'Opere in prosa che scrissc 
 1'Aretino, quests sopra i Salmi si pud riputar la migliore, non gia pcrchc diasi da 
 noi fede a quel Predicator Bolognese riferito dallo stesso Aretino, il quale pre- 
 dicando in Venezia, chi ruol vedcre, disse, m la penitentia David, leggali, e tedrallo; 
 ma per testimonio anche del Crescimbeni, il quale le chiama dcgni fuser Utti, e 
 ammirati. La Vita di Pietro Aretino, Padova, 1741, 218. 
 
 1 Miss Forwell tries to show that he is indebted to the Psalter of 1530, bccau.sc 
 he probably composed them while travelling and the Great Bible would have been 
 cumbersome. Apparently she forgets that Wyatt was brought up on the Vul- 
 gate. Moreover the Italian nottulo, the nycticoxax of the Vulyate, while it does 
 mean "bat" also means owl. Wyatt's owl, therefore, does not signify anything.
 
 482 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Psalms were written to be read. The composition is a single unit, 
 where the prologues give the scenery for the dramatic monologues. 
 It is dramatic, therefore, and not lyric, in conception. This is also 
 shown by the fact that whereas the prologues are in the ottava 
 rima, a lyric measure, the psalms themselves are in the terza rima, 
 a purely narrative measure. 
 
 To discuss the Psalms from this literary point of view is 
 almost impossible for the modern English reader. The su- 
 perbly beautiful phrasing of the Authorized Version is so 
 familiar that the addition of rime seems cheap and the dilution 
 impertinent. But this necessarily renders him unfair to Wyatt, 
 for the majority of the readers of his age thought of the Psalms in 
 terms of Latin. Any English version was still tentative. Yet it 
 must be granted that the meter chosen was unfortunate. Terza 
 rima is so difficult in English that he is forced to expand the simple 
 lines of the Vulgate. Although naturally the work is better in 
 proportion as there is less Aretino and more Vulgate, even at the 
 best it seems diffuse. For example, the two lines of the Fiftieth 
 Psalm (the Fifty-first in English) read: 
 
 Asperges me hyssopo, et mundabor; 
 
 lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor. 
 
 Wyatt's version runs : 
 
 And as the Juyz to hele the liepre sore, 
 
 With hysope dense, dense me, and I ame dene; 
 Thou shalt me wash, and more then snow therfore 
 
 I shall be whight, how foule my faut have bene. 
 
 Surely no one can maintain that Wyatt has improved the Author- 
 ized Version: 
 
 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be dean; wash me, and I shall be whiter 
 than snow. 
 
 The meter has forced him, not only to unnecessary additions, but 
 also to an awkward inverted order. And Aretino is not responsible 
 here. 
 
 Among the Italian authors Wyatt not only chose poor mod- 
 els, but he also selected poor examples of their work. 1 The ques- 
 
 1 Miss Foxwell (The Poems, 2, Introduction, vi), tells us: "At Venice, amongst 
 other great statesmen, he met Navagero and Baldassaro Castiglione, the two
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 483 
 
 tion naturally arises, why were these particular poems chosen, 
 when the best of the cinquecento was open to him. The answer 
 to this question is clear from the previous analysis. The one char- 
 acteristic common to all of Wyatt's translations is that the appeal 
 in them is to the mind, rather than to the heart. The emotional 
 sonnets of Petrarch are passed by in favor of those in which a con- 
 ceit is carefully worked out; the musical strains of Serafino are ig- 
 nored to translate an antithesis; the moralization of Alamanni and 
 the sentimentality of Aretino are chosen for intellectual reasons. 
 Each work, whether sonnet or strambotto, whether psalm or satire, 
 is in itself a clearly defined unit. The strambotto is not an undevel- 
 oped sonnet, but, from the beginning, the author had a clear per- 
 ception of exactly what he wished to accomplish; nor is the sonnet 
 by chance a sonnet, but it was originally conceived as a sonnet. 
 However trite this may seem to us, only a glance is needed at the 
 works of his contemporaries to realize that it was a revolutionary 
 conception. There is no place here for poems written "to eschew 
 ydelnes," works that are accretions of years brought together be- 
 cause of a common topic, such as Skelton, or Hawes, or Barclay, 
 or Heywood. Wyatt's works are on a different plane of literary 
 art. 
 
 This is his great contribution to literature. It is for this reason 
 that the Elizabethans recognized in him the beginning of English 
 poetry, why Puttenham calls him a "lantern of light." And it 
 was perceived even in his own time. Immediately after his death 
 in 1542 Leland, the antiquary, published a volume of Latin elegies 
 in his honor. 1 In most of them the worthy antiquary is particularly 
 interested in doing full justice to his own classical learning, so that 
 the result is platitudinous. But in them one can see how one man 
 at least judged him. In one of them Wyatt is held comparable to 
 Dante and Petrarch in the vulgar tongue. There are two others 
 which give exactly the fact here stated. 
 
 men whose influence was most felt among other nations." Consequently he 
 came under the influence of "the grand" Navagero, C'astiglione whose "own 
 married life was ideally happy," and Trissino. While of course it is possible 
 that he met these men on his Italian journey, just as it is possible that he 
 met an indefinite number of others, as a matter of fact there is no proof that he 
 did. 
 
 1 Naeniae in mortem Thomae Viaii rqvitit ineomparabilit, I^ondini 1542. Thia 
 is reprinted by Miss Foxwcll.
 
 484 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Anglica lingua fuit nulls & sine nomine ihythmus 
 Nunc limam agnoscit docte Viate tuam. 
 
 Nobilitaa didicit te praeceptore Britanna 
 
 Carmina per varies scribere posse modos. 
 
 That expresses precisely Wyatt's function. In an age, when art 
 in its narrow sense had been lost, in his work the English language 
 did find again the art of omission, did recognize his file, and did 
 learn to write songs in various clearly differentiated forms. 
 
 For such a purpose as this, obviously, the content of the individ- 
 ual poems is a secondary matter. Whether or not they are auto- 
 biographical, whether or not he did love Anne Boleyn, whether or 
 not they are translations, whether or not they express his real con- 
 victions, none of these is particularly important. The important 
 thing is that in his work the early Tudor found examples of a large 
 variety of verse forms, coldly but carefully worked out. 1 It must 
 be granted that a poet whose primary interest is in form, rather 
 than in content, is not great. Poetic technique, clever phrase, 
 witty conceit go a little way, but only a little way. On the other 
 hand, the great emotions that have aroused poets from the begin- 
 ning are not present in Wyatt's work. The nature in his poems is 
 of the lion-and-tiger sort drawn from books; beauty apparently 
 makes little appeal; and his love serves merely as the occasion to 
 make far-fetched comparisons. This lack of emotion is apparently 
 one of the reasons why critics call him " virile ! " His better poems 
 
 1 Miss Foxwell tries to show that Wyatt deduced the principles of his versifi- 
 cation from the Pynson Chaucer of 1526. (Study, Chapter VI.) "Wyatt de- 
 liberately and conscientiously studied Chaucer with a view of carrying on his 
 method of work, and made his exercise in versification parallel with his introduction 
 of the Petrarchan Sonnet." From that he made rules of versification. "The 
 rules collected from the above include the chief rules of Wiat's versification, such 
 as the slurring of vowels, . . weak syllables ending in vowel-likes (i. c. n, T, \, n), 
 and slurring of verbal ending '-eth' in the body of the verse; the absence of weak 
 stress after the ctesura, and before the strong stress of the second foot; the caesura 
 after the third syllable as in 'palmers,' and the occasional variety of an octo- 
 syllabic line." (The Poems, Appendix D.) In regard to this there are two com- 
 ments: (a) these "rules" are subjective in that they depend upon the way 
 in which the line is read; (b) Wyatt's versification, like that of his contemporaries, 
 including the Pynson Chaucer, was affected by the principles of the Medieval 
 Latin. In other words, it is unnecessary to discuss Pynson, since Wyatt's versi- 
 fication is that of his age.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 485 
 
 are observations of the life around him. In them he has mastered 
 the medium, he carries the structure easily, and at the same time 
 is definite and concrete. 
 
 They fle from me, that sometyme did me seke l 
 
 suggests an actual occasion, or the epigram written to Bryan from 
 prison. 2 But the most successful are those written to be sung. 
 Such poems as My Lute awake! 3 F for get not yet the tryde entent, 4 or 
 Blame not my lute, 5 have maintained their place in all anthologies. 
 They deserve all the praise that has been lavished upon them. The 
 union of strength and grace makes a rare and felicitous combina- 
 tion. But in spite of these, and the six or eight more like them, the 
 proposition remains true that for his age Wyatt's value lay, not 
 in the few pieces where the fire of his passion has amalgamated 
 the content and the form into one perfect whole, but in the many 
 others which may not unjustly be called experiments in stanza- 
 forms. Not only is the rondeau, the sonnet, the terza rima, and the 
 ottava rima to be found, he made experiments also with the mono- 
 rime, the Medieval Latin types of simple triplets with refrains, of 
 quatrains of different combinations of length of line and different 
 rime-schemes, of quatrains with codas, with French forms hi 
 the douzaine and treizaine, and finally with poulter's meter. There 
 are even two attempts at what will be later the Elizabethan sonnet. 
 With the exception of the heroic couplet and of blank verse, two 
 very important exceptions, most of the stanzas to be used during 
 the century are there. Of course with our ignorance of what the 
 other writers were doing, it is uncritical to assume that all these 
 novelties were first imported by Wyatt, an assumption that 
 would make him one of the greatest verse-technicians in the history 
 of the language, but they prove that the minds of the men in the 
 
 1 Pom*, ed. Foxwell, I, 86. 
 
 1 Ibid, I. 62. 
 
 l lbid, I, 117. This poem is almost certainly Wyatt's since it appears in the 
 Egerton MS. with the signature "Tho". It was assigned to George Boleyn by 
 Park in Nubae Antiquae. 1804 and also in a note to the Warton. because it "in 
 one of the Harrington MSS. dated 1504, is ascribed to viscount Rochford." 
 Whatever Park may have meant in the passage quoted, the Egerton MSS. would 
 take precedence in any case. 
 
 *Ibid..l, 801. 
 
 Ibid., I, SOS.
 
 486 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 circle to which Wyatt belonged were seriously occupied in studying 
 the forms of verse. 
 
 That Wyatt was a leader in this circle seems probable, not only 
 from Puttenham's statement, but also from the number of manu- 
 scripts that have been preserved containing his poems . That he was 
 the founder of a "school" we have no grounds for believing. The 
 variety of his experiments seems to argue that he was still feeling 
 his way, and the imitative nature of them does not suggest a domi- 
 nating personality. 1 He was a fearless diplomat and an accom- 
 plished courtier, although apparently quick-tempered. His na- 
 ture seems to have been grave and sweet, meditating over moral 
 issues. 2 And his poems bear out this judgment. Tottel's phrase 
 "the weightinesse of the depewitted sir Thomas Wyat the elders 
 verse" is sound criticism; but that he "reft Chaucer the glory of 
 his wit" is Surrey's exaggeration. The preceding line, however, 
 that he "taught what might be said in ryme" explains the con- 
 temporary admiration. If this be true, the assumption may be 
 plausible that such songs as Henry's Pastyme with good companye, 
 Gray's The hunte is vp, Cornysshe's lyrics, etc., etc., represent the 
 work done hi the first quarter of the century. Later, George 
 Boleyn, Lord Vaux, Henry Morley, Heywood, Anthony Lee, etc. 
 composed after foreign models. This would explain Tottel's apol- 
 ogy " If parhappes some mislike the statelinesse of stile remoued 
 from the rude skill of common eares". . . But this is merely an 
 hypothesis. The authors are really little more than names! Of 
 George Boleyn, a volume of whose rhythmos elegantissimos is 
 listed by Bale, one song alone remains and his authorship of that 
 is doubtful. To judge of Lord Thomas Vaux' "maruelous facil- 
 litie, " 3 two short pieces are given us. Tottel's Miscellany, as we 
 are told in the Preface gives us those poems "which the ungentle 
 horders up of such treasure haue heretofore enuid thee." But 
 
 1 Miss FoxwelTs comment (op. cit., 2, XX), "Wiat's life and work is a song of 
 harmony. The 'music of the spheres' is here. It is a vindication of what man 
 can become with lofty ami and set purpose," proves rather her sympathetic im- 
 agination than her critical ability. Flugel's summary, (Neuenglisches Lesebuch, 
 Halle 1895, Band 1,376-3852), is a careful statement of the case. 
 
 2 Two letters written by Wyatt while in Spain to his son have been preserved. 
 As they partake of the nature of sermons, one wonders in what mood the son, 
 anxious for news of his father, received these improving epistles. 
 
 3 Puttenham, op. cit., 247.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 487 
 
 the ungentle borders have done their work ! Whatever may have 
 been the "treasures," they are now lost. Of the group Wyatt 
 alone survives. And if, from his work, we may posit conditions 
 and characteristics belonging to the work that is gone, we must 
 recognize that these men consciously followed Italian precedent. 
 
 But whereas the court poetry of the early Tudors followed the 
 precedent of Italian poetry, there is practically no influence of Ital- 
 ian prose. An occasional book, such as More's Life of Pico, ap- 
 peared, but in general, so far as the lessons to be learned from the 
 great Italians are concerned, English writers were woefully ig- 
 norant. This condition is not surprising. To copy a sonnet re- 
 quires far less drudgery than to translate a folio history; in the 
 first case, it is possible to conceive it as a pastime, while the second 
 requires application and many leisure hours. Therefore such 
 labor would not be usual in the caste to which Wyatt belonged, the 
 class most open to Italian influence. But Wyatt himself with his 
 two college degrees must have represented a stage far in advance 
 of the majority of the English reading public. The main reason 
 why Italian Prose was not translated is because there was no de- 
 mand. It was not for hah* a century that the English people could 
 appreciate the intellectual analysis of a Macchiavelli, or a Guic- 
 ciardini. The first half of the period was still transitional in its 
 character; the larger part was still medieval. There is a third 
 factor that is scarcely independent of the other two, the intro- 
 duction of printing. The fact that a book was long, as it made 
 reproduction by hand onerous, made printing the logical solution. 
 So Caxton, when he found that people wished copies of his Re- 
 cueil des histoires de Troyes determined to learn the art of printing. 
 But the press equally made literature sensitive to the popular de- 
 mand. As the object in issuing any given publication was to make 
 money by selling it, the inevitable desire was to issue such books 
 as the people would buy. Since the public then was conservative, 
 it followed logically that the early issues of the press in England 
 would be medieval in character, that it served to project medi- 
 eval conceptions into the early Renaissance. 
 
 In any discussions of the works of the early printers in England, 
 there are two facts that must be remembered. As printing was 
 a business, the printers were neither well-born nor well-educated. 
 They belonged to a caste very different from any of the authors al-
 
 488 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 ready discussed. Before their shops they had stalls from which 
 books were sold at retail. To the American reader this may seem 
 to imply an impossibility of intercourse between the printers and 
 the nobility. Actually it did not, nor do the facts support any 
 such contention. Quite the reverse was true. Snobbery is a con- 
 commitant of democracy, because when every man is as good as 
 his neighbor, some will think that socially they are a little better. 
 But this self-assumed social superiority requires constant asser- 
 tion to have it recognized by a careless and egotistic world. With 
 a clearly defined caste system such a condition is impossible. In 
 the army there is no awkwardness in the meeting between the 
 captain and the corporal; the captain is captain and the corporal 
 is corporal. Nor does the corporal by gesture, or speech, try to 
 suggest that he is captain; his rank is on his sleeve and all who run 
 may read. Therefore they meet on terms of complete under- 
 standing. The situation was the same between the prince and the 
 printer in the sixteenth century. We are apt to forget this, be- 
 cause to us Caxton (or Shakespeare) is so vastly more important 
 than the casual prince. When Caxton alludes to Skelton, uncon- 
 sciously we feel that the latter must have been immensely honored ! 
 And Skelton was the tutor to the Prince! The importance of this 
 fact, as affecting literary conditions, is that, aside from the great 
 democracy of the Church, the social status was a pre-requisite for 
 formal education. As the early printers did not have this prerequi- 
 site, naturally they also lacked the training of the schools. The re- 
 sult was that literature necessarily became popular by the introduc- 
 tion of the press; being popular, it was necessarily conservative. 
 
 The other fact important for its literary consequences is that 
 for the first half century of its existence in England the press was 
 controlled to a very large degree by foreigners. Although Cax- 
 ton himself was a native of England, the thirty-five years previous 
 to the establishment of his press in Westminster had been spent 
 upon the continent "for the most part in the centres of Braband, 
 Flandres, Holand and Zeland. " After 1476, when Caxton estab- 
 lished the first English press, others followed but slowly; Oxford 
 1478, 1479 (circ.) St. Albans, and 1480 John Lettou in London, "but 
 at best the output of books in England was miserably scanty. 1 " 
 
 1 1 am quoting (and utilizing the facts) from A Century of the English Book Trade 
 by E. Gordon Duff printed for the Bibliographical Society in 1905.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 489 
 
 Whether or not this was appreciated, in 1484 to the act regulating 
 the conditions under which foreigners might trade in England was 
 put the curious proviso: 
 
 Provided always, that this act or any parcel thereof, or any other act made or 
 to be made in this said parliament, shall not extend, or be in prejudice, disturbance 
 damage or impediment to any artificer or merchant stranger, of what nation or 
 country he be, or shall be of, for bringing into this realm, or selling by retail or 
 otherwise, any books written or printed, or for inhabiting within this said realm 
 for the same intent, or any scrivener, alluminor, binder or printer of such books, 
 which he hath or shall have to sell by way of merchandise, or for their dwelling 
 within this said realm for the exercise of the said occupations; this act or any part 
 thereof notwithstanding. l 
 
 The result of this may be stated in the words of the same authority : 2 
 
 The position held by the foreigner in the English book-trade may easily be 
 gauged from the fact that, with the exception of William Caxton and Thomas 
 Hunte the Oxford bookseller, we find no English name in the colophon of any book 
 printed in or for England as printer or bookseller until about the year 1516. The 
 school-master of St. Albans was doubtless also an Englishman, but his name is 
 not known. That there were many English booksellers and stationers at this 
 time is certain, but for some reason or other the foreigner took the lead and the 
 native workman lagged in the background. 
 
 If this condition be true and the reasoning in the previous para- 
 graph be sound, we should find that, in the reign of Henry VII and 
 the early part of that of Henry VIII, the press was issuing books 
 medieval in feeling and that many of them would be taken from 
 foreign literatures. And as the French predilections of Henry VII 
 are well known, the particular foreign literature drawn upon would 
 be French. But as this favoring of the foreigner passed away, 
 in 1523 it was forbidden for an alien to take any apprentices ex- 
 cept English born, and to keep more that two foreign journey- 
 men, and in 1534 foreigners were prohibited from bringing over 
 books to retail, the foreign influence on English would diminish. 
 At least, that is the condition as shown by the lists of publi- 
 cations. Fortunately interest in the early printing has been suffi- 
 cient to attract specialists, until we can be fairly certain of what 
 
 'Quoted from Duff, op. cit., xi. The original act (Statutes of the Realm, fol. 
 1816. Vol. ii. p. 493.) is itself in French. 
 1 ibid, xv.
 
 490 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 was published. Without attempting even to state the separate 
 problems connected with Caxton's work, Sir Sidney Lee's list in 
 the Dictionary of National Biobraphy may be taken as a working 
 basis. He enumerates there seventy -one separate works. 1 Of 
 these about forty per cent come from the French. The surprise 
 caused by this percentage lessens when the entire list is considered. 
 It then becomes evident that, with but an occasional insignificant 
 publication, Caxton has printed no contemporary works, either 
 of English, French, or Latin. There are issues of single works by 
 Chaucer and Lydgate, Gower's Confessio Amantis, from the Latin 
 religious tracts, and Reynard the Fox from the Dutch. Caxton 
 is obviously looking backward. Consequently his publications 
 scarcely concern the student of the Renaissance. 
 
 They concern the student of the Renaissance only as it can be 
 shown that they affected subsequent work. In the case of Chau- 
 cer and Lydgate this is clear. But from the French Caxton took 
 one book that has had a marked influence, Sir Thomas Malory's 
 Morte Darthur. 2 This was issued in 1485; before the acces- 
 sion of Elizabeth it had been reprinted three times. The record 
 does not show great popularity, as within a shorter interval the 
 Pastime of Pleasure, for example, had had five editions; nor is it 
 fair to compare the number of editions with the Chaucerian list, 
 since one is prose and the other poetry, whose system of prosody 
 had been forgotten. It is, of course, impossible to measure thus 
 an author's influence by mere quantity; Flaubert's influence on 
 the English prose of the last half of the nineteenth century cer- 
 tainly is not indicated by the number of editions of his translated 
 works. On the other hand, it is certainly true that to the modern 
 reader the value of Malory's book is enhanced by the appreciation 
 of Spenser and Tennyson. "A national epic" Dr. Sommer calls 
 it. But to the early Tudors, ignorant of the future, there was no 
 national epic about it. They took it, as apparently did Caxton, at 
 its face value. Although Caxton's preface is so well known that 
 
 1 Duff, op. cii., 24: "The number of books actually printed by Caxton in England, 
 counting separate editions, is ninety-six, and with the three printed at Bruges, and 
 the Missal, he issued exactly one hundred books." 
 
 * The scholarly edition is by H. Oskar Sommer, and published by David Nutt 
 1889-91. This forms the basis of all subsequent work. It is accompanied with 
 critical apparatus, and an appreciation by Andrew Lang.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 491 
 
 it may be omitted here, I may be permitted to refresh the memory 
 of the reader on the main points. Caxton tells us that of the three 
 Christian worthies, the story of Charlemagne is accessible in French 
 and English, and he himself had printed the history of Godfrey of 
 Boulogne, but as the story of Arthur was not at hand, he was asked 
 to print it by "the sayd noble lentylmen," because Arthur had 
 been "borne wythin this royame and kyng and Emperour of the 
 same. " To his reply that some believed "that there was no suche 
 Arthur," the nobleman pointed out the many relics of Arthur 
 then existing, "wherfor it is a meruayl why he is no more re- 
 nomed in his owne contreye." 
 
 Thenne al these thynges forsayd aledged I coude not wel denye / but that there 
 was suche a noble kyng named arthur / and reputed one of the ix Worthy / & fyrst 
 & chyef of the cristen men / & many noble volumes be made of hym & of his noble 
 knyghts in frensshe which I haue seen & redde beyonde the see / which been not 
 had in our maternal tongue / but in walsshe ben many & also in frensshe / & somme 
 in englysshe but no where nygh alle / wherfore suche as haue late ben drawn oute 
 bryefly into englysshe / I haue after the symple connynge that god hath sente to 
 me / vnder the fauour and correctyon of al noble lordes and gentylmen enprysed 
 to enprynte a book of the noble hystoryes of the sayd kynge Arthur / and of certeyn 
 of his knyghtes after a copye vnto me delyuerd / whyche copye Syr Thomas Mal- 
 orye dyd take oute of certeyn bookes of frensshe and reduced it in to Englysshe / 
 And I accordyng to my copye haue doon sette it in enprynte / to the entente that 
 noble men may see and lerne the noble actes of chyualrye / the lentyl and vertuous 
 dedes that somme knyghtes vsed in tho dayes / by whyche they came to honour / 
 and how they that were vycious were punysshed and of te put to shame and rebuke 
 / humbly bysechyng al noble lordes and ladyes wyth al other estates of what estate 
 or degree they been of / that shal see and rede in this sayd book and werke / that 
 they take the good and honest actes in their remembraunce / and to folowe the 
 same / Wherin they shalle fynde many loyous and playsaunt hystoryes / and noble 
 & renomed actes of humanyte / gentylnesse and chyualryes / For herein may be 
 seen noble chyualrye / Curtosye / Humanyte / frendlynesse / hardynesse / loue / 
 f rendshyp / Cowardyse / Murdre / hate / vertue / and synne / Doo after the good 
 and leue the euyl / and it shal brynge you to good fame and renommee / And for 
 to passe the tyme thys boook shal be plesaunte to rede in / but for to gyue fayth 
 and byleue that al is trewe that is conteyned herein / ye be at your lyberte / 
 
 Modern scholarship has shown that this is an exact account of the 
 origin of the famous book. Sir Thomas Malory, and of him we 
 know little more than Caxton tells us 1 "reduced" into English 
 
 ' Professor Kittredge (Harvard Studies and Notes, vol. v, p. 85) has plausibly 
 united the name to an historic Sir Thomas Mallory.
 
 492 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 prose a number of French poems dealing with the Arthur stories. 1 
 The originals were in French, because the subject matter was com- 
 posed at a time when French was the great dominant language. 
 Of this treatment of the material, as the matter is confessedly 
 beyond my knowledge, I can do no better than to quote in full 
 Dr. Sommer's summary : 2 
 
 As regards the special features of Malory 's compilation, I trust I have succeeded 
 in clearly exhibiting his merits and demerits as a writer. I have shown that he 
 sometimes added small episodes of his own composition, though as a rule, he con- 
 tented himself with welding into one the diverse materials that were at his disposal, 
 and that not infrequently he literally translated entire passages from his French, 
 or made large transcripts from his English, sources. 
 
 We owe the worthy knight a deep debt of gratitude both for preserving the 
 mediaeval romances in a form which enabled them to remain an integral portion 
 of English literature, and for rescuing from oblivion certain French versions of 
 great value to the critical student. But truth demands that we should not rate 
 him too highly. To put it mildly, his work is very unequal sometimes he excels, 
 but often he falls beneath, oftener still, he servilely reproduces his originals. Nor 
 can his selection of material be unreservedly praised. Difficulties in procuring cer- 
 tain MSS. may possibly have occurred of which we have nowadays no idea; yet, 
 giving him the full benefit of this supposition, we must still say that he left out many 
 of the most touching and admirable portions of the French romances, and that he 
 has incorporated others of inferior quality. The most marked and distressing 
 instance is his preference of the trivial and distasteful version of the Merlin and 
 Viviene episode as found in the "Suite de Merlin" to the exquisite version of the 
 Vulgate-Merlin, which, in its mingling of wild romance and delicate sentiment, is 
 perhaps the most beautiful and characteristic story of mediaeval literature. Be 
 this as it may, Malory must always be counted as an English classic. 
 
 As it was not an "English classic" to the early Tudors, the inter- 
 esting question is how did they regard it, and other romances like 
 it. The answer is to be found in the words of Caxton quoted. 
 Clearly many thought that the whole story was without historical 
 foundation. But scattered through the south of England were 
 numerous relics, the sepulcher at Glastonbury, the seal at West- 
 minster, the round table at Winchester, Gawain's skull at Dover, 
 etc., the local custodians of which, unless the tribe was very differ- 
 ent from that of today, fervently believed in their particular relic. 3 
 
 1 This has all been done with great care by Dr. Sommers, op. cit. 
 1 Ibid. vol. iii, 294. 
 
 3 It must be remembered that the readers of that age were familiar with similar 
 relics of the saints, relics that worked miracles, to doubt which was heresy.
 
 And it must be confessed that a skull is a convincing proof of pre- 
 vious existence! But whether or no Arthur actually existed, the 
 book described the manners of a noble age, from which many les- 
 sons might well be drawn. And, lastly, it made amusing reading. 
 In an age when Hawes dared to call his poem The Pastime of Pleas- 
 ure, surely this last was not to be despised. But so far from the 
 book pretending to import French influence, it was, from the point 
 of view of the sixteenth century, immaterial whether the sources 
 were English, French or Welsh. 
 
 The attitude was so different from that of this sceptical age of 
 ours that we find difficulty hi comprehending it. With historical 
 research we test each fact, scrutinize each text. Contemporary 
 evidence is sought to refute tradition and paleography dis- 
 proves the statement by the words used in making it. Tell is a 
 myth, Tiberius a model, and the "higher criticism" has shorn the 
 prophets of their prophecies! But in the sixteenth century men 
 did not know, could not know, and did not very much wish to 
 know the historical facts. "History" and "story" had not yet 
 become differentiated. This may be illustrated by Lord Berners. 
 In 1523-25 he translated Froissart's Chronicle at the request of 
 Henry VII. Henry's taste must have been in advance of his age 
 if one may judge by the limited number of editions. 1 The size of 
 the publication may have had something to do with its lack of 
 sale, but whatever the reason, it seems clear that to Lord Berners' 
 contemporaries Froissart did not make a strong appeal. Such a 
 fact as this gives one pause. Froissart is such a famous book, and 
 in his amiable accounts of battle, murder and sudden death we 
 ourselves find so much charm, that we infer that they also must 
 have loved it. Froissart is not analytic, and he is not hard read- 
 ing, and his descriptions are those of one who knows. 2 The Eng- 
 lish version is rendered simply and quaintly naturally we pic- 
 ture them bending with absorption over its pages. But the fact 
 is that they did not! By the humanists, those to whom the vivid 
 
 1 Parts 1 and 2 were printed by Pynson in 1523; 3rd and 4th, in 1524; and vol. 2 
 in 1525. Then Wiliam Middleton reprinted vol. 1 in two undated issues, but vol- 
 ume one only. AH he was admitted a freemen in 1541 and died in 1547,presumably 
 the parts of half Berners' book falls between these dates. 
 
 1 Cf. The subtile and sympathetic criticism on Froissart by Mr. William Paton 
 Ker, prefixed to the Tudor Translation reprint of Berners 1901.
 
 494 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 presentation of a past age would naturally appeal, it was con- 
 temptuously dismissed as "gothic. " The others, as yet unaffected 
 by the new culture, had what is to us an astounding credulity, and 
 actuality was matter of minor importance to them. Berners' 
 geography is incredibly inexact. As he naively tells us; * 
 
 as for the true namyng of all maner of personages, countreis, cyties, townes, 
 ryvera, or feldes, whereas I coude nat name them properly nor aptely in Englysshe 
 I have written them accordynge as I founde them in Frenche. 
 
 Also by his own confession the distances measured in miles and 
 leagues must be understood " acordyng to the custome of the coun- 
 treis where as they be named " in other words they mean prac- 
 tically nothing at all ! And yet at the very time when he was trans- 
 lating, he was there in France presumably with opportunity to 
 verify the French version. But to verify never occurred to him. 
 Clearly Froissart to him was not an author writing of actual events 
 that he knew personally or from the lips of participants; the in- 
 terest lay in the narration of the events themselves. 
 
 This criticism is illustrated by the ease with which Lord Ber- 
 ners turned from translating Froissart to translating the old ro- 
 mances. Incredible as it seems, those impossible adventures were 
 accepted as statements of fact. In Arthur of Little Britain J even 
 he seems to have been unable to believe; he fears that it is a "fay- 
 ned mater, wherin semeth to be so many unpossybylytees. " But 
 he comforts himself that in the other "noble hystoryes" there is 
 the same difficulty. Certainly the same difficulty is in the most 
 famous romance that he translated, the Huon of Burdeux. 2 The 
 French prose compilation of the Huon stories was published in 1513. 
 Berners' translation, undated, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 
 who died late in 1534 or early in 1535. As in the English Huon 
 there is no preface, the assumption is that, although finished be- 
 fore the Golden Book, it was not published until after the death of 
 the translator in March 1533. The date of publication, therefore, 
 is limited to the years 1533-34. Neither did this book have a con- 
 temporary success. The second edition is 1570(?) and the third 
 1601 . Certainly this record is not one of overwhelming popularity. 
 
 1 For a discussion of Lord Berners and his work, the reader is requested to turn 
 back to pp. 369ff. where the passages are cited at greater length. 
 
 2 Published in 1882 for the E. E. T. S. withan introduction by Sidney Lee.
 
 There exists today a curious tendency to overestimate both the 
 literary value and the effect upon literature of such books as this. 
 The scholarly question of the origins of the various stories and 
 their mutual relation is of course fascinating, 1 and equally of course 
 it has nothing whatever to do with the sixteenth century. Their 
 interest in the book was not in the analysis of its component 
 parts; they accepted it as the history of an actual man and be- 
 lieved, or half-believed, it as a record of real experience. In other 
 words, in Berners' mind in passing from Froissart to the romances, 
 there was not the transition of moving from history to fiction that 
 there is in ours. To all intents and purposes one was as true as the 
 other, only more interesting. 2 To appreciate the full import of this 
 statement it must be remembered that Huon, having slain in self- 
 defense the son of Charlemagne, is ordered to go to the city of 
 Babylon (Cairo), to the Admiral Gaudy s, to cut off the head of the 
 greatest lord sitting at his banquet, to do the same thing to the 
 fiance of the daughter, kiss her three times in presence of the court, 
 to demand a tribute of a thousand hawks, a thousand bears, a thou- 
 sand hounds, a thousand youths and a thousand maidens, and to 
 bring back a handful of the hair of the Admiral's beard and four 
 of his greatest teeth. On this preposterous errand Huon meets 
 equally preposterous adventures, aided by innumerable unknown 
 relatives and by the fairy king Oberon. He achieves his quest, 
 marries the daughter of the Admiral, and regains his duchy of Bor- 
 deaux. Here ends the first part. The continuation relates how, 
 besieged in Bordeaux by the Emperor of Germany, he escapes to 
 seek help, by this means encountering a whole new series of ad- 
 ventures. It closes by his being appointed the successor of Obe- 
 ron as King of Fairyland. Having seen Huon established success- 
 fully in a highly desirable position, the reader is disheartened by 
 discovering that the romance continues with first the adventures 
 of his daughter, Clariet, then of his grandson, Ide, 3 and, finally, of 
 his great-grandson Croissant! This genealogical collection of 
 
 1 This is epitomized in Chapters IV, V and VI in the History of the Novel Previous 
 to the Seventeenth Century by F. M. Warren, New York 1895. 
 
 'This is outlined (not quite accurately) in Dunlop's History of Prose Fiction, 
 revised by Henry Wilson, 1888, Vol. 1, 294 ff. Only the first two parts are here given. 
 
 1 At least Ide, who in the opening of the story is a woman, at the close is pro- 
 moted to manhood.
 
 496 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 "unpossybylytees" is told baldly, without poetic imagination 
 and with no sense of humor. According to the tale, Charlemagne 
 actually had a craving for the beard and teeth of the Admiral; it 
 was not, as the modern reader suspects, a ruse to have Huon killed, 
 because he has previously sent fifteen men on the same ridiculous 
 errand ! The characters are unmotivated and their actions monoto- 
 nously unexpected. 1 Apparently the one method to assure Huon's 
 performance of any deed is to have it forbidden by authority and 
 contrary to commonsense. The only virtues he possesses are 
 that he is honest and faithful to his love. There seems no remote 
 conception of fair play. He wins by magic, a factor which neces- 
 sarily gives him an immense advantage. If a man wear enchanted 
 armour that renders him invincible, wherein lies the prowess of his 
 victory? Naturally fiction is not restricted to probable, or even 
 possible, events. Granting the suppositions demanded by the 
 author we may be carried to unknown lands and uncounted perils, 
 and the fact that they are not true does not disturb us provided 
 also that they seem imaginatively true while we are reading. This 
 implies that the author must have learned the art so to treat the 
 impossible that it seems real, that in imagination he must have 
 preceded us, and that he has acquired the knowledge of emphasis 
 and of the convincing detail. Whatever our reason may tell us to 
 the contrary, we feel the tale ought to be true. But this is where 
 Berners, or his original, fails. He does not differentiate between 
 the credible and the incredible, and tells both in the same tone. 
 Now, most adults would admit that the Ugly Duckling, as Ander- 
 son tells it, is incredible, yet we all feel its poetic truth. On the 
 other hand, Jack the Giant Killer is appreciated only by children. 
 Intellectually Huon of Burdeux is on the same plane as Jack the 
 Giant Killer. In each case the sole basis of interest is in the 
 
 1 Ten Brink, History of English Literature, translated by Dora Schmitz, 1896 
 iii, 189: "For even though the French prose- version (produced about 1454) lacks 
 strict unity of conception and construction for, in addition to the nucleus offered 
 by the Chanson de Geste of the twelfth century, it includes also the greater portion 
 of the additions the "Chanson" received subsequently still it contains so much 
 grace in the narrative and descriptions, such happy motives for the story and the 
 delineation of the characters, that, with some abbreviations, a reader of our day 
 even would find pleasure in perusing it. In Bemers' translation the narrative lost 
 nothing of its attractiveness ." Is it credible that the great Dutch scholar never 
 read the book?
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 497 
 
 belief in the reality of the events. In the author and in the reader 
 it presupposes the ignorant credulity of the child. And that must 
 have been the condition of Lord Berners and those for whom he 
 wrote. He, probably, to judge from his remarks about Arthur of 
 Little Britain did not think that the incidents were true, but he did 
 not know that they were not true, a mental condition that is 
 quite different. In his mind there was a large zone of half-belief. 
 Although this was written a dozen or more years after the Utopia, 
 he belongs to an earlier age. To him, the stories came with the 
 weight of tradition. The new geographic discoveries with their 
 startling tales of Indian emperors and of cities of gold would 
 strengthen his power of believing. Also, the action took place in an 
 age long past, "in the tyme acountyde the yere of grace vii.c. & 
 Ivi. yere the crucyfyynge of oure Sauyour Ihu Cryst," and he had 
 convincing authority for believing that there were giants in those 
 days. Nor did he have any basis for comparison. Chaucer, with 
 knights as commonplace phenomena, could say satirically * 
 
 Now every wys man, lat him herkne me; 
 
 This storie is al-so trewe, I undertake, 
 
 As is the book of Launcelot de Lake, 
 
 That wommen holde in ful gret reverence . . . , 
 
 but to Berners chivalry was only a tradition. He had neither the 
 habit of mind, nor the knowledge, to render him sceptical. 
 
 How general was this condition among the readers in Lord Ber- 
 ners' generation it is hard to estimate. 2 There are indications a 
 plenty, only one cannot be quite sure what they indicate. For 
 example, in the Elizabethan literature there are numerous allusions 
 to the old romances, but it does not follow from such allusions that 
 the writer had ever read the romance to which he alluded. The 
 names of their heroes had become commonly familiar, suggesting 
 the superman, but quite probably often with no definite romance 
 in mind, just as today in current literature you find Don Juan or 
 Lothario. The hero had become a type. Or the allusion may have 
 
 I The Nannes Preeste* Tale, 4400-03. 
 
 I 1 heartily second Professor Crane (The Vogue of Guy Warwick, Publications of 
 the Mod. Lang. Ass. xxx, 2.) in wishing a systematic study of the persistence of 
 the romances during the Tudor period, and I confess my indebtedness to hi* in- 
 forming article.
 
 498 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 been due to childish memories, as we know Jack the Giant Killer. 1 
 An illustration of the nebulous influence of these old romances may 
 be found in the Huon. It will be remembered that early in his 
 adventures Huon encounters the fairy king Oberon, a personage 
 that through two parts of the book plays the important role of deus 
 ex machina. His function seems to be to warn Huon against certain 
 acts and then to rescue him after he has committed them. He is a 
 very beautiful dwarf, a fairy who is yet mortal, and with clearly 
 defined magical powers. There is no question that he was first 
 introduced to English readers by Lord Berners, and he made a 
 strong appeal. When, therefore, we find Oberon as a character in 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, we feel confident that we know one 
 book that was in Shakespeare's library. Actually the two charac- 
 ters have scarcely one trait in common, except the name. Surely 
 to assume that Shakespeare gave to his character a name somewhat 
 vaguely associated hi his mind with the King of the Fairies, is more 
 probable than to think that he made use of Berners' work only 
 to change the conception. To Lord Berners, however, must be 
 granted the credit the amount of which each may figure for him- 
 self, of introducing the name into English literature. 
 
 Another method of estimating the influence of the old romances 
 is to consult the bibliographical records. The limitation of this 
 method is that we do not know the number of copies to each issue, 
 nor even whether the number was uniform. Huon of Burdeux, for 
 example, survives in a unique copy. As it is a long work, if it had 
 been a large edition the probability is that there would be now 
 more copies, or at least fragments. If it were a small edition, 
 naturally the number of possible readers would be correspondingly 
 limited. A relative estimate may be made, as Pynson, for example, 
 printed over three hundred books of which only three are romances. 
 This proportion does not argue an immense popularity. And it 
 is not surprising. During the period that Pynson was printing 
 humanism was most active, and humanism, as we have seen, was 
 strongly opposed to the medieval romances. 2 Although humanism 
 could never have been popular, in the early days of the press the 
 
 1 It is probable that not one of my readers for pleasure only has read that 
 fascinating tale since childhood, and it is equally probable that not one has failed 
 to understand the allusion. 
 
 2 Cf. pp. 323-326.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 499 
 
 humanists must have been exceedingly influential with that part 
 of the public that bought books. Also, with the increased facil- 
 ity for printing, the press would make an appeal to classes be- 
 yond the range of humanistic influence. The expectation would be, 
 therefore, from the middle of the century to find more romances 
 issued and at a cheaper rate. We find William Copland and Ca- 
 wood printing them. Still another factor must be remembered, 
 namely, that in the second decade of Elizabeth's reign there was a 
 revival of interest in the earlier authors. Not only the romances 
 but Skelton, Barclay, and others were again printed. It is from 
 this period, I think, that the copies of medieval stories came that 
 figure in such lists as that of Captain Cox's library. But that is at 
 present beyond our scope. For the first half of the century, the 
 romances do not seem to have been particularly sought after, and, 
 even if they had been, they would have brought in only a slight 
 degree of French influence. 
 
 Aside from these romances which, as they had been originally 
 written in French, were first reduced to French prose and then 
 translated into English prose, a number of French books crossed 
 the Channel. Most of these scarcely come under the head of litera- 
 ture. The xv Tokens, the Booget of Demaunds, the Art of Memory, 
 the Rutter of the Sea, books on religion, riddles, medicine, 
 navigation, etc., etc. they show exactly the natural intercourse 
 between the two countries. The type of book taken may be il- 
 lustrated by the Kalendar of Shepherdes, one of the most popular 
 books of the age, and by reputation at least well-known to us be- 
 cause from it Spenser adapted the title to his first published work. 1 
 The number of editions it may be worth the while to state for the 
 sake of comparison with the number of the romances. By 1560 in 
 the French there had been nineteen, and there had been eight differ- 
 ent issues of the English translation. The first edition is a bibliog- 
 raphical curiosity, that is not without bearing on the question of 
 French books in England and on early printing. In 1503 Antoine 
 Verard, the Parisian printer, issued three books in English, The 
 traytte of good living, Castle of Labour, and Kalendayr of shyppars. 2 
 
 1 My statements are drawn from the very elaborate edition by H. Oskar Sommer, 
 London, 1892. In his characteristic way Dr. Sommer has investigated the various 
 problems so thoroughly that English scholarship will be in his debt for a long time. 
 
 1 Antoine Virard, by John Macfurland, Bibliographical Society, 1900. As has
 
 500 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Verard, like Gerard Leeu and Jan Van Doesborgh, apparently had 
 determined to invade the English market. So far there is nothing 
 strange. But to translate the popular Compost et Kalendier des 
 bergiers he employed, as seems likely, a young Scotchman who 
 lacked the somewhat necessary qualification for such a task of 
 possessing a thorough knowledge of either French or English. As 
 Verard's ignorance of English prevented him from judging his 
 assistant's work, the result appeared in a book the language of 
 which may safely be described as unique. Ben Jonson's remark 
 on the Faerie Queene quite literally applies here; "it was writ in no 
 language." But the book itself seemed so valuable that it was 
 worth rewriting. Consequently in 1506 Pynson, without translat- 
 ing the original French, tried to re-work the English. His reasons 
 for this seem worth quoting: 2 
 
 Here before tyme thys boke was prynted In parys In to corrupte englysshe and 
 nat by no englysshe man wherfore these bokes that were brought Into Inglonde no 
 man coude vnderstonde them perfetly and no maruayll for hit is vnlekly for a man 
 of that countrey for to make hyt Into perfyte englysshe as it shulde be. Newely 
 nowe it is drawne out of f rensshe into englysshe at the instaunce & coste and charge 
 of Rycharde Pynson and for by cause he sawe that men of other countries inter- 
 medellyd with that that they cowde no skyll in / and therefore the foresayde. 
 Rycharde Pynson and shuche as longethe to hym hath made it into playne en- 
 glysshe to the entente that euery man may vnderstonde it / that thys boke is verya 
 profytable bothe for clerkes and laye people to cause them to haue great vnder- 
 stondyng and in espessyall in that we be bounde to lerne and knowe on peyne of 
 auerlastinge deth. 
 
 In spite of Pynson's statement, it is quite clear to us that his book 
 is merely a new version of the Verard. It was also clear to his 
 contemporaries since two years later, for Wynkyn de Worde, 
 Robert Copland translated the French of 1497. Thus in six years 
 there were three different editions in English of this one French 
 book. Although elaborately illustrated and a mixture of prose and 
 verse, it belongs to the purlieus of literature. The book opens with 
 an address by the Master Shepherd comparing the stages of man's 
 life to the months of the year. Then it is divided into five parts. 
 
 been said, Mr. Gordon Duff discovered a single leaf of this edition of the Castle 
 of Labour among the Bagford collections. Although undated, as the type also 
 is found nowhere else but in the Kalendayr of shyppars, the date is probably also 
 1503. The traytte of good lyuyng and good Deyng, extant in three copies, shows the 
 peculiarities of the Kalendar. Sommer, op. cit. i, 30. 
 2 Sommer, op. cit., iii, 7.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 501 
 
 The fyrste of oure synes of the compot and the kalender. 
 
 The seconde is the tre of vyces with the peynes of hell. 
 
 The thyrde is the waye of helthe of man, the tre of vertues. 
 
 The foureth is fesseke and gouernoure of helthe. 
 
 The fyfte is astrology fysnomy for to vnderstonde many dysceyuynges 
 and whyehe they be by lychelyhode thewhich by nature are inclyn- 
 ede and can do them as ye shall rede or ye come to the ende. 
 
 It needs only be said that this program is faithfully carried out. 
 There is a perpetual calendar and complicated tables by which one 
 can find^nd remember the saints' days and feast days of the Church. 
 This part is purely practical. The second and third parts are re- 
 ligious. Here are to be found the translated creed, the ten com- 
 mandments and the five commandments of the Church, and in 
 addition the account of Lazarus' visit to hell, vividly pictured and 
 luridly described, the many ramifications of the seven deadly sins, 
 and the tree of virtues. In quite another manner the fourth dis- 
 cusses when a man should be bled, and where. And the fifth is an 
 omnibus section, comprising physiognomy and astrology, a brief 
 account of the ten Christian nations, verses on an assault against 
 a snail, etc., etc. In this combination of the calendar with reli- 
 gious, medical and astrological features it suggests the old New 
 England almanacs. Like them, too, it filled the function performed 
 by the modern magazine. There is a little something of everything 
 for everybody. In content, as Sommer has shown, the original 
 French is only a compilation of medieval material. In its English 
 form, also, it harks back to the medieval methods. The follow- 
 ing stanza, from the Wynkyn de Worde edition, however excellent 
 may be its contents, does not look forward to the great work of 
 the Renaissance : l 
 
 Fie faynt falsehode bekell foule'nd fell 
 
 Fie fatall flaterers full of fayrnes 
 
 Fie fayre faynynge fabels of fauell 
 
 Fie folkes felawshyp frequentynge falsenes 
 
 Fie frantyke facers fullfylled of frowardnes 
 
 Fie foles falaces / fle fonde fantasyes 
 
 Fie from fresshe fablers faynynge flaterers. 
 
 Consequently in this also, the most popular of the French importa- 
 tions, there is nothing of contemporary France. 
 
 1 Sommer, op. ci'., iii, 181.
 
 502 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Robert Copland, who translated the Kalendar, may be taken as 
 an extreme example of those importing French influence. Of his 
 life really nothing is known. In 1535 he was one of the executors 
 of the will of Wynkyn de Worde, and in 1547 his establishment is 
 spoken of as "old Robert Copland's the eldest printer of England." l 
 In this capacity he issued only twelve books, of which the one that 
 is interesting to literature is his own Hye Way to the Spyttel Hous. 
 But it is worth remarking that he printed Barclay's Introductory 
 to French and that his earliest device, 1515, is modelled after the 
 French. As an author he prepared for the press seventeen works, 
 twelve of which are translated from the French. He may, con- 
 sequently, be considered as one of the main channels. Aside from 
 the original poems, which have already been discussed, 2 they seem 
 well distributed between religious works, practical treatises, and 
 books of popular appeal. There are three romances. And proba- 
 bly in the work of Copland one may find an epitome of the whole 
 question. In English prose there was no definite movement to 
 imitate French culture, as there was in English verse to imitate 
 Italian forms, or in English thought to follow German leadership. 
 The two nations were too nearly at the same stage of cultivation 
 to have England follow in the footsteps of France. But this con- 
 dition would render it normal that a book popular in France would 
 be translated for the English market, no matter what kind of book 
 it might be. And in the early efforts of the press, while English 
 writers were still struggling with the changing language, naturally 
 printers imported French successes. The condition then was much 
 as it is today. A work that has created a sensation in Paris can 
 usually be found in English on the shelves of the New York shops. 
 It is after all a matter of business. But the books that were to be 
 revered in the coming ages, were written neither in French nor in 
 English, but in Latin. They were written in Latin to appeal to a 
 public of all Europe. The obverse of this is that those books writ- 
 ten in either French, or English, were local, to appeal especially 
 to the less thoughtful of the two nations. Logically, therefore, 
 as such people are conservative, the vernacular literature is ret- 
 
 1 For Robert Copland, cf. Duff, Century of the English Book Trade, H. R. Plomer, 
 Handlists of the English Printers (both printed for the Bibliographical Society), 
 and H. R. Tedder in the D. N. B. 
 
 2 Hye Way, pp. 2585-229; Jyl of Brentford's Testament, pp. 431-433.
 
 INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 503 
 
 regressive. As the two nations were in the same stage of develop- 
 ment, so also neither had a great individual, such as Martin Luther, 
 who used the native language as his medium. It is not until the 
 time of Calvin that French prose has an appreciable effect upon 
 English. 1 For the early authors, the influence of French prose, like 
 the influence of French verse, while undoubtedly existent, is un- 
 doubtedly little. 
 
 1 As Calvin's influence comes at the end of the period, it has seemed better to 
 postpone it for a later study, when it may be treated consecutively.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 
 
 Up to the period of the second literary generation of the writers 
 of the reign of Henry VIII, the literature is easy to analyze be- 
 cause the work has the extreme characteristics that mark all be- 
 ginnings. The change in the language, due to the long contin- 
 uance of civil strife, had broken the literary continuity. The works 
 of Chaucer and his contemporaries were no longer available as 
 precedents. Yet the social stability given by the first two Tudor 
 kings stimulated a demand for literature. Under the circumstan- 
 ces those that wished to supply this demand necessarily experi- 
 mented in literary forms, each choosing that form most consonant 
 to his aims and his predilection. In this new age there was no one 
 dominant literary tradition. Consequently there is apparent con- 
 fusion. Books were written contemporaneously which yet de- 
 pend upon entirely differenl theories and to judge which requires 
 a knowledge of entirely different literatures. Such a statement 
 may seem to imply that it was a critical age, an age in which there 
 was eager discussion of literary theory. But this is untrue. Aside 
 from the humanists there was no literary propaganda, and with 
 them the stress was upon morality, not upon literature. As in the 
 time of the Judges, each man did what was right in his own eyes. 
 Moreover, as each wrote according to his natural bent, instead of 
 electing one literary type and spurning all the others, actually in 
 his work he may show the result of two quite different forces. 
 This is quite natural. They were alive, and, being alive, each was 
 affected in varying degrees by the literary impulses of his age. Yet 
 in each author one (and only one) impulse is major; the other im- 
 pulse, (or other impulses) is definitely subordinated. For this reason 
 it is possible, by arranging them according to the dominant impulse, 
 to show the gradual progress and modification of the types. But 
 by so doing a judgment is passed upon them. Great writers can- 
 not be listed according to single traits, because they draw from 
 
 504
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 505 
 
 a diversified past. This age, then, will not produce great litera- 
 ture. With the exception of More and Skelton, the personality 
 of the writer seems subordinated to the form in which he writes, 
 and even Skelton cannot control his medium. The reader does 
 not feel near to the author; the latter's voice seems faint and far 
 away. He cannot make his form express himself. This is be- 
 cause the age was one of beginnings. Chaucer, at the culmi- 
 nation of the previous period, can say what he wishes ; Spenser, at 
 the culmination of this period, can say what he wishes; but these 
 men in the rude beginnings of art necessarily stammer. It is the 
 inevitable penalty of youth. The age does not reach its intellec- 
 tual maturity until the writers of the second half of the reign, writ- 
 ers represented for us by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. 
 
 The uncertainty so characteristic of all our knowledge of this 
 period finds another illustration in the poems of Surrey. Of these, 
 not counting the translations of Vergil, the publication of which 
 was separate, there are fifty-nine pieces. These are preserved to 
 us by Tottel and by seven manuscripts. 1 Only two of the manu- 
 scripts are pre-Elizabethan and those two have but one poem each. 
 All told, there are thirty-four poems in the manuscripts. Unhap- 
 pily the manuscripts do not completely agree with one another for 
 the text, nor does any one completely agree with Tottel. In them 
 there are found poems not in Tottel, and one in Tottel that is 
 assigned to "Uncertain Authors." It is to be remembered that 
 as Tottel in 1557 printed the contents of a commonplace book, 
 probably like that in the British Museum Add. 36529, the author- 
 ity of his text depends upon the accuracy of an entirely unknown 
 compiler. On the other hand, as the manuscripts that furnish the 
 majority of the poems are late, they equally depend upon unknown 
 compilers. By comparison with the autograph manuscript of 
 Wyatt we know that Tottel's text is far from being accurate. 
 Therefore the presumption is that the same is the case with his 
 text of Surrey. The manuscripts which contain poems of Wyatt 
 and may therefore be tested are only slightly more accurate than 
 Tottel. The result is that in Surrey's text we have only an ap- 
 proximation. Each poem, consequently, requires careful dis- 
 cussion. But however faulty may be the text of Tottel, it will 
 
 1 Tottel's Miacdlany we have in Arbor's Reprint. The manuscript poems have 
 been reprinted by Professor Padelford in Anglia, xxix, 3.
 
 506 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 always be important because through it the Elizabethan age 
 knew Surrey. It was reprinted nine times before the end of the 
 century. 
 
 It may be even due to Tottel's publication that in the last half 
 of the century Surrey was regarded as the great poet of the former 
 age. The title-page of the Miscellany reads Songes and Sonettes, 
 written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward late Earle of 
 Surrey, and other. Although the only other author named in full in 
 the second edition is Wyatt, apparently he is considered secondary. 
 They are usually bracketed together, and Surrey is usually given 
 the precedence, so often in fact that the curious error arose that 
 Wyatt was Surrey's disciple. The most extreme illustration of 
 Wyatt's eclipse by Surrey is given by Sidney : 1 
 
 For there being two principall parts, Matter to be expressed by words, and words 
 to expresse the matter: In neither, wee use Art or imitation rightly . . . Chawcer 
 undoubtedly did excellently in his Troilus and Creseid: of whome trulie I knowe not 
 whether to mervaile more, either that hee in that mistie time could see so clearly 
 or that wee in this cleare age, walke so stumblingly after him. Yet had hee great 
 wants, fit to be forgiven in so reverent an Antiquitie. I account the Mirrour of 
 Magistrates, meetly furnished of bewtiful partes. And in the Earle of Surreis 
 Lirickes, manie thinges tasting of a Noble minde. The Sheepheards Kalendar, 
 hath much poetrie in his Egloges, . . Besides these, I doo not remember to have 
 seen but fewe (to speak boldly) printed, that have poeticall sinnewes in 
 them. 
 
 Chaucer, Surrey, presumably Sackville and Spenser, those four 
 names to Sidney are the only ones that have poetical sinews. The 
 list is extraordinary for its omissions. As to him Chaucer is the 
 sole representative of Middle English, Surrey is the only survivor 
 of the literature of the first half of the century. 2 It is a fair state- 
 ment that where Wyatt is remembered, as in Ascham and Putten- 
 ham, he is subordinated to Surrey, and that very many did not 
 remember him at all. Surrey is the principal figure of the past 
 age. 
 
 As the respect for caste was great in the time of Elizabeth, such 
 valuation of his poetry may have been due, to some extent at 
 
 1 The Defence of Poesie. By Sir Philip Sidney, Knight. Printed at the University 
 Press, Cambridge, 1904, p. 71. 
 
 2 Wyatt is also omitted from the list of writers given by Webbe, A Discourse 
 of English Poetrie, 1586, Arber's Reprint, S3.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 507 
 
 least, to his rank. He belonged to the family which in Pope's lines 
 was to become synonymous with noble blood. 1 The fortunes of 
 the family were founded early in the fifteenth century by the mar- 
 riage of Robert Howard with the Lady Margaret Mowbray, in 
 whose veins was blood royal. By her father, she was descended 
 from Edward the First and Margaret of France; by her mother, 
 from Edward the First and Elinor of Castile. On the extinction 
 of the Mowbrays, John, the son of Robert, was created Duke of 
 Norfolk by Richard III in 1483. He married twice. By the first 
 wife he had Thomas, the second Duke of Norfolk, and four daugh- 
 ters who all married; by the second, one daughter Catherine, who 
 married John Bourchier, Lord Berners, the translator. This 
 Thomas, the second Duke of Norfolk, the grandfather of Surrey, 
 married twice and had eleven children. As these intermarried with 
 the great noble families, Surrey was thus closely related to many in 
 the English court. Of these the important ones are (besides his 
 father) : Edward, the English admiral whose gallant death in 1513 is 
 celebrated by Barclay in the Fourth Eclogue; Edmund, the father of 
 Catherine, the fifth wife of Henry VIII; and Elizabeth, the mother 
 of Anne Boleyn the second wife of Henry VIII. Surrey's father, 
 Thomas, the third Duke of Norfolk, married first the Lady Anne, 
 the daughter of Edward IV and sister of Elizabeth the Queen of 
 Henry VII. On her decease he married Lady Elizabeth Stafford, 
 the daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, who bore him three 
 children; Henry the poet, Thomas, and Mary. Thus on his moth- 
 er's side he was descended from Edward III ; his grandmother was 
 a daughter of the Percys; his uncle had married the daughter of 
 Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury; one aunt, Ralph Neville, 
 earl of Westmorland, and the other, George Neville, Lord Aber- 
 gavenny. In fact he was so close to the throne that it was ru- 
 mored that he was to marry the princess Mary, daughter of Henry 
 VIII and Katherine of Aragon, who later became queen. He was 
 the close friend of Henry, Duke of Richmond, the King's illegiti- 
 mate son, who married his sister Mary. By his descent and by his 
 family connections he was the greatest noble of his generation, 
 and his ancestry compared very favorably even with that of the 
 prince of Wales, whose descent on the father's side was scarcely 
 
 1 What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? 
 Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards. Kasay on Man, Epistle IV.
 
 508 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 better than Surrey's own and whose mother was the comparatively 
 obscure Jane Seymour. 
 
 An appreciation of the state of life to which Surrey was called by 
 his birth is all important in understanding his character and the 
 events of his life. There is no necessity of recounting the latter 
 here. 1 It is enough to state that we know a very great many facts 
 concerning his various actions through the years, and from them 
 can infer fairly accurately his character. Another factor, however, 
 must be mentioned. The Howards were in somewhat straightened 
 circumstances. Naturally, as the first Duke of Norfolk and his son 
 had fought on the side of Richard III at Bosworth Field, the sur- 
 vivor, the second Duke, was promptly lodged in the Tower and his 
 goods attainted. Although Henry VII pardoned him, freed him, 
 and eventually restored him to his rank, he did not restore the 
 property that went to sustain the rank. Although Henry VIII 
 was much more lavish in their regard, yet as their expenses in- 
 creased proportionally to their honors, the family was financially 
 embarrassed. In 1515 the Duke of Norfolk, admittedly the ablest 
 general in England and the victor of Flodden Field, was forced to 
 retire from court to recuperate. This condition explains the finan- 
 cial negotiations which they dignified by the name of marriage. 
 Love was no more a factor in the marriage of the sixteenth century 
 than in the royal alliances of today. 2 Surrey's mother, for example, 
 who brought a dowry of 1500 pounds, had previously been engaged 
 to Ralph Neville (who afterwards married her sister,) was much 
 attached to him, and their wedding day had been announced. 3 
 All this was not allowed to interfere with her nuptials with the 
 Duke of Norfolk. Such a beginning would scarcely argue for happy 
 connubial relations. And historical events did not tend to in- 
 crease the chance. In 1523 her father, Duke of Buckingham, was 
 condemned for high treason by a panel of peers, of which her 
 father-in-law the Duke of Norfolk was chief judge. The fact that 
 
 1 Owing to his high rank Surrey figures largely in the State Papers, which have 
 been published. Basing upon those entries and supplementing them by outside 
 reference, M. Edmond Bapst has constructed a detailed life of Surrey, in Deux 
 Gentushommes-Poctes de la Gourde Henry VIII, Paris 1891. This is the authority 
 for Sir Sidney Lee's article in the D. N. B. There is an excellent digest in Fltigel's 
 Lesebuch, op. til., 382. 
 
 1 Cf. pp. 20-21. 
 
 J Letter to Cromwell, Calendar of State Papers, October 27, 1537.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 509 
 
 "the Duke of Northfolke wept" * probably did not compensate 
 for the triviality of the charges on which her father was put to 
 death, nor for the fact that the presiding judge was recompensed by 
 part of the sequestered property. But at this time she had, also, a 
 more personal grievance against her husband. He took to himself a 
 concubine, an Elizabeth Holland, a relative of Lord Hussey. In 
 spite of the fact that "she was butt washer of my nursery VIII 
 yeres," 2 when the Duchess objected, 3 
 
 "They bound me and pynnaculled me and satt on my brest tyll I spitt blod, 
 which I have ben worse for ever syns; and all for spoking gainst the woman in 
 the Courte, Bess Holand. Therefore he put me out at the doors and kepys the 
 bawd and the harlots styll in his house." 
 
 In a later letter she is still more explicit: 4 
 
 "He sett hys women to bynde me, tyll blod came out att my fingars endes, and 
 (they) pynnacullyt me and satt on my brest tyll I spett blod and he never ponyshed 
 them, and all thys was done for Besse Holond's sake." 
 
 It is quite possible, as Bapst suggests, 5 that the Duchess in these 
 accounts is drawing the long bow. She seems to have been an 
 extremely high-spirited lady, much given to speaking her mind 
 very frankly. Her remarks to Anne Boleyn, when the favorite 
 opposed the marriage of Mary Howard to the Count of Derby, were 
 such that she narrowly avoided being banished from the Court. 6 
 In 1534 the definite rupture came, because she discharged from her 
 service the father of the lady in question and all connected with 
 her. As the Duke took the part of the servants, the Duchess re- 
 tired to Redbourn on a pension. That she was justified from the 
 modern standpoint is clear, since in 1537, until the imprisonment 
 of the Duke, Elizabeth Holland was installed at Kenninghall under 
 
 1 Hall's Henry VIII, ed. Whibley, op. eit., 1, 225. 
 Letter to Cromwell, December 30, 15SC. 
 Letter to Cromwell,October 24, 1537. 
 4 Letter to Cromwell, June 6, 1538. 
 
 * Bapst, op. dt., 207: "Les scenes de violence dont, a en croire ses lettres, la Du- 
 chesse aurait etc victime a ce moment de la part de ses domestiques, ne se sont 
 tres prohablement jamais pasees que dans son imagination, ou tout au moins, s'il 
 y a dans ses recits une part de veriti, elle est assez restreinte." 
 
 Chapuis to the Emperor, October 15, 1530, quoted by Bapst, op. cit., 199 (note).
 
 510 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 the pretext of being lady-in-waiting to Mary Howard, at that time 
 the widowed Duchess of Richmond. It is interesting to note that 
 Surrey and his sister took the side of their father, the Duke, in this 
 family quarrel, even to the extent of receiving the cause of it in the 
 place of their own mother. Whatever may be the difference of 
 opinion in regard to the principals in the affair, there can be no 
 question of the unfortunate results to the children. The "home- 
 life" at Kenninghall could not have been conventionally "sweet." 
 Later it bore its inevitable fruit. One of the most telling witnesses 
 against Surrey, when he was accused of high treason, was his own 
 sister, the widow of his best friend. She deposed, and it was con- 
 firmed by another witness, that, when it was a question of her 
 marriage with Sir Thomas Seymour, Surrey had advised her to use 
 the marriage as a step to becoming the mistress of the king. 1 
 " Cette sanglante ironic" Bapst calls it. 2 Perhaps it was irony, 
 at least one wishes to believe it, but the previous events in the 
 family life scarcely tend to make one confident. At least her fur- 
 ther testimony that Surrey had placed a cipher upon his coat-of- 
 arms that resembled HR shows that she for one placed the worst 
 interpretation and bore him a bitter hatred. 3 In our necessary 
 ignorance, it seems rather useless first to impute motives and then 
 to explain by them. Yet surely the inference is justifiable that the 
 family life of the Howards was not happy. In spite of the Duke's 
 experience, gained from his own mercenary marriage, acting by the 
 direction of Anne Boleyn he married Surrey, February 13, 1532, 
 to Lady Frances de Vere, daughter of the Count of Oxford, for 2500 
 pounds. In Surrey's case, however, the union seems to have been 
 productive of happiness. The additional money was gratefully 
 received. 
 
 This union of very high rank and comparative poverty accen- 
 
 1 Froude (Chapter XXIII, The Reign of Henry the Eighth) gives the deposition 
 in full. 
 
 2 Bapst, op. cit., 339. 
 
 8 Miss Foxwell, op. cit., 2, 76 notes on Wyatt's poem A face that skuld content 
 me: "This description of a woman is the only one in Wiat. Constant to his rule, 
 he gives us no portrait, but rather a character sketch. Honest and sincere himself, 
 with a deep scorn of anything false or inconstant, his ideal of a woman is displayed 
 here in strength of character and gravity of thought, a cheerful, sympathetic 
 and graceful woman. Mary, Duchess of Richmond, ' Maiden-wife, and widow', 
 possessed the qualities he admired." Comment would be unkind !
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 511 
 
 tuated in Surrey the arrogance inherited from his mother. He was 
 "the most folish prowde boye that ys in England." * When he 
 was accused by Sir Richard Southwell, his answer was an appeal 
 to the judgment of God by means of a boxing match! 2 He refuted 
 another witness by merely saying " I leave it to yourselves, Gentle- 
 men, to judge whether it were probable that this man should speak 
 thus to the Earl of Surrey, and he not strike him." Holinshed 
 comments "had he tempered his answers with such modesty as he 
 shewed token of a right perfect, and ready wit, his praise had been 
 the greater." 3 But such a temperament is very rarely modest, 
 and it does lead to blows. In 1542 he had quarreled with an 
 unknown John d Leigh, and he was released only on a bond that 
 he would not molest that gentleman. But he figures in another 
 scrape that has some literary importance. On the second of 
 February, 1543, Surrey in company with Sir Thomas Wyatt the 
 younger, the son of the poet, and a William Pickering anticipated 
 the eighteenth century Mohocks by a night raid upon London. 
 As the citizens failed to find amusement in the performance, in- 
 quiry led to a certain Mistress Arundel of St. Laurence-Lane. On 
 being summoned before the Privy Council she confessed that Sur- 
 rey and other young noblemen used her house. 4 
 
 Further, she saitli, how at Candlemas they went out with stone bows at nine 
 o'clock at night, and did not come back, till past midnight, and the next day there 
 was a great clamour of the breaking of many glass windows both of houses and 
 churches, and shooting at men that night in the street; and the voice was that those 
 hurts were done by my lord and his company. Whereupon she gave commandment 
 unto all her house that they should say nothing of my lord's going out in form 
 specified. Item, she said, that that night or the night before they used the same 
 stone bows, rowing on the Thames; and Thomas Clear told her how they shot at 
 the queans on the Bankside. Mistress Arundel also, looking one day at Lord 
 Surrey's arms, said the arms were very like the king's arms, and said further, she 
 thought he would be king, if aught but good happened to the king and prince. 
 
 The inquiry dragged along until the first of April. 5 
 
 1 A Memorial from George Constantyne to Thomas Lord Cromwell, Archax>logia, 
 xxiii, 62. 
 
 1 Lord Herbert of Cherbury's account is based on documents now lost. 
 
 * Both quoted from Nott, op. cit., cii. 
 
 * These passages are accessible in Froude, op. oil., Chapter XX. 
 
 * AcU of the Privy Council, Bapst, op. cit., 268.
 
 512 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Att Saint-James the first day off aprill . . . Th'erle of Surrey being sent for 
 t'appere before the Cownsell was charged as well off eating off flesshe, as off a 
 lewde and unsemely manner of walking in the night abowght the stretes and break- 
 ing with stonebows off certeyne wyndowes. And towching the eating off flesshe, 
 he alleged a license, albeitt he hadde nott so secretly used the same as apparteyned. 
 And towching the stonebows, he cowlde nott denye butt he hadde verye evyll 
 done therein, submitting himselff therefore to such ponissement as sholde to them 
 be thowght good. Whereapon he was committed to the Fleet. 
 
 Clearly we have here a drunken frolic in which the opposition of 
 the City and the Court comes to the fore. It is the sort of senseless 
 vandalism common hah* a century ago in our American colleges 
 and manifested in the town and gown riots. But however objec- 
 tionable may have been this lewd and unseemly manner of walking, 
 it is impossible to regard it seriously. Rightfully he was sent to the 
 Fleet to realize that the London citizen also had rights. Presum- 
 ably while there, he composed his absurd explanation of the 
 affair. 1 
 
 London, hast thow accused me 
 
 Of breche of lawes the roote of stryfe, 
 
 within whose brest did boyle to see 
 
 (so fervent hotte) thy dissolute lief 
 
 that even the hate of synnes that groo 
 
 within thy wicked walles so rife 
 
 ffor to breale forthe did convert soo 
 
 that terrowr colde it not represse 
 
 the which by worde* syns prechers knoo 
 
 what hope is le(f)t for to redresse 
 
 by vnknowne meanes it liked me 
 
 my hydden burden to expresse 
 
 wherby yt might appere to the 
 
 that secret synn hath secret spight 
 
 ffrom lustice rodd no fault is free 
 
 but that all such as wourkes vnright 
 
 In most quyet are next ill rest 
 
 In secret sylence of the night 
 
 this made me with a reckles brest 
 
 to wake thy sluggardes with my bowe 
 
 A fygure of the lordes behest 
 
 whose scourge for synn the sc(r)eptures shew 
 
 that as the fearfull thonder clapp 
 
 1 The text is given in MS. Add. 36529. It is also found in Add. MS. 28635, but 
 not in Tottel.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 513 
 
 by soddayne flame as hand we knowe 
 
 of peoble stones the sowndles rapp 
 
 the dredfull plage might mak the see 
 
 of godd&J wrath that doth the enwrapp 
 
 that pryde might know from conscience free 
 
 how loftye workes may her defend 
 
 and envye fynd as he hath sought 
 
 how other seke him to offend 
 
 and wrath tast of eche crewell thought 
 
 that iust shapp hyer in the end 
 
 and ydell slouthe that never wrought 
 
 th heven hys spirite lift may begyn 
 
 & gredye lucre ly ve in dred 
 
 to see what haste ill gott goodcs wynn 
 
 the lechers ye that lustes do feed 
 
 perceve what secrecye is in synne 
 
 and gluttons hartes for sorow blede 
 
 awaked when their faulte they fynd 
 
 In lothsome vyce eche dronken wight 
 
 to styrr to godd this was my mynd 
 
 thy wyndowes had don me no spight 
 
 but prowd people that drede no fall 
 
 clothed wi'tA falshed and vnright 
 
 bred in the closures of thy wall 
 
 but wrested to wrathe in fervent zeale 
 
 thow hast to strief my secret call 
 
 endured hartes no warning feale 
 
 Oh shameles hore is dred then gone 
 
 by suche thy foes as ment thy weale 
 
 Oh membre of false Babylon 
 
 the shopp of craft, the denne of ire 
 
 thy dredfull dome drawes fast vppon 
 
 thy martyres blood by swoord & fyre 
 
 In heaven & earth for lustice call 
 
 the lord shall here their iust desyre 
 
 the flame of wrath shall on the fall 
 
 wttA famyne and pest lamentablie 
 
 stricken shalbe they lecheref all 
 
 they prowd towers and turrets* hye 
 
 enmyes to god beat stone from stone 
 
 thyne Idollas burnt that wrought iniquitie 
 
 when none thy ruyne shall bemone 
 
 but render vnto the right wise lord 
 
 that so hath iudged Babylon 
 
 Imortall praise wj tA one accord 
 
 ffynis H. S.
 
 514 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Whether the Fleet served its purpose in causing repentance is open 
 to question. Surrey could not deny but he had very evil done, 
 but remained an unrepentant sinner. To him the psalm-singing 
 money-loving citizen was beneath contempt. So his poem from 
 the point of view of the injured party is insulting both in matter 
 and in manner. He defends himself by attacking. London is so 
 evil that it should be shocked to an appreciation of its sins. And 
 this paradox is phrased in a careful parody of the reforming 
 manner. 
 
 Oh member of false Babylon ! 
 The shop of craft! The den of ire! 
 Thy dreadful doom draws fast upon! 
 Thy martyr's blood by sword and fire 
 In Heaven and earth for justice call ! 
 
 Of course, a jeu d'esprit must not be taken too seriously; it betrays 
 a lack of humor. Yet, the piece is distinctly clever. As the City 
 by its trade relations with the continent was the stronghold of 
 Lutheranism, to apply to it the opprobrious name applied by the 
 Lutherans to the Roman Church is a neat distortion. 1 And the 
 "martyrs" were the poor courtiers, such as Surrey himself and 
 young Wyatt, persecuted by the demons in the City, merely be- 
 cause they shot at them with cross-bows ! But the literary signifi- 
 cance of this is great. At once the reader is conscious of a note 
 that has not been sounded in English poetry since Chaucer. There 
 is a lightness of touch in the fooling that implies a mastery of 
 the medium, that tells that the long apprenticeship of English 
 literature is now over. 
 
 The last lines of this satire are also important since they have 
 been quoted to show that Surrey was at heart in favor of the Refor- 
 mation. 2 Irony is a dangerous tool that is apt to turn in the wield- 
 er's hand and cut him. So Defoe found in the Shortest Way with 
 Dissenters. So with Surrey here. He naturally by his birth be- 
 
 1 Of course there is no parallelism with Petrarch's sonnets against Avignon, 
 as Nott suggests, because Petrarch was not attacking the city of Avignon but the 
 papal court located there. Petrarch's "Babylon" and Surrey's "Babylon" are 
 two entirely different things. By 1542 London had no connection with the papacy. 
 
 2 There is also an ambiguous remark of George Barlow, Dean of Westbury, 
 quoted by Constantyne (op. eit.), and the fact that Surrey translated the Psalms, 
 a proof that Aretino also was a Protestant.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 515 
 
 longed to the other party, of which his father the Duke of Norfolk 
 was the recognized leader. 1 It was Norfolk who introduced the Bill 
 of Six Articles to the House when not even Cranmer dared argue 
 against it. The whole political complexion of the reign is deter- 
 mined by the opposition of the party of the old nobility, of which 
 Norfolk was necessarily a member, and the " new men,'* due to the 
 influence of the various queens. Each queen may be regarded as a 
 counter signifying what political party had at that moment the 
 control, although Anne Boleyn, as a niece of the Howards, con- 
 fuses the issue; in general, as through her Henry was led to break 
 with the Papacy, she may be considered as representing the Protes- 
 tants. Still more Protestant was Jane Seymour, and her relatives. 
 As uncles of the heir to the throne, in spite of their lack of high 
 rank, they naturally became important. Also they were antago- 
 nists of the older order. This is the explanation for the Howards' 
 hatred of Cromwell. His downfall was a triumph for them, a 
 triumph which they consolidated by the marriage of Katharine 
 Howard to the King, a triumph which was fleeting and fatal. 
 Towards the last, across the body of the King, the two parties 
 glared at each other. The King was dying. The question upper- 
 most was who should control the young Prince. Surrey naturally 
 thought that his own father was the proper person, but he was im- 
 prudent in giving expression to his thought. Passion was running 
 high. When Surrey told one of the other faction that Norfolk 
 should be the governor, he was answered "rather than it should 
 come to pass that the prince should be under the governance of his 
 father or you, I would bide the adventure to thrust this dagger in 
 you." Norfolk was playing safe, but Surrey had the reckless 
 spirit of youth. Of course the end came. On the trivial charge of 
 quartering the arms with his own, Surrey was tried and found 
 guilty of high treason. There is no need to go into the evidence of 
 the trial. The technical indictment was merely technical. If it had 
 not been that charge it would have been another. Nor is it of value 
 to discuss it in terms of murder and bemoan Surrey's innocence. 
 With the morality of the age it is quite possible that the Howards 
 on their side had contemplated some such move. The sixteenth 
 
 1 See the quotation from both Romanists and Reformers cited by Bapst, op. 
 cit., 161. 
 
 2 Froude, Chapter xxiii. There is some slip in the use of the pronouns.
 
 516 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 century is the sixteenth century; it is useless to apply twentieth 
 century conceptions as explanations of events then. The fact 
 is that on the 19th of January, 1547, there was beheaded on Tower 
 Hill the most brilliant, the most spectacular, the most cultivated 
 noble in England, in the last analysis because he was descended 
 from kings. 
 
 By the facts of his life Surrey is a romantic figure; it needed very 
 little to make of him a figure in a romance. Two generations later 
 this was done by Thomas Nash in his novel The Unfortunate Trav- 
 eller, or the Life of lacke Wilton. 1 The hero, encountering the Earl 
 of Surrey in Holland, where Cornelius Agrippa shows him a like- 
 ness of his love Geraldine in a mirror, travels to Italy with him and 
 enjoys the tournament held by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 
 which Surrey sustains the honor of his lady against all comers. 
 This yarn apparently was made up out of whole cloth. 2 Nash's 
 novel has had the exceptional record of having been accepted as 
 fact by scholars of repute for two centuries. It was accepted by 
 Drayton and endorsed by Warton. When Nott published his 
 great edition of Surrey in 1815, as in the case of Wyatt, he was 
 strongly stirred by the whole romantic story. From Nott inevi- 
 tably it spread broadcast. It may be disproved, as does Courthope, 
 by showing the inconsistencies in the dating, very large inconsis- 
 tencies, or as does Bapst by proving that in Surrey 's record there 
 is no time-interval sufficient to allow any series of such events. 
 Today, surely, there is no necessity for more than a bare state- 
 ment. The basis of the story is to be found in the sonnet. 
 
 Ffrom Tuscan cam my ladies worthi race 
 faire fflorence was sometime her auncient seate 
 the westorne He (whose plcasaunt showre doth face 
 wylde Chambares cliffes) did geve her ly vely heate 
 ffostred she was with mylke of Irishe Brest 
 her Syer (an) erle, hir dame, of princes bloud 
 from tender yeres in britaine she doth rest 
 witA a kinge* child where she tastea gostly foode 
 honsdon did furst present her to myn eyen 
 bryght ys her hew and Geraldine shee highte 
 
 1 Entered in the Stationers' Register xvii mo die Septembris (1593). 
 
 2 Mr. Berthold Clifford was unable to find any growth of such a legend in Eng- 
 lish, when he made the search for me.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 517 
 
 Hampton me tawght to wishe her f urst for myne 
 and windesor alas doth chace me from her sight 
 bewty of kind, her vertues from a bove 
 happy ys he, that may obtaine her love. S. H. 1 
 
 "Geraldine, " the Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, the daughter of the 
 Earl of Kildare, was born 1528 (?) in Ireland. In 1533 she was 
 brought to England and in 1537 she is listed among the attend- 
 ants of the Princess Elizabeth at Hunsdon. In the spring of the 
 same year she accompanied the little princess to Hampton Court. 
 At this time she could not have been more than ten years old. Sur- 
 rey certainly was then in attendance on the Court, because his quick 
 temper involved him in a quarrel, of which we have the record. 
 In spite of the fact that he had joined his father in suppressing the 
 rebellion, called "The Pilgrimage of Grace," Lord Darcy before his 
 execution had intimated that Surrey was favorable to the rebels. 2 
 When a courtier 3 repeated this rumor, Surrey struck him, forget- 
 ting that, as he was within the royal precincts, he rendered himself 
 by so doing liable to the amputation of one hand. Although the 
 motive of the trouble is doubtful, the correspondence between Nor- 
 folk and Cromwell leaves no doubt of the fact. The pleading of his 
 father was successful; Surrey was punished only by being paroled to 
 Windsor, a very great mitigation to the punishment as he must 
 have been released before November 12th, when he was present at 
 the funeral of Jane Seymour. On March 10th, 1538, his first son, 
 Thomas, was born and on February 24th, 1539, his second son, 
 Henry. And according to the records this is the only time after 
 1537 when the twelfth line of the sonnet is applicable. Under the 
 circumstances it is quite clear that we have here the fancy of a 
 lively lad of nineteen pleasuring a little girl. To read in it the his- 
 tory of a great passion posits an abnormal precocity on the part of 
 Geraldine. 4 Aside from the romantic tradition there are no facts 
 to support it. 
 
 1 Add. MS. 86529 and in Tottel. 
 
 *This is Bapst's interpretation of Norfolk's letter to Cromwell (Calendar of 
 State Papers, xi, no. 21). 
 
 1 If this were one of the Seymours, as Bapst suggests, it would partly explain 
 Surrey's hatred of them. 
 
 * The ninth line of the sonnet, The golden gift that nature did thee give, in the 
 first edition of Tottel (and it is found no where else) reads "Now certesse Ladie;" 
 in the second edition this phrase was changed to "Now certesse Garret," the
 
 518 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Another misconception, of quite a different type, is the close 
 association of the names Wyatt and Surrey, the "Dioscuri of the 
 dawn," "the twin stars of the Reformation." So far as the latter 
 phrase be applied to Surrey, whatever evidence there is points in 
 entirely the opposite direction. Religion was then joined with 
 politics, and the party of the reformers found in Surrey an active 
 antagonist. Sir Edward Knyvet deposed that when he learned 
 of Cromwell's fall, he exclaimed: "Nowe is that foul churl dead 
 so ambitious of others blode; no we is he stricken by his owne staff e" 
 and this in spite of the fact that it was by Cromwell's intercession 
 that he himself had escaped mutilation only three years before. 
 The f eeling for his caste obliterated the sense of the merely personal 
 obligation. But such sentiments would scarcely commend him 
 to Wyatt, who did belong to the other party and who was one of 
 the "minions" of Cromwell. The political differences, moreover, 
 were not compensated for by a similarity in age. Wyatt was fifteen 
 years older than Surrey, and, as at the time of his death 
 Surrey was but twenty-nine, this difference was marked. Surrey 
 belonged to a younger generation. He was but little older than 
 Wyatt's son, and in fact it was in company with the latter that 
 he scandalized London. It is Wyatt the younger that he takes 
 with him on his French expedition. Consequently the usual im- 
 plication in discussing the relationship between them, that they 
 were intimates, needs careful revision. 
 
 That they were acquaintances, however, is equally clear from 
 the same facts. But it does not rest alone upon inference. We 
 have three poems by Surrey referring to Wyatt; one is in praise 
 of the translations of the Psalms, and two are elegies on his death. 
 Of these three the two Elizabethan sonnets are conventional. The 
 third is worth quoting in this connection. 1 
 
 W. resteth here, that quick could neuer rest: 
 Whose heauenly giftes encreased by disdayn, 
 And vertue sank the deper in his brest. 
 Such profit he by enuy could obtain. 
 
 family name of the Fitzgeralds. Bapst's suggestion that Garret is a diminutive 
 from Margaret is not plausible. I am unable to conjecture why Tottel made 
 this alteration, unless this poem belongs, or he thought it belonged, to the same 
 period and related the same affair. 
 1 This is found only in Tottel.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 519 
 
 A bed, where wisdom misteries did frame: 
 Whose hammers bet styll in that liuely brayn, 
 As on a stithe: where that some work of fame 
 Was dayly wrought, to turne to Britaines gayn. 
 
 A visage, stern, and my Id: where bothe did grow. 
 Vice to contemne, in vertue to reioyce: 
 Amid great stormes, whom grace assured so, 
 To lyue upright, and smile at fortunes choyce. 
 
 A hand, that taught, what might be sayd in ryme: 
 That reft Chaucer the glory of his wit: 
 A mark, the which (unparfited, for time) 
 Some may approche, but neuer none shall hit. 
 
 A toung, that serued in forein realmes his king: 
 Whose courteous talke to vertue did enflame. 
 Eche noble hart: a worthy guide to bring 
 Our English youth, by trauail, unto dame. 
 
 An eye, whose iudgement none affect could blinde, 
 Frendes to allure, and foes to reconcile: 
 Whose persing loke did represent a mynde 
 With vertue fraught, reposed, voyd of gyle. 
 
 A hart, where drede was neuer so imprest, 
 To hyde the thought, that might the trouth auance: 
 In neyther fortune lost, nor yet represt, 
 To swell in wealth, or yeld unto mischance. 
 
 A valiant corps, where force, and beawty met: 
 Happy, alas, to happy, but for foes: 
 Liued, and ran the race, that nature set: 
 Of manhodes shape, where she the molde did lose. 
 
 But to the heauens that simple soule is fled: 
 Which left with such, as couet Christ to know, 
 Witnesse of faith, that neuer shall be ded: 
 Sent for our helth, but not receiued so. 
 Thus, for our gilte, this iewel haue we lost: 
 The earth his bones, the heauens possesse his gost. 
 
 Whatever may be the criticisms on the stereotyped expressions in 
 this piece, or the inventory nature of its structure, the allusions 
 show that the poet knew his subject, although the frigidity of the 
 treatment suggests that this knowledge was of the head rather than 
 of the heart. But at least it is certain that he admired him. Pre- 
 sumably it was on account of this poem that Leland dedicated his 
 Naeniae in mortem Thomae Viaii equitis incomparabilis to Surrey. 1 
 In the dedicatory poem to this volume Leland tells Surrey that 
 
 1 This has been reprinted as Appendix B, Vol. 2 of Miss Fozwell's edition.
 
 520 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Nominis ille tui dum vixit magnus amator. 
 
 The phrase suggests the friendly interest of the older poet in 
 the younger, an interest that was repaid by the formal elegy 
 just quoted. This hypothesis seems borne out by another epi- 
 gram. 1 Although naturally much trust cannot be placed in 
 verses in which the author aims to flatter, the conjunction of the 
 two names seems to indicate that Surrey was recognized as the 
 logical successor to Wyatt's poetical position, and at the least it 
 does show that Surrey took his own verses seriously enough to 
 make Leland feel that he would be flattered by such a conjunction. 
 The inference from this is that he must have regarded Wyatt's 
 work with admiration and respect. 
 
 Under the circumstances a comparison between the work of the 
 two poets is inevitable. Both translated Sonnet CXL of Petrarch. 
 In order that the reader may have the documents in evidence the 
 three will be given. 
 
 Amor, che nel penser mio vive e regna 
 
 E'l suo seggio maggior nel mio cor tene, 
 
 Talor armato ne la fronte vene; 
 
 Ivi si loca, et ivi pon sua insegna. 
 Quella ch'amare e sofferir ne 'nsegna, 
 
 E vol che '1 gran desio, 1'accesa spene, 
 
 Ragion, vergogna e reverenza affrene, 
 Di nostro ardir fra se stessa si sdegna. 
 Onde Amor paventoso fugge al core, 
 Lasciando ogni sua impresa, e piange, e trema; 
 
 Ivi s'acsonde e non appar piti fdre. 
 Che poss' io far, temendo il mio signore, 
 
 Se non star seco in fin a 1'ora extrema? 
 
 Che bel fin fa chi ben amando more. 
 
 This is a typical sonnet in Petrarch's conceited manner, a meta- 
 phor ridden to death for the purpose of closing with an epigram. 
 The last line is marked by conscious alliteration, c-b-f-f-c-b-m-m-. 
 It is a purely intellectual concept worked out like a puzzle. With 
 
 1 Miss FoxwelFs Wial, *, *35. 
 
 Una dies geminos phoenices non dedit orbi 
 
 Mors erit unius vita sed alterius 
 Rara avis in terris confectus morte Viatus 
 
 Houardum heredem scripserat ante suum.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 521 
 
 Wyatt's predeliction for this sort of sonnet no explanation is re- 
 quired why he chose it. 1 
 
 The longe love that in my thought doeth harbar: 
 
 And in myn hert doeth kepe his residence: 
 
 Into my face preseth with bolde pretence; 
 
 And therein campeth spreding his baner. 
 She that me lerneth to love and suffre; 
 
 And willes that my trust and lustes negligence 
 
 Be rayned by reason, shame, and reverence; 
 
 With his hardines taketh displeasur. 
 Where with all unto the hertes forrest he fleith: 
 
 Leving his enterprise with payn and cry: 
 
 And ther him hideth and not appereth. 
 What may I do when my maister fereth? 
 
 But in the feld with him to lyve and dye? 
 
 For goode is the liff, ending faithfully. 
 
 Wyatt here has succeeded in giving an almost literal translation, 
 at the same time preserving the form of the Italian sonnet, with 
 the exception of the ending in a couplet. It is unnecessary again 
 to stress the amount of verbal ingenuity such a performance re- 
 quires. Also it must be granted that in the accomplishment of 
 this feat he has sacrificed whatever poetic value the original may 
 have. Nor is the scansion without difficulties. If the first line 
 be read as a normal pentameter, 
 
 The 16nge love that in my thought doth harbar, 
 
 every stress falls upon a weak syllable. But Wyatt, following the 
 Medieval Latin tradition, composed by ear. Thus there is a syl- 
 labic value given to the probably unsounded final e and a dactyl 
 is substituted for a trochee. The line then reads 
 
 The I6nge I6ve // that in my thought doeth harbar. 
 
 But to shift the accent to so great an extent is not freedom but 
 license, and presupposes the accompaniment of music. The ex- 
 planation is that thelanguage was still in so unsettled a condition 
 that the Romance accent upon the second syllable, where modern 
 English accents the first, was allowable. Consequently he ac- 
 
 1 The reading is from the Egerton MS. given by Miss Foxwell, 1, 14.
 
 522 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 cepts rimes based alone on the final syllable, harbar, baner, 
 suffre, displeasur, although by no system can they be accounted 
 pure rimes. Wyatt is clearly hampered both by an unsettled 
 technique and an unsettled language. Surrey's version shows 
 the advance. 1 
 
 Love that doth raine and liue within my thought 
 and buylt his seat within my captyve brest 
 clad in the armes wherein wt'tA me he fowght 
 oft in my face he doth his banner rest 
 But she that tawght me love and suffre paine 
 my doub(t)ful hope & eke my hote desire 
 with shamfast looke to shadoo and refrayne 
 her smyling grace convertyth streight to yre 
 And cowarde Love then to the hart apace 
 taketh his flight where he doth lorke and playne 
 his purpose lost, and dare not shew his face, 
 for my lorde's gilt thus fawtles byde I payine; 
 yet from my Lorde shall not my foote remove 
 sweet is the death that taketh end by love. 
 
 Although this version is as literal as the other, by abandoning the 
 rime-scheme of the Italian sonnet, the difficulty of the rendition 
 has been greatly decreased. It is unnecessary here to apologize 
 for the so-called "Elizabethan sonnet"; the form used by Shake- 
 speare needs no defense. For, whereas the frequency of rimes in 
 Italian makes the Italian sonnet normal in that language, in Eng- 
 lish, except in the hands of the greatest masters, it tends to 
 degenerate into mere verbal ingenuity. It is always an exotic. 
 Certainly Wyatt's experiments in the Italian form would not en- 
 courage imitators. Surrey here shows, then, both his independence 
 and his critical ability in preferring a form more consonant with the 
 genius of the language. And his use of it was carried over into the 
 next generation. The two forms of the sonnet produce quite differ- 
 ent effects. The Italian sonnet, as Petrarch uses it, automatically 
 breaks into the octave and the sextet, the octave stating the gen- 
 eral condition and the sextet giving the concrete application. As 
 the Elizabethan sonnet consists of three quatrains and a couplet, 
 there is no such mechanical break; the idea, therefore, is developed 
 
 *Add. MS. 36529, as quoted by Padelford. It must be remembered that 
 whereas the Wyatt text being probably autographic represents Wyatt's final 
 work, the Surrey is derived only from a copyist.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 523 
 
 through twelve lines, closing with an epigrammatic couplet. The 
 difference is obvious even in the translations from Petrarch. 
 Wyatt's couplet is not complete in itself, whereas Surrey's may 
 be detached as a quotation. That this form originated with Sur- 
 rey is very doubtful, since it was used by Wyatt, although with 
 a slightly different rime-scheme, by Grimald, and by several of the 
 Uncertain Authors; Surrey's use of it, however, in all probability 
 gave it currency. It was Surrey's fortune to be accepted as the 
 representative of the age, the age when for the first time since 
 Chaucer, the language had become relatively fixed in the forms 
 of the words, and when the poetic technique had passed beyond 
 the obviously experimental stage. 
 
 Owing to this advantage of position, Surrey seemed to Sidney 
 to be the first modern poet. Whereas the language of Skelton 
 or Wyatt was archaic, Surrey's English was current for the next 
 two centuries. As the archaic effect in the previous quotations 
 is due primarily to the spelling, his translation of the forty-seventh 
 Epigram of the Tenth Book of Martial will be given, with the Latin 
 and with two later versions. The Martial is as follows : l 
 
 Vitam quse faciant beatiorem, 
 lucundissime Martialis, htec sunt: 
 Res non parta labore, sed relicta; 
 Non ingratus ager, focus perennis; 
 Lis numquam, toga rani, mens quieta; 
 Vires ingenuse, salubre corpus; 
 Prudens simplicitas, pares amici; 
 Convictus facilis, sine arte mensa; 
 Nox non ebria, sed soluta curls; 
 Non tristis torus, et tamen pudicus; 
 S< minus, qui faciat breves tenebras: 
 Quod sis, esse velis nihilque malis; 
 Summum nee metuas diem nee optea. 
 
 Surrey renders this as follows : 2 
 
 Martial, the things that do attain 
 The happy life, be these, I find : 
 The riches left, not got with pain; 
 The fruitful ground, the quiet mind: 
 
 1 Ad Julium Martialem, Martialis Epigrammaton, Liber X, Epig. xlvii, von 
 Ludwig Friedlaender, Zweiter Band, 134. 
 
 1 The Poem of Henry Howard Earl of Surrey, London, William Pickering, 1881* 
 57.
 
 524 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 The equal friend, no grudge, no strife; 
 No charge of rule, nor governance; 
 Without disease, the healthful life; 
 The household of continuance: 
 
 The mean diet, no delicate fare; 
 True wisdom join'd with simpleness; 
 The night discharged of all care, 
 Where wine the wit may not oppress: 
 
 The faithful wife, without debate; 
 Such sleeps as may beguile the night. 
 Contented with thine own estate; 
 Ne wish for Death, ne fear his might. 
 
 Fortunately this same epigram was translated by R. Fletcher in 
 1656: l 
 
 Most pleasant Martial these are they 
 
 That make the happyer life and day, 
 
 Means not sweat for, but resign'd, 
 
 Fire without end, fields still in kinde, 
 
 No strife, no office, inward peace, 
 
 Free strength, a body sans disease, 
 
 A prudent plainesse, equal friends, 
 
 Cheap Gates, not scraped from the world's ends, 
 
 A night not drown'd, but free from care, 
 
 Sheets never sad, and yet chast are, 
 
 Sleep that makes short the shades of night, 
 
 Art such thou would'st be, it there might 
 
 A choice be offer'd, nor dost fear 
 
 Nor wish thy last dayes exit here. 
 
 Nearly fifty years later, in 1695, the same epigram was translated 
 again: 2 
 
 What our Lives render most at ease, 
 My dearest Martial, they are these: 
 A 'State that's left, not got with Toil; 
 A constant Fire, a fruitful Soil; 
 A quiet Life, from Law-Suits free; 
 But seldom that the Gown doth see; 
 
 1 Ex otio Negotium, or Martiatt his Epigrams. By R. Fletcher, London 1656; 
 03. 
 
 1 Epigrams of Martial, Englished. . . London, 1695, 236. It was likewise 
 translated by Charles Cotton, Poems on Several Occasions, 1689, 561. I have 
 preferred the one in the text merely because the date of publication is nearer 
 the end of the century.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 525 
 
 Ingenuous Strength, a Body sound; 
 Prudent Plainness, Friends equal found; 
 An artless Board, with easie Fare; 
 A Night not Drunk, yet void of Care; 
 A Bed not sowre, and yet that's Chaste; 
 Sound Sleep, that makes Night seem to haste; 
 Nought else, but what thou art, to wish to be, 
 The last Hour not to fear, or haste to see. 
 
 Of these three, certainly (with the modern spelling) Surrey shows 
 his age the least ! There is nothing that suggests the peculiarities 
 of the epoch as does the line 
 
 A Night not Drunk, yet void of Care! 
 
 Aside from the obvious fact that Surrey is by far the greatest poet 
 of the three, it is worthy of note that there is scarcely one of his 
 phrases that is not today in common usage, whereas in both of the 
 others some phrases seem strained. Clearly in his time it was 
 possible to write standard English. 
 
 And the fact is obvious that Surrey is giving poetic value to 
 his version of the Latin. The objection may be raised that the 
 effect is gained by the easy device of comparing him with inferior 
 writers. Fortunately the same piece has been translated by the 
 well-known Clement Marot. 1 
 
 Marot, voici, si tu le veux savoir, 
 
 Qui fait a 1'homme heureuse vie avoir: 
 
 Successions, non biens acquiz a peine, 
 
 Feu en tout temps, maison plaisante et saine, 
 
 Jamias proces, les membres bien dispos, 
 
 Et au dedans un esprit a repos; 
 
 Contraire a mil, n'avoir aucuns contraires; 
 
 Peu se mesler des publique affaires; 
 
 Sage simplesse, amys a soy pareilz, 
 
 Table ordinaire et sans graus appareilz; 
 
 Facilement avec toutes gens vivre; 
 
 Nuict sans nul soing, n'estre pas pourtant yvre; 
 
 Femme joyeuse, et chaste neantmoins; 
 
 Plus haut qu'on n'est ne vouloir point attaindre; 
 
 Ne desirer la mort ny ne la craindrc. 
 
 Voyla, Marot, si tu le veux scavoir, 
 
 Qui faict a 1'homme heureuse vie avoir. 
 
 1 Oeuvres de Clement Marot, ed. Jannet, 3, 89. DC toy mesme.
 
 526 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 For precision and felicity of phrase Surrey need not shun com- 
 parison even with the great French poet of his age. The docu- 
 ments in evidence have here been given the reader, that he may 
 form his own judgment. It will be a matter of surprise, how- 
 ever, if the verdict, to some measure at least, does not justify the 
 Elizabethans in their estimate of Surrey. 
 
 That this ability was not reached at a bound, either by Surrey, 
 or the poets of his age, is shown by the translations from Horace. 
 The three separate renderings of the same ode, the Tenth Ode of 
 the Second Book, 1 may be regarded as studies in English versi- 
 fication. This must argue either that Surrey and two of his friends 
 translated this ode in rivalry, or that independently each of the 
 three turned to Horace, as the exemplar of the art of poetry, to 
 learn poetic technique. That it is the latter alternative may be 
 assumed from the widely separated positions of the translations 
 in Tottel. Surrey's version is on page twenty-seven; the second, 
 by one of the " Uncertain Authors," on page one hundred and fifty- 
 seven; and the third was included in the thirty-nine additional 
 poems of the second edition. If indeed the Miscellany does repre- 
 sent the combination of two or more commonplace books, the 
 probability is strong of a diverse authorship. 
 
 Such a possibility at once lends a peculiar interest to the poems 
 themselves. In order that the reader may be able himself to make 
 the necessary comparison, the Latin will be first cited and then the 
 three English translations in the order given above. 
 
 Rectius vives, Licini, neque altum 
 semper urgendo; neque, dum procellas 
 cautus horrescis, nimium premendo 
 litus iniquum. 
 
 Auream quisquis mediocritatem 
 diligit, tutus caret obsoleti 
 sordibus tecti, caret invidenda 
 sobrius aula. 
 
 Saepius ventis agitator ingens 
 pinus, et celsae graviore casu 
 decidunt turres, feriuntque summos 
 fulgura montes. 
 
 1 Noted by Nott, Works of Surrey, op. tit., 329.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 627 
 
 Sperat infostis, metuit secundis 
 alteram sortem bene praeparatum 
 pectua. Informes hiemes reducit 
 luppiter, idem 
 
 Summovet. Non, si male nunc, et olim 
 sic erit. Quondam cithara tacentem 
 suscitat Musam, neque semper arcum 
 tendit Apollo. 
 
 Rebus angustis animosus atque 
 fortis appare; sapienter idem 
 contrahes vento nimium secundo 
 turgida vela. 
 
 Surrey's version is headed Praise of meane and constant estate. 
 
 Of thy lyfe, Thomas, this compasse well mark: 
 Not aye with full sayles the hye seas to beat: 
 Ne by coward dred, in shonning stormes dark, 
 On shalow shores thy keel in perill freat. 
 Who so gladly halseth the golden meane, 
 Voyde of dangers aduisdly hath his home 
 Not with loth. soi n muck, as a den vncleane: 
 Nor palacelyke, wherat disdayn may glome. 
 The lofty pyne the great winde often riues: 
 With violenter swey falne turrets stepe: 
 Lightninges assault the hye mountains, and cliues. 
 A hart well stayd, in ouerthwartes depe, 
 Hopeth amendes: in swete, doth feare the sowre. 
 God, that sendeth, withdrawthe winter sharp. 
 Now ill, not aye thus: once Phebus to lowre 
 With bow vnbent shall cesse, and frame to harp. 1 
 His voyce. In straite estate appere thou stout: 
 And so wisely, when lucky gale of winde 
 AH thy puft sailes shall fil, loke well about: 
 Take in a ryft: hast is wast, prose doth finde. 
 
 The poem of the First Edition is entitled The meane estate is to be 
 accompted the beat. 
 
 Who craftly castes to stere his boate 
 
 and safely skoures the flattering flood : 
 
 He cutteth not the greatest waues 
 
 for why that way were nothing good. 
 
 1 The punctuation, although clearly in error, has been retained.
 
 528 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 Ne fleteth on the crocked shore 
 
 lest harme him happe awayting left. 
 But wines away between them both, 
 
 as who would say the meane is best. 
 Who waiteth on the golden meane, 
 
 he put in point of sickernes: 
 Hides not his head in sluttishe coates, 
 
 ne shroudes himself in filthines. 
 Ne sittes aloft in hye estate, 
 
 where hatefull hartes enuie his chance: 
 But wisely walkes betwixt them twaine, 
 
 ne proudly doth himself auance 
 The highest tree in all the woode 
 
 is rifest rent with Must ring windes: 
 The higher hall the greater fall 
 
 such chance haue proude and lofty mindes. 
 When lupiter from hie doth threat 
 
 with mortall mace and dint of thunder 
 The highest hilles ben batrid eft 
 
 When they stand still that stoden vnder 
 The man whose head with wit is fraught 
 
 in welth will feare a worser tide 
 When fortune failes dispaireth nought 
 
 but constantly doth stil abide 
 For he that sendeth grisely stormes 
 
 with whisking windes and bitter blastes 
 And fowlth with haile the winters face 
 
 and f rotes the soil with hory frostes 
 Euen he adawth the force of colde 
 
 the spring in sendes with somer hote 
 The same full oft to stormy hartes 
 
 is cause of bale: of ioye the roote. 
 Not always il though so be now 
 
 when cloudes ben driuen then rides the racke 
 Phebus the fresh ne shoteth still 
 
 sometime he harpes his muse to wake 
 Stand stif therfore pluck vp thy hart 
 
 lose not thy port though fortune faile 
 Againe whan wind doth serue at will 
 
 take hede to hye to hoyse thy saile. 
 
 The version in the Second Edition is labelled merely Of the golden 
 meane. 
 
 The wisest way, thy bote, in waue and winde to guie, 
 Is neither still the trade of middle streame to trie:
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 529 
 
 N^ (warely shunnyng wrecke by wether) aye to nie, 
 
 To presse vpon the perillous shore. 
 But clenely flees he filthe: ne wonnes a wretched wight, 
 In carlish coate: and carefull court aie thrall to spite, 
 With port of proud astate he leues: who doth delight, 
 
 Of golden meane to hold the lore. 
 Stormes rifest rende the sturdy stout pineapple tre. 
 Of lofty ruing towers the fals the feller be, 
 Most fers doth lightenyng light, where furthest we do se. 
 
 The hilles the valey to forsake. 
 
 Well furnisht brest to bide erne chanses changing chear. 
 In woe hath chearfull hope, m weal hath warefull fear, 
 One self loue winter makes with lothfull lokes appear. 
 
 That can by course the same aslake. 
 What if into mishap the ease now casten be? 
 It forceth not such form* of luck to last to thee. 
 Not alway bent is Phefous bow : his harpe and he, 
 
 Ceast siluer sound sometime doth raise. 
 In hardest hap vse helpe of hardy hopefull hart. 
 Seme bold to bear the brunt of fortune ouerthwart. 
 Eke wisely when forewinde to full breathes on thy part, 
 
 Swage sw*llyng saile, and doubt decayes. 
 
 Even a casual reading of these poems in comparison with the 
 Latin shows that we are dealing with prentice pieces of low grade. 
 Not one of them would excite the enthusiasm of a modern school- 
 master. The problem was to transpose the Sapphic strophes of 
 Horace into an analogous English form without dilution. As the 
 three are here given to the reader, he may judge the results for 
 himself. Surrey is trying to render the six strophes of the Latin 
 into five pentameter quatrains. To translate the ninety- two words 
 of the original he has used only one hundred and fifty-seven, in 
 spite of the fact that his rime-scheme required a superfluous last 
 line. On the other hand to gain such condensation his sentences 
 are distorted out of the English order. 
 
 once Phebus to low re 
 
 With bow vnbent shall cesse, and frame to harp 
 His voyce. . 
 
 is comprehensible only upon a second reading. It may be assumed 
 that this is an early piece; if so, it, with the other two, is an interest- 
 ing proof that the poets of the age turned to the Latin to learn
 
 530 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 their art. The very crudity of the work becomes eloquent. And 
 if much of the work produced then has been lost, these pieces are 
 important, not for themselves but as types. For such poems as 
 these there may be posited a background of classical Latin. 
 
 But clearly so far as Surrey is concerned, this classical back- 
 ground is limited to the contents of the poems. He makes no at- 
 tempt to suggest classic forms. Thus, in the three poems just 
 quoted, while the third author endeavors to imitate the Sapphic 
 strophe by three riming hexameter lines and a half line, Surrey 
 contents himself with pentameter quatrains. The simplicity of the 
 rime-scheme, abab, recalls the precepts of the Medieval Latin. 
 The practice of the medieval writers is also evidenced in the desire 
 to introduce the very obvious classical allusion. 1 
 
 I that Vlisses' yeres have spent 
 
 to seeke Penelope 
 
 fynde well the foyle I have ment 
 
 to say yat was not soo 
 
 Sins Troilus' cause bathe caused me 
 
 from Crised for to goo 
 
 and to repent Ulisses' truthe 
 
 in seas and storme skyes 
 
 of raginge will & wanton youthe, 
 
 wherewith I have tossed sore 
 
 from Cilia's seas to Carribes' clives 
 
 vppone the drowninge shore. 
 
 Such stanzas as these might well have been written in the fifteenth 
 century before the introduction of Greek. No distinction is made 
 between the stories of the Odyssey and the Troilus; to the writer 
 both are equally authoritative. The objection may be made that 
 this poem is at best only doubtfully attributed to Surrey. But the 
 same is true of the poem assigned him by Tottel, When ragyng 
 loue. z The second and third stanzas of this are: 
 
 I call to minde the nauye greate, 
 That the Greekes brought to Troye towne: 
 And how the boysteous windes did beate 
 Their shyps, and rente their sayles adowne, 
 
 1 Harl. Misc. 78, given by Padelford, op. cit., 41. By Tottel it is listed among 
 the poems of the "Uncertain Authors," Arbers Reprint, 241. 
 *Arber's Reprint, 14; not given in any manuscript.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 531 
 
 Till Agamemnons daughters bloode 
 Appeasde the goddes, that them withstode. 
 And how that in those ten years warre, 
 Full many a bloudye dede was done, 
 And many a lord, that came full farre, 
 There caught his bane (alas )to sone: 
 And many a good knight ouerronne, 
 Before the Grekes had Helene wonne. 
 
 Lines such as these are more like the medieval treatment of Grecian 
 "knights" and of "Duke Hannyball," and the rime-scheme, 
 ababcc, is that used, according to Gascoigne, in the Ballade, 1 and 
 serving "beste for daunces and light matters." The very word 
 comes from the Medieval Latin ballare. All this reminds one that 
 besides the obvious classical strain there is the other, the Medieval 
 Latin strain, in Surrey. It must be remembered that he was 
 brought up with a knowledge of poets following medieval prece- 
 dents. It was for his uncle, the Admiral, that Barclay wrote the 
 Tower of Honour and Virtue, and, what is much more important 
 Skelton was in some sort an attache of the Howards. 2 It will be 
 remembered 3 that the Medieval Latin scanned by the number of 
 accents rather than the number of syllables in a line. So in the 
 second, third and fifth lines of the second stanza of the last passage 
 quoted, there is an extra syllable. For instance, in the line, 
 
 Full many a bloudye dede was done, 
 
 the second foot is an anapest. Quite clearly this is not due to a de- 
 sire to copy classic meters; it is due to medieval precedent. This 
 gives the point of view necessary to understand Gascoigne' s re- 
 marks in the next age: 4 
 
 For furder explanation hereof, note you that commonly now a dayes in eng- 
 lish rimea (for I dare not cal them English verses) we use none other order but a 
 
 I Ceriayne notet of Instruction in The Posies, ed. by John W. Cunliffe, 1907, 
 471. 
 
 I 1 have myself overstated the relationship in saying that Surrey was a" pupil " 
 of Skelton, Surrey could not have been more than four or 6ve when Skelton 
 wrote the Garland of Laurel at Sheriff Hutton, but that there is a definite influ- 
 ence of the older poet upon the younger is not open to question. 
 
 Cf. pp. 145-147. 
 
 4 Gascoigne, op. cit., 467. The diagram there given is omitted.
 
 532 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 foote of two sillables, wherof the first is depressed or made short, & the second 
 is elevate or made long: and that sound or scanning contineuth throughout the 
 verse. We have used in times past other kindes of Meeters: as for example this 
 following: 
 
 No wight in this world, that wealth can attayne, 
 tnlesse h& beleve, that all is but vayne. 
 
 Also our father Chaucer hath used the same libertie in feete and measures that 
 the Latinists do use: and who so ever do peruse and well consider his workes, he 
 shall finde that although his lines are not alwayes of one selfe same number of 
 Syllables, yet beyng redde by one that hath understanding, the longest verse 
 and that which hath most Syllables in it, wil fall (to the eare) correspondent unto 
 that whiche hath fewest sillables in it: and likwise that whiche hath in it fewest 
 syllables, shalbe founde yet to consist of woordes that have suche naturall sounde, 
 as may seeme equall in length to a verse which hath many moe sillables of lighter 
 accentes. And surely I can lament that wee are fallen into suche a playne and 
 simple manner of wryting, that there is none other foote used but one: wherby 
 our Poemes may justly be called Rithmes, and cannot by any right challenge 
 the name of a Verse. 
 
 Gascoigne here is lamenting that the progress of humanism has 
 restricted the freedom of English verse. Although, as a matter 
 of fact, the practice was not in accord with the theory, yet the 
 theory is significant, especially for the development of blank- 
 verse. The origin of this has been discussed elsewhere. 1 It is 
 Surrey's treatment of the measure that is the problem here. 
 
 The difficulty consists in the fact that during the first hah* of the 
 century two distinct theories of versification were advocated, and 
 the practice was a compromise between them. In the rimed verse 
 the Medieval Latin theory is certainly perceptible; the confusion 
 arises in the unrimed verse, where we with our intensive knowl- 
 edge of the classics expect a quantitative value. To clear the issue, 
 take first the unrimed translation of the Fifty-fifth Psalm, the 
 Fifty-fourth of the Vulgate. Forty-one lines in the English follow 
 fairly literally the Latin of the Vulgate. Then follows an inter- 
 polation entirely original. 
 
 friowr whose harme and tounge presents the wicked sort 
 
 of those false wolves witA cootes which doo their ravin hyde 
 
 that sweare to me by heauen the fotestole of the lord 
 
 who though force had hurt my fame they did not touch my lyfe 
 
 such patching care I lothe as feeds the welth witA lyes 
 
 1 Pp. 352-360.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 533 
 
 but in thother p(s)alme of David fynd I ease 
 
 lacta curam tuam super dominum et ipse to enutriet. 1 
 
 The Latin line with which the poem ends is that in the Vulgate 
 immediately following the one translated; the Psalm then con- 
 tinues for five more verses. Surrey's version is then truncated; 
 forty-one lines are translated, an original passage is interpolated, 
 a line of the original is given, and the conclusion omitted. The 
 explanation of this anomaly is purely hypothetical. It will be 
 remembered that the witnesses all comment upon the fact that 
 during his trial Surrey's attitude was one of defiance, 2 to such an 
 extent that Holinshed insinuates that it prejudiced his judges 
 against him. 3 If this passage means what it says, Surrey had been 
 told by a friar, suborned by his enemies, that the accusation con- 
 cerned merely his reputation, not his life. 4 Consequently instead 
 of the expected humble confession, such as was his father's later, 
 he played into the hands of the Seymours by defending himself. 
 After his conviction, therefore, 
 
 lacta super Dominum curam tuam, et ipse te enutriet! 
 
 If this hypothesis be accepted as plausible, the passage becomes 
 interesting, since it is the last work of the author. To the end, 
 then, he scans his lines by the number of accents, not by the num- 
 ber of syllables. The third line of the passage quoted reads 
 
 that sweare to me by heauen the f6testole 6f the 16rd; 
 
 and the fourth line is still more irregular in beginning with an 
 anapest, 
 
 who though force had hdrt my fime they did not touch my lyfe. 
 Clearly he avails himself of an unacademic freedom. 
 
 1 Padelford, op. cii., 53. Of course "to" in the last line of the passage should 
 read te. The poem is the last of Surrey's in Add. MS. 36629 and is found in Add. 
 MS. 8635. 
 
 *Cf. p. 511. 
 
 1 Herbert of Cherbury, (The Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth, London, 
 1649, 565) who had access to documents now lost, gives the same impression. 
 
 4 Nott (Surrey, op. cit., 398) sees in this passage a "presumption that Surrey's 
 attachment to the Reformation had drawn upon him the anger of the supporters 
 of Popery." The documents do not support such an interpretation. Bapst, 158,
 
 534 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 This has been a long approach to the question of Surrey's version 
 of the Second and the Fourth Books of the yEneid. The question 
 has been complicated because it happened to be a classic author, 
 Vergil. But for a long sustained effort in translation Vergil was 
 the inevitable choice for author and the ^Eneid for subject. This 
 is shown by the fact that during the first half of the century trans- 
 lations of the ^Eneid appear in almost all the vernaculars. In 1529 
 was published the French version in rimed couplets by Octavien 
 de Saint-Gelais; in 1553 the Gawin Douglas version in Lowland 
 Scotch; and in 1539-1544 the Italian rendition of the first six books, 
 done by a group of men. As there is little probability of imitation 
 between the French, Italian, and the Scotch, it is evident that we 
 are dealing with a phenomenon not limited to a single country or 
 to a single author. There was during the first half of the century 
 a desire diffused throughout Europe to reproduce classic authors 
 in the vernacular, and this desire surely is due to humanism. 
 
 The relation of Surrey's translation to those of the members of 
 the group requires a detailed analysis. Yet, even in the stating of 
 the problem, the inherent difficulties in the way of a satisfactory 
 solution become manifest. We have no data. Of necessity hypoth- 
 esis piles upon hypothesis, until the result is as complicated and as 
 fragile as a spider's web! On June 21, 1557, Tottel issued Surrey's 
 translation of the Second and Fourth Books of the ^Eneid, but 
 by 1557 Surrey had been dead already ten years. Therefore the 
 date of the Tottel publication is of no value in deciding the date of 
 composition. Nor is it definite for textual criticism, since there is 
 little probability that Tottel had a better text for the ^Eneid than 
 he had for the poems. Moreover, for the Fourth Book there are 
 two other issues, that of the Hargrave MS. 205, and that of the 
 John Day impression 1 and the text as given by the manuscript 
 
 interprets this passage as a reference to the betrayal of the Duke of Buckingham 
 by the Monk Hopkins. But surely both Surrey was too young at that time, and 
 the passage was written too much later, to make that explanation plausible. 
 
 1 The first is in the British Museum, and has been studied by Fest (uber Surrey's 
 Virgilubersetzung, nebst Neuausgabe des vierten Buckes, von Dr. Otto Fest, Palaestra 
 XXXXIV, 1903) and by Imelmann (Zu den Anfangen des Blankversets: Surrey's 
 Mneis IV in ursprunglicher Gestatt. Von Rudolf Imelmann, Jahrbuch der 
 Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, 1905, p. 81. The second is the John Day issue 
 previously discussed (pages 855-356 note) at Britwell Court. To my knowledge this 
 has never been either reprinted or collated.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 535 
 
 differs markedly from that given by Tottel. 1 Whether this differ- 
 ence in the readings be due to Surrey himself, or whether in the 
 versions we have are derivatives from a single lost original, and, if 
 so, which of the two more nearly represents that lost original, are 
 questions at present impossible of solution. 2 The fact to be kept 
 constantly in mind in discussing Surrey's treatment of blank 
 verse is that the fundamental requirement, an authoritative 
 text, is lacking. Therefore the relation of the unknown Surrey 
 version to the various translations, when one remembers the high- 
 handed methods of the sixteenth century editors, may be expressed 
 as an algebraic formula where all the quantities are unknown ! The 
 value of x may be expressed only in terms of y and z. 
 
 Since no one has ever claimed Surrey's dependence upon Saint- 
 Gelais, the question narrows down to the relation between his 
 version and that of Douglas and the Italian. Actually of course, 
 it is not one question here, but two quite different problems. Al- 
 though the Douglas version was not published until 1553, six 
 years after Surrey's death, as Douglas had died in London in 1524, 
 for a quarter of a century his translation had been in existence in 
 manuscript or manuscripts. Now there is nothing inherently im- 
 probable in the assumption that at some time Surrey had had 
 access to one of these manuscripts. Nott collected the passages 
 in which the two versions were verbally similar, of which there are 
 
 I An extreme example is given by Imelmann. (op. cit: 98.) 
 
 Continuo invadit: "Tu nunc Karthaginis altse 
 Fundamenta locas, pulchramque uxorius urbem 
 Exstruis? heu regni rerumque oblite tuarum! 
 
 Tottel's version is: 
 
 Thus he encounters him: oh careles wight 
 Both of thy realme and of thine owne affaires; 
 A wifebound man now dost thou reare the walles 
 Of high Cartage, to build a goodly town .... 
 
 The Hargrave MS. renders it: 
 
 Then thus he sayd : Thow that of highe Cartage 
 Dost the foundaciouns laye,to please thie wife, 
 Raising on height a passing fayer citie, 
 But oh! for woe, thine owne things out of minde. 
 
 I 1 confess that I am not much impressed by arguments where the chief reliance 
 u placed upon rhetorical questions.
 
 536 EARLY POETRY TUDOR 
 
 ninety-seven in the Second Book alone. Now although it may be 
 granted that two men translating the same poem tend to use the 
 same expressions even in cases where the verse-form requires a dilu- 
 tion of the original, yet so large a number can scarcely be explained 
 upon the theory of coincidence. If we were but sure of our text, the 
 question might be considered answered. But the curious fact is 
 that the version of the Fourth Book, given by the unpublished 
 Hargrave MS., is clearly much more like the Douglas translation 
 than is the version given by Tottel. What this signifies is not very 
 clear. Apparently, after 1553, Surrey's work was edited with the 
 Douglas translation in mind. Therefore the case rests merely upon 
 the fact that there are similarities between the two versions, 
 whether due to Surrey or to another, and must rest there until more 
 data be given. 
 
 In comparing Surrey with Douglas, at least we have the ident- 
 ity of phrase to guide us; in the case of the Italian even that 
 help is withdrawn. In 1539 the Second Book appeared in Italian 
 in versi sciolti. 1 Hippolito, the natural son of Giulano, had been 
 raised to the cardinalate in 1529. He gathered around him a 
 court of scholars as was the fashion, among whom was the writer 
 Molza. As the book professes to be by him, it must have been com- 
 posed before 1535, the year of his death, whether or not he actu- 
 ally wrote it. Later, others joined in translating separate books, 
 of which the Fourth is by Bartolomeo C. Picholomini. Surrey's 
 translation, then, if taken from the Italian, would be dependent 
 upon the work of two writers, and each book must be considered 
 separately. Dr. Fest feels that there is no doubt but that Book 
 Two is drawn from the Italian and Dr. Imelmann that at least the 
 Hargrave MS. version, the "older" version, shows equal depend- 
 ence upon Book Four. 2 To prove his position each cites numerous 
 lines where both the Italian and the English agree in diluting the 
 original. For, since both translations are in verse, a certain 
 amount of dilution is inevitable. As it is stated, with the long ar- 
 ray of confirmatory passages, the conclusion seems inevitable. But 
 
 1 II secondo di Virgilio in lingua volgare, volto da Hippolito de Medici Cardinale. 
 (Citta di Castello.) M. D. XXXVIIII: again in 1540, 1541, and 1544 as parts 
 of the collected work. 
 
 2 This supposition was originally suggested by Nott (op. cit. CC.) but denied by 
 him. It owes its present form to the German scholars.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 537 
 
 a priori such a conclusion is surprising. To the sixteenth century 
 boy Latin was almost as familiar as his mother-tongue, and of 
 all writers in Latin Vergil was probably the most familiar. 1 To 
 find a writer of that age turning for help to a translation hi a 
 foreign vernacular is curious. One would expect him to use the 
 Latin to interpret the vernacular. That Surrey in particular knew 
 Italian, although he had never been in Italy, is always assumed 
 from his renditions of Petrarch; but that he understood Italian 
 with anywhere near the facility with which he understood Latin 
 is an idea that needs very careful proof before it should be accepted. 
 On the other hand the correspondence between the Surrey and 
 the Italian are evident, and it is within the bounds of possibility 
 that he might have seen the Italian. The fact to be explained is 
 that the correspondences are there. The first and most obvious 
 explanation is that they are due to coincidence. Two men, trans- 
 lating the same piece into verse will be apt to amplify in much 
 the same way. Thus when the meus Hector of the Second Book 
 of Vergil (522) is amplified respectively into il nostro figlio and 
 Hector my son, on the assumption that each translator needed an 
 extra foot in the verse, it is not necessary to assume a dependence 
 of one upon the other as the additional matter, son, is implicit 
 in the Latin meus. This is typical of many of the correspondences 
 collected by the German scholars. The undoubted effect pro- 
 duced by their work is due to the accumulation of such minute de- 
 tails, any one of which is in itself negligible. Numerous as they 
 seem when so carefully listed and classified, the total effect is also 
 negligible upon the translation as a whole since they are scattered 
 through it at long intervals. 2 Yet however negligible they may 
 seem, the fact that it is possible to frame such a list requires an 
 explanation other than mere coincidence. We are forced to the 
 dilemma, that either Surrey was familiar with the Italian versions 
 or there was a common source. This common source, I think, is to 
 be found in the annotated editions of Vergil. 3 Very early such edi- 
 
 1 The reader is referred back to Chapter IV. 
 
 1 This is the explanation of Nott's remark: "But as there is no similarity what- 
 ever in style or turn of expression between the two translations, I am disposed to 
 think that Surrey's adoption of blank verse originated wholly with himself." . . 
 Op. cii. CC. 
 
 * They appear almost every year.
 
 538 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 tions began to appear. Moreover, as each editor tended to pre- 
 serve such annotations of his predecessors as seemed to him valu- 
 able, around each Vergilian phrase was gathered a mass of com- 
 mentary. Such commentary would be followed in any doubtful 
 interpretation by both the Italian and Surrey. 1 
 
 At least that would be the usual course. Particularly would it 
 be true of a man of the sixteenth century. And although it is con- 
 ceivable that before undertaking his translation Surrey assembled 
 versions in other languages, such a proceeding would be more 
 characteristic of the scholarly pedant than of a high-spirited young 
 poet and man of the world. Consequently until all the various 
 commentaries of Vergil published before the composition of Sur- 
 rey's translation be examined, his indebtedness to the Italian 
 should be received with great caution. Supposing that by this 
 means Surrey's indebtedness to the Italian be proved, the result 
 would not be commensurate with the labor. As the poem is clearly 
 mature work, the result of the effort would be merely to confirm 
 what has always been assumed. Yet until that is done, the as- 
 
 1 The edition I have used is that of Venice 1531 with the comments of Donatus, 
 Landinus, and Servius Maurus. For example, to the passage quoted above the 
 comment is: "Non si ipse meus, sub audi filius posset defendere." Another il- 
 lustration, Surrey's version of the lines 63-4: 
 
 Undique visendi studio Troiana iuventus 
 Circuuif usa ruit, certantque inludere capto, 
 
 is (81-82) 
 
 Near him, to gaze, the Trojan youth gan flock, 
 And strave who most might at the captive scorn. 
 
 Nott notes (op. cit., 403) "To scorn, is to insult at, to make a mock of." The 
 Hippolito version is 
 
 La gioventu Troiana d'ogn* intorno 
 
 Sparsa corre a verderlo a fanno a gara, 
 
 Chi plu faccia al prigion vergogna e scorno. 
 
 Fest black-leads this with the comment: "Es ist durchaus unwahrscheinlich, 
 dass H. und S. unabhang ig zur Wiedergabe des Infinitives durch Fragesatz, die 
 sich fast wBrtlich deckt, gekommen sind. 'Scorn' mit Nott 1403 als Verb 
 aufzufassen, ist unrichtig" (op. cit., 57). The comment, in this case of Servius, is: 
 "Circufusa ruit. Figura hypallage, ruit & circufusa est. Illudere capto. Et 
 illudo tibi dicim, vt hoc loco & illudo te. vt verbis virtute" illude supbis (superbis) 
 & in te sil'e (simile) est a iaulto. It is quite clear it is not Nott that is here 
 "unrichtig."
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 539 
 
 sumption of Surrey's indebtedness to the Hippolito version is hy- 
 pothetical. 
 
 However unsatisfactorily vague may seem the discussion of the 
 problem of the Second Book, the outlines are clearly drawn in 
 comparison with the questions involved in the problem of the 
 Fourth. For the Second Book we have a text admittedly inferior, 
 because there is very little doubt that it has been edited; for the 
 Fourth we have three texts, which do not agree among themselves 
 and the value of any one of which depends upon its similarity 
 to an unknown original. These are (a) the Tottel edition of 1557, 
 reprinted by the Roxburghe Club in 1814, and the Fourth Book 
 alone by Fest; (b) the Hargrave MS. version, never printed at all, 
 but very carefully collated by Imelmann; and (c) the printed 
 edition of John Day, which exists today in an unique copy at Brit- 
 well Court, and which has never been either reprinted or collated. 1 
 In the two accessible texts, the Tottel and the Hargrave MS., there 
 are certain curious differences. Imelmann has shown that the 
 second is more like the Douglas translation, and also the Italian 
 version of Picholomini, than is the Tottel. 2 Granted that this 
 be true, it is not clear what it signifies. Either Tottel changed 
 the text, or the copyist of the Hargrave MS. changed the text, or 
 (what is more probable) both edited the manuscripts that they 
 received. The case is still more complicated by the fact that, as 
 Imelmann shows, there are apparent reminiscences of the Hargrave 
 MS. version in Phaer's translation, finished in April 1556. But 
 there is no proof that the copyist of the Hargrave MS. did not im- 
 prove his author in reference to Phaer ! And these verbal similar- 
 ities are not more numerous than would happen by the doctrine 
 
 1 Clearly, until this last be published, no results can be considered definite. 
 * The following is a fair sample of the variants: 
 
 IV. 427. Nee patris Anchisae cineretn Manisve revelli . . . 
 
 Tottel, 560-1 . Nor cynders of his father Anchises 
 Disturbed have, out of his sepulture. 
 
 Hargrave MS. 561-2 Nor cynders of his father Anchises 
 
 Disturbed/ ne pulled/ out of his sepulture. 
 
 Picholomini 12b. Ne'l cener del suo padre Anchise o 1 'ombre 
 Trassi fuor del sepolcro. 
 
 Rut then* pulled is superimposed upon an aye crossed out. Imelmann, 
 opcit., 110
 
 540 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 of chance. We are asked to accept hypothesis piled upon hypothe- 
 sis, that Surrey knew the unpublished Douglas and the accessible 
 Italian, and that Phaer knew the unpublished Surrey (unless the 
 Britwell copy be like the Hargrave MS.). It seems to me that this 
 theory breaks of its own weight. The correspondences in the 
 various versions are not sufficiently striking; you read, but you 
 remain unconvinced. The one dominant idea you gain from the 
 whole discussion is of the uncertainty surrounding Surrey's text. 
 Until that be determined any discussion of the relation between 
 the different versions is necessarily futile. 
 
 The importance of this discussion lies in the fact that it involves 
 the early treatment of blank verse. Upon analysis, the peculiar- 
 ities of blank verse may be resolved into (a) the omission of 
 rime; (b) the use of pentameter; and (c) the use of the feet within 
 the line. The first seems clearly due to the influence of human- 
 ism. 1 The second, on the other hand, is due to the dominance in 
 English of the pentameter line. There is no inherent reason why 
 the five-accented line should have been preferred to that having six 
 accents, especially as the hexameter was the meter of Vergil. At 
 least so thought Surrey himself as shown by his version of the Fifty- 
 fifth Psalm. But the pentameter line was that used in both the 
 rime-royal and in the heroic couplet. It therefore had the sanc- 
 tion of all the great writers. Logically, then, both Grimald and 
 Surrey adopted it. This represents the working of the English 
 tradition. But for the treatment within the lines Surrey especially 
 claimed the full measure of freedom in the placing of his accents. 
 As in the case of the Fifty-fifth Psalm, here also, he writes by 
 ear. So long as there be the five stresses in the line, the feet may 
 take care of themselves. One of the favorite openings is a stressed 
 syllable, followed by two unaccented syllables: 2 
 
 C'oldest thou hope? Unurst to leve my land? 
 
 Usually after such an opening the line becomes iambic, but it may 
 be as irregular as 3 
 
 F6r to prepare, and drive to the sea coast. 
 
 If this be the reading, it is clear that the number of syllables, 
 
 while usually ten, is of minor importance. This explains Nott's 
 
 1 See ante 356 ff. 2 Bk. IV, 397 (Fest). Bk. IV, 374 (Fest).
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 541 
 
 hypothesis that Surrey left the work unfinished, because a number 
 of the lines do not scan according to the strict iambic measure. 1 
 But this is in consonance with the principles of the Medieval Latin 
 as practiced in English. 2 The danger of this method is at once 
 obvious; the freedom may degenerate into license, and lines be 
 produced that are verse by courtesy only. 3 Consequently under 
 the lead of humanism there was exerted a steady pressure to make 
 the lines more "regular." The humanist critics objected to Sur- 
 rey's feet that they lacked "true quantities. " Their position may 
 be best illustrated by Ascham, who, it will be remembered, 
 desired unrimed iambic verse in imitation of the "perfect 
 Grecians. " 4 
 
 The noble Lord Th. Earle of Surrey, first of all English men, in translating the 
 fourth booke of Virgill: and Gansaluo Periz that excellent learned man, and Secre- 
 tarie to kyng Philip of Spaine, in translating the Vlisses of Homer out of Greke into 
 Spanish, haue both, by good iudgement, auoyded the fault of Ryming, yet neither 
 of them hath fullie hit(t)e perfite and trew versifying. Indeed, they obserue iust 
 number, and euen feete: but here is the fault, their feete: be feete without ioyntes, 
 that is to say, not distinct by trew quantitie of sillabes: And so, soch feete, be 
 but nummc (benummed) feete: and be, euen as vnfitte for a verse to turne and 
 runne roundly withall, as feete of brasse or wood be vnweeldie to go well withall. 
 And as a foote of wood, is a plaine shew of a maifest maiine, euen so feete, in our 
 English versifying, without quantitie and ioyntes, be sure signes, that the verse is 
 either, borne deformed, vnnaturall and lame, and so verie vnseemlie to looke vpon, 
 except to men that be gogle eyed them selues. 
 
 This passage must mean that, while the number of syllables in the 
 line is normally correct, the placing of the stress is such that feet 
 in the classical sense cannot be formed from them. 6 But this 
 freedom in placing the stress is characteristic of all our great blank 
 verse. And the reason why in the history of the literature blank 
 verse is so late in developing is because it thus combines in itself 
 
 1 Some of them certainly read like alexandrines. 
 
 1 Ante 145 ff. 
 
 1 Some of the authors of the Mirror for Magistrates, Cavyl for instance, wrote 
 lines that defy any known rules for scansion. 
 
 4 Ascham 's SchoUmaster, Arber's Reprint, 147-8. 
 
 This may be the explanation for the divergence of the texts of Surrey, that 
 each editor in varying degrees tried to remodel the work along humanistic 
 lines.
 
 542 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 so many utterly diverse and antagonistic elements. Before it 
 could be written an author must have arisen who in himself com- 
 bined the movements of the English tradition, the Medieval Latin, 
 and humanism. Logically such a combination was not possible 
 until the second generation of the reign of Henry VIII, the gener- 
 ation of the Earl of Surrey. 
 
 It is this union of the separate influences that makes Surrey's 
 work so important. It is possible, even, to choose single poems in 
 which any one of the various movements seems to dominate. For 
 example, a characteristic of the English tradition, inherited from 
 Chaucer, is to be found in the feeling toward nature, shown by 
 concrete allusions. Surrey's Description of Spring may be cited in 
 illustration: 1 
 
 The soote season, that bud and blome f urth bringes 
 With grene hath clad the hill and eke the vale; 
 The nightingale with f ethers new she sings: 
 The turtle to her make hath tolde her tale: 
 Somer is come, for euery spray nowe springes, 
 The hart hath hong his olde hed on the pale: 
 The buck in brake his winter cote he Singes: 
 The fishes flote with newe repaired scale: 
 The adder all her sloughe awaye she slinges: 
 The swift swalow pursueth the flyes smale: 
 The busy bee her honye now she minges: 
 Winter is worne that was the flowers bale: 
 And thus I see among these pleasant thinges 
 Eche care decayes, and yet my sorow springes. 
 
 Here even the language shows its dependence upon the earlier 
 English writers; such words as soote (sweet), make (mate) and 
 ming (remember) 2 prove Surrey a student of English. This is not 
 an imitation of Chaucer or Lydgate, but one feels that, had they 
 not written, the poem would have been quite different. The same 
 is true also of its content. It is a catalogue of the signs of an Eng- 
 lish spring. For the sake of comparison to bring out this very im- 
 portant point the corresponding sonnet of Petrarch is here given : 3 
 
 1 Tottd's Miscellany, Arber's Reprint, 4. 
 
 2 It may be worth while to correct the old Aldine edition of Surrey on the authority 
 of the N. E. D. Ming does not mean "mingle." 
 
 1 Sonnet CCCX.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 543 
 
 Zefiro torna, e'l bel tempo rimena, 
 
 E i fiori e 1'erbe, sua doice famiglia, 
 
 E garrir Progne e pianger Filomena, 
 
 E primavera Candida e vermiglia. 
 Ridono i prati, e'l ciel si rasserena: 
 
 Giove s'allegra di mirar sua figlia; 
 
 L'aria a 1'acqua e la terra e d'amor plena: 
 
 Ogni animal d'amar si riconsiglia. 
 Ma per me, lasso!, tornano i piu gravi 
 
 Sospori, che del cor profondo tragge 
 
 Quella ch'al ciel se ne port6 le chiavi; 
 E cantar augelletti, e fiorir piagge, 
 
 E'n belle donne oneste atti soavi, 
 
 Sono un deserto, e fere aspre e selvagge. 
 
 These two poems lend themselves perfectly to the comparison; 
 they are identical in both length and subject. Yet the dissimi- 
 larity is striking. The conventional generalizations of the Italian, 
 the classical reminiscence in Progne, Filomena, and Giove, and the 
 conceited close, contrast markedly with the concrete detail in the 
 English, such detail, be it noted in passing, as would come to the 
 eye of a young Englishman, fond of the out-of-doors. This char- 
 acteristic trait, to embody within the verse observations of nature, 
 was learned surely of his English predecessors, and not from the 
 Italian poet; one has but to visit Vaucluse to realize how inade- 
 quate an impression of the spectacular beauty of the place is given 
 by Petrarch's enamelled phrases. In Surrey the content surely 
 is English. But if in the preceding poem the content be English, 
 the form surely is not. The elaborate simplicity of the rime- 
 scheme, three quatrains abab with a final couplet cc, recall rather 
 the Medieval Latin. Consequently in Surrey's works careful 
 analysis can show the traces of all four of the great dominating 
 impulses of literature. It is this union of forces which have ap- 
 peared in the earlier writers that makes the poetry of the gener- 
 ation exemplified in Surrey so important. 
 
 It is this factor, rather than mere verse-technique, that caused 
 the esteem in which Surrey was held by the Elizabethans. For one 
 reason, the language had settled into its modern form. Whereas, 
 even in Wyatt, the romance accent was still current, it is rare in 
 Surrey. To assume that the romance accent disappeared because 
 of his dislike, is to attribute much more influence to his writings 
 than the facts seem to warrant. Actually it is more logical to as-
 
 544 EARLY TUDOR POETRY 
 
 sume that he wrote the language as he found it, and the innova- 
 tions attributed to him belong equally to all his contemporaries. 1 
 It was chronology, rather than genius, that rejected the older 
 forms. But much the same reasoning applies to verse forms. In 
 Surrey's work are first developed several of the forms used later, 
 such as the Elizathan sonnet, and his use of others than new, such 
 as poulter's measure, probably gave them currency. Yet here 
 again he was following the lines of least resistance. It was Sur- 
 rey's fortune, rather than his merit, that in his work are crystallized 
 the beginnings of modern English literature. And it was equally 
 the good fortune of the age that it found in Surrey a writer that 
 could so crystallize them. Because of the junction of the time 
 and the man, the result is that Surrey's work marks an epoch, the 
 line of cleavage between the old and the new. 
 
 This is primarily because in Surrey we find for the first time the 
 author clearly transcending his medium. He writes what he wishes 
 to write as he wishes to write it, not because he is constrained to 
 any given form inherited from the past, or borrowed from Europe. 
 For the first time since Chaucer the reader feels the personal note. 
 Even Skelton's powerful personality dashes to pieces against his ac- 
 quired forms, and he remains unread, and Wyatt's innate nobility 
 petrifies in the Italian formula. But in Surrey ,^is in Chaucer, there 
 is a light touch. When Lady Hertford refused to dance with him, 
 he describes the scene with details that are intentionally comic. 2 
 The idea of personifying the participants by their armorial animals 
 gives the ridiculous picture of the lion rampart "prancing" and 
 beating his tail. Or, another example is his charming poem that 
 childhood is the happiest period of a man's life, with the ironic 
 pathos added that to our modern eyes the author himself was still 
 a young man at his death, in spite of the "white and hoarish hairs " 
 "the messengers of age." His pieces to his wife seem of genuine 
 lyric quality, without the Petrarchan conventionality and hack- 
 neyed phrasing. It is easy to believe that in his time of trial she 
 remained faithful to him. The famous illustration is of course the 
 poem written from Windsor. Without accepting the superlative 
 
 I These innovations have been carefully analysed by Courthope, History of 
 English Poetry, London 1904, 92-100. Therefore I shall not repeat them here. 
 
 I 1 cannot take this poem seriously as does M. Bapst, op. cit., 371-4, although 
 certainly Surrey was distinctly irritated by the incident.
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY 545 
 
 employed by Professor Courthope, 1 the charm is at once apparent. 
 This charm, however, arises not from the splendor of the verse 
 nor from the easy handling of a conventional situation, but it is 
 due to the use of such detail that the reader is convinced of the 
 actuality. While the lads below are playing tennis on the green 
 courts, the girls are watching them from the leads of the Maiden's 
 Tower. Such a scene must have occurred many many times, or 
 the tournaments, 
 
 On foaming horse, with swords and friendly hearts. 
 
 For the moment you breathe the air of merry England in the reign 
 of bluff King Hal ! But of what other writer of the age may this 
 be said? Others may interest us by the quaintness of their senti- 
 ments or the power of their verse, but they are dead. Surrey alone 
 lives. 
 
 Surrey's poetry, therefore, shows the culmination of forces that 
 had been at work for nearly three quarters of a century. Uncon- 
 scious of his place and blind to the law, each writer had contrib- 
 uted his part to the making of English literature. Each had writ- 
 ten as seemed good to him, limited by his particular past and con- 
 ditioned by his own personality. Each had written, as we write, 
 for the vital present; no more than we, had they power to foresee 
 the future. Nevertheless, each in his own way, had laid the founda- 
 tions for the great literature of the coming age. Poetry was ready 
 for the master's hand, because the prentice work had already been 
 done. Early Tudor literature is primarily interesting, therefore, 
 because it is prentice work, because in this period, more clearly 
 than in any other, is to be seen the working of literary law. 
 
 1 " I know of few verses in the whole range of human poetry in which the voice 
 of nature utters the accents of grief with more simplicity and truth; it seems to me 
 to be the most pathetic personal elegy in English poetry." Op. cil., 1, 85.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abel, Walter, 402 
 
 Abelard, 121, 124 
 
 Abingdon Abbey, 322 
 
 Academy, 333 
 
 Act of the Six Articles, 387 
 
 Act regulating printing, 488 
 
 Addison, J., on ballads, 325; on Para- 
 dise Lost, 324 
 
 Ad Herennium, 141; quoted, 131 (note) 
 
 Aeneas Silvius, see Piccolomini 
 
 A la man ni, Luigi, 476-477; II Diluvio 
 Romano, 353; satire, / vi diro, quoted, 
 478; on blank verse, quoted, 854 
 (note); mentioned, 480, 483 
 
 Alberti, Leon Battista, 322 
 
 Albertus Magnus, 121 
 
 Alcock, John, mentioned by Barclay, 
 245, 246, 247; reputed author of 
 Castle of Labour, 426 
 
 Alcuin, 128 
 
 Aldus, 260, 263 
 
 Aliene dictionis introductio, 137 
 
 Allegory, erotic, 62-74; moral, 74-92 
 
 Allen, H. Warner, Celestina, 365 
 
 Allen, John, 427, 429 
 
 Allen, P. S., Age of Erasmus, 19; Erasmi 
 Epistolae, 279 
 
 Ammonias, 27 
 
 Andersen, Hans C., 413, 496 
 
 Andrd, Bernard, 418, 419 
 
 Andrelinus, Faustus, 282 
 
 Andrews, Laurens, 128, 409 
 
 Anglia, 150 
 
 Anne of Cleves, 383 
 
 Anonymous, What our lines render, 524; 
 Who craftily catts, 527; The wisest 
 uay, 529 
 
 Apollo of Corinth, 172 
 
 Apuleius, 262 
 
 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 121, 295 
 
 Arber, Edward, 78, 89, 128, 150. 207. 
 208, 212, 344 (note) 
 
 Arber's Reprints, 344, 530 
 
 d'Arc, Jeanne, 434 
 
 Architectural development in Renais- 
 sance, 6 
 
 Aretino, Pietro; his life, 480; Humanitd 
 di Cristo, 481; / Sette Salmi, 481; 
 Raggiamenli, 17; mentioned, 236, 
 380, 483, 514 
 
 Ariosto, Ludovico, quoted, 66; in- 
 fluenced Wyatt, 456-457 (note); 
 mentioned, 456 
 
 Aristophanes, sold by Dome, 281 
 
 Aristotle, Ethics, 263; sold by Dome, 
 281; mentioned, 141 
 
 Aristotle, the senile, 83 
 
 Armonye of Byrdes, 149 
 
 Arnold's Chronicle, 153 
 
 ATS Rithmica, 125 
 
 Art, development, 6 
 
 Art of Memory, 499 
 
 Arthur, Thomas, 201 
 
 Arthurian Legend, 325 
 
 Arundel, Mistress, 511 
 
 Ascham, Roger, friend of Elyot, 306; 
 tutor, 306; knows Fourth Book of 
 Aeneid, 356; description of Elizabeth, 
 339-340; description of Lady Jane 
 Grey, 20, 339; origin of Scholemaster, 
 330; influenced by Cheke, 305; gives 
 theory of the humanists, 307; his 
 apology for writing in English, 332; 
 his opinion on archery, 315; on blank 
 verse, 356; on classic culture, 317; on 
 dancing, 316; on exercises, 314; on 
 Greek, 318; on immorality, 18; on 
 morality, 310; on purism in speech. 
 327; on reading, 323, 324; on sports, 
 315; on style, 144; on teaching, 327; 
 
 547
 
 548 
 
 INDEX 
 
 on Surrey, 641 ; on writing in English, 
 268; mentioned, 20, 305, 506. 
 
 Asconius, 262 
 
 Assembly of Ladies, 65-68; added by 
 Thynne, 65; feminism displayed, 65; 
 French mottoes, 65; gorgeous cos- 
 tumes, 67; plot, 65; rejected by 
 Tyrwhit, 65 
 
 Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, 386 
 
 Athenae Cantabrigienses, 93 
 
 Athenae Oxanienses, 75 
 
 Athletics, 314 
 
 Aulus Gellius, sold by Dome, 281; 
 mentioned, 157 
 
 Aureate language, 139; used by Skelton, 
 162 
 
 Ausonius, 344 
 
 Awdeley, J., 153 
 
 Babington, Churchill, 168, 169 
 
 Bacon, Francis, compared to Vives, 303; 
 Henry VII, 418 
 
 Bacon, Roger, 2 
 
 Bailey, N., 310 
 
 Bale, John, Index Britanniae Scripto- 
 rum, 427; Scriptorum lUustrium 
 Maioris Brytanniae, 209 (note); 
 method of compilation, 350; Barclay's 
 authorship of Castle of Labour, 426- 
 427; omits Bryan, 378; on Grimald, 
 351; on Hawes, 75; on Roye, 209; on 
 Skelton, 94; mentioned, 158, 260, 379, 
 390 
 
 Baliol, 236 
 
 Ballad-literature omitted, 39 
 
 Ballard's Memoirs of Several Ladies, 339 
 
 Balue, Cardinal, 192 
 
 Bandello, 17, 406 
 
 Bapst, Edmond, Deux Gentilshommes 
 Poetes de la Cour de Henry VIII, 509, 
 510, 511, 515, 516, 517, 533, 544 
 
 Barbican, The, 226-227 
 
 Barclay, Alexander, 237-256; A Lover's 
 Confession, 54; Castle of Labour, 51, 
 426-427; Eclogues, 147, 238-248, 252, 
 253; Toiore of Vertue and Honour, 
 247, 531; Ship of Fools, 248-250; 
 
 quoted, 39, 131, 172 (note); men- 
 tioned, 52, 130, 228, 382, 436; Barclay 
 on disordered love, 249; e final, 51; 
 French vocabulary, 420-421; uni- 
 versities, 382; verse-forms, 249; 
 voyages, 33; compared with Elyot, 
 309; Skelton, 99-100, 170; Villon, 
 438; Wyatt, 480; mentioned 171, 217, 
 259, 281 (note), 479, 483, 499 
 
 Barlow, George, Dean of Westbury, 
 514 (note) 
 
 Barlow, Jerome, Rede me and Be nott 
 Wrothe, 208-212, 400-401 
 
 Barlow, William, 210 (note) 
 
 Barnes, 207, 389 
 
 Battle Abbey, 322 
 
 Beatus Rhenanus, 261 
 
 Belief in Future Life, Greek, 5 
 
 Bembo, Cardinal, 380 
 
 Benivieni, Girolamo, 318 
 
 Bennet, James, 268 
 
 Benson, Rev. R. H., 307 
 
 Berkeley, Thomas Lord, 168 
 
 Bernard, Saint, 121 
 
 Bernsdorf, Cornelia, 301 
 
 Berners, Lord, see Bouchier 
 
 Bertaut, Rene, 373 
 
 Bible, Coverdale's, 401; objections to 
 in English, 392 
 
 Biblioteque Erasmiana, 280 
 
 Bijvanck, W. G. C., 431 
 
 Bilney, Thomas, 201, 207 
 
 Black Death, 28 
 
 Blank verse, origin, 353-360; Grimald' s, 
 355; Surrey's, 354, 534-542 
 
 Bloch, Dr. Ivan, 28 
 
 Boccaccio, Giovanni, his theory of 
 poetry, 76; mentioned, 157, 472 
 
 Boethius, 157 
 
 Boileau, 421 
 
 Boleyn, Anne; life, 461-462; attacked 
 by plague, 27; relations with Henry 
 VIII, 265, 388; with Wyatt, 461-467; 
 French influence, 444; mentioned, 29, 
 383, 418, 484, 509, 515 
 
 Boleyn, George, Lord Rochford, 29, 
 345, 486
 
 INDEX 
 
 549 
 
 Boleyn, Mary, 27, 216, 461 
 
 Boleyn, Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire. 29, 
 362 
 
 Bond, R. W., 373 
 
 Bonner, Edmund, 362, 402 
 
 Booget of Demands, 499 
 
 Borgia, Cesare, 16 
 
 Bosworth Field, Battle of, 48 
 
 Bouge of Court, 14 
 
 Bourbon, Conn6table de, 456 
 
 Bourchier, Henry, Earl of Essex, 29 
 
 Bourchier, John, Lord Berners, 369- 
 377; Ambassador to Spain, 362; 
 portrait, 371; his geography, 494; 
 style, 374; dating of his works, 371; 
 his works, 369, 493-498; Arthur of 
 Little Britain, 370, 494; Castle of Love, 
 872; Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius, 
 373-377; Froissart, 372, 493-494; 
 Euan of Burdeux, 494-498; men- 
 tioned, 417, 447 
 
 Bradley, Henry, 175, 177 (note) 
 
 Bradshaw, Henry, 118, 254, 255 
 
 Brandon, Charles, 266, 388, 465 
 
 Brandt, Sebastian, 248; mentions uni- 
 versities, 382; see Narrenschiff 
 
 Brantdme, 17 
 
 Brewer, J. S., History of the Reign of 
 Henry VIII, 8, 26. 27, 193, 198; see 
 Calendar of State Papers 
 
 Brie, F. W. D., Eulenspigel in England, 
 405, 410, 411 (note); Gaguin, 171 
 (note); Hundred Mery Tales, 406 
 (note); Skelion-Studien, 92 (note), 
 101, 173 (note). 201 (note), 417 
 
 Bromyard, 406 
 
 Brooke, C. F. Tucker, 103 
 
 Brown, Rawdon, Calendar of Slate 
 Paperi . . . in Venice, 44; Four 
 Years at the Court of Henry VIII, 38 
 
 Browning, E. B., 91 
 
 Brunetiere, P., 422 
 
 Bruno, 24 
 
 Bruyant, Jean. 426, 429 
 
 Bryan. Sir Francis, 377-8; "Vicar of 
 Hell," 377; his reputation. 878; 
 friend of Wyatt, 479; account of in 
 
 Hall, 377; French influence, 442; 
 poetry, 345; Dispraise of the Life of a 
 Courtier, 379; Wyatt's satire to him, 
 378; the Golden Book suggested by 
 him, 369; mentioned, 69 
 
 Buckingham, Duke of, Henry, Earl of 
 Straff ord, his dinner, 14; his ward- 
 robe, 12; execution, 508; mentioned, 
 348 
 
 Buckingham, Duke of, George Villiers, 
 Dryden's satire on, 174 
 
 Budaeus (Bude), 302, 364 
 
 Buffon, 401 
 
 Bullein, Wm., 195 
 
 Bullock, Henry, 284 
 
 Burckhardt's Diary, 17 
 
 Burgos, Martinez de, 379, 380 
 
 Burkart on Hawes, 75, 89 
 
 Burns, Robert, 326 
 
 Burrows, M., 260 
 
 Busch, Wilhelm, 39 
 
 Byron, George, 174 
 
 Caesar, 262, 263 
 
 Caius, Dr., quoted, 26 
 
 Calembour, origin of word, 410 
 
 Calendar of State Papers, ed. Brewer, 
 187, 189, 207, 210, 446 
 
 Calmeta, Vicentio, 474-475 
 
 Calvin, John, 36, 503 
 
 Cambridge History of English Litera- 
 ture, 104 (note), 154 
 
 Camden's Remains, 256 
 
 Camden Society, 369 
 
 Cammelli, see Pistoia 
 
 Campeggio, Cardinal, 388 
 
 Capella, Martianus, 82. 92 
 
 Capelli, A., 467 
 
 Capitoli, 18 
 
 " Captain Cox's Library," 499 
 
 Carew, 442 
 
 Carew, Lady Elizabeth. 369 
 
 Carmina Clericorum, 149 
 
 Carthusians, 390 
 
 Cary, William, 27 
 
 Castle of labour, see Barclay 
 
 Casuum mutatio, 138
 
 550 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Catullus, 213, 261, 262, 819, 348 
 
 Caveat or Warning for Common Cur- 
 sitors, 227 
 
 Cavendish, George, Life of Wolsey, 14, 
 420 
 
 Cavyl, 541 
 
 Cawood, 499 
 
 Caxton, William, works printed by him, 
 490; Book of Curtesye, 55; quoted 56; 
 Aeneid(?), 281; Eneydos, quoted, 52, 
 201; his version of Image du Monde, 
 82; Mirrour of the World, quoted, 83; 
 Longer Accidence, 409; Morte Darthur, 
 490-493; Polychronicon, 169; Recueil 
 des histories de Troye, 487; Reynard 
 the Fox, 384 (note); his opinion of 
 Chaucer, quoted, 55; of Lydgate, 
 quoted, 56; his address to Skelton, 93; 
 opinion of Skelton, 156, 283; echoed 
 by Skelton, 160 (note); his social po- 
 sition, 488; his literary position, 262 
 
 Celestina, 365-8; editions of, 365 (note); 
 date, 365 
 
 Cellini, B., 456 
 
 Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, 406, 412 
 
 Chalcondylas, 236 
 
 Chalmer's English Poets, 139 
 
 Chandler, 259 
 
 Change in pronunciation, 50 
 
 Chappell, Popular Music, 98 
 
 Chapuis, 463, 466, 509 
 
 Chariteo, 475 
 
 Charles V of Spain, 264, 266 
 
 Charles VIII of France, 17, 416 
 
 Chatelain, Henri, 439 (note) 
 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, works read, 56; 
 editions of, 59, 116-117; Canterbury 
 Tales, Prologue, 50, 231; Clerkes Tale, 
 154; Tale of Melibeus, 497; Nonnes 
 Preestes Tale, 497; meeting with 
 Petrarch, 236; used as model, 50; not 
 sold by Dome, 281; his reputation, 
 116; his versification lost, 54; casual 
 mention, 130 (note), 155, 157, 160, 
 214, 231, 255, 324, 325, 416, 505, 506, 
 523, 542, 544 
 
 Chaucer, derivatives from, 416 
 
 Chaucerian apocrypha, 59 ff . 
 
 Cheke, Sir John, 305, 318 
 
 Cheney, Sir Thomas, 462 
 
 Chertsey Abbey, 322 
 
 Chevy Chase, 325 
 
 Child, H. H., 358 
 
 Chivalry, 91 
 
 Christening of Queen Elizabeth, 29 
 
 Churchyard, Thomas, 345 
 
 Cicero, 157, 262, 263, 281, 361 
 
 Ciceronianism, 328 
 
 Clement VII, 266 
 
 Cleveland, John, 251 (note) 
 
 Clewners, 227 
 
 Clifford, Berthold, 516 (note) 
 
 Cobham, Lord, 465 
 
 Cock Lorell, historicity of, 225 (note) 
 
 Cock Lorrelles Bate, 222-225; quoted, 
 
 228; compared with Eye Way, 228 
 Coleridge, S. T., 264 
 Colet, John, 158, 236, 259, 260, 264, 
 
 280, 285; "Gratian Pullus," 294; 
 
 Barclay's allusion to, 236; founds 
 
 St. Paul's School, 800 
 Colin Clout, see Skelton 
 Collectanea, Oxford Historical Society, 
 
 260 
 
 Colleges, Tudor, 301 
 Collier, J. P., 410 (note) 
 Colonna, Giovanni, 471 
 Colores, 130 ff. 
 Columbus, 32 ff. 
 Comparetti, 235 
 Comets, medieval interpretation of, 
 
 24 
 
 Comperta, 390 
 Compositio, 136 
 Compton, Sir William, 27 
 Conde" Jean de, 73 
 Confessio Goliardi, 149 
 Conflictus, 128, 155, 206, 398, 407 
 Conon, 317 
 Constantinople, 236 
 Constantyne, George, 511, 514 
 Consultatio Sacredotum, 129 
 Conti, Giusti de', 472 
 Contrarii positio, 137
 
 INDEX 
 
 551 
 
 Contrast between Christian and pagan 
 ethics, 3 
 
 Cook, A. S., 395 
 
 Copernican theory, 23 
 
 Copland, Robert, Hye way to the Spittal 
 Hous, 228; Jyl of Brentford, the pro- 
 logue, 433; Kalendar of Shepherds, 
 500; prints Howleglas, 410; French 
 influence of, 502 
 
 Copland, William, 499, 433 
 
 Cornish, Thomas, 427 (note) 
 
 Coroysshe, 135, 165, 345, 419, 486 
 
 Cortez, 34 
 
 Cotton, Charles, 524 
 
 Courthope, W. J., 82, 104 (note), 516, 
 545 (note) 
 
 Courtney, Henry, 29 
 
 Court of Love, 68-74; architectural 
 details, 70; attitude toward religion, 
 71-72; dating, 68; forgery, 68; imita- 
 tion of Chaucer, 70; literary value, 
 74; Matins of the Birds, 73; morality, 
 71; plot, 69; mentioned, 92, 115, 254 
 
 Court of Sapience, 81 
 
 Coverdale, Miles, 401-404; his Bible, 
 401; Gostely Psalms, 401, 481 
 
 Cranmer, Archbishop, 29, 462, 515 
 
 Crane, Professor, 324, 497 
 
 Cretin, 422, 423 (note) 
 
 Crofts, H. H. S. L., 304, 307 (notes 1, 2) 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 22 
 
 Cromwell, Richard, 117-118, 305, 348, 
 383, 385, 388, 464, 465, 471, 508, 509, 
 515, 517 
 
 Croy, Henri de, 422 
 
 Cuer a" 'amours Sprit, 82 
 
 Culinary art, 15 
 
 Culture, Greek, 16 
 
 Cum consonatia sequent* immediate, 151 
 
 Cunliffe, John W., 531 
 
 Dancing. 315-16 
 Daniel, Samuel. 460 
 Dante, 77, 235, 456, 457, 483 
 Darcy, Lord, 29, 517 
 Debat du Seigneur du cour et du Seigneur 
 dcy champs, 243 
 
 Defense et illustration de la langue 
 
 franfaise, 17, 442 
 Defoe, Daniel, 514 (note) 
 Delia Crusca, 333 
 Derby, Count of, 509 
 Deschamps, Eustace, 422, 431 
 Dialogue between Lupset and Pole, 
 
 quoted, 21 
 Dibdin, T. F., 264 
 LHctionum debita derivatio, 136 
 Dictioni similtudinis adjunctio, 137 
 Diotrephes, 400 (note) 
 Divorce, 462 (note) 
 Doesborgh, Jan van, 409, 500 
 Dome, J., sales, 281; sales of Erasmus, 
 
 281; Arnold's Chronicle, 154; Nut- 
 
 browne Mayd, 154 
 Douglas, Gawin, 416, 534, 535 
 Douze triomphes de Henry VII, 418-419 
 Dragon, Hawes' description of quoted, 
 
 85 
 
 Drake, Raff, 135 
 Drayton, M., 378, 460, 516 
 Dreves, 124 
 Droyn, 382 
 Dryden, John, Absalom and Achitophel, 
 
 173; Preface to Fables, quoted, 51; 
 
 Flower and the Leaf, 325; Hind and 
 
 the Panther, 106; Mac Flecknoe, 226- 
 
 227; mentioned, 333 
 DuBellay, French ambassador, 26 
 DuBellay, Joachim, 451 
 Duemler, Ernestus, 123 
 Duff, E. Gordon, Castle of Labour, 426; 
 
 Century of the English Book Trade, 
 
 488, 502; Caxton's works, 490 (note); 
 
 Salomon and Marcolphus, 408 
 Dunbar. 416, 417 (note) 
 Dunlop, 495 
 Duns Scotus, 295, 302 
 Dyce, Alexander, 162 
 Dysart, Lord, 76 
 
 e final, 50 
 
 Early English Drama Society, 256 
 
 Edmond, J. P.. 222 
 
 Education, 49, 295, 299
 
 552 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Education of women, 333-841 
 
 Edward VI, 463 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, Ascham's descrip- 
 tion of, 339; learning of, 339; legit- 
 imacy of, 462; mentioned, 517 
 
 Elyot, Sir Thomas,, 304-305; studied 
 with Linacre, 305. 305 (note); 
 relations with More, 305; compared 
 to Barclay, 309; reasons for author- 
 ship, 308; The Gouernour, Croft's 
 edition, 38, 304; origin of Image of 
 Gouernance, 306; Elyot's opinion of 
 dancing, 316; of exercise, 313; of 
 expurgated works, 320; of Greek, 318; 
 his method, 304; on reading, 317; 
 on sports, 314; on teaching, 326, 329; 
 on the vernacular, 331; mentioned, 
 337, 375. 
 
 Emerton, Ephraim, 279, 310. 
 
 English Poets, A. Chalmers, 134; S. 
 Johnson, 134 
 
 English Sweating Sickness, 26 
 
 Envoy of Alison, 130, 139 
 
 Epitaffe of Jasper Duke of Bedford, 
 129 ff. 
 
 Epislola ad Herennium, see Ad Heren- 
 nium 
 
 Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, 167, 
 218, 281, 295, 364, 382 
 
 Equivocatio, 136 
 
 Erasmus, Desiderius, 279-294; his 
 visit to the royal household, 43, 234; 
 Elyot, 307; Skelton, 181, 185, 234; 
 Vives, 302-303 (notes); his relation 
 with the humanists, 236, 260; editions, 
 280; sales, 281, 282; popularity of 
 separate works, 282; Chiliades, 305; 
 Colloquies, 288-291, 206, 381, 399; 
 Adulescens et Scorfum, 283; Diversoria, 
 283; IxOvo(f>vyui, 310 (note), Nau- 
 fragium, 283; Copia, 316; Dialogue 
 de Pronunciatione, 299; Enchiridion, 
 285; Epistles, 259; Julius Exdusus, 
 282 (note); De laudibus Britanniae, 
 234; New Testament, 83, 392; ver- 
 sions used by Tyndale, 392; Praise of 
 Folly, 286-287, 296-299; translated 
 
 by Margaret Roper, S36; his opinion 
 of Church abuses, 287; his Catholi- 
 cism, 291; cosmopolitanism, 279; on 
 confession, 289-290; character of his 
 humanism, 385; intellectual freedom, 
 276; description of Montaigu College, 
 311; moral reform, 285; rationalism, 
 290; reform, 292; on sanitation, 25; 
 his sceptical spirit, 287; his scholarly 
 instinct, 283; mentioned, 122, 158, 
 211, 246, 259, 263. 264, 302. 328, 364, 
 390, 405 
 
 Esdaile, Arundell, 480 (note) 
 
 Espieglerie, 410 
 
 Eudaimonism, 5 
 
 Eulenspiegel, cf. Howleglas 
 
 Euphuism, 373-374 
 
 Exempla honestae vitae, 125, 130, 132 
 
 Exercise, 312 
 
 Faber, Jacobus, 281 
 
 Fabri, 422, 439 
 
 Faerie Queene, 78, 92 
 
 Fall of Princes, 64 
 
 Farmer, John S., 256 
 
 Fatality of the age, 29 
 
 Faukes, Richard, 176 
 
 Federa, Karl, 5 
 
 Feilde, Thomas, 128, 150 
 
 Ferrari, G., 467 
 
 FescennSne verses, 122 
 
 Fest, Otto, 356. 534, 536, 538 (note), 539 
 
 Ficino, 318 
 
 Fictio, illustrated, 138 
 
 Field of the Cloth of Gold, 417 
 
 Fifteen Tokens, 409, 499 
 
 Figliucci, Felice, 354 
 
 Finzi, Guiseppe, 429 
 
 Fish, Simon, 388, 391, 396 
 
 Fiske, John, 32 
 
 Fitzgerald, Lady Elizabeth, 517 
 
 Fletcher, A. R. L., 281 
 
 Fletcher, R., quoted, 524 
 
 Flodden Field, 416 
 
 Flower and the Leaf, 63-64; added by 
 
 Speght, 63; not by Lydgate, 64; 
 
 doubted by Tyrwhit, 63; Skeat's
 
 INDEX 
 
 553 
 
 hypothesis, 64; the plot, 63; trans- 
 lated by Dryden, 63; Keat's sonnet 
 on, 63 
 
 FlUgel. Ewald, 44, 135, 343, 419, 486 
 (note) 
 
 Formal literary tradition, 60-61 
 
 Forrest, 386 
 
 Fortini, 406 
 
 Fountains Abbey, 322 
 
 Fowler, Mary, 457 (note) 
 
 Fowler, Thomas, 246 
 
 Fox, Richard, Bishop of Winchester, 246 
 
 Foxe, John, 389, 390, 390 (note), 402 
 (note), 415 
 
 Foxwell, A. K., 343, 378, 445, 446 
 (note), 448 (note), 450 (note), 469, 
 471, 483 (note), 484 (note), 486, 510 
 (note), 520, 521 
 
 Francis, I, 189 
 
 Fratrasie, 167 
 
 Frederick of Jennen, 409 
 
 French alliance, 8 
 
 French influence on poetry, 415-444 
 
 French influence on prose, 490-503 
 
 du Fresnoy, 449 (note) 
 
 Friedlaender, Ludwig, 523 
 
 Friedmann, Paul, 461 
 
 Frith, John, 207, 386, 389, 392 
 
 Froben, 382 (note) 
 
 Froebel, 330 
 
 Froissart, 493-494 
 
 Froltola, 167 
 
 Froude, J. A., History of England, 511, 
 515; Life and Letters of Erasmus, 45, 
 229 (note), 264 (note), 292 (note); 
 The Pilgrim, 21; conception of Henry 
 VIII, 266; "Chelsea tradition," 275 
 
 Fuchs, Eduard, Das Erotische Element, 
 46; Sittengeschichte, 16 
 
 Fuller, Thomas, 256, 260, 301 
 
 Fumisa Abbey, 322 
 
 Furnival, F. J., 117, 432 (note) 
 
 Gaguin, Robert, 157, 171 
 
 Gairdner, James, Pasion Letters, 49; 
 
 English Church in the Sixteenth 
 
 Century, 199, 387 
 
 Galen, Linacre's translation of, 260, 314 
 
 Galileo, 22, 23, 24 
 
 Games, 314 
 
 Gammer Gurton's Needle, 155 (note) 
 
 Gardiner, Stephen, 256 
 
 Garlandia, John of, 125, 131 (note), 
 
 147, 148, 232 
 Garnesche, 171, 234 
 "Garret," 517-518 (note) 
 Gascoigne, George, 356 (note), 531-532 
 Gasquet, F. A., 397 
 Genealogy e of Heresy e, 205 
 Geography, increased knowledge of, 30 
 German influence, 381-415 
 Germany, sixteenth century knowledge 
 
 of, 382 
 
 Germany, trade with, 383 
 Gesualdo, S. A., 459 (note) 
 Gibbon, Edward, 375 
 Gibbons, Cardinal, 386 
 Giles, Rev. Dr., 307 
 Giotto, 23 
 
 Giovanni della Banda Nera, 480 
 Glastonbury Abbey, 322 
 Gladstone, W. E., 22 
 Gnapheus, 381 
 Gobilive, Godfrey, 83 
 Golden age, 321 
 Goliardic Poetry, 124 
 Gothic, 321 
 Gower, 54, 116, 157, 160, 214, 251, 252, 
 
 265, 281 
 
 Graf, Arturo, 460, 480 (note) 
 Grammar Schools, 301 
 Grand rheioriquers, Les, 422, 424 
 Gray, Thomas, 215, 324 
 Gray, or Grey, William, 345, 486 
 Greek, revival of, 3; study of, 317-319; 
 
 Ascham's emphasis on, 328 (note), 
 
 in Court of Love, 70 
 Greg, W. W., 406 
 Grey, Henry, Duke of Suffolk, 29 
 Grey, Lady Jane, 20, 339 
 Grimald, Nicholas, 350-352; Archi- 
 
 propheta, 351; Christus Redirimu, 351; 
 
 Tottel'a Miscellany, 344; blank verse, 
 
 355, 358-9; Death of Zoroas, 355;
 
 554 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Marcus Tullius Ciceroes death, 855; 
 
 mentioned, 69, 445, 523 
 Gringoire, 426, 429 
 Griselda, the Patient, 154 
 Grocyn, William, 158, 236, 259, 260, 262 
 Guest, 353 
 Guevara, Antonio de, 373-380; origin 
 
 of the Relax, 374; Menosprecio de 
 
 Corle, 378; imitates Aretino, 380; is 
 
 imitated by Bryan, 378 
 Guiccardini, 456 (note), 487 
 Guistinian, 187 
 Gummere, F. B., 154 
 Gtinther, Rudolf, 303 
 Gunpowder, invention of, 2 
 Guy, Henricus, 441 
 
 Habel, Edwin, 125 
 
 Haber, Jacob, 105 
 
 Hague, Arthur, 165 (note) 
 
 Hall. Edward. 8, 198, 278, 383, 442, 
 444 
 
 Hallam, Henry, 341 
 
 Halliwell, J. O., Debate between Somer 
 and Wynter, 128; Sack Full of News, 
 406 
 
 Ham House, 76 
 
 Hamlet, 35 
 
 Hammond, Elinor P., 220 
 
 Hampton Court, architecture, 66; 
 furniture, 66; History of, 7 
 
 Hanford, J. H., 128 
 
 Hardy, Sebastian, 379 
 
 Harleian Miscellany, 208 
 
 Harman, 227 
 
 Harrison, William, 104 
 
 Harvey, Gabriel, 256, 353, 410 (note) 
 
 Hastings, Lord George, 369 
 
 Hauvette, Henri, 854, 476 
 
 Hawes, Stephen, 74-92; his life, 74-76; 
 "groom of the Chamber," 75; death, 
 75; his works, 76; editions, 76; 
 Example of Virtue, date, 76; a con- 
 flictus, 128; plot, 78; King of Love, 
 79; verses on Prince Henry, quoted, 
 43; A Joyful Meditation, quoted, 88; 
 Pastime of Pleasure, date, 59; Mor- 
 
 ley's epitome of, 79; comparison 
 between Example and Pastime, 80; 
 Godfrey Gobilive, 83; pronunciation 
 of final e, 51; published by Tottel, 343; 
 quoted, 57, 77, 85, 89, 140; Mirror 
 of Good Manners, 250-253; Conver- 
 syon of Swerers, quoted, 78, 90; 
 mentioned, 79, 88; Comfort of Lovers, 
 76 (note), 86-88; Hawes compared 
 to Bunyan, 86; his knowledge of 
 Chaucer, 55; compared to Chaucer, 
 86; his "colores," 130; use of dia- 
 logue, 128; attitude toward Henry 
 VII, 75; his inventiveness, 81; 
 eulogy of Lydgate, quoted, 57; 
 imitates Lydgate, 84; his sources, 82; 
 relation to Spenser, 91; his general 
 significance, 91; not sold by Dome, 
 281; his theory of poetry, 76; his 
 text, 89; his vagueness, 92; men- 
 tioned, 116, 120, 216, 370, 371. 405. 
 
 418, 444, 483, 492 
 
 Hawkins, John Sidney, 164 (note) 
 Hazlitt, W. Carew, Early Popular 
 Poetry, 128, 149, 150, 155, 156 (note), 
 226, 432; Shakespeare's Jest Books, 
 275, 406; edition of Warton, 219. 
 473 (note) 
 Henry VII, French influence on, 418- 
 
 419, 453; his literary tastes, 42; his 
 policy, 41; his right to the throne, 40 
 
 Henry VIII, his accession, 45; the 
 Assertio, 386-389; celebrated by 
 Hawes, 43; his culture, 44; Defensor 
 Fidei, 386; description of, 45; the 
 divorce, 266, 388; French influence, 
 419; suggests Froissart, 369; his 
 humanism, 44; his knowledge of 
 foreign languages, 44; his love- 
 letters, 18; his love of music, 44; his 
 morality, 46; the paradox of, 46; 
 Pasty me with good company e, 486; his 
 physique, 44; popular conception of, 
 43; reasons for his success, 47; suc- 
 cess of his reign, 47; tutored by 
 Skelton, 234 
 
 Henry, Duke of Richmond, 265, 463
 
 INDEX 
 
 555 
 
 Henry, Earl of Strafford, see Bucking- 
 ham 
 
 Henry son, 416 
 
 Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, 511, 533 
 
 Herenc, Baudet, 422 
 
 Heresy defined, 389 
 
 Herford, C. H., 100 (note), 211 (note), 
 224 (note), 381, 384, 399, 400, 402 
 (note), 405 (note), 407 (note), 411 
 (note) 
 
 d'Hericault, 438, 441 
 
 Hero and Leander, 147 
 
 H6ron, A., 422 
 
 Heaiod, 157 
 
 Heywood, John, 102-116; alliteration, 
 114; French influence, 102-103; per- 
 sonality, 102; sense of humor, 107; 
 use of dilemma, 108-114; Epigrams, 
 103, 256, 257; Epigram on Himself, 
 102; Proverbs, 90, 103, 254, 256, 257; 
 Spider and the Flye, interpretation, 
 105-106; dating, 105; animal char- 
 acters, 103; critical opinion, 104; 
 quoted, 107, 108-114; Spenser's 
 method, 106; mentioned, 256; Tot- 
 tel's Miscellany, 245, summary of 
 Heywood, 115; mentioned, 483, 486 
 
 Higden, 168 
 
 Holbein, paints scenery, 11; portrait 
 of More, 278 
 
 Holinshed, 511, 533 
 
 Holland, Elizabeth, 509 
 
 Holle, Fritz, 366 
 
 Homer, 157 
 
 Hopkins, John, 404 
 
 Hopkins, the betrayer of Buckingham, 
 534 (note) 
 
 Horace, meters used, 232; influence of, 
 262; sold by Dome, 281; in TotteFs 
 Miscellany, 346-348; model for Ren- 
 aissance, 348; imitated by Wyatt, 
 345, 480; mentioned, 14, 123, 133, 
 158, 173, 218, 302, 319, 477; ode 
 quoted, 526 
 
 Horstmann. Carl, 254, 255 
 
 Howard, Sir Edward, 245, 247 
 
 Howard, Henry, see Surrey 
 
 Howard, Katharine (Catherine), 466, 
 
 515 
 Howard, Mary, Duchess of Richmond, 
 
 509, 510 
 Howleglas, Tyll, 410-415; given to 
 
 Spencer, 410 (note); contents, 411; 
 
 object, 412; satire, 413; mentioned, 
 
 407 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 415 
 
 Humanism, definition of, 230; educa- 
 tional theory, 295; education of 
 
 women, 333-341; the goal, 307; 
 
 morality, 261-262; the Reformation, 
 
 22, 294; the sterility of the humanists, 
 
 262 
 Hume, Martin, Spanish Chronicle, 373, 
 
 463; Wives of Henry VIII, 365, 461 
 Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, 208, 
 
 236,259 
 
 Hundred Mery Talys, 405 
 Hunn, Richard, 211 
 Hussey, John, 29, 463 
 Hutten, Ulrich von, see Epistolae 
 
 Obscurorum Virorum 
 Huxley, T. H., 22 
 Hye Way to the Spittal Hous, 225-228, 
 
 502 
 
 Hymns, Latin, 124 
 Hyrde, 315, 323 (note), 336, 338 
 
 Image du Monde, 82-83 
 
 Image of Ipocrysy, 205 
 
 Imelmann, Rudolf, 355 (note), 534, 536, 
 
 539 
 
 Immorality of Renaissance, 16 
 Ink horn terms, 140 
 International Manuscripts, 348 
 Introductio, 138 
 Islip, Abbot, 232 
 Italian influence on English poetry, 
 
 454-486 
 
 Italian influence on English prose, 487 
 Italian Relation, The, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, 
 
 25, 38, 39, 41 
 
 Jack the Giant Killer, 496 
 James IV, of Scotland, 131, 316
 
 556 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Jamieson, T. H., 171 (note), 249, 250, 
 
 254 
 Jannet, ed. of Marot, 448 (note), 
 
 525 
 
 Jardin de Plaisance, 422, 439 
 Jerome, Friar, see Barlow 
 Jest Books, 405-415 
 Johnson, Sam, 833 
 Jonson, Ben, 333, 500 
 Jusserand, Ambassador, 416 
 Justes of the Monethes, 151 
 Juvenal, 133, 157, 173, 193, 232, 262, 
 
 319, 477 
 Jyl of Brentford, 432 
 
 Kalendar of Shepherds, 499-501 
 Kalendar of Shyppars, 499 
 Kalendier des bergiers, 500 
 Kastner, L. E., 451 (notes 1, 2) 
 Katharine (Katherine) of Aragon, 265, 
 
 339, 362, 363, 388 
 Kemble, Salomon and Saturn, 408 
 Kepler, 23 
 
 Ker, W. P., 369, 370, 373, 493 
 King Arthur, 325 
 Kingsley, 117 
 Kingston, 465 
 
 Kittredge, G. L. f 491 (note) 
 Knight, Samuel, 286, 301 
 Knight's Tale, The, 479 
 Knyvet, Sir Edward, 518 
 Koelbing, A., 100 (note) 
 Koeppel, Emil, 406 (note), 452 (note), 
 
 456 (note), 475 (note) 
 Kuypers, Franz, 303, 331 (note), 313 
 
 (note) 
 
 La Belle Dame, 50 
 
 Laborinthus, 125, 133, 148 
 
 Laing, D., 75 
 
 Lamentation of Mary Magdalen, 134 
 
 Lamentatio Oedipi, 148 
 
 Lando, Ortensio, 354 
 
 Lane, Dr. J. E., 28 (note) 
 
 Lang, H. R., 125 
 
 Lanthorne of Light, 389 (note) 
 
 Latimer, 259 
 
 Latin, Classical and Medieval con- 
 trasted, 127 
 
 Law, Ernest, 7, 196 
 
 Lawrence, John, 210 
 
 Lazarillo, 410 (note) 
 
 Lecky, W. E., 389 
 
 Lee, Anthony, 486 
 
 Lee, Dr. Edward, 362, 386 
 
 Lee, Sir Sidney, Carton, D. N. B., 488; 
 Elizabethan Sonnets, 448, 460 (note); 
 French Renaissance in England, 353 
 (note), 416 (note), 456 (note); Great 
 Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century, 
 271; Huon of Burdeux, 369, 374, 379, 
 494 
 
 Leeu, Gerard, 408, 500 
 
 LeForestier, Jacques, 426 
 
 Lehmeyer, Fred, 431 (note) 
 
 & Leigh, 511 
 
 Leland, John, 456 (note), 483, 519, 520 
 
 LeMaire de Beige, 422 
 
 Leo X, 264 
 
 Letter in ink horn terms, 142-143 
 
 Lettou, John, 488 
 
 Life of Saint Werburge, 254-255 
 
 Lily (Lilly), William, 158, 171, 218, 
 236, 259, 260 
 
 Linacre, Thomas, 158, 201, 236, 259, 
 260, 263, 305, 314 
 
 Lindsay, Rev. Dr., 282 
 
 Lindisferne Abbey, 322 
 
 Lisle, Lord, 462, 463 
 
 Livy, 157, 262 
 
 Locher, Jacob, Stultitiae Navis, the 
 change from the Narrensckiff, 228, 
 248, 249; mentioned, 382; list of 
 universities, 382 
 
 Lollardism, 389 
 
 London Chronicle, 33 
 
 London Lickpenny, 220-222 
 
 Long Meg of Westminster, 268 
 
 Longnon, Auguste, 432 (note) 
 
 Lorenzo, 236 
 
 Louis XII of France, 266, 388, 417 
 
 Lounsbury, T. R., 68, 118, 160 
 
 Ijover and a Jay, see Feilde 
 
 Lowell, J. R., 59
 
 INDEX 
 
 557 
 
 Lucan, 157, 281 
 
 Lucian, 281, 398, 399 
 
 Lucillius, 157 
 
 Lucretius, 262 
 
 Lupton, J. H., 260, 264 (note) 
 
 Lusty Juventus, 152 
 
 Luther, Martin, opposed by More, 268; 
 denounced by Henry VII, 387; domi- 
 nant in Germany, 385; compared 
 with Eulenspiegel, 415; mentioned, 
 264, 293, 391, 392, 396, 403, 503 
 
 Lycidas, 148 
 
 Lydgate, John, Devotion of the Fowles, 
 73; Court of Sapience, 81; Fall of 
 Princes, 343; London Lickpenny, 220; 
 Order of Fools, 226; Temple of Glas, 
 62,71,83 (note); Starts Puer, 281; 
 literary channel, 60; influence on 
 Hawes, 89; his imitators, 62; his 
 reputation, 56; Ritson's opinion of, 
 61; his style, 62; imitated in Court of 
 Love, 69, 70; "broken-backed line," 
 62; use of Latin, 133; mentioned, 40, 
 48, 55, 59, 74, 116, 139, 149, 157, 160, 
 255, 264, 542 
 
 Lyly, John, 340 (note) 
 
 McConaughy, J., 351, 381 
 
 Macaulay, G. C., 369 
 
 Macchiavelli, 16, 385, 476, 487 
 
 Macchiavellianism, 16 
 
 MacCracken, H. N., 61, 64, 81, 133, 281 
 
 Macfarlane, John, 422, 499 
 
 Mac Flccknoc, 226, 227 
 
 Machado, Roger, 419 
 
 Mackenzie, 412 
 
 Macrobius, 157 
 
 Maidment, James, 222 (note) 
 
 Mair, G. H., 140 
 
 Major, Prince Henry the Navigator, 31 
 
 Malherbe. 421 
 
 Malory, Sir Thomas, 490-493; not 
 
 sold by Dome, 281; mentioned, 84 
 Mancinus, 250 
 Mantuan, Bnptista Spagnola, 243, 244, 
 
 246. 247 
 Manuel, Der krankheit der Messe, 450 
 
 Mapes, Walter, Poems of, 169 
 
 Mappamondo at Pisa, 23 
 
 Marat, 266 
 
 Margaret Tudor, 416 
 
 Marillac, 466 
 
 Man, Giovanni, 125, 130 (note), 132, 
 
 133, 136, 145, 146, 148, 151, 152 
 Marlowe, C., 147. 442 
 Marot, Clement, edited Roman de la 
 
 Rose. 441, Villon, 436, 441; editions, 
 
 438; U Adolescence Clementine, 447; 
 
 the preface quoted, 447 (note); 
 
 A Anne, 449; En un rondeau, 440; 
 
 Marot, void, 525; S'il est ainsy, 448 
 
 (note); court poet, 438-442; poems 
 
 conventional, 448; his style, 442; 
 
 influence on Wyatt, 447-450; poem 
 
 similar to one by Wyatt, 448 (note); 
 
 mentioned, 17, 432, 435, 444, 454, 481 
 Marot, Jean, 422, 439 
 Marshe, Thomas, 175, 219 
 Martial, 256-258; Bk. X, Ep. 47, 523; 
 
 various versions of it, 523-526; 
 
 mentioned, 173, 232, 319 
 Martin Marprelate, 22, 400 
 Mart inus Dorpius, 284 
 Marullus, Michael Tarchaniota, 261, 
 
 262 
 Mary Tudor, her learning, 339; the 
 
 legitimacy of, 462; mentioned, 266, 
 
 417 
 
 Mary of Burgundy, 361 
 Mary of Nemmengen, 361 
 Mary Stewart, 463 
 Matilda, Queen, 266 
 Maximianus, 157 
 Mayor, J. E. B., 310 
 Maze at Hampton Court, 66 
 Mazzuchelli, Giammaria, 481 (note) 
 Mearns, 402 (note) 
 Meauties, John, 191 (note) 
 Medieval attitude toward this life, 3 
 Medieval hymnology, 4 
 Medieval Latin, 121 
 Medieval rhetorical devices, 125 
 Medici, Giulio d\ 477 
 Medici, Hippolito de, Cardinal, 354, 536
 
 558 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Menendez y Pelayo, 865 
 
 Menghini, Marion, 474 
 
 Meres, Francis, 219, 378 
 
 M erg Tales of Skelton, 406 
 
 Meschinot, 422 
 
 Meung, Jean de, 430 
 
 Middleton, William, 493 (note) 
 
 Milanessi, Carlo, 456 
 
 Milton, John, 325, 398, 435 
 
 Ming, 542 (note) 
 
 Mirror for Magistrates, 541 
 
 Mitchell, A. F., 402 (note) 
 
 Mock wills, 431-434 
 
 Modern Language Notes, 177 
 
 Modern Language Association, Publica- 
 tions of, 177 
 
 Modern Language Review, 248 
 
 Molinet, 422 
 
 Molinier, H. J., 243 
 
 Molza, 354, 536 
 
 Montaigu College, 310, 311 
 
 Montmerqu-Didot, 422 
 
 Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 128 
 
 Morality in English Literature, 18 
 
 Morality in Renaissance, 15 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, works sold by Dome, 
 281; works, 343; Confutation, 399; 
 Dialogue of Images, 294; Epigram- 
 mata, 261; In Anglum Gatticae Lin- 
 guae AJfectorem, 442; Life of Pico, 
 487; Lucian, 399; Supplycacyon of 
 Souks, 208, 397-398; Utopia, editions 
 of, 269; Robison's translation, 270; 
 Sampson's edition, 269; character- 
 istics of, 268; fundamental conception 
 of, 270; letter about, 277; origin of, 
 269; modernity of, 271-272; men- 
 tioned, 29, 205, 381, 496; More's 
 character, 267-268; friend of Eras- 
 mus, 281; Heywood, 106, 256; his 
 household, 338; his opinion of trans- 
 lating the Bible into English, 207, 
 392, 393; allowed to read heretical 
 books, 391; debate with Tyndale, 392; 
 interpretation of terms, 394; in- 
 tellectual freedom, 276; mentioned, 
 158, 171, 211, 236, 246, 256, 259, 260, 
 
 261, 263, 348, 364, 386, 389, 400, 405, 
 
 444, 505 
 
 Morley, Henry, the poet, 486 
 Morley, Henry, the scholar, 79 
 Morlini, 406 
 Morton, Archbishop, 40, 171, 245, 246, 
 
 247,274 
 
 Mountjoy, Charles, 280, 326 
 Moyen de Parvenir, 406 
 Mullinger, J. Bass, Athenae Cantabrig- 
 
 ienses ed., 93; Alcock in D. N. B., 
 
 426 (notes 2, 3) 
 Murison, William, 80 
 Mustard, W. P., 243, 244, 246 
 
 Narrenschiff, characteristics of, 222; 
 
 in English prose, 100; Locher's version 
 
 and Barclay's, 226; illustrations, 224; 
 
 universities mentioned, 382; see 
 
 Brandt 
 Nash, Thomas, Harvey controversy, 
 
 400; "lascivious rhymes," 18; Un- 
 fortunate Traveller, 516 
 Nature, man's relation to, 24ff . 
 Neilson, W. A., 29 
 New Nut Brown Maid, 156 (note) 
 Newman, John Henry Cardinal, 274 
 Nichols, F. M., 43, 259, 277, 279, 284 
 Noels, 134 
 Norfolk, Duke of, conservative, 515; 
 
 correspondance with Cromwell, 517; 
 
 financial straits, 508; letter to Wol- 
 
 sey, 21; negotiates a marriage, 21; 
 
 presides at Buckingham's trial, 508' 
 
 mentioned, 386 
 Norfolk, Duchess of, her character, 
 
 509; difficulties with the Duke, 509- 
 
 510 
 
 North, Sir Thomas, 373 
 Nott, George Frederick, 336, 346, 460, 
 
 472, 511, 514, 516, 533, 535, 537. 
 540 
 
 Nove dictionis fictio, 137 
 Nucius Nisancer, 420 
 Nutbrowne Mayde, 153-156; a con- 
 
 flictus, 129; mentioned, 444 
 Nutter, Dr. Hans, 82
 
 INDEX 
 
 559 
 
 Oberon, 495, 498 
 
 Observants, 390 
 
 Occam, 295 
 
 Occleve, 40, 55, 281 
 
 O'Donovan, Louis, 386 
 
 Oesterley, Herman, 405, 406 (note) 
 
 Oldcastle, Sir John, 208 
 
 Orcagna, 23 
 
 Order of Fools, 226 
 
 Oriel College Library, 35, 236 
 
 Orpheus, 5 
 
 Orti Oricellari, 476, 477 
 
 Osney Abbey, 322 
 
 Ouvry, Fred, 410 (note) 
 
 Ovid, 71, 157, 281, 346 
 
 Oxford, 236, 259 
 
 Oxford Historical Society, 260 
 
 Oxford Reformers, 267 
 
 Padelford, F. M., Anglia, 505, 522, 
 532; Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, 
 445 
 
 Palgrave, 381 
 
 Pandulpho, 344 
 
 Paris, Gaston, 434 
 
 Park, Nugae Poeticae, 211, 432 
 
 Parker Society, Ridley, 350 
 
 Parr, Catherine, 380 
 
 Parson of Kalenborow, 384 (note), 407, 
 410 
 
 Paston Letters, 12, 21, 48 
 
 Paston, Sir John, 49 
 
 Pastoral, 325 
 
 Patrizi, Francesco, 307 
 
 Paynell, Thomas, 335 (note) 
 
 Peele, George, 415 
 
 Percy, Henry, 462 
 
 Persius, 157, 173, 282, 281 
 
 Pestalozzi, 330 
 
 Petrarch, Francesco, 456-560; his com- 
 ments on his sonnets, 458-459; 
 condemned by Ascham, 324; his 
 humanism, 234-236; master of quat- 
 trocento, 474; model of Renaissance, 
 457; sonnet form, 522; influence on 
 Wyatt, 469; his Africa, 547; Codex 
 3195, 458 (note); the Rime, 457; 
 
 Sonnet. Cn, 469; CXXXIV, 474; 
 
 CXL, 520; CXC, 472; CCLXIX, 470; 
 
 CCCX, 543; mentioned, 77. 155, 157, 
 
 480, 483, 523 
 Petrarchism, 460 
 Petrarchismo, 460 
 Petronius, 319 
 
 Phaer, Thomas, 539 
 
 Piccolomini, Aeneas Silvius, Pope Pius 
 
 II, De Curalium Miseriis, 237, 247, 
 
 379; Euryalus and Lucretia, 409; 
 
 mentioned, 30 
 Picholomini, B. C., 536 
 Pickering, William, 511 
 Pico della Mirandola, 318 
 Picot, Emile, 128 
 Pi6ri, Marius, 460 
 Piers Plowman, 122, 146 
 Pigouchet, Philippe, 426 
 Pilgrim The, 21 
 Pilgrimage of Grace, 386, 517 
 Pilgrim's Progress, 78, 326 
 Pilgrim's Tale, 117 
 Pisander, 157 
 Pistoia, 11, 468, 475 
 Pius II, see Piccolomini 
 Pizarro, 22 
 Plato, the Phaedo, 5; the Republic, 274; 
 
 use of dialogue, 398 
 Platonic conception of beauty, 312 
 Platonists, The early, 318 
 Plautus, 157, 262, 351 
 Pleiade, 421, 442 
 Pliny, 281 
 Plomer, H. R., 502 
 Plouman's Tale, 117 
 Plutarch, 157 
 
 Poetae Latini Aem Carolini, 123 
 Poggio's tales, 17, 157, 406 
 Pole, Reginald Cardinal, 21. 386 
 Polemic dialogue, 206, 398-401 
 Politian, Italian humanist, 236, 261; 
 
 sold by Dome, 281 ; recommended by 
 
 Elyot, 317; Aristotle's Analytics, 262; 
 
 mentioned, SOS 
 Political situation, 39
 
 560 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pollard, A. F., England under Protector 
 
 Somerset, 349; Henry VIII, 44, 46 
 Pollard, A. W., Castle of Labour, 425, 
 
 427, 429; mentioned, 355 
 Polychronicon, 168 
 Pontano, Giovanni, 261, 262, 302 (note), 
 
 307,317 
 Pope, Alexander, 147, 174, 219, 292, 
 
 325, 333, 415 
 
 Population of England, 30 
 Potter, A. K, 74, 76, 82, 89 (note) 
 Priapeia, 16 
 
 Prince Henry the Navigator, 31 
 Printing, 35ff. 
 Printers, early, 487-489 
 Prior, Mathew, 154 
 Proclus, De Sphaera, 260 
 Proctor, Robert, 408, 409, 410 (note) 
 Proksch, J. K., 28 (note) 
 Proper Dialogue, A, 207 
 Propertius, 157 
 Ptolemaic system, 23 
 Pulci, Luigi, 32 
 Puritans, 22 
 Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie, 
 
 102, 219, 256, 258, 342, 389 (note), 
 
 456, 483, 506 
 Pynson, Richard, 203, 246, 248, 254, 
 
 262, 408, 426, 495 (note), 498, 500 
 
 Quintilian, 157, 327 
 Quintus Curtius, 157 
 
 Raine, James, 38 
 
 Rastell, John, 11, 256, 268, 368, 405 
 
 Raynaud, Gaston, 439 
 
 Reading Abbey, 322 
 
 Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, 84 
 
 Rede me and Be not Wrothe, 208-212, 
 
 400 
 
 Reformation and Humanism, 294 
 Reformers, difference in beliefs, 391-392 
 Reich of Freiburg, 82 
 Rembrandt, 414; Religion and Science, 
 
 23 
 
 Remedies for plague, 27-28 
 Remedy of Love, 139 
 
 Renaissance paradoxes, 37 
 
 Reni, Guido, 216 
 
 Repeticio, 131; in Skelton, 163; in 
 Cock Lorrelles Bate, 222 
 
 Retrograd verses, 132 
 
 Reuchlin, 264 
 
 Rey, A., 100 (note), 101 (note) 
 
 Reynard the Fox, 384 
 
 Rhetoriquers, 441 
 
 Richard II, King, 208 
 
 Richard III, King, 268 
 
 Ridley, Bishop Nicholas, 350 
 
 Rimbault, Ed. F., 222 (note) 
 
 Rime-royal, 60 
 
 Rithm, 145 
 
 Rithmua cum duplici differentia, 152 
 
 Ritson, 61, 164 (note) 
 
 Riviere, 249, 250 
 
 Robbery, 39 
 
 Robin Hood, 281, 409 
 
 Rome, sack of, 456 
 
 Romanello, 472 
 
 Roman de la Rose, 425, 430, 433, 441 
 
 Rondeau, 439-441 
 
 Rood, the printer, 263 
 
 Roper, Margaret, character, 338; Ten- 
 nyson's verse on, 268; translated 
 Erasmus, 336; chooses Ascham, 306; 
 mentioned, 338 
 
 Roper, William, Life of More, 387 
 
 Ros, Sir Richard, 50, 51 
 
 Roscoe, 215 (note) 
 
 Rosenbach, A. S. W., 368 
 
 Rousseau, 266 
 
 Routh, H. V., 431 
 
 Roy, William, 207, 208, 400 
 
 Royas, Ferdinando de, 364-365 
 
 Rumming, Elinor, 229 
 
 Ruscellai, 353, 354, 476 
 
 Russell, Sir John, 477 
 
 Rutter of the Sea, 499 
 
 Sack Full of News, 406 
 
 Sackville, Thomas, 69, 330, 06 
 
 St. Albans Press, 488 
 
 Saint Alexis, 4 
 
 Saintsbury, George, Cambridge History
 
 INDEX 
 
 of Literature, 64; The Earlier Renais- 
 sance, 280; History of English Prosody, 
 353; quoted, 429 (note), 256, 257 
 
 Saint-Gelais, Melin de, character of his 
 verse, 441; influence on Wyatt, 450- 
 453 
 
 Saint-Gelais, Octovien de, 243, 534, 535 
 
 St. Paul's School, 300 
 
 St. Thomas' Shrine, 13 
 
 Salesbury, William, 62 
 
 Sallust, 157, 281 
 
 Salomon and Marcolphus, 407 
 
 Salsbury, John of, 232 
 
 Sampson, George, 269 
 
 Sanitation, 25 
 
 Sannazaro, Jacopo, 372, 451, 470 
 
 San Pedro, Diego de, 372 
 
 Saturnian verses, 122 
 
 Schick, J., on Court of Love, 69; on 
 Hawes, 84, 91; on Temple of Glas, 62 
 
 Schroeder, Karl, 274 
 
 Schultz, J. R., 420 
 
 Scipio Africanus, 317 
 
 Scoggin, Tales of, 407, 415; given by 
 Spenser to Harvey, 410 (note) 
 
 Scott, J., 156 (note) 
 
 Scott, Walter, 84, 174 
 
 Scottish State Papers, 21 
 
 Scrope, Stephen, 21 
 
 SeBoyar, G., 204 
 
 Seebohm, H., 286 
 
 Seneca, 157, 263 
 
 Sensuousness in English literature, 17 
 
 Serafino, 474-476, 448, 476, 477, 480, 
 483 
 
 Servatius, 286 
 
 Servius Maurus, 538 (note) 
 
 Settle, E., 174 
 
 Seymour, Jane, 515, 517 
 
 Seymoua, Sir Thomas, 510 
 
 Shadwell, Thomas, 174, 226 (note) 
 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 174 
 
 Shakespeare, William, 123, 232, 248, 
 824,498 
 
 Shakespearean sonnet, 522 
 
 Sharman, Julian, 257 
 
 Ship of Fools, see Barclay 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 203, 506, 523 
 
 Silver in London, 12 
 
 Silvius, Aeneas, see Piccolomini 
 
 Simonds, W. E., 446 (note), 462, 463. 
 464, 465 
 
 Sir Thopas, 479 
 
 Skeat, Bertha M., 134 
 
 Skeat, W. W., 65, 68, 117 
 
 Skelton, John, his life, 92-95, 92 (note); 
 associated with the Howards, 531; 
 attack on Wolsey, 185ff.; attitude 
 toward Church, 180ff.; Barclay, 
 99-100; humanist, 232-234; knowl- 
 edge of Italian, 157 (note); learning, 
 93; loyalty, 177; not a national 
 leader, 454; opinion of Court, 99; 
 "Orator Regius," 94; Poet Laureat, 
 94; his reading, 157, 299; Reforma- 
 tion, 183-184; his social caste, 488; 
 Ancient Acquaintance, 160; Bouge of 
 Court, 92-101; dating, 101 (note); 
 interpretation of, 101 ; plot, 95; School 
 of Lydgate, 96; mentioned, 156, 160; 
 Colin Clout, interpretation, 179-186, 
 194-201; dating, 194; Bullein's ac- 
 count, 195; Thynne's account, 118, 
 194; dating, 194; mentioned, 158; 
 Earl of Northumberland, 161; Epitaph, 
 171; Flodden Field, 171; Garland of 
 Laurel, 158, 170; Garnesche, 94; 
 Magnyfycence, 158, 444; Manerly 
 Margery, 161, 164; Mistress Anne, 
 161; My darling dere, 160, 164; 
 Phillip Sparrow, 158, 212-215; Rep- 
 lycacion, 201-205; Speke, Parrot, 
 176; Tunnyng of Elinor Humming, 
 215-217; Ware the Hawk, 162; Why 
 Come Ye Not to Court, 190-194; his 
 alliteration, 160; aureate language, 
 162; concentric plan of satires, 218; 
 concreteness, 97; dating of satires, 
 175-177; Greek, 158-159; "Harvy 
 Hafttr," 97; humanistic Latin, 160; 
 lost poems, 172; music to the songs, 
 98; not sold by Done, 281; ob- 
 scurity, 174; pronunciation, 53; rep- 
 eticio, 103; satire, 171-205; scansion.
 
 562 
 
 INDEX 
 
 163; scholarly knowledge of Chaucer, 
 53; theory of poetry, 202; tradition, 
 268; use of French, 420; mentioned, 
 116, 120, 229, 328 (note), 332, 389, 
 407, 444, 483, 499, 505, 544 
 
 Skdton, Merry Tales of, 410 (note). 
 415 
 
 Skeltoniads, 166 
 
 Skeltonic Verse, 166-170 
 
 Smeaton, Mark, 462 
 
 Smerte, Epitaph of the Duke of Bedford, 
 quoted, 129, 131, 132, 135, 138, 139 
 
 Smith, Gilbert, 351 
 
 Somerset, Edward, 349 
 
 Sommer, H. O., Kalendar of Shepherds, 
 499, 501; Morte Darthur, 490, 492 
 
 Sommers, Will, 415 
 
 Songs and Carols, 152 
 
 Sortes Vergilianae, 3 
 
 Southwell, Sir Richard, 511 
 
 Southey, Robert, 89 
 
 Spanish influence, 362-381 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, Amoretti, 460; Four 
 Hymns, 312; Faerie Queene, 78, 92; 
 Mother Hubbard's Tale, 106, 226 
 (note); note to Harvey, 410 (note); 
 America, 34; Chaucer, 56, 116; com- 
 bines the four types, 116; mentioned, 
 78, 416, 499, 505, 506 
 
 Spenser Society, 256 
 
 Spingarn, J. E., 77 
 
 Standish, Henry, 187, 211 
 
 Stapleton, 305 
 
 Starkey, 21, 27, 399 
 
 Statius, 157 
 
 Statutes of Love, 69 
 
 Steen, Jan, 216, 414 
 
 Steevens, 359 
 
 Sternhold, Thomas, 404, 481 
 
 Stirgonia, Archbishop of, 242 
 
 Stokes, F. M., 295 
 
 Sudor Anglicus, 26-28 
 
 Suetonius, 262 
 
 Suffold, Duke of, see Brandon, Charles 
 
 Sulpitius, 281 
 
 Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, 504- 
 545; the MSS., 505; Aeneid, 344; 
 
 Fifty-fifth Psalm, 532, 540; From 
 Tuscan came, 516; 7 thai Ulysses, 530; 
 London, hast thou, 512-513; Love that 
 doth reign, 522; Martial the things, 523; 
 Of thy life, Thomas, 527; The golden 
 gift, 577 (note); The soote season, 542; 
 Tottel's Miscellany, 344; translation 
 from Horace, 526-530; Where raging 
 love, 330; on Wyatt, W. resteth here, 
 518; ancestry, 507; birth of children, 
 517; blank verse, 354, 534; disliked by 
 sister, 510; Elizabethan reputation, 
 506; family difficulties, 509; final 
 couplet, 523; financial condition, 508; 
 humanism, 523-530; legend of Geral- 
 dine, 516-517; his manners, 510-514; 
 his marriage, 510; marriage to Mary 
 Tudor rumored, 504; Medieval Latin 
 influence, 530-535; Pickering edition, 
 523; political affiliations, 515; relation 
 to Wyatt, 518-523; Vergil, 534; men- 
 tioned, 59, 69, 348, 386, 445, 456 
 
 Sweating Sickness, 26-28 
 
 Swift, Jonathan, Battle of the Books, 106; 
 Conduct of the Allies, 398; Gulliver's 
 Travels, 398; Tale of a Tub, 398 
 
 Syllogism, attack on, 295-296 
 
 Symonds, J. A., 235, 255, 272 
 
 Syphilis, 28 (note) 
 
 Tacitus, 262, 281 
 
 Taft, A. I., 391, 392, 397 
 
 Tailebois, Lady, 265 
 
 Tales of Poggio and Valla, 17 
 
 Tarleton, 415 
 
 Tedder, H. R., 409, 502 
 
 Tempio of the Malatesta, 322 
 
 Ten Brink, B. E. K., 81, 104 (note), 
 
 496 (note) 
 
 Terence, 157, 263, 281 
 Testament of the hawthorne, 434 
 Theocritus, 157, 243 
 Theodulus, 133 
 The traytte of good liuing, 499 
 Theuerdank of Maximilian, 82 
 Thomas, William, 21, 399 
 Thomas, Lord Vaux, 69, 345, 486
 
 INDEX 
 
 563 
 
 Thrush and the Nightingale, 128 
 
 Thtimmel, A.. 93 
 
 Thynne, Francis, 117, 194 
 
 Tibino, Nicolo, 130, 136 
 
 Tilley, A., 451 (note) 
 
 Tintern Abbey, 322 
 
 Titian, 17 
 
 Toscanelli, 32 
 
 Tottel, Richard, publications, 343; 
 quoted, 486 
 
 Tottel's Miscellany, 343-344, 434, 445- 
 446, 486-487, 505 
 
 Trade routes, 31 
 
 Transumptio, 137, 139 
 
 Travellers' tales, 34 
 
 Travelling, 38 
 
 Treitschke, 385 
 
 Trissino, 353, 354, 476 
 
 Trevesa, J., 168, 169 
 
 Trollope, A., 67 
 
 Tudor conceptions; attitude toward 
 children, 19; authorship, 42; home- 
 life, 20; marriage, 19-20; pretenders, 
 41; punishments, 27; streets, 25 
 
 Tudor, Margaret, 388 
 
 Tuke, Bryan, 27, 191 (note) 
 
 Tunstall, Gilbert, 362, 386, 392 
 
 Tyndale, William, Obedience of a Chris- 
 tian Man, 395; New Testament, 36, 
 207, 390-396; its burning, 208, 211, 
 394; Wicked Mammon, 208, 394; 
 debate with More, 268, 391, 392; 
 mentioned, 22, 206, 382 (note), 389, 
 391,401 
 
 "Uncertain Authors," 330 (note), 345, 
 
 434, 445, 453, 523 
 Underbill, J. G., 362 
 Unius partis orationis pro receptio, 137 
 Usque ad aras, 305, 305 (note) 
 Usury forbidden, 12 
 Utopia, see More, Thomas 
 
 Valerius Maximus, 157, 262 
 
 Valla, 17, 281 
 
 VanDyke, 187 
 
 Vaux, see Thomas. Lord Vaux 
 
 Vellutello, 459 
 
 Vergil, medieval conception of, 3; the 
 enchanter, 83; copy of in Milan, 459; 
 edition of in 1531, 538; translations 
 of, 534; Fourth Book of the Aeneid, 
 355 (note); the Bucolics, 263; Grim- 
 aid's translation of the Georgics, 351; 
 Addison's standard, 324; mentioned, 
 14, 157, 235, 243, 262, 281, 318, 319 
 
 V6rard, Antoine, 299, 419, 422, 426, 500 
 de Vere, Francis, 510 
 
 Villon, Frangois, ed. by Marot, 441; 
 Ballade des Dames, 435; Ballade des 
 Seigneurs, 437; compared with Bar- 
 clay, 438; mock will, 432; mentioned. 
 435 
 
 Vincentius, 157 
 
 Vitelli, 259 
 
 Vives, J. L. f his works, 303; De In- 
 stitutione Foeminae Christianae, 334; 
 De Officio Mariti, 308, 335, 337 
 (note); De Tradendis Disciplinis, 331; 
 Exercitatio Linguae Latinae, 313; 
 Instruction of a Christian Woman, 315; 
 Satellitum, 316; on classical authors, 
 837; early Christian writers, 317; 
 medieval education, 299; educa- 
 tional aims, 303; education of women, 
 333; expurgation, 319; on Greek, 318; 
 pedagogy, 302; Spanish influence, 
 363-364; on the vernacular, 330; on 
 vernacular literature, 823; com- 
 pared with Erasmus, 302-303 (note); 
 his mother, 338; letter to Mountjoy, 
 328; stay in England, 303; tutor of 
 Mary Tudor, 362 
 
 Vostre, Simon, 426 
 
 Vox Populi, 205 
 
 Waddington, S., 541 
 Waller, A. R., 104 
 Ward, F. N., 105 
 Warham, Archbishop, 280 
 Warren, F. M., 495 
 Wars of the Roses, 236 
 Warton, Thomas, History of English 
 Poetry, 54; his opinion on Geraldine,
 
 564 
 
 INDEX 
 
 516; on Grimald, 356; on Hey wood, 
 104; on Rastell, 368; on Skeltoo, 93, 
 233; on Tottel, 345; on Wyatt, 473 
 
 Washington, George, 61 
 
 Watson, Foster, 299, 315, 316, 317 
 (notes 1, 2), 322, 330, 324 (note) 
 
 Watson, Henry, 100 
 
 Wealth of England, 13 
 
 Webbe, William, 506 
 
 West, John, 210 
 
 Westminster Abbey, 322 
 
 Wever, 152 
 
 What our lives render, 524 
 
 Whibley, 198 
 
 "Whip of Six Strings," 386 
 
 Whitby Abbey, 322 
 
 Wbitington, Robert, 93, 233 
 
 Whittingham, Charles, 208 
 
 Who craftly castes, 527 
 
 Wilson, Thomas, Arte of Rhetorigue, 140; 
 Rule of Reason, 127 
 
 Winchcomb, Abbot of, 187 
 
 Windet, John, 404 (note) 
 
 Wingfield, 362 
 
 Wisest way, The, 529 
 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, attacked by plague, 
 27; attacked by Reformers, 211; 
 attacked by Skelton, 185 ff.; Bar- 
 clay's allusion to, 246; as chief spider, 
 106; his entertainments, 14; his 
 household at Hampton Court, 7-8; 
 bis foreign policy, 191; French in- 
 fluence, 444; German policy, 383; 
 The Pilgrim's Tale, 117-118; reasons 
 for his state, 8; mentioned, 348, 388 
 
 Wonderful Shape, 409 
 
 Wood, Anthony, 75, 256 
 
 Worde, Wynkyn de, 76, 223, 262, 426, 
 00 
 
 Wordsworth, Christopher, 36 
 
 Worth, R. N., 38 
 
 Wright, Thomas, 89, 133, 134, 135, 169, 
 210 (note) 
 
 Wyatt, Sir Henry, 464 
 
 Wyatt, Margaret, 467 
 
 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, his life, 446-447; 
 ambassador to Spain, 362; first im- 
 prisonment, 462; second imprison- 
 ment, 463; third imprisonment, 463; 
 Italians he may have known, 482 
 (note); letters to his son, 486 (note); 
 love for Anne Boleyn, 461-477; his 
 marriage, 461; oration to his judges, 
 464; relation to Surrey, 518; travels 
 in Italy, 455-456; Blame not my lute, 
 485; Caesar, when that, 467; Forget 
 not yet, 485; I find no peace, 474; 
 Like unto these, 450-452; The long 
 love, 521; Madame withouten, 451; 
 My lute awake, 485; My own John 
 Poyntz, 478; The pillar perished, 470; 
 Tagus, farewell, 381; Thenmy of liff, 
 450; They fie from me, 485; To seke 
 eche where, 499; Whoso list to hunt, 
 472; Wyatt compared to Marot, 448 
 (note), 450; to Surrey, 518-523; 
 conventionality, 448; humanism, 344- 
 345; final couplet, 448; influence of 
 Saint-Gelais, 450-453; Petrarchism, 
 467; principles of versification, 484 
 (note), rimes, 522; scansion, 521; 
 verse-forms, 485; Egerton MS., 447 
 (note); Tottel, 344, 445-446; edition 
 by Miss Foxwell, 378; Third Satire, 
 378; Penitential Psalms, 480-482; 
 mentioned, 445, 543, 544 
 
 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, the younger, 511 
 
 Wydville, Anthony, 150 
 
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