they did not print their verses, but simply circulated them in manuscript among their friends. In 1557, after both poets were dead, their poems were published in a collection of Songs and Sonnets by various authors. This book (which is commonly known as Tottel's Miscellany, because it was published by a man named Tottel) was the earliest of many similar collections of verse. Poetry from Wyatt and Surrey to Spenser. - More than thirty years elapsed before the work begun by Wyatt and Surrey was taken up by any poet of the first rank. Surrey, who outlived Wyatt three years, was beheaded on the charge of treason in 1547, the last year of Henry VIII's reign. No great poet appeared during the reigns of Edward VI (1547-1553) and Mary (1553-1558); and Elizabeth had been on the throne for more than twenty years before the spirit of the Renaissance began to find an adequate expression in a wonderful outburst of literary genius which is one of the glories of her reign. When we speak of the Age of Elizabeth as "the Golden Age of English literature," we must not forget that this great literary period covers the latter and not the earlier half of her reign. She had ruled for more than twenty years before Spenser, the earliest of the great poets of her era, published his first important poem (1579), and her reign was more than half over before the name of Shakespeare began to be known to the London theater-goers. Nevertheless, these thirty-two years between the death of Surrey and the coming of Spenser (1547-1579) were eventful years in the history of the nation. By religious dissensions and persecution, by the spread of new educational ideas, by many experiences, England was rapidly moving toward a new goal. Yet while we find no man of supreme genius in literature between Surrey and Spenser, we find many writers, some of them men of marked ability, whose work was preparing the way for the great age that was close at hand. Among these men we may mention ROGER ASCHAM (1515–1568), at one time tutor to Queen Elizabeth, who was one of the leading scholars and prose writers of his day. Ascham did much to increase the taste for classical studies. He embodied his ideas on education in a famous book called The Schoolmaster (1570). The sermons of HUGH LATIMER (1-485-1555), a sturdy reformer, who was burnt at the stake in Queen Mary's reign, are remarkable for their vigor, simplicity, and homely humor. These men, with many others, show the increasing strength and importance of English prose. In poetry, GEORGE GASCOIGNE (1536?-1577), a man of restless energy and adventurous life, proved himself a clever writer and a keen critic of the evils of his time. He wrote a comedy, he was part author of one of the earliest English tragedies, he composed songs, tried his hand at blank verse, and through his experiments in many forms of composition became a pioneer of the coming age. The Steel Glass (1576), a satirical poem on the abuses and follies of the day, is probably his best known work. Sackville. Early in Queen Elizabeth's reign, THOMAS SACKVILLE (1536-1608), although then a very young man, won an honorable place for himself in the history of English poetry. He was a distant kinsman of the Queen, and he early won her notice and favor. Thus both opportunity and inclination pushed him toward a diplomatic and public career. But in his youth Sackville showed that he possessed powers that qualified him to win renown of a very different kind. Before he left the university, he had gained some reputation as a poet, and he continued to write poetry after he came to London and had entered upon the study of the Law at the Inner Temple.' In 1561 Christmas was celebrated at the Inner Temple with great festivities. Among the other features of the entertainment was a play composed for the occasion by Sackville and Thomas Norton, a fellow-member of the Inner Temple. This play was Gorboduc (or Ferrex and Porrex, as it is often called), famous as the first regular tragedy in the history of the English drama. It is written in the manner of the Latin playwright Seneca, and it shows the disastrous results of the selfish strife between two brothers, Ferrex and Porrex, between whom their father Gorboduc had divided the kingdom. Many of the speeches are long and tiresome, and the play as a whole. is dull, dignified, and monotonous. But if we want to judge the play fairly, we must not dwell exclusively on the stiffness of the verse, or the heavy respectability which weighs down the play; we must think also of its merits and of the circumstances under which it was composed. We must not expect two young gentlemen of the Temple (with little or nothing in English to guide them) to create a new kind of drama at a stroke, or to dash off a tragic masterpiece at the first trial, in order to give variety to a Christmas entertainment. Plays were to be written before long which were to leave this 1 The Inner Temple was one of the four Inns of Court, that is legal societies, roughly corresponding to our modern law school, which had the exclusive right to admit persons to the bar. The other Inns were Lincoln's Inn, the Middle Temple, and Gray's Inn. The Inner and the Middle Temple occupied the land and buildings which had formerly been held by the Knights Templar. The place retained the name of the Temple after it was leased by the lawyers, and the students or members of the Inner or Middle Temple were often called Templars. formal imitation of a poor classical model far behind, but Ferrex and Porrex was creditable, nevertheless, as a first attempt, and it was especially important because it set the fashion of using blank verse in plays, a fashion which the coming dramatists were to follow with great results. Ferrex and Porrex marks a step forward in the progress of the English drama, but Sackville's contributions to a long poem called The Mirror for Magistrates, have a distinct merit quite apart from their effect on the history of English poetry. This work (which Sackville is supposed to have planned about 1557) was intended to be a mirror in which magistrates, that is the great in this world, could see by the example of those who had fallen from power how insecure worldly prosperity is, and how those in high places are brought low. Sackville's contribution to the poem consisted of a general preface, or Induction, and the Complaint of Henry, Duke of Buckingham (the adherent of Richard III). In the Complaint, the spirit of Buckingham relates the story of the Duke's ambitious life and its violent end, as a warning to others. The opening stanzas of the Induction will give some notion of Sackville's descriptive style: "The wrathful winter 'proaching on a-pace, With blust'ring blasts had all y-bared the treen, (trees) With chilling cold had pierced the tender green; The mantles rent, wherein enwrappèd been The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown, The tappets1 torn, and every bloom down blowen. Hawthorn had lost his motley livery, The naked twigs were shivering all for cold; 1 Tapestry-hangings. Each thing (me thought) with weeping eye me told Myself within, for I was gotten out Into the fields whereas I walked about." Sackville's poetry is on a higher level than that of Wyatt or Surrey. His verse moves smoothly, his tone is serious, dignified, and noble. On the whole we may safely say that Sackville wrote the best poetry produced in England between the death of Chaucer and the coming of Edmund Spenser. This seems the more remarkable when we remember that Sackville gave but a fraction of his life to literature. Poetry was but the occasional recreation of his young manhood; but while his best years were spent as courtier and statesman, it is chiefly by his work as a poet that he is remembered. His Mirror for Magistrates is a connecting link between the poetry of Lydgate, the disciple of Chaucer, and the greater glories of Spenser, the poet of the Faërie Queen. WYATT AND SURREY, the chief Court poets of Henry VIII's reign. Wyatt introduced the Italian sonnet, and Surrey JOHN HEYWOOD (attached to Henry VIII's Court, and 1557 |