CHARACTER OF THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE.

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to cease, and its manhood to commence. In the earlier half of the sixteenth century, it was sensibly affected by a variety of influences, which, for an age before, had operated most powerfully in expanding the intellect of European nations. The study of classical literature, the invention of printing, the freedom with which religion was discussed, together with the substitution of the philosophy of Plato, for that of Aristotle, had every where given activity and strength to the minds of men. The immediate effects of these novelties upon English literature, were the enrichment of the language, as already mentioned, by a great variety of words from the classic tongues, the establishment of better models of thought and style, and the allowance of greater freedom to the fancy and powers of observation in the exercise of the literary calling. Not only the Greek and Roman writers, but those of modern Italy and France, where letters experienced an earlier revival, were now translated into English, and, being liberally diffused by the press, served to excite a taste for elegant reading in lower branches of society, than had ever before felt the genial influence of letters. The dissemination of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, while it greatly affected the language and ideas of the people, was also of no small avail in giving new directions to the thoughts of literary men, to whom these antique Oriental compositions, presented numberless incidents, images, and sentiments, unknown before, and of the richest and most interesting kind.

Among other circumstances favourable to literature at this period, must be reckoned the encouragement given to it by Queen Elizabeth, who was herself very learned and addicted to poetical composition, and had the art of filling her court with men qualified to shine in almost every department of intellectual exertion. Her successors, James and Charles, resembled her in some of these respects, and during their reigns, the impulse which she had given to literature, experienced rather an increase than a decline. There was, indeed, something in the policy as well as in the personal character of all these sovereigns, which proved favourable to literThe study of the belles lettres was in some

ature.

measure identified with the courtly and arbitrary principles of the time, not perhaps so much from any enlightened spirit in those who supported such principles, as from a desire of opposing the puritans and other malecontents, whose religious doctrines taught them to despise some departments of elegant literature, and utterly to condemn others. There can be no doubt that the drama, for instance, chiefly owed that encouragement which it received under Elizabeth and her successors, to a spirit of hostility to the puritans, who, not unjustly, repudiated it for its immorality. We must at the same time allow much to the influence which such a court as that of England, during these three reigns, was calculated to have among men of literary tendencies. Almost all the poets, and many of the other writers, were either courtiers themselves, or under the immediate protection of courtiers, and were constantly experiencing the smiles, and occasionally the solid benefactions of royalty. Whatever, then, was refined, or gay, or sentimental, in this country and at this time, came with its full influence upon literature.

The works brought forth under these circumstances, have been very aptly compared to the productions of a soil for the first time broken up, when all indigenous plants spring up at once with a rank and irrepressible fertility, and display whatever is peculiar and excellent in their nature, on a scale the most conspicuous and magnificent.' The ability to write having been, as it were, suddenly created, the whole world of character, imagery, and sentiment, as well as of information and of philosophy, lay ready for the use of those who possessed the gift, and was appropriated accordingly. As might be expected, where there was less rule of art than opulence of materials, the productions of these writers are often deficient in taste, and contain much that is totally aside from the purpose. To pursue the simile above quoted, the crops are not so clean as if they had been reared under systematic cultivation. On this account, the refined taste of the eighteenth century condemned most of the productions of the sixteenth and seventeenth to oblivion, and it is only of late that they have once more obtained their deserved reputation.

SPENSER.

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After every proper deduction has been made, enough remains to fix this era as by far the mightiest in the history of English literature, or indeed of human intellect and capacity. There never was anything,' says the writer above quoted, like the sixty or seventy years that elapsed from the middle of Elizabeth's reign to the period of the Restoration. In point of real force and originality of genius, neither the age of Pericles, nor the age of Augustus, nor the times of Leo X., nor of Louis XIV., can come at all into comparison; for in that short period, we shall find the names of almost all the very great men that this nation has ever produced, the names of Shakspeare, and Bacon, and Spenser, and Sydney, and Hooker, and Taylor, and Barrow, and Raleigh, and Napier, and Hobbes, and many others; men, all of them, not merely of great talents and accomplishments, but of vast compass and reach of understanding, and of minds truly creative and original; not perfecting art by the delicacy of their taste, or digesting knowledge by the justness of their reasonings, but making vast and substantial additions to the materials upon which taste and reason must hereafter be employed, and enlarging to an incredible and unparalleled extent, both the stores and the resources of the human faculties.'*

POETS.

First among the poets of this age, in point of time, and also in point of genius, must be reckoned EDMUND SPENSER (1553—1598,†) the author of the Faery Queen. Spenser, whose parentage was humble, received his education at Cambridge, and entered life under the protection of the Earl of Leicester, to whom he had been introduced by Sir Philip Sydney. Having been appointed secretary to Lord Grey, the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, he emigrated to that country, where he spent a considerable portion of his life upon the estate of Kilcolman, near Cork, which was granted to him by Queen Elizabeth. Here he wrote his Faery Queen, which is an

Edinburgh Review, XVIII. 275.

+ Dates given in this form, and in connexion with names, throughout the present volume, refer to the birth and death of the individuals to whose names they are attached.

elaborate allegorical poem, designed to celebrate the principle virtues. Only six of the original twelve books now remain, the rest having been lost by a servant on the passage from Ireland to England. Each of these is divided into twelve cantos, and the versification of the whole is in a peculiar stanza of nine lines, now commonly called the Spenserian, and remarkable for its elegance and harmony. Each book is devoted to the adventures of a particular knight, who personifies a certain virtue, as Holiness, Temperance, Courtesy, &c., and who moves in the midst of a whole host of sentiments and ideas, personified in the same way, the whole bearing the appearance of a chivalrous tale. The work, though upon the whole too tedious for the generality of modern readers, is justly regarded as one of the greatest compositions in English poetry. Spenser formed his manner, in some degree, upon the model of the Italian poets; and yet he is not only unlike them in many respects, but he is like no other English writer. The Faery Queen,' says a modern critic, is a peculiar world of itself, formed out of the extraordinary fancy of the author. His invention was without limit. Giants and dwarfs, fairies, and knights, and queens, rose up at his call. He drew shape after shape, scene after scene, castle and lake, woods and lawns, monstrous anomalies and beautiful impossibilities, from the unfathomable depths of his mind; yet all of them intended to represent some shade or kind of emotion, passion, or faculty, or the things upon which these are continually operating. Some critics, while allowing the beauty of these creations, are of opinion that their very profusion, and the minuteness with which they are described, lessen their value, and give a tediousness to the whole poem. Perhaps it is fortunate for the Faery Queen, that one half of it was lost; and it might have even been improved in value by the want of a half of that which remains; for it is allowed that the strength of the work lies in the first three books.

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As a specimen of the allegorical manner of Spenser, may be given his description of that chamber of the brain which he supposes to be the residence of memory:

That chamber seemed ruinous and old,

And therefore was removed far behind ;*
Yet were the walls that did the same uphold

Right firm and strong, though somewhat they declin'd;
And therein sat an old old man, half blind,
And all decrepid in his feeble corse,

Yet lively vigour rested in his mind,
And recompensed him with a better scorce:

Weak body well is chang'd for mind's redoubled force.

This man of infinite remembrance was,

And things forgone through many ages held,

Which he recorded still as they did pass,
Nor suffer'd them to perish through long eld,
As all things else, the which this world doth weld,
But laid them up in his immortal scrine,

Where they for ever incorrupted dwell'd;
The wars he well remember'd of King Nine,
Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine.

The years of Nestor nothing were to his,
Nor yet Methusalem, though longest liv'd;
For he remember'd both their infancies:

Nor wonder, then, if that he were depriv'd
Of native strength, now that he them surviv'd.
His chamber all was hung about with rolls,

And old records from ancient times deriv'd,
Some made in books, some in long parchment scrolls,
That were all worm-eaten, and full of canker holes.

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Spenser wrote several other poems of considerable extent, and also some works in prose, the chief of which was a View of the State of Ireland, in which he endeavoured to point out a way for the settlement of that country. In consequence of the Earl of Tyrone's rebellion, which took place in 1598, he was forced to fly from his estate and seek refuge in England, where he died in penury and dejection of mind, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

SIR PHILIP SYDNEY (1554–1586,) is chiefly known as the author of an allegorical prose romance called Arcadia, which, though now held as dull and antiquated, was the favourite light reading of the court ladies in the time of Elizabeth. His verses are not of remarkable merit, though the power of writing them must have been an agreeable addition to his character as a soldier and a gentleman. Owing to his singular union of ac

* It was formerly supposed that memory lay in the hinder portion of the head.