INTRODUCTION

When a writer offers a new work on an old subject, the scholarly public rightly demands both fresh handling of the old material and fresh material itself. True as this is as a general proposition, it is still more applicable in the case of Early Tudor literature, because here the subject itself is usually considered to lack interest. 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

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 admittedly 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 Shakespeare, 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 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

art.

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. Arbuthnot is definitely Augustan, or as In Memoriam is definitely MidVictorian. 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 manner. 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 innovator 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 Augustan 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. Brunetière explains it by applying the Darwinian doctrine of natural selection. But what is the survival 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.

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 language 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 education, 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 expression. Verse forms, such as the rime-royal, the sonnet, the rondeau, 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 rimeroyal and the ottava rima 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