own consent." "And this consent," they ended, "we have never given, and never will give, were we all to die in one day.' They forbade the child of any tiller of the soil to be apprenticed in a town. They prayed the king to ordain, "that no bondman or bondwoman shall place their children at school, as has been done, so as to advance their children in the world, by their going into the Church." As a protest against this class hatred, as unchristian as it was unjust, thus manifested by the owners towards the tillers of the soil, Poetry, true to her high vocation, as the spiritual teacher of humanity, proclaimed, through her immortal bard, the equality of all men in the presence of great spiritual realities. This truth, involved in the very idea of a pilgrimage, which brought together, on terms of equality, individuals of every social grade, from the knight to the plowman, lies at the very root of the "Canterbury Tales," thus proclaiming the lesson which the poet doubtless intended to enforce, namely, that human life is itself a pilgrimage to the unseen Beyond, where justice will be impartially administered alike to lord and cherl.

With this inadequate notice of their respective works, I must bid farewell to the Poet of the Dawn, and his contemporary, William Langland.

ITALY.

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO.

1474-1533.

In the history of human progress the fifteenth, with the earlier decades of the sixteenth century, constitutes an ever memorable epoch, having in Italy witnessed the Renaissance, which, due to the indefatigable labours of Italian scholars, whose enthusiastic zeal had succeeded in disinterring the master-works of classical antiquity, had given to the world new ideals, in the domain alike of poetry, philosophy, and art. This devotion to the

study of Pagan literature, which appears for a time to have exerted a demoralizing influence upon Italian society, was accompanied simultaneously by a remarkable revival of Italian literature and art. In Germany the same period gave birth to the Reformation, which, by emancipating men's minds from the thraldom of the Mediæval Church, opened to their energies a new and boundless career.

In England, meanwhile, a considerable interval elapsed before the new learning made itself felt; men's minds, in that country, being preoccupied with domestic affairs, more especially with the Wars of the Roses, and their manifold results.

Hence, before continuing our survey of English poetry, it will be necessary to return to Italy, where the poetical successors of Dante and Petrarch bear witness to the new world which had been recently opened to them by the Renaissance.

The year 1474, precisely one hundred years after the death of Petrarch, witnessed the birth of Ludovico Ariosto, Italy's third great poet, "whose 'Orlando Furioso' embodies all the characteristics of the Renaissance, which, in the previous century, had been inaugurated by his predecessor."

"The Orlando Furioso,"" it has been said, "gave full and final expression to the Cinque Cento, just as the Divina Commedia ' uttered the last word of the Middle Ages."

Revelling in the new world which had been opened to them by the discovery of the Classics, and endowed with the sensuous temperament and realistic genius of the south, the poets and artists of the Renaissance, in their recoil from the ascetic tendencies, and other deadening influences of Mediævalism, devoted themselves with passionate ardour to the worship of the Beautiful, as manifested in external form, in the perfection of which they found the realization of their ideal. The literature of the so-called Golden Age, "seems to have been produced for and by men who had lost their ethical. and political conscience, and had enthroned an æsthetical conscience in its room.' "Of this age, devoid alike of moral earnestness, political enthusiasm, and spiritual passion, Ariosto, the consummate artist, was," we are told, "the best interpreter.'

While recognizing that chivalry with its marvels and its magic, its love of peril and adventure, was a thing of the past, he received his theme from Boiardo, who, in his "Orlando Innamorato," following the Medieval romances, has recounted in verse the marvellous adventures of Charlemagne and his Paladins, in their encounters with the Moors, and wherein, in accordance with the spirit of Chivalry, the fair sex, preeminently the charming Angelica, play a conspicuous part. The story of Orlando, as left by Boiardo, was adopted by Ariosto, as a framework whereon to construct a poetical master-work, and rarely has the power of genius been more strikingly displayed than in the inexpressible charm

M

with which the ancient tales of chivalry and romance are invested by his magic touch.

With his supreme pictorial faculty, with his marvellous imaginative power, with wit and wisdom, with knowledge of men and women, and with occasional pathos, he arranges a series of tableaux vivants, which succeed each other with endless variety, and upon which the spectator gazes, as in a theatre, with never-ceasing astonishment, amusement and delight, and occasionally, it must be confessed, with feelings of a very different character.

The amazing popularity of the "Orlando Furioso," is attested by Bernardo Tasso, the father of Torquato, according to whom, "within a few weeks after its appearance, there was no one in Italy, neither learned man nor artisan, no youth, or maiden, young, or old, who had not read it through more than once; passengers in the streets, sailors in their boats, and virgins in their chambers, sung for their disport the stanzas of Ariosto."

A supreme master of his craft, Ariosto takes rank among the immortal singers, but not among the inspired teachers of the world.

TORQUATO TASSO.

1544-1595.

INDISSOLUBLY associated with Ariosto is another Italian poet, Torquato Tasso, whose career so strikingly illustrates some of the more salient features of his age, that a slight sketch of his tragic story may form a not inappropriate prelude to a brief notice of this immortal poet. He may be regarded as representing, in his writings, the later, as Ariosto had represented, under some of its aspects, the earlier, portion of the sixteenth century, and also as bearing witness to the great Catholic revival, which formed so striking a feature of the age,

and which may be viewed under a twofold aspect. As a revolt against the paganism of the Renaissance, with its flagrant licentiousness and depravity, it doubtless tended to raise the moral tone of Italian society, which, owing to a variety of causes, had become frightfully corrupt.

At the same time, true to her traditional policy, the Church, by the establishment of the Inquisition, and other agencies, aimed at paralyzing all freedom of thought, and thus placed herself in opposition to the progressive tendencies of the age.

Among the promoters of the Catholic revival, under its higher aspects, a prominent place must be assigned to San Carlo Barromeo, who, "by his life and instructions, and unwearied labours, had succeeded,” we are told, "in reviving the nearly extinguished spark of religion."1

That great prelate had established or reopened, either directly, or by his influence and authority, numerous schools and universities, thronged with students from all parts of the Christian world. Among these universities, that of Padua held the highest rank, and there, in his eighteenth year, Torquato Tasso was entered by his father, Bernardo, as a student of law.

Following, however, the bent of his genius, he devoted himself with passionate fervour to the study of philosophy, poetry, and mathematics, and during his first year's residence, having already produced an epic poem, Rinaldo," he conceived, and in part executed, the grand design of his "Gerusalemme Liberata," some cantos of which, on leaving the university, he carried with him to Ferrara.

66

One of the most remarkable features of Italian society, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, was the anxiety manifested by the princes and nobles to attract to their courts men in any way distinguished in war or in scholarship, in science, poetry, or art. Among the princely families who prided themselves upon their

1

"Life of Torquato Tasso," by Dean Milman.