shine in that department of literature, and hence the poets of that age were constantly receiving the smiles and occasionally the solid benefactions of royalty. The works brought forth at this period have been 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," says an observing critic, "been, as it were, suddenly created, the whole world of character, imagery, and sentiment 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. Yet it has been justly observed "that 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." "In point of real force and originality of genius," says Craik, "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 with the sixty or seventy years that elapsed from the middle of Elizabeth's reign to the period of the Restoration, for in that short period we find the names of all the very great men England has ever produced, men not merely of great talents, but of vast compass and reach of understanding, and of minds truly creative and original, not perfecting art by the delicacy of their tastes, or digesting knowledge by the justness of their reasonings, but making vast and substantial additions upon which taste and reason must hereafter be employed." The cultivation of an English style began now to be especially regarded. Roger Ascham was the first English scholar who ventured to "break the shackles of Latinity," and publish in English with a view of giving a pure and correct model of English composition. "Whoever will write well in any tongue," he quaintly observes, "must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do; using such strange words as Latin, French, and Italian, do make all things dark and hard." This learned man, university orator at Cambridge, and at one time preceptor and ultimately Latin secretary to Queen Elizabeth, was the first writer on education in our language; and many of his views on this subject are thought to be remarkable, according with the most enlightened of modern times. Living in an age when men of learning were prone to waste their talents in disputes about predestination and original sin, this wise man deserves our admiration for the better use of his acquirements. When he died, in 1568, Queen Elizabeth is said to have remarked that she "would rather have given ten thousand pounds than to have lost him," - a coarse estimate of his worth, but doubtless meant to do him honor. Ascham's writings furnished an improved example of style; yet in this era our language cannot be said to have assumed that facility and clearness, that fluency and grace, which it afterward acquired. Thomas Wilson, one of the most accomplished scholars of his time, and privy counsellor to the Queen as well as Secretary of State, thus quaintly discusses the prevailing errors in style peculiar to the time: "The fine courtier," he says, "will talk nothing but Chaucer. The mystical wisemen and poetical clerkes will speak nothing but quaint proverbs and blind allegories, delighting much in their own darkness, especially when none can tell what they do say. ... "Some will be so fine and poetical withal that to their seeming there shall not stand one hair amiss, and yet every body else shall think them meter for a ladie's chamber than for an earnest matter in an open debate. . . . Some,” he adds, “ use over-much repetition of one letter-as, pitiful poverty prayeth for a penny, but puffed presumption passeth not a point, pampering his paunch with pestilent pleasure; procuring his passport to post it to hell-pit, there to be punished with pains perpetual. "Some," he continues, "end their sentences all alike, making their talk rather to appear rhymed metre than to seem plain speech. I heard a preacher delighting much in this kind of composition, who used so often to end his sentences with words like unto that which went before, that in my judgement there was not a dozen sentences in his whole sermon but they ended all in rhyme for the most part. Some, not best disposed, wished the preacher a lute, that with his rhymed sermon he might use some pleasant melodie, and so the people might take pleasure divers ways, and dance if they list." The poets, as might be expected, ran headlong into errors for which they could plead such respectable example as the grave and learned professions. The court language was for some time during Elizabeth's reign formed on the plan of John Lyly, born in 1554,-a pedantic courtier, who wrote a book entitled "Euphues, or, The Anatomy of Wit,” which he makes to consist in the power of hatching unnatural conceits. Lyly exercised a powerful and injurious influence upon the literature of his age. Alliteration, which was now, it is said, almost as fashionable as punning, seemed in some degree to bring back English composition to the barbarous rules of the ancient Anglo-Saxons, the merit of whose poems consisted not in the ideas, but in the quaint arrangement of the words and the regular recurrence of some favorite sound or letter. However, England had now arrived at that period propitious to the growth of original and true poetry. General knowledge was increasing with a wide diffusion and rapidity. Books began to be multiplied, and a variety of the most useful and rational topics had been discussed in our own language, though it is still affirmed that the generality of the lower and many even of the middle classes remained to the end of this period almost wholly uneducated. It has been supposed that the father of Shakespeare, an alderman of Stratford, could not write his name. In the reign of Elizabeth some poetical names of importance precede that of Spenser. The first is Thomas Sackville, subsequently Earl of Dorset, and Lord High Chancellor of England, and author of "Gorboduc," the first English tragedy. In 1557 Sackville formed the design of a poem entitled "The Mirrour for Magistrates." In this poem, the scene of which, in imitation of Dante, he lays in the infernal regions, it was his design to make all the great persons of English history, from the Conquest downward, pass in review, and each tell his own tale as a warning to existing statesmen. Other duties compelled Sackville to break off the poem after he had written a portion, and to commit the completion of the work to two poets of inferior note, Richard Baldwin and George Ferrers. Baldwin and Ferrers called other writers to their aid; and as any narrative belonging to the historical or legendary annals of the nation might be inserted in the work without any regard to connection or adaptation, it became a receptacle for all the ready versifiers of the day, and has been aptly compared to "a sort of growing monument or cairn, to which every man added his stone or little separate specimen of brick and mortar, who conceived himself to have any skill in building the lofty rhyme." Yet for all its many authors it is only of note in the history of English poetry for the portions contributed by its originator. The work is considered of a remarkable kind for the age, and is thought to contain in some parts a strength of description in allegorical painting of character scarcely inferior to Spenser, whose genius was one of the peculiar glories of the romantic reign of Elizabeth. Edmund Spenser was, like Chaucer, a native of London, born about 1553. The rank of his parents is not known; he is supposed to belong to the noble and ancient family of Spenser, "who," as Gibbon happily remarks, "should consider the Faery Queen' as the most precious jewel in their coronet." Spenser took his degree in Cambridge in 1576. In 1579 he first published his "Shepherd's Calendar," dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, who afterward became his friend and patron at court, and recommended him to his uncle, the powerful Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's prime favorite. As a dependant upon Leicester and a suitor for court favor, Spenser is supposed to have experienced many reverses at this period of his life, of which comparatively little is known. These lines in "Mother Hubbard's Tale,” though not printed till 1581, evidently belong to this period. "Full little knowest thou that hast not tried To spend, to give, to wait, to be undone !" Spenser, from recently discovered documents, appears to have been employed in inferior State missions, -— a task |