atmosphere with which he invested his dramas aided to bring out their beauty, while the novelle on which he based his plots set free his imagination.

The Italian influence in English literature was thus twofold. On the one hand, it taught the value and beauty of artistic form in poetry, and introduced new poetic models; on the other, it gave, so to speak, the raw material from which the Elizabethan dramatists drew the subject-matter of their inspiration. At the same time it offered a model for the novel and the epic, and the critical criteria for the judgment of literature. The first two influences were romantic; the influence of the Italian humanists, on the other hand, was classical. While this influence was paramount in criticism, it yet failed to attain any results in poetry and the drama, the desultory attempts made to introduce it in England proving sterile. The romantic influences, however, did not fetter the originality of English poetry; the models of Petrarch and Ariosto breathed new life into it, while the tales of Boccaccio and his followers stirred the imagination of Elizabethan dramatists.

APPENDIX A

ENGLISH CATHOLICS IN ROME

PERHAPS the most permanent and binding chain, which from the earliest times familiarized Italy with England, was the constant stream of pilgrims journeying to and from Rome. These pilgrimages had already begun long before the Conquest and had continued through the Middle Ages. In the fourteenth century one John Shepherd, a London merchant, established a hospital in Rome for English pilgrims and travellers. So early as 727, King Ina had founded a hospice for Saxon pilgrims beyond the Tiber. The English records of these early days are either lacking or scanty. Some information can be obtained, however, from a partial register of the pilgrims written in the first years of the sixteenth century.' The guests then received were of two kinds, -noblemen (nobiles) so called, who paid for their board, and poor people (pauperes) who were lodged free. The names and occupations of the guests were in each case given ; thus John Vaughan, priest, John Williams, knight, Thomas Halsey, student at Bologna, show the general nature of the lodgers. Most of them were designated either as scholars or priests; but others lodged there as well, even the ambassadors sent by Henry the Seventh 1 Liber Primus Instrumentorum, English College, Rome.

to the Vatican, Edward Scot and John Alen, the first of whom died of fever in the hospital. In one year, 1505, fifty-five persons were registered as "nobles." Among the poor were the names of an occasional Oxford student, of sailors, and again of a dozen Welshmen, together with a pilgrimage of priests from Norfolk and Suffolk. In all over two hundred pilgrims went there in a single year. Women, also, were among the pilgrims, such names occurring as Juliana Lutt of London, and Elizabeth Welles, a widow, of Norwich. This constant intercourse with Rome which had always existed must have spread a knowledge of Italy among Englishmen; the first English accounts of travel in Italy were certainly written by just such pilgrims.

Although it would be outside the province of this study to sketch even hastily the development of the English Reformation, at the same time certain of its effects must be alluded to among the connecting links between England and Italy. With the growth of Protestantism pious English Catholics began more and more to take refuge in the latter country. While this was not so much the case in the first half of the sixteenth century, when strong hopes were entertained that there might be a return to Rome, after these had vanished with the death of Mary, the movement became an important one, and numbers of Englishmen found new homes on the banks of the Tiber and elsewhere in Italy. At the same time the beginnings of the movement may be found in the period now treated. It will only be necessary to mention very briefly cer

tain of the English Catholics of this time who resided in Italy, chiefly on account of their religious convictions. They form, as it were, the nucleus around which the Italian influences surrounding them could take action. Without ever ceasing to be Englishmen, many of them yet show to a marked degree the effect of their environment. John Clerke was an example of this; after graduating at Oxford, he travelled in Italy and lived there for many years, writing books on theology, several of which were in Italian; he openly professed his preference for its literature to the Greek and Roman. George Lily, the son of the grammarian, was another one who lived in Rome, where he became noted for his erudition, and was protected by Cardinal Pole. Still a third was Ellis Heywood, brother of the poet, who, after graduating at All Souls, travelled in Italy, where he was received in the household of Reginald Pole, and was appointed by him one of his secretaries; later in life he became a Jesuit. He also wrote in very good Italian two dialogues1 purporting to be Sir Thomas More's conversations with certain learned men of his time on virtue and love, the great Renaissance topics of discussion. The locality selected was the garden of More's country-house near London, in accordance with the Italian fashion of laying the scenes of conversation in the open air. Apart from this, however, there was little truly English about the book which might as well have been written by some Italian.

1 Il Moro d' Heliseo Hevodo Inglese, Florence, 1556.

Both Lily and Heywood centre around the greater commanding figure of Cardinal Reginald Pole. It was he who, during the period when England was drifting away from Rome, stood for the highest type of English Catholic churchman, and, more than any one else, maintained in Italy the dignity of England. In himself he formed one of the great links between the two countries. A connection of the royal family, he had first studied at Oxford under Linacre and Latimer, and had graduated at Magdalen. In 1521 he was sent by the king to Padua, then known as Helladis Hellas, to continue his studies; while there he made friends with some of the great scholars of the time, Leonicus and Longolius, through whom he became acquainted with Bembo. He met there, as well, Thomas Lupset, who had gone to study in Italy by the advice of Vives, the Spanish humanist, and two men who were to be his lifelong friends, Ludovico Priuli, a young Venetian nobleman, and Gaspar Contarini, who later became cardinal. At Padua, Pole entertained considerably, and on account of his royal kinship much attention was paid him by the authorities. His interest in learning he maintained through life; the scholar Longolius, who died in his house, left him his library. When Pole returned to Padua ten years later, he took into his household Lazzaro Buonamici, a well-known classical scholar, to study once more Greek and Latin. But Pole, in spite of his interest in humanism and learning, unlike his Italian friends, cared nothing for literary fame. His one aim and object in life, to which he