and his native language. His versification differs very considerably from that of his predecessors. He introduced a sort of involution into his style, which gives an air of dignity and remoteness from common life. It was, in fact, borrowed from the license of Italian poetry, which

our own idiom has rejected.

He avoids pedantic words, forcibly ob

were first collected

truded from the Latin, of which our earlier poets, both English and Scots, had been ridiculously fond. The absurd epithets of Hoccleve, Lydgate, Dunbar, and Douglas are applied equally to the most different things, so as to show that they annexed no meaning to them. Surrey rarely lays an unnatural stress on final syllables, merely as such, which they would not receive in ordinary pronunciation - another usual trick of the school of Chaucer. His words are well chosen and well arranged." Wyatt is inferior to Surrey in harmony of numbers and elegance of sentiment. Their "Songs and Sonnettes' and printed at London by Tottel, in 1557, in his Miscellany, which was the first printed poetical miscellany in the English language. § 8. I cannot better conclude this transitional or intercalary chapter than by making a few remarks on a peculiar class of compositions in which England is unusually rich, which are marked with an intense impress of nationality, and which have exerted, on modern literature in particular, an influence whose extent it is impossible to overrate. These are our national Ballads, produced, it is probable, in great abundance during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and in many instances traceable to the "North Countrée," or the Border region between England and Scotland. This country, as the scene of incessant forays from both sides of the frontier during the uninterrupted warfare between the two countries, was naturally the theatre of a mul

of in the admirable romances which commemorate the long struggle strains of indigenous minstrels. No country indeed (excepting Spain, between the Christians and the Moors, and the collection containing the cycle of the Cid) possesses anything similar in kind or comparable in merit to the old ballads of England. They bear the marks of having been composed, somewhat like the Rhapsodies of the old Ionian bards from which the mysterious personality whom we call Homer derived at once his materials and his inspiration, by rude wandering minstrels. Such men-probably often blind or otherwise incapacitated from taking part in active life-gained their bread by singing or repeating them. These poets and narrators were a very different class from the wandering troubadours or jongleurs of Southern Europe and of France; and living in a country much ruder and less chivalric, though certainly not less warlike than Languedoc or Provence, their compositions are inimitable for simple pathos, fiery intensity of feeling, and picturesqueness of description. In every country there must exist some typical or national form of versification, adapted to the genius of the language and to the mode of declamation or musical accompaniment generally employed for assisting the effect. Thus the legendary poetry of the Greeks naturally took the form of the Homeric hexam

eter, and that of the Spaniards the loose asonante versification, as in the ballads of the Cid, so well adapted to the accompaniment of the guitar. The English ballads, almost without exception, affect the iambic measure of twelve or fourteen syllables, rhyming in couplets, which, however, naturally divide themselves, by means of the cæsura or pause, into stanzas of four lines, the rhymes generally occurring at the end of the second and fourth verses. This form of metre is found predominating throughout all these interesting relics; and was itself, in all probability, a relic of the old long unrhymed alliterative measure, examples of which may be seen in the Lay of Gamelyn, or in the more recent Vision of Piers Plowman. The breaking up of the long lines into short hemistichs, to which I have just alluded, may have been originally nothing but a means for facilitating the copying of the lines into a page too narrow to admit them at full length: and the readiness with which these lines divide themselves into such hemistichs may be observed by a comparison with the long metre of the old German Nibelungen Lied, each two lines of which can be easily broken up into a stanza of four, the rhymes being then confined, as in the English ballads, to the second and fourth lines.

Written or composed by obscure and often illiterate poets, these productions were frequently handed down only by tradition from generation to generation: it is to the taste and curiosity, perhaps only to the family pride, of collectors, that we owe the accident by which some of them were copied and preserved; the few that were ever printed, being destined for circulation only among the poorest class, were confided to the meanest typography and to flying sheets, or broadsides, as they are termed by collectors. Vast numbers of them perhaps not inferior to the finest that have been preserved - have perished forever. The first considerable collection of these ballads was published, with most agreeable and valuable notes, by Bishop THOMAS PERCY, in 1765, and it is to his example that we owe, not only the preservation of these invaluble relics, but the immense revolution produced, by their study and imitation, in the literature of the present century. It is no exaggeration to say that the old English ballads had the greatest share in bringing about that immense change in taste and feeling which characterizes the revival of romantic poetry; and that the relics of the rude old mosstrooping rhapsodists of the Border, in a great measure, generated the admirable inspirations of Walter Scott. Constructed, like the Homeric rhapsodies or the Romances of Spain, upon a certain regular model, these ballads, like the productions just mentioned, abound in certain regularly recurring passages, turns of expression and epithets: these must be regarded as the mechanical or received aids to the composer in his task; but these commonplaces are incessantly enlivened by some stroke of picturesque description, some vivid painting of natural objects, some burst of simple heroism, or some touch of pathos. Among the oldest and finest of these works I may cite "the grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, the Battle of Otterburne, Chevy Chase, the Death of Douglas, all commemorating some battle, foray, or military exploit

- source.

of the Border. The class of which the above are striking specimens, bear evident marks, in their subjects and the dialect in which they are composed, of a Northern, Scottish, or at least Border origin: it would be unjust not to mention that there exist large numbers, and those often of no inferior merit, which are distinctly traceable to an English meaning a South British To this class will belong the immense cycle or collection of ballads describing the adventures of the famous outlaw Robin Hood, and his "merry men." This legendary personage is described in such a multitude of episodes, that he must be considered a sort of national type of English character. Whether Robin Hood ever actually existed, or whether, like William Tell, he be merely a popular myth, is a question that perhaps no research will ever succeed in deciding: but the numerous ballads recounting his exploits form a most beautiful and valuable repertory of national tradition and national traits of character. In the last-mentioned class of ballads, viz. those of purely English origin, the curious investigator will trace the resistance opposed by the oppressed class of yeomen to the tyranny of Norman feudalism; and this point has been turned to admirable account by Walter Scott in his romance of Ivanhoe, in those exquisitely delineated scenes of which Robin Hood, under the name of the outlaw Locksley, is the hero. In these compositions we see manifest traces of the rough, vigorous spirit of popular, as contradistinguished from aristocratic, feeling. They commemorate the hostility of the English people against their Norman tyrants: and the bold and joyous sentiment which prevails in them is strongly contrasted with the lofty and exclusive tone pervading the Trouvère legends.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

A.-MINOR POETS.

From the death of Chaucer there is a dreary blank In the history of English poetry. The first writer who deserves mention is

THOMAS OCCLEVE (fl. 1420), a lawyer in the reign of Henry V. But he hardly deserves the name of a poet, as his verses are feeble and stupid. Very few of his poems have been printed.

JOHN LYDGATE (fl. 1430) is a writer of greater merit. He was a monk of Bury, in Suffolk; he travelled into France and Italy, and was well acquainted with the literature of both countries. He wrote a large number of poems, of which one of the most celebrated is a translation of Boccaccio's Fall of Princes, which he describes as a series of Tragedies. His two other larger works are, the Story of Thebes translated from Statius, and the History of the Siege of Troy. Gray formed a high opinion of his poetical powers. "I pretend not," he says, "to set him on a level with Chaucer, but he certainly comes the nearest to him of any contemporary writer I am acquainted with. His choice of expression, and the smoothness of his verse, far surpass

both Gower and Occleve. He wanted not art in raising the more tender emotions of the mind."

JOHN HARDING (fl. 1470) wrote in verse a Chronicle of England, coming down to the reign of Edward IV., to whom he dedicated the work. The poetry is wretched, and deserves only the attention of the antiquary.

THE SCOTTISH POETRY occupies a higher place than the English in the fifteenth and the first half ofthe sixteenth centuries. BARBOUR and WYNTON belong to the fourteenth century, and are spoken of in the Notes and Illustrations to the preceding chapter (p. 55). They are followed by JAMES I., DUNBAR, GAWIN DOUGLAS, HENRYSON, and BLIND HARRY, mentioned in the text (pp. 60, 61). To these should be added SIR DAVID LYNDSAY (1490-1557), the Lyon King at Arms, and the friend and companion of James V. His poems are said to have contributed to the Reformation in Scotland. In his satires he attacked the clergy with great severity. "But in the ordinary style of his versification he seems not to rise much above the prosaic and tedious rhymers of the fifteenth century. His

CHAPTER IV.

THE ELIZABETHAN POETS (INCLUDING THE REIGN OF JAMES I.). A. D. 1558-1625.

§ 1. Characteristics of the Elizabethan age of Literature. § 2. The less known writers of this period: GASCOIGNE; TURBERVILLE; THOMAS SACKVILLE, Lord Buckhurst. § 3. EDMUND SPENSER: his personal history; the Shepherd's Calendar; his friendship with Harvey and Sidney; favored by Leicester and Elizabeth; disappointments at court; residence in Ireland; misfortunes, and death. § 4. Analysis and criticism of the Faery Queen: brilliancy of imagination; defects of plan; allusions to persons and events. § 5. Detailed analysis of the Second Book, or the Legend of Temperance. § 6. Versifica, tion of the poem; adaptation of the language in the metre; Spenser's boldness in dealing with English. § 7. Character of Spenser's genius: his minor works. 8. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: his accomplishments and heroic death: his Sonnets, Arcadia, and Defence of Poesy. §9. Other leading Poets of the age: — (i.) DANIEL; (ii.) DRAYTON; (iii.) SIR JOHN DAVIES; (iv.) JOHN DONNE; (v.) BISHOP HALL; English Satire. § 10. Minor Poets: PHINEAS and GILES FLETCHER; CHURCHYARD; the Jesuit SOUTHWELL; FAIRFAX, the translator of Tasso.

§ 1. THE Age of Elizabeth is characterized by features which cause it to stand alone in the literary history of the world. It was a period of sudden emancipation of thought, of immense fertility and originality, and of high and generally diffused intellectual cultivation. The language, thanks to the various causes indicated in the preceding chapters, had reached its highest perfection; the study and the imitation of ancient or foreign models had furnished a vast store of materials, images and literary forms, which had not yet had time to become commonplace and overworn. The poets and prose writers of this age, therefore, united the freshness and vigor of youth with the regularity and majesty of manhood; and nothing can better demonstrate the intellectual activity of the epoch than the number of excellent works which have become obsolete in the present day, solely from their merits having been eclipsed by the glories of a few incomparable names, as those of Spenser in romantic and of Shakspeare in dramatic poetry. It will be my task to give a rapid sketch of some of the great works thus "darkened with the excess of light."

§ 2. The first name is that of GEORGE GASCOIGNE (1530-1577), who, as one of the founders of the great English school of the drama, as a satirist, as a narrative and as a lyric poet, enjoyed a high popularity for art and genius. His most important production, in point of length, is a species of moral or satiric declamation entitled the Steel Glass, in which he inveighs against the vices and follies of his time. It is written in blank verse, and is one of the earliest examples of that kind