there were almost continuous wars for a century and a half, and even in times of peace there were terrible persecutions and massacres. Even to-day, three centuries since Luther, the western world is sharply divided into Protestants and Catholics. William Tyndale. In England one man should be remembered for his great services both to the Reformation and to our literature. William Tyndale was a student at Oxford and Cambridge, well trained in Greek and in the ideas of the humanists. As a priest in the church, however, he found himself bitterly opposed by many, and he resolved to aid the cause of reform by an English translation of the New Testament. To one of his clerical opponents he declared, "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the scripture than thou dost." England proved hostile to his purpose, and he went to Germany, visited Luther, and in 1525 completed his translation. Until his martyrdom, in 1536, Tyndale remained in Germany or the Netherlands, working on a translation of the Old Testament, and writing many books on the Protestant side. His controversy with Sir Thomas More resulted in a number of pamphlets by both men which make the most important literary presentation of the great debate in English.

The English Bible. In his original works Tyndale wrote in a direct, forcible style and showed himself one of the first masters of English prose, but his great monument was his New Testament. Its general character as well as many specific phrases and passages are preserved in the familiar authorized version made nearly a century later. The wonderful simplicity and dignity of the King James version are in no small measure due to Tyndale. His translation, and others which shortly followed, made the Bible a part of English literature and familiar to all classes of readers.

Henry VIII and the Church of England. Henry VIII won from the Pope the title of "defender of the faith" because of a pamphlet which he himself wrote against Luther; but

within a few years this monarch had become the great foe of Rome. Two acts of his reign brought England to the Protestant side; the establishment of himself instead of the Pope as the head of the English church, and the dissolution of the monasteries. The great wealth in buildings and estates held by the religious orders was confiscated, and the endowments changed to secular purposes. The controversy over the relations between church and state was thus settled by the king. No one dared to oppose him, and under his rule there was little chance for public discussion of the questions which were greatly stirring the nation. Nor in the next two reigns was there any opportunity for literature to express ideas fully. The reign of Edward VI was brief and Protestant, that of Mary brief and Catholic; and in neither reign was much mercy shown to the other side.

Foxe's Book of Martyrs. A characteristic product of these religious changes was the great compilation, Acts and Monuments, usually known as the Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe. · This huge work described, often in lurid terms and with much violent language directed against his religious opponents, the sufferings and deaths of the martyrs of the church from the earliest times to the reign of Mary. It was the later martyrdoms that made the deepest impression, and the book has been second only to the Bible in the training of young Puritans down almost to our own day.

LITERATURE, 1500-1557

Wyatt and Surrey. It was to the Italian Renaissance rather than to the Protestant Reformation that the poets turned for inspiration. The Italian form of the sonnet was introduced into English verse by Sir Thomas Wyatt and used by the Earl of Surrey, who also in his translation of the Eneid wrote the first English blank verse (iambic pentameter). These two poets were noblemen of high rank who led adventurous lives

and played large parts in the troubled affairs of the time, yet they succeeded in writing English verse with an ease and grace unknown since Chaucer. "Wyatt and Surrey," wrote a critic later in the century, "were novices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, and greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie." Sir Philip Sidney called them" the two chief lanterns of light to all others that have since employed their pens upon English poesie." Their poems and those of some other writers were collected long after their deaths and published in a volume, Tottel's Miscellany, in 1557. This volume, which went through many editions, is one of the landmarks in the history of English literature, not so much because it gives us the work of these pioneers, Wyatt and Surrey, as because it marks the opening of the great Elizabethan period, when English poetry became the chief glory of a glorious epoch.

Moralities and Farces. The changes that were taking place in England from the accession of Henry VII to the accession of Elizabeth are perhaps better reflected in the drama than in any other form of literature. Miracle plays were already growing less frequent at the beginning of this period, and they had virtually disappeared at its close. The prevailing form of drama was the morality. The best play of this type, Everyman, preaches an old lesson with impressive solemnity. The hero facing death finds that his earlier companions, Friendship, Kindred, and Riches, are useless and that he needs the aid of Good Works, Repentance, and Mercy. These plays, as we have seen, soon supplemented their moral themes by comic episodes; and the "Vice," or clown, became their principal personage. In the work of John Heywood the comic incidents were made into plays by themselves; and in his farces, John, Tib, and Sir John, The Four P's, and The Pardoner and the Friar, we have the first English plays that were neither miracles nor moralities, and which sought to amuse rather than to instruct.

Varieties of the Morality. The moralities were also giving up the effort to present a general allegory of life, and substituting a sort of biography based on the story of the prodigal son, or a pedagogical lesson on the superiority of wisdom to ignorance. In one play Ignorance appears as a schoolboy inaking hard work of his spelling lesson. Almost any theme could be adapted to the scheme of the morality, and the Protestant controversy soon found a place on the stage. In one of these controversial plays, King John, by Bishop Bale, that worthy is presented as a Protestant hero. The play, because it gives historical scenes and persons as well as personified abstractions, is often styled the first English historical play.

Interludes. The form and the method of presentation were changing as well as the content of the plays. The earliest moralities were very long and were acted out of doors by amateurs, after the fashion of the miracles. But with the Tudors, professional actors appear with growing frequency. They are attached to courts or to the households of the great nobles, but they are also permitted to travel about giving plays wherever they find it profitable. Plays are also found valuable as a means of education and are given at school or university. The court undertakes all sorts of dramatic entertainments, and employs choir boys as well as professionals. As plays increase in variety and popularity, there are many kinds of presentation, but the main demand is for a short play that can be presented by a few actors and can be given almost anywhere. The usual theater is either a hall or an innyard, and the usual stage a simple platform. The term "interlude " is synonymous with play or drama, but it is generally applied to these short plays, whatever their contents, which are suited to this simple representation.

Comedy and Tragedy. Many of these interludes, whether morality or farce, and whether played at school or court or elsewhere, were imitated more or less from the plays prevalent in the Netherlands, France, or Italy. Latin plays were also