And no mervaile, for little availe Were in your counsel then ; Alone, a banished man. SHE. Right well know ye that women be But feeble for to fight; No woman hede it is indede From death men many a one ; For in my mind, of all mankind, I love but you alone. The Nut Brown Maid is indeed a pearl of song, and the same may be said of many other British ballads, especially those of Scotland, of which, in general, we shall have to speak later. Their greatest importance, however, does not consist in the merit of individual pieces, but in the revival of European poetry of which they were in such large measure the instruments. The popular poetry of Germany, Scandinavia, and Spain is not inferior to that of the British Isles, but the study of these came later, and the impulse to it proceeded from Britain. The Romantic School, in so far as popular poetry was an element in it, dates from the day when the future Irish Bishop picked the torn and dirty manuscript out of the bureau in the little Shropshire town. CHAPTER X THE AGE OF THE FIRST TUDORS We have now arrived at the verge of an epochal period in English letters, when, no longer oscillating between contending forces as in the middle ages, or plunged into torpor when it ought to be going on to victory, literature presents itself as the expression of the thought and language of a united nation, and at the same time as a growing organism, continually developing new phases of activity, and augmenting simultaneously in depth and in breadth. The character of unity, indeed, had belonged to it for more than a century; but just when the amalgamation of Saxon and Norman was perfected, a blight seemed to wither the promise of their union. Enough has been said upon this subject; it need only be added that the paralysis of literary productiveness in England cannot, as in Italy, be ascribed in any degree to the enlistment of the best minds in the service of classical studies. Civil strife may be alleged as a reason, and it is certainly true that the Wars of the Roses were dynastic contests involving no principle, and powerless to fire the imagination and create impassioned feeling as war waged for freedom or even for conquest might have done. But no single cause will account for a phenomenon manifested simultaneously in almost every country in Europe, especially at a time when light was breaking in on all sides, and the arts were flourishing beyond previous example. The reawakening of lulled genius near the close of the fifteenth century is not so mysterious as its slumber; yet of the two great intellectual movements which apparently called it into being it may be said that the Renaissance was rather its nurse than its parent, and the Reformation rather its consequence than its cause. The literary Renaissance dates from Petrarch, and had consequently long preceded the revival at the end of the fifteenth century. It had, as we have seen, been rather detrimental than favourable to original power; but when original power awoke of itself, it found that the Renaissance had greatly expanded and enriched its field of operation. The English author at the end of the fifteenth century addressed a different public from that which he would have encountered at the end of the fourteenth. Although actual literary production had been sparse and unimportant in the intervening period, literature itself was more widely and highly esteemed. The idea of its being the special property of the clerical or even of the scholarly class had been given up. English prose, which no one before Mandeville's translator had written except in devotional treatises, now claimed by far the largest share of published literature. Translations were being made from all cultivated languages, and each new version begot the desire for another. Such events Henry VIII. After the portrait by Holbein in Lord Leconfield's collection at Pe.worth as the progress of Turkish conquest and the discoveries of the Spaniards and Portuguese had powerfully affected the mind of man, and engendered a thirst for information which could only be gratified by books. Just at this conjuncture the printing press came in perfect correspondence with the new order of things. All these various influences, so favourable to literature, may be summed up under the head of Renaissance, a general fermentation of the spirit, eventually carrying those of whom it took possession far beyond that exclusive veneration for the classics which had for the time contributed to repress originality of genius. The Renaissance may also not unfairly be described as one of the parents of the second potent influence which regenerated literature and made it great, the Reformation. Two widely differing strains of ancestry may be traced in the Reformation's pedigree. There were in the first place the spiritually minded, the simple and devout who remained unaffected by the flood of new light which the Renaissance was bringing in, and relied solely upon their own pious instincts. In the second place were the scholars, champions of the Renaissance in no way remarkable for piety, but whose æsthetic taste and whose critical conscience were revolted by the prevalent superstitions. RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 315 The Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum sums up the feelings of such men as perfectly as Luther's discourses sum up the feelings of the religious; and may remind us that there was a Renaissance beyond the Alps, and that if the humanists of Leo the Tenth's court preferred him to Luther, the humanists of Germany inclined the other way. Almost the perfect mean between the two extremes was held by Erasmus; and when we see how Renaissance and Reformation between them could equip that consummate man of letters, and with what a public they could provide him, we see to what a height they were capable of exalting literature. To make an Erasmus required a combination of the Italian elements then permeating cultivated society in England with the sound and sterling type APOPHTHEGMES, that is to fate,prompte,quicke,wittie And not translated into Excufum typis Ricardi Grafton. 1542. Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum folum. of her ancient character. English scholars visited Italy, some, like Pace, sent expressly by patrons for the purpose of study. The libraries of newly founded colleges were enriched with books and manuscripts imported from Italy. Italian secretaries were becoming indispensable to sovereigns. Italian sculptors and artists were remedying the backward state of the arts in a country where the mediæval style had gone out and the Renaissance had not come in. Italian merchants flourished in London, and Italian ecclesiastics bereft the natives of bishoprics and benefices. Distinguished men of letters, like Polydore Vergil and Carmelianus, found themselves at home in a country where the Italian language was studied, Italian books were read and sometimes translated, and even Italian writing masters were imported to Title-page of Erasmus' "Apophthegmes," 1542 regenerate the national handwriting. Had the English character possessed less native vigour Italy might have dominated her literature as completely as France now dominat s that of the other Latin peoples, but while willing to be instructed the national mind refused to be subjugated. The most perfect instance to be found of the combination of the two types, the exemplar at the same time of the new Englishman and the true Englishman, is Sir THOMAS MORE, the enthusiast for Pico della Mirandola, whose life he wrote, the friend of Erasmus, and, save when religious differences interfered, of every good and intellectual man with whom it was possible for him to come into contact. It further happens that the book upon which his literary reputation rests is, though originally written in Latin, the truest representative of the better English mind of its day. It is needless to enter at any great length into a history so well known as Sir Thomas More's. Born in 1478, educated in the household of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of |