NON-DRAMATIC POETRY.
Elizabethan poetry is the product of the Renaissance,— the flowering of the English stock under the fertilizing power of European thought. English literature at all points—in Alfred's time, in Eliza beth's, in the 18th and 19th centures, — has owed its great moments to foreign inspiration, but this is true of no age so conspicuously as of the Elizabethan. The period is short, if it be measured strictly by Elizabeth's reign, 1558 1603; and even if the limits be broadened to include Wyatt and Surrey at the beginning and all of Shakespeare's work at the end, it is still but narrow room for the development of the crude religious play into the drama of Shakespeare and Jonson, — of the clumsy son nets of Wyatt into the great sequences of Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare,— of the stiff Tudor music into the noble harmonies of the madrigals and the sweet melodies of the airs.
Perhaps because of this swiftness of devel opment, the age illustrates with unusual clear ness the transference of life to books. The rush of genius draws into its vortex most of the experience about it; Spenser's friends enter the (FaErie Queene' unchanged, and in spite of the allegory, undisguised; Sidney's passion takes over the incidents of his wooing with an immediateness that the occasional bookishness of his inspiration cannot smother; history, scarce made, is subject for aplay; the gossip of a shipwreck becomes the
In this swift drawing-in of Continental Ren aissance thought with English history and char acter, the age is set off by three great names Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton — for though Milton stands well outside the Elizabethan period, he is the last term in its development. The apparent remoteness of Spenser, his un English quality, is due probably to the fact that he is nearest to the great wave; he takes over a larger quantity of unnaturalized material; he represents the early school of wholesale colo nizers of Italian thought on English soil. Yet
he takes over into his writings quite as much of English kfe, even of English incident, and quite as much of English character, as Shakes peare. The great dramatist, at first glance so natural, so near to his race, so untouched by the tyranny of books, is indeed all these things, yet his imagination starts always in some for eign suggestion. Aside from the different scale of genius, he is as English as Spenser— no more so; but he represents a more complete blend of the foreign themes with the native mind. So Milton also, heir to the assimilated learning of the Renaissance—to humanism, yet draws on the most English sources of life — English experience, English character, English landscape. These three poets illustrate the Elizabethan age in that thcy are typically in dividual, typically English, and typically chil dren of the Renaissance mind.
It is usual to take as the beginning of Eliz abethan poetry the book in which the Eliza bethans themselves saw the herald of their day —