Ills Billie, in the various stages of its revision. exemplifies the final crystallization of a really English style, whielt at the same time. by its wide currency, it did more than any other book to fix and render nniform.
From this period until the Renaissance had tardily begun its work in England, there was little creative or really significant work. Lyd gate and Geeleve and -James I. of Scotland (the source of whose education entitles us to include him among English poets) were content to catch the trick of Chaucer's style, and to name him and Gower as their avowed masters. Prose, however, in this as in all literatures later in its develop ment than verse, began to take shape which is worthy of more than a passing notice. Though the universal employment of Latin as the lan guage of scholars discouraged attempts to write serious English prose, yet the appeal of Wield's pamphlets and Reginald Peeock's Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy to a popular audience brought it into the controversies of the time; and in lighter literature the l'oiage and Traraile of Sir John Alaandeville showed what could be done with it. This lesson was learned by a greater master of style than the anonymous translator of that marvelous traveler's tale; the stately and beautiful, as well as natural and simple, rhythm of Malory's Morte d'Arthur, which Caxton printed in 1485, is the happiest thing in the whole of English fifteenth-century literature.
In that very year Henry VII. came to the throne, and the country, so long distracted by internecine warfare, had rest and leisure to think of intellectual culture. At last the `new learn ing' crossed the Channel and found a home in England. Grocyn and Linaere and their fellows were busy with their Greek manuscripts. Eras mus, the greatest scholar of the time, came to England, and with Colet and More discussed the great problems of Church and State in a temper of hopeful idealism. But More and Roger Ascham were under the spell of classical authority, and the latter actually apologizes for using the clumsy English tongue. They wrote for the cultivated classes: but at the same time a popular literature was growing up around the Reformation move ment, typified in the racy. idiomatic English of
Latimer's sermons. Its simple directness was partly the fruit of his acquaintance with Tyn dale and Coverdale's vigorous and happy trans lation of the Scriptures, a monument of pure Anglo-Saxon speech scarcely tinged with Latin ism. The English prayer-hook. which, like the Bible, has done much to mold the speech of later generations. was a compromise in language as in doctrines; one of the most characteristic fea tures of its style is the frequent recurrence of pairs of synonyms—'acknowledge and confess,' 'dissemble nor clokc'—to appeal alike to the lovers of the sonorous Latin and to the plain, un lettered folk.
The time was at last ripe for England to show the results of long and patient study and as similation of good models, both classical and Italian. A year before Elizabeth came to the throne, these results were put forth in the publi cation of Totters Miscellany, a collection of songs and sonnets, many of them no doubt writ ten melt earlier, and, according to the fashion if the time, circulated in manuscript until that date. The two chief contributors were Henry Howard. Earl of Surrey, who had closed a bril liant life on the block ten years before, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, who. like Chaucer, had visited France and Italy on diplomatic missions. Their matter was not so significant as their manner; their great service was the enriching of English poetry by the importation of foreign forms to relieve the monotony into which it had fallen. To Surrey it owes its most powerful and cha•ac teristic form, blank verse, and the sonnet, adapt ed by his happy intuition to the form in which Shakespeare uses it. Yet although they and Saekville showed taste and judgment in the use of their chosen tools, there was as yet little promise of I he glorious efflorescence that was to follow. Lyly's refined and elegant artificiality, which has (»tidied the language with it new word, and Sidney's charming work, which rises at times to a dignity above that of the experi ments of a highly cultivated amateur, are not enough to turn the scale.