HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

DURING THE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD.

CHAPTER I.-INTRODUCTION.

THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.

DANTE, b. 1265, d. 1321; PETRARCA, Francesco, b. 1304, d. 1374; BOCCACCIO, Giovanni, b. 1313, d. 1375.

THERE was a deep and spiritual significance for the medieval mind in the story of Faust. In order to enjoy the world, to taste of its experience, Faust sells his soul to the devil; he gives way to those cravings, the satisfaction of which, according to mediæval belief, must make him the victim of the powers of evil. The legend, the story of his desires, of his temptation and his fall, is truly typical of the struggle that went on in the minds that hovered on the brink of that great movement of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,- -a movement which is often too exclusively, too narrowly, called the Renaissance, embracing as it does that twofold revolt against the authority of the Church and the intellectual despotism of the Schoolmen, the latter specially aided and characterised by the revival of the classics. The later mediæval mind had in it the germs of revolt against the narrowed life of the Middle Ages; against the ascetic theory that earthly life was but a pilgrimage, that here on earth there was nothing but misery, suffering, and sacrifice in order to reach the heavenly life and gain the heavenly crown, the one object of human effort; that the cravings for earthly knowledge, earthly enjoyment, were a deadly sin. But for long the ascetic theory remained powerful, and the legend told the story of the man, who, seeking to satisfy his earthly desires, was eternally lost.

Of the great movement, of which the legend contains an early indication, there can be no adequate comprehension, unless

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we accept that view which regards it as a necessary phase, and one of the most important phases, in the growth of the social organism; we must look upon it as something external to the great men who mark it by their names, as not produced by, but as productive of men such as Dante, Luther, Petrarch, and Erasmus it was not the result but the cause of the discovery of the New World, of America in 1492, of the Cape of Good Hope in 1497, of the outburst of science, of the Copernican discoveries of the solar system in 1507. Hegel's theory of a worldspirit, Comte's of the historic growth of the civilised world through ordered successive stages, Spencer's of the evolution of the social organism, are all but various expressions of the great truth that the history of society is the history of a natural ordered growth; that there is a continuity in all the phases of our politics, of our literature, of our social life; that each phase is vitally dependent upon the other; that what we are apt to consider as causes, as decisive changes, are but incidents in a movement larger than themselves. The history of the Renaissance is "the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in the European races;" it resulted in what Michelet calls "the discovery of the world and of man;" it gave the impulse alike to science and to art; it made the Middle Ages seem dark and dreary in comparison to its brilliant life.

It is with the Middle Ages that our modern European civilisation begins, with the fall of the Roman Empire, or rather with the absorption into the Roman Empire of the new fresh force of barbarism. To civilise the strong barbaric individuality, to make it capable of realising the social tie, was the problem to be solved by earlier mediæval Europe; and the solution of this problem is found in the history of the growth of the human mind, politically and intellectually, and in the influences which acted on it during these periods. Barbarism had to undergo a severe discipline, and it was the great institution of the Middle Ages, the Church, which administered the discipline. It was the Church and its offspring, monasticism, which taught the allimportance of those qualities of self-denial, of self-sacrifice, of unselfishness, which are the foundations of social union; the recognition of which is the first principle essential to common action, to that co-operation necessary to a great nation. During the Middle Ages, the Church and monasticism inculcated these principles, emphasizing them by the doctrine of contempt of self and contempt of the world, by encouraging only those yearnings

and aspirations after an infinite and eternal life beyond the grave. These are the ages which have always been called Dark, because during them no apparent advance was made either intellectually or politically; and because the sense of the social tie, of duty and relationship to others, could only be made an instinct by means of a severe discipline, which, representing self-denial and selfrepression as the individual's best interest, checked all enterprise and originality. "Man's life is a struggle, and heroism the only excellence," was the strongest and highest sentiment of the Teuton barbarian; and Christianity taught him that heroism was the one excellence, because it showed scorn of suffering and struggle here on earth in order to win a heavenly crown. But the races of Europe, in receiving this discipline, which resulted at first in such a barren life, made the first step towards a civilisation grounded on a wider basis; they made the first step towards reconciling that problem, the great one both of individual and national life; they acquired the instincts necessary to the perfect social life; it remained to be seen whether they would ever develop those of the perfect individual life. The spirit of the Renaissance was the imprisoned spirit of humanity rebelling against the fetters that mediæval life had forged for it.

The results of its rebellion, the Reformation in religion, the Renaissance in literature, mark the downfall of the institutions of the Middle Ages, the climax of the revolt that had been gradually growing against the authority of the Church and the intellectual despotism of the Schoolmen, the substitution of classic, sometimes of pagan ideals for those of monasticism and asceticism, the reaction in favour of that free individual life which had been held in such check during the Middle Ages. Man may now enjoy life without fear that the Evil One shall possess his soul.

First and foremost in this movement stands Italy,—first, because chronologically she was the earliest to attain to that belief in the dignity of man, in the indivisibility of the human race, and to that reverence for classic culture and classic ideals which is so distinctive of the Renaissance of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and secondly, she is foremost, because in her these characteristics were developed to their fullest and greatest extent; and because her political condition rendering her cosmopolitan instead of patriotic, she considered herself as bound to spread the truth abroad through Europe-she considered that she had a proselytising mission of culture and of art. Thus Italy is important to us, from the secondary point of view, as influencing

England. Between 1320 and the beginning of the sixteenth century, we can study clearly in Italy the characteristics of the great movement. We find there "the highest expression of belief in man as a rational being apart from theological determinations, which, together with a profound belief in and reverence for the classics, constitutes the essence of humanism." "Then the Supreme Maker," wrote Pico della Mirandola, "decreed that unto man, on whom He could bestow nought singular, should belong in common whatsoever had been given to His other creatures. Therefore He took man, made in His own individual image, and having placed him in the centre of the world, spake to him thus: 'Neither a fixed abode, nor a form in thine own likeness, nor any gift peculiar to thyself alone, have we given thee, O Adam, in order that what abode, what likeness, what gifts thou shalt choose, may be thine to have and to possess. The nature allotted to all other creatures, within laws appointed by ourselves, restrains them. Thou, restrained by no narrow bounds, according to thy own free will, in whose power I have placed thee, shalt define thy nature for thyself. I have set thee midmost the world, that thence thou mightst more conveniently survey whatsoever is in the world. Nor have we made thee either heavenly or earthly, mortal or immortal, to the end that thou being, as it were, thy own free maker and moulder, shouldst fashion thyself in what form may like thee best. Thou shalt have power to decline unto the lower or brute creatures. shalt have power to be reborn unto the higher or divine, according to the sentence of thy intellect.' Thus to man, at his birth, the Father gave seeds of all variety and germs of every form of life."

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And we find, too, that in Italy the reverence and affection for the classic Past rose almost into a passion: it was not merely a literary reverence-it was a feeling influencing political and moral judgment. It was thought that in the Greeks humanity was seen at its perfection. Pius II. gave amnesty to the citizens of Aretino because they were fellow-citizens of Cicero; Leonardo Bruni writes: "The Greeks far excel us in humanity and gentleness of spirit." In knowledge of the classics, in culture, lay the highest life. Only through study and learning was it possible to bridge over the gulf between the ancient and the modern world; only through them could one commune with the great spirits and souls of antiquity; only in culture could be sought immortality; only in bringing forth a work which should influence posterity could be gained that eternity of life denied to

the individual soul. Sappho's lines to an illiterate and uncultivated friend might have been spoken by the men of the Renaissance to those outside the pale of culture :—

"So, thou shalt die

And lie

Dnmb in the silent tomb:

Nor of thy name

Shall there be any fame

In ages yet to be or years to come :

For of the rose

That on Pieria blows

Thou hast no share ;

But in sad Hades' house,

Unknown, inglorious,

'Mid the dim shades that wander there,

Shalt thou flit forth and haunt the filmy air."

Of the highest and most spiritual aspect of the Renaissance Petrarch is the grandest representative. Dante stood, as it were, midway between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: he had the strong individuality, the command over form which belonged to the men of the time of revival, but he had also the deep religious sense, the mystic yearnings of the Middle Ages. "In Petrarch scholarship and culture appeared as the divine teachers, the evangelists of mankind:" they taught that the aim of life was self-expression-self-expression in its most complete, beautiful, and harmonious form. With Petrarch love of form was indeed a passion: before he could understand Latin he was accustomed to repeat to himself the orations of Cicero, delighting in their majestic march and rounded periods, though the sense was hidden to him. But yet at the same time the man who wishes to express his thoughts in most beautiful form, must, according to Petrarch, live the best sort of life: he must live so that it comes naturally to him to express the highest thoughts and the highest emotions. Upon the purity of his enthusiasm, the sincerity of his inspiration, depended the future well-being of the world for which he laboured. Thus for one man at least the art of letters was a priesthood, and the earnestness of his vocation made him fit to be a master of succeeding ages.' But succeeding ages in Italy could not show another man who, like Petrarch, spiritualised the cult of letters, making them a power over life, taking the place of religion. Petrarch had indeed none of those mystic religious yearnings towards the Infinite which distinguished the Middle Ages; but he was ideally and spiritually minded, and he rendered spiritual and ideal, the studies that the medieval mind considered hopelessly mundane and finite.