THE

CHAPTER I

INTELLECTUAL CONFLICT IN EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY: THE PAPACY, THE EMPIRE, AND THE NATION: CATHOLICISM AND CHIVALRY : THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION.

I HAVE said that the purpose of this History is to trace the course of our Poetry rather by the stream of the national thought and imagination than by that of the national language, and this involves a constant reference to the state of morals and politics in Europe at large. However the nations of Europe may have diverged from each other in idiom of speech, character, and institution, there is not one of them whose genius can be judged, like that of the states of ancient Greece, as if it were the product of an inward, self-developed, energy. They are bound together by instincts derived from primeval affinities of race; by the traditions of a common religion, which has supplanted their original heathenism; by their joint inheritance of more ancient civilisations. And therefore, though the history of English Poetry furnishes a clear mirror of the intellectual growth of the nation, this progress is to be regarded, not from a mere insular point of view, exhibiting the march of the Anglo-Saxon, or any other single element in the constitution of the people, but rather in its European aspect, which shows us the gradual blending of many opposing spiritual forces into the organic conscience that now directs our national life.

We have reached a point in the history of our poetry at which it becomes necessary to dwell with emphasis on

VOL. II

B