to ascribe to lawyers the merit of having first polished and adorned the English tongue. It surely was not due to the poetical genius of Lydgate, whose "Siege of Troy," written at the command of Henry V., when still Prince of Wales, is most verbose and diffuse, and could hardly earn for its author the praise bestowed upon him by the same critic, "that he added considerably to those amplifications of the English tongue, and was one of those writers whose style is clothed with the perspicuity of English phraseology of the present day." An excuse for the poet, whose language is otherwise clear and fluent, and whose merits of his mother-tongue are undeniable, may possibly be found in the fact, that age deprived him, as he says, "of all the subtylte of curious makyng in Englyshe to endyte."

The authors of the latter half of the fourteenth century had thus exercised such influence on their vernacular as to form it fully and rationally. It was then cultivated more generally, and written with some approach to uniformity. Nor are historical proofs wanting of the estimation which the newly-developed language had by such means acquired in the eyes of the great and even of foreigners. James I., who was educated in London, wrote, as is well known, his poem in honor of Jane Beaufort, the granddaughter of John of Gaunt, and afterwards his wife, in English. Such examples could not fail to have a general and lasting effect; and "The King's Quair” (cahier) deserves to be mentioned for the same, if for no better cause. Equally familiar are the sweet poems which Charles of Orleans, the father of Louis XII., wrote, when English policy and French injustice kept him, after the battle of Agincourt, for twenty-five long years a prisoner in England.

It has already been mentioned that William Caxton, as an author and as a printer, produced probably as great a change in English as Chaucer himself; and the astonishing effects of the increased frequency with which English was now written and printed, are easily seen in the greater brevity of expression, compactness of construction, and occasional elegance of later authors. Already, in 1447, William Lichfield left 3083 sermons written by his own hand in English; and the translation of the Æneid, which Gawin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, published in 1512, at a time when no metrical version of any classic, except Boethius, existed in English, gave ample proof of the progress and the increased capacity of the language. How nearly the latter then already approached the English of our day, and with what gigantic strides it must therefore have emerged from its former state of confusion and irregularity, may easily be seen in the many works of that age, which is generally considered the commencement of a new era in polite English literature. With the Paston letters, the metrical chronicles of Harding, and Sir John Fortescue's discourses, the old obsolete English seems to have disappeared. Even these works, however, present only occasionally antiquated forms and words, as they still prevailed about 1570, and they appear not unintelligible, but only quaint, and present no difficulty to the modern reader possessed of general information. Sir Thomas More's historical writings and ballads, like the Nut Brown Maid, cause often surprise by their modern turn and structure. The former proves his noble heart, by his fondness for his mother-tongue. He says: "English is plenteouse enoughe to expresse oure myndes in anythinge whereof one man hath use to

speeke with another;" and when it is said to be "rather barbarous," he indignantly calls that "all a fantasye." He thus earned Ben Jonson's praise, that his works might be considered models of a pure and elegant style; while Hallam calls his history of Richard III. "the first example of good English language, pure and conspicuous, well chosen, without vulgarisms or pedantry."

CHAPTER XXXII.

Henry VIII.-Elizabeth-Surrey and Wyatt-English Satirists-John Skelton -Spenser-Ancient Languages in England-Sir Thomas Browne.

HENRY VIII. attempted poetry himself, and Elizabeth wrote (with charcoal on a shutter in her prison) "A Ditty;" but a more marked proof of the importance which these sovereigns attached to the development of the national tongue appears in the liberal policy by which they enabled the literature of their days to aid in its gradual refinement. Italian sonnets also became known in England, and were successfully imitated by men of great talent, like the unfortunate Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who had studied the poetry of the continent with such success as to enable him to seize the spirit as well as the form of the great Petrarch himself. The effect in England was the same as in Italy. The desire to express distinctly the most minute shades of sentiment, led to a new and happy coinage or combination of words: picturesque, compound epithets and glowing metaphors were invented, and the necessity of observ

ing the strict metre and complicated rhyme of these models taught English authors conciseness, accuracy, and harmony. A race of satirists also sprang up-some successful, like William Roy, whose nervous language told with great effect upon Cardinal Woolsey; others, like John Heywood, compelled by Queen Mary's persecution to seek refuge abroad. Both these authors, however, wielded their English tongue with a forcible pointedness, which developed new powers and gave it additional versatility. Heywood's collection of English proverbs possesses, moreover, its intrinsic interest for the philologist. The doubtful but not unimportant honor of being the father of English doggrel belongs to one of these satirists, John Skelton, tutor to Henry VIII. in his youth, and "a great scholar" in the eyes of the learned Erasmus. Oxford made him her poet laureate, but posterity has judged differently. Pope calls him the "beastly Skelton," and then saves him by coupling him with "Chaucer's worst ribaldry learned by rote;" whilst Coleridge speaks of his "Boke of Phylipp Sparrowe" as of an exquisite and original poem. His only but great merit lies in the happy use he made of the vulgar forms of his vernacular, in addressing the people in the language of the people, and in the fact that, as he says,

"Tho' my ryme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,

Rudely rain beaten,
Rusty and moth eaten,
If ye take well therewith,
It hath in it some pith."

In this respect he adds to the merit of being, with the exception of Howard and Wyatt, the only English poet between Chaucer and Elizabeth, that of forming the connecting link between the genuine and vernacular poetry of Langland and Chaucer, and the Elizabethan dramatists. The praise bestowed upon him by Caxton, that he "translated oute of Latyn into Englysche, not in rude and olde language, but in polished and ornate terms craftely," applies but to a small portion of his work, such as his poetic elegy on Edward III. whom he represents as saying:

"Where is now my conquest and victory?
Where is my riches and royal array?

Where be my coursers and my horses hye?
Where is my myrth, my solas and my play?
As vanyte-to nought al is wandred away.
O, Lady Bes, longe for me may ye call!
For I am departed tyl domis day;
But love ye the Lord that is soveraygne of all.
Where be my castles and buyldynges royall?
But Windsor alone, now I have no mo,
And of Eton the prayers perpetuall,

Et ecce nunc in pulvere dormio."

In these quaint but expressive effusions he really shows the happy harmony of language and of thought, which belonged to that more refined period of letters, and, no doubt, assisted both in developing and enriching the language and in improving and refining the taste of those who used it. In his bitter, irreverent satires against Woolsey, he is, on the contrary, insufferably coarse and offensive, and apt to be, when gay and frolicsome, rather indelicate and unscrupulous. The occasional