way, physically, mentally, morally, he was the personified ideal. To the people at large he seemed the embodiment of the typical Englishman. His delight in archery, in wrestling, in joust and in tourney, his skill on the tennis court and his boldness at the hunt, thrilled men to whom mental attainment meant little. As Professor Pollard aptly remarks: 1

1

"Suppose there ascended the throne today a young Prince, the hero of the athletic world, the finest oar, the best bat, the crack marksman of his day, it is easy to imagine the enthusiastic support he would receive from thousands of his people who care much for sport, and nothing at all for politics." But mentally he was equally fortunate in pleasing the scholar. His education had been unusually careful,-to such a degree that Lord Herbert of Cherbury, a century later, was led to assume that he had been destined for the Church. He knew Latin well, spoke French easily, understood Italian, and later acquired Spanish. His father's love of music he had inherited; he composed pieces, one of which, Pastime with good company, is occasionally heard now. He set the example to his Court in making verses, both in English and French. He was an enthusiastic humanist, defending the "Greeks" against the "Trojans" at Oxford, and attracted many men of learning to his Court. Finally in 1521 his book against Luther was finished, a work that, however much revised by others, was yet his own,-and the Pope granted him the title Fidei Defensor. He was certainly distinguished for his excellences for the first half of his reign. The Venetian ambassador, representing the shrewdest court in Europe, would have no object in giving an account untrue because flattering, since his letter would be read only by his own rulers in Venice. His report would be marked by calm analysis, because its object was to enable the Venetian Council to estimate the character of the King as a leading piece in the game of European politics. The following report was, therefore, a statement of the facts as seen by the writer, and is free from the suspicion of self-interest that might be inferred in the case of an Englishman, or even of Erasmus.2

1 Henry VIII, A. F. Pollard, 41.

2 Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the Archives and collections of Venice, and in other libraries of Northern Italy, ed. by Rawdon Brown, 1871, iv, 293.

In this Eighth Henry, God combined such corporal and mental beauty, as not merely to surprise but to astound all men. Who could fail to be struck with admiration on perceiving the lofty position of so glorious a prince to be in such accordance with his stature, giving manifest proof of that intrinsic mental superiority which is inherent in him? His face is angelic rather than handsome; his head imperial (Cesarina) and bald, and he wears a beard, contrary to English custom. Who would not be amazed when contemplating such singular corporal beauty, coupled with such bold address, adapting itself with the greatest ease to every manly exercise. He sits his horse well, and manages him yet better; he jousts and wields his spear, throws the quoit, and draws the bow, admirably; plays at tennis most dexterously; and nature having endowed him in youth with such gifts, he was not slow to enhance, preserve and augment them with all industry and labour. It seeming to him monstrous for a prince not to cultivate moral and intellectual excellence, so from childhood he applied himself to grammatical studies, and then to philosophy and holy writ, thus obtaining the reputation of a lettered and excellent Prince. Besides the Latin and his native tongue, he learned Spanish, French, and Italian. He is kind and affable, full of graciousness and courtesy, an liberal; particularly so to men of science (virtuosi), whom he is never weary of obliging.

Such a characterization, however false it may appear to modern eyes, enables us to comprehend the exultation in England upon Henry's accession that is shown by Mountjoy in his letter to Erasmus.1

What, my dear Erasmus, may you not look for from a prince, whose great qualities no one knows better than yourself, and who not only is no stranger to you, but esteems you so highly! He has written to you, as you will perceive, under his own hand, an honour which falls but to few. Could you but see how nobly he is bearing himself, how wise he is, his love for all that is good and right, and espcially his love for men of learning, you would need no wings to fly into the light of this new risen and salutary star. Oh, Erasmus, could you but witness the universal joy, could you but see how proud our people are of their new sovereign, you would weep for pleasHeaven smiles, earth triumphs, and flows with milk and honey and nectar. This king of ours is no seeker after gold, or gems, or mines of silver. He desires only the fame of virtue and eternal life. I was lately in his presence. He said that he regretted that he was still so ignorant; I told him that the nation did not want him to be himself learned, the nation wanted him only to encourage learning. He replied that without knowledge life would not be worth our having.

ure.

With such a paragon on the throne no wonder men looked for a new Golden Age! Literature and Learning united to call him blessed and the Renaissance in England was incarnate in her King. In modern opinion this aspect of Henry's character is apt to be

1 Life and Letters of Erasmus, J. A. Froude, 90.

obscured by the moral issue and that in turn to be discussed in terms of abstract morality. Of a king that married six wives, executed two and divorced two, that sent to the block More and Fisher, that, using men as his instruments, ruthlessly abandoned them when they no longer served his purpose, what good can be said? And it was under this king, also, that the Church of England separated from the Church of Rome, a fact which has biassed many writers. Moral standards, however, vary from age to age. In accordance with the standards of his age, Henry's character stands as high certainly as those of his fellow sovereigns, higher in fact than that of the profligate Francis. And although it is true that during the lifetime of Katherine Henry had at least two illicit connections, it is equally true that it was not on that account that moral indignation was excited against him. The peculiarity of his case lies in the fact that he tried to legalize his amours in order to legitimize the possible heir to the throne. Even in his excesses he showed care for the State. That he was far from the sensual monstrosity of popular legend is also shown by the comparative purity of the literature.1 That the age was coarse and brutal is obvious; the astonishing feature is that, in comparison with either the Italian or the French, the English literature is so pure in intention. And if, as has been suggested, Court literature takes its color from the character of the king, this freedom from the erotic must be due, at least to some degree, to Henry himself.

Henry's dominance of his age seems perplexing, His acts seem those of a tyrant, callously shedding the blood of the noblest and the best, and carelessly sacrificing any interest in opposition to his own. Professor Pollard's statement of the enigma is worth quoting.2

Henry's standing army consisted of a few gentlemen pensioners and yeomen of the guard; he had neither secret police nor organized bureaucracy. Even then Englishmen boasted that they were not slaves like the French, and foreigners pointed a finger of scorn at their turbulence. Had they not permanently or temporarily deprived of power nearly half their kings who had reigned since William the Conqueror? Yet Henry VIII not only left them their arms, but repeatedly urged them to keep those arms ready for use. He eschewed that air of mystery with which tyrants have usually sought to impose on the mind of the people. All his life he moved familiarly and almost unguarded in the midst of his subjects, and

English conditions are almost omitted in the renaissance chapter of Das Erotische Element in der Karikatur by Eduard Fuchs.

2 Henry VIII, ibid., 3.

he died in his bed, full of years, with the spell of his power unbroken and the terror of his name unimpaired.

The answer is that in Henry two antagonistic points of view found expression. The nation at large had learned from the bitter lesson of the late wars the value of stable government. To it Henry represented, just as his daughter Elizabeth did in the second half of the century, the personified State. His sudden death, or death without heirs, threatened anarchy. Therefore Parliament in any crisis was willing to legalize his action. By Parliament and by the nation any individual, even as reverend as Fisher or as saintly as More, would be sacrificed if his living endangered the common good, irrespective of abstract justice. There is, consequently, the anomaly that, if Henry be a criminal, the English nation was particeps criminis. Henry himself, on the other hand, was saved from the sense of this paralyzing responsibility, by the individualism characteristic of the whole Renaissance. So both parties accepted the sentiment of Louis XIV, L'état c'est moi,-with this essential difference, however, that the nation stressed the subject of the sentence and the sovereign the predicate. This condition appears but once more in English history, in Henry's daughter Elizabeth. In both cases there is a despotic government, conducted along parliamentary lines, yet the sovereign, both by himself and the nation, is considered to represent the nation. The result in each case was a strong popular government, and, historically, the dominance of England. Through the turmoil of that age the nation led by her King passed in almost unbroken calm. The great question of the separation from the Papacy was settled in England without a French Saint Bartholomew, or a German civil strife; through almost continuous years of peace the martial prestige of England steadily grew; and a country which at his birth was rent by innumerable internal dissensions, at his death was strong and unified; the dynasty, started by his usurping father, was so well established by him that his daughter, Mary Tudor, had but to appear to have all England hail her as queen. Without an appreciation of the magnitude of his accomplishment, the literature of his reign seems merely a sporadic development, and without an appreciation of the literature of his reign, the great literature of the Elizabethan age, of Shakespeare and of Spenser, is an unrelated, inexplicable phenomenon.

CHAPTER II

THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION

In history the Battle of Bosworth Field marks an epoch. It is the turning of the tide that comes to the full a century later. The disastrous French wars of Henry VI, followed by the still more disastrous civil strife between York and Lancaster, had almost removed England as a factor from European politics. After the accession of Henry VII, however, civil strife dwindled into a few insignificant insurrections, and foreign warfare was negligible. In literature for the same reason the Battle of Bosworth Field marks an epoch. The presence of literature implies not only leisure for the writer, but also leisure for the reader, and England had been at war spasmodically for half a century. Consequently after Lydgate there is no uniform literary development, each poem is casual, and the appearance of poetry seems sporadic. During this time there was no English writer who survived as a personality and no book of general interest with the exception of the prose Morte Darthur. When once again the country had returned to a state of equilibrium and again there was a demand for literary production, writers found themselves without definite literary models. Their effort to adapt medieval or foreign models, or to originate their own, is the subject of this book; their modification of the traditionary English treatment is the subject of this chapter.

Before proceeding further, it may be well to lodge a caveat. There has been a tendency in recent writers to assume that the Renaissance in England was completely severed from the past. Actually this is not so. In spite of the irregularity and vagueness of the English tradition it is astonishingly strong, due to the vendetta-like nature of the conflict. Battles, on which the possession of the kingdom depended, were fought with comparatively small armies, and small sections of the country only were involved. Elsewhere men went about their business as usual. Naturally, as is shown by the Paston Letters, to each man his own affairs bulked large, and the chief interest in the bewildering political changes