bours. Yet, slight as they are, his "Obedience of a Christian Man," his dissertation on the parable of "The Wicked Mammon," his "Practice of Prelates," and his few expositions and prefaces, not only show great clearness of thinking and aptness of illustration, but are exceedingly favourable specimens of Old English style.* b. ab. 1472. d. 1555. Our second instance is the celebrated Latimer, whose literary remains, chiefly sermons and letters, are of a very different stamp, but exceedingly interesting and instructive. In the writings of this venerable man we discover no depth of learning, and as little refinement of taste: but they abound in homely sense and shrewdness; they show at once earnest and deep piety, and a quiet courage, prognosticating indomitable en *WILLIAM TYNDALE. From "The Practice of Prelates;" published in 1530. [The modern spelling is generally adopted in this Extract, and in those that follow.] To see how Our Holy Father came up, mark the ensample of an Ivy Tree. First it springeth out of the earth, and then a while creepeth along by the ground, till it findeth a great tree; then it joineth itself beneath alow unto the body of the tree, and creepeth up, a little and a little, fair and softly. And, at the beginning, while it is yet thin and small, that the burden is not perceived, it seemeth glorious, to garnish the tree in winter, and to bear off the tempests of the weather. But, in the mean season, it thrusteth roots into the bark of the tree, to hold fast withal; and ceaseth not to climb up, till it be at the top and above all. And then it sendeth his branches along by the branches of the tree, and overgroweth all, and waxeth great, heavy, and thick; and sucketh the moisture so sore out of the tree and his branches, that it choketh and stifleth them. And then the foul ivy waxeth mighty in the stump of the tree, and becometh a seat and a nest for all unclean birds, and for blind owls which hawk in the dark, and dare not come at the light. Even so the Bishop of Rome, at the beginning, crope along upon the earth; and every man trode upon him in this world. But, as soon as there came a Christian Emperor, he joined himself unto his feet, and kissed them, and crope up a little with begging; now this privilege, now that; now this city, now that; to find poor people withal, and the necessary ministers of the Word. * * * And thus, with flattering, and feigning, and vain superstition under the name of Saint Peter, he crept up, and fastened his roots in the heart of the Emperor; and with his sword climbed up above all his fellowships, and brought them under his feet. And, as he subdued them with the Emperor's sword, even so, by subtlety and help of them, after that they were sworn faithful, he climbed above the Emperor, and subdued him also; and made him stoop unto his feet and kiss them another while. Yea, Celestinus crowned the Emperor Henry the Fifth, holding the crown between his feet. And, when he had put the crown on, he smote it off with his feet again, saying that he had might to maks emperors and put them down again. durance; and they are inspired with a cheerfulness which never fails. Those who sneered at Sir Thomas More as a scoffing jester, might have found still apter ground for censure in many effusions of Latimer, both while he preached to the peasants of Wiltshire and after he had become the bishop of an important diocese. He jests, and plays on words, when he writes letters of business to Cromwell the secretary of state; and, in the pulpit, seizing eagerly on all opportunities of interesting his audience by allusions to facts of ordinary life, he never allows his illustrations to lose their force through any fear of infringing on the gravity of the place. His "Sermon on the Plough," the only one remaining from a series of three on the same text, expounds and illustrates the duties of the ploughman, that is, the preacher of the Gospel, with equal ingenuity of application and plainness of speech. In a passage that has often been quoted, he takes occasion to describe the experience of his own youth, and the frugality of his father's rural household. In another place, the duty of residence, strongly urged on the clergy throughout the discourse, is enforced by a very original similitude. The spiritual husbandman, he says, ought to supply continual food to his people: the preaching of the word is meat, daily sustenance: it is not strawberries, which come up once a-year and do not tarry long. The metaphor appears to have been relished, and to have suggessed a descriptive name for clerical absentees. In an extant sermon of the time, they are spoken of as "strawberry-preachers." An excursion yet wider from clerical formalities is ventured on in his set of "Sermons on the Card." Preaching at Cambridge in Christmas, he tells his hearers, that, as they are accustomed to make card-playing one of the occupations in which they celebrate the festival, he will deal to them a better kind of cards, and show them a game in which all the players may win. One scriptural text after another is pronounced and commented on in the odd manner thus promised: and the great truth, of the importance of the affections in religion, is thrown repeatedly into this quaint shape; that, in the game of souls, hearts are always trumps.* *HUGH LATIMER. From the Sermon on the Plough; preached in January 1548. But now methinketh I hear one say unto me: Wot ye what you say? Is preaching a work? Is it a labour? How then hath it happened that we have had, so many hundred years, so many unpreaching prelates, lording loiterers, and idle ministers? Ye would have me here to make answer, and to show the cause thereof. Nay! this land is not for me to plough. It is too stony, too thorny, too hard for me to plough. They have so many things that make for them, so many things to lay for them Such eccentricities, however discordant with modern taste, must be judged with a recollection of the time in which they appeared; and their prevalence is a feature not to be overlooked, in the eloquence of a man who was admittedly one of the most impressive public speakers of his day. His sermons deserve commendation more unqualified, for their general simplicity of plan. They have little or nothing of the scholastic complication and multiplicity of subdivisions, which made their appearance in the theological compositions of the next age, and which characterize almost all efforts of the kind made in our language till we have proceeded beyond the middle of the seventeenth century. Before we quit those who acted and suffered in the Reformation, we must remember John Fox, their zealous but honest memorialist. His "History of the Acts and Monuments of the Church," better known as "The Book of Martyrs," was first printed in his exile, towards the close of our period. selves, that it is not for my weak team to plough them. And I fear me this land is not yet ripe to be ploughed: for, as the saying is, it lacketh weathering; this gear lacketh weathering; at least way it is not for me to plough. For what shall I look for among thorns, but pricking and scratching? What among stones, but stumbling? What (I had almost said) among serpents, but stinging? But this much I dare say, that since lording and loitering hath come up, preaching hath come down, contrary to the Apostles' times: for they preached and lorded not, and now they lord and preach not. * * And thus, if the ploughmen of the country were as negligent in their office as prelates be, we should not live for lack of sustenance. And as it is necessary for to have this sustentation of the body, so must we have also the other for the satisfaction of the soul; or else we cannot live long ghostly. For, as the body wasteth and consumeth away for lack of bodily meat, so doth the soul pine away for default of ghostly meat. * CHAPTER II. THE AGE OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION. A. D. 1509-A. D. 1558. SECTION SECOND: MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE IN ENGLAND; MISCELLANEOUS PROSE IN ENGLAND. 1. Secondary Importance of the Works-Sir Thomas More-His Style-His Historical Writings-His Tracts and Letters.-2. Roger Ascham-His Style-His Toxophilus-His Schoolmaster-Prosody-Female Education-Wilson's Logic and Rhetoric.-ENGLISH POETRY. 3. Poetical Aspect and Relations of the Age-Its Earliest Poetry-Satires-Barklay-Skelton's Works. -4. Lord Surrey-His Literary Influence-Its Causes-His Italian Studies-His Sonnets-Introduction of Blank Verse-His Supposed Influence on English Versification. -5. Wyatt-Translations of the Psalms-The Mirror of Magistrates-Its Influence -Its Plan and Authors-Sackville's Induction and Complaint of Buckingham.— -INFANCY OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 6. Retrospect-The English Drama in the Middle Ages-Its Religious Cast-The Miracle-Plays-The Moral-Plays.-7. The Drama in the Sixteenth Century-Its Beginnings-Skelton-Bishop Bale's Moral Plays-Heywood's Interludes.-8. Appearance of Tragedy and Comedy-Udall's Comedy of Roister Doister-The Tragedy of Gorboduc, by Sackville and Norton.LITERATURE IN SCOTLAND. 9. Literary Character of the Period-Obstacles-State of the Language.-10. Scottish Poetry-Sir David Lindsay-His Satirical Play-Its Design and Effects-His other Poems.-11. First Appearance of Original Scottish Prose-Translations-The Complaint of Scotland-Pitscottie-State of LearningBoece-John Major.-12. John Knox-George Buchanan's Latin Works-Other Latinists-Melville-Scottlsh Universities-Schools. MISCELLANEOUS PROSE LITERATURE IN ENGLAND. 1. PAUSING in our survey of ecclesiastical literature in England, at the moment when Protestantism rejoiced in the accession of Elizabeth, we quit the cloister, from which the monks have been cast out, and the church, in which the mass is no longer chanted; and we are content, perforce, with the little we have had time to learn in regard to the most abstruse of the studies out of which emerged the light of the Reformation. We now look abroad on those literary pursuits of the same period, whose aim was neither religious nor ecclesiastical, and whose natural and appropriate organ was the living tongue of the nation. New actors will appear on the scene: yet some of those whom we have encountered as combatants in the fiery struggle of creeds, will again be seen in the quieter walks along which our eye is next to be guided. Nor are the few names, which only can here be set down, sufficient to show, at all distinctly, how close was the connexion, in that fervent age, not only between the ecclesiastical changes and the progress of literature, but between the men who led the former and those who most efficiently promoted the latter. While the theological writings which have just been noticed are, admittedly, valuable chiefly for their matter, the miscellaneous writings of the age in English prose attract us most as specimens of the language in its earliest stage of maturity. None of them exhibit either such eloquence or such vigour of thought, as should entitle them to a high rank among the monuments of our literature; and, with few exceptions, the very names of the writers have been allowed to sink into complete oblivion. b. 1480. Sir Thomas More was commemorated when we } d. 1535. studied the progress of the language, as having been called the earliest writer whose English prose was good. This eminent man wrote purely, naturally, and perspicuously. His style, indeed, has very great excellence; and it, with that of the other writer who will here be cited, should be studied as characteristically showing, when we compare it with the manner of the prose which was written in the next period, a simplicity, both of construction and of diction, which may be accounted for in more ways than one. Certainly less cumbrous, as well as less exotic, the style of More and Ascham may have been so, either because classical studies had not yet become familiar enough to produce a great effect on the manner of expression, or because the writers were compelled to be the less ambitious in proportion to their want of mastery over the resources of their native tongue. More's works, Latin and English, are but the recreations in which a highly accomplished man, placed in the midst of a learned age, spent the little leisure allowed by a life of professional and public business. His Historical Writings are among the very earliest that belong to our period; and they have received very warm commendation, not only for their style, but for the ease and spirit of the narrative. There is not any work of the fifteenth century, that has merit enough to forbid our considering him as the earliest writer of the English language, who rose to the dignity and skill of proper history. His Controversial Tracts are perhaps equally good in language; but, occupied with the ecclesiastical questions of his day, they fall beyond our sphere. His "Dialogue concerning Heresies" led him into a hot contest with Tyndale. When we are thus reminded that More adhered to |