His scurrying lines and ingenious successions of rhymes often run so rapidly as to lose the sense and become mere doggerel. But here and there among his clattering lines one finds pretty conceits, touches of quaint originality, and occasional passages of true lyrical feeling, as in The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe and The Garlande of Laurell. He occasionally surpassed himself, as in these pretty lines in praise of Margaret:— Stedfast of thought, Wele made, wele wrought; Or hawke of the towre. Skelton's work is thoroughly English, a rude product of the Chaucerian school, untouched by the classical forces that were about to exert a transforming influence upon English poetry. Skelton had only heard of Petrarch as a famous clark." next English poets whom we shall meet were disciples of that inspired "clark" in far-away Italy. 66 The PROGRAM OF WORK CLASS READING. ENGLISH CHAUCERIANS: Lydgate's London Lickpenny, The Golden Age (Ward, Bronson); Occleve's Tributes to Chaucer (Ward); Hawes's Character of a True Knight (Ward); Skelton's Mistress Margaret Hussey, Colyn Clout (Ward). SCOTTISH CHAUCERIANS: King's Quair, stanzas 30-54 (Ward, Bronson); Henryson's Robene and Makyne (Oxford Book of English Verse); Dunbar's The Thistle and the Rose (Ward); Sanct Salvatour and The Golden Targe (Bronson); To a Lady (Oxford). BALLADS: Sir Patrick Spens; Edom o'Gordon; Chevy Chase (The Hunting of the Cheviot); The Douglas Tragedy; The Wife of Usher's Well; The Nut-Browne Mayd; The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington; Robin Hood and Maid Marion; Robin Hood Rescuing the Widow's Three Sons; Robin Hood's Death and Burial; The Wee, Wee Man; The Three Ravens; Sweet William's Ghost. The best collections of ballads are Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads (one vol. ed.), Gummere's Old English Ballads, Oxford Book of Ballads, Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. There are good selections in the Pocket Classic Series, Maynard's, R. L. S., and Ward. MORTE D'ARTHUR: Selections in Craik, Century Readings, Athenæum Press Series, R. L. S., Pocket Classics. Best complete editions are the Globe and the Reproduction of the Original (Nutt). Howard Pyle's Stories of King Arthur and Lanier's Boys' King Arthur are excellent. Froissart's Chronicles is included in Everyman's Library. LITERARY HISTORY. Cambridge, vol. II; Snell's Age of Transition; Morley's English Writers, vols. VI and VII; Minto's Characteristics of English Poets; Jusserand's Romance of a King's Life; Lang's Introduction to Ballads (Ward); Gummere's Old English Ballads (Introduction); Henderson's The Ballad in Literature; Gummere's The Popular Ballad. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. Green's Short History, ch. vi, secs. 1-3; Green's Town Life in the Fifteenth Century: Denton's England in the Fifteenth Century; Gairdner's Houses of Lancaster and York. TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH 1. Extent, character, and result of the Wars of the Roses. 2. Effects upon literature. 3. Chaucer's successors in England and Scotland. 4. General character of this imitative poetry. 5. The story of James I from history. 6. Describe the versification of The King's Quair, known as "rhyme royal." 7. Rewrite five stanzas of the poem in modern language (Glossary in Bronson). 8. Compare the personal experiences in The King's Quair with the imaginary experiences in The Knightes Tale. 9. Love of nature in the Scottish poets. 10. Characteristics of the old ballads. 11. Who were the authors of the ballads? (Consult Gummere). 12. Distinguish the ballad from the song. 13. Explain the effect of repetition, and of the refrain or burden. 14. Select good illustrations of the use of the burden in ancient or modern ballads (Rossetti's Sister Helen, Kingsley's Three Fishers, for example). 15. Compare the ballad of Chevy Chase with the later version (Percy's Reliques). 16. Read Addison's essays on Chevy Chase (Spectator, nos. 70, 74). 17. Why are modern ballads generally inferior to the ancient? 18. Compare ballads of Goldsmith, Scott, Tennyson, Longfellow, Whittier with the old ballads. 19. Explain the peculiar charm of the Morte d'Arthur. 20. Trace some of Tennyson's borrowings from Malory in the Idylls of the King. Mediaeval CHAPTER V THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND THE wide intellectual awakening that attended the breaking up of the medieval world is known as the Renaissance, the rebirth of progressive civilization. New ways of thinking, new ideals and enthusiasms, appeared. There was a reaction against the dominant ignorance and superstition of the preceding “dark ages." To think independently of church doctrine had long been heresy and crime. Philosophy, dominated by theology, had become little more than a barren exercise of the intellect upon metaphysical subtleties and useless speculations. Learned schoolmen debated such questions as, "whether an angel can pass from one point to another without passing through the intermediate space." Bacon described this scholastic philosophy as "cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit," which were "spun out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit." Petrarch called the universities "nests of gloomy ignorance." The human mind now began to assert its freedom and individuality. The arid and fruitless learning of the schoolmen, as the mediæval scholars are called, gave place to problems in science and art of real human significance. The close and musty atmosphere of the monasteries was cleared away, and light and pure air were allowed to circulate in the halls of learning. The impulse was first felt in Italy, in the fourteenth century, where there was a rediscovery of the arts and phi Rebirth of Italy was a favorable losophy of Greece and ancient Rome. place for the beginning of such a movement, among neglected statues and crumbling temples, relics of a splendid past. When the Turks took possession of Constantinople, in 1453, many scholars fled to Italy, bringing with them the language and literature of classic Greece. Students, poets, and philosophers engaged with enthusiasm in the study of Greek and in the search for lost manuscripts. The splendid court of the Medicis was the center of the new intellectual interests, and Florence became a "modern Athens." The Humanists In Italy, therefore, the Renaissance was the rebirth of Greek and Roman civilization. The medieval church had taught men to renounce the world and their own humanity, and to regard heaven and the future life as the only worthy objects of contemplation and aspiration. The pagan sense of the beauty of the world and of the joy of life was regarded as a sinful and dangerous concession to the flesh. "Human existence had no meaning except as the prelude to heaven or hell." The students of the “new learning" protested against this view of life and presented in contrast the more liberal and gracious ideals found in the writings of the ancients. These strange and fascinating works they called litera humaniores, the more human literature, the "humanities," as such studies came to be named; hence these reformers were known as humanists. The Renaissance, as it spread throughout Europe, presents four elements that appeared partly as causes and partly as effects. First was the revival of classical learning and art in Italy and the splendid outburst of native genius Four Phases in literature, sculpture, and painting, of which Petrarch, Michael Angelo, and Raphael are respectively the great representatives. Second was the invention of printing, which increased vastly the acquirement and circulation of knowledge. Third was the sudden and of the Awakening marvelous widening of the world's horizon through the discoveries made just at the end of the fifteenth century. In 1486 Diaz discovered the Cape of Good Hope; in 1492 Columbus discovered the American continent; in 1497 the Cabots discovered North America; in 1498 Vasco da Gama rounded Africa and opened the way to India; and in 1500 Copernicus published his theory of the universe, which affected mediæval thinking like an earthquake shock. Fourth was the religious reformation, the appearance of an awakened and more liberal religious spirit. In England the Renaissance expressed itself strongly in two directions,-in the revival of learning and in religious reform, each of which contributed directly to the advancement of literature. The Oxford Toward the close of the fifteenth century young Englishmen began to visit Italy for study. Among the first of these seekers after the new learning were William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre, who returned to teach Greek at Oxford. Here a little band of scholars gathered for teaching and study, united in a common enthusiasm for the newly discovered riches of the ancient world. The real masterpieces of Greek and Latin now began to displace the theological treatises of the schoolmen in mediæval Latin. Contact with the original texts of the Greek classics and of the Scriptures revealed an undreamed-of world of truth and beauty. The Dutch humanist, Erasmus, the greatest Continental scholar of the period, was attracted to Oxford, and became intimately associated with John Colet and Sir Thomas More in the work of spreading the new culture. At the home of More, Erasmus wrote his Praise of Folly, a satirical pæan of triumph over the doomed forces of ignorance and superstition. His edition of the New Testament in the original Greek was one of the foundation-stones of the Reformation. Colet was the leader of the Oxford humanists, and the most effective in applying the new learning to religious reform. In his lectures on St. Paul's Epistles he rejected the commentaries |