caccio the Italians have usually paid their tribute to "illustrious women," notwithstanding the free insinuations of some malicious novelists; that people preceded in the refinement of social life the tramontani. England and France, in their ruder circle of society, contracted a cynicism which appears in a variety of invectives and apologies for the beautiful sex.

One of the most popular attacks of this sort was "The School-house of Women," a severe satire, published anonymously. One of the heaviest charges is their bitter sarcasm on the new dresses of their friends. The author, one Edward Gosynhyll, charmed, no doubt, by his successful onset, and proud in his victory, threw off the mask; mending his ambidextrous pen for "The Praise of all Women," called "Mulierum Pean," he acknowledged himself to be the writer of "The School-house." Probably he thought he might now do so with impunity, as he was making the amende honorable. Whether this saved the trembling Orpheus from the rage of the Bacchantes, our scanty literary history tells not; but his defence is not considered as the least able among several elicited by his own attack.

"The Wife lapped in Morels' Skins, or the Taming of a Shrew," was the favorite tale of the Petruchios of those days, where a haughty dame is softened into a degrading obedience by the brutal command of her mate; a tale which some antiquaries still chuckle over, who have not been so venturous as this hero.*

Several of these pieces are preserved in Mr. Utterson's "Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetry." This attack on women proved not a theme less fertile among our neighbors; how briskly the skirmish was carried on, the notice of a single writer will show :- Alphabet de l'Imperfection et Malice des Femmes, par J. Olivier, licencier aux loix, et en droit-canon, 1617;" three editions of which appeared in the course of two years. This blow was repelled by "Defense des Femmes contre l'Alphabet de leur pretendue Malice, par Vigoureux, 1617;" the first author rejoined with a "Réponse aux Impertinences de l'Aposté Capitaine Vigoureux, par Olivier, 1617." The fire was kept up by an ally of Olivier, in "Réplique à l'Anti

All these books, written for the people, were at length consumed by the hands of their multitudinous readers; we learn, indeed, in Anthony à Wood's time, that some had descended to the stalls; but at the present day some of these rare fugitive pieces may be unique. This sort of pamphlet, Burton, the anatomist of melancholy, was delighted to heap together; and the collection formed by such a keen relish of popular humors, he actually bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, where, if they are kept together, they would answer the design of the donor; otherwise, such domestic records of the humors and manners of the age, diffused among the general mass, would bear only the value of their rarity.

Malice du Sieur Vigoureux, par De la Bruyere, 1617." At a period earlier than this conflict, the French had, as well as ourselves, many works on the subject.

THE DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED BY A PRIMITIVE AUTHOR.

SIR THOMAS ELYOT is the first English prose-writer who avowedly attempted to cultivate the language of his country. We track the prints of the first weak footsteps in this new path; and we detect the aberrations of a mind intent on a great popular design, but still vague and uncertain, often opposed by contemporaries, yet cheered by the little world of his readers.

Elyot for us had been little more than a name, as have been many retired students, from the negligence of contemporaries, had he not been one of those interesting authors who have let us into the history of their own minds, and either prospectively have delighted to contemplate on their future enterprises, or retrospectively have exulted in their past labors.

This amiable scholar had been introduced at court early in life; his "great friend and crony was Sir Thomas More ;" so plain Anthony à Wood indicates the familiar intercourse of two great men. Elyot was a favorite with Henry the Eighth, and employed on various embassies, particularly on the confidential one to Rome to negotiate the divorce of Queen Katherine. To his public employments he alludes in his first work, “The Governor,” which "he had gathered as well of the sayings of most noble authors, Greek and Latin, as by his own experience, he being continually trained in some daily affairs of the public weal from his childhood."

A passion for literature seems to have prevailed over the ambition of active life, and on his return from his last embassy, he decided to write books "in our vulgar tongue," on a great variety of topics, to instruct his countrymen The diversity of his reading, and an unwearied pen, happily qualified, in this early age of the literature of a nation,

DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED BY A PRIMITIVE AUTHOR.

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a student who was impatient to diffuse that knowledge which he felt he only effectually possessed in the degree, and in the space, which he communicated it.

His first elaborate work is entitled, "The Boke of the Governor, devised by Sir Thomas Elyot," 1531 a work once so popular, that it passed through seven or eight editions, and is still valued by the collectors of our ancient literature.

"The Governor" is one of those treatises which, at an early period of civilization, when general education is imperfect, becomes useful to mould the manners and to inculcate the morals which should distinguish the courtier and the statesman. Elyot takes his future "Governor" in the arms of his nurse, and places the ideal being amid all the scenes which may exercise the virtues, or the studies which he develops. The work is dedicated to Henry the Eighth. The design, the imaginary personage, the author, and the patron, are equally dignified. The style is grave; and it would not be candid in a modern critic to observe that, in the progress of time, the good sense has become too obvious, and the perpetual illustrations from ancient history too familiar. The erudition in philology of that day has become a schoolboy's learning. They had then no other volumes to recur to of any authority, but what the ancients had left.

Elyot had a notion that, for the last thousand years, the world had deteriorated, and that the human mind had not expanded through the course of ages. When he compared the writers of this long series of centuries, the babbling, though the subtle schoolmen, who had chained us down to their artificial forms, with the great authors of antiquity, there seemed an appearance of truth in his decision. Christianity had not yet exhibited to modern Europe the refined moralities of Seneca, and the curious knowledge of Plutarch, in the homilies of Saints and Fathers; nor had its histories of man, confined to our monkish annalists, emulated the narrative charms of Livy, nor the grandeur

of Tacitus. Of the poets of antiquity, Elyot declared that the English language, at the time he wrote, could convey nothing equivalent, wanting even words to express the delicacies, "the turns," and the euphony of the Latin

verse.

A curious evidence of the jejune state of the public mind at this period, appears in this volume. Here a learned and grave writer solemnly sets forth several chapters on "that honest pastime of dancing," in which he discovers a series of modern allegories. The various figures and reciprocal movements between man and woman, "holding each other by the hand,” indicate the order, concord, prudence, and other virtues so necessary for the common weal. The singles and reprinses exhibit the virtue of circumspection, which excites the writer to a panegyric of the father of the reigning sovereign. These ethics of the dance contain some curious notices, and masters in the art might hence have embellished their treatises on the philosophy of dance; for, "in its wonderful figures, which the Greeks do call idea, are comprehended so many virtues and noble qualities." It is amusing to observe how men willingly become the dupes of their fancies, by affecting to discover motives and analogies, the most unconnected imaginable with the objects themselves. Long after our polished statesman wrote, the Puritan excommunicated the sinful dancer, and detected in the graceful evolutions of "the honor," the "brawl," and the "single," with all their moral movements, the artifices of Satan, and the perdition of the souls of two partners, dancing too well. It was the mode of that age thus to moralise, or allegorise, on the common acts of life, and to sanction their idlest amusements by some religious motive. At this period, in France, we find a famous Veneur, Gaston Phebus, opening his treatise on "hunting," in the spirit that Elyot had opened to us the mysteries of dancing. "By hunting, we escape from the seven mortal sins, and therefore, the more we hunt, the salvation of our souls