France and other races were still at the mercy of absolute monarch and feudal lords.* The same spirit which had withstood kings and nobles, was prepared to strive against the wealth, pride, and corruptions of the church. The "Vision of Piers Ploughman," written about 1362, expressed the popular jealousy of the pomp and luxuries of the clergy; and, a few years later, Wiclif translated the Bible, and was preparing the way for the Reformation.

And now, the English language being formed, a great poet arose to prove its richness. Chaucer was an accomplished gentleman and man of the world; he had seen courts and camps, and lived in the most polite society of England and the Continent. His poetry derived its first inspiration from Italy; but it was otherwise thoroughly English. His temperament was as gay and airy as the French; but his humor was of the true English savor. With a dramatic conception of characters, and a coarse spirit of satire, he united an impassioned love of nature, and a vein of serious reflection, characteristic of the English mind. His verse was as rich and musical as the half-fashioned language of his time would allow. He has been called the Homer of his country; and certainly he was our first great poet.

With a new language and a great master, may be said to have commenced the history of truly English literature; and here M. Taine, laying aside, for awhile, historical speculation, assumes the office of critic, for which he has rare aptitude. When not led astray by delusive theories or national prejudice, he apprehends, at once, the distinctive traits of a writer's mind; discerns his merits and defects with the nicest discrimination, and assigns him his true place in the commonwealth of letters; and his critical talents become more conspicious as he advances to times and writers more congenial to his taste. He has spared no pains to make his countrymen familiar with our best writers, by admirable translations of selected passages, the originals appearing in the notes. So true and spirited are

*Vol. i. pp. 103--160.

some of the translations of Chaucer and other early poets, that his version may serve as a commentary upon obscure phrases in the original text. The following lines may be taken as an example:

And as the new abashed nightingale That stinteth first, when she beginneth sing, When that she heareth any heerdes tale, Or in the hedges any wight stearing, And after siker doeth her voice outring; Right so Cresceide, when that her drede stent, Opened her herte, and told him her entent. These lines are thus translated:Et comme le jeune rossignol étonné, Qui s'arrête d'abord, lorsqu'il commence sa chan

Ouvrit son cœur, et lui dit sa pensée.' (Vol. i. p. 189.)

Again, we must follow M. Taine as an historian, fertile in theories, and most ingenious in the collocation of facts. We are approaching what he terms "the Pagan Revival" (La Renaissance Païenne). For seventeen centuries, he says, an idea of the weakness and decay of the human race had taken possession of the minds of men. Greek corruption, Roman oppression, and the dissolution of the ancient world had given rise to it; the Christian religion had kept it alive, by warning its disciples that the kingdom of heaven was at hand; the crumbling ruins of antiquity deepened this gloomy sentiment; and when men were beginning to arouse themselves from the depression of the dark ages, their spirit and hopes were crushed by the Catholic Church. On this point his observations are so striking that we must give them entire:

“The (Christian) religion; fluid in the first ages, was now congealed into a hard crystal, and the gross contact of barbarians had deposited upon its surface a layer of idolatry: theocracy and the Inquisition, the monopoly of the clergy, and the prohibition of the Scriptures, the worship of relics and the sale of indulgences, began to appear. In place of Christianity, the Church; in place of a free creed, enforced orthodoxy; in the place of

have fallen into many inaccuracies, which the author has overlooked.

moral fervor, fixed customs; instead of the heart and stirring thought, outward and mechanical discipline: such are the characteristics of the middle ages. Under this constraint thinking society had ceased to think; philosophy had turned into a manual, and poetry into dotage; and man, inert, kneeling, delivering up his conscience and his conduct into the hands of his priest, seemed but a mannikin fit for reciting a catechism, and mumbling over his beads." (Vol. i. p. 250.)

At length a new spirit was awakened in the laity. There were discoveries in science and the arts; literature was revived, and religion transformed. "It seemed as if men opened their eyes all at once, and saw." "The ancient pagan idea reappeared, bringing with it the cultivation of beauty and force: first in Italy-for of all the countries in Europe it is the most pagan, and the nearest to ancient civilization; next in France and Spain, and Flanders, and even in Germany, and lastly in England." Under the Tudors a sense of the beautiful, a taste for enjoyment and refined luxuries, was growing up. The nobles left their gloomy castles and stagnant moats for elegant palaces, half Gothic, half Italian, ornamented with gardens, fountains, and and statues. The fashions of dress, of banquets, and of fêtes became more costly and magnificent; masques were played for the entertainment of the Court, preparing the way for the drama. Everything appealed to the senses and to nature. The study of the classics was revived; and after the doleful legends of the middle ages, it was delightful to see once more the radiant Olympus of Greece. The literature of Italy was pagan in its origin, its language, and traditions; and from this source Surrey, Sidney, Spencer, and Shakspeare sought examples and materials for their poetry. The revived art of Italy and her disciples was also pagan. The lean, deformed, and bleeding Christ of the middle ages, and the livid and illfavored Virgin, were changed into noble and graceful forms. It was now the study of artists to represent the human body to perfection, in its unveiled beauty; and the splendid goddesses of antiquity reappeared in their primitive nudity. Even the Madonna was but a Venus draped. Art had again become sensuous, and idolized the body rather than the soul.

All this may be very true, but M. Taine must allow us to assure him that it explains nothing in the intellectual life of England. These incidents of this intellectual revival in the sixteenth century are truly and vividly told. But the reader will hesitate to accept the inference that its inspiration was pagan. True that poets and artists profited by the glorious monuments of ancient genius; but at both periods perfection was attained by a close study of nature; and when men had outgrown the traditional types of monkish times, they resorted to the noble models which nature herself set before them. Homer and Virgil had studied nature; and so did Chaucer, Spencer, and Shakspeare. Praxiteles had studied nature; and so did Raphael and Titian. The human mind and forms of natural beauty are eternal, and the same in ancient Greece, in modern Italy, and in England. The conceptions of modern genius often took their shape and coloring from the examples of antiquity, but not their inspiration, which came direct from nature. And, moreover, it was the genius of Greece and Rome-not their paganisin-that found students and admirers. Their heathen faith was dead, and had left no believers: their deities had become the pleasing fiction of poets; and, as has been finely said by an Irish writer of genius, "Religious ideas die like the sun; their last rays, posessing little heat, are expended in creating beauty."*

Even M. Taine, when he has concluded his amusing but fanciful chapter, proceeds to say that "paganism transplanted into other races and climates receives from each race and each climate distinct traits and an individual character. It becomes English in England: the English revival is the revival of the Saxon genius." In other words, this revival is the very reverse of the "renaissance" which took place in the arts and literature of the Catholic nations-of Italy and of France: for this very Saxon genius, as he had already shown, had been, in early times, opposed to pagan worship, and ripe for the spiritual faith of Christ; it had lately purified that faith

* Lecky's History of Rationalism, vol. i, p. 286. † Vol. i, p. 277.

from every taint of paganism derived from Rome; yet we are asked to believe in the pagan inspiration of modern English literature. It is a pleasant conceit, in which M. Taine has mistaken incidents for causes, and suffered an attractive theory to obscure the truth.

But we must proceed with the story of this literary revival. The Earl of Surrey has been called the English Petrarch. Familiar with Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto, he refined the rude verse of his own time with the graces of Italian poetry. His mind was even cast in the same mould as Petrarch's; but his spirit and sentiments were not the less English. This difference is well illustrated by M. Taine in the sentimental abstraction of Petrarch's Laura, and Surrey's devotion to his own wife. "The poetic dream of Petrarch became in Surrey the exact picture of profound and perfect conjugal affection, such as it still exists in England, and such as all the poets, from the author of the Nut-Brown Maid' to Dickens, have never failed to represent it."* Surrey's elegance and taste rendered great services to English poetry: but he wants the fire and passion of poetic genius. M. Taine, with his usual discernment, observes that "in his sonnets he thinks less often of loving well than of writing well."

We are next introduced to Sir Philip Sidney, as the first of a host of Elizabethan poets, who, says the author, be ing of a German race, were not restrained, like the Latin races, by a taste for harmonious forms, but preferred a forcible impression to a beautiful expression. He sees in Sidney's poetry "charming imaginations-pagan and chivalrous-in which Petrarch and Plato seem to have left their memory." In every natural beauty of the poets of this age he discovers the prevailing paganism; but happily "spiritual instincts are already piercing through it, and making Platonists preparatory to making Christians."† If the pagan theory can be impressed upon us by repetition, it will be no fault of M. Taine that we are not converts: yet is hard to persuade ourselves that after the Reformation our best English

* Vol. i, pp. 277-285. † Vol. i, pp. 289-311.

writers were no nearer to Christianity than Plato. If it were possible for M. Taine to lay his theories on one side, we should accept him with pleasure as one of the most eloquent and discriminating critics who have studied the literature of the Elizabethan age. In his chapters on Sidney and Spencer he rises to a genuine enthusiasm, and the magical charm of these poets has never been more faithfully rendered in a foreign language.

Spencer was the greatest poet of this age, and above all poets who had yet flourished in England. The richness of his imagination, his poetic spirit-at once gentle and impassioned-his deep sense of the beautiful in nature, and in the human mind, the melody of his verse, and the grace and vigor of his language, combined to place him beyond all rivalry. Allegory was the fashion of his time, and M. Taine compares him to Rubens, whose allegory swells beyond all rules, and withdraws fancy from all law, except that of form and color. In a poet so devoted to natural beauty, and so familiar with classical and Italian models, he readily discovers another example of the pagan type in a Christian race, and the worship of form in a Northern imagination. It would have been at variance with this theory to believe that an English temperament, without pagan inspiration, could be instinct with a passionate love of nature; yet as a critic he can not fail to observe that English poets, above all others, dwell upon the beauties of natural scenery. This sentiment we hold to be indigenous: it breathes through our poetry; it thrills in the hearts of all cultivated Englishmen; it is a strong natural impulse of our race, and not a borrowed fancy. It surpasses the models which we are said to have followed, in freshness, simplicity, and truth.

The school of Elizabethan poets passed away suddenly, like the schools of painting in Italy and Flanders, and was succeeded by a feebler race-by Carew, Suckling, and Herrick-in whom, says M. Taine, "the pretty replaced the beautiful"-by Quarles, Herbert, Babington, Donne, and Abraham Cowley. Poetry was dying out; but the intellect of this age of revival was not confined to poetry

Vol. i, pp. 328-369.

and song. It is only in the infancy of a nation that its whole mind is expressed in that simple form. But the mind of England was now expanding in literature and learning, in science and the arts, in industry, in social, political, and religious enlightenment. The language was ripening, and growing in richness, force, and amplitude. The religious regeneration of the people was the main cause and most striking incident of this revival: but its consideration is postponed to a much later portion of M. Taine's history. Nor, according to his scheme, could this have been otherwise; for it would have tried even his ingenuity to place in the foreground of his spirited sketch of a "pagan" revival, the great religious movement which filled the minds of men, above all other thoughts, and was essentially antagonistic to the spirit of paganism. But we will follow, as he leads, to the prose writers of the period. To criticise and illustrate prose is far less attractive than the more picturesque treatment of which poetry naturally admits; but we can scarcely forgive M. Taine for passing over, in a couple of pages, the prose writers of a century. We think that, even at the sacrifice of some of his accustomed animation, he might have done more ample justice, to these worthies, while he consulted the due proportion of his own work. He dismisses them as a body with a few contemptuous remarks. "They have not the spirit of analysis, which is the art of following, step by step, the natural order of ideas, nor the spirit of conversation, which is the talent of never wearying or shocking others. For the most part they are tiresome pedants, never maintaining the proper level of prose," "but rising above it by their poetic genius, and falling below it by the heaviness of their education and the coarseness of their manners. He condescends, however, to single out three writers from this crowd-Robert Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, and Francis Bacon.

He is attracted by the learning, imagination, and quaint humor of the eccentric author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy," who reminds him of his own countryman Rabelais. In the inventive

* Vol. i, pp. 370-388.

philosophy of Sir Thomas Browne, he perceives the imagination of a poet, conceiving and anticipating the discoveries of science. But of all the thinkers of this age, Francis Bacon was the deepest and most comprehensive, and his style was not less excellent than his wisdom. It was his special art to enforce scientific truths by imagery and illustration, or, as M. Taine most happily expresses it, "by symbols, not by analysis." "Hence a style of admirable richness, gravity, and force, sometimes solemn and symmetrical, sometimes close and incisive-always studied and colored." "There is nothing in English prose superior to this diction." And again: "There is no proof, no effort to convince; he affirms, and that is all; he has thought after the manner of artists and poets, he speaks after the fashion of prophets and divines." "In fine, his process of thought was that of creators-not argument, but intuition." All Bacon's philosophy took a practical direction for the benefit of mankind. With him the object of science was the production of useful arts. by inverting the synthetic reasoning of the ancients, and introducing inductive philosophy, he laid the true foundations of scientific discovery. It may be true, as M. Taine observes, that while he taught others to discover natural laws, he discovered none himself; but his own discovery was great enough for a single mind, and he might well leave its practical application to other men, according to their special gifts and opportunities.

66

As a review of the entire mind and writings of Lord Bacon M. Taine's sketch is imperfect; but, on the whole, he appreciates his genius not unfairly. He is not prepared, however, to allow Lord Bacon the credit of his own rare endowments. Such an admission would be at variance with his theory. No, Lord Bacon is merely an example of the force of surrounding circumstances, or milieu." "Man thinks he is doing everything by the force of his own thought; and he does nothing but with the concurrence of surrounding thoughts; he imagines he is following the small voice which speaks within himself, and he only hears it because it is spoken by a thousand loud and imperious voices, which, proceeding from far and near, vibrate in