LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND CHAPTER I THE EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH CRITICISM FROM LITERARY criticism in England during the Elizabethan age was neither so influential nor so rich and varied as the contemporary criticism of Italy and France. This fact might perhaps be thought insufficient to affect the interest or patriotism of English-speaking people, yet the most charming critical monument of this period, Sidney's Defence of Poesy, has been slightingly referred to by the latest historian of English poetry. Such interest and importance as Elizabethan criticism possesses must therefore be of an historical nature, and lies in two distinct directions. In the first place, the study of the literature of this period will show, not only that there was a more or less complete body of critical doctrine during the Renaissance, but also that Englishmen shared in this creation, or inheritance, of the Renaissance as truly as did their continental neighbors; and on the other hand this study may be said to possess an interest in itself, in so far as it will make the growth of classicism in England intelligible, and will indicate that the formation of the classic ideal had begun before the introduction of the French influence. In neither case, however, can early English criticism be considered wholly apart from the general body of Renaissance doctrine; and its study loses in importance and perspicuity according as it is kept distinct from the consideration of the critical literature of France, and especially of Italy. English criticism, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, passed through five more or less distinct stages of development. The first stage, characterized by the purely rhetorical study of literature, may be said to begin with Leonard Coxe's Arte or Crafte of Rhetoryke, a hand-book for young students, compiled about 1524, chiefly from one of the rhetorical treatises of Melanchthon.1 This was followed by Wilson's Arte of Rhetorike (1553), which is more extensive and certainly more original than Coxe's manual, and which has been called by Warton "the first book or system of criticism in our language." But the most important figure of this period is Roger Ascham. The educational system expounded in his Scholemaster, written between 1563 and 1568, he owed largely to his friend, John Sturm, the Strasburg humanist, and to his teacher, Sir John Cheke, who had been Greek lecturer at the University of Padua; but for the critical portions of this work he seems directly indebted to the rhetorical treatises of the Italians. Yet his obligations to the Italian human 1 Cf. Mod. Lang. Notes, 1898, xiii. 293. ists did not prevent the expression of his stern and unyielding antagonism to the romantic Italian spirit as it influenced the imaginative literature of his time. In studying early English literature it must always be kept in mind that the Italian Renaissance influenced the Elizabethan age in two different directions. The Italianization of English poetry had been effected, or at least begun, by the publication of Tottel's Miscellany in 1557; on this, the creative side of English literature, the Italian influence was distinctly romantic. The influence of the Italian humanists, on the other hand, was directly opposed to this romantic spirit; even in their own country they had antagonized all that was not classical in tendency. Ascham, therefore, as a result of his humanistic training, became not only the first English man of letters, but also the first English classicist. The first stage of English criticism, then, was entirely given up to rhetorical study. It was at this time that English writers first attained the appreciation of form and style as distinguishing features of literature; and it was to this appreciation that the formation of an English prose style was due. This period may therefore be compared with the later stages of Italian humanism in the fifteenth century; and the later humanists were the masters and models of these early English rhetoricians. Gabriel Harvey, as a Ciceronian of the school of Bembo, was perhaps their last representative. The second stage of English criticism-a period ▼of classification and especially of metrical studies— commences with Gascoigne's Notes of Instruction concerning the making of Verse,1 published in 1575, and modelled apparently on Ronsard's Abrégé de l'Art Poétique françois (1565). Besides this brief pamphlet, the first work on English versification, this stage also includes Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, the first systematic classification of poetic forms and subjects, and of rhetorical figures; Bullokar's Bref Grammar, the first systematic treatise on English grammar; and Harvey's Letters and Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie, the first systematic attempts to introduce classical metres into English poetry. This period was characterized by the study and classification of the practical questions of language and versification; and in this labor it was coöperating with the very tendencies which Ascham had been attempting to counteract. The study of the verse-forms introduced into England from Italy helped materially to perfect the external side of English poetry; and a similar result was obtained by the crude attempts at quantitative verse suggested by the school of Tolomei. The Italian prosodists were thus, directly or indirectly, the masters of the English students of this era. The representative work of the third stage-the period of philosophical and apologetic criticism—is Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy, published posthumously in 1595, though probably written about 1 The Reulis and Cautelis of Scottis Poesie by James VI. of Scotland is wholly based on Gascoigne's treatise. |