eny man geve, let hym do it with singlenes. Let hym that rueleth do it with diligence. Yf eny man shewe mercy, lett him do itt with cherfulnes."

That there should be such a gulf between the English of Wiclif and the English of Tyndale, is a proof of the rapid growth of the language during the time from 1380 to 1525. After 1525 such an explanation would be impossible. The effect of Tyndale's translation was to fix the standard of English which subsequent writers had to follow; and nineteen years after Tyndale's version the decision as to his English style was finally endorsed by the issue of Ascham's Toxophilus. Sir Thomas More and his friends, writing about 1513, had made no conscious endeavour to treat English as they would have treated one of the learned tongues. The prose of the early part of the sixteenth century therefore possesses a more purely native character than it does under Elizabeth.

The notable resemblance of the Authorised Version to Tyndale's Bible is explained by the fact of this definite acceptance of Tyndale's English as the standard tongue. From his time, each one of the intermediate versions of the Scriptures has been largely based upon its immediate predecessor.

Miles Coverdale, ten years after Tyndale, issued the first complete Bible supplemented four years later by the Great Bible of 1539. The translation of the Psalms in this work, which was issued under the patronage of Thomas Cromwell, has remained without alteration the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer. A revision of Cromwell's Bible appeared in 1540, and was known as Cranmer's Bible, which was set up in every parish church in England."

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By the early part of Edward the Sixth's reign, Cranmer and Somerset had brought about the actual Reformation, and compelled the use of the Prayer-Book by all ministers in any cathedral, parish, or other church. This is the Prayer-Book of 1549-52. As a prose work it is not without fault. In many places it is heavy and wants directness, and Latin words are unduly employed. On the whole, it is stately and sonorous its best feature is the retention of the Psalter from the Great Bible of ten years before.

During the last years of Mary's reign and the early years of Elizabeth's the English refugees at Geneva revised the Great Bible, and published the work in 1560. A marginal commentary was added, and the chapters were divided into verses. It was known as the Genevan, or Breeches, Bible, and became very popular among the Puritans.

Before Elizabeth had been long on the throne Archbishop Parker caused a revision of Cromwell's Great Bible of 1539 to

be made, published in 1568 under the name of the Bishop's Bible. Towards the close of the reign the Roman Catholic exiles at Rheims produced a new version from the Vulgate which, from the place of its issue, is known as the Douay Bible.

In 1611 the Authorised Version in the form familiar to us all, was completed; and this, with the translations of Wiclif and Tyndale are those which have exercised an influence upon the language. The Great Bible and the Bishop's Bible are merely modifications of Tyndale's work. The Breeches Bible represents the version acceptable to the one extreme party; the Douay Bible, the version acceptable to the other.

Cromwell and Cranmer, with the Great Bible, brought Tyndale's English home to the people. The Pilgrim Fathers took the Authorised Version of 1611 with them, and fixed by it the standard of English in America.

The Authorised Version although dated 1611, belongs to a period earlier than the time of its issue. Its influence upon the language and the nation is a purely sixteenth century influence, and any estimate of that century would be incomplete which did not take it into account. It is difficult to over-estimate the value of this influence. Many books of the Old Testament lend themselves to little beyond a plain directness of treatment, as in the case of the books of law and ritual, the records of the chroniclers, or the bare statements of events. But whenever an opportunity has occurred-in the sublime passages of the prophetic writings, the poems of the Psalms, the Book of Job, or the poetic narratives of the Pentateuch-then the English employed rises to a height in every way worthy of its themes. In richness of language, in sonority of phrase, and in due balance of sentence it is not to be surpassed in our literature. Its most remarkable feature perhaps is that, with a style affording exquisite pleasure to a cultured mind, there is hardly a passage beyond the understanding of the most illiterate.

27. The Second Period of Elizabethan Literature, 1579-1603. (1) The Early Books-Lyly, Sidney, Webbe, Puttenham. The second part of Elizabeth's reign was made famous in literature by the great names of Spenser, Shakspere, Hooker, and Bacon. There were many other writers not occupying so high a position, whose work is sometimes of interest only on account of itself, sometimes because it is closely connected with other men or with public affairs. We will take two or three books of the second of these two classes, and consider the points particularly attaching to them.

John Lyly, a poet and dramatist, in 1579 produced a book called Euphues, written in a prose, with fanciful style, remarkable for its smoothness and easy flow. Hence it acted as a corrective to the previously-written prose, which had nearly all been worked out in a rougher form. Euphues is a name signifying a man who possesses thorough command over his nerves and his senses, and is, in consequence, able to receive correct impressions of the things and people he happens to meet. It is given to the hero of Lyly's book, who is described as a young gentleman of Athens, possessed of a desire for travel. He therefore journeys into Italy, and resides for a time at Naples, eventually returning home, weary of the gay and frivolous life that he finds among the Italians. The second part of the book is made up of two or three separate stories, and gives an amusing study of an Englishman abroad. Lyly has not so much attempted to tell a tale, as to use his hero Euphues, and the adventures he went through, as pegs whereon to hang his own views of religion, love, or friendship. The book gained its reputation because it fell in with the peculiar taste of Elizabeth's time. Her reign was notably a reign of unrest, when the nation, believing itself free from all its trammels, permitted extravagances which often went to an extreme. The fanciful language, the odd conceits, and the sham gallantry, which are to be found in the pages of Euphues, met with ready acceptance among an over-excited people. It was not until a quarter of a century later that Shakspere, with his insight into human nature and his commonsense, destroyed the Euphuistic foolishness by ridicule.

The tone of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia was very different from and very superior to that of Lyly's Euphues. The one is as obviously the work of plebii filius, the description attached to Lyly's name in the College rolls, as is the other the work of a man of good breeding. Arcadia is a romance, but its characters are real; the sentiment is delicate, full of charming and poetic thoughts; and the book gives a picture of the writer, rather than any study of the time. Sidney was regarded "both at home and abroad as the type of what a chivalrous gentleman should be." His death on the field of Zutphen, brought about by the fact that he had lent most of his armour to a brother-officer, was marked by the crowning incident of his career: As he was dying, one of his troopers in the same plight lay near him, and eyed longingly a cup of water which was brought to his officer. Sidney saw the man's imploring look, and, handing him the cup untasted, "Take it," he said, "thy necessity is greater than mine." It was with a spirit such as this that he lived his life, and met death like a soldier and a Christian.

Sidney was never a mere dilettante. His Apology for Poetry, an excellent criticism of contemporary verse, defended it against the statements of the School of Abuse by Stephen Gosson, in which poetry and plays were assailed from the Puritan point of view. In addition to the good work that the Apology did, it showed that Sidney was conscious of certain flaws of style in his own Arcadia. These flaws he carefully avoided in the Apology; and in it produced not only a book written in most excellent prose, but one that created in England a new artthe art of criticism. The interest aroused by it led to the production of two more volumes, each dealing with the same subject. The authors were William Webbe and George Puttenham.

Webbe was a Cambridge graduate, who composed his discourse at an Essex manor-house, where he was engaged as tutor. So far as English poetry itself was concerned, he wrote at a somewhat barren time. Chaucer belonged to a remote age, and Shakspere had not yet begun. Webbe therefore prefaces his discourse upon English poetry by some considerations of writing in general, and speaks in enthusiastic terms of what he had studied at the University. His acquaintance with the classics makes him unable to admire " a balde kind of ryming," which he stigmatises as a “brutish poetrie.” His taste was nevertheless sound enough to enable him to appreciate Chaucer, and his "delightsome vayne," and he holds that "the author of the Sheepehearde's Kalendar principally deserveth the tytle of the rightest English poet that ever I read." It is interesting to see this attitude in so early a critic, who wrote when much contemporary verse was strained and artificial, and when the finer work of after-years had not yet appeared.

Puttenham's Art of English Poesie, published in 1589, is a more elaborate production than that of Webbe. It is divided into three books-the first, of poets and poesie; the second, of proportion; and the third, of ornament. On these points of criticism, Puttenham corresponds very nearly to Webbe. He argues well in his first book that "there may be an art of our English poesie as well as there is of the Latine and Greeke." He is distressed that poets are " now become contemptible,” and finds the evil to have sprung largely from the illiberality of princes. At the same time, he is firm in his argument that the poet's art should be employed on worthy themes, and should not be wasted "upon vayne conceits, or vicious or infamous." The most interesting chapter to us now is the last of the first book, where he examines in more or less detail, the writings of various English poets. He shows a warm appreciation for Chaucer, and judiciously criticises Gower. Speaking of pastoral poetry, he

commends Sydney "and that other gentleman who wrote the late Shephearde's Callender." "For ditty and amorous ode," Puttenham finds "Sir Walter Rawlegh's vayne, most lofty, insolent, and passionate." "Others," he continues, "have also written with much facillitie, but more commendably perchance if they had not written so much nor so popularly," with which remark his treatise fittingly closes.

(2) The Great Books of the Second Period of Elizabethan Literature-Hooker and his Ecclesiastical Polity—Bacon. English prose made a great advance in one direction by the appearance in 1594 of Richard Hooker's first four books of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Since the days of Richard Pecock no theological work of any standing had been written in English. The Puritan attack upon the stage and the Martin Marprelate discussions as to the bishops were carried on by writings cast into pamphlet form. Hooker, composing slowly and carefully, did not bring out any part of his great work until 1594. Then it appeared, a grave and powerful defence of the Church against the Puritans.

Hooker was born at Heavitree, in Devonshire, and in his young days was educated at the Exeter Grammar School. His parents were people in poor circumstances. At last, a prosperous relative gave some help; and with his assistance, backed up by the friendship of Bishop Jewel, Hooker was enabled to enter at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He won his fellowship in 1577, and took holy orders four years later. He held a living in Buckinghamshire for a short time, and in 1585, through the influence of Archbishop Sandys and Bishop Whitgift, was appointed to the mastership of the Temple. Walter Travers, an ardent Puritan, had competed against him for the mastership. Hooker was an equally strong supporter of the Church of England as by law established. Travers, although failing to obtain the mastership, continued to hold the appointment he already had, of afternoon lecturer at the Temple. Here he preached strong Calvinistic doctrines, while Hooker, in his sermons, combatted such views. "The pulpit," Fuller wrote, "spake pure Canterbury in the morning, and Geneva in the afternoon."

Travers eventually charged Hooker with heresy, a charge to which Hooker replied, "with so much quiet learning and humility" that he at once gained the friendship of the Archbishop. Hooker then determined to undertake an investigation, and to make an exposition, of the principles upon which Insolent, used in the Latin sense of uncommon.