the influence of the Italian school of the Renaissance, gave a death-blow to the medievalism which had for so long haunted our literature. In so doing they prepared the way for the freedom and harmony of the Elizabethan writers. However, in satire, Wyatt's example was not immediately followed, nor when, after an interval of over half a century, the Elizabethan classical satirists arose, did they, like Wyatt, imitate the polished irony and witty ridicule of Horace, but rather the vehement denunciations, the coarse and rugged virulence, of Juvenal, Persius and Martial. It is probably in no small degree due to this fact that English satire has almost always been distinguished by two disfigurements-an excessive personal bitterness and an unnecessary coarseness combined with an exaggerated air of moral indignation. Ri?

not

1550.

Meantime, Robert Crowley, whose dreary epigrams exhibit him as a 'censor morum,' handed on the flickering torch of native satire to George Gas- | 1576. coigne. This versatile author invented,"1 to quote his own words, a morall and godly Satyre called the Steele Glasse, written without rime, but I trust not without reason.' The Steele Glasse, or Mirror, typifies the plain manners of England as opposed to the Crystal Glass—the foreign luxury and corruption of Venice. Though his metres show that he has felt the Italian influence, Gascoigne does not follow Wyatt in imitating classical models, but rather inclines to that allegorical treatment which Spenser frankly adopts. Spenser and Gascoigne, in fact, are, ↑ as satirists, nearer to the spirit of Dante and Langland than to that of the era which was now beginning. Spenser, not to mention the incidental satire in the 'Faery Queen,' uses this allegorical method of 1 Epistle Dedicatory, and Dedication of 'Delicate Diet for Daintie Mouthde Drunkards.'

satire in the fifth Eclogue of the 'Shepheard's Calendar' to gird at the colourable and fained goodwill of Protestant and Catholic,' and openly attacks the loose living of popish prelates in Eclogue IX. 'Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubberd's Tale,' again, is in the shape of a fable, published in 1591, but composed, as Spenser tells us, in the raw conceit of his youth. It is a satire of some heat and choler, but the point of it is blunted by the allegory. None the less it contains some fine and famous passages. Whilst Spenser wrote this fable in over - fluent heroics, Gascoigne used still less polished blank verse. The latter, a man of the world and a soldier of experience, devoted, as he himself put it, 'tam Marti quam Mercurio,' as much to the God of War as to the God of Learning, is a shrewd critic of man's vices and follies, and he preserves for us a curious picture of the manners and morality of the age. In spite of his imperfect mastery of blank verse rhythm, and his tendency towards the prosaic, he can boast an ease and harmony rare at that date. His style, which is clear and, except in his prose works, unaffected, shows him to be a master of the English language. Without any great fertility of fancy, he has masculine energy and an undoubted gift of satirical description.

The work of Edward Hake1 has some little recommendation beyond its rarity, and

'Intent good living to erect,

And sin rescinde which rifely raignes abroade.'

He boldly attacked not only bawds, lawyers, and physicians, but also vice in high places, at a time when the Star Chamber was not idle. His hatred of Papists is quite rabid. If his easy black-letter rhymes are not poetry, they deserve, at any rate,

1 M.P. for Windsor, circa 1579.

some mention as a collection of professedly serious satires.

We now find ourselves on the threshold of the Elizabethan era. Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe may be taken as representing the prose satire of that period. They availed themselves of the pamphlet, which at this time supplied the place of journalism, to carry on personal controversies, or to amuse the public by ridiculing the affectations and vices of the age-but always with the object of putting money in their own pockets.

The rollicking humour and fertile genius of the Elizabethans were not favourable to satire. Men were not, in those days, sufficiently out of temper with themselves and the world to be critical. The spirit of romanticism-of emotional imagination, rather than the critical spirit, was abroad. So that in the satiric compositions of the day, wit unpruned, wild burlesque, and exuberant horse-play take the place of that acid intellectual aloofness, that restrained inward revolt, which have marked the greatest satirists.

As it was the direct impulse of classical studies acquired at the Universities which at this time inspired Lodge, Donne, Marston, and Hall to write satiric verse, so Greene and Nashe also were 'University wits.' But their biting pamphlets owe nothing to the classics. They are the outcome of their life in London. They are pasquinades thrown off in a fever heat of personal resentment, or satiric romances, confessions, exposures written under pressure of want. Wild and unrestrained in their lives, these writers were equally wild and unrestrained in their prose. Their touch is uncertain, their style diffuse, their sarcasm often pointless, their satire frequently degenerates into the absurdest buffoonery, but, in spite of all those defects, the wit,

were

and warmth, and life of the Elizabethans was in them, and these are imperishable qualities. 1560-1592. Robert Greene, as dramatist or euphuistic romancer, lampooner or moralist, lyricist or pamphleteer, blackguard or repentant, offers one of the most interesting character-studies in Elizabethan literature. But we have only to consider him. in the one capacity of satirist; we must not even stay to moralize over his unfortunate surfeit of Rhenish and pickled herrings.

Greene spent his life in passing from violent fits of debauchery to equally violent fits of remorse, which found voice in confessions and culminated in the 1591. 'Groat's-worth of Wit,' an autobiography in the form of a novel, written on his death-bed. In the Conny-catching' series he uses his unrivalled knowledge of knavery to expose the ways of the London sharpers. It is very probable that, with characteristic irony, he also wrote the 'Defence of Conny-catching,' in which he is himself roundly abused, with the view of advertising his previous pamphlets. Here, and in 'The Life and Death of Mourton and Ned Browne, two notable Conny-catchers,' he shows great skill in wielding the weapon of irony. The latter work is, indeed, a faint foreshadowing of 'Jonathan Wild,' though it lacks the strength and consistent irony of that masterpiece.

Greene's best satiric work, however, is 'A Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' wherein he ridicules the whole race of parvenus in the person of Gabriel Harvey, whose brother Richard, an astrologer given to indulging in troublesome prophecies, had caused offence by calling Greene's circle piperly makeplaies and make-bates.' The description of the jury, who decide the Quaint Dispute' as to the social value of foreign luxuries between Velvet-breeches and Cloth-breeches in favour of the latter, gives occasion

for a whole gallery of contemporary portraits drawn from members of the various professions. Besides the historical interest of these portraits there is much satiric humour to be found in the delineation of them.

In his best satiric work, we may note, there is little trace of that pedantic, affected, euphuistic style which Greene exhibited in his love-stories. The sentences, indeed, are straggling and unframed, but the style becomes simple and natural. The chief fault of his prose, dramatic or other, is that there is no air of repose, but a continual straining after wit, which signifies a lack of art and self-criticism, and results in the tedious quality attending so much Elizabethan wit. The 'Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' however, is comparatively free from this fault. The unity of plan makes this piece a more artistic whole than is usually the case in the pamphlets of the time.

Greene's attack upon Harvey gave rise to a literary warfare, which was carried on for five years by Harvey and Nashe. So virulent and rancorous was this war, and so much did it excite popular feeling, that it became necessary at last for the authorities to interfere and put a stop to it.

1597.

Thomas Nashe, like Greene, was a University 1567-1601. man, and, like him, was a dramatist, romancer, pamphleteer-everything by starts and nothing long. His work is marred conspicuously by the lack of form and self-restraint which distinguish all the Elizabethan prose writers; but his brilliant motherwit, his gift for irony and burlesque, and his power of scathing sarcasm to a large extent redeem these faults. He is not, however, so dexterous in the use of irony as Greene, and he is more boisterous. His share in the Martin-Marprelate controversy1

1 For the history of the Martin Marprelate controversy and tracts see Dexter's 'The Congregationalism of the last Three