interest as very primitive examples of original prose in Early Modern English.

7. A writer of this period, Ralph Strode, has an undying name only because Chaucer has mentioned him. There is reason to think that he taught one of Chaucer's sons. He was a Dominican of Jedburgh Abbey, who had sought knowledge in France, Germany, and Italy, had visited the Holy Land, and was in highest credit as a theologian and philosopher about the year 1370. He wrote verse also, both Latin and English. Some of his books have been printed in Germany, but none in England.

CHAPTER III.

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY: POETS.

1. Intellectual Character of the Fifteenth Century.-2. Development of the English Language and of English Style; Reserved Energies.-3. John Lydgate.— 4. Thomas Oceleve.-5. James I. of Scotland.-6. Minor Poets.-7. Ballads.

1. It is usual for literary historians to speak of the fifteenth century as a dismal one in the annals of English letters, -as an epoch of intellectual relapse and of literary barrenness. Even beyond the borders of England there was, during this period, a dearth of important literary works: according to Hallam, no great literary masterpiece was produced in the fifteenth century anywhere in Europe. Certainly, in England, during all that time, there was no literary genius of the highest order, such as the fourteenth century had in Chaucer, such as the sixteenth century had in Spenser and in Shakespeare.

In studying the English literature of the fifteenth century, it will be best for us, first, to group together the principal facts in the outward and inward life of that century, that helped or hindered the progress of literature.

(a) It was in England a century of turbulence; of popular convulsion; of bloody strife between rival families of the royalty and nobility. Not a king sat on the throne whose right to sit there was not in dispute. It was the century of the insurrection of Jack Cade, and the Wars of the Roses.

(b) The claim of the King of England to the crown of France kept both countries, during the first half of the century, in a state of constant war, or of the expectation of war.

(c) Greater restraints were put upon the action of the human mind than had ever before been done in England. In 1401 an English statute was confirmed, by which it was settled that every sheriff in taking the oath of his office must swear to redress all errors and heresies; and also that heretics might be

dealt with at their own discretion, provided always that the proceedings against any heretic should be publicly and judicially ended within three months. In that very year, William Sawtree, the first English martyr for heresy, was burned alive in Smithfield; and the light of such fires was kept up in England for more than a century.

(d) In spite of such perils, bitter theological controversy raged in England, diverting many minds from the temper that is favorable to literary studies, yet educating many minds to think keenly on the most difficult problems.

(e) It was in this century that the future influence of every wise thought was enlarged by the invention of printing, made by John Gutenberg in 1438, and introduced into England by William Caxton about 1475.

(f) For a hundred years and more before the fifteenth century, the impulse had been growing in Europe, to turn away from the tasteless mass of medieval literature to the study of the Roman and Greek classics. This impulse was advancing under great disadvantages, the principal one being the lack of Greek books and of Greek teachers. In 1453, about the time that the art of printing was perfected by Gutenberg, Constantinople, then a vast Greek city, was captured by the Turks; and multitudes of the finest Greek scholars, carrying with them copies of the best Greek classics, were turned adrift upon Western Europe to gain a livelihood by teaching Greek. They and their books were everywhere welcomed with unspeakable homage; and the push they gave to the revival of ancient learning can hardly be overstated. England, as the westernmost barrier of Europe, was of course the last to be reached by this new light shining out of the East; but it was reached in due time, and that, too, before the end of the fifteenth century.

(g) Two other great events occurred in that period, which greatly stimulated mental activity and widened the range of human thought in all European countries, and especially in England: these events were the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1486, and the discovery of America in 1492.

(h) During the fifteenth century, extraordinary zeal was shown in England for the foundation and improvement of