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HISTORY OF PRINTING.
I entertaining. Nor must it be denied, that his language is more cultivated than that of many of his cotemporaries, and that he contributed his share to the improvement of the English phra- seology. His author, Sebastian Brandt, a Ger- man, who was born at Strasburg in 1458, and died 1521, appears to have been a man of uni- versal erudition ; and his work, for the most part, is a tissue of citations from the ancient poets and historians.
Mr. Warton, in his History of EnglUh Poetry, taJces a general view of the progress of modern learning through the reigns of Edward IV., Richard III., Henry VII. and VIII., and con- cludes with the following judicious and ingeni- ous observations; which we cannot refrain from quoting at length : —
" The customs, institutions, traditions, and religion, of the middle ages, were favourable to poetry. Their pageaunts, processions, specta- cles, and ceremonies, were friendly to imagery, to personification and allegorv. Ignorance and superstition, so opposite to the real interests of human society, are the parents of imagination. The very devotion of the Gothic times was romantic. The catholic worship, besides that its numerous exterior appendages were of a pic- turesque and even of a poetical nature, disposed the mind to a state of deception, and encouraged, or rather authorised, every species of credulity : its visions, miracles, and legends, propagated a general propensity to the marvellous, and streng- thened toe belief of spectres, demons, witches, and incantations. These allusions were heigh- tened by churches of a wonderful mechanism, and constmcted on such principles of inexplica- ble architecture as had a tendency to impress the soul with every false sensation of religious fear. The savage pomp and the capricious he- roism of the baronial manners, were replete with incident, adventure, and enterprise : and the in- tractable genius of the feudal policy, held forth those irregularities of conduct, discordances of interest, and dissimilarities of situation, that framed rich materials for the minstrel-muse. The tacit conipact of fashion, which promotes civiliw by dinusing habits of uniformity, and tberemre destroys peculiarities of character and situation, had not yet operated upon life: nor had domestic convenience abolished unwieldy magnificence. Literature, and a better sense of things, not only banished these barbarities, but superseded the mode of composition which was formed upon them. Romantic poetry gave way to the force of reason and inquiry ; as its own inchanted palaces and gardens instantaneously vanished, when the Christian champion dis- played the shield of tmth, and baffled the charm of Uie necromancer. The study of the classics, together, with a colder magic and a tamer my- thology, introduced method into composition : and the universal ambition of rivalling those new patterns of excellence, the faultless models nf Greece and Rome, produced that bane of in- vention, imitation. Eradition was made to act upon genius. Fancy was weakened by reflec-
tion and philosophy. The bshion of treating every thing scientifically, applied speculation and theory to the arts of writing. Judgment was advanced above imagination, and rules of criticism were established. The brave eccentri- cities of original genius, and the daring hardi- ness of native thought, were intimidated by me- taphysical sentiments of perfection and refine- ment. Setting aside the consideration of the more solid advantages, which are obvious, and are not the distinct object of our contemplation at present, the lover of true poetry will ask, what have we gained by this revolution ? It may be answered, much good sense, good taste, and good criticism. But, in the mean time, we have lost a set of manners, and a system of machinery, more suitable to the purposes of poetry, thin those which have been adopted in their place. We have parted with extravagancies that are above propriety, with incredibilities that are more acceptable than troth, and with fictions that are more valuable than reality."
1509. Printing introduced into the city of York, by Hewe Goes, a printer iivm Antwerp : his first production was the Pica or Vic, (an old book of liturgy for the cathedral). The last of his works in York bears the date of 1016, in which year he removed to Beverley ; and printed a broadside ; being a wooden cut of a man on horseback, with a spear in his right hand, and a shield, with the arms of France, in his left, with the following imprint : — Emprynted ot Beveriay in the Hyegate, Dy me Hewe Goes ; to which is added his mark or rebus of a great ^ and a goose. He afterwards removed to London, and there printed a Latin Grammar, in quarto.
Matthias Goes, a printer at Antwerp, and who printed a book entitled Cordiale ae quatuor novissimit, 8vo. 1483, perhaps was father to the above Hewe Goes.
1509, April 22, died Henry VII.— The reign of this king was barren in literature; the muses, if muses they might be called, produced nothing more than homilies in rhyme, and were minis- terial only to make creeds halt on lame feet, and controversy jingle. The spirit, the humour, the genius of Chaucer were no more. And what should occasion the miserable change? What, but turning the yet scanty streams of science into the channel of school divinity, were its wa- ters were lost, and its cturent obscured, in the most noxious weeds. One solitary versifier is all that Mr. Warton has noticed in this con- siderable reign. His name was Hawes; and his principal performances were called the Pastime of Pleasure, and the Temple of Glass ; the only valuable part of the latter is the imagery, which is chiefly borrowed from Chaucer's House of Fame. Robert Fabian, an eminent merchant, and in 1493, sheriff of London, where he died Febraary 26, 1512, is the only historian worthy of our notice in this reign. His Historiarum Concordantia; consists of seven parts, of which the six first bring down the history of England from Bratus to William the Conqueror, and in the seventh he gives the history of our kings
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