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HISTORY OF PRINTING.
quiver, which under the influence of such irre- sistible charms was sure to wound the most obdu- rate heart. 'A gift,' says honest HoUinshead, ' which her majesty, now verging to her fiftieth year, received very thankfully.' In one of the fulsome interludes at court, where she was present, the singing boys of her chapel presented the story of the three rival goddesses on Mount Ida, to which her maiesty was ingeniously added as a fourth; and Pans was arraigned in form for adjudging the golden apple to Venus, which was due to the queen alone.
This inundation of classical pedantry soon in- fected our poetry. Our writers, already trained in the school of fancy, were suddenly dazzled with these novel imaginations, and the divinities and heroes of Pagan antiquity decorated every composition. The perpetuid allusions to ancient fable were often introduced without the least regard to propriety. Shakspeare's Mrs. Page, who is not intended in any degree to be a learned or affected lady, laughing at the cumbersome courtship of her corpulent lover, Falstaffe, says, " I had rather be a giantess, and lie under Mount Pelion." This familiarity with the Pagan storv was not, however, so much owing to the study of the original authors, as to the nume- rous English versions of them, which were con- sequently made. The dissemination of the scrip- tures in the vulgar tongue, by means of the press, while it greatly affected the language and ideas of the people, wasalso of no small avail in giving new directions to the thoughts of literary men, to whom these antique Oriental compositions, presented numberlessincidents, images, and sen- timents, unknown before, and of the richest and most interesting kind.
Spencer, Sidney, Shakspeare, Jonson ,Marlow, Green, and Peele, may be considered as the chief poetical names 'which adorn the reign of Elizabeth. Almost all the poets, and many of the other writers, were either courtiers themselves, or underthe immediate protection of courtiers, and were constantly experiencing the smiles, and occasionally the solid benefactions of royalty. Not only the Greek and Roman writers, but those of modern Italy and France, where it has been shown that learning experienced an earlier revival, had been translated into English, and liberally diffused by means of the press, served to excite a taste for elegant reading amongst all classes of society. The study of the belles-lettres was in some measure identified with the courtly and arbitrary principles of the time, not so much from any enlightened spirit in those who sup- ported such principles, as from a desire of oppos- ing the puritans, whose ascetic spirit and narrow- doctrines of religion led them to despise every department of elegant literature.
This reign also produced Hooker, Raleigh, and Francis Bacon, lord Verulum, who as a philosopher, deserves the highest praise ; whose style is copious and correct, and whose wit is only surpassed by his learning and penetration. During this period the whole island seemed as if roused from her long habits of barbarity; arts,
commerce, and legislation, began to acquire new strength every day ; and England which had hitherto been the object of every invasion, and a prey to every plunderer, now asserted her strength in turn, and became terrible to its in- vaders. The achievements of Drake, Hawkins, Davis, Forbisher, Raleigh, Howard, and other naval commanders, carried the British flag to every part of the world. If we look through history, and consider the rise of kingdoms, we shall scarcely find an instance of a people be- coming, in so short a time, wise, powerful, and happy. Liberty, it is true, still continued to fluctuate ; Elizabeth knew her own power, and very often stretched it to the very verge of des- potism. We are not to imagine from the ac- counts of the religious and other controversies, which were carried on during this reign, that an entire freedom of debate and of writing, was then admitted. The true liberty of the press was by no means understood; and those who wrote or printed any thing against the established system, did it at great hazard; and the suffer- ings which in some cases were inflicted on the boldness of publication was, as we have shown, extremelysevere, and often despotic. After every proper deduction has been made, enough remains to fix the seventy or eighty years that elapsed from the middle of the sixteenth century to the period of the restoration, a« " by far the mightiest in the history of English literature, or indeed of human intellect and capacity."
Dr. Wotton, in his Rejlectiom on Ancient and Modern Learning, assures us, that no age was so productive of learned women as the sixteenth century. Speaking of the flourishing condition learning was in at that time, he says, " it was so very modish, that the fair sex seemed to believe the Greek and Latin added to their charms; and that Plato and Aristotle, untranslated, were fre- quent ornaments of their closets." And Eras- mus, speaking of the early part of this century, says, " the scene of human things is changed ; the monks, famed in times past for learning, are become ignorant ; and women love boolu." — Elizabeth herself was the most conspicuous of the learned ladies of her reign. The daughters of the duke of Somerset;* lady Killegrew jf-
- Anne, MaTg:aret, and Jane Seymonr, were the daush-
ters of Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset, and uncle to king Edward VI. by Anne his second wife, daughter of sir Edward Stanhope, knii^ht, by whom he had six dau^- ters, all learned ; Anne, the eldest, was married, first to John Dudley, earl of Warwick, and afterwards to sir Edward Unton, Knight of the Bath : she died about the end of the sixteenth century. Margaret died unmarried, Jane also died sioglc. notwithstanding her father's endea- vour to have married her to Idng Edward VI. She was maid of honour to queen Elizabeth, and in great favour ; she died in 1560, in the twentieth year of her age, and was buried in Westminster abbey, with great solemnity. These three learned sisters wrote four hundred Latia distlchs on the death of the queen of Navarre, Margaret de Valois, which were translated into Greek, French, and Italian, and printed at Paris in IS57, under the title of Tombeau de Marguerite de Vaioig, Rejfne de Navarre.
t The fourth daughter of sir Anthony Cooke, was born at Giddy hall, in 1530. She was married to sir Henry KiUegrew, and died about 1S7S. Her death was lamented in various epitaphs ; and on the monument erected to her memory, in the church of Thomas, in the Vintry ward.
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