date exactly the changes in poetical taste. It seems The Spenserians. clear, however, that in the closing years of the sixteenth century there was a reaction against the diffuse, flamboyant, Italianate poetry which Spenser, Sidney, and Lodge had made fashionable,—a reaction which showed itself in the satires of Hall and Marston, but found its fullest expression in the poetry—much of which is satirical—of Donne and of Jonson, who took the place in courtly circles which had been held earlier by Spenser and Sidney. The Spenserians of the early seventeenth century—between whom and Spenser in pastoral poetry Drayton forms an important link—were not courtly poets. Though they look towards the court on occasions, they stand outside its circle. They belong to the Protestant wing of the Anglican Church; and in the somewhat bourgeois and didactic tone of their poetry, their taste for emblems, and the natural, artless tone in which they speak of themselves, resemble the Dutch poets of the same class.
The most thorough-going disciples of Spenser among these serious young poets of the reign of James I. were the Cambridge divines and poets Phineas (1582-1648) and Giles (1583-1623) Fletcher, the sons of Giles Fletcher, author of Licia, and cousins of the dramatist. They were both Fellows—Phineas of King's, Giles of Trinity College—and both took orders. Giles, after being reader in Greek at Cambridge, became rector of Alderton in Suffolk, and Phineas, after some vicissitudes of fortune, was appointed rector of Hilgay in Norfolk.
