matter of their romances in large part to the ancient chronicles and lays of France, they sent in return a wave of new light and great ideas into the northern country, which produced the newer school of poetry there in the sixteenth century-the Augustan Age of Ronsard, and Marot, and Rabelais. case. In Spain the influence was more marked, and can be traced almost to two individuals, the poets Boscan and Garcilasso. I cannot say that this influence was altogether for good. The character of the older Spanish lyric poetry was destroyed, and the fineness of the later writer's workmanship scarcely makes good that loss. It is more interesting, however, to consider our own Here we meet with Italian influence almost at the fountain-head. Chaucer, the father of English literature, is supposed to have personally met Petrarch in Padua. Many of his poems and forms of poetry bear the stamp of Italian influence. In Spenser, too, the influence is obvious. The "Faery Queen" is such another poem as the two "Orlandos," only written in English, and perhaps containing more of the spiritual or subjective element than is perceived in the fruits of the Italian mind, engrossed as it was with outward form and colour, without much inclination for reflection or the perfection of moral purposes. It is sufficient to mention the names of some of Shakespeare's plays to immediately remind the student of literature of the rich source from which their material at least was derived. The stories of "Measure for Measure," "Much Ado about Nothing," "Romeo and Juliet," "All's Well that Ends Well," and "Othello," are to be found among the Italian novelists. Of Milton it will be sufficient to note his "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" as distinctly Italian in type, and to remember his early travels in the lands of Dante and Petrarch. I should like, in conclusion, to say something, in a general way, of the whole period I have been reviewing. It seems to me that we can best understand that period if we attempt to draw a line, which it is always difficult to draw, but which is nevertheless a very broad one, although its course is often tortuous. I mean the line which separates literature from poetry. We have here a mass of literature, we have one or two instances of poetry. The distinction is one which no two people will probably agree upon, so to put it on as broad a basis as possible, I shall call it the distinction between the learning, the general culture, and the respectable accomplishments which find their expression in written speech, and that higher faculty which contains all the elemental emotion, all the keen æsthetic delights and revelations which are permitted to humanity, and which compels its expression with an impulse which is genius in splendours of colour, in majesty of form, in music that bewitches, or in words that burn. In this view I fear that we should have to make one great leap from Dante to Politian. For the Trecentisti, with perhaps the exception of Petrarch, sink below the line I have drawn, and it is not till the time of Lorenzo that we find poetry properly so called. For this result I think the sonnet is largely to be blamed. That form of verse is a difficult and artificial one. almost of necessity It cramps and confines the poet's thoughts, and worse still leads by its poverty of rhyme to the suggestion of ideas which are irrelevant and far-fetched. It breeds conceits and subtleties and induces general obscurity, which is always paralysing to the faculties which find their satisfaction in the power of simple beauty. But when we have arrived at the time of the Medici there is scarcely a man who sinks below the line of high art. It is one continuous baze of splendour, like the Elizabethian period in our annals, or the beginning of the present century, which saw living together Burns, and Wordsworth, and Byron, and Coleridge, and Keats, and Scott. But in interest it exceeds even these, for a long reign of internal peace and prosperity fostered the one, the subsidence of a world storm called for the other, but the Renascence rose of its own force out of the blackness of darkness, and made all the others possible. The present age seems to some to be one of those pauses between the acts which must, no doubt, occur. But we have one or two great names amongst us still, and I do not fear that our national life will ever lose that reverent spirit and truthfulness of purpose which the presence and pursuit of high art fosters and cherishes, or that there will ever come a time when there will be no great voice left to tell us that "Not in entire forgetfulness, Nor yet in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come AN ELIZABETHAN "ENDYMION" HE use of the title "Endymion" by modern writers such as Keats and Longfellow, not to speak of Lord Beaconsfield, suggests a backward glance over English literature with a view to noting when and where it has been employed before. Keats may be said to live in his "Endymion." It was the first, and will always be the most typical work of his genius. "Hyperion" is more stately and finished in its verse, many of his odes are more directly human in their interest, but the rich, almost over-sweet music of Endymion," with its gorgeous imagery and exquisite descriptive power, will keep its author's fame green for 66 ever. Besides these modern and well-known works, there is an "Endimion" of much older date, which we venture to say has had few readers of late; and a glance at this, as a typical work of its class and time, may not be uninteresting. Almost everybody has heard of John Lilly, the author of "Euphues," the sweet-spoken playwright whose stilted, yet elegant eloquence became "the rage" among the courtiers of Queen Elizabeth. Born probably in the same year as Edmund Spenser, Lilly, after passing through Oxford, where he took his master's degree in 1575, became a well-known writer of his time. Besides "Euphues" he wrote many dramas, the chief among which are "Campaspe," "Sapho and Phao," "Endimion," "Mother Bombie" and "Galathea." Lilly's "Endimion" bears the date 1591, and was written in all probability when its author was in the prime of his literary power. Its original title was as follows: "Endimion, the Man in the Moone, play'd before the Queen's Majestie at Greenwich on Candlemas day at night, by the chyldren of Paules." The first scene of the first act opens with a duologue between Endimion and his friend Eumenides. The style is that of the author of "Euphues," yet there is a certain grace and poetic cadence in the high-flown sentences which is very quaint and pleasing. Endimion avows to his friend the strange passion which has taken possession of his heart, and, notwithstanding Eumenides' remonstrances (with which the reader cannot help sympathising), goes on to speak of the beauty and perfectness of his "faire Cynthia." Taunted with the undeniable fact of her changeableness, he breaks into a rhapsody in which he speaks of her as "getting youth by years, and never decaying beautie by time; whose faire face, neither the summer's blaze can scorch, nor winter's blast chap, nor the numbering of years breed altering of colours." This reminds one inevitably of the opening of the third book of Keats' poem, where the moon is apostrophised in richer and less formal language— "The sleeping kine Couched in thy brightness, dream of fields divine; Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes." Eumenides, who is a person of common-sense, closes the scene by announcing his intention of keeping his |