in the fifteenth century. The mighty
impulse of this New Learning culminated during the reign of the Virgin
Queen in a profound quickening of the national consciousness, and in
arousing an intense curiosity to know and to imitate the rich treasures of
the classics and romance. Its first phase was the _classical revival_. The
tyrannous authority of ecclesiasticism had long since been broken; a
general reaction from Christian asceticism had set in; and by the side of
the ceremonies of the church had been introduced a semi-pagan religion of
art--the worship of moral and sensuous beauty. Illiteracy was no longer the
style at court. Elizabeth herself set the example in the study of Greek.
Books and manuscripts were eagerly sought after, Scholars became conversant
with Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the great tragic poets Sophocles,
Euripides, and Aeschylus; and translations for the many of Vergil, Ovid,
Plautus, Terence, and Seneca poured forth from the printing-presses of
London. The English mind was strongly tempered by the idealistic philosophy
of Plato and Aristotle, and the influence of Latin tragedy and comedy was
strongly felt by the early English drama.

Along with this classical culture came a higher appreciation of the _beauty
of mediaevalism_. The romantic tendency of the age fostered the study of
the great epics of chivalry, Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_ and Tasso's
_Jerusalem Delivered_, and of the cycles of French romance. From the
Italian poets especially Spenser borrowed freely. Ariosto's fresh
naturalness and magic machinery influenced him most strongly, but he was
indebted to the semi-classical Tasso for whole scenes. On the whole,
therefore, Spenser's literary affinities were more with the Gothic than the
classical.

Spenser was also the spokesman of his time on religious questions. The
violent controversies of the Reformation period were over. Having turned
from the beliefs of ages with passionate rejection, the English people had
achieved religious freedom, and were strongly rooted in Protestantism,
which took on a distinctly national aspect. That Calvinism was at that time
the popular and aristocratic form of Protestantism is evident from
references in the _Faerie Queene_.

Spenser lived in the afterglow of the great age of chivalry. The passing
glories of knighthood in its flower impressed his imagination like a
gorgeous dream, and he was thus inspired to catch and crystallize into
permanent art its roma