ols of
historians, translators, controversialists, and especially critics who
illustrated the middle period of the reign, and singling out the noteworthy
personality of Sidney. We shall also say something of Lyly (as far as
_Euphues_ is concerned) and his singular attempts in prose style, and shall
finish with Hooker, the one really great name of the period. Its voluminous
pamphleteering, though much of it, especially the Martin Marprelate
controversy, might come chronologically within the limit of this chapter,
will be better reserved for a notice in Chapter VI. of the whole pamphlet
literature of the reigns of Elizabeth and James--an interesting subject,
the relation of which to the modern periodical has been somewhat
overlooked, and which indeed was, until a comparatively recent period, not
very easy to study. Gabriel Harvey alone, as distinctly belonging to the
earlier Elizabethans, may be here included with other critics.

It was an inevitable result of the discovery of printing that the
cultivation of the vernacular for purposes of all work--that is to say, for
prose--should be largely increased. Yet a different influence arising, or
at least eked out, from the same source, rather checked this increase. The
study of the classical writers had at first a tendency to render inveterate
the habit of employing Latin for the journey-work of literature, and in the
two countries which were to lead Western Europe for the future (the
literary date of Italy was already drawing to a close, and Italy had long
possessed vernacular prose masterpieces), it was not till the middle of the
sixteenth century that the writing of vernacular prose was warmly advocated
and systematically undertaken. The most interesting monuments of this
crusade, as it may almost be called, in England are connected with a school
of Cambridge scholars who flourished a little before our period, though not
a few of them, such as Ascham, Wilson, and others, lived into it. A letter
of Sir John Cheke's in the very year of the accession of Elizabeth is the
most noteworthy document on the subject. It was written to another father
of English prose, Sir Thomas Hoby, the translator of Castiglione's
_Courtier_. But Ascham had already and some years earlier published his
_Toxophilus_, and various not unimportant attempts, detailed notice of
which would be an antedating of our proper period, had been made. More's
chief work, _Utopia_, had been written in Latin, and was t