rarely coincide exactly with chronological, is sufficiently
coincident with the accession of Elizabeth), it cannot be said with any
precision that there was an English _literature_ at all. There were eminent
English writers, though perhaps one only to whom the first rank could even
by the utmost complaisance be opened or allowed. But there was no
literature, in the sense of a system of treating all subjects in the
vernacular, according to methods more or less decidedly arranged and
accepted by a considerable tradition of skilled craftsmen. Something of the
kind had partially existed in the case of the Chaucerian poetic; but it was
an altogether isolated something. Efforts, though hardly conscious ones,
had been made in the domain of prose by romancers, such as the practically
unknown Thomas Mallory, by sacred orators like Latimer, by historians like
More, by a few struggling miscellaneous writers. Men like Ascham, Cheke,
Wilson, and others had, perhaps with a little touch of patronage,
recommended the regular cultivation of the English tongue; and immediately
before the actual accession of Elizabeth the publication of Tottel's
_Miscellany_ had shown by its collection of the best poetical work of the
preceding half century the extraordinary effect which a judicious xenomania
(if I may, without scaring the purists of language, borrow that useful word
from the late Karl Hillebrand) may produce on English. It is to the
exceptional fertilising power of such influences on our stock that we owe
all the marvellous accomplishments of the English tongue, which in this
respect--itself at the head of the Teutonic tongues by an almost
unapproachable distance--stands distinguished with its Teutonic sisters
generally from the groups of languages with which it is most likely to be
contrasted. Its literary power is originally less conspicuous than that of
the Celtic and of the Latin stocks; the lack, notorious to this day, of one
single original English folk-song of really great beauty is a rough and
general fact which is perfectly borne out by all other facts. But the
exquisite folk-literature of the Celts is absolutely unable either by
itself or with the help of foreign admixture to arrive at complete literary
perfection. And the profound sense of form which characterises the Latins
is apparently accompanied by such a deficiency of originality, that when
any foreign model is accepted it receives hardly any colour from the native
genius,