THE BARREN PERIOD BETWEEN CHAUCER AND SPENSER.
Greek Literature. Invention of Printing. Caxton. Contemporary History.
Skelton. Wyatt. Surrey. Sir Thomas More. Utopia, and other Works. Other
Writers.
THE STUDY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
Having thus mentioned the writers whom we regard as belonging to the
period of Chaucer, although some of them, like Henryson and Dunbar,
flourished at the close of the fifteenth century, we reach those of that
literary epoch which may be regarded as the transition state between
Chaucer and the age of Elizabeth: an epoch which, while it produced no
great literary work, and is irradiated by no great name, was, however, a
time of preparation for the splendid advent of Spenser and Shakspeare.
Incident to the dangers which had so long beset the Eastern or Byzantine
Empire, which culminated in the fall of Constantinople--and to the gradual
but steady progress of Western Europe in arts and letters, which made it a
welcome refuge for the imperilled learning of the East--Greek letters came
like a fertilizing flood across the Continent into England.
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