1072 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
civil warfare, which stamped out, by constant slaughter, the 
effects of Chaucer’s genius and example. The one gleam- of 
light during the Wars of the Roses was the institution of printing 
by movable type, which commenced at Haarlem, was perfected 
at Mayence, and rapidly introduced into France, Italy, and 
England. After the death of Lydgate no English poet arose 
worthy of mention until we meet with Hawesin the early part of 
the sixteenth century. His Pastime of Pleasure, or the Historie 
of Graunde Anour, and La Bel Pucel, was printed in 1817. 
There is a most peculiar parallel between Hawes and Bunyan. 
Hallam remarks : ‘Their inventions are of the same class, various 
and novel, though with no remarkable persistence to the leading 
subject, or naturally consecutive order ; their characters, though 
abstract in name, have a personal truth about them, * * * 
They render the general allegory subservient to inculeating a 
system—the one of philosophy, the other of religion.” 
The peaceful and comparatively prosperous reign of Henry VIIT 
gave England once more a place among nations, and her alliance 
was alternately solicited by France and Spain. Under Wolsey’s 
rule the nation prospered, and intercourse with foreign countries, 
particularly with Spain, was largely extended. Throughout the 
Tudor period Spain was the most powerful country in Europe, and 
the marriages of members of the English and Spanish royal 
families made Spanish the court language of the period. Speaking 
of the Spanish writer, Guevara, author of J/arco Aurelio, or the 
Golden Book, Hallam says: “ This sententious and antithetical 
style of the Spanish writers is worthy of our attention, for it was 
imitated by their English admirers, and formed a style much in 
vogue in the reigns of Elizabethand James.” At this era Spain 
was the principal power in the Italian States, and the Italian 
poetry was well known in Spain, and greatly admired, Dante, 
Petrarch, and Boccacio, so familiar to Chaucer, had been forgotten 
daring the long period of civil strife. “In the latter end of 
King Henry VIII's reign,” says Puttenham in his Art of Poesie 
“sprang up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas 
Wyatt the elder, and Henry, Earl of Surrey, were the two chief- 
tains, who, having travelled into Italy, and there tasted the sweet 
and stately measures and style of the Italian poesie, as novices 
newly crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, 
they greatly polished our rude and vulgar manner of homely 
poesie, from that it had been before, and for that cause may justly 
be sayd the first reformers of our English meeter and stile. In 
the same time, or not long after, was the Lord Nicholas Vaux, a 
man of much facilitie in vulgar makings.” 
In this age chivalry was not yet dead, and the era of exploration 
and adventure had begun. Thirty years of civil strife had made 
