450 NATIONAL POETRY. 



Germany seemed to have become impenetrable to the rays of poetry, but 

 the Northern peoples began to feel their influence. The Danes possessed in 

 Peter Laland a national poet in the first years of the sixteenth century, while, 

 previously to this, the Swedes had had Eric Ola'i, who set their chronicles to 

 rhyme. Poland, whose national poetry does not date further back than the 

 fifteenth century, possessed a certain number of poets whose very names were 

 scarcely known to the rest of Europe ; amongst others, Nicholas Rey dc 

 Naglovice and Jean Kochanowski, called the Prince of Poets, who formed 

 a friendship with Ronsard while staying in Paris. In Holland Dirk 

 Koornhert created national poetry, and, following upon a few translators 

 of the Psalms, Roemer Wisscher and Spiegel laid down the principles of 

 versification. It was in England that the poetical movement was the most 

 brilliant and the most active. Spenser invented a new kind of pastoral, in 

 which the shepherds spoke in the language of shepherds instead of in that 

 of courtiers. His allegorical poem, the " Faery Queen," had an even greater 

 success than the " Shepherd's Calendar." His contemporaries, Sidney, 

 Raleigh, Marlowe, and Green Watson, composed light poetry full of 

 simplicity and grace. Robert Southwell, Samuel Daniel, and John Davies 

 drew their inspirations from religion and philosophy ; while, at the close of 

 the century, there appeared two poems, " Venus and Adonis " and the " Rape 

 of Lucretia," the author of which was the immortal Shakspere. 



The second half of the sixteenth century witnessed a complete meta- 

 morphosis of poetry in France. A few poets had remained true to the school 

 of Clement Marot, who died in poverty abroad. Marguerite de Valois, 

 Queen of Navarre, would have been one of the most charming types of this 

 school, if her attachment to the doctrines of the Reformation had not clouded 

 her ideas and depressed her style (Fig. 348). Two other female poets 

 retarded the decadence of Marotism, viz. two women of Lyons Pernette du 

 Guillet and Louise Labe, the latter of whom was the mysterious muse of 

 Olivier de Magny. Etienne Forcadel composed some neat epigrams and 

 clever epistles; Peletier of Le Mans, who had an unfortunate mania for 

 constructing a new way of spelling, wrote his Poetical Works in plain and 

 excellent French ; while Maurice Sceve, in his poem " Delie," followed the 

 teaching given him by his friend Clement Marot. There is no need to say 

 anything about such feeble poets as Artus Desire, Guillaume des Autels, 

 and Barthelemy Aneau, whose compositions are involved and obscure. By 



