with either Chaucer or Lydgate
as to vigour of invention. There is in truth, more of the dramatic
spirit of Chaucer in Barklay's "Ship of Fools," which, though
essentially a translation, achieved in England the popularity of an
original work. For this poem, like the "Canterbury Tales," introduces
into its admirable framework a variety of lifelike sketches of
character and manners; it has in it that dramatic element which is so
Chaucerian a characteristic. But the aim of its author was didactic,
which Chaucer's had never been.

When with the poems of Surrey and Wyatt, and with the first attempts in
the direction of the regular drama, the opening of the second great age
in our literature approached, and when, about half a century
afterwards, that age actually opened with an unequalled burst of varied
productivity, it would seem as if Chaucer's influence might naturally
enough have passed away, or at least become obscured. Such was not,
however, the case, and Chaucer survived into the age of the English
Renascence as an established English classic, in which capacity Caxton
had honoured him by twice issuing an edition of his works from the
Westminster printing-press. Henry VIII's favourite, the reckless but
pithy satirist, Skelton, was alive to the merits of his great
predecessor, and Skelton's patron, William Thynne, a royal official,
busied himself with editing Chaucer's works. The loyal servant of
Queen Mary, the wise and witty John Heywood, from whose "Interludes"
the step is so short to the first regular English comedy, in one of
these pieces freely plagiarised a passage in the "Canterbury Tales."
Tottel, the printer of the favourite poetic "Miscellany" published
shortly before Queen Elizabeth's accession, included in his collection
the beautiful lines, cited above, called "Good Counsel of Chaucer."
And when, at last, the Elizabethan era properly so-called began, the
proof was speedily given that geniuses worthy of holding fellowship
with Chaucer had assimilated into their own literary growth what was
congruous to it in his, just as he had assimilated to himself--not
always improving, but hardly ever merely borrowing or taking over--much
that he had found in the French trouveres, and in Italian poetry and
prose. The first work which can be included in the great period of
Elizabethan literature is the "Shepherd's Calendar," where Spenser is
still in a partly imitative stage; and it is Chaucer whom he imitates
an