apple of the golden
age was not to be plucked in the Greek Hesperides' garden, but in a
plain Warwickshire orchard: nor was it the less golden.

This fermentation of mind lasted for more than a century; lives were
often shortened by it, but they had been doubly well filled. From this
restless curiosity, bent towards past ages and foreign countries,
towards everything that was remote, unknown and different, came that
striking appearance of omniscience and universality, and that prodigious
wealth of imagery, allusions and ideas of every kind that are to be
found in all the authors of that time, small as well as great, and which
unites in one common bond Rabelais and Shakespeare, Cervantes and Sidney
and the "master of the enchanters of the ear," Ronsard.

When the armour, worn less often, began to grow rusty in the great
halls, and the nobles, coming forth from their coats-of-mail like the
butterfly from the chrysalis, showed themselves all glistening in silk,
pearls in their ears, their heads full of Italian madrigals and
mythological similes, a new society was formed, salons of a kind were
organized, and the role of the women was enlarged. English mediaeval
times had been by no means sparing of compliments to them. But there is
a great difference between celebrating in verse fair, slim-necked
ladies, and writing books expressly for them: and it is one of the
points in which, during the Middle Ages and even until the middle of the
sixteenth century, England differed from the nations of the south. In
England no Lady Oisille had gathered round her in the depth of green
valleys tellers of amorous stories; no thickly-shaded parks had seen
Fiammettas or Philomenas listening to all kinds of narratives, forgetful
of the actual world and its sorrows. The only group of story-tellers,
bound together by a true artist's fancy, Chaucer's pilgrims, had ridden
in broad daylight on the high road to Canterbury, led by Harry Bailly,
the jovial innkeeper of Southwark, a blustering, red-faced dictator, who
had regulated the pace of the nags, and silenced the tedious babblers:
very different in all things from Fiammetta and the Lady Oisille.

Under the influence of Italy, France and mythology, the England of the
Tudors, changed all that. Women appeared in the foreground: a movement
of general curiosity animated the age, and they participated in it quite
naturally. They will become learned, if necessary, rather than remain in
the shade; th