ished
condition than Italian, and perhaps also because political causes made the
following of Spaniards seem almost unpatriotic. Yet the very same causes
made the Spanish language itself familiar to far more Englishmen than are
familiar with it now, though the direct filiation of euphuism on Spanish
originals is no doubt erroneous, and though the English and Spanish dramas
evolved themselves in lines rather parallel than connected.

France and Germany were much (indeed infinitely) less influential, and the
fact is from some points of view rather curious. Both were much nearer to
England than Spain or Italy; there was much more frequent communication
with both; there was at no time really serious hostility with either; and
the genius of both languages was, the one from one side, the other from the
other, closely connected with that of English. Yet in the great productions
of our great period, the influence of Germany is only perceptible in some
burlesque matter, such as _Eulenspiegel_ and _Grobianus_, in the furnishing
of a certain amount of supernatural subject-matter like the Faust legend,
and in details less important still. French influence is little greater; a
few allusions of "E. K." to Marot and Ronsard; a few translations and
imitations by Spenser, Watson, and others; the curious sonnets of
_Zepheria_; a slight echo of Rabelais here and there; some adapted songs to
music; and a translated play or two on the Senecan model.[68]

[68] Some, like my friend Mr. Lee, would demur to this, especially as
regards the sonnet. But Desportes, the chief creditor alleged, was himself
an infinite borrower from the Italians. Soothern, an early but worthless
sonneteer, _c._ 1584, did certainly imitate the French.

But France had already exercised a mighty influence upon England; and
Germany had very little influence to exercise for centuries. Putting aside
all pre-Chaucerian influence which may be detected, the outside guiding
force of literary English literature (which was almost exclusively poetry)
had been French from the end of the fourteenth century to the last
survivals of the Scoto-Chaucerian school in Hawes, Skelton, and Lindsay.
True, France had now something else to give; though it must be remembered
that her great school coincided with rather than preceded the great school
of England, that the _Defense et Illustration de la Langue Francaise_ was
but a few years anterior to Tottel's _Miscellany_, and that, except Marot