le of French production which found a
new and more stimulative home across the Alps; for just as it is
possible to trace the German Reformation back, through Huss, to its
birth in Wycliff's England, so French critics have delighted to point
out that the Italian Renaissance itself was but an expansion of an
earlier Renaissance in France, which, for all the strength and maturity
it gained under its new conditions, lost much of that indescribable
flavour of direct simplicity and gracious sweetness which breathes from
the pages of _Aucassin and Nicolette_ and its companion _Amis and
Amile_. Under Charles VIII. and his successors this Renaissance was
carried home, as it were, to die--so subtle is the ebb and flow of
intellectual influences between country and country. In England the
_novella_, of which Chaucer had made ample use, first appeared in prose
dress from the printing-press of Caxton's successor, Wynkyn de Worde.
The Dutch printer had also published Lord Berners' translation of _Huon
of Bordeaux_, the best romance of chivalry belonging to the Charlemagne
cycle. But, before the dawn of the 16th century Malory had already given
us _Morte D'Arthur_, from the Arthurian cycle, printed, as everyone
knows, by the industrious Caxton himself. Thus, if we neglect, as I
think we may, translations from the _Gesta Romanorum_, we may say that
the prose narrative appeared in England simultaneously with the
printing-press, a fact which is more than coincidence; since the
multiplication of books, which Caxton began, decreased the necessity for
remembering tales; and therefore it was now possible to dispense with
the aid of verse; in fact Caxton deprived the minstrel of his
occupation.

Of the third form of prose narrative--the moral Court treatise--we have
already said something. It had appeared in Italy and in Spain, and our
connexion with it came from the latter country, through Berners'
translation of the _Golden Boke_ of Guevara. So slight was the thread of
narrative running through this book, that one would imagine at first
sight that it could have little to do with the history of our novel. And
yet in comparison with its importance in this respect the _novella_ and
the romance of chivalry are quite insignificant. The two latter never
indeed lost their popularity during the Elizabethan age, but they had
ceased to be considered respectable--a very different thing--before that
age began. The first cause of their fall in the socia