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throughout; the lyric is written in the first person to another, but the second person does not appear; the epic is objective, the lyric purely subjective.

The epic is

a product of the outer world and tells a story, the lyric belongs to the inner world and shows feeling. The epic is an early, the lyric a later stage of development.

As I have stated above, there were many changes in outside influences brought to bear upon the lyric as well as upon the other literature of the two ages under discussion. Let us note for a moment the state of society

and the general spirit pervading these times.

The Elizabethan period I shall take to extend from
This was Europe's grand age

about 1576 to 1674.

it was

a renewal of the arts and industries, and the beginning of invention. Every department of human intelligence was stimulated and refreshed. This stimulation went from innovators to laggards, and reformed Catholicism and established Protestantism. The ideal changes, and the old pagan ideas recur. This pagan Italian influence brought about a worship of beauty and vigor; an insatiable desire for pleasure invaded the court, the days of "Merry England" had begun. The queen led in all festivities and she acknowledged her love and admiration for worldly wisdom. The combination of amusement and learning was not concealed. The Elizabethans studied only those things that

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amused them; they put themselves into a spirit of laughter and they laughed at the most trivial provocation. When emotion ran so high, with no attempt at restraint we may expect, as was the case, a certain lack of refinement coarseness or rather boldness, characteristic of the court life of the day. This Italian influence had, however, a fortunate outcome, for it brought into England a study of

the classics.

Elizabeth and her couriers plunged into an enthusiastic study of the classics most esteemed in Italy. This "passionate delight for beauty," this love of the pastoral, lent to the lyric its peculiar charm. The life of the Shepherd and the Shepherdess were attractions to Sidney, and no finer lyrical strain is found than is thrilled in the music of Astrophel and Stella.

Sidney's description of the May morning, of the

fields richly beautiful with flowers, of the happy lovers seated in the shade of the trees whose leaves are trembling while the wind itself is full of amorous sighs and kisses shows the intense passion portrayed in this pastoral poesy.

"In a grove most rich of shade,
Where birds want on musicke made,

May, then yong, his py'd weeds showing,
New perfumed with flowers fresh growing.

Astrophel with Stella sweet,
Did for mutuall comfort meet.

But when their tongues could not speake,
Love it selfe did silence breake;
Love did set his lips asunder,

Thus to speak in love and wonder.....

This small winde which so sweet is,
See how it the leaves doth kisse,
Each tree in his best attyring,
Sense of love to love inspiring."

On bended knee the shepherd sings:

"Stella, soveraine of my joy,
Stella, starre of heavenly fire,
Stella, load-starre of desire,
Stella, in whose shining eyes

Are the lights of Cupid's skies....
Stella, whose voice when it speakes
Senses all asunder breakes;

Stella, whose voice when it singeth,
Angels to acquaintance bringeth."

Sidney's very heart cries out in intense passion,

sounding the key-note of the age. Nor can we claim a lower place for Spenser, though to him the pastoral was but a passing mood. Lyly, Peele, Lodge, Greene, Breton, Marlowe, Constable, Munday, and Barnfield sing in sweet simplicity the loveliness of pastoral scenes and the natural impulsiveness of love itself. Through Sidney this Italian influence spread to Watson, Barnes, and Greville.

Professor Dowden says:

"They do not need ideas, or abstractions, or memories of the past or hopes for the future; it suffices them to be in presence of a bed of roses, or an arbor of eglantine, or the gold hair of a girl, her clear eyes, bright lips, little cloven chin and fair shadowed throat....... She shall be a shepherdess, and the passionate shepherd will cull the treasures of earth, and of the heaven of the gods of Greece and Rome to lay them before her feet. It is not

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