The Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. 3 (Classic Reprint)

CHAPTER I ENGLISHMEN AND THE CLASSICAL RENASCENCE THE classical renascence implied a knowledge and imitation of the great literary artists of the golden past of classical antiquity, and, as a preliminary, a competent acquaintance with, and some power to use, the Latin and Greek languages. Italy gave it birth and it gradually spread beyond the Alps into Germany, France and England. In the eud it created, almost imperceptibly, a cosmopolitan republic of which Guillaume Bude and Erasmus disputed the sovereignty, and where, latterly, Erasmus, by universal consent, ruled as chief. This republic established itself in a Europe almost savage, supremely warlike and comparatively untaught-in it and yet not of it. Its citizens were a select people who lived and worked in the midst of the tumult of arms, the conflict of politics and the war of creeds which went on around them. It spread widely and silently until it almost became the mark of a well-educated person to be able to rea

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