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Throughout this period the English mediæval tradition of classical theory was highly important, losing ground but gradually as the influence first of the rhetoric newly recovered from the classics and then of Italian criticism produced an increasingly stronger effect on English criticism.
In its gross extravagances and irregularities, severe critics found just cause for complaint. The opposition of the church to the theatre, however, which had been for a time so formidable, had at last given way, and from the beginning of the seventeenth century, the popular drama was too strong to be subjected either to classical criticism or ecclesiastical rule.
This amateur character of English critics accounts in a measure for the slowness with which classical and Italian renaissance critical theories filtered into England; for a statesman or a soldier is less likely to be up-to-date on theories of poetry than is a professional critic whose business it is to know what is written on his specialty.
Some men would have been contented with political power, or classical learning, or literary distinction, but he excelled in all these not only as a statesman, but as a man of letters and a classical scholar. Neither has held him exclusively as its own he belongs to all, or rather they belong to him for he explored and conquered them.
Lord Bacon outlined his gigantic plan for "the Instauration of the Sciences" during the four years spent in the University of Cambridge. Milton laid the foundations of his classical scholarship in the university. "Newton was matured in academic discipline, a fellow in Trinity College, Cambridge, and a professor of mathematics.
During the twenty years that the Moro reigned as Regent and Duke in Milan, the new apse built in Bramante's classical style, the central cupola, and the beautiful cloisters with their slender marble shafts and dark red terra-cotta friezes of angel-heads, all rose into being.
She was entirely self- educated, and has made herself an admirable scholar in classical as well as in modern languages. Those who knew her had always recognized her wonderful endowments, and only watched to see in what way they would develop themselves. She is a person of the simplest manners and character, amiable and unpretending, and Mrs. B spoke of her with great affection and respect."
For a permanent view the eye craves large and simple forms, as the body requires plain food for its best nourishment. The town of Concord is built mainly upon one side of the river. In its centre is a large open square, shaded by fine elms. A white wooden church, in the most classical style of Yankee-Greek, stands upon the square. The Court-house is upon one of the corners.
Thus, when he wished to suggest an extreme contrast between simplicity and pomp, we find him using Saxon words in direct antithesis to classical ones.
The deficiency of classical patterns at a time which still firmly believed, for the most part, that all good work in literature had been so done by the ancients that it could at best be emulated should count for something: the scanty respect in which the kind was held for something more.
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