Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Works Sir Philip Sidney
The Four Elements (1520) were endured for the sake of the questions of general interest which were introduced. It discusses, for instance, the use of English as a fitting medium for scholarly works, and laments that only idle stories of love and war are written in it. This is an early example of interest in a question which was to occupy the minds of men for many years - of More, Ascham. Bacon, and Sidney himself. Again it is love of culture which induces men like Wyatt (d. 1542) and Surrey (d. 1547) to introduce new verse-forms, to make the first English translation from the classics, to acquaint their countrymen with the work that has been done abroad. To it also may be ascribed collections of verse such as T-ottel's Mis cellany (1557) or the Mirror for Magistrates. Above all it induced men to study the classics, to attempt gradually to discriminate the value of famous works, to analyse the principles of poetic composition, to interest themselves in style as well as in matter, and in the wider questions of educa tion. Men of letters, poets, theologians, philoso phers, schoolmasters were not differentiated into clearly defined classes: they merged into one another, the aims of one were the aims of all.
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