Leaving the great masters, let us consider a little the more popular literature of the day; the kind which has its run among the people and is forgotten; the current literature, the books of the time, the works which were bought and read by those of the citizens who read at all, probably as large a proportion as we should find at the present day, when the newspaper is the only reading of multitudes. It is not difficult to arrive at what constituted a library. There were religious books, such as Hooper’s _Sermons_; there were collections of songs, such as _The Court of Venus_, against which the clergy spoke vehemently; books of chivalry and novels in great numbers, such as _Bevis of Hampton_, _Guy of Warwick_, _Arthur of the Round Table_, _Huon of Bordeaux_, _Oliver of the Castle_, _Four Sons of Aymon_, _The Witless Devices of Gargantua_ and _Howleglas_. There were the English stories, _Robin Hood_, _Adam Bell_, _Friar Rushe_, _The Foole of Gotham_. There were satires and fables; _Æsop_, Erasmus’s _Praise of Folly_, _The Schoolhouse of Women_, _The Defense of Women_, _Piers Plowman_, _Raynolde the Fox_, _The Palace of Pleasure_. There were translations, as _Virgil_, _Seneca_, and _Apulosius_; there were books of instruction, as _The Boke of Carvynge_, _The Boke of Cokerye_, _The Boke of Nurture for Men servants_, _The Boke of Fortune_, _The Boke of Curtesey_, _The Boke of Chesse_, and _The Hundred Points of Good Husserye_. These titles are taken from actual lists before me; the presses were extremely active and the output of books was very considerable during the whole of Elizabeth’s long reign. In a word, there was as great a variety of books for the reader’s choice as there is now, setting aside the modern books in science; there were poets by the hundred, dramatists, novelists of all kinds, historians, preachers, moralists, and essayists. It would take too much space and time were I to attempt an estimate or an account of the Elizabethan literature.
[Illustration: EDMUND SPENSER (1552(?)-1599)
There was, however, one form of literature then playing a very important part in the education of the people which has been too much neglected by those who write of the sixteenth century. It was the ballad. In the last century, if a man had a thing to say, he wrote a pamphlet; at present if he has a thing to say and desires that the people at large should hear it, he either casts it into the form of a novel, or he sends it to the papers as a letter or as a communication. The Elizabethan, on the other hand, cast it into the form of verse; the ballad expressed the popular opinion; by means of the ballad that opinion was formed and taught; by means of the ballad events were recorded and remembered. Every event produced its own ballad. I have before me a list of a hundred ballads, taken at random from the registers of the Stationers’ Company, published for the Shakespeare Society in 1849 by Payne Collier. From these registers it is evident that the ballad, as sung in private houses, in taverns, at fairs, and where people congregated; in the streets, in the markets, and at the Carrefours where stood the Cross and the Conduit, taught and led the people as the Press now teaches and leads them. There was a great competition in the production of new ballads; the printers vied with each other in getting the latest or the most striking event turned into ballad form and put upon the market. These ballads were written on every conceivable subject. In order to illustrate their importance I have compiled the following list roughly classified. The titles in almost all cases indicate the contents and aim of the ballad. Some of them are very well written.