Church said and did--grew aware that their literature had been as a child
at play. It had never philosophised good and evil, life, love or death:
it had no literary forms for doing this; it had not even the vocabulary.
So our ancestors saw that to catch up their lee-way--to make their report
worthy of this wonderful, alluring discovery--new literary forms had to
be invented--new, that is, in English: the sonnet, the drama, the verse
in which the actors were to declaim, the essay, the invented tale. Then,
for the vocabulary, obviously our fathers had either to go to Greek,
which had invented the A.B.C. of philosophising; or to seek in the other
languages which were already ahead of English in adapting that alphabet;
or to give our English Words new contents, new connotations, new
meanings; or lastly, to do all three together.

Well, it was done; and in verse very fortunately done; thanks of course
to many men, but thanks to two especially--to Sir Thomas Wyat, who led
our poets to Italy, to study and adopt the forms in which Italy had cast
its classical heritage; and to Marlowe, who impressed blank verse upon
the drama. Of Marlowe I shall say nothing; for with what he achieved you
are familiar enough. Of Wyat I may speak at length to you, one of these
days; but here, to prepare you for what I hope to prove--that Wyat is one
of the heroes of our literature--I will give you three brief reasons why
we should honour his memory:--

(1) He led the way. On the value of that service I shall content myself
with quoting a passage from Newman:--

When a language has been cultivated in any particular department of
thought, and so far as it has been generally perfected, an existing
want has been supplied, and there is no need for further workmen. In
its earliest times, while it is yet unformed, to write in it at all is