to an extent which we have not yet begun to measure.

FOREIGN INFLUENCE. We shall understand the imitative quality of early
Elizabethan poetry if we read it in the light of these facts: that in the
sixteenth century England was far behind other European nations in culture;
that the Renaissance had influenced Italy and Holland for a century before
it crossed the Channel; that, at a time when every Dutch peasant read his
Bible, the masses of English people remained in dense ignorance, and the
majority of the official classes were like Shakespeare's father and
daughter in that they could neither read nor write. So, when the new
national spirit began to express itself in literature, Englishmen turned to
the more cultured nations and began to imitate them in poetry, as in dress
and manners. Shakespeare gives us a hint of the matter when he makes Portia
ridicule the apishness of the English. In _The Merchant of Venice_
(Act I, scene 2) the maid Nerissa is speaking of various princely suitors
for Portia's hand. She names them over, Frenchman, Italian, Scotsman,
German; but Portia makes fun of them all. The maid tries again:

_Nerissa_. What say you, then, to Falconbridge, the young baron of
England?

_Portia_. You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me,
nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian; and you will
come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the
English. He is a proper man's picture, but, alas, who can converse
with a dumb show? How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his
doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany
and his behaviour every where.

When Wyatt and Surrey brought the sonnet to England, they brought also the