The period so eloquently sketched in the above extract extends from the culminating point whence high civilization, in the age of Leo X., descended on the western edge of Europe, and passed the broad Atlantic, to pour all its accumulated beams into the auspicious orient of a New World. As it respects moral force, and originality of genius, neither the age of Pericles, nor that of Augustus, could be compared with the evening glories of that age which was adorned by such names as Chaucer and Spenser, Sidney and Raleigh, Bacon and Milton. These and many others possessed not merely great talents and accomplishments, but vast compass and reach of understanding, minds truly creative and original. They made great and substantial additions to the treasures of general knowledge, and fortified human faculties, while they augmented the facilities for human happiness to an unparalleled extent. Geoffrey Chaucer, born in 1328, was coeval with Wickliffe, with whom it has been said that he studied at Oxford. He saw the reigns of three British kings, had conversed with Petrarch at Padua, was a shining light through a protracted life, and died in the first year of the fifteenth century, "the father of English poetry." At a later and much brighter epoch, Edmund Spenser, born 1553, shone without a rival. Much of his language has become antiquated, but is yet beautiful in its quaintness, and, like the moss and festooned ivy on some dilapidated castle, covers his antique phrases with romantic and venerable associations. Schlegel regarded the chivalrous poem of Spenser, the Fairy Queen, as presenting the completest view of the spirit of romance which yet lingered in England among the subjects of Elizabeth. He undoubtedly was a perfect master of the picturesque, and in his lyrics breathed the tenderness of the Italian Idyll, redolent of all the perfume of the Troubadours. Chaucer was more like the German poets of the sixteenth century; but Spenser seemed to have imbibed at earlier fountains of inspiration, and gave a final expression to the tender and melodious poesy of the olden time.