He is the last and greatest figure in the English Renaissance.

The new passion for art and letters which in its earnest fumbling beginnings gave us the prose of Cheke and Ascham and the poetry of Surrey and Sackville, comes to a full and splendid and perfect end in his work.

In it the Renaissance and the Reformation, imperfectly fused by Sidney and Spenser, blend in their just proportions.

The transplantation into English of classical forms which had been the aim of Sidney and the endeavour of Jonson he finally accomplished; in his work the dream of all the poets of the Renaissance--the heroic poem--finds its fulfilment.

There was no poet of the time but wanted to do for his country what Vergil had planned to do for Rome, to sing its origins, and to celebrate its morality and its citizenship in the epic form.