CHAPTER X.
THE BARREN PERIOD BETWEEN CHAUCER AND SPENSER.
Greek Literature.

Invention of Printing.Caxton.Contemporary History.
Skelton.Wyatt.Surrey.Sir Thomas More.

Utopia, and other Works.

Other Writers.
THE STUDY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
Having thus mentioned the writers whom we regard as belonging to the period of Chaucer, although some of them, like Henryson and Dunbar, flourished at the close of the fifteenth century, we reach those of that literary epoch which may be regarded as the transition state between Chaucer and the age of Elizabeth: an epoch which, while it produced no great literary work, and is irradiated by no great name, was, however, a time of preparation for the splendid advent of Spenser and Shakspeare.
Incident to the dangers which had so long beset the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, which culminated in the fall of Constantinople--and to the gradual but steady progress of Western Europe in arts and letters, which made it a welcome refuge for the imperilled learning of the East--Greek letters came like a fertilizing flood across the Continent into England.

The philosophy of Plato, the power of the Athenian drama, and the learning of the Stagyrite, were a new impulse to literature.