THOMAS CRANMER, the first Protestant primate of England, was so engrossed with theological controversy that he contributed nothing to general literature. From our more modern standpoint this is a misfortune—the more so because he had an imaginative faculty of the highest order and a vocabulary of pure, idiomatic English, adequate to its expression. His “Preface to the Bible” gives in a few graphic strokes such a cumulative suggestion of the vicissitudes of life as can hardly be found elsewhere in English literature, unless it be in Shakespeare’s tragedies or John Bunyan’s sermons.

  Cranmer was born in Nottinghamshire, England, July 2d, 1489, and was burned at the stake by Queen Mary at Oxford, March 21st, 1556. In his relation to literature, he represents the quickening influence of the revival of classical learning as it inspired the Teutonic and Gothic peoples of northern Europe. The most notable effect of this revival in northern Europe was an irresistible desire to study more critically and completely the Greek and Hebrew versions of the Bible. Cranmer was a classical scholar of eminent attainments, but his style as a master of English comes chiefly from the Bible. He was largely instrumental in translating and arranging the English Prayer-Book, and Froude says of it that though the most beautiful portions of it are from the “Breviary,” yet Cranmer impressed his individuality on the translation by “the silvery melody of his language.”