Chaucer's indebtedness has just been noticed.

Spenser borrowed his versification and not a little of his poetic handling in the Faery Queen from Ariosto.

Milton owes to Dante some of his conceptions of heaven and hell in his Paradise Lost, while his Lycidas, Arcades, Allegro and Penseroso, may be called Italian poems done into English.
In the time of Chaucer, this Italian influence marks the extended relations of English letters; and, serving to remove the trammels of the French, it gave to the now vigorous and growing English that opportunity of development for which it had so long waited.

Out of the serfdom and obscurity to which it had been condemned by the Normans, it had sprung forth in reality, as in name, the English language.

Books, few at the best, long used in Latin or French, were now demanded by English mind, and being produced in answer to the demand.
THE FOUNDER OF THE LITERATURE .-- But there was still wanted a man who could use the elements and influences of the time--a great poet--a maker--a creator of literature.