The reign of Elizabeth was, in fact, Europe's grandest age. It was a
time when everything was bursting into life and color. The world had
suddenly grown larger; it had opened toward the east in the revival of
classical learning; it had opened toward the west, and disclosed a
continent of unknown extent and unimaginable resources.
About twenty years after Cabot had discovered the mainland of America
(S335), Sir Thomas More (SS339, 351) wrote a remarkable work of
fiction, in Latin (1516), called "Utopia" (the Land of Nowhere). In
it he pictured an ideal commonwealth, where all men were equal; where
none were poor; where perpetual peace prevailed; where there was
absolute freedom of thought; where all were contented and happy. It
was, in fact, the Golden Age come back to earth again.
More's book, now translated into English (1551), suited such a time,
for Elizabeth's reign was one of adventure, of poetry, of luxury, of
rapidly increasing wealth. When men looked across the Atlantic, their
imaginations were stimulated, and the most extravagant hopes did not
appear too good to be true. Courtiers and adventurers dreamed of
fountains of youth in Florida, of silver mines in Brazil, of rivers in
Virginia, whose pebbles were precious stones.[1] Thus all were
dazzled with visions of sudden riches and of renewed life.
[1] "Why, man, all their dripping-pans [in Virginia] are pure gould;
... all the prisoners they take are feterd in gold; and for rubies and
diamonds, they goe forth on holydayes and gather 'hem by the
sea-shore, to hang on their children's coates."--"Eastward Hoe," a
play by John Marston and others, "as it was playd in the Blackfriers
[Theatre] by the Children of her Maiesties Revels." (1603?)