OLIVER MADOX BROWN

1855-1874

234

Νο

A Treasury of English Sonnets.

CCCCLXIII

more these passion-worn faces shall men's eyes
Behold in life. Death leaves no trace behind
Of their wild hate and wilder love, grown blind
In desperate longing, more than the foam which lies
Splashed up awhile where the showered spray descries
The waves whereto their cold limbs were resigned;
Yet ever doth the sea-wind's undefined

Vague wailing shudder with their dying sighs.
For all men's souls 'twixt sorrow and love are cast,
As on the earth each lingers his brief space,
While surely nightfall comes, where each man's face
In death's obliteration sinks at last

As a deserted wind-tossed sea's foam-trace

Life's chilled boughs emptied by death's autumn-blast.

NOTES

NOTES

Sir Thomas Myat and the Earl of Surrey.

'In the latter end of the same kings raigne' (Henry VIII's), writes Puttenham, sprong up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat th' elder & Henry Earle of Surrey were the two chieftaines, who having travailed into Italie, and there tasted the sweete and stately measures and stile of the Italian Poesie as novices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Arioste, and Petrarch, they greatly pollished our rude & homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had bene before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and stile.'' The poems of Wyat and Surrey, fellowsingers whose 'sweet breath,' more immediately than Dan Chaucer's, 'Preluded those melodious bursts, that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth,'

though extensively circulated in manuscript, and possibly on loose printed sheets also, during the lives of their authors, were not published in the ordinary sense of the word until 1557, when they appeared, with others, in Tottel's Miscellany. The two poets have often been elaborately compared, but by none better than Mr. Stopford Brooke, thus succinctly: The subjects of Wyatt and Surrey were chiefly lyrical, and the fact that they imitated the same model has made some likeness between them. Like their personal characters, however, the poetry of Wyatt is the more thoughtful and the more strongly felt, but Surrey's has a sweeter movement and a livelier fancy. Both did this great thing for English verse-they chose an exquisite model, and in imitating it "corrected the ruggedness of English poetry.' One consequence of this difference in character and temperament was that Wyat easily excelled Surrey in song-writing, of which he possessed the true gift; and it has

1 The Arte of English Poesie, 1589, Lib. i, chap. xxxi, p. 48.

2 Songes and Sonettes, written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward late Earle of Surrey, and other. 1557.

3 English Literature Primer, 1876, p. 58.

Sir Thomas Wyat and the Earl of Surrey.

been justly remarked by Mr. Palgrave, whose Golden Treasury contains two of Wyat's songs, while Surrey is unrepresented, that it was long before English poetry returned to his 'charming simplicity.' In reading the poetry of this time it is necessary to remember that the language being in an imperfectly developed condition, pronunciation was somewhat unsettled and arbitrary. But if the more ordinary variances from modern practice be kept in view-the tendency of the accent to fall towards the end rather than the beginning of words, especially those of recent acquisition; and the frequent necessity of giving such words as passion, impatient, &c., the value of three and four syllables respectively—Wyat and Surrey's metre will be found comparatively regular.

PAGE

I-I. From Tottel's Miscellany, ed. Arber, 1870. perfect: 'parfit' (1557); persever persevere, continue-then so accentuated, as in Spenser's Amoretti 9, 1. 9 (infra, p. 243); 'scaped: 'scape' (1557); lever, or lieffer = dearer; property = qualities or powers; longer : lenger' (1557).

2-II. From the Devonshire MS. apud Dr. G. F. Nott's edition of Wyat, 1816. lynn. = cease, desist-in use as late as Milton; been: qu. 'bin'? Ll. 13-14. How like Burns's sarcasm (She's fair and fause):

'Nae ferlie 'tis, though fickle she prove-
A woman has't by kind'!

Wyat repeats the sentiment in one of his songs (p. 139, Aldine ed.
1831):

"And though she change it is no shame,

Their kind it is, and hath been long.'

III. soote sweet. So Barnabe Barnes (Parthenophil and Parthenophe, 1593, ed. Grosart, 1875, Son. 40, 1. 12) 'songes soote': 'Thou with thy notes harmonius, and songes soote

1=

Allur'd my sunne, to fier mine harts soft roote.'

make mate; flete, or flote = float, swim; slings = casts off; smale small-pronounced as spelt; mings = mingles, mixes. This sonnet may be compared with Petrarca's 269th, 'Zefiro torna,' of which it is partly imitative; and something very like a recollection of it is perceptible in the opening lines of Pope's Temple of Fame.

3-IV. Mr. Tomlinson (The Sonnet: its Origin, Structure, and Place in Poetry, 1874, p. 81) draws attention to the circumstance that this sonnet is not original to Surrey, but really a pretty close rendering of Petrarca's 113th, 'Pommi ove 'l Sol occide i fiori e