well, would be an established tradition perhaps, nothing more, had he not written verses. No diplomatic reserve arrested his pen when, forbidden to speak, he poured his soul out to her in poetry; and we have every reason to believe that his love was virtuous, since it was hopeless. It survived, perchance, the period of her marriage; it followed her to the scaffold; it lingered over her nameless grave; but no inquisitorial search—not even Bishop Bonner himselfcould prove that it was directly coupled with guilt, although for the married to love the married can never be termed innocence.

The pictures which trace Anne's image in our mind were all painted of her as a matron. The coif set in pearls, the closely braided hair, the richly garnished dress, were such as she wore when she had become a queen. At Wolsey's feast she must, in compliance with the arbitrary rules of the day, have had for her head-gear a ribbon, or snood, interwoven with the rich masses of her dark hair. How it must have heightened the whiteness of that marble brow, setting off the somewhat pale, but not, as her enemies alleged, sallow skin! how clear were her arched eyebrows; how soft, dark, and sentimental were her eyes; how exquisite the curled mouth, full of sense as well as of sweetness,-Holbein has enabled us to judge of all these attributes.

It was, perhaps, Wyatt's passion for Anne that brought him, as he wrote later in life, to his son, 'into a thousand dangers and hazards, enmities, hatreds, 'prisonments, despites, and indignations. God,' he could then feel, for it is only after repeated trials that we do feel it, had chastised him, and not cast him clean out of his favour.' Thus, after the turmoil of youth had subsided, wrote the author of the 'Paraphrase of the Seven Penitential Psalms' to his ill-fated son.

It is, however, as the poet of social life that we best know and now consider Wyatt. Wyatt's poems, according to Warton, ' abound more in good sense, satire, and observations on life

VOL. I.

G

than in pathos or imagination.' He was a great imitator of the Italian poets. Nevertheless, sweet and elegant are the lines entitled, "The Lover Complaineth of the Unkindness of his Lute;' of which we here give some stanzas:

In attacking the vices and follies of the Court, Wyatt was still more felicitous than in love sonnets; witness his lines to John Poines, a young gallant about the king:

'Myne oune John Poines: since ye delite to know,

The causes why that homewarde I me drawe,
And flee the prease of courtes where so they go,
Rather than to live thrall under the awe

Of lordly looks, wrapped within my cloke;
To will and lust learning to set a law:

It is not that, because I scorne or mocke

The power of them whom fortune here hath lent
Charge over us, of right to strike the stroke:
But true it is that I have always ment
Lesse to esteem them (than the common sort)
Of outwarde things that judge in their entent,
Without regarde that inward doth resort.
I grant sometimes of glory that the fire
Doth touch my heart. Me list not to report
Blame by honour, nor honour to desire;
But how can I this honour now attaine,
That cannot die the colour black a liar?'

HE DESCRIBES THE COURT.

83

Often did Wyatt rush to Allington Castle, which he rebuilt magnificently, to enjoy freedom and retirement. Here he was happy; and his love of ease made him hate the shackles which he had left behind.

"This is the cause that I could never yet

Hang on their sleeves, that weigh, as thou maist see

A chippe of chaunce more than a pounde of wit:
This maketh me at home to hunt and hawke,
And in fowle wether at my booke to sit;

In frost and snow then with my bow to stalk;
No man doth marke whereto I ride or go:
In lusty leas at liberty I walke:

And of these nerves I fele no weale nor wo,

Save that a clogge doth hange yet at my heel

No force for that, for it is ordered so,

That I may leape both hedge and dike full wele.'

Thus has he described the Court, from which he fled in despair at its frivolity, and from the monotony which a course of pleasure, far more than a course of study and quiet, produces:

In court to serve, decked with freshe aray,
Of sugred meates feeling the swete repaste,
The life in bankets, and sundry kindes of play,
Amid the prease of worldly lookes to waste,
Hath with it joinde oft times such bitter taste,
That whoso joyes such kind of life to hold

In prison joyes fettred with chaines of gold.'

Although Dr. Warton thinks that Wyatt wrote 'better on any subject except on that of love,' it was the love-poetry that produced, in the first instance, the intimacy between Surrey and Wyatt; (and we are inclined to think that a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, although Professor of Poetry, was less likely to be a judge on this point than the enthusiastic and enamoured Earl of Surrey). Surrey is allowed by Warton to be the first polite writer of love verses in our language. All that had preceded him, how meritorious soever, were coarse and rough compared with

84

WYATT AND SURREY, FRIENDS.

the delicate effusions of the romantic Surrey; and it was Surrey who stirred the first pure fire in Wyatt's heart, by introducing him to his kinswoman, Anne Boleyn, whose mother was a Howard.

So intermingled are the lives of Surrey and Wyatt, that, in referring to the literature of that day, we can scarcely separate their efforts. They were the model courtiers who reflected on Henry's Court inestimable lustre; and the light of their genius was commingled. Surrey was the greater poet of the two; Wyatt the more able and sounder character. They formed, however, around them and together, the choicest, the purest, the most intellectual circle of the day.

CHAPTER V.

COURT FESTIVITIES IN THE TIME OF HENRY VIII.; LADIES INTRODUCED SURREY; HIS BIRTH; HIS EARLY TRAINING,

INTO THEM.

EARL OF

AND RESIDENCE AT WINDSOR. HENRY FITZROY, DUKE OF RICHMOND. THEY STUDY TOGETHER AT

THE FRIENDSHIP OF RICHMOND AND SURREY.

CHRIST CHURCH. DEATH OF THE DUKE OF RICHMOND. SURREY'S PASSION FOR THE FAIR GERALDINE. SKETCH OF HER LIFE. HE MARRIES; FALLS INTO DISGRACE WITH HENRY.

POEMS.

HIS DEATH.

-

EXTRACTS FROM HIS

CONTEMPORARIES OF SURREY, GEORGE BOLEYN, LORD ROCHFORD,

SIR FRANCIS BRYAN, AND LORD VAUX.