Sir Thomas Wyat and the Earl of Surrey. Surrey in song-writing, of which he possessed the true gift; and it has 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); perséver = 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). = 2-11. 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, III. soote = sweet. So Barnabe Barnes (Parthenophil and Parthenophe, 1593, ed. Grosart, 1875, Son. 40, l. 12) 'songes soote': Thou with thy notes harmonius, and songes sɔote make smale = Allur'd my sunne, to fier mine harts soft roote.' mate; flete, or flote = float, swim; slings = casts off; 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 PAGE rendering of Petrarca's 113th, Pommi ove 'l Sol occide i fiori e l'erba' (cf. Horace, Lib. i, Ode 22). It may be said that it is the exception when Surrey's sonnets are not translations or adaptations from Petrarca; while almost as small a proportion of Wyat's is original. Among the poems of Uncertaine Auctours' printed in Tottel's Miscellany there occurs an interesting early tribute in sonnetform to the great master, which may not be out of place here (edn. 1585, fol. 74):— A PRAISE OF PETRARCHE AND LAURA HIS LADYE. ○ Petrarche, head and prince of Poets all, Those beautie lightned in thy time and sence, Why hath not our penes rimes so perfet wroughte, Petrarca's sonnet has been frequently translated later; e.g., anony- 'Set me where Phoebus heate the flowers slaieth;' Philip Ayres (Lyric Poems, &c., 1687, p. 78): 'Place mee where Sol dryes up the Flow'ry Fields;' Charlotte Smith (Elegiac Sonnets, &c., 1795, p. 13); Charles Johnston (Sonnets, &c., 1823, p. 85); and lastly Mr. Tomlinson himself, though without acknowledgment to an anonymous version (Sonnets and Odes Translated from the Italian of Petrarch. Lond. 1777, p. 21) from which he varies in no appreciable degree. Puttenham, inadvertently no doubt, ascribes Surrey's sonnet to Sir Thomas Wyat (Arte of Eng. Poesie, p. 186). = 3-v. Sir T. W. the Elder: = Sir Thomas Wyat, who paraphrased the Seven Penitential Psalms; ark coffer, or casket; gests = heroic deeds; perfect: 'perfite' (1557); imprinted: 'y-printed' PAGE Sir Thomas Wyat and the Earl of Surrey. (Harington MS.). Had we the precise dates at which Surrey's various poems were written, it could with more certitude be determined whether such words as those in the closing verses of this sonnet bore allusion to the king. As it is, there can be little doubt that they did; and that being so, it hardly required the thunderbolt that followed in another (VII) to seal the doom of that virtuous nobleman. The pretext on which Surrey was condemned and executed was his assumption of a portion of the royal arms. 4-VI. hight = wert named; thy cousin = Anne Boleyn; chase = didst choose; render = surrender; timely = early. Clere, Surrey's faithful friend and follower, while succouring his master in extremity during an attempt of the English to storm Montreuil, received a wound which eventually caused his death. It does not appear that the lady, a daughter of Sir John Shelton of Shelton in Norfolk, whom for love' he 'chase', ever became his bride. This sonnet,' says Leigh Hunt (Book of the Sonnet, 1867, i. 140), ‘is complete of its kind. There is not a sentence which does not contain information; not a word too much; no want of increased interest; all is strong, simple, and affecting.' VII. See reference under v. 2-4-III-VII. Of these examples from Surrey one only does not occur in Tottel's Miscellany: viz. VI, which is here given, slightly amended, from Camden's Remains Concerning Britain, ed. 1674, p. 514. Edmund Spenser. Spenser's own love-story forms the subject of the Amoretti (1595). Amid so much fruitless sonnet-wooing as was then in vogue, one welcomes the advent of a poet who to many higher merits adds the very rare one of having prosecuted a successful suit; though it is not in the Amoretti, but in the glorious nuptial ode published with them, the Epithalamion, that Spenser celebrates his triumph most divinely. Notwithstanding the exceptional feature referred to, however, and the oftrecurring signature of his genius throughout, unprejudiced readers must acknowledge that these sonnets are disappointing. They fall short of what we should have expected of the author of The Faerie Queene. Regarding their peculiar form, Leigh Hunt has pointed out that Spenser, with all his Italianate proclivities, was the first who deliberately abandoned the archetypal pattern of the sonnet. It is interesting to note his several experiments. The earliest was in blank verse, of which the following is a favourable example. It forms one of a series of translations from Du Bellay, contributed by Spenser to Vander Noodt's Theatre for Worldlings, a little work which appeared in 1569, while the poet was yet in his seventeenth year, and just entered of Pembroke.' Hall,' Cambridge: I saw a fresh spring rise out of a rocke, Clere as Christall against the Sunny beames, Of many accordes more swete than Mermaids song, An hundred Nymphes sate side by side about, With hideous cry assembled on the place, Which with their feete uncleane the water fouled, Threw down the seats, and drove the Nimphs to flight. His next was in the common illegitimate form of three elegiac quatrains and a rimed couplet, and will be illustrated best in the same poem, as it appeared, with others similarly transformed, in the 1591 volume of Complaints, &c., under the title of 'The Visions of Bellay.' I saw a spring out of a rocke forth rayle, As cleare as Christall gainst the Sunnie beames, And hundred Nymphes sate side by side about ; A troupe of Satyres in the place did rout, Which with their villeine feete the streame did ray, In his third and final experiment the three quatrains are interlaced by means of a rime common to each-a method which seems to have satisfied his maturer judgment, since it is that on which the Amoretti are constructed; as here : (26) Sweet is the Rose, but growes upon a brere; Sweet is the Eglantine, but pricketh nere ; Sweet is the firbloome, but his braunches rough: Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill; Sweet is the broome-flowre, but yet sowre enough; Edmund Spenser. So every sweet with soure is tempred still, Why then should I accoumpt of little paine, That endlesse pleasure shall unto me gaine ?1 Of this last form Leigh Hunt justly remarks that 'It is surely not so happy as that of the Italian sonnet. The rhyme seems at once less responsive and always interfering; and the music has no longer its major and minor divisions.' (Book of the Sonnet, i, 74.) PAGE 5-VIII, 8. Cf. Tho. Heywood (A Woman Kilde with Kindnesse, ed. Lond. 1874, p. 112) whose Wendoll cries: 'O speake no more, For more then this I know, & have recorded IX. portly... portliness: There lies in " portly" a certain sense of dignity of demeanour still, but always connoted with this a cumbrousness and weight, such as Spenser . . would never have ascribed to his bride,'-Trench's Select Glossary, s. v. sdeign disdain, scorn. 13-14 Cf. A. H. Clough's poem The Higher Courage: 'He who would climb and soar aloft Must needs keep ever at his side In a MS. note under this sonnet in his copy of Spenser, Leigh Hunt 6-x. Lord Brooke begins one of his pieces (Calica, 'Sonnet' 3, Works, 1633, p. 162): 'More than most faire, full of that heavenly fire, a coincidence which, together with the circumstance noted by Dr. 1 pill = peel. |