EXECUTION OF SURREY. Dec. 12, 91 and Seymour. The element of religious strife added to the bitterness of the feeling which grew up between these two rival families; for the Howards were Roman Catholics, and the Earl of Hertford, the head of the Seymours, was a secret friend of the Reformation. The grand aim of Hertford was to secure the protectorship of his young nephew Prince Edward when the old king was dead. Surrey and his father Norfolk, standing in the way, must perish. The thing was easy to do; the name of Howard was poison to the king, who had already soiled their proud escutcheon with an ugly smear of blood, drawn, four years earlier, from the fair neck of his fifth wife. Arrested for treason, the father and the son, each ignorant of the other's capture, were hurried by different ways to the Tower. Surrey was tried at 1546 Guildhall on a flimsy charge of treason, supported chiefly by the fact that he had quartered the arms of Edward the Confessor on his shield with those of his own family. This was tortured into a proof that he aimed at the throne. He had long worn these arms, he said, even in the king's own sight; and the heralds had allowed him to do so in virtue of his royal descent. In spite of these simple truths, and the noble eloquence of his defence, the poet was doomed to die; and on the 19th of January 1547 his bright hair, all dabbled in blood, swept the dust of the scaffold. Eight days later, the blood-stained Henry died, just in time to save from the block the head of Norfolk, whose execution had been arranged for the following morning. A.D. Surrey's literary merits have been already noticed. Dr. Nott, who edited Surrey's works, claims for the poet the honour of having revolutionized English poetry, by substituting lines of fixed length, where the accents fall evenly, for the rhythmical lines of earlier poets, in which the number of syllables is irregular, and the equality of the lines requires to be kept up by certain pauses or cadences of the voice. But recent writers have shown that this theory cannot be maintained. In the words of Dr. Craik, "The true merit of Surrey is, that he restored to our poetry a correctness, polish, and general spirit of refinement, such as it had not known 92 THE EARLIEST ENGLISH BLANK-VERSE. since Chaucer's time; and of which, therefore, in the language as now spoken, there was no previous example whatever." Like Chaucer, he caught his inspiration from the great bards of Italy, and sat especially at the feet of Petrarch. In his purification of English verse, he did good service by casting out those clumsy Latin words, with which the lines of even Dunbar are heavily clogged. The poems of Petrarch ring the changes in exquisite music on his love for Laura. So the love-verses of Surrey are filled with the praises of the fair Geraldine, whom Horace Walpole has tried to identify with Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a daughter of the Earl of Kildare. If this be so, Geraldine was only a girl of thirteen when the poet, already married to Frances Vere for six years, sang of her beauty and her virtue. It is no unlikely thing that Surrey, an instinctive lover of the beautiful, was smitten with a deep admiration of the fresh, young, girlish face of one "Standing with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Such a feeling could exist-it often has existed—in the poet's breast, free from all mingling of sin, and casting no shadow of reproach upon a husband's loyalty. Surrey's chief work was the translation into English blankverse of the Second and Fourth books of Virgil's " Eneid." Some think that he borrowed this verse from Italy; Dr. Nott supposes that he got the hint from Gavin Douglas, the Scottish translator of Virgil. Wherever the gem was found, Surrey has given it to English literature; a rough gem, indeed, at first, and shining with a dim, uncertain gleam, but soon, beneath Shakspere's magic hand, leaping forth to the sight of men, a diamond of the first water, flashing with a thousand coloured lights. Surrey is said to have written also the first English Sonnets.* *The Sonnet is borrowed from the Italian. It is a poem of fourteen lines, two of its four stanzas having four lines each, and the others three lines. The rhymes are arranged according to a particular rule. SPECIMENS OF SURREY'S VERSE. FROM SURREY'S TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL. (FOURTH BOOK.) But now the wounded quene with heavie care And honor of his race, whiles on her brest 93 SONNET ON SPRING. (MODERN SPELLING.) The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings, The busy bee her honey now she mings; [sweet [also [mate [float [small [mixes [evil ROBERT HENRYSON was chief schoolmaster at Dunfermline about the end of the fifteenth century. His longest poem is the Testament of Fair Creseide, in which Chaucer's tale of "Troilus and Creseide" is continued. The fine ballad of Robin and Makyne, which 66 be found in Percy's may Reliques," is ascribed to this accomplished man. The Moral Fables of Esop, and The Garment of Gude Ladyes, are his chief remaining works. He is said to have died some time before 1508. WILLIAM DUNBAR, placed by Sir Walter Scott at the head of Scottish poets, and perhaps, therefore, deserving more prominence than he receives here, is thought to have been a native of East Lothian, and to have been closely allied to the noble house of March. This Chaucer of the North graduated at St. Andrews as M.A. in 1479. Then, assuming the grey robe of the Franciscans, he travelled for some years in Britain and France, preaching and begging, according to the custom of the friars; and he afterwards visited the English and some of the Continental courts, as an attaché to certain Scottish embassies. The many-coloured life he thus spent is clearly reflected in his works, which show remarkable knowledge of human nature and society. Pensions, rising THE DANCE OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS." 95 at last to £80, rewarded the public services of the poet. Spending his last days in the irksome bondage of a court life, and pining for a chance of escape from his gilded cage, he died about 1520, having reached the age of sixty years. Dunbar's leading poems are three-The Thistle and the Rose; The Golden Terge; and, finest of all, The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins. The first-named commemorates the marriage of King James IV. with the English princess Margaret in 1503,-an historical event which paved the way for the close union of two sister lands. In the poem of "The Golden Terge," the sleeping bard is attacked by Venus and her train. Reason, holding over him a golden shield, repels all assailants, until blinded by a powder which Presence flings in his eyes. The poor poet then becomes the captive of Lady Beauty, and is much tormented until the scene vanishes with a clap of thunder, and he awakes amid the of birds and the perfume of bright May flowers. song "The Dance" describes a vision, beheld during a trance into which the poet fell on a winter night. In presence of Mahoun (that is, Mahomet, or the Devil, for these were often interchangeable terms about the days of the Crusades) Pride leads on the other deadly sins in a fearful dance. Each sin is represented by a distinct personification, painted in horror's darkest hues, and lighted in the dance by the lurid flames through which he leaps. GAVIN DOUGLAS was a younger son of the fifth Earl of Angus, well known in Scottish story as Archibald Bell-the-Cat. He was born about 1474. Having finished his education at Paris, he rose by many minor steps to be Abbot of Aberbrothock, and was afterwards consecrated Bishop of Dunkeld. But for the Pope's refusal to sanction his appointment, he would have become Archbishop of St. Andrews. The work for which Douglas is most celebrated, is his poetical translation of Virgil's "Eneid" into the Scottish dialect; remarkable as being the first rendering of a Latin classic into our native tongue. Two long allegories-King Hart, and The Palace of |