kindly part all his friend Lindsay's preaching. He could jest back at his censor in verse of his own, for he loved literature, and some ascribe to him, among other pieces, a clever variation upon "Peebles to the Play," called "Christ's Kirk on the Green." But while the king jested back he assented heartily to the spirit of much of Lindsay's counsel, and sought by swift action to protect the poor from plunder. He had been only a year his own master, and was but eighteen, when, in the course of an endeavour to put down with a strong hand the lawless freebooting upon the border, he seized among others, in 1529, John Armstrong, of Gilnock Hill, in Liddesdale, and hanged him with forty-eight of his men at Carlenrig Chapel, about ten miles above Hawick. John Armstrong had acquired great wealth by his plunder, and as most of it was taken from the English, there were sympathisers on the Scottish side of the

20

30

40

"The four and twenty mills complete, Sall gang for thee thro' all the year, And as meikle of gude red wheat As all their happers dow1 to bear." "Away, away, thou traitor," &c.

"Grant me my life, my liege, my king, And a great gift I'll gie to thee: Bauld four and twenty sister's sons Sall for thee fecht, tho' all' suld flee." "Away, away, thou traitor," &c.

"Grant me my life, my liege, my king,
And a brave gift I'll gie to thee:
All between here and Newcastle town
Sall pay their yearly rent to thee."
"Away, away, thou traitor," &c.

"Ye lied, ye lied now, King," he says,
"Although a king and prince ye be,
For I luid3 naething in all my life,
I dare well say it, but honesty;

CHAPTER IX.

COURTLY POETS: WYATT, SURREY, AND OTHERS.
A.D. 1520 TO A.D. 1558.

THE spirit of reform was quickened by the spread
of culture. Young Englishmen of good means visited
Italy, and when they came home they brought with
them into society Italian fashions. In Italy wit was
in fashion, poetry was cultivated. Dante (b. 1265,
d. 1321) had made in Italy the strong beginning
of Modern Literature in Europe, followed by two
other great poets, Petrarch (b. 1304, d. 1374) and
Boccaccio (b. 1313, d. 1375), who were the living
heads of European Literature when our Chaucer
began to write. Lorenzo de' Medici (b. 1448, d.
1492) had maimed liberty in Florence, but he wrote
poems and patronised those poets and artists whom
preceding days of freedom had developed. Ariosto
(b. 1474, d. 1533) was the great living Italian
singer in the days of our William Dunbar, John
Skelton, Gavin Douglas, and Sir David Lindsay of
the Mount. But Tasso-born some eleven years
after Ariosto's death-was only a boy of fourteen in
1558, the year of the accession of Elizabeth.
English Spenser was about nine years younger than
his contemporary Tasso. Two English poets of the
reign of Henry VIII.--Sir Thomas Wyatt and the
Earl of Surrey-represented influence of Italy on
English Literature. They imitated also various
forms of the verse then written in Southern Europe
which found favour at the court of France.

Our

Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, of Allington Castle,

in Kent, was born in 1503, and became M.A. of Cambridge at the age of seventeen. He was made a gentleman of King Henry VIII.'s bedchamber, was knighted in 1537, and went as ambassador to the Emperor Charles V. in Spain. He spoke French, Italian, and Spanish, was skilled in all exercises that became a gentleman, and had, as his verse shows, the right spirit of his country. Henry VIII. delighted in him, but he suffered at one time from his Majesty's distrust, and, in the winter of 1540-41, Sir Thomas

SIR THOMAS WYATT.

From the Copy of Holbein's Portrait in Chamberlaine's "Portraits of Illustrious Persons of the Court of Henry VIII."

was in the Tower, charged with disrespect to the king and treasonable correspondence with Cardinal Pole. In the Tower he wrote these lines :

WYATT BEING IN PRISON TO BRYAN. Sighs are my food; my drink are my tears; Clinking of fetters would such music crave: Stink, and close air, away my life it wears;

Poor Innocence is all the hope I have. Rain, wind, or weather, judge I by mine ears; Malice assaults that righteousness should have. Sure am I, Bryan, this wound shall heal again; But yet, alas! the scar shall still remain.

Acquitted in the summer of 1541, and again befriended by the king, Wyatt withdrew to Allington; while there he wrote a Paraphrase in verse of the seven Penitential Psalms, and three Satires, imitated from the Latin and Italian, through which he spoke his mind on life. In the autumn of 1542 he died of a fever, caught in riding fast through bad weather to meet, at King Henry's command, an ambassador from Charles V.

The first of Wyatt's three Satires is based upon Horace's story of the Town and Country Mouse, which we have had already from Robert Henryson; the second is a free version from the Florentine poet Luigi Alemanni, who lived and wrote in Wyatt's

time, and was only about eight years his senior. The fitness of this Satire, as an utterance of Wyatt's own mind, when, after his imprisonment in the Tower, he withdrew to Allington, will be found to account fully for his choice of model.

OF THE COURTIER'S LIFE. (TO JOHN POINS.)

Mine own John Poins, since ye delight to know

The causes why that homeward I me draw,
And flee the press of Courts, whereso they go,
Rather than to live thrall under the awe

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

It is not that, because I scorn or mock

The power of them to whom fortúne hath lent
Charge over us, of right to strike the stroke;

But true it is, that I have always meant

Less to esteem them than the common sort
Of outward things that judge in their intent,
Without regard what inward doth resort.

I grant sometime of glory that the fire
Doth touch my heart. Me list not to report
Blame by honour, and honour to desire.

But how may I this honour now attain,
That cannot dye the colour black a liar?
My Poins, I cannot frame my tongue to feign;
To cloke the truth for praise, without desert,
Of them that list all vice for to retain.

I cannot honour them that set their part

With Venus and Bacchús all their life long;
Nor hold my peace of them, although I smart.

I cannot crouch nor kneel to such a wrong,
To worship them like God on earth alone,
That are as wolves these sely lambs among.

I cannot with my words complain and moan,
And suffer nought; nor smart without complaint;
Nor turn the word that from my mouth is gone.

I cannot speak and look like as a saint;
Use wiles for wit, and make deceit a pleasure;
And call craft, counsaile; for lucre still to paint.

I cannot wrest the law to fill the coffer,
With innocént blood to feed my self fat,
And do most hurt, where that most help I offer.

I am not he that can allow the state

Of high Cæsar, and damn Cato to die,
That with his death did scape out of the gate
From Cæsar's hands, if Livy doth not lie,
And would not live where liberty was lost:
So did his heart the common wealth apply.
I am not he, such eloquence to boast,
To make the crow in singing as the swan;
Nor call the lion of coward beasts the most,
That cannot take a mouse, as the cat can;

And he that dieth for hunger of the gold,
Call him Alexander; and say that Pan
Passeth Apollo in music many fold;

Praise Sir Thopas for a noble tale,

And scorn the story that the Knight told;1 Praise him for counsel that is drunk of ale;

1 The allusion is to two pieces in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales:" (1) the rhyme of Sir Thopas, given by Chaucer as a caricature of the prolix conventionality of many of the old romances, and cut short by Harry Bailly, host of the Tabard, as unendurable; and (2) the "Knight's Tale" of Palemon and Arcite, wherein Chaucer has sung in his own best way of love and chivalrous adventure.

Grin when he laughs that beareth all the sway, Frown when he frowns, and groan when he is pale; On others' lust to hang both night and day.

None of these points would ever frame in me :
My wit is nought, I cannot learn the way.
And much the less of things that greater be;
That asken help of colours to devise
To join the mean with each extremity;
With nearest virtue aye to cloke the vice;

And, as to purpose likewise it shall fall,
To press the virtue that it may not rise.
As, drunkenness good fellowship to call;

The friendly foe, with his fair double face,
Say he is gentle and courteous therewithal;

Affirm that favel3 hath a goodly grace

In eloquence; and cruelty to name
Zeal of justice, and change in time and place;
And he that suffereth offence without blame,

This maketh me at home to hunt and hawk,
And in foul weather at my book to sit,

In frost and snow, then with my bow to stalk.
No man doth mark whereso I ride or go.
In lusty leas at liberty I walk;

And of these news I feel nor weal nor woe,

Save that a clog doth hang yet at my heel.
No force for that; for it is ordered so

That I may leap both hedge and dike full wele.
I am not now in France to judge the wine,
With savoury sauce the delicates to feel;
Nor yet in Spain, where one must him incline
Rather than to be, outwardly to seem.
I meddle not with wits that be so fine.
Nor Flanders cheer lets not my sight to deem
Of black and white, nor takes my wit away
With beastliness; such do those beasts esteem.

Nor I am not where truth is given in prey

For money, poison, and treasón, of some

60

70

Speak, without word, such words as none can tell

The tress also should be of crispéd gold. With wit and these perchance I might be tried, And knit again with knot that should not slide.

OF HIS RETURN FROM SPAIN. Tagus, farewell! that westward with thy streams Turns up the grains of gold already tried; For I, with spur and sail, go seek the Thames, Gainward the sun that sheweth her wealthy pride; And to the town that Brutus sought by dreams,7 Like bended moon that leans her lusty side, My King, my Country, I seek, for whom I live. O mighty Jove, the winds for this me give.

THAT PLEASURE IS MIXED WITH EVERY PAIN.

Venomous thorns that are so sharp and keen
Bear flowers, we see, full fresh and fair of hue.
Poison is also put in medicine,

And unto man his health doth oft renew.
The fire that all things eke consumeth clean

May hurt and heal; then if that this be true, I trust sometime my harm may be my health, Since every woe is joined with some wealth.

OF DISSEMBLING WORDS.

Throughout the world, if it were sought,
Fair words enough a man shall find :

They be good cheap; they cost right nought;

Their substance is but only wind.

But well to say, and so to mean,

That sweet accord is seldom seen.

Alack, why is she so?"

"She loveth another better than me,

And yet she will say, no."

"I find no such doubleness;

I find women true.

My lady loveth me doubtless,

7 That Brutus sought by dreams. Brut or Brutus, great-grande n of the Trojan Eneas, was, according to Geoffrey of Monmontà s chronicle, and the old poems formed from it by Wace and Layamon the founder and name-father of Britain. As he was leading the captive Trojans from Greece he had in a temple of Diana a prophetic dream of the fair land in the West (Britain) that he was to win, and where he was to build a new Troy, Troy-novant, or London.