Not many years intervened between the uncouth gorgeousness of HAWES, the
homely sense of BARCLAY, the anomalous genius of SKELTON, and the pure
poetry of Henry Howard the EARL of SURREY. In the poems of SURREY, and
his friend, Sir Thomas Wyatt,[1] the elder, the age of taste, if not of
genius, opens on us. Dryden and Pope sometimes seem to appear two
centuries before their date. There is no chronology in the productions
of real genius; for, whenever a great master appears, he advances his
art to a period which labour, without creation, toils for centuries to
reach.
The great reformer of our poetry, he who first from his own mind,
without a model, displayed its permanent principles, was the poetic Earl
of Surrey. There was inspiration in his system, and he freed his genius
from the barbaric taste or the undisturbed dulness which had prevailed
since the days of Chaucer. His ear was musical, and he formed a metrical
structure with the melodies of our varied versification, rejecting the
rude rhythmical rhyme which had hitherto prevailed in our poetry. He
created a poetic diction, and graceful involutions; a finer selection of
words, and a delicacy of expression, were now substituted for vague
diffusion, and homeliness of phrases and feeble rhymes, or, on the other
hand, for that vitiated style of crude pedantic Latinisms, such as
"purpure, aureate, pulchritude, celature, facunde," and so many others,
laborious nothings! filling the verse with noise. The contemplative and
tender SURREY charms by opening some picturesque scene or dwelling on
some impressive incident. He had discerned the error of those
inartificial writers, whose minute puerility, in their sterile
abundance, detailed till nothing was remembered, and described, till
nothing was perceptible. Hitherto, our poets had narrowed their powers
by moulding their conceptions by temporary tastes, the manners and modes
of thinking of their day; but their remoteness, which may delight the
antiquary, diminishes their interest with the poetical reader. SURREY
struck into that secret path which leads to general nature, guided by
his art: his tenderness and his thoughtful musings find an echo in our
bosoms, and are as fresh with us as they were in the court of Windsor
three centuries past.
These rare qualities in a poet at such a period would of themselves form
an era in our literature; but SURREY also extended their limits; the
disciple of Chaucer was also the pupil of Petrarch, and the Earl of
SURREY composed the _first sonnets_ in the English language, with the
amatory tenderness and the condensed style of its legitimate structure.
Dr. Nott further claims the honour for Surrey of the invention of heroic
blank verse; Surrey's version of Virgil being unrhymed.
When Warton suggested that Surrey borrowed the idea of blank verse from
Trissino's "Italia Liberata," he seems to have been misled by the
inaccurate date of 1528, which he affixed to the publication of that
epic. Trissino's epic did not appear till 1547,[2] and Surrey perished
in the January of that year. It was indeed long a common opinion that
Trissino invented the _versi sciolti_, or blank verse, though Quadrio
confesses that such had been used by preceding poets, whose names he has
recorded. The mellifluence and flexibility of the vowelly language were
favourable to unrhymed verse; while the poverty of the poetic diction,
and the unmusical verse of France, could never venture to show itself
without the glitter of rhyme. The heroic blank verse, however, was an
after-thought of Surrey: he first composed his unrhymed verse in the
long Alexandrine, had afterwards felicitously changed it for the
decasyllabic verse, but did not live to correct the whole of his
version. Surrey could not therefore have designed the pauses and the
cadences of blank verse in his first choice, nor will they be found in
his last. Nor can it be conceded that blank verse was wholly unknown
among us. Webbe, a critic long after, in the reign of Elizabeth,
considers the author of Pierce Ploughman as "the first whom he had met
with who observed the quantity of our verse, _without the curiosity of
rhyme_."
Dr. Nott, with editorial ardour, considers that the unfinished model of
Surrey was the prototype of all subsequent blank verse, and was also the
origin of its introduction into dramatic composition. A sweeping
conclusion! when we consider the artificial structure of our blank verse
from the days of Milton, who, not without truth, asserted that "he first
gave the example of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the
troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming." This indeed has been denied
to Milton by those who look to dates, and have no ear; and are apt to
imagine that rhymeless lines, mere couplets, with ten well-counted
syllables in each, must necessarily form blank verse. Dr. Nott, in
quoting the eulogy of Ascham on this noble effort of Surrey "to bring
our national poetry to perfection," has omitted to add what followed,
namely, the censure of Surrey for not having rejected our heroic verse
altogether, and substituted the hexameter of Virgil, in English verse.
It is therefore quite evident that Ascham had formed no conception of
blank verse, no more than had Surrey, such as it was to be formed by the
ear of Milton, and by some of his successors. All beginnings are
obscure; something is borrowed from the past, and something is invented
for the future, till it is vain to fix the gradations of invention which
terminate in what at length becomes universally adopted.
Could the life, or what we have of late called the psychological
history, of this poetic Earl of SURREY be now written, it would
assuredly open a vivid display of fine genius, high passions, and
romantic enthusiasm. Little is known, save a few public events; but the
print of the footsteps shows their dimension. We trace the excellence,
while we know but little of the person.
The youth of SURREY, and his life, hardly passed beyond that period,
betrayed the buoyancy of a spirit vehement and quick, but rarely under
guidance. Reckless truth, in all its openness and its sternness, was his
habit, and glory was his passion; but in this restlessness of generous
feelings his anger too easily blazed forth. He was haughty among his
peers, and he did not even scorn to chastise an inferior. We are not
surprised at discovering that one of so unreserved a temper should in
that jealous reign more than once have suffered confinement. But the
youthful hero who pursued to justice a relative and a court favourite,
for a blow, by which that relative had outraged Surrey's faithful
companion--he who would eat flesh in Lent--he who issued one night to
break the windows of the citizens, to remind them that they were a
sinful race, however that might have been instigated by zeal for "the
new religion"--all such things betrayed his enthusiastic daring, but his
deeds, to become splendid, depended on their direction. The lofty
notions he attached to his descent; his proud shield quartering the arms
of the Confessor, which the duke, his father, dared not show to a
jealous monarch; his feats of arms at the barriers, and his military
conduct in his campaigns,
----------Who saw Kelsal blaze,
Landrecy burnt, and battered Boulogne render;
At Montreuil's gate hopeless of a recure (recovery),
there, where that twin-spirit, his beloved associate, Clere, to save his
wounded friend, had freely yielded his own life; his magnificence as a
courtier, the companion of the princely Richmond; all "the joy and feast
with a king's son;" his own record of the brilliant days, and the
soothing fancies of "proud Windsor:" "its large open courts;" "the
gravelled ground for the foaming horse;" "the palm-play;" "the stately
seats and dances;" "the secret groves," and "the wild forest, with cry
of hounds;" and more than all, the mysterious passion for "the fair
Geraldine," cover the misty shade of Surrey with a cloud of glory,
which, while it veils the man from our sight, seems to enlarge the
object we gaze on.
We see this youth, he who first taught the English Muse accents she had
never before tried, hurried from his literary seclusion to be immolated
on the scaffold, by the arts of a remorseless rival, of him whose pride
at last sent him to the block, and who signed the death-warrant of his
own brother! It was at a moment when the dying monarch, as the breath
was fleeting from his lips, once in his life was voiceless to condemn a
state victim, that Somerset took up the stamp which Henry used, to affix
it to the death-warrant of SURREY. Victim of his own domestic circle!
The father disunited with the son, from fear or jealousy; the mother
separated from the father, to the last vowing unforgiving vengeance; a
sister disnatured of all kin, hastening to be the voluntary accuser of
her father and her brother! These domestic hatreds were the evil spirits
which raged in the house of the Howards, and hurried on the fate of the
accomplished, the poetic, the hapless Earl of Surrey.
A tale of such grandeur and such woe passed away unheeded even by a
slight record, so inexpert were the few writers of those days, and
probably so perilous was their curiosity. The pretended trial of Surrey,
who being no lord of parliament, was tried by a timorous jury at
Guildhall, seems to have been studiously suppressed, and the last solemn
act of his life, "the leaving it," is alike concealed. Even in the
registers of public events by our chroniclers, they unanimously pass
over the glorious name and the miserable death--to spare the monarch's
or the victim's honour.
The poems of SURREY were often read, as their multiplied editions show;
but of the noble poet and his Geraldine, tradition had not sent down
even an imperfect tale. In this uncertainty, the world was disposed to
listen to any romantic story of such genius and love and chivalry.
The secret history of SURREY was at length revealed, and the gravity of
its discloser vouched for its authenticity. Who would doubt the
testimony of plain Anthony a Wood?
SURREY is represented hastening on a chivalric expedition to Italy; at
Florence he challenges the universe, that his Geraldine was the peerless
of the beautiful. In his travels, Cornelius Agrippa exhibited to Surrey,
in a magical mirror, his fair mistress as she was occupied at the moment
of inspection. He beheld her sick, weeping in bed, reading his poems, in
all the grief of absence. This incident set spurs to his horse. At
Florence he hastened to view the chamber which had witnessed the birth
of so much beauty. At the court he affixed his challenge, and maintained
this emprise in tilt and tourney. The Duke of Florence, flattered that a
Florentine lady should be renowned by the prowess of an English
nobleman, invited Surrey to a residence at his court. But our Amadis
more nobly purposed to hold on his career through all the courts of
Italy, shivering the lances of whoever would enter the lists, whether
"Christian, Jew, or Saracen." Suddenly the Quixotism ends, by this
paragon of chivalry being recalled home by the royal command.
This Italian adventure seemed congenial with the romantic mystery in
which the poet had involved the progress of his passion for his poetic
mistress. He had himself let us into some secrets. Geraldine came from
"Tuscany;" Florence was her ancient seat, her sire was an earl, her dame
of "princes' blood," "yet she was fostered by milk of an Irish breast;"
and from her tender years in Britain "she tasted costly food with a
king's child." The amatorial poet even designates the spots hallowed by
his passion; he first saw her at Hunsdon, Windsor chased him from her
sight, and at Hampton Court "first wished her for mine!"
These hints and these localities were sufficient to irritate the vague
curiosity of Surrey's readers, and more particularly of our critical
researchers, of whom Horace Walpole first ventured to explain the
inexplicable. With singular good fortune, and from slight grounds,
Walpole conjectured that Geraldine was no Italian dame, but Lady
Elizabeth Fitzgerald, one of the daughters of the Earl of Kildare; the
family were often called the Geraldines. The Italian descent from the
Geraldi was made out by a spurious genealogy. The challenge and the
tournament no one doubted. But some harder knots were to be untied; and
our theoretical historian, unfurnished by facts and dates, it has been
recently shown, discovered some things which never existed.
But every writer followed in the track. Warton compliments the sagacity
of Walpole, and embroiders the narrative. The historian of our poetry
not only details the incident of the magical mirror, but adds that "the
imagination of Surrey was _heated anew_ by this _interesting
spectacle_!" He therefore had no doubt of the reality; and, indeed, to
confirm the whole adventure of the romantic chivalry, he refers the
curious to a finely sculptured shield which is still preserved by the
Dukes of Norfolk. The Italian adventures of Surrey, and all that Walpole
had erroneously suggested, are fully accepted, and our critic
observes--"Surrey's life throws so much light on the character and the
subjects of his poetry, that it is almost impossible to consider the one
without exhibiting the _few anecdotes_ of the other." But the critical
sagacity of Warton did not wholly desert him through all the
circumstantial narrative, for suddenly his pen pauses, and he exclaims
on these travels of Surrey, that "they have the air of a romance!"
And it was a romance! and it served for history many a year![3] This
tale of literary delusion may teach all future investigators into
obscure points of history to probe them by dates.
It was long after the days of Walpole and Warton, and even of George
Ellis, that it was discovered that these travels into Italy by Surrey
had been transferred literally from an "Historical Romance." A great
wit, in Elizabeth's reign, Tom Nash, sent forth in "the Life of Jack
Wilton, an unfortunate traveller," this whole legend of Surrey. The
entire fiction of Nash annihilates itself by its extraordinary
anachronisms.
In what respect Nash designed to palm the imposture of his "Historical
Romance" on the world, may be left to be explained by some "Jack
Wiltons" of our own. He says "all that in this _phantastical treatise_ I
can promise is some _reasonable conveyance of history_, and variety of
mirth." Must we trust to their conscience for "the reasonable
conveyance?"
We now trace the whole progress of this literary delusion.