From Tuscan came my lady's worthy race;
Fair Florence was sometime her ancient seat--
the romancer inferred that Geraldine must be a fair Florentine; Surrey
had alluded to the fanciful genealogy of the Geralds from the Geraldi.
On this single hint the romancer sends him on his aerial journey in this
business of love and chivalry.
This romance, of which it is said only three copies are known, was
published in 1594. Four years after, DRAYTON, looking about for subjects
for his Ovidian epistles, eagerly seized on a legend so favourable for
poetry, and Geraldine and Surrey supplied two amatory epistles. Anthony
a Wood, finding himself without materials to frame a life of the poetic
Surrey, had recourse to "the famous poet," as he calls Drayton, whom he
could quote; for Drayton was a consecrated bard for the antiquary, since
Selden had commented on his great topographical poem. But honest Anthony
on this occasion was not honest enough. He did not tell the world that
he had fallen on the romance itself, Drayton's sole authority. Literally
and silently, our antiquary transcribed the fuller passages from a
volume he was ashamed to notice, disingenuously dropping certain
incidents which would not have honoured the memory of Surrey. Thus the
"phantastical" history for ever blots the authentic tomes of the grave
_Athenae Oxonienses_. A single moment of scrutiny would have detected the
whole fabricated narrative; but there is a charm in romance which
bewitched our luckless Anthony.
Thus it happened that the romancer, on a misconception, constructs an
imaginary fabric; the poet Drayton builds on the romancer; the sober
antiquary on both; then the commentators stand upon the antiquary. Never
was a house of cards of so many stories. The foundation, Surrey's poetic
passion, may be as fictitious as the rest; for the visionary Geraldine,
viewed in Agrippa's magic mirror was hardly a more mysterious shadow.
Not one of these writers was informed of what recent researches have
demonstrated. They knew not that this Earl of Surrey in boyhood was
betrothed to his lady, also a child--one of the customs to preserve
wealth or power in great families of that day. These historians were
unfurnished with any dates to guide them, and never suspected that when
Surrey is made to set off on his travels in Italy, after a Donna Giraldi
who had no existence, he was the father of two sons, and "the fair
Geraldine" was only _seven_ years of age! that Surrey's first love broke
out when she was _nine_; that he declared his passion when she was about
_thirteen_; and finally, that Geraldine, having attained to the womanly
discretion of _fifteen_, dismissed the accomplished Earl of Surrey, with
whom she never could be united, to accept the hand of old Sir Anthony
Brown, aged sixty. Lady Brown disturbs the illusion of Geraldine, in the
modest triumph of sixteen over sixty.
Dr. Nott is in trepidation for the domestic morality of the noble poet;
yet some of these amatory sonnets may have been addressed to his
betrothed. He has perplexed himself by a formal protest against the
perils of Platonic love, but apologises for his hero in the manners of
the age. It appears that not only the mistress of Petrarch, but those of
Bayard the chevalier "sans reproche," and Sir Philip Sidney, were
married women, with as crystalline reputations as their lovers. Nor
should we omit the great friend of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt, who was a
staid married man, notwithstanding his romantic passion for Anne Bullen.
The courtly imitators of Petrarch had made love fashionable. It is
evident that Surrey found nothing so absorbing in his passion, whatever
it might be; for whenever called into public employment he ceased to be
Petrarch--which Petrarch never could, and possibly for a want of
occupation. A small quantity of passion, dexterously meted out, may be
ample to inspire an amatorial poet. Neither Surrey nor Petrarch,
accomplished lovers and poets, with all their mistress' coquetry and
cruelty, broke their hearts in the tenderness of their ideas, or were
consumed by "the perpetual fires" of their imagination.
We have now traced the literary delusion which long veiled the personal
history of the Earl of Surrey, and which has duped so many ingenious
commentators. The tale affords an additional evidence of that "confusion
worse confounded" by truth and fiction, where the names are real, and
the incidents fictitious; a fatality which must always accompany
"Historical Romances." The same mischance occurred to "The Cavalier" of
DE FOE, often published under different titles, suitable to the designs
of the editors, and which tale has been repeatedly mistaken for an
authentic history written at the time. Under the assumed designation by
"a Shropshire Gentleman," whole passages have been transferred from the
Romance into the authentic history of Nichols's Leicestershire--just as
Anthony a Wood had felicitously succeeded in his historical authority of
Tom Nash's "Life of Jack Wilton."
In the story of SURREY and WYATT, one circumstance is too precious to be
passed over. WYATT commenced as a writer nearly ten years before Surrey,
and his earlier poetic compositions are formed in the old rhythmical
school. His manuscripts, which still exist, bear his own strong marks in
every line to regulate their caesura; for our ancient poets, to satisfy
the ear, were forced to depend on such artificial contrivances. It was
in the strict intercourse of their literary friendship that the elder
bard surrendered up the ancient barbarism, and by the revelation of his
younger friend, studied an art which he had not himself discovered.
Wyatt is an abundant writer; but he has wrought his later versification
with great variety, though he has not always smoothed his workmanship
with his nail. For many years Wyatt had smothered his native talent, by
translation from Spanish and Italian poets, and in his rusty rhythmical
measures. He lived to feel the truth of nature, and to practise happier
art. Of his amatory poems, many are graceful, most ingenious. The
immortal one to his "Lute," the usual musical instrument of the lover or
the poet, as the guitar in Spain, composed with as much happiness as
care, is the universal theme of every critic of English poetry.
His defrauded or romantic passion for Anne Bullen often lends to his
effusions a deep mysterious interest, when we recollect that the poet
alludes to a rival who must have made him tremble as he wrote.
Who list to hunt? I know where is an hind!
But as for me alas! I may no more,
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore;
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain;
Graven with diamonds, in letters plain,
There is written, her fair neck round about--
"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
_And wild to hold, though I seem tame_."
We perceive Wyatt's keen perception of character in the last verse,
admirably expressive of the playfulness and levity of the thoughtless
but susceptible Anne Bullen, which never left her when in the Tower or
on the scaffold. The poems of WYATT accompanied the unhappy queen in her
imprisonment; and it was Wyatt's sister who received her prayer-book
with her last smile, for the block before her could not disturb the
tenderness of her affections.
WYATT is an ethical poet, more pregnant with reflection than
imagination; he was intimately conversant with the world; and it is to
be regretted that our poet has only left three satires, the first
Horatian Epistles we possess. These are replete with the urbanity and
delicate irony of the Roman, but what was then still unexampled, flowing
with the fulness and freedom of the versification of Dryden. Wyatt had
much salt, but no gall.
WYATT excelled SURREY in his practical knowledge of mankind; he had been
a sojourner in politic Madrid, and had been employed on active
embassies. Surrey could only give the history of his own emotions,
affections, and habits; he is the more interesting poet for us; but we
admire a great man in Wyatt, one whose perception was not less subtile
and acute, because it spread on a far wider surface of life.
WIAT, for so he wrote his name, was a great wit; as, according to the
taste of his day, his anagram fully maintained. We are told that he was
a nice observer of times, persons, and circumstances, knowing when to
speak, and we may add, how to speak. That happened to Wyatt which can be
recorded probably of no other wit: three prompt strokes of pleasantry
thrown out by him produced three great revolutions--the fall of Wolsey,
the seizure of the monastic lands, and the emancipation of England from
the papal supremacy. The Wyatts, besides their connexion with Anne
Bullen, had all along been hostile to the great Cardinal. One day Wyatt
entering the king's closet, found his majesty much disturbed, and
displeased with the minister. Ever quick to his purpose, Wyatt, who
always told a story well, now, to put his majesty into good humour, and
to keep the Cardinal down in as bad a one, furnished a ludicrous tale of
"the curs baiting a butcher's dog." The application was obvious to the
butcher's son of Ipswich, and we are told, for the subject but not the
tale itself has been indicated, that the whole plan of getting rid of a
falling minister was laid down by this address of the wit. It was with
the same dexterity, when Wyatt found the king in a passion on the delay
of his divorce, that, with a statesmanlike sympathy, appealing to the
presumed tendency of the royal conscience, he exclaimed, "Lord! that a
man cannot repent him of his sin but by the pope's leave!" The hint was
dropped; the egg of the Reformation was laid, and soon it was hatched!
When Henry the Eighth paused at the blow levelled at the whole ponderous
machinery of the papal clergy, dreading from such wealth and power a
revolution, besides the ungraciousness of the intolerable transfer of
all abbey lands to the royal domains, Wyatt had his repartee for his
counsel:--"Butter the rooks' nests!"--that is, divide all these houses
and lands with the nobility and gentry.
Wyatt should have been the minister of Henry; we should then have
learned if a great wit, where wit was ever relished, could have saved
himself under a monarch who dashed down a Wolsey.
Surrey and Wyatt, though often engaged, the one as a statesman, the
other as a general, found their most delightful avocation in the
intercourse of their studies. Their minds seemed cast in the same mould.
They mutually confided their last compositions, and sometimes chose the
same subject in the amicable wrestlings of their genius. It was a
community of studies and a community of skill; the thoughts of the one
flowed into the thoughts of the other, and we frequently discover the
verse from one in the poem of the other. Wyatt was the more fortunate
man, for he did not live to see himself die in the partner of his fame
perishing on a scaffold, and he has received a poet's immortality from
that friend's noble epitaph. In his epitaph, Surrey dwells on every
part of the person of his late companion; he expatiates on the
excellences of the head, the face, the hand, the tongue, the eye, and
the heart--but these are not fanciful conceits; the solemnity of his
thoughts and his deep emotions tell their truth. Wyatt's was
A head, where Wisdom's mysteries did frame,
Whose hammers beat still in that lively brain,
As on a stithy,[4] where some work of fame
Was daily wrought.