But the most remarkable example of accidental metrical invention that I have yet come across is to be found in the Earl of Surrey’s translation of Horace’s ode on the golden mean. Surrey was one of the pioneers of the reaction against the vagueness and uncertain carelessness of the post-Chaucerians. From the example of Italian poetry he had learned that a line must have a fixed number of syllables. In all his poems his aim is always to achieve regularity at whatever cost. To make sure of having ten syllables in every line it is evident that Surrey made use of his fingers as well as his ears. We see him at his worst and most laborious in the first stanza of his translation:
Of thy life, Thomas, this compass well mark:
Ne by coward dread in shunning storms dark
Not aye with full sails the high seas to beat;
On shallow shores thy keel in peril freat.
The ten syllables are there all right, but except in the last line there is no recognizable rhythm of any kind, whether regular or irregular. But when Surrey comes to the second stanza—
Auream quisquis mediocritatem
Diligit, tutus caret obsoleti
Sordibus tecti, caret invidenda
Sobrius aula—