Or brightest day the darkest night."
But the most important fact in Surrey's poetical history is his introduction of blank verse into the English language, a simple but, in its consequences, most eventful innovation, liberating both the heroic and the dramatic muse from the shackles of rhyme, and leading the way to the magnificent works of Shakespeare and Milton in that free form. There has been much dispute among critics as to whether Surrey invented blank verse, or merely copied it from some other language; but the only wonder seems that some one of our poets had not attempted it before. What so likely as that Surrey, in translating the first and fourth books of the "Æneid," should adopt the blank verse in which the original was written, not exactly the hexameter but a measure more suitable to the English language? All the verse of the ancient Greeks and Romans is of this blank species; and it is extraordinary that men well read in these tongues had so long omitted the experiment; especially as the Italians, the French, and the Spaniards had tried it. Gonsalvo Perez, secretary to Charles V., had translated Homer's "Odyssey" into blank verse; and in 1528 Trissino, in order to root out the terza rima of Dante, had published his "Italia Liberata di Goti"—"Italy delivered from the Goths"—in blank verse. In the reign of Francis I. two of the most popular poets of France, Jodelle and De Baif, wrote poems in this style. Gawin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, had already translated the "Æneid' into Scots metre, and it would seem as if Surrey, in trying his hand on two books of the same poem, had been induced to make the essay of blank verse at the same time. Whatever was the immediate cause, nothing could exceed the success of Surrey's experiment. His verse flows with a stately dignity full of music and strength. We take a specimen from the fourth book of the "Æneid," where Dido, who has vowed never to marry again, perceives her new passion for Æneas, and discloses her pain to her sister:—
"Ne to her lymmes care graunteth quiet rest.
The next morrowe with Phœbus' lampe the erthe
Alightened clere, and eke the dawning daye,
The shadowe danke gan from the pole remove,
When all unsownd her sister of like minde,
Thus spoke she to: 'O sister An, what dremes
Be these that me tormenten, thus afraide?
What newcome gest unto our realm ys come?