“I cannot eat but little meat
My Stomach is not good
But sure I think, that I can drink
With him that wears a hood;
Tho’ I go bare, take ye no care
I nothing am a colde,
I stuffe my skin so full within
Of jolly good ale and olde.”
Wyatt and Surrey.
The model poets, however, of this reign[82]—those who kept alive the best old classic traditions, and echoed with most grace and spirit the daintiness of Italian verse, were the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. The latter was son of an old courtier of Henry VII., and inheritor of an estate and castle in Kent, which he made noteworthy by his decorative treatment, and which is even now counted worthy a visit by those journeying through the little town of Maidstone. He was, for those times, brilliantly educated; was in high favor with the King (save one enforced visit to the Tower); he translated Petrarch, and in his own way imitated the Italian poet’s manner, and was, by common consent, the first to graft the “Sonnet” upon English forms of verse. I find nothing however in his verse one-half so graceful or gracious as this tribute to his worth in Tennyson’s “Queen Mary:”—