“Courtier of many courts, he loves the more
His own gray towers, plain life, and lettered peace,
To read and rhyme in solitary fields;
The lark above, the nightingale below,
And answer them in song.”
Surrey was well born: was son to the Duke of Norfolk who figures in the Shakespearean play of Henry VIII., and grandson to the Surrey who worsted the Scotch on Flodden Field: he was companion of the King’s son, was taught at the Universities, at home and abroad. There was no gallant more admired in the gayer circles of the court; he too loved Petrarch, and made canzonets like his; had a Geraldine (for a Laura), half real and half mythical. The further story once obtained that he went with a gay retinue to Florence, where the lists were opened—in the spirit of an older chivalry—to this Stranger Knight, who challenged the world to combat his claims in behalf of the mythical Geraldine. And—the story ran—there were hot-heads who contended with him; and he unhorsed his antagonists, and came back brimming with honors, to the court—before which Hugh Latimer had preached, and where Sternhold’s psalms had been heard—to be imprisoned for eating flesh in Lent, in that Windsor Castle where he had often played with the King’s son. The tale[83] is a romantic one; but—in all that relates to the Florentine tourney—probably untrue.
I give you a little taste of the graceful way in which this poet sings of his Geraldine:—
“I assure thee even by oath
And thereon take my hand and troth
That she is one of the worthiest