1. Sir Thomas Wyat (1503–42) was descended from an ancient Yorkshire family which adopted the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses. He was educated at Cambridge, and, entering the King’s service, was entrusted with many important diplomatic missions. In public life his principal patron was Thomas Cromwell, after whose death he was recalled from abroad and imprisoned (1541). Though subsequently acquitted and released, he died shortly afterward.
None of Wyat’s poems is very long, though in number they are considerable. The most numerous of them are his love-poems, ninety-six in all, which appeared in a compendium of the day called Tottel’s Miscellany (1557). The most noteworthy of these poems are the sonnets, the first of their kind in English, thirty-one in number. Of these, ten are written almost entirely in the Italian or Petrarchan form. In sentiment the shorter poems, and especially the sonnets, are serious and reflective; in style and construction they are often too closely imitative to be natural and genial; but as indications of the new scholastic and literary influences at work upon English, sweetening and chastening the earlier uncouthness, they are of the highest importance. Wyat’s epigrams, songs, and rondeaux are lighter than the sonnets, and they also reveal a care and elegance that were typical of the new romanticism. His Satires are composed in the Italian terza rima, once again showing the direction of the innovating tendencies.
2. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1518–47), whose name is usually associated in literature with that of Wyat, was the younger poet of the two. He was the son of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, and when his father became Duke of Norfolk (1524) the son adopted the courtesy title of Earl of Surrey. Owing largely to the powerful position of his father, Surrey took a prominent part in the Court life of the time, and served as a soldier both in France and Scotland. He was a man of reckless temper, which involved him in many quarrels, and finally brought upon him the wrath of the ageing and embittered Henry VIII. He was arrested, tried for treason, and beheaded on Tower Hill.
About 1542 Surrey began his literary relations with Wyat, who was his elder by fifteen years. His poems, which were the recreations of his few leisure moments, and which were not published till after his death (1557), appeared along with Wyat’s in Tottel’s Miscellany. They are chiefly lyrical, and include a few sonnets, the first of their kind, composed in the English or Shakespearian mode—an arrangement of three quatrains followed by a couplet. There are in addition a large number of love-poems addressed to a mysterious “Geraldine.” They are smoother than Wyat’s poems, and are much more poetical in sentiment and expression. His most important poem was published separately: Certain Bokes of Virgiles Æneis turned into English Meter (1557). Though the actual translation is of no outstanding merit, the form is of great significance; it is done in blank verse, rather rough and frigid, but the earliest forerunner of the great achievements of Shakespeare and Milton.
In the development of English verse Surrey represents a further stage: a higher poetical faculty, increased ease and refinement, and the introduction of two metrical forms of capital importance—the English form of the sonnet, and blank verse. We add a specimen of the earliest English blank verse. It is wooden and uninspired, but as a beginning it is worthy of attention.
But now the wounded quene with heavie care
Throwgh out the vaines doth nourishe ay the plage,
Surprised with blind flame, and to her minde
Gan to resort the prowes of the man
And honor of his race, whiles on her brest