ost of them amatory--"songs and sonnets"--full of love and
lovers: as a makeweight, in _foro conscientiae_, he paraphrased the
penitential Psalms. An excellent comment this on the age of Henry VIII.,
when the monarch possessed with lust attempted the reformation of the
Church. That Wyatt looked with favor upon the Reformation is indicated by
one of his remarks to the king: "Heavens! that a man cannot repent him of
his sins without the Pope's leave!" Imprisoned several times during the
reign of Henry, after that monarch's death he favored the accession of
Lady Jane Grey, and, with other of her adherents, was executed for high
treason on the 11th of April, 1554. We have spoken of the spirit of the
age. Its criticism was no better than its literature; for Wyatt, whom few
read but the literary historian, was then considered

A hand that taught what might be said in rhyme,
That reft Chaucer the glory of his wit.

The glory of Chaucer's wit remains, while Wyatt is chiefly known because
he was executed.

SURREY.--A twin star, but with a brighter lustre, was Henry Howard, Earl
of Surrey, a writer whose works are remarkable for purity of thought and
refinement of language. Surrey was a gay and wild young
fellow--distinguished in the tournament which celebrated Henry's marriage
with Anne of Cleves; now in prison for eating meat in Lent, and breaking
windows at night; again we find him the English marshal when Henry invaded
France in 1544. He led a restless life, was imperious and hot-tempered to
the king, and at length quartered the king's arms with his own, thus
assuming royal rights and imperilling the king's dignity. On this charge,
which was, however, only a pretext, he was arrested and executed for high
treason in 1547, before he was thirty years old.

Surrey is the greatest poetical name of Henry the Eighth's reign, not so
much for the substance of his poems as for their peculiar handling. He is
claimed as the introducer of blank verse--the iambic pentameter without
rhyme, occasionally broken for musical effect by a change in the place of
the caesural pause. His translation of the Fourth Book of the AEneid,
imitated perhaps from the Italian version of the Cardinal de Medici, is
said to be the first specimen of blank verse in English. How slow its
progress was is proved by Johnson's remarks upon the versification of
Milton.[23] Thus in his blank verse Surrey was the forerunner of Milton,
and in his rhymed pentam