some time, as a prisoner to Windsor. He was liberated, however, from thence, and again made his appearance at, court, unsuspicious of his impending

ruin.

It is difficult to trace any personal motives that could impel Henry to wish for his destruction. He could not be jealous of his intentions to marry the princess Mary-that fable is disproved by the discovery of Surrey's widow having survived him. Nor is it likely that the king dreaded him as an enemy to the Reformation, as there is every reason to believe that he was a protestant. The natural cruelty of Henry seems to have been but an instrument in the designing hands of Hertford, whose ambition, fear, and jealousy, prompted him to seek the destruction of Norfolk and his son. His measures were unhappily aided by the vindictive resentment of the duchess of Norfolk against her husband, from whom she had been long separated, and by the still more unaccountable and unnatural hatred of the duchess of Richmond against her own brother. Surrey was arrested on the 12th of December, 1546, and committed to the tower. The depositions of witnesses against him, whose collective testimony did not substantiate even a legal offence, were transmitted to the king's judges at Norwich, and a verdict was returned, in consequence of which he was indicted for high treason. We are not told the full particulars of his defence, but are only generally informed that it was acute and spirit. ed. With respect to the main accusation, of his bearing the arms of the Confessor, he proved that he had the authority of the heralds in so doing, and that he had worn them himself in the king's presence, as his ancestors had worn them in the presence of former kings. Notwithstanding his manifest innocence, the jury was base enough to find him guilty. The chancellor pronounced sentence of death upon him; and in the flower of his age, in

his 31st year, this noble soldier, and accomplished poet, was beheaded on Tower-hill.

Surry was not, as has been said, the inventor of our metrical versification; nor had his genius the potent voice and the magic spell which rouse all the dormant energies of a language. In certain walks of composition, though not in the highest, viz. in the ode, elegy, and epitaph, he set a chaste and delicate example; but he was cut off too early in life, and cultivated poetry too slightly, to carry the pure stream of his style into the broad and bold channels of inventive fiction. Much, undoubtedly, he did, in giving sweetness to our numbers, and in substituting for the rude tautology of a former age, a style of soft and brilliant ornament, of selected expression, and of verbal arrangement, which often winds into graceful novelties; though sometimes a little objectionable from its involution. Our language was also indebted to him for the introduction of blank verse. It may be noticed at the same time that blank verse, if it had continued to be written as Surrey wrote it, would have had a cadence too uniform and cautious to be a happy vehicle for the dramatic expression of the passions. Grimoald, the second poet who used it after Lord Surrey, gave it a little more variety of pauses; but it was not till it had been tried as a measure by several composers, that it acquired a bold and flexible modulation.

EARL OF SURREY.

DESCRIPTION OF SPRING.

WHEREIN ECHE THING RENEWES SAUE ONELY THE

LOVER.

THE Soote season, that bud and blome forth brings,

With grene hath clad the hill, and eke the vale:
The nightingale with fethers new she sings:
The turtle to her mate hath tolde her tale :
Somer is come, for euery spray now springs:
The hart hath hong his old hed on the pale;
The buck in hrake his winter coate he flings:
The fishes flete with new repaired scale :
The adder all her slough away she flings;
The swift swalow pursueth the flies smale;
The busy bee her hony now she mings,
Winter is worne, that was the flowers bale.
And thus I se among these pleasant things
Eche care decayes; and yet my sorow springs.

COMPLAINT OF A LOUER THAT DEFIED LOUE, AND WAS BY LOUE AFTER THE MORE TORMENTED.

WHEN Somer toke in hand the winter to assail, With force of might, and vertue great, his stormy blasts to quail; [grene, And when he clothed faire the earth about with And every tree new garmented, that pleasure

was to sene;

Mine hart gan new reuiue, and changed blood did

stur

Me to withdrawe my wynter woes, that kept within the dore.

Abroade, quod my desire, assay to set thy fote Where thou shalt finde the savour swete, for

sprong is euery rote.

And to thy health, if thou were sick in any case, Nothing more good, than in the spring the aire to fele a space.

There shalt thou heare and se al kyndes of birdes ywrought,

Wel tune their voice with warble smal, as nature

hath them tought.

(leaue: Thus pricked me my lust the sluggish house to And for my health I thought it best such counsel

to receaue.

So on a morrow furth, vnwist of any wight,

I went to proue how well it woulde my heauy burthen light.

And when I felt the aire so pleasant rounde about, Lord, to my self how glad I was that I had gotten out.