The painful patience in delays,
Forget not yet!

Forget not!-Oh! forget not this,
How long ago hath been, and is
The mind that never meant amiss,
Forget not yet!

Forget not then thine own approv'd,
The which so long hath thee so lov'd,'
Whose steadfast faith yet never mov'd,
Forget not this!

HE LAMENTETH THAT HE HAD EVER CAUSE TO
DOUBT HIS LADY'S FAITH.

DEEM as ye list upon good cause,
I may or think of this or that;
But what or why myself best knows,
Whereby I think and fear not.
But thereunto I may well think
The doubtful sentence of this clause;
I would it were not as I think;
I would I thought it were not.

For if I thought it were not so,
Though it were so, it griev'd me not;
Unto my thought it were as thô
I hearkened though I hear not.

At that I see I cannot wink,

Nor from my thought so let it go:
I would it were not as I think;

I would I thought it were not.

Lo! how my thought might make me free,
Of that perchance it needs not:
Perchance none doubt the dread I see;
I shrink at that I bear not.

But in my heart this word shall sink,
Until the proof may better be;
I would it were not as I think;
I would I thought it were not.

If it be not, shew no cause why
I should so think, then care not;
For I shall so myself apply

To be that I appear not.

That is, as one that shall not shrink

To be your own until I die;

And if that be not as I think,
Likewise to think it is not.

HENRY HOWARD,

EARL OF SURREY.

4

WALPOLE, Ellis, and Warton, gravely inform us that Lord Surrey contributed to the victory of Flodden, a victory which was gained before Lord Surrey was born. The mistakes of such writers may teach charity to criticism. Dr. Nott, who has cleared away much fable and anachronism from the noble poet's biography, supposes that he was born in or about the year 1516, and that he was educated at Cambridge, of which university he was afterwards elected high steward. At the early age of sixteen he was contracted in marriage to the Lady Frances Vere, daughter to John Earl of Oxford. The Duke of Richmond was afterwards affianced to Surrey's sister. It was customary, in those times, to delay, frequently for years, the consummations of such juvenile matches; and the writer of Lord Surrey's life, already mentioned, gives reasons for supposing that the poet's residence at Windsor, and his intimate friendship with Richmond, so tenderly recorded in his verses, took place, not in their absolute childhood, as has been generally imagined, but immediately after their being contracted to their re

spective brides. allusion to

If this was the case, the poet's

The secret groves which oft we made resound
Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies love,

may be charitably understood as only recording the aspirations of their conjugal impatience.

Surrey's marriage was consummated in 1535. In the subsequent year he sat, with his father, as Earl Marshal, on the trial of his kinswoman Anne Boleyn. Of the impression which that event made upon his mind, there is no trace to be found either in his poetry, or in tradition. His grief for the amiable Richmond, whom he lost soon after, is more satisfactorily testified. It is about this period that the fiction of Nash, unfaithfully misapplied as reality by Anthony Wood', and from him copied, by mistake, by Walpole and Warton, sends the poet on his romantic tour to Italy, as the knight errant of the fair Geraldine. There is no proof, however, that Surrey was ever in Italy. At the period of his imagined errantry his repeated appearance at the court of England can be ascertained; and Geraldine, if she was a daughter of the Earl of Kildare, was then only a child of seven years old.

'Nash's History of Jack Wilton. If concurring proofs did not so strongly point out his poetical mistress Geraldine to be the daughter of the Earl of Kildare, we might well suspect, from the date of Surrey's attachment, that the object of his praises must have been some other person. Geraldine, when he declared

That Surrey entertained romantic sentiments for the fair Geraldine, seems, however, to admit of little doubt; and that too at a period of her youth which makes his homage rather surprising. The fashion of the age sanctioned such courtships, under the liberal interpretation of their being platonic. Both Sir P. Sidney and the Chevalier Bayard avowed attachments of this exalted nature to married ladies, whose reputations were never sullied, even when the mistress wept openly at parting from her admirer. Of the nature of Surrey's attachment we may conjecture what we please, but can have no certain test éven in his verses, which might convey either much more or much less than he felt; and how shall we search in the graves of men for the shades and limits of passions that elude our living observation?

Towards the close of 1540 Surrey embarked in public business. A rupture with France being anticipated, he was sent over to that kingdom, with Lord Russel and the Earl of Southampton, to see that every thing was in a proper state of defence within the English pale. He had previously been

his devotion to her, was only thirteen years of age. She was taken, in her childhood, under the protection of the court, and attended the Princess Mary. At the age of fifteen she married Sir Anthony Wood, a man of sixty, and after his death accepted the Earl of Lincoln. From Surrey's verses we find that she slighted his addresses, after having for some time encouraged them; and from his conduct it appears, that he hurried into war and public business in order to forget her indifference.