England," and at the age of thirty, still young and gay and full
of life, he died upon the scaffold. Accused of treason, yet
innocent, he fell a victim to "the wrath of princes," the wrath
of that hot-headed King Henry VIII. Surrey lived at the same
time as Wyatt and, although he was fourteen years younger, was
his friend. Together they are the forerunners of our modern
poetry. They are nearly always spoken of together--Wyatt and
Surrey--Surrey and Wyatt. Like Wyatt, Surrey followed the
Italian poets. Like Wyatt he wrote sonnets; but whereas Wyatt's
are rough, Surrey's are smooth and musical, although he does not
keep the rules about rime endings. One who wrote not long after
the time of Wyatt and Surrey says of them, "Sir Thomas Wyatt, the
elder, and Henry, Earl of Surrey, were the two chieftains, who,
having travelled in Italy, and there tasted the sweet and stately
measures and style of the Italian poesie . . . greatly polished
our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie from that it had been
before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers
of our English metre and syle. . . . I repute them for the two
chief lanterns of light to all others that have since employed
their pens on English poesie."*

*G. Puttenham, Art of English Poesie.

A later writer* has called Surrey the "first refiner" of our
language. And just as there comes a time in our own lives when we
begin to care not only for the story, but for the words in which
a story is told and for the way in which those words are used,
so, too, there comes such a time in the life of a nation, and
this time for England we may perhaps date from Wyatt and Surrey.
Before then there were men who tried to use the best words in the