latter in the style of the former. Here a brief historical retrospect is
necessary. The Italian poetry of the sixteenth century had itself been
originally an imitation, namely of the poetry of Provence in Southern
France. There, in the twelfth century, under a delightful climate and in a
region of enchanting beauty, had arisen a luxurious civilization whose
poets, the troubadours, many of them men of noble birth, had carried to the
furthest extreme the woman-worship of medieval chivalry and had enshrined
it in lyric poetry of superb and varied sweetness and beauty. In this
highly conventionalized poetry the lover is forever sighing for his lady, a
correspondingly obdurate being whose favor is to be won only by years of
the most unqualified and unreasoning devotion. From Provence, Italy had
taken up the style, and among the other forms for its expression, in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, had devised the poem of a single
fourteen-line stanza which we call the sonnet. The whole movement had found
its great master in Petrarch, who, in hundreds of poems, mostly sonnets, of
perfect beauty, had sung the praises and cruelty of his nearly imaginary
Laura.

It was this highly artificial but very beautiful poetic fashion which Wyatt
deliberately set about to introduce into England. The nature and success of
his innovation can be summarized in a few definite statements.

1. Imitating Petrarch, Wyatt nearly limits himself as regards substance to
the treatment of the artificial love-theme, lamenting the unkindness of
ladies who very probably never existed and whose favor in any case he
probably regarded very lightly; yet even so, he often strikes a manly
English note of independence, declaring that if the lady continues
obstinate he will not die for her love.

2. Historically much the most important feature of Wyatt's experiment was