emotion). In introducing the conceit Wyatt fathered the most conspicuous of
the superficial general features which were to dominate English poetry for
a century to come.

5. Still another, minor, innovation of Wyatt was the introduction into
English verse of the Horatian 'satire' (moral poem, reflecting on current
follies) in the form of three metrical letters to friends. In these the
meter is the _terza rima_ of Dante.

Wyatt's work was continued by his poetical disciple and successor, Henry
Howard, who, as son of the Duke of Norfolk, held the courtesy title of Earl
of Surrey. A brilliant though wilful representative of Tudor chivalry, and
distinguished in war, Surrey seems to have occupied at Court almost the
same commanding position as Sir Philip Sidney in the following generation.
His career was cut short in tragically ironical fashion at the age of
thirty by the plots of his enemies and the dying bloodthirstiness of King
Henry, which together led to his execution on a trumped-up charge of
treason. It was only one of countless brutal court crimes, but it seems the
more hateful because if the king had died a single day earlier Surrey could
have been saved.

Surrey's services to poetry were two: 1. He improved on the versification
of Wyatt's sonnets, securing fluency and smoothness. 2. In a translation of
two books of Vergil's 'Aneid' he introduced, from the Italian, pentameter
blank verse, which was destined thenceforth to be the meter of English
poetic drama and of much of the greatest English non-dramatic poetry.
Further, though his poems are less numerous than those of Wyatt, his range
of subjects is somewhat broader, including some appreciative treatment of
external Nature. He seems, however, somewhat less sincere than his teacher.
In his sonnets he abandoned the form followed by Wyatt and adopted (still