All in all--beauty on beauty-- Chevy Chase has never been matched, and does much better "unapparelled in the gorgeous eloquence of a Pindar." Truly, the obscure author of this one ballad stands alone--the father of English heroic poetry.
"Res gestæ, regumque, ducumque, et tristia bella, Quo scribi possent numero monstravit Homerus."
But he has attained excellence, without following the path which Homer "has shown;" and without using Homer's "numbers," has sung a great song.
III. Next on the list of those poets to whom the English language and English literature are indebted, stand Wyatt and Surrey. With regard to the first, I will hardly say more than that he was an Anacreon compared with his contemporaries. Rather gentle in his genius, he wrote love verses intuitively, and added in no slight degree to the melody of the language.
But Surrey added more. His love for the fair haired Lady Geraldine sent him "knight-erranting" among the romances and romantic grounds of Italy; and he is said to have been so well acquainted with the Tuscan tongue, and so well read in Italian authors, as to be a marvel, even in the days when Venice was the Paris of young English noblemen, and the Appenines their Switzerland. It may be as well to quote a few lines from Surrey's poems, as he has the reputation of having introduced much of the southern softness into English verse.
"_Lines writ by Henry Howard Lord Surrey--being a complaynt that hys Ladie, after she knew of hys love, kept her face always hydden from hym._
"I never sawe my ladie laye apart Her cornet blacke, in colde, nor yet in heate, Sith first she knew my griefe was growen so greate, (Whyche other fansies dryveth from my harte, That to myself, I do the thought reserve,-- The which, unwares, did wound my woful brest;) But on her face, mine eies mote never rest: Yet synce I knew I dyd her love and serve, Her golden tresses--cladd allway with blacke, Her smyling lookes, that had thus evermore, And that restraynes which I desire so sore: So doth this cornet governe me alacke! In sommer sunne, in winter's breathe, a frost Wherebye the lyghte of her fayre lookes I lost."
The reader will recognize this as a paraphrase, or indeed almost literal version of one of Petrarch's _canzoni_. He may, if curious enough, amuse himself by studying it with the original, not for the purpose of detecting the very visible theft, but for comparing a specimen of English verse, while not nearly escaped from its rudeness, with the Tuscan of perhaps the most musical of all bards.