second marriage might be decent, in order that he might marry the princess Mary, in the event of the king's death, and so disturb the succession of Edward.

"The placing of these events in this series would render the story of his knighterrantry sufficiently improbable, were we left without any information respecting the date of Surrey's marriage; but that event renders the whole impossible, if we wish to preserve any respect for the consistency of his character; Surrey was actually married before the commencement of his travels in pursuit or in defence of Geraldine's beauty. His eldest son Thomas, fourth duke of Norfolk, was eighteen years old when his grandfather died in 1554. He was consequently born in 1536; and his father, it is surely reasonable to suppose was married in 1535. It would therefore be unnecessary to examine the story of Surrey's romantic travels any farther, if we had not some collateral authorities which may still show that whatever may be wrong in the present statement, it is certain that there is very little right in the common accounts which have been read and copied without any suspicion.

"If it be said that Surrey's age is not exactly known, and therefore allowing 1536 the date of his travels to be erroneous, it is possible that he might have been enamoured of Geraldine, long before this; and it is possible that his travels might have commenced in 1526, or any other period founded on this new conjecture; this, however, is as improbable as all the rest of the story; for it can be decidedly proved that there was no time for Surrey's gallantries towards Geraldine, except the period which his biographers, however absurdly, have assigned, namely, when he was a married man. The father of lady Elizabeth, the supposed Geraldine, married in 1519 one of the daughters of Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset, and by her had five children, of whom Elizabeth was the fourth, and therefore probably not born before the year 1523 or 1524; if Surrey's courtship, therefore, must be carried further back, it must be carried to the nursery; for even in 1536, when we are told he was her knight-errant, she could not have been more than

eleven or twelve years old: let us add to this a few particulars respecting Geraldine's husband. She married Edward lord Clinton; he was born in 1512, was educated in the court, and passed his youth in those magnificent and romantic amusements which distinguished the beginning of Henry VIII's reign; but did not appear as a public character until the year 1544, when he was thirty-two years of age, Geraldine about twenty-four, and Surrey within two years of his death, and most probably a widower. This earl of Lincoln had three wives; the date of his marriage with any of them is not known, nor how long they lived; but Geraldine was the third and only one by whom he had no children, and who survived his death, which took place in 1584, thirty-eight years after the death of Surrey. Mr. Warton, in his earnest desire to connect her with Surrey, insinuates that she might have been either cruel, or that her ambition prevailed so far over her gratitude, as to tempt her to prefer the solid glories of a more splendid title and ample fortune, to the challenges and the compliments of so magnanimous, so faithful, and so eloquent a lover. On this it is only necessary to remark that the lady's ambition might have been as highly gratified by marrying the accomplished and gallant Surrey, the heir of the duke of Norfolk, as by allying herself to a nobleman of inferior talents and rank: but of his two conjectures, Mr. Warton seems most to adhere to that of cruelty, for he adds that Surrey himself outlived his amorous vows, and married the daughter of the earl of Oxford." This, however, is as little deserving of serious examination as the ridiculous story of Cornelius Agrippa showing Geraldine in a glass, which Anthony Wood found in Drayton's Heroical Epistle, or probably, as Mr. Park thinks, took it from Nash's fanciful Life of Jack Wilton, published in 1594; where, under the character of his hero, he professes to have travelled to the emperor's court as page to the earl of Surrey. But it is unfortunate for this story, wheresoever borrowed, that Agrippa was no more a conjurer than any other learned man of his time; and that he died at Grenoble the year before Surrey is said to have set out on his romantic expedition. Drayton has made a similar mistake in giving Surrey as one of

the companions of his voyage, the great Sir Thomas More, who was beheaded in 1535, a year likewise before Surrey set out. Poetical authorities, although not wholly to be rejected, are of all others to be received with the greatest caution; yet it was probably Drayton's Heroical Epistle which led Mr. Warton into so egregious a blunder as that of our poet being present at Flodden-field in the year 1513. Dr. Sewell, indeed, in the short memoir prefixed to his edition of Surrey's poems, asserts the same; but little credit is due to the assertion of a writer who at the same time fixes Surrey's birth in 1520, seven years after the memorable battle was fought.

"It is now time to inquire whether the accounts hitherto given can be confirmed by internal evidence. It has been so common to consider Geraldine as the mistress of Surrey, that all his love poems are supposed to have a reference to his attachment to that lady. Mr. Warton begins his narrative by observing that Surrey's life throws so much light on the character and subjects of his poetry, that it is almost impossible to consider the one without exhibiting a few anecdotes of the other. We have already seen what those anecdotes are; how totally irreconcileable with probability, and how amply refuted by the dates which his biographers, unfortunately for their story, have uniformly furnished. When we look into the poems we find the celebrated sonnet to Geraldine the only specious foundation for his romantic attachment; but as that attachment and its consequence cannot be supported without a continual violation of probability, and in opposition to the very dates which are brought to confirm it, it seems more safe to conjecture that this sonnet was one of our authors earliest productions, addressed to Geraldine, a mere child, by one who was only not a child, as an effort of youthful gallantry in one of his interviews with her at Hunsdon. Whatever credit may be given to this conjecture for which the present writer is by no means anxious, it is certain that if we reject it, or some conjecture of the same import, and adopt the accounts given by his biographers, we cannot proceed a single step without being opposed by invincible difficulties.

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There is no other poem in Surrey's collection that can be proved to have any reference to Geraldine: but there are two with the same title, viz. "The Complaint of the absence of her lover being upon the Sea," which are evidently written in the character of a wife lamenting the absence of her husband, and tenderly alluding to his "faire litle sonne." Mr. Warton indeed finds Geraldine in the beautiful lines beginning "Give place, ye lovers, here before;" and from the lines "Spite drave me into Boreas' reign," infers that her anger drove him into a colder climate, with what truth may now be left to the reader but another of his conjectures cannot be passed over. In 1544, he says, lord Surrey was field-marshal of the English army in the expedition to Boulogne, which he took. In that age love and arms constantly went together; and it was amidst the fatigues of this protracted campaign that he composed his last sonnet called "The Fancies of a wearied Lover:" but this is a mere supposition. The poems of Surrey are with out dates, and were arranged by their first editor without any attention to a matter of such importance. The few allusions made to his personal history in these poems are very dark; but in some of them there is a train of reflections which seems to indicate that misfortunes and disappointments had dissipated his quixotism, and reduced him to the sober and serious tone of a man whose days had been "few and evil." Although he names his productions songs and sonnets, they have less of the properties of either than of the elegiac strain. His scripture translations appear to be characteristic of his mind and situation in his latter days: what, unless a heart almost broken by the unnatural conduct of his friends and family, could have induced the gay and gallant Surrey, the accomplished courtier and soldier, to console himself by translating those passages from Ecclesiastes which treat of the shortness and uncertainty of all human enjoyments, or those Psalms which direct the penitent and the forsaken to the throne of almighty power and grace? Mr. Warton remarks that these translations of Scripture "show him to have been a friend to the reformation ;" and this, which is highly probable, may have been one reason why his sufferings were

embittered by the neglect, if not the direct hostility, of some of his relations. The translation of the Scriptures into prose, was but just tolerated in his time; and to familiarize them by the graces of poetry must have appeared yet more obnoxious to the enemies of the reformation. I have said some of his relations; his father I should hope cannot be enumerated in this class. After Surrey's execution, his sister, the Duchess of Richmond, took care of the education of his children, and engaged Fox the martyrologist to be their tutor; and the duke, when this zealous protestant was pursued by the bloody Gardiner, screened him from his fury; and when he found it no longer safe to keep him, conveyed him abroad in spite of Gardiner's vigilance."

It is singular that the life of this noble man, should have been so enveloped in mystery as it is a mystery too which seems to have commenced at his birth, and followed him even to his grave-shewing, as we have, that even upon his tomb, an error has been made, which is calculated to convey to posterity, that he was the son of the second, and father of the third Duke of Norfolk, when in reality, he was son of the third, and father to the fourth.

We have now severally noticed these relics. In contemplating them, what an interesting family group do they present. Here rests the father of Surrey-Surrey himself, his friend (the Duke of Richmond) and a tomb stands to Surrey's own son. Surrey, and his issue, both suffered the penalty of the axe, and his parent" cradled in suffering," and escaping from an ignominious death by miracle only, might almost be added to the list of victims, that "like bloody fruit fast ripened," were plucked from the genealogical tree of the Bigods', Mowbrays' and Howards', to satisfy the raging thirst of Kings. Who looks upon these memorials of death, suffering and blighted genius, and thanks not heaven, he lives in times when the axe has lost its use, and the monarch no longer possessing power and will to shed the blood of his nobles or his people, is supported by law, and law alone. Such dark years can return no more. The power of blood has fallen from the sceptre, and when monarchs part