LIFE OF WYAT. SIR THOMAS WYAT was born at Allington castle, in Kent, in the year 1503. His education was commenced at Cambridge, but completed at Oxford. The similarity of his character and pursuits naturally produced the inviolable friendship, which was known to subsist between himself and the chivalrous earl of Surrey. He was frequently sent as an envoy to the various parts of Europe; and his many popular accomplishments at first rendered him a favourite of king Henry VIII.; who, says Wood, was in a high manner delighted with his witty jests;' but who, we may add, was, in as high a manner,' offended at his intimacy with queen Anne Boleyn. His imprisonment changed, for a time, the burthen of his sonnets; and, though he was at length liberated, and again received into favour, he retired to Allington castle, and became a satirizer of all courtiers and flatterers. In a poetical epistle to his friend, John Poynes, he says, he is not now in France,' 'nor yet in Spayne,' 'nor Flanders :' But I am here in Kent and Christendome How long he continued to 'read and rhyme,' we are not informed; but, in 1541, we find him ap pointed to accompany the ambassador of Charles VI. from Falmouth to London. He undertook to execute his commission with too much punctuality and despatch; and he took such a fever, by riding in a hot day, that, on his return, his journey and his life were both cut short, at Serburn. He lies in the abbey church of that place. Leland published Latin verses on his death-Vaeniae in Mortem T. Viati-accompanied with a print of his head, after a painting of Holbein. Holbinus nitida pingendi maximus arte Effigiam expressit graphice, sed nullus Apelles His friend Surrey has a right to be heard in the description of his character. A visage stern and mild, where both did growe; To hide the thought that might the truth advance; To swell in welth, or yeld unto mischance. Those who are fond of attributing extravagant effects to some one insignificant cause, have taken the pains to record the epigrammatic saying, that the reformation was occasioned by a joke of Wyat, and that cardinal Wolsey fell by one of his seasonable apothegms. Nothing is clearer, however, than that his wit was much celebrated in the court of Henry VIII. 'In the latter end of that kinge's raigne (says Puttenham, who was an oracular critic, in his day) spronge up a new company of wit-makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat the elder,* and Henry earle of Surrey, were the chieftaines; who having travelled into Italie, and there tasted the sweete and stately measures and style of the Italian poesie, as novises newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie from that it had been before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and style.' Again, 'Henry earle of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyat, between whom I find very little difference, I repute them (as before) for the two chief lanternes of light to all others that have since employed their pennes upon English poesie. Their conceits were lofty, their stiles stately, their conveyance cleanly, their terms proper, their meetre sweet, and well proportioned; in all, imitating very naturally and studiously their maister, Francis Petrarch.' The reader, who opens to Wyat's sonnets with an expectation of finding all 'stately,' and 'lofty,' and 'cleanly,' and 'proper, and.'sweet,' will not be disappointed for the first time. Sighs, and tears, and smiles, are but a meagre stock of materials for poetry; and, after they are set before us a few times, the dish becomes stale and unpalatable, without some seasoning of far-fetched metaphors and overstrained conceits. So called in contradistinction to his son, who figured at the head of a rebellion in the reign of queen Mary. |