It varies from five to six syllables, with several consecutive rhymes.

His “Merie Tales” are a series of short and generally broad stories, suited to the vulgar taste:  no one can read them without being struck with the truly historic character of the subjects and the handling, and without moralizing upon the age which they describe.  Skelton, a contemporary of the French Rabelais, seems to us a weak English portrait of that great author; like him a priest, a buffoon, a satirist, and a lampooner, but unlike him in that he has given us no English Gargantua and Pantagruel to illustrate his age.

WYATT.—­The next writer who claims our attention is Sir Thomas Wyatt, the son of Sir Henry Wyatt.  He was born in 1503, and educated at Cambridge.  Early a courtier, he was imperilled by his attachment to Anne Boleyn, conceded, if not quite Platonic, yet to have never led him to criminality.  Several of his poems were inspired by her charms.  The one best known begins—­

    What word is that that changeth not,
    Though it be turned and made in twain? 
    It is mine ANNA, God it wot, etc.

That unfortunate queen—­to possess whose charms Henry VIII. had repudiated Catherine of Arragon, and who was soon to be brought to the block after trial on the gravest charges—­which we do not think substantiated—­was, however, frivolous and imprudent, and liked such impassioned attentions—­indeed, may be said to have suffered for them.

Wyatt was styled by Camden “splendide doctus,” but his learning, however honorable to him, was not of much benefit to the world; for his works are few, and most of them amatory—­“songs and sonnets”—­full of love and lovers:  as a makeweight, in foro conscientiae, he paraphrased the penitential Psalms.  An excellent comment this on the age of Henry VIII., when the monarch possessed with lust attempted the reformation of the Church.  That Wyatt looked with favor upon the Reformation is indicated by one of his remarks to the king:  “Heavens! that a man cannot repent him of his sins without the Pope’s leave!” Imprisoned several times during the reign of Henry, after that monarch’s death he favored the accession of Lady Jane Grey, and, with other of her adherents, was executed for high treason on the 11th of April, 1554.  We have spoken of the spirit of the age.  Its criticism was no better than its literature; for Wyatt, whom few read but the literary historian, was then considered

    A hand that taught what might be said in rhyme,
    That reft Chaucer the glory of his wit.

The glory of Chaucer’s wit remains, while Wyatt is chiefly known because he was executed.