This satire Wyatt wrote while living quietly in the country, having barely escaped with his life from the King’s wrath.  But although he escaped the scaffold, he died soon after in his King’s service.  Riding on the King’s business in the autumn of 1542 he became overheated, fell into a fever, and died.  He was buried at Sherborne.  No stone marks his resting-place, but his friend and fellow-poet, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, wrote a noble elegy:—­

    “A hea, where Wisdom mysteries did frame;
    Whose hammers beat still, in that lively brain,
    As on a stithy* where that some work of fame
    Was daily wrought, to turn to Britain’s gain.

Anvil. . . . . . . .  A hand, that taught what might be said in rhyme, That Chaucer reft the glory of his wit.  A mark, the which (unperfected for time) Some may approach; but never none shall hit!”

Early Sixteenth-Century Lyrics (Belle Lettres Series), edited by F. M. Padelford (original spelling).

Chapter XL THE BEGINNING OF BLANK VERSE

THE poet with whose verses the last chapter ended was named Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.  The son of a noble and ancient house, Surrey lived a gay life in court and camp.  Proud, hot-headed, quick-tempered, he was often in trouble, more than once in prison.  In youth he was called “the most foolish proud boy in England,” and at the age of thirty, still young and gay and full of life, he died upon the scaffold.  Accused of treason, yet innocent, he fell a victim to “the wrath of princes,” the wrath of that hot-headed King Henry VIII.  Surrey lived at the same time as Wyatt and, although he was fourteen years younger, was his friend.  Together they are the forerunners of our modern poetry.  They are nearly always spoken of together—­Wyatt and Surrey—­Surrey and Wyatt.  Like Wyatt, Surrey followed the Italian poets.  Like Wyatt he wrote sonnets; but whereas Wyatt’s are rough, Surrey’s are smooth and musical, although he does not keep the rules about rime endings.  One who wrote not long after the time of Wyatt and Surrey says of them, “Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder, and Henry, Earl of Surrey, were the two chieftains, who, having travelled in Italy, and there tasted the sweet and stately measures and style of the Italian poesie . . . greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie from that it had been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers of our English metre and syle. . . .  I repute them for the two chief lanterns of light to all others that have since employed their pens on English poesie."*

G.  Puttenham, Art of English Poesie.