Well, it was done; and in verse very fortunately done; thanks of course to many men, but thanks to two especially—to Sir Thomas Wyat, who led our poets to Italy, to study and adopt the forms in which Italy had cast its classical heritage; and to Marlowe, who impressed blank verse upon the drama. Of Marlowe I shall say nothing; for with what he achieved you are familiar enough. Of Wyat I may speak at length to you, one of these days; but here, to prepare you for what I hope to prove—that Wyat is one of the heroes of our literature—I will give you three brief reasons why we should honour his memory:—
(1) He led the way. On the value of that service I shall content myself with quoting a passage from Newman:—
When a language has been cultivated in any particular department of thought, and so far as it has been generally perfected, an existing want has been supplied, and there is no need for further workmen. In its earliest times, while it is yet unformed, to write in it at all is almost a work of genius. It is like crossing a country before roads are made communicating between place and place. The authors of that age deserve to be Classics both because of what they do and because they can do it. It requires the courage and force of great talent to compose in the language at all; and the composition, when effected, makes a permanent impression on it.
This Wyat did. He was a pioneer and opened up a new country to Englishmen. But he did more.
(2) Secondly, he had the instinct to perceive that the lyric, if it would philosophise life, love, and the rest, must boldly introduce the personal note: since in fact when man asks questions about his fortune or destiny he asks them most effectively in the first person. “What am I doing? Why are we mortal? Why do I love thee?”
This again Wyat did: and again he did more.
For (3) thirdly—and because of this I am surest of his genius—again and again, using new thoughts in unfamiliar forms, he wrought out the result in language so direct, economical, natural, easy, that I know to this day no one who can better Wyat’s best in combining straight speech with melodious cadence. Take the lines Is it possible?—
Is it possible?
For to turn so oft;
To bring that lowest that was most aloft:
And to fall highest, yet to light soft?
Is it possible?All is possible!
Whoso list believe;
Trust therefore first, and after preve;
As men wed ladies by licence and leave,
All is possible!
or again—
Forget not! O forget not this!—
How long ago hath been, and is,
The mind that never meant amiss:
Forget not yet!
or again (can personal note go straighter?)—
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay, for shame!
To save thee from the blame
—Of all my grief and grame.
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay! say nay!5
No: I have yet to mention the straightest, most natural of them all, and will read it to you in full—
What should I say?
Since Faith is dead
And Truth away
From you is fled?
Should I be led
With doubleness?
Nay! nay! mistress.I promised you
And you promised me
To be as true
As I would be:
But since I see
Your double heart,
Farewell my part!Thought for to take
Is not my mind;
But to forsake
One so unkind;
And as I find,
So will I trust,
Farewell, unjust!Can ye say nay
But that you said
That I alway
Should be obeyed?
And—thus betrayed
Or that I wist!
Farewell, unkist!
I observe it noted on p. 169 of Volume III of The Cambridge History of English Literature that Wyat “was a pioneer and perfection was not to be expected of him. He has been described as a man stumbling over obstacles, continually falling but always pressing forward.” I know not to what wiseacre we owe that pronouncement: but what do you think of it, after the lyric I have just quoted? I observe, further, on p. 23 of the same volume of the same work, that the Rev. T. M. Lindsay, D.D., Principal of the Glasgow College of the United Free Church of Scotland, informs us of Wilson’s Arte of Rhetorique that
there is little or no originality in the volume, save, perhaps, the author’s condemnation of the use of French and Italian phrases and idioms, which he complains are “counterfeiting the kinges Englishe.” The warnings of Wilson will not seem untimely if to be remembered that the earlier English poets of the period—Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, and the Earl of Surrey—drew their inspiration from Petrarch and Ariosto, that their earlier attempts at poetry were translations from Italian sonnets, and that their maturer efforts were imitations of the sweet and stately measures and style of Italian poesie. The polish which men like Wyatt and Surrey were praised for giving to our “rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie” might have led to some degeneration.
Might it, indeed? As another Dominie would have said, “Pro‑digious.”6
But I have lingered too long with this favourite poet of mine and left myself room only to hand you the thread by following which you will come to the melodious philosophising of Shakespeare’s Sonnets—
Let me not to the marriage of true Minds
Admit impediment. Love is not love
Which alters where it alteration finds
