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They were alike devoted to the melioration of their native tongue, and an attainment of the elegancies of composition. They were both engaged in translating Virgil*, and in rendering select portions of Scripture into English metre.

SECTION XXXIX.

The first printed Miscellany of English Poetry. Its Contributors. Sir Francis Bryan, Lord Rochford, and Lord Vaulx. The First True Pastoral in English. Sonnet-writing cultivated by the Nobility. Sonnets by King Henry the Eighth. Literary Character of that king.

To the poems of Surrey and Wyat are annexed, as I have before hinted, in Tottell's editions, those of "Uncertain Authors"." This latter collection forms the first printed poetical miscellany in the English language; although very early manuscript miscellanies of that kind are not uncommon. Many of these pieces are much in the manner of Surrey and Wyat, which was the fashion of the times. They are all anonymous; but probably, sir Francis Bryan, George Boleyn earl of Rochford, and lord Vaulx, all professed rhymers and sonnet-writers, were large contributors +.

Drayton, in his elegy [epistle] To his dearly loved friend HENRY REYNOLDS OF POETS AND POESIE, seems to have blended all the several collections of which Tottell's volume consists. After Chaucer

he says,

They with the Muses who conversed, were
That princely SURREY, early in the time

Of the eighth Henry, who was then the prime
Of England's noble youth. With him there came
WYAT, with reverence whom we still do name
Amongst our poets: BRYAN had a share
With the two former, which accounted are
That time's best Makers, and the authors were
Of those small poems which the title bear

* [There seems no reason for inferring with Dr. Nott, that Warton intended by this expression a larger portion of Virgil than the Song of Iopas mentioned above. -PRICE.]

a

They begin at fol. 50.

[Churchyard must also be added to this list of contributors on the following averment:-"Many things in the booke

See

of Songs and Sonets printed then (in queen Mary's time) were of my making." notices of his works prefixed to his "Challenge, 1593." Heywood and Harrington likewise have dormant claims to the honourable distinction of coadjutorship. Vid. infra, p. 56. and Nuge Antiquæ, vol. i. p. 95. and ii. 256. ed. 1775.-PARK.]

Of Songes and Sonnetts, wherein oft they hit
On many dainty passages of witb.

Sir Francis Bryan was the friend of Wyat, as we have seen; and served as a commander under Thomas earl of Surrey in an expedition into Brittany; by whom he was knighted for his bravery. Hence he probably became connected with lord Surrey the poet. But Bryan was one of the brilliant ornaments of the court of king Henry the Eighth, which at least affected to be polite: and from his popular accomplishments as a wit and a poet, he was made a gentleman of the privychamber to that monarch, who loved to be entertained by his domesticsa. Yet he enjoyed much more important appointments in that reign, and in the first year of Edward the Sixth; and died chief justiciary of Ireland, at Waterford, in the year 1548e. On the principle of an unbiassed attachment to the king, he wrote epistles on Henry's divorce, never published; and translated into English from the French, Antonio de Guevara's Spanish Dissertation on the life of a courtier, printed at London in the year last mentioned. He was nephew to John Bourchier, lord Berners, the translator of Froissart; who, at his desire, translated at Calais from French into English, the GOLDEN BOKE, or Life of Marcus Aurelius, about 15338. Which are Bryan's pieces I cannot ascertain.

George Boleyn, viscount Rochford, was son of Sir Thomas Boleyn, afterwards earl of Wiltshire and Ormond; and at Oxford discovered an early propensity to polite letters and poetry. He was appointed to several dignities and offices by king Henry the Eighth, and subscribed the famous declaration sent to Pope Clement the Seventh. He was brother to queen Anne Boleyn, with whom he was suspected of a criminal familiarity. The chief accusation against him seems to have been, that he was seen to whisper with the queen one morning while she was in bed. As he had been raised by the exaltation, he was involved in the misfortunes of that injured princess, who had no other fault but an unguarded and indiscreet frankness of nature; and whose character has been blackened by the bigoted historians of the catholic cause, merely because she was the mother of queen Elizabeth. To gratify the ostensible jealousy of the king, who had conceived a violent passion for a new object, this amiable nobleman was beheaded on the first of May, in 1536h. His elegance of person, and spritely conversation, captivated all the ladies of Henry's court. Wood says, that at the "royal court he was much adored, especially by the female sex, for his admirable discourse, and symmetry of body." From these irresistible allurements his

b Works, vol. iv. p. 1255. edit. Lond. 1759. 8vo.

c Dugd. Bar. ii. 273 a.

d Rymer, Foed. xiv. 380.

e Hollinsh. Chron. i. 61.

And ibid.

Hooker's Contin. tom. ii. P. ii. pag. 110.
See also Fox, Martyr. p. 991.

Cod. Impress. A. Wood, Mus. Ashmol.

Oxon. [Printed again in 1575, small 8vo.
-PARK.]

8 See the Colophon. It was printed by Thomas Berthelett, in 1536, quarto. Often afterwards. Lord Berners was deputygeneral of Calais, and its marches.

See Dugd. Baron. iii. p. 306 a. i Ath. Oxon. i. 44.

enemies endeavoured to give a plausibility to their infamous charge of an incestuous connection. After his commitment to the Tower, his sister the queen, on being sent to the same place, asked the lieutenant, with a degree of eagerness, "Oh! where is my sweet brotherk?" Here was a specious confirmation of his imagined guilt: this stroke of natural tenderness was too readily interpreted into a licentious attachment. Bale mentions his RHYTHMI ELEGANTISSIMI', which Wood calls "Songs and Sonnets, with other things of the like naturem." These are now lost, unless some, as I have now insinuated, are contained in the present collection; a garland, in which it appears to have been the fashion for every FLOWERY COURTIER to leave some of his blossoms. But Boleyn's poems cannot now be distinguished*.

The lord Vaulx, whom I have supposed, and on surer proof, to be another contributor to this miscellany, could not be the Nicholas lord Vaux, whose gown of purple velvet, plated with gold, eclipsed all the company present at the marriage of prince Arthur; who shines as a statesman and a soldier with uncommon lustre in the history of Henry the Seventh, and continued to adorn the earlier annals of his successor, and who died in the year 1523. Lord Vaux the poet was probably Thomas lord Vaux, the son of Nicholas, and who was summoned to parliament in 1531, and seems to have lived till the latter end of the reign of queen Mary". All our old writers mention the poetical lord Vaux, as rather posterior to Wyat and Surrey; neither of whom was known as a writer till many years after the death of lord Nicholas. George Gascoyne [Thomas Churchyard], who wrote in 1575 [1568], in his panegyric on the ENGLISH POETS, places Vaux after Surrey.

Piers Plowman was full plaine,

And Chauser's spreet was great;
Earle Surrey had a goodly vayne,

LORD VAUX the marke did beat †.

Puttenham, author of the ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE, having spoken of Surrey and Wyat, immediately adds, "In the SAME TIME, or NOT Long after, was the lord Nicholas Vaux, a man of much facilitie in

* Strype, Mem. i. p. 280. 1 ii. 103.

m Ubi supr. [One of these has been pointed out at p. 42. and his name was thus united with other known contributors in 1575. Chaucer by writing purchast fame, And Gower got a woorthie name : Sweet Surrey suckt Pernassus springs, And Wiat wrote of wondrous things: Old ROCHFORT clombe the statelie throne Which Muses hold in Helicone. Then thither let good Gascoigne go, For sure his verse deserveth so.

See Richard Smith's verses, in commendation of Gascoigne's Posies.-PARK.]

n See what I have said of his son lord William, in the Life of Sir Thomas Pope, p. 221. In 1558, sir Thomas Pope leaves him a legacy of one hundred pounds, by the name of lord Vaulx. [Warton's conjecture is now generally admitted to be correct.-PRICE.]

[Prefixed to Skelton's Poems, printed by Marsh, 1568.—PARK.]

The christian name is a mistake, into which it was easy to fall.

vulgar makings P." Webbe, in his DISCOURSE OF ENGLISH POETRIE, published in 1586, has a similar arrangement. Great numbers of Vaux's poems are extant in the PARADISE of Dainty DeVISES; and, instead of the rudeness of Skelton, they have a smoothness and facility of manner, which does not belong to poetry written before the year 1523, in which lord Nicholas Vaux died an old man. The PARADISE of DAINTY DEVISES was published in 1576, and he is there simply styled Lord Vaulx the elder: this was to distinguish him from his son lord William, then living. If lord Nicholas was a writer of poetry, I will venture to assert, that none of his performances now remain; notwithstanding the testimony of Wood, who says that Nicholas "in his juvenile years was sent to Oxon, where by reading humane and romantic, rather than philosophical authors, he advanced his genius very much in poetry and history"." This may be true of his son Thomas, whom I suppose to be the poet. But such was the celebrity of lord Nicholas's public and political character, that he has been made to monopolise every merit which was the property of his successors. All these difficulties, however, are at once adjusted by a manuscript in the British Museum, in which we have a copy of Vaux's poem, beginning 1 lothe that I did love, with this title: "A dyttye or sonet made by the lord Vaus, in the time of the noble quene Marye, representing the image of deaths." This sonnet, or rather ode, entitled, The aged lover renounceth love, which was more remembered for its morality than its poetry, and which is idly conjectured to have been written on his death-bed*, makes a part of the collection which I am now examining". From this ditty are taken three of the stanzas, yet greatly disguised and corrupted, of the Grave-digger's Song in Shakspeare's HAMLET". Another of lord Vaux's poems in the volume before us, is the ASSAULT OF CUPIDE UPON THE FORT IN WHICH THE LOVER'S HEART LAY WOUNDED*. These two are the only pieces in our collection, of which there is undoubted evidence, although no name is prefixed to either, that they were written by lord Vaux. From palpable coincidences of style, subject, and other circumstances, a slender share of critical sagacity is sufficient to point out many others.

These three writers were cotemporaries with Surrey and Wyat; but the subjects of some of the pieces will go far in ascertaining the date of the collection in general. There is one on the death of sir Thomas Wyat the elder, who died, as I have remarked, in 1541v. Another on the death of lord chancellor Audley, who died in 1544.

P Fol. 48. ["vulgar makings" seem to imply vernacular poems.-PARK.]

9 See Percy's Ball. ii. 49. edit. 1775. Ath. Oxon. i. 19.

MSS. Harl. 1703. [fol. 100.]

* [Yet Mr. Warton does not regard a similar supposition as idle when applied to the Soul-knell of Edwards. Vid. postea, Sect. LII.-PARK.]

Another on

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the death of master Devereux, a son of lord Ferrers, who is said to have been a Cato for his counsel; and who is probably Richard Devereux, buried in Berkyng church, the son of Walter lord Ferrers, a distinguished statesman and general under Henry the Eighth. Another on the death of a lady Wentworth. Another on the death of sir Antony Denny, the only person of the court who dared to inform king Henry the Eighth of his approaching dissolution, and who died in 1551o. Another on the death of Phillips, an eminent musician, and without his rival on the lutef. Another on the death of a countess of Pembroke, who is celebrated for her learning, and her perfect virtues linked as in a chaine : probably Anne, who was buried magnificently at saint Paul's, in 1551, the first lady of sir William Herbert the first earl of Pembroke, and sister to Catharine Parr, the sixth queen of Henry the Eighth1. Another on master Henry Williams, son of sir John Williams, afterwards lord Thame, and a great favourite of Henry the Eighth'. On the death of sir James Wilford, an officer in Henry's wars, we have here an elegy, with some verses on his picture1. Here is also a poem on a treasonable conspiracy, which is compared to the stratagem of Sinon,

and which threatened immediate extermination to the British constitution, but was speedily discovered. I have not the courage to explore the formidable columns of the circumstantial Hollinshed for this occult piece of history, which I leave to the curiosity and conjectures of some more laborious investigator. It is certain that none of these pieces are later than the year 1557, as they were published in that year by Richard Tottell the printer. We may venture to say, that almost all of them were written between the years 1530 and 1550"; most of them perhaps within the first part of that period.

a Fol. 51.

Stowe, Survey of London, p. 131. fol. ed.

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Who died in 1558. See Dugd. Bar. ii. 177.

4 Fol. 73. Margaret. See Dugd. Bar. ii. 310.

e Fol. 78. There is Sir John Cheek's EPITAPHIUM in Anton. Denneium. Lond. 1551. 4to.

f Fol. 71. One Phillips is mentioned among the famous English musicians, in Meres's Wit's Tresurie, 1598. fol. 288. I cannot ascertain who this Phillips a musician was. But one Robert Phillips, or Phelipp, occurs among the gentlemen of the royal chapel under Edward the Sixth and queen Mary. He was also one of the singing-men of saint George's chapel at Windsor: and Fox says, "he was so notable a singing-man, wherein he gloried, that wheresoever he came, the longest song with most counterverses in it should be set up against him." Fox adds, that while he was singing on one side of the

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