wi SURREY'S SERVICE TO POETRY

and Italy and was influenced by the literatures of those court*
tries, as Chaucer had been long before him. He introduced
into English an adaptation of the Petrarchan sonnet and wrote
three satires in ttr%a rima. From Italy, too, he borrowed
conventional themes and 'conceits', of love unrequited and love
forsaken; and his verse, like Surrey's, includes many direct
translations. But many of his lyrics, some of which are ex-
quisite in their blend of haunting cadence with a direct personal
utterance, show clearly and unmistakably the influence of the
English song-books then so much in fashion. His best work
was done in these native measures.

In reading Wyatt's sonnets it is necessary to remember that
he was doing something new and difficult, laying the first
foundations of a form which it was left for later poets to perfect.
Similar allowances have to be made, throughout, for Surrey.
Surrey is rightly honoured for having, in Gilfillan's phrase
(1856), 'improved the mechanical part of our poetry *. He did
much to restore to use the five-foot iambic line of Chaucer.
But, though the lyrics Give place, ye lovers and When raging lov»
are outstandingly successful in their kind, Surrey's distinctive
and historically most important achievement was the invention
of English blank verse, the medium in which Shakespeare's
and Milton's masterpieces were to be written. The judgment
that held Surrey to be a better poet than Wyatt has been reversed
in recent times, but no one would wish to belittle this great
service. Frederick Morgan Padclford, in 1920, produced for
the University of Washington a scholarly edition of Surrey's
works, with full textual notes and an elaborate critical apparatus
for which we must be grateful* But Padclford's remarks on
prosody should be received with great caution* 'Surrey's
outstanding contribution to prosody/ he writes, *was his
insistence that metrical accent should be coincident with
sentence stress and word accent. , . . The prevailing disregard
of this principle may be illustrated by the following sonnet,
one of Wyatt's earlier compositions:

'The I6nge love that in m^ thought d6eth harbat
And in my hirt doeth k£pc his residence
I'nto my face prese"th with b61de pretence
And therein campeth spreding his bane"r*
Sh£ that me l£rncth t6 love And suffr<£,
And willcs that m^ trust And lustes n^gligc'nce