If many sighs with little speech to plain, -
Now joy, now woe, if they my cheer distain,-
For hope of small, if much to fear therefore, —
To haste or slack my pace to less or more, -
Be sign of love, then do I love again.

If thou ask whom, sure, since I did refrain

Brunet, that set my wealth in such a roar,

The unfeigned cheer of Phyllis hath the place
That Brunet had
;- she hath, and ever shall.

She from myself now hath me in her grace;
She hath in hand my wit, my will, and all.

My heart alone well worthy she doth stay,

Without whose help scant do I live a day.

See Essay, p. 67. The first part of this sonnet is supposed to have been suggested to Wyatt by the sonnet of Petrarca beginning,

"S'una fede amorosa, un cor non finto,".

of which he had elsewhere given an entire version. If so, the latter part may be equally supposed to have been suggested by some French song. I think I have a recollection of some such contrastment of a Phyllis and a Brunette in old French poetry. Yet these propositions and contrapositions are so common in lovepoets, that the feeling may have originated with Sir Thomas himself; though he was a Petrarcist professed. In a court like that of Henry VIII. Wyatt may well enough have met with a Brunette of his own, who revolted him with her ostentation and her love of wealth, -setting his mercer's and jeweller's bills "in a roar.'

The names of Brunet (Brunetta) and Phyllis in conjunction are to be found nowhere else, I believe, in English literature, except in Steele's amusing story of the two rival beauties in the Spectator, No. 80. Did he get them from Wyatt? It is pleasant to think so, and not at all unlikely. Wyatt was just the sort of man to be loved and admired by Steele.

HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY.

I.

DESCRIPTION OF SPRING AND SUMMER ;

Wherein everything renews, save only the Lover.

THE SOOte* season that bud and bloom forth brings
With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale;
The nightingale, with feathers new, she sings;
The turtle to her make † hath told her tale;
Summer is come, for every spray now springs;
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes flete ‡ with new repairéd scale;
The adder all her slough away she slings; §
The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale ; ||
The busy bee her honey now she mings; T
Winter is worn, that was the flowers' bale;

And thus I see, among these pleasant things,
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.

* sweet.

flit, float quickly.

|| The old pronunciation of small.

† mate.

§ throws off, slips off. ¶ mingles.

II.

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE TIME HE SPENT IN WINDSOR CASTLE.

wearied arm,

*

WHEN Windsor walls sustained my
My hand my chin, to ease my restless head,
The pleasant plot, revested green with warm,*
The blossomed boughs with lusty Ver† y-spread,
The flowered meads, the wedded birds so late,
Mine eyes discover; and to my mind resort
The jolly woes, the hateless short debate,
The rakehell + life, that 'longs to love's disport;
Wherewith, alas! the heavy charge of care
Heaped in my breast breaks forth against my will
In smoky sighs that overcast the air:

My vapored eyes such dreary tears distil,

The tender spring which quicken where they fall;
And I half bend, to throw me down withal.§

* warmth.

† spring.

More properly,—says a note in Robert Bell's edition of Surrey,-"rakel, rash, careless, reckless. Rakehel was used to designate a dissolute profligate fellow." Some commentators, however, might choose to suppose that there was an involuntary, if not a candid, propriety in the word, when speaking of the Court of Henry VIII.

§ Some of the sentences in these verses are ill put together, per