HENRY VIII. CONTINUED.

HENRY VIII. wrote poetry as well as prose. He played on the flute and the spinett. He set to music ballads for his court and masses for his chapel, and he left behind him a motett, an anthem, and many scaffolds. He was certainly a troubadour of most imaginative genius. This man, who employed a wooden image of the Virgin as part of the materials for the pile at which the confessor of Catherine of Arragon was burnt ;-who summoned before his tribunal the dead body of St. Thomas of Canterbury, tried it and condemned it to death, in spite of the legal maxim, non bis in idem; who caused faggots to be bound on the backs of five Dutch Anabaptists, and regaled his eyes with the spectacle of five moving auto-da-fés; he had

a fine subject for a romantic sonnet when, from the summit of a solitary hill in Richmond Park, he saw the signal which was transmitted from the Tower of London, announcing the execution of Anne Boleyn. What delicious satisfaction he must have enjoyed at that moment! The axe had severed the delicate neck, and stained with blood the beautiful hair, on which the poet king had lavished his fatal caresses.

SURREY-SIR THOMAS MORE.

In the reign of Henry VIII we find Surrey and Sir Thomas More. The Earl of Surrey released English poetry from the forms of the middle ages, and conferred on it the impress of the Italian style by composing sonnets to Geraldine in the manner of Petrarch. It is supposed by some that Geraldine was Elizabeth Fitzgerald; but others allege that she was the daughter of Lord Kildare. Be that as it may, the beautiful and beloved lady once was, and is now no more. Surrey, being in Florence, addressed a challenge to every christian, Jew, Moor, Turk, and cannibal, declaring that he, Surrey, would maintain against one or all the incomparable beauty of Geraldine. Petrarch sighed for Laura, but did not fight for her. The English of those days displayed their chivalry and their passions among those ruins to which they now carry only their fashions and their ennui.

On his return to England, Surrey was impri

HENRY VIII. CONTINUED.

HENRY VIII. wrote poetry as well as prose. He played on the flute and the spinett. He set to music ballads for his court and masses for his chapel, and he left behind him a motett, and many scaffolds. He was cerbadour of most imaginative genius. ho employed a wooden image of the the materials for the pile at of Catherine of Arragon mmoned before his tribunal St. Thomas of Canterbury, ed it to death, in spite of bis in idem; who caused n the backs of five Dutch aled his eyes with the