the crown, and was seized and imprisoned in the Tower, where he died in 1534, having been previously attainted of high treason by an act passed in the parliament of Ireland. His eldest son, Thomas, died without issue; and his second son, Gerald, having escaped from the power of Henry VIII., wandered about the continent, where he completed his education, in Italy, under the protection of Cardinal Pole, who was related to his mother. He was partially restored to his titles and estates by Edward VI., and fully reinstated in the following reign.

The misfortunes of the family are supposed to have moved the pity of Henry VIII. on behalf of Lady Elizabeth, who was nearly related to him. As the worst men are capable sometimes of acts of inexplicable generosity, so it may be possible that the protection extended to her originated with the king; but however that may be, it is certain that, at a very early age, she was removed to England, and brought up at Hunsdon, under the care of her second cousin, the Princess Mary. The intimate connexion of the families is further shown by the appointment of her uncle, the Lord Leonard Gray, as the Duke of Richmond's deputy in Ireland. These circumstances clearly explain all the subsequent allusions in the sonnet.

Such is the sum of all that is known of Surrey's Geraldine. Passing now from the only matters of fact established by the investigation of the poet's biographers, it is desirable in this place to touch upon the singular romance which was constructed out of these scanty particulars, and which passed current as a veritable narrative, until the researches of Dr. Nott detected and exposed the imposition.

In 1536 Surrey sustained a heavy calamity, by the death of his friend and brother-in-law, the Duke of Richmond. The date of this event is important, for, at this date, the fictitious incidents that follow take their rise. Soon afterwards, as the story runs, Surrey made a tour in Italy, partly to dissipate his grief, but chiefly at the command of his mistress, for the purpose of asserting her charms against all

comers, according to the fashion of the chivalry of old. This tour closely resembled the enterprise of a knight errant in quest of adventures. Wherever he went, he proclaimed the peerless beauty of Geraldine, and challenged the world in its defence. It might have been almost supposed (although the inventor of the romance was ignorant that there existed so plausible a source of inspiration) that Surrey was animated by a sense of the traditions of Round-table lineage in the blood of the Fitzgeralds, whose great ancestor, Fitz-Otho, was married to Nesta, daughter of Rys ap Tudor Mawr, Prince of South Wales. On his way to Florence, whither he was bound, according to the same authority, as the birth-place of his mistress, he visited the court of the Emperor, where he became acquainted with the famous magician Cornelius Agrippa, who, being solicited by him, showed him his mistress languishing on a couch, reading one of his sonnets in a passion of grief for his absence. This pathetic revelation, instead of calling him back to England, only inflamed his imagination, and hastened his journey to Florence. On the way his knight-errantry was tarnished by a degrading intrigue at Venice, for which he was thrown into prison, where he was kept for several months, until his liberation was procured by the interposition of the English Ambassador. It is proper to observe, that the subsequent retailers of the original romance omitted this staining episode, preserving only those passages which exhibited Surrey's gallantry and poetical sensibility in the most favourable light, so that they must have been fully conscious of the suspicious character of the narrative they passed into circulation as an authentic history. Credulity and caution have rarely worked so inconsistently together in accepting the absurd, and rejecting the probable. Arrived at Florence, Surrey visited the house, and the very chamber where Geraldine was born, giving way to a burst of ecstacies, which were faithfully chronicled in a sonnet forged for the occasion. He then published a challenge in honour of his mistress's beauty, in defiance of all persons who should dare to call her supremacy

into question, whether Christian, Jew, Turk, Saracen, or Cannibal. The lady being a Florentine, the pride of the Florentines was, of course, highly flattered by his intrepidity; and the Duke, having duly ascertained his rank and pretensions, threw open the lists to the combatants of all countries. Then followed a series of magnificent tilts, in which Surrey, who wore a shield presented to him by the Duke before the tournament began,1 came off victorious, and Geraldine was in due form declared the fairest of women. The Duke was so

enchanted with his valour and accomplishments that he offered him the highest preferments if he would remain at his court; but the gallant knight being resolved to celebrate his lady in similar jousts throughout the principal cities of Italy, declined these tempting proposals, and was preparing to prosecute his journey, when letters arrived from the King of England commanding his immediate return. This unex

pected summons cut short his adventures, and brought the romance to an abrupt conclusion.

It is scarcely necessary to say that this circumstantial detail is a pure and unmixed invention from beginning to end. It is even doubtful whether Surrey ever was in Italy; and it is quite certain that during the period when these adventures are stated to have happened he was at home in England, occupied in pursuits widely different from those of a wandering knight contending in the lists for the beauty of his mistress. The facts which establish the falsehood of the narrative may be briefly stated.

At the age of fifteen or sixteen, that is to say early in 1532, Surrey was contracted in marriage to the Lady Frances Vere, daughter of John, Earl of Oxford. The marriage did

1 Walpole gives a minute description of this shield, which is still preserved in the archives of the Norfolk family. Dr. Nott gives another description of it, supplied by Mr. Dallaway, differing in some particulars from the former. The name of Stradanus, who painted the subjects on this curious relique, destroys the authenticity of the tradition connected with it, as Stradanus (says Dr. Nott) was not born till the year in which the shield is said to have been presented to Surrey by the Duke of Tuscany.

not actually take place till some time in 1535, and on the 10th of March, 1536, the year in which he is supposed to have gone into Italy, his eldest son, Thomas, was born. In the following May the unfortunate Anne Boleyn was brought to trial, upon which occasion the Duke of Norfolk presided as Lord High Steward, and Surrey acted under him as his representative as Earl Marshal. In the July of the same year, the Duke of Richmond died; and in the following October we find Surrey receiving the honour of knighthood from the king, at St. James's. The circumstances of his family, and his public position, may be presumed to have given him ample occupation during the whole of this period. His uncle, Lord Thomas Howard, was attainted of high treason and committed to the tower in the same year, for having married the Lady Margaret Douglas without the King's permission; an incident which harrowed his feelings so deeply, as appears from a poem written many years afterwards,' that, had he not even been restrained by other considerations, it was impossible he could have selected such a time for publishing to the world his devotion to Geraldine. In the following October, he again appears publicly assisting as one of the chief mourners at the funeral of Lady Jane Seymour; and on New Year's Day, 1538, we find him in attendance at Court, according to the custom of the nobility (a custom carried to its final extravagance in the reign of Queen Elizabeth), to present gifts to the king.2

That Surrey was married, and his first son born, when he was said to have been tilting at Florence in honour of Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, is in itself a sufficient refutation of the entire story; but the conclusive evidence against it is the fact, that Geraldine, at whose command his adventurous journey was undertaken, who was represented to him by Cornelius Agrippa in an agony of sorrow at his absence, and whose beauty he maintained in all places through which he 2 Consisting of three gilt bowls.

1 See Poems, p. 81.

passed, was at that period little more than seven years old. She was born in 1528, and the championship of her charms is assigned to the year 1536.

The origin and reception of this absurd story, which was universally admitted as a piece of veracious biography until the publication of Dr. Nott's elaborate memoir of Surrey, about forty years ago, furnish one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of literary frauds. It first appeared in a book called The Unfortunate Traveller, or Life of Jack Wilton, written by the notorious Thomas Nash, and published in 1594. The hero of the imaginary adventures related in this impudent book, describes himself as a tapster who, early in the reign of Henry VIII., went with the English army to Tournay and Terouenne, afterwards serving under the French at Marignan and Milan, and finally going into Germany, where he was present at the siege of Munster.

On his way homewards, after these various experiences, he meets the renowned Earl of Surrey, who confides to him the object of his travels, his passion for Geraldine, and his determination to visit her birth-place, for which purpose he had obtained especial leave of absence from her for a year or two, the lady at the same time putting her gracious command upon him to defend her beauty at Florence by open challenge against all comers. Having concluded this confidential revelation, the noble poet entreats Jack Wilton, or, as he familiarly calls him, 'dear Wilton,' to accompany him on his expedition. The details of the subsequent journey, interspersed with stanzas stated to have been written on different occasions by Surrey, are as extravagant as the marvels of a mediæval legend; and it is perfectly incomprehensible how any person of ordinary sagacity could have been imposed upon by so palpable an invention. That the hand of vulgar imitation was not discerned at once in the verses ascribed to Surrey, is surprising enough; but it is still more astonishing that the obvious anachronisms of the narrative, which clearly prove its circumstantial particulars to be not merely improbable,