Born in Huntingdonshire (at “Brownshold,” according to his own statement), 1519; died about 1562. An English writer, the contributor of 40 poems to the first edition of “Tottel’s Miscellany” (of which he was, perhaps, the editor), many of which were omitted from the second edition. He also published a translation of Cicero’s “De Officiis.” He was probably of Italian parentage (son of a certain Gianbatista Grimaldi), studied at Cambridge and Oxford, and was chaplain to Bishop Ridley.

  I have taken more pains to introduce this Nicholas Grimoald to the reader’s acquaintance, because he is the second English poet after lord Surrey, who wrote in blank-verse. Nor is it his only praise, that he was the first who followed in this new path of versification. To the style of blank-verse exhibited by Surrey he added new strength, elegance, and modulation. In the disposition and conduct of his cadencies, he often approaches to the legitimate structure of the improved blank-verse: but we cannot suppose, that he is entirely free from those dissonancies and asperities, which still adhered to the general character and state of our diction…. Grimoald, as a writer of verses in rhyme, yields to none of his contemporaries, for a masterly choice of chaste expression, and the concise elegancies of didactic versification. Some of the couplets, in his poem, “In Praise of Moderation,” have all the smartness which marks the modern style of sententious poetry, and would have done honour to Pope’s ethic epistles.

  His principal claim to a place amongst English poets rests upon the distinction to which he is fairly entitled as the second writer who attempted blank verse in our language. The two pieces of this kind he has given us are, “The Death of Zoroas,” and “Marcus Tullius Cicero’s Death,” which Warton seems to treat as original compositions, but which are really translations,—the former from the “Alexandried” of Philip Gaultier, and the latter from Beza. The versification, however, is his own; and certainly contrasts favourably with that of Surrey, upon which it presents a marked improvement in art and power. He is seldom so sweet as Surrey, but his modulations are more varied and skilful, and in vigour and elevation he far surpasses him. The structure of the lines in these pieces is so dexterous, and the diction so effective, that it is not easy to believe they were written in the very infancy of this form of verse.

  Nicholas Grimald is chiefly remembered as the author of a considerable quantity of verse, preserved in “Tottel’s Miscellany” with that of Wyatt and Surrey, and not altogether unworthy of the companionship. He is entitled however to an equally distinguished position in the history of the English drama, as the author of the first extant tragedy. For such, beyond question, though it has scarcely been recognised, in his “Archipropheta, sive Johannes Baptista,” printed at Köln in 1548, probably performed at Oxford in the previous year.

  Nicholas Grimoald’s blank-verse … is superior to Surrey’s. There is more spontaneity, more go in it; and it does not show so much metre consciousness as is always present in Surrey’s.