Born, at Allington Castle, Kent, 1503. Matriculate St. John’s College, Cambridge, 1515; B.A., 1518; M.A., 1520. Married Hon. Elizabeth Brooke, 1520 (?). In favour at Court of Henry VIII. Clerk of King’s Jewels, Oct. 1524 to May 1531. On embassy to France, 1526. Marshal of Calais Castle, 1529–30. Commissioner of Peace for Essex, 1532. Imprisoned in Tower at time of Anne Boleyn’s trial, spring of 1536; released soon afterwards. Knighted, 1537 (?). Ambassador in Spain, June 1537 to June 1539. On embassy in France and Holland, Nov. 1539 to May 1540. Imprisoned in Tower on charge of high treason, 1541; tried and acquitted, June 1541. Grant of land from King, July 1541. High Steward of Manor of Maidstone, 1542. Died, at Sherborne, 11 Oct. 1542. Buried in Sherborne Church. Works: Poems in the Earl of Surrey’s “Songs and Sonnets,” 1567; “Poetical Works,” ed. by R. Bell, 1854; ed. by G. Gilfillan, 1858.

Personal

  Of worthy memory for wit, learning, and experience.

  He possessed almost all the qualifications which go to constitute a consummate courtier. He had a noble appearance, a form where, according to Surrey, “force and beauty met,” a face of perfect symmetry, eyes of dazzling lustre, a mouth of singular sweetness, and a carriage distinguished alike by dignity and ease—the dignity of the oak and the yielding grace of the willow. His accomplishments, too, were extensive, and yet hung elegantly about him, waving to his outline freely like the toga—not sternly girded around him like the tunic. He spoke French, Italian, and Spanish, like English, besides being thoroughly acquainted with the classical languages.

  Wyatt was considered the greatest wit of his time, yet, in an age of gross indelicacy, was never known to utter an improper jest or word. He had a horror of joking on serious subjects…. As he advanced to middle life, as a man after thirty was in those days considered to be, he respectfully declined entering into the amusements in which the court was necessarily engaged. On being urged by Henry to join in a midnight mask, he refused: the King asked his reason. “Sir,” he said, “he who would be thought a wise man in the daytime, must not play the fool at night.”… But whilst naturally gay, full of spirits, and fond of society, Wyatt had a holy, heavenly frame of mind, combined with purity and elevation of thought.

  Few men ever possessed a more unblemished reputation, or died more sincerely regretted and esteemed than Sir Thomas Wyatt. His talents and accomplishments, great as they undoubtedly were, yielded even to the higher qualities of frankness, integrity, and honour, in obtaining him the approbation and love of his contemporaries; and to judge from the numerous elegies by which minds of kindred excellence sought to commemorate his worth, Wyatt possessed the advantage of being appreciated by those whose praise is fame. His poems sufficiently attest the variety and scope of his abilities; and, like those of his friend Surrey, they are free from the slightest impurity of thought or expression. He spoke several languages, and was so richly stored with classical literature, that the erudite Camden says he was “splendide doctus.” His prose is forcible and clear, and occasionally animated and eloquent. He excelled on the lute, and was eminent for his conversational powers; but all these merits were exceeded by the agreeable qualities of his private character. In person Wyatt was eminently handsome; tall, and of a commanding presence, elegantly formed, and gifted with a countenance of manly beauty.

General

  In the latter end of the same kings raigne sprong vp a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat th’ elder and Henry Earle of Surrey were the two chieftaines, who hauing trauailed into Italie, and there tasted the sweete and stately measures and stile of the Italian Poesie as nouices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante Arioste and Petrarch, they greatly pollished our rude and homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had bene before, and for that cause may iustly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and stile…. Henry Earle of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyat, betweene whom I finde very litle difference, I repute them (as before) for the two chief lanternes of light to all others that haue since employed their pennes vpon English Poesie, their conceits were loftie, their stiles stately, their conueyance cleanely, their termes proper, their meetre sweete and well proportioned, in all imitating very naturally and studiously their Maister Francis Petrarcha.

  He does not appear to have much imagination, neither are his verses so musical and well polished as lord Surry’s. Those of gallantry in particular seem to be too artificial and laboured for a lover, without that artless simplicity which is the genuine mark of feeling; and too stiff, and negligent of harmony for a poet.

  Although sufficiently distinguished from the common versifiers of his age, is confessedly inferior to Surrey in harmony of numbers, perspicuity of expression, and facility of phraseology. Nor is he equal to Surrey in elegance of sentiment, in nature and sensibility. His feelings are disguised by affectation, and obscured by conceit. His declarations of passion are embarrassed by wit and fancy; and his style is not intelligible, in proportion as it is careless and unadorned. His compliments, like the modes of behaviour in that age, are ceremonious and strained. He has too much art as a lover, and too little as a poet. His gallantries are laboured, and his versification negligent. The truth is, his genius was of the moral and didactic species: and his poems abound more in good sense, satire, and observations on life, than in pathos or imagination.

  One of the principal ornaments of an age unable to discern his merits, or unwilling to record them.

  Wyatt had a deeper and more accurate penetration into the characters of men than Surrey had: hence arises the difference in their satires. Surrey in his satire against the citizens of London, deals only in reproach; Wyatt, in his, abounds with irony, and those nice touches of ridicule which make us ashamed of our faults, and therefore often silently effect amendment. Surrey’s observation of nature was minute, but he directed it towards the works of nature in general, and the movements of the passions, rather than to the foibles and characters of men; hence it is that he excels in the description of rural objects, and is always tender and pathetic. In Wyatt’s complaints we hear a strain of manly grief which commands attention; and we listen to it with respect for the sake of him that suffers. Surrey’s distress is painted in such natural terms, that we make it our own, and recognise in his sorrows, emotions which we are conscious of having felt ourselves. In point of taste, and perception of propriety in composition, Surrey is more accurate and just than Wyatt; he therefore seldom either offends with conceits, or wearies with repetition; and when he imitates other poets, he is original as well as pleasing. In his numerous translations from Petrarch, he is seldom inferior to his master; and he sometimes improves upon him. Wyatt is almost always below the Italian, and frequently degrades a good thought by expressing it so, that it is hardly recognisable. Had Wyatt attempted a translation of Virgil as Surrey did, he would have exposed himself to unavoidable failure.

  The genius of Sir Thomas Wyat was refined and elevated like that of his noble friend and contemporary; but his poetry is more sententious and sombrous, and in his lyrical effusions he studied terseness rather than suavity.

  Wyatt is an abundant writer; but he has wrought his later versification with great variety, though he has not always smoothed his workmanship with his nail. For many years, Wyatt had smothered his native talent by translation from Spanish and Italian poets, and in his rusty rhythmical measures. He lived to feel the truth of nature, and to practice happier art. Of his amatory poems, many are graceful, most ingenious.

  In his Satires we find what we may call a mellowed souredness of spirit, like the taste of the plum or sloe when touched by the first frosts. There is no fury, no rancour, and but little bitterness. You have simply a good and great man, who has left the public arena early and without stain, giving the results of his experience, and deliberately preferring the life of rural simplicity and peace to that of courtly etiquette and diplomatic falsehood. How different from the savage, and almost fiendish eye of retrospect such men as Swift and Byron cast upon a world which they have spurned, and which, with quite as much justice, has spurned them! Wyatt and the world, on the other hand, part fair foes, and shake hands ere they diverge from each other’s paths for ever.

  Wyatt and Surrey are said to have been the introducers of the sonnet into English literature, but this credit is due especially to Wyatt, not only as the elder man and earlier writer, but as the one of the two who alone gave accurate models of the structure of that form of poem…. Although Surrey’s sonnets are in fourteen lines, and closely imitate Petrarch’s forms of thought, yet as to their mechanism they are all at fault. Wyatt studied the form of the verse before he imitated, and the true sonnet was introduced into our literature by him alone.

  Wyatt and Surrey are usually classed together—par nobile fratrum—the Dioscuri of the Dawn. They inaugurated that important period in our literature known as the Era of Italian Influence, or that of the Company of Courtly Makers—the period which immediately preceded and ushered in the age of Spenser and Shakespeare…. In Surrey we find the first germ of the Bucolic Eclogue. In Wyatt we have our first classical satirist. Of our lyrical poetry they were the founders…. It is unfortunately not possible to decide how far these two poets acted and re-acted on each other. We are however inclined to think that Wyatt was the master-spirit, and that Surrey has been enabled to throw him so completely and so unfairly into the shade, mainly because he had his friend’s patterns to work upon…. The dignity and gravity which characterise the structure of some of his lyric periods appear to have been caught from the poets of Castile. His general tone is sombre, sententious and serious, and he is too often reflecting when he ought to be feeling. The greater part of his poetry is wasted in describing with weary minuteness transports of slighted and requited affection, but his true place is among observant men of the world, scholars and moralists. His versification is often harsh and uncouth, except in some of his lyrics, which are occasionally very musical, and in his Satires, which are uniformly terse and smooth. He is inferior to Surrey in diction, in taste, in originality, and in poetical feeling; but it may be doubted whether the more delicate genius of the younger poet would have been able to achieve so complete a triumph over the mechanism of expression had he not been preceded by his robuster brother.

  His love-sonnets and songs have none of that lightness and gaiety which we are apt to associate with such verses, but they contain much subtle thought, and bear the appearance of expressing a genuine passion.

  Now there is every reason to believe, if we study the biographies of Wyatt and Surrey, that Wyatt, and not Surrey as is so commonly stated, led the way in the work which is associated with their names—that Wyatt, and not Surrey, was the first to attempt the improvement of our metres by Italian example and precedent. As early as 1526, when Surrey was certainly not more than ten years old, perhaps only eight, Leland had “honoured” Wyatt, then twenty-three, as the most accomplished poet of his time…. Tulit alter honores. But surely it is time Wyatt had a more general recognition as the first, in time at least, of those “courtly makers.”… Surely it is time he should more generally have some credit for having introduced the sonnet into our literature. Yet, in his otherwise admirable remarks on the sonnet in the recently published edition of Milton’s Sonnets, Mr. Mark Pattison, a singularly accomplished scholar, and a most excellent writer and critic, as all the world knows, does not even mention poor Sir Thomas. Sic vos non vobis.

  So stumbling and knock-kneed is his verse that any one who remembers the admirable versification of Chaucer may now and then be inclined to think that Wyatt had much better have left his innovations alone.

  Wyatt gave abundant promise of the broad daylight of poetry that was to follow hard upon these crepuscular rays.

  Wyatt is not one of the great master-minds, but certainly occupied one of the most distinguished positions in the history of his own nation. Owing to the soundness and complete harmony of his nature, he exercised an enduring influence upon English poetry at a period when its culture was specially in need of inward consistency.

  Rank undoubtedly placed Surrey’s name, on the Title page; but Sir T. Wyatt is the most important of all the Contributors, both as to priority in time, as to literary influence, and as to the number of poems contributed.

  Two very marked and contrary features distinguish Wyatt’s poetry, the individual energy of his thought, and his persistent imitation of foreign models…. His actual poetical achievements are of very unequal merit; he often aims at objects which he ought to have avoided; or at effects to which his resources are unequal; he is most successful when his fiery genius can find out a way for itself untrammelled by the precedents of art…. Wyatt’s best poems are written in simple metrical forms, which enable him to pour himself forth with a strength and energy rarely equalled in English poetry…. Wyatt is a noble figure in English poetry. His strength, his ardour, his manliness, his complete freedom from affectation, make him a type of what is finest in the national character.

  Wyatt’s poetic efforts often lack grace, his versification is at times curiously uncouth, his sonnets are strained and artificial in style as well as in sentiment; but he knew the value of metrical rules and musical rhythm, as the “Address to his Lute” amply attests. Despite his persistent imitation of foreign models, too, he displays at all points an individual energy of thought, which his disciple Surrey never attained. As a whole his work evinces a robuster taste and intellect than Surrey’s.