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anything like the sixty or seventy years that elapsed from the middle of Elizabeth's reign to the period of the Restoration. In point of real force and originality of genius, neither the age of Pericles, nor the age of Augustus, nor the time of Leo X., nor of Louis XIV., can come at all into comparison; for in that short period we shall find the names of Shakspeare, and Bacon, and Spenser, and Sidney, and Hooker, and Taylor, and Barrow, and Raleigh; of Napier, Milton, Cudworth, Hobbes, and many others— men, all of them, not merely of great talents and accomplishments, but of vast compass and reach of understanding, and of minds truly creative and original."

HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY.
BORN, 1516; DIED, 1547.

HENRY HOWARD was the son of Thomas, Earl of Surrey, and afterwards Duke of Norfolk. His early life is involved in some uncertainty, and both Oxford and Cambridge have claimed the honour of being his alma mater. Wherever he received his education, it appears to have been completed at an early period, as he had only reached the age of sixteen when he contracted a marriage, according to the custom of the times, with Lady Francis Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. In the same year he visited France and Germany, and then proceeding to Florence, he there fell in, it is said, with the lady whom he celebrates in his poems by the name of Geraldine. By some she is said to have been a daughter of one of the Earls of Kildare, but so little is known with certainty on the subject, that several writers have regarded her as a

mere creation of the poet's fancy. The character of his amorous poetry is neither so earnest nor so heartfelt as to render the latter idea extravagant or improbable.

The Earl of Surrey figures prominently in the history of Henry VIII's reign. He was one of the nobles who accompanied the English monarch to his interview with Francis I. at Boulogne; he represented his father-in-law, the Lord High Chamberlain, at the marriage of his kinswoman, Anne Boleyn; and at her iniquitous trial, he had to appear as depute Earl Marshal. He distinguished himself both in the continental and Scottish wars of this reign, and was one of the gallantest knights of his age. Such virtues, however, were no protection from the wrath of that fickle tyrant. The houses of Howard and Seymour were rivals for the royal favour, and the Earl of Hereford having meanly reported some free expressions of the Earl of Surrey, he was imprisoned in the Tower, and brought to trial on the charge of bearing the arms of Edward the Confessor quartered on his shield, which, it was maintained, furnished sufficient evidence of his having treasonably aspired to the crown. He in vain showed that the arms were those assigned to him by the heralds, and had been worn by him unchallenged for fourteen years. An obsequious jury brought him in guilty, and the gallant Surrey, in the flower of his age, perished on the block, the last victim of the tyrant who expired only a few days afterwards. No English historian has been found to defend this judicial murder. It forms one of the basest among those deeds which have rendered the royal murder of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, Surrey, and so many other noble victims, an object of detestation to all succeeding times.

The Earl of Surrey was only thirty-one years of age

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when he was thus prematurely cut off. Amid the active life of court and camp, we need not wonder to find his compositions very limited in number; and even the best of these we owe to hours of forced leisure during one of his imprisonments at Windsor Castle. But in these few compositions he went far in advance of all his contemporaries or immediate predecessors. He introduced novelties of measure and a dignity of style unknown before; and he has, moreover, the distinguished honour of having been the first poet who introduced blank verse into the language. He was cut off too early to allow us fair means of judging of what he might have achieved as a poet, but he has done enough amply to vindicate his claim to a place among the great poets of the Elizabethan age, of whom he was the first; appearing like a morning star in its gray dawn.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

BORN, 1552; DIED, 1618.

RALEIGH, though claiming a place among the poets of England, occupies a far more prominent place in history as a statesman, a soldier, a navigator, and colonist. His life, indeed, has all the interest of a romance, added to the stern force of reality. He was the second son of a gentleman of ancient family in Devonshire, and early won the favour of Queen Elizabeth, no less by his fine figure and gallant bearing than by the sterling qualities of his mind. After performing various military and diplomatic services for his royal mistress, he obtained permission to set out on the voyage of discovery which

led to the colonization of Virginia, and was the immediate means of introducing both tobacco and potatoes into Europe. In 1597 Raleigh filled the high office of rear-admiral, and as such sailed with Essex to intercept the Spanish West India fleet; and he continued to receive many tokens of royal favour till the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603. On the accession of James I., however, he immediately fell into disgrace, the king's mind having been poisoned against him by Cecil, and other rivals. The precise cause of the mean and rancorous hatred evinced by that monarch towards him has never been satisfactorily explained; but his long imprisonment and base execution cast an indelible stigma on the memory of their royal perpetrator. Raleigh's conduct in prison and on the scaffold exhibit a rare mixture of firmness and resignation. His works pertain to nearly every branch of literature, and his "History of the World," published in 1614, far surpasses any preceding historical work in the English language.

EDMUND SPENSER.

BORN, 1553; DIED, 1598.

EDMUND SPENSER, one of the world's poets, who takes his high place among the few selected from the great of every age, whom we look up to as the instructors of all times, occupies a very different place as a poet from that of any of those whose names have heretofore been noticed. Claiming descent from a noble English family, Gibbon, the historian, justly remarks: "The nobility of the Spensers has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort them to consider

the 'Færie Queene' as the most precious jewel in their coronet." The immediate progenitors of Spenser, however, were, it is believed, in a humble position. Various contradictory accounts have been published of his parentage, and even the year of his birth is not quite certainly established; but among the varied allusions to himself which occur in his works, he repeatedly refers to his claims of kindred with people of rank, and we find him at all times taking his just place, as on a perfect equality, with the noble born of the Maiden Queen's proud court, not by right of his genius, but simply as an English gentleman. The place of his birth was East Smithfield, London, and his early education was, in all probability, pursued there, with such advantages as the available ecclesiastical seminaries of old London afforded. In 1569, when Spenser was in his sixteenth year, he was admitted as a sizar of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and in 1576 he took his degree as master of arts. He then retired into the north of England, where he is supposed to have found an engagement as tutor in the family of one of his noble relatives. It was there that his "Shepherd's Calendar" was composed, and there also he became attached to the lady whom he addresses in that poem under the name of Rosaline. The suit of the poet was not, however, responded to by the lady, and this in all probability decided his return to London, where he was introduced to Sir Philip Sidney, and through the influence of his brother-poet he obtained the patronage of the Earl of Leicester, and had the office of Poet-Laureat bestowed on him by Queen Elizabeth. The favours thus honourably conferred on the poet were viewed with jealousy by the eminent but illiberal statesman Lord Burleigh, and it was the poet's misfortune to become the object of his implacable enmity.

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