This romance, of which it is said only three copies are known, was published in 1594. Four years after, DRAYTON, looking about for subjects for his Ovidian epistles, eagerly seized on a legend so favourable for poetry, and Geraldine and Surrey supplied two amatory epistles. Anthony à Wood, finding himself without materials to frame a life of the poetic Surrey, had recourse to "the famous poet," as he calls Drayton, whom he could quote; for Drayton was a consecrated bard for the antiquary, since Selden had commented on his great topographical poem. But honest Anthony on this occasion was not honest enough. He did not tell the world that he had fallen on the romance itself, Drayton's sole authority. Literally and silently, our antiquary transcribed the fuller passages from a volume he was ashamed to notice, disingenuously dropping certain incidents which would not have honoured the memory of Surrey. Thus the "phantastical" history for ever blots the authentic tomes of the grave _Athenæ Oxonienses_. A single moment of scrutiny would have detected the whole fabricated narrative; but there is a charm in romance which bewitched our luckless Anthony. Thus it happened that the romancer, on a misconception, constructs an imaginary fabric; the poet Drayton builds on the romancer; the sober antiquary on both; then the commentators stand upon the antiquary. Never was a house of cards of so many stories. The foundation, Surrey's poetic passion, may be as fictitious as the rest; for the visionary Geraldine, viewed in Agrippa's magic mirror was hardly a more mysterious shadow. Not one of these writers was informed of what recent researches have demonstrated. They knew not that this Earl of Surrey in boyhood was betrothed to his lady, also a child--one of the customs to preserve wealth or power in great families of that day. These historians were unfurnished with any dates to guide them, and never suspected that when Surrey is made to set off on his travels in Italy, after a Donna Giraldi who had no existence, he was the father of two sons, and "the fair Geraldine" was only _seven_ years of age! that Surrey's first love broke out when she was _nine_; that he declared his passion when she was about _thirteen_; and finally, that Geraldine, having attained to the womanly discretion of _fifteen_, dismissed the accomplished Earl of Surrey, with whom she never could be united, to accept the hand of old Sir Anthony Brown, aged sixty. Lady Brown disturbs the illusion of Geraldine, in the modest triumph of sixteen over sixty.