Truly this English realm was a strange one in those times, and this a strange King--who has listened approvingly to Hugh Latimer’s sermons--who harries Tyndale as he had harried Tyndale’s enemy--More; who fights the Pope, fights Luther, holds the new Bible (even Cranmer’s) in leash, who gives pension to Sternhold, works easy riddance of all the wives he wishes, pulls down Religious Houses for spoils, calls himself Defender of the Faith, and maybe goes to see (if then on show) _Gammer Gurton’s Needle_,[81] and is hilariously responsive to such songs as this:-- “I cannot eat but little meat My Stomach is not good But sure I think, that I can drink With him that wears a hood; Tho’ I go bare, take ye no care I nothing am a colde, I stuffe my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and olde.” _Wyatt and Surrey._ The model poets, however, of this reign[82]--those who kept alive the best old classic traditions, and echoed with most grace and spirit the daintiness of Italian verse, were the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. The latter was son of an old courtier of Henry VII., and inheritor of an estate and castle in Kent, which he made noteworthy by his decorative treatment, and which is even now counted worthy a visit by those journeying through the little town of Maidstone. He was, for those times, brilliantly educated; was in high favor with the King (save one enforced visit to the Tower); he translated Petrarch, and in his own way imitated the Italian poet’s manner, and was, by common consent, the first to graft the “Sonnet” upon English forms of verse. I find nothing however in his verse one-half so graceful or gracious as this tribute to his worth in Tennyson’s “Queen Mary:”-- “Courtier of many courts, he loves the more His own gray towers, plain life, and lettered peace, To read and rhyme in solitary fields; The lark above, the nightingale below, And answer them in song.”