In his way thither he passed a few days at the Emperor’s court; where he became acquainted with Cornelius Agrippa, a celebrated adept in natural magic. This visionary Philosopher shewed our hero in a mirror of glass, a representation of Geraldine, reclining on a couch, sick, and reading one of his most tender sonnets by a waxen taper. His imagination, which wanted not the flattering representations and artificial incentives of illusion, was heated anew by this interesting and affecting spectacle. Inflamed with every enthusiasm of the most romantic passion, he hastened to Florence; and on his arrival, immediately published a defiance against any person who could handle a lance and was in love, whether Christian, Jew, Turk, Saracen, or Cannibal, who should presume to dispute the superiority of Geraldine’s beauty. As the lady was pretended to be of Tuscan extraction, the pride of the Florentines was flattered on this occasion; and the Grand Duke of Tuscany permitted a general and unmolested ingress into his dominions of the combatants of all countries, until this important trial should be decided. The challenge was accepted, and the Earl proved victorious. The shield which was presented to him by the Duke of Tuscany before the tournament began, is exhibited in Vertue’s valuable print of the Arundel family, and was actually in the possession of one of the late Dukes of Norfolk. These heroic vanities did not, however, so totally engross the time which the Earl of Surrey spent in Italy, as to alienate his mind from letters; he studied with the greatest success a critical knowledge of the Italian tongue; and that he might give new lustre to the name of Geraldine, attained a just taste for the peculiar graces of the Italian poetry. He was recalled to England for some idle reason by the king, much sooner than he expected; and he returned home the most elegant traveller, the most polite lover, the most learned nobleman, and the most accomplished gentleman of his age. Dexterity in tilting and gracefulness in managing a horse under arms, were excellencies now viewed with a critical eye, and practised with a high degree of emulation. In 1540 at a tournament held in the presence of the Court at Westminster, and in which some of the principal nobility were engaged, Surrey was distinguished above the rest for his address in the use and exercise of arms.