Whether the Fleet served its purpose in causing repentance is open
to question. Surrey could not deny but he had very evil done,--
but remained an unrepentant sinner. To him the psalm-singing
money-loving citizen was beneath contempt. So his poem from
the point of view of the injured party is insulting both in matter
and in manner. He defends himself by attacking. London is so
evil that it should be shocked to an appreciation of its sins. And
this paradox is phrased in a careful parody of the reforming
manner.

Oh member of false Babylon!
The shop of craft! The den of ire!
Thy dreadful doom draws fast upon!
Thy martyr's blood by sword and fire
In Heaven and earth for justice call!

Of course, a jeu d'esprit must not be taken too seriously; it betrays
a lack of humor. Yet, the piece is distinctly clever. As the City
by its trade relations with the continent was the stronghold of
Lutheranism, to apply to it the opprobrious name applied by the
Lutherans to the Roman Church is a neat distortion. ¹ And the
"martyrs" were the poor courtiers, such as Surrey himself and
young Wyatt, persecuted by the demons in the City, merely be-
cause they shot at them with cross-bows! But the literary signifi-
cance of this is great. At once the reader is conscious of a note
that has not been sounded in English poetry since Chaucer. There
is a lightness of touch in the fooling that implies a mastery of
the medium, that tells that the long apprenticeship of English
literature is now over.

The last lines of this satire are also important since they have
been quoted to show that Surrey was at heart in favor of the Refor-
mation. ²
Irony is a dangerous tool that is apt to turn in the wield-
er's hand and cut him. So Defoe found in the Shortest Way with
Dissenters. So with Surrey here. He naturally by his birth be-

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