Another misconception, of quite a different type, is the close association of the names Wyatt and Surrey, the "Dioscuri of the dawn," "the twin stars of the Reformation." So far as the latter phrase be applied to Surrey, whatever evidence there is points in entirely the opposite direction. Religion was then joined with politics, and the party of the reformers found in Surrey an active antagonist. Sir Edward Knyvet deposed that when he learned of Cromwell's fall, he exclaimed: "Nowe is that foul churl dead so ambitious of others blode; nowe is he stricken by his owne staffe" and this in spite of the fact that it was by Cromwell's intercession that he himself had escaped mutilation only three years before. The feeling for his caste obliterated the sense of the merely personal obligation. But such sentiments would scarcely commend him to Wyatt, who did belong to the other party and who was one of the "minions" of Cromwell. The political differences, moreover, were not compensated for by a similarity in age. Wyatt was fifteen years older than Surrey, and, as at the time of his death Surrey was but twenty-nine, this difference was marked. Surrey belonged to a younger generation. He was but little older than Wyatt's son, and in fact it was in company with the latter that he scandalized London. It is Wyatt the younger that he takes with him on his French expedition. Consequently the usual im- plication in discussing the relationship between them, that they were intimates, needs careful revision. That they were acquaintances, however, is equally clear from the same facts. But it does not rest alone upon inference. We have three poems by Surrey referring to Wyatt; one is in praise of the translations of the Psalms, and two are elegies on his death. Of these three the two Elizabethan sonnets are conventional. The third is worth quoting in this connection. 1 W. resteth here, that quick could neuer rest: Whose heauenly giftes encreased by disdayn, And vertue sank the deper in his brest. Such profit he by enuy could obtain. family name of the Fitzgeralds. Bapst's suggestion that Garret is a diminutive from Margaret is not plausible. I am unable to conjecture why Tottel made this alteration, unless this poem belongs, or he thought it belonged, to the same period and related the same affair. ____________________ | 1 | This is found only in Tottel. | -518- |