their art. The very crudity of the work becomes eloquent. And
if much of the work produced then has been lost, these pieces are
important, not for themselves but as types. For such poems as
these there may be posited a background of classical Latin.

But clearly so far as Surrey is concerned, this classical back-
ground is limited to the contents of the poems. He makes no at-
tempt to suggest classic forms. Thus, in the three poems just
quoted, while the third author endeavors to imitate the Sapphic
strophe by three riming hexameter lines and a half line, Surrey
contents himself with pentameter quatrains. The simplicity of the
rime-scheme, abab, recalls the precepts of the Medieval Latin.
The practice of the medieval writers is also evidenced in the desire
to introduce the very obvious classical allusion. ¹

I that Vlisses' yeres have spent
to seeke Penelope
fynde well the foyle I have ment
to say yat was not soo
Sins Troilus' cause hathe caused me
from Crised for to goo

and to repent Ulisses' truthe
in seas and storme skyes
of raginge will - wanton youthe,
wherewith I have tossed sore
from Cilla's seas to Carribes' clives
vppone the drowninge shore.

Such stanzas as these might well have been written in the fifteenth
century before the introduction of Greek. No distinction is made
between the stories of the Odyssey and the Troilus; to the writer
both are equally authoritative. The objection may be made that
this poem is at best only doubtfully attributed to Surrey. But the
same is true of the poem assigned him by Tottel, When ragyng
loue. ² The second and third stanzas of this are:

I call to minde the nauye greate,
That the Greekes brought to Troye towne:
And how the boysteous windes did beate
Their shyps, and rente their sayles adowne,

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