SOURCE: Muir, Kenneth. “Wyatt's Poetry.” In Life and Letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt, pp. 222-60. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1963.

[In the excerpt below, Muir analyzes the canon of Wyatt's poetry, concluding that his original lyrics are his finest writings.]

(1) THE MANUSCRIPTS

Some account of the manuscripts, apart from a recently discovered one, in which Wyatt's poems appear will be found in all recent editions of his poetry. By far the most important is Egerton MS. 2711 (E) in the British Museum, which contains 101 of his lyrics, as well as the satires and the psalms. The early part of the manuscript is in the hand of a scribe, with occasional corrections in Wyatt's own hand; the later poems in the manuscript, including the Penitential Psalms, are mostly in Wyatt's hand, and some of them appear to be first drafts with numerous corrections. The next manuscript, identified as Blage's (B) in 1959, contains 15 of the Egerton poems and nearly 100 other poems of which at least half are probably Wyatt's. This is in the library of Trinity College, Dublin (D.2.7). A third manuscript, known as the Devonshire (D), is in the British Museum (Add. MS. 1792). It is an anthology of early Tudor poetry, containing 18 poems also found in B and about 50 others which have been ascribed to Wyatt, though his authorship is by no means certain. The Arundel manuscript (A) contains four poems which appear in no other manuscript, and 40 more poems which appear in other manuscripts, including the Penitential Psalms. Other poems are to be found in Add. MS. 36529 (P) and Harleian MS. 78 (H) in the British Museum. Royal MS. 17 A. xxii contains the Penitential Psalms (R).

Tottel's Songes and Sonnettes contains 16 poems which are not to be found in any of the manuscripts together with many which are. The texts have been ‘improved’ by an editor who did not appreciate the subtleties of Wyatt's rhythms. The Court of Venus contains a number of his lyrics in a garbled form.

Altogether more than 250 poems in addition to the Psalms have been ascribed to Wyatt, but of these only 142 are credited to him by the manuscripts or by Tottel.

(2) THE CANON

It is difficult to establish the Wyatt canon. On the one hand, Miss Foxwell misread the FS appended to thirty-three of the Devonshire poems as T.V. and claimed them as Wyatt's on the strength of these initials. On the other hand Dr Ethel Seaton has professed to find acrostics in nearly all Wyatt's lyrics, which prove that they were written originally by Sir Richard Roos. I think Miss Foxwell was nearer the truth than Dr Seaton.

Dr Seaton was looking for so many acrostics connected with the names and mottoes of people connected with Roos, she was so easily satisfied with fragmentary words, and she was so willing to ignore letters which do not fit into the acrostic that it would have been surprising if she had not found them. She admits, indeed, that Wyatt revised poems by Roos; but it is difficult to believe that acrostics would survive the process of revision. I find it difficult to understand how anybody who had looked at the poems in Wyatt's hand in the Egerton manuscript could believe that they were not Wyatt's own. Some of them are clearly first drafts, with corrections made currente calamo.

The only perfect acrostics in Wyatt's poems—i.e. poems where the initial letters of lines or stanzas when taken in the order in which they are written spell a name—are Nos. 107 (Sheltun) and 178 (Anni Stanhope).¹ Dr Seaton has found an Alice Seaton connected with Roos; but there was a Lady Anne Stanhope at the Court of Henry VIII, to whom Wyatt might well have written such a poem.

But perhaps the strongest argument for the authenticity of the poems in the Egerton Manuscript—and for many of the poems in the Blage and Devonshire MSS—is the impression they give of a coherent poetic personality, quite unlike the author of the ‘Chaucer’ and ‘Surrey’ poems also ascribed by Dr Seaton to Roos. It is impossible to believe that this coherence could have been obtained by a revision of Roos poems slight enough to leave the acrostics more or less intact.

It must be admitted, however, that although Wyatt's poems are on the whole better than those of his contemporaries, he was writing within a general convention; and in many cases, where there is no direct evidence for Wyatt's authorship, the poems could be by Rochford or Bryan or by some imitator. Several of the manuscripts in which Wyatt's poems are found—Blage, Devonshire, Arundel—are anthologies. The Blage MS contains poems by Surrey, Blage himself and others. The Devonshire MS contains extracts from Chaucer, one poem by Sir Anthony Lee, Wyatt's brother-in-law, and at least fifty poems no one would ascribe to Wyatt. The Arundel MS, recently published by Professor Ruth Hughey,² contains poems by Elizabethan poets written fifty years after Wyatt's death.

We may be confident that Wyatt wrote three satires, the Penitential Psalms and one other psalm and the 101 shorter poems in the Egerton MS; it is highly probable that he wrote at least 28 of the poems in the Blage MS (apart from those also included in E); that he wrote at least 23 of the Devonshire poems—apart from those included in B and E; that at least 8 poems in other MSS are his; and that he wrote 16 poems ascribed to him by Tottel, of which no MS copy has survived. This makes a total of 176 shorter poems. I should hesitate to say that the remaining 75 poems are Wyatt's, though many of them probably are. In the discussion which follows I shall exclude the doubtful poems, except for an occasional reference.

(3) TRANSLATIONS

Chaucer was hailed as a great translator, though to modern readers such praise would seem inadequate, if not inept. In the same way Wyatt was famous as the poet who translated Italian and French poetry and introduced the sonnet into England. It is significant that sources have been discovered for more than half the first fifty poems in the Egerton MS, and others may well be based on foreign originals which have not yet been identified. Sources have been found for very few of the poems in the other MSS. As the Egerton was Wyatt's own manuscript, it looks as though he gave pride of place to his translations and that he regarded his other lyrics as of less importance.

Most of the known sources were pointed out by Nott; there is an admirable account of them by Baldi; and there have been studies of Wyatt's methods as a translator by Hallett Smith, J. W. Lever, Otto Hietsch and others.³ A few examples may be given. This is one of Petrarch's sonnets:⁴

Mille fiate, o dolce mia guerrera,
per aver co'begli occhi vostri pace,
v'aggio profferto il cor; ma a voi non piace
mirar sì basso con la mente altera:
e se di lui fors'altra donna spera,
vive in speranza debile e fallace:
mio, perché sdegno ciò ch'a voi dispiace,
esser non può giammai così com'era.
Or s'io lo scaccio, ed e'non trova in voi
nell'esilio infelice alcun soccorso,
nè sa star sol, nè gire ov'altri'l chiama
poria smarrire il suo natural corso;
che grave colpa fia d'ambeduo noi,
e tanto più di voi, quanto più v'ama.

The following is Wyatt's translation:⁵

How oft have I, my dere and cruell foo,
          With those your Iyes for to get peace and truyse,
          Profferd you myn hert, but you do not vse
          Emong so high thinges to cast your mynde so lowe.
Yf any othre loke for it, as ye trowe,
          There vayn weke hope doeth greately them abuse;
          And thus I disdain that that ye refuse;
          It was ons myn: it can no more be so.
Yf I then it chase, nor it in you can fynde
          In this exile no manner of comfort,
          Nor lyve allone, nor where he is called resort,
He may wander from his naturall kynd.
          So shall it be great hurt vnto vs twayn,
          And yours the losse and myn the dedly pain.

Except for the alteration of the rhyme scheme in the sestet, so as to end the sonnet in his customary manner with a couplet,⁶ Wyatt preserves the form of the original; and he adheres to the meaning more closely than in many of his translations. The rhythm and metre is generally much harsher than Petrarch's, but the very irregularity of several of the lines has the effect of throwing into relief the smooth and regular lines with which the octave and sestet both end.

He renders Mille fiate by ‘How oft’; O dolce mia guerrera by a phrase which is more explicit about his mistress's hostility ‘my dere and cruell foo’; and the simple pace by ‘peace and truyse’. He omits the conventional epithet for eyes, begli; and he translates the line

mirar sì basso con la mente altera

as

Emong so high thinges to cast your mynde so lowe.

Here he implies not so much that his mistress is proud as that she has set her mind on higher things, which is perhaps a possible meaning of the Italian. In the 5th line he adds ‘as ye trowe’, partly for the rhyme, no doubt; but it introduces a complication in the relationship between the poet and his mistress.

Petrarch's 8th line—

esser non può giammai così com'era—

merely states that his heart can never be as it was; Wyatt, looking ahead to the first line of the sestet, in which Petrarch speaks of expelling his heart, has a line of magnificent finality:

It was ons myn: it can no more be so.

In the 12th line, Wyatt translates natural corso by ‘natural kynd’. This alteration, suggested by the necessity of rhyme, and perhaps by ‘exile’ two lines before, is nevertheless effective. In the last line, Wyatt sharpens the antithesis; and whereas Petrarch says that grave colpa will be more in Laura than in him, because his love is the more, Wyatt contrasts his mistress's loss of his love with his own deadly pain:

And yours the losse and myn the dedly pain.

Another useful comparison may be made of Wyatt's version with one of Petrarch's best-known sonnets:⁷

Pien d'un vago pensier, che mi desvia
da tutti gli altri, e fammi al mondo ir solo,
ad or' ad or' a me stesso m'involo,
pur lei cercando che fuggir devria:
e veggiola passar sì dolce e ria,
che l'alma trema per levarsi a volo;
tal d'armati sospir conduce stuolo
questa bella d'Amor nemica e mia.
Ben s'io non erro, di pietate un raggio
scorgo fra'l nubiloso altero ciglio,
che'n parte rasserena il cor doglioso:
allor raccolgo l'alma, e poi ch'i'aggio
di scovrirle il mio mal preso consiglio,
tanto le ho a dir che'ncominciar non oso.
Suche vayn thought as wonted to myslede me,
          In desert hope by well assured mone,
          Maketh me from compayne to live alone,
          In folowing her whome reason bid me fle.
She fleith as fast by gentill crueltie,
          And after her myn hert would fain be gone;
          But armed sighes my way do stoppe anone,
          Twixt hope and drede locking my libertie.
Yet, as I gesse, vnder disdaynfull browe
          One became of pitie is in her clowdy loke,
          Whiche comforteth the mynde that erst for fere shoke;
And therwithall bolded I seke the way how
          To vtter the smert that I suffre within,
          But suche it is I not how to begyn.(8)

Wyatt does not translate Petrarch's third line, and his own second line is original. In the fourth line he paraphrases che fuggir devria (‘from whom I should flee’) as ‘whome reason bid me fle’. Petrarch sees his mistress go by; Wyatt's ‘fleith’. Wyatt wishes to pursue his mistress but is stopped by the ‘armed sighes’ which make Petrarch's soul trema per levarsi a volo. This probably means that Petrarch wishes for death, though one sixteenth-century commentator does not give this interpretation.⁹ In any case Wyatt suppresses the mention of the soul. Instead of questa bella d'Amor nemica e mia Wyatt has the line:

Twixt hope and drede locking my libertie.

In the sestet Wyatt brilliantly translates

          di pietate un raggio
scorgo fra'l nubiloso altero ciglio

as

                                        vnder disdaynfull browe
One beame of pitie is in her clowdy loke.

He expands rasserena il cor doglioso to ‘comforteth the mynde that erst for fere shoke’. Petrarch's heart is sad; Wyatt's mind is fearful. Wyatt's single word ‘bolded’ is more concise and striking than raccolgo l'alma, though suggested by the ripiglio l'ardire of a commentator. Instead of admitting his unwise choice, as Petrarch does, Wyatt has the more commonplace ‘the smert I suffre within’ and he is tongue-tied not because he has too much to say but, apparently, because of his suffering. The alterations in this sonnet were obviously not due to Wyatt's failure to understand the original: his deviations were deliberate.

This is even more apparent if one compares ‘Who so list to hount, I knowe where is an hynde’ (No. 7) with the sonnet on which it is based¹⁰:

Una candida cerva, sopra l'erba
Verde m'apparve, con duo corna d'oro,
Fra due riviere, a l'ombra d'un alloro,
Levando 'l sole, a la stagione acerba.
Era sua vista sí dolce superba,
Ch'i'lasciai per seguirla ogni lavoro;
Come l'avaro che'n cercar tesoro
Con diletto l'affanno disacerba.
‘Nessun mi tocchi’, al bel collo d'intorno
Scritto avea di diamanti e di topazi;
‘Libera farmi al mio Cesare parve.’
Et era 'l sol già vòlto al mezzo giorno;
Gli occhi miei stanchi di mirar, non sazi;
Quand'io caddi ne l'acqua, et ella sparve.

As Miss Patricia Thomson has shown,¹¹ Wyatt ‘converts Petrarch's contemplation of the hind into a prolonged account of hunting’. His attitude to the apparently tame, but actually wild, lady is different from Petrarch's attitude to the chaste Laura. He had probably read Petrarch's commentators who quoted ‘Noli me tangere quia Caesaris sum’; but whereas Petrarch says that Caesar had set the hind free, Wyatt implies that Anne Boleyn—if the sonnet is about her—is Henry VIII's exclusive property. The diamonds are not used by Wyatt, as they were apparently by Petrarch, ‘as a symbol of firm resistance to every lascivious desire’. Wyatt's regret that he had wasted his time in pursuit of the lady is not in accordance with the courtly love of the Petrarchans. He uses Petrarch's sonnet as the basis of a poem which has a totally different atmosphere and almost a different theme.

As a last example of Wyatt's petrarchan imitations we may take the sonnet written on the execution of Cromwell, which is based on the following¹²:

Rotta è l'alta Colonna e'l verde Lauro
che facean ombra al mio stanco pensero;
perdut'ho quel che ritrovar non spero
dal borea all'austro, o dal mar indo al mauro.
Tolto m'hai, Morte, il mio doppio tesauro,
che me fea viver lieto e gire altero;
e ristorar no'l può terra nè impero,
nè gemma oriental nè forza d'auro.
Ma se consentimento è di destino,
che poss'io più se no aver l'alma trista,
umidi gli occhi sempre e 'l viso chino?
O nostra vita, ch'è sí bella in vista,
com' perde agevolmente in un mattino
quel che 'n molt'anni a gran pena s'acquista!

Petrarch quibbles in the first line on the names of Colonna, his patron, and Laura. Wyatt omits reference to the laurel and introduces the idea of leaning on the pillar.¹³ Whereas Petrarch says he has lost what he does not hope to find again ‘from Boreas to Auster, from the Indian sea to the Mauritanian’, Wyatt omits the second half of this line (4) and makes the third more emphatic:

The lyke of it no man agayne can fynde.

Petrarch says that Death has taken away his double treasure; Wyatt ascribes the loss to ‘happe’. Petrarch says that nothing can make good his loss; Wyatt tells us that he is condemned by chance—

Dearlye to moorne till death do it relent.

This looks forward to the last line of the sestet—

Till dreadfull death do ease my dolefull state.

His grief will only terminate with his own death. Wyatt returns to Petrarch in the opening lines of the sestet, his ‘destenye’ corresponding to destino and his ‘wofull hart’ to l'alma trista; but in place of Petrarch's moist eyes and bent head he has two lines:

My penne in playnt, my voyce in carefull crye,
My mynde in woe, my bodye full of smart.

Petrarch concludes his sonnet with a general reflection on mortality; Wyatt concludes his with self-hatred and longing for death. The effect of the two poems is quite different, and they each express the personality of their respective authors.¹⁴

A number of Wyatt's translations are, in fact, closer to the originals than the ones discussed above. Sometimes he may have misunderstood Petrarch's meaning; but generally speaking he seems to show a fine understanding of nuances of meaning, and as Hietsch has shown,¹⁵ he sometimes moves away from the literal sense of the original in order to get close to its sound.

Wyatt's translations of sonnets are much harsher in rhythm and more irregular in metre than his original lyrics, the satires and the psalms. The best of his songs show that he had an exquisite ear and his elaborate and very varied metrical forms show that he had a technical mastery unequalled before Sidney and Spenser. It cannot be argued that Wyatt's sonnets were prentice work, written in his youth, before he had attained technical mastery; for lyrics written at least as early are notably melodious. Nor can it even be said that the difficulty of preserving the sonnet form while keeping close to the sense of the original tempted Wyatt to sacrifice metrical smoothness; for, as we have seen, Wyatt did not follow the originals slavishly, and he mastered the more difficult terza-rima in the satires and psalms.

It should be remembered, too, that Tottel was dissatisfied with poems other than sonnets, in which Wyatt's metrical genius is apparent to the modern reader. He turned one of the finest lines in sixteenth-century poetry—

Into a straunge fasshion of forsaking—

into the comparatively pedestrian—

Into a bitter fashion of forsaking.

The most disturbing thing about Wyatt's translations is his frequently imperfect rhymes. Sometimes he appears to rhyme unaccented syllables—harbar, baner, suffre; sometimes he rhymes an accented syllable with an unaccented one—done, prison; and sometimes he uses assonance rather than rhyme—vnfayned, depaynted. Even when one makes allowances for possible pronunciation, the rhyming is often unsatisfactory. Yet our sense of dissatisfaction is partly due to what we expect of the sonnet form; and, as Mirabel said of Millamant's faults, the more familiar we are with them, they give us every hour less and less disturbance. The harsh rhythms and the lines which seem at first impossible to scan reveal, on further acquaintance, strength and subtlety which justify their deviations from the norm; and the firm and regular rhythms, when they occur, take an additional strength from their context, like a resolution in music.

The lines—

Wherewithall vnto the hertes forrest he fleith …
It is as in dreme vnperfaict and lame …
I fley above the wynde yet can I not arrise …
Alas, the snow shalbe black and scalding;
The see waterles; fisshe in the mountain …
Whiche comforteth the mynd that erst for fere shoke—

can all be defended for their metrical expressiveness; and they contrast with the smooth, strong lines with which the sonnets frequently end:

To cloke my care, but vnder sport and play …
Yours is the fault and myn the great annoye …
And my delite is causer of this stryff …
And I remain dispering of the port …
And yours the losse and myn the dedly pain.

Wyatt's sonnets, then, which at first sight seem much more clumsy than Surrey's, become more acceptable the more we read them, and they reveal a toughness of texture and a vigour which compensate for the lack of smoothness, which may indeed be incompatible with the melody pursued before all else by many Elizabethan sonneteers.

Petrarch is not the only Italian poet with whose work Wyatt was acquainted. One of his sonnets is based on two strambotti of Serafino, the octave on one, and the sestet, less closely, on the other. Nine other short poems have also been traced to Serafino.¹⁶ One of the satires is based on Alamanni,¹⁷ and the framework of the Penitential Psalms is derived from Aretino.¹⁸

Wyatt knew and imitated some of Marot's poems¹⁹ and it has been suggested that he may have met both Marot and Saint-Gelais during his first visit to France. The direct influence of French poetry on Wyatt's work was comparatively small; but some of his poems may be based on French originals which have not yet been traced, and his use of the rondeau form was doubtless suggested by Marot's example. It was a form in which Wyatt was never wholly at ease; though he achieved a few successes despite the form.²⁰

Wyatt was also acquainted with several Latin poets, ranging from Horace and Seneca to Boethius and Pandulpho. He advised his son to read Seneca and one of his most successful epigrams is translated from the Thyestes, a chorus at which both Cowley and Marvell were afterwards to try their hand:²¹

Stond who so list vpon the slipper toppe
          Of courtes estates, and lett me heare reioyce;
And vse me quyet without lett or stoppe,
          Vnknowen in courte, that hath suche brackishe ioyes:
In hidden place, so lett my dayes forthe passe,
          That when my yeares be done, withouten noyse
I may dye aged after the common trace.
          For hym death greep'the right hard by the croppe
That is moche knowen of other; and of him self, alas,
Doth dye vnknowen, dazed with dreadfull face.

In the poem written in the Tower in 1536, the refrain is taken from Seneca's Phaedra and the imagery of the first two stanzas is derived from the same chorus²²:

Quanti casus humana rotant!
minor in parvis Fortuna furit
leviusque ferit leviora deus;
servat placidos obscura quies
praebetque senes casa securos.
          Admota aetheriis culmina sedibus
Euros excipiunt, excipiunt Notos,
insani Boreae minas
imbriferumque Corum.
Taros patitur fulminis ictus
umida vallis;
Iuppiter alto vicina petit;
non capit umquam magnos motus
humilis tecti plebeia domus.
circa regna tonat.
Who lyst his welthe and eas Retayne
Hym selffe let hym vnknown contayne;
          Presse not to ffast in at that gatte
Wher the Retorne stands by desdayne:
          For sure, circa Regna tonat.
The hye montaynis ar blastyd oft,
When the lowe vaylye ys myld and soft;
          Ffortune with helthe stondis at debate;
The ffall is grevous ffrome Aloffte:
          And sure, circa Regna tonat.

This is one of the best examples of Wyatt's transformation for his own purposes of a foreign original.

(4) THE MEDIEVAL INFLUENCE

Wyatt used a great variety of stanza forms, Italian, French, and English. There are fifteen different kinds of stanza in the first fifty of the Egerton poems, though more than half of them are sonnets and rondeaux, and there are some thirty-five different stanzas used in the sixty-six ‘Wyatt’ poems in the Devonshire manuscript. Some of Wyatt's stanzas were probably his own invention but many of the simpler ones are to be found in the song-books of the early sixteenth century and were not then new.

The stanza used in one of the Blage poems²³ and two other Wyatt poems²⁴—

Absence, alas.
Causeth me pas
Frome all solas
                    To great grevans:
Yet though that I
Absent must be,
I trust that she
                    Hath remembraunce—

is to be found in a fifteenth-century manuscript:

Alone walkyng,
In thought pleynyng,
And sore syghyng,
                    Al desolate,
Me remembryng
Of my lyuyng
My deth wyssyng
                    Bothe erly and late.

It is, in fact, sometimes difficult to be sure whether the poems ascribed to Wyatt are really his, or medieval poems preserved by an anthologist, or revisions by Wyatt of poems written in the previous century. We may assume that poems in the Egerton MS signed Tho. are indeed Wyatt's, and we need not doubt that similar poems in the Blage and Devonshire MSS are mostly his.

The most interesting case is provided by the 15-stanza poem in the Blage MS²⁵ which is closely related to a 4-stanza poem appearing twice in Huntington MS. El. 1160.

I muste go walke the woodes so wyld,
          And wander here and there
          In dred and Dedly fere;
          For wher I trust, I am begilyd,
                    And all for your Loue, my dere.
I am banysshed from my blys
          By craft and fals pretens,
          Fawtles, without offens,
          And of return no certen ys,
                    And all for your Loue, my dere.
Banysshed am I, remedyles
          To wildernes alone,
          Alone to sigh and mone,
          And of relefe all comfortles,
          And all for your Loue, my dere.
My house shalbe the grene wood tre,
          A tuft of brakys my bede,
          And this my lyf I lede
          As on that from his Joy doth fly,
          And all for your Loue, my dere.
The runnyng stremes shalbe my drynke,
          Akehornes shalbe my foode;
          Naught elles shall doo me good,
          But on your beawty for to thynke,
          And all for your Loue, my dere.
And when the Dere draw to the grene
          Makys me thynke on a row,
          How I haue sene ye goo
          Aboue the fayrest, fayrest besene,
          And all for your Loue, my dere
But where I se in any cost
          To turkylles set and play,
          Rejoysyng all the day,
          Alas, I thinck this haue I lost,
          And all for your Loue, my dere.
No Byrd, no bushe, no bowgh I se
          But bryngith to my mynd
          Sumthing wherby I fynd
          My hart far wandred, far fro me,
                    And all for your Loue, my dere.
The tune of byrdes when I doo here,
          My hart doth bled, alas,
          Remembryng how I was
          Wont for to here your wayes so clere,
                    And all for your Loue, my dere.
My thought doth please me for the while:
          While I se my Desire
          Naught elles I do requyer.
          So with my thought I me begyle,
                    And all for your Loue, my dere.
Yet I am further from my thought
          Then yerth from hevyn aboue;
          And yet for to remoue
          My payne, alas, avayleth naught,
                    And all for your Loue, my dere.
And where I ly secret, alone,
          I marke that face a none,
          That stayith my Lyff, as won
          That other comfort can get non,
                    And all for your Loue, my dere.
The Sumer Dayes that be so long,
          I walked and wandred wyde,
          Alone, without a gyde,
          Alwayes thynkyng how I haue wrong,
                    And all for your loue, my dere.
The wynter nyghtes that ar so cold,
          I ly amyd the
          Vnwrapt in pryckyng thornes,
          Remembryng my sorowes old,
                    And all for your loue, my dere.
A wofull man such desperat lyfe
          Becummyth best of all,
          But wo myght them befall
          That are the causers of this stryfe,
                    And all for your Loue, my dere.

The following is a modernised version of the Huntington poem:²⁶

I must go walk the wood so wild,
          And wander her and there
          In dread and deadly fear;
For where I trusted I am beguiled,
          And all for one.
Thus am I banished from my bliss
          By craft [and false] pretence,
          Faultless without offence
And of return no certain is,
          And all for fear of one.
My bed shall be under the greenwood tree,
          A tuft of brakes under my head,
          As one from joy were fled;
Thus from my life day by day I flee,
          And all for one.
The running streams shall be my drink,
          Acorns shall be my food;
          Nothing may do me good,
But when [of] your beauty I do think,
          And all for love of one.

The other copy has the same refrain in two of the stanzas as the Blage version. The manuscript itself is medieval in origin, but this particular poem is crowded into the margin in a hand-writing that could date from the first half of the sixteenth century. It has been argued that both versions are based on a common original, of which the Blage text is obviously the more accurate. The writer of the Huntington text remembered not very accurately only part of the poem. But as the Blage text contains one line—‘The wynter nyghtes that ar so cold’—and two phrases which Wyatt uses elsewhere, and as one of the phrases appears also in the Huntington text, it is wisest to assume that Wyatt wrote the poem at the beginning of his career—perhaps basing it on a lost poem written in the previous century—and the owner of the Huntington MS used the margin to copy down what he remembered of Wyatt's poem. The two copies, differing in detail, show that he was aware that his memory was faulty.

(5) THE LYRICS

Mr John Stevens in his admirable book on Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court speaks²⁷ of the problem ‘which faces any reader of Wyatt's poetry’ ‘to reconcile the conventional picture of him as a “maker of songs” with the unanimous comment of his contemporaries that he was “weighty” and “depe-witted”.’ Tottel praises ‘the weightinesse of the depe witted Sir Thomas Wyat the elders verse’ because in it he had shown that it was possible to rival in English the work of Latin and Italian poets. In recent years Mr Hallett Smith²⁸ and Mr H. A. Mason²⁹ have tended to depreciate Wyatt's original lyrics and to praise him as a translator and adaptor of foreign models. Mr Mason asks ‘can we doubt that if we had all the songs sung at court between Chaucer and Wyatt, we should be able to shew that every word and phrase used by Wyatt was a commonplace?’³⁰ Mr Stevens speaks of the ‘drab lifelessness’ of the courtly lyric. ‘The writers have what amounts to a genius for the stilted and colourless.’³¹ Elsewhere he complains of the ‘barrenness, monotony, superficiality’³² of most of Wyatt's balets; and he agrees with Professor C. S. Lewis that Wyatt's verse was drab and that it was written for social occasions.

There is some truth in these strictures. We may admit that Wyatt wrote within a convention and that many of his poems are indistinguishable in quality from those of his lesser contemporaries. We may allow, too, that his masterpieces were few; that he wrote many poems as part of a courtly game; that he is apt to repeat himself; and that his lyrics are full of poetic clichés. Yet, when all is said, there is more to Wyatt than these criticisms would suggest. A poet must be judged by his successes rather than by his failures, and Wyatt's successes are more numerous than these critics would allow. Moreover, in spite of the resemblances between Wyatt's poems and those of his contemporaries, nearly all his readers would admit that he seems to have an individual voice. Mr Stevens himself prints the poems from three song-books—more than a hundred in all—but hardly any of them could be mistaken for Wyatt's, even when the phrasing is similar. One of the Fayrfax poems, for example, runs as follows:

O my desyre, what eylyth the
Whan that desert lakkyth remedy,
In willfullness so for to be,
Syn that it is playnly foly;
Thoo that ye wolde until ye dye
Yet other grace can ye gett non
Butt yff hit be to wissh for one:
O my desyre, what eylyth the?
Treuth nor service nevir so playne
Cannot avayle, it shal be sayd;
Sum tyme is lost and all in vayne
Thynkyth my hart can be well payd
So for to se ye betrayd,
And all be folissh fantasy
In whom there is no remedy;
O my desyre, what aylyth the?

One of the poems appearing in both the Devonshire and Blage manuscripts, which is generally accepted as Wyatt's, has a superficial resemblance to the above poem:³³

A! my harte, A! what alith the
To set soo light by libertye,
Makyng me bound where I was fre?
          A! my harte, A! what ayleth the?
Where thow warte ryd frome all distres,
Voide of all payne and pensyfnes,
To chouse agayne a new mistress,
          A! my harte, A! what ayleth the?
When thou warte well, thou couldes not hold;
To turne agayne thow warte to bolde;
Thus to renew my sorowes olde,
          A! my harte, a! what ayleth the?
Thow knowest full well that but of late
I was turned owt of Loues gate,
And now to gyde me to this mate,
          A! my harte, a! what ayleth the?
I hoped full well all had ben doone,
But now my hope is tane and wone,
To my turment to yeld soo sone,
          A my hart, a! what ayleth the!

This is not one of Wyatt's best poems but it at least exhibits a more expert craftsmanship than the anonymous song. It can be enjoyed as a poem, whether or no it was set to music. Indeed, Mr Stevens makes the convincing point that there is no certainty that most of Wyatt's poems were intended to be sung. ‘References to music … do not … always imply what at first sight they seem to.’³⁴ All Wyatt's

references to music are vague and conventional, even the most famous of them. He blames his lute, or not, as the fancy takes him, but never talks about it in the way of a man who really understands and cares for it.³⁵

Mr Stevens believes that ‘Blame not my lute’ was written to be sung to a popular tune³⁶ and that ‘A Robyn’³⁷ is an expansion by Wyatt of a popular song set by Cornish:

A Robyn, gentyl Robyn
Tel me how thy lemman doth
And thow shalt know of myne.
My lady is unkynde I wis.
          Alac, why is she so?
She lovyth another better than me
And yet she will say no.
I cannot thynk such doubylnes
          For I fynd women trew;
In faith my lady lovith me well;
          She will change for no new.

Wyatt seems to have tinkered with these stanzas, changing ll.4 and 10 to provide alternate rhymes, and improving the rhythm in two or three lines. Then he added four more sophisticated stanzas:

Thou art happy while that doeth last,
          But I say as I fynde,
That womens love is but a blast
          And torneth like the wynde.
Yf that be trew yett as thou sayst
          That women turn their hart,
Then spek better of them thou mayst,
          In hop to have thy partt.
Suche folkes shall take no harme by love,
          That can abide their torne;
But I, alas, can no way prove
          In love but lake and morne.
But if thou wilt avoyde thy harme,
          Lerne this lessen of me:
At othre fires thy self to warme,
          And let theim warme with the.

As we have admitted, Wyatt was writing within a convention and many of his poems are lacking in individuality. His vocabulary is small, he continually repeats stock phrases and ideas, he rings the changes on a comparatively small number of themes, and he is over-fond of a limited number of rhymes. Again and again he writes of the pain³⁸ and smart³⁹ of love, of the cruelty, disdain,⁴⁰ deceit⁴¹ and faithlessness⁴² of women, of the absence of pity⁴³ and steadfastness,⁴⁴ on the need of patience,⁴⁵ and on the inconstancy of Fortune.⁴⁶ But we cannot make the easy assumption that there is a line of demarcation between the conventional and the inspired for some of his acknowledged masterpieces are similar in tone and treatment to poems which are only partly successful. Compare, for example, two poems on newfangledness, one from the Blage and the other from the Egerton manuscript⁴⁷:

Syethe yt ys so that I am thus refusyd,
          And by no meanys I can yt Remedye,
          Me thynckes of Right I ought to be excusyd,
          Tho to my hart I set yt not to nye;
          But now I see, Alas, tho I shuld dye,
          Ffor want of truthe and ffaythffull stedfastnes
          Of hym that hathe my hart onlye,
          Yt wold not be but ffals nuffanglydnes.
I set my hart, I thought, not to withdrawe,
          The proffe therof ys knowen to well, Alas!
          But now I se that neuer erst I sawe
          Wher I thought gold I fond but brytell glas.
          Now yt ys this ye know, somthyng yt was
          Not so promysed, the truthe ys so dobtles.
          Who ys my fo, who brynges me in thys cace?
          I can none blame but ffals newfanglydnes.
Yet Reasone wold that trewe love wer regardyd
          Without ffayninge, wher ment ffaythfully,
          And not with vnkyndnes ys to be rewardyd.
          But this yt ys, Alas, suche hap had I,
          I can no more but I shall me aplye
          My woffull hart to bryng out of distres,
          And withdraw my mynd so full of ffollye,
          Sythe thus dothe Raygne this false newfanglydnes.

Although, as we can see from line 7, these lines are put into the mouth of a deserted woman, the theme is typical of Wyatt and the poem's vocabulary and rhythm is characteristic of him. But, in spite of one or two good lines and a cunningly varied refrain, the poem as a whole is undistinguished. The Egerton poem, on the other hand, is one of the great anthology pieces:

They fle from me that sometyme did me seke
          With naked fote stalking in my chambre.
I have sene theim gentill, tame and meke
          That nowe are wyld and do not remembre
          That sometyme they put theimself in daunger
To take bred at my hand; and nowe they raunge,
Besely seking with a continuell chaunge.
Thancked be fortune, it hath ben othrewise
          Twenty tymes better; but ons in speciall,
In thyn arraye after a pleasaunt gyse,
          When her lose gowne from her shoulders did fall,
          And she me caught in her armes long and small;
Therewithall swetely did me kysse,
And softely saide, dere hert, howe like you this?
It was no dreme: I lay brode waking.
          But all is torned thorough my gentilnes
Into a straunge fasshion of forsaking;
          And I have leve to goo of her goodenes,
          And she also to vse new fangilnes.
But syns that I so kyndely ame serued,
I would fain knowe what she hath deserued.

It might be supposed that the superiority of this poem was partly due to the fact that Wyatt was here speaking for himself instead of for another. But it so happens that the next poem in the Egerton manuscript, a woman's complaint, is almost as successful. The success of ‘They fle from me’ depends on its rhythmical subtlety (e.g. ll.2, 12, 17), on the effective image in the first stanza, on the particularity of the second stanza which carries immediate conviction, on the perfection of phrasing, and on the way Wyatt walks the tight-rope of acceptable tone. He avoids sentimentality, sensuality, exaggeration, and bitterness.

From reading Wyatt's original poems one might get the impression that he was singularly unlucky in love, that he paid his addresses to a cruel beauty who rejected his suit, that those who loved him were unfaithful. But it must be remembered that the love poems were nearly all written before Wyatt first went to Spain, and perhaps before he met Elizabeth Darrell; that the merciless beauty and ill-used lover were stereotypes; that the woman was not always as merciless nor her suitor so unsuccessful as they were in literature; that Wyatt's poems may seldom be autobiographical; that in the poem just quoted he confesses that he was not always unsuccessful; and that in a number of poems he admits that his picture of love has been one-sided.

One poem in three parts (No. 87) presents as thesis the view that

Love is a fervent fire,
Kendeld by hote desire,
                    For a short pleasure
                    Long displeasure;
Repentaunce is the hire.

The antithesis repudiates this slander of love. Wyatt declares that

To love and not be wise
Is but a mad devise.

True love is a matter of ‘honest wayes’ and ‘plaisaunt daies’:

Love is a plaisaunt fire
Kyndeled by true desire;
                    And though the payne
                    Cause men to playne,
Sped well is ofte the hiere.

The third section of the poem provides a kind of synthesis in which Wyatt admits that thought it were a strange devise ‘To love and to be wise’

Suche fire and suche hete
Did never make ye swete,(48)
                    For withoute payne
                    You best obtayne
To good spede and to great.

In another poem (No. 138) he repudiates the unreturned love of which he has chiefly written and advocates a happier and easier kind:

What vailith vndre kaye
To kepe treasure alwaye,
That never shall se daye?
                    Yf yt be not vsid,
                    Yt ys but abusid.
What vayleth the flowre
To stond still and wither?
Yf no man yt savour,
                    Yt servis onlye for sight
                    And fadith towardes night.
Therefore fere not t'assaye
To gadre ye that maye
The flower that this daye
                    Is fresher than the next:
                    Marke well, I saye, this text.
Let not the frute be lost
That is desired moste;
Delight shall quite the coste.
                    Yf hit be tane in tyme,
                    Small labour is to clyme.

Even in one of the poems in which Wyatt laments the unkindness of his mistress,⁴⁹ he hints at the end that he will find consolation elsewhere:

Farwell, vnknowne, for tho thow brake
          My strynges in spight with grett desdayn,
Yet haue I fownde owtt for thy sake
          Stringes for to strynge my lute agayne;
And yf perchance this folysh Rhyme
Do make the blushe at any tyme,
          Blame nott my lute.

In another poem Wyatt exhorts his readers:⁵⁰

Marvaill no more all tho
          The songes I syng do mone,
For othre liff then wo
          I never proved none.

But in the last stanza he tells them that if his luck in love should change, he will sing a different song:

And if I have suche chaunce,
          Perchaunce ere it be long
For such a pleasaunt chaunce
          To syng som plaisaunt song.

Some of the most successful poems are written to reproach an unfaithful mistress. They range from the desperately simple, short-lined poems⁵¹—

Wyth seruing still
                    This have I wone,
For my goodwill
                    To be vndone;
And for redresse
                    Of all my payne,
Disdaynefulnes
                    I have againe. …
What shulde I saye
                    Sins faithe is dede,
And truthe awaye
                    From you ys fled?
                    Shulde I be led
With doblenesse?
Naye, naye, mistresse!—

to a number of poems in which the effect is obtained by exquisite manipulation of a refrain. Two of the best⁵² are in the Blage manuscript:

Ons in your grace I know I was
Evyn as well as now ys he
Tho ffortune so hath tornyd my case
That I am doune and he ffull hye
                    Yet ons I was.
Ons I was he that dyd you please
So well that nothyng dyd I dobte;
And tho that nowe ye thinke yt ease
To take him in and throw me out,
                    Yet ons I was.
Ons I was he in tyme past
That as your owne ye did Retayne;
And tho ye haue me now out cast
Shoyng vntruth in you to raygne,
                    Yet ons I was.
Ons I was he that knyt the knot
The whyche ye sware not to vnknyt;
And tho ye fayne yt now fforgot
In vsyng your newffanglyd wyt,
                    Yet ons I was.
Ons I was he to whome ye sayd
‘Welcomm, my joy, my hole delight!’
And tho ye ar nowe well apayd
Of me your owne to clame ye quyt,
                    Yet ons I was.
Ons I was he to whome ye spake
‘Haue here my hart, yt ys thy owne!’
And tho thes wordis ye now fforsake
Sayng thereof my part ys none
                    Yet ons I was
Ons I was he before Reherst
And nowe am he that nedes must dye;
And tho I dye, yet at the lest,
In your Remembrance let yt lye
                                        That ons I was.

The other poem uses a Latin word in the refrain as ‘In eternum’ (No. 71):

Quondam was I in my Lady's gras,
          I thynk as well as nou be you;
And when that you haue trad the tras,
          Then shal you kno my woordes be tru,
                    That quondam was I.
Quondam was I. She seyd for euer:
          That euer lastyd but a short whyl;
Promis mad not to dysseuer;
          I thoght she laughte—she dyd but smyl …
                    Than quondam was I.
Quondam was I: he that full oft lay
          In hyr armes wythe kysses many whon.
Yt is enou that thys I may saey:
          Tho amonge the moo nou I be gon,
                    Yet quondam was I.
Quondam was I: yet she wyl you tell
          That syns the ouer she was furst borne
She neuer louyd non halffe so well
          As you. But what altho she had sworne,
                    Suer quondam was I.

There is hardly a memorable line in either of these poems and yet they are masterly. By an organisation of commonplace phrases, vitalized, we must suppose, by deep feeling, by a rhythmical impetus which carries us from the first stanza to the last, and by psychological precision, Wyatt conveys the totality of an experience. This does not necessarily mean that the two poems are autobiographical, though one could hazard a guess that the lady of the first poem is the one who wrote in the poet's book:⁵³

I am yours, you may be wel suer,
And shall be whyle that Lyffe dothe duer.

There are many poems which are concerned not with the faithless mistress but with one who rejects the poet's love from the start.⁵⁴ These include some of Wyatt's most famous lyrics (e.g. ‘Forget not yet’) and some of his dreariest. In the best of them, ‘My lute awake!’, the poet achieves a haunting beauty as he prophesies that his mistress' disdain will be punished:⁵⁵

Vengeaunce shal fall on thy disdain.
That makest but game on ernest pain;
          Thinck not alone vnder the sonne
Vnquyt to cause thy lovers plain,
          All tho my lute and I have done.
Perchaunce the lye wethered and old,
The wynter nyghtes that are so cold,
          Playnyng in vain vnto the mone;
Thy wisshes then dare not be told;
          Care then who lyst, for I have done.
And then may chaunce the to repent
The tyme that thou hast lost and spent
          To cause thy lovers sigh and swoune;
Then shalt thou knowe beaultie but lent,
          And wisshe and want as I have done.

It has been suggested by Sir Edmund Chambers that one poem in the Devonshire manuscript may have been intended by Wyatt as an envoi to a projected volume of love-poems.⁵⁶ In it he exhorts his readers to lament his loss, his labour and his pain and in the last stanza he says farewell to the kind of love of which he has been writing:

And patientely, O Redre, I the praye,
          Take in good parte this worke as yt ys mente
And greve the not with ought that I shall saye,
          Sins with good will this boke abrode ys sente,
To tell men howe in youthe I ded assaye
          What love ded mene and nowe I yt repente:
That musing me my frendes might well be ware,
And kepe them fre from all soche payne and care.

Several recent critics have pointed out resemblances between Wyatt and Donne, though these are surely less striking than the differences. The metrical irregularities and the underlying passion are less significant than the complete absence in Wyatt's poetry of metaphysical wit; and, though sometimes he displays psychological penetration, the majority of his poems were written in a convention similar to the one against which Donne was in reaction.

Yet Wyatt's best lyrics can stand comparison with any written in the sixteenth century. His poetic individuality shines through the conventions he uses and, when all allowances have been made for the social mode of early Tudor verse, in which so many feeble poems were written, he is the first great English lyric poet.

(6) SATIRES

Wyatt's three satires appear close together in the Egerton manuscript and they were probably written before he went to Spain, perhaps in 1536 after his imprisonment in the Tower. The first of the three, at least, was composed at Allington; and all of them were written in a mood of disillusionment with the life of the court and with the worldly arts necessary for success. Wyatt's model for the first was Alamanni's tenth satire, which he follows fairly closely in tone, in content, and in the use of terza rima. The other two were suggested by Horace, but only in general outline.⁵⁷ Wyatt again uses terza rima, and he still makes no attempt to keep the stanzas self-contained.⁵⁸

The general argument of the first satire is the same as Alamanni's, and Wyatt translates some lines almost literally. At the same time he often contrives to be more pointed and particular and to introduce colloquial phrases. The lines—

Non saprei reverir chi soli adora
          Venere et Bacco, ne tacer saprei
          Di quei che'l vulgo falsamente onora.—

appear as:

I cannot honour them that settes their part
          With Venus and Baccus all theire lyf long;
          Nor holld my pece of them allthoo I smart.

Alamanni's next eighteen lines are condensed by Wyatt into twelve. Then he alters a contrast between Caesar and Sulla on the one hand and Brutus on the other to one between Caesar and Cato, who ‘wolld not lyve whar lyberty was lost’. He anglicises references to those who praise bad poetry by substituting:

Praysse Syr Thopas for a nobyll tale,
And skorne the story that the knyght tolld.

In the next thirty-six lines he departs a good deal from the original, but in the lines describing France, Spain, Flanders and Rome Wyatt closely follows Alamanni's corresponding lines, except that he substitutes Flanders for Germany:

Non sono in Francia a sentir beffe et danno
          S'io non conosco i vin, s'io non so bene
          Qual vivanda è miglior di tutto l'anno.
Non nella Ispagna ove studiar conviene
          Più che nell'esser poi nel ben parere,
          Ove frode, et menzogna il seggio tiene.
Non in Germania ove'l mangiare e'l bere
          M'abbia a tor l'intelletto, et darlo in preda
          Al senso, in guisa di selvagge fere.
Non sono in Roma, ove chi'n Cristo creda,
          Et non sappia falsar, nè far veneni,
          Convien ch'a casa sospirando rieda.
          I ame not now in Fraunce to judge the wyne,
          With saffry sauce the delicates to fele;
Nor yet in Spaigne where oon must him inclyne
          Rather then to be, owtewerdly to seme.
          I meddill not with wittes that be so fyne,
Nor Flaunders chiere letteth not my sight to deme
          Of black and white, nor taketh my wit awaye
          With bestlynes, they beeste do so esteme;
Nor I ame not where Christe is geven in pray
          For mony, poison and traison at Rome,
          A commune practise vsed nyght and daie.

It will be observed that Wyatt follows Alamanni in criticising the excessive fondness for good wine and food in France, the hypocrisy of the Spaniards and the religious corruptions of Rome, and that he transfers the German vices to Flanders; but several of his touches (e.g. ‘saffry sauce’ and the lines about Rome) are more vivid.

Finally, Wyatt condenses thirteen lines of the original into the famous lines describing his own pursuits:

But here I ame in Kent and Christendome
          Emong the muses where I rede and ryme;
          Where if thou list, my Poynz, for to come,
Thou shalt be judge how I do spend my tyme.

The theme of this satire, or epistle, is the poet's inability to succeed at court because he could not follow the way of the world. In the second satire, also addressed to Poynz, Wyatt uses the fable of the town and country mice⁵⁹ (as many had done before him) to point the moral that a peaceful private life was preferable to the pursuit of ambition at court. It was a subject very close to Wyatt's heart, as we can see from his early translation of Plutarch, from the poem written in the Tower in 1536, from his imitation of one of Seneca's choruses, and from the noble lines imitated from Boethius.⁶⁰ The last lines of the satire are based on some lines by Persius; but, as Nott pointed out, they are superior to the original:

Magne Pater divum, saevos punire tyrannos
Haud alia ratione velim, cum dira libido
Moverit ingenium ferventi tincta veneno,
Virtutem videant intabescantque relicta.
          These wretched fooles shall have nought els of me,
          But to the great god and to his high dome
None othre pain pray I for theim to be
          But when the rage doeth led them from the right
          That lowking backwards vertue they may se
Evyn as she is so goodly fayre and bright;
          And whilst they claspe their lustes in armes acrosse,
          Graunt theim, goode lorde, as thou maist of thy myght,
To frete inwards for losing suche a losse.

The third satire, addressed to Sir Francis Bryan, a fellow poet and courtier, continues Wyatt's attack on the arts necessary for success in the world. Bryan, like Wyatt himself, was hard up—sometimes, indeed, Wyatt was hard up because he had lent money to Bryan; and the poem, in a bitterly ironical vein, provides various recipes for getting rich, which both men were too scrupulous to follow. Bryan is advised to play the hypocrite, to flatter, to act as pandar, to prostitute his sister or his daughter to a great man.⁶¹ Horace's satire on which Wyatt's is based is also in the form of a dialogue, but we are not told whether Tiresias accepts or rejects Ulysses' advice.⁶² Bryan rejects Wyatt's ironical advice, preferring to ‘have an honest name’.

Wyatt deserves the credit for being a pioneer—he was the first English writer of formal satire. He learnt a good deal, as we have seen, from Latin and Italian satirists, but what he borrowed he made essentially his own. As a satirist he was greatly superior to Hall, Marston, Lodge and even, I think, to Donne. He preserved very skilfully an urbane and colloquial tone, and never forgot, as the Elizabethans were apt to do, that invective was not enough, that a satirist should also be a poet; and he wisely avoided the Juvenalian roughness of versification, which the Elizabethans mistook for strength. Compared with other sixteenth century satirists, it might almost be said that Wyatt was a civilised man among barbarians.⁶³

(7) PSALMS

Wyatt's version of the Penitential Psalms have evoked widely differing reactions. Miss Foxwell thought they were the crown of his achievement; but Dr Tillyard spoke of them as ‘academic exercises, penitential not merely in matter, but to those whose task it is to read them’. There have been signs in recent years of less extreme attitudes. When I remarked ‘that Wyatt contrived to make better metrical versions of the psalms than either Sidney or Milton’, I intended to damn with faint praise. Since then, I must confess, I have come to value the Psalms more highly, partly as the result of familiarity and partly after reading Mr H. A. Mason's illuminating exposition.⁶⁴

It is important to realise that the Penitential Psalms, with their prologues, are essentially a single poem.⁶⁵ These psalms had been traditionally associated with the story of David and Bathsheba, and Aretino, who provided Wyatt with the main outlines of his poem, used this story as a framework. We now know, through the researches of Mr Mason,⁶⁶ that Wyatt also made use of Latin versions of the Psalms by Campensis and Zwingli. There were English translations of both these, but Mr Mason has not found any evidence that Wyatt used either. It is probable, as Miss Foxwell and Professor Hallett Smith both believed, that Wyatt also used the 1530 prose psalter.⁶⁷

Professor Smith remarks that the Psalms are ‘romantic’:

They form a series of complaints, not so much for sin in general as for the traps and trammels of the flesh from a courtly point of view. David is made the author of a kind of de remedia amoris.

But Wyatt's purpose seems to have been a good deal more serious than these remarks would suggest. Starting from Aretino's not very distinguished prose, he contrives before the end of the sequence to express with an individual voice his own religious feelings. We need not assume, of course, that Wyatt was repenting the sins of the flesh; and, even if he were, we do not know the precise reasons for his imprisonment in 1536, so that we cannot date the Psalms by their subject matter which was provided both by his main source and by tradition. He treats the theme dramatically, although he could express, suitably modified, his own feelings of repentance. On the whole, 1541 seems to be the most probable date of the poem.⁶⁸

Miss Foxwell believed that Wyatt ‘touches at times the mystical vision which to Blake was the only domain of poetry and the only reality of life’. But there is nothing mystical about Wyatt's Psalms and the qualities displayed in them are entirely dissimilar to those of Blake. As Mr Mason has shown,⁶⁹ the poem is ‘a drama of penitence’ in which Wyatt seems to have been following protestant theologians, though we may doubt whether the Psalms ‘have been completely adapted to the poet's inner needs’. Mr Mason admits that the poem is not entirely successful and he believes that this is due to Wyatt's failure to rewrite the earlier part, written before his real theme had emerged:

Although the theme of this poem was central, for it turns on the restatement of man's relation to God, its universal significance is lost or so clouded as only to emerge in patches.

Perhaps the partial failure of the poem can be better explained by its unfinished state. Mr Mason, indeed, points out that ‘though Wyatt corrected some weak passages, he left many more, just as weak, uncorrected’. The corrections are spread, fairly evenly, through the fourteen sections—the seven Psalms with their prologues. From the appearance of the manuscript, it looks as though we have to do with an early, if not with a first, draft, and that the corrections were made for the most part at the time of composition. I can see no signs of a systematic revision after the completion of the poem.⁷⁰

The association of all the Penitential Psalms with the story of David and Bathsheba led Wyatt into some psychological improbabilities. The threats of David against his enemies⁷¹ were inappropriate to the situation described in the prologues, though Wyatt who on several occasions knew himself to be surrounded by enemies, could use such passages to express his own feelings.

Wyatt's paraphrases, particularly of the first two Psalms, are much longer than the biblical versions; but, generally speaking, he amplifies the original by the introduction of phrases from the Bible or its commentators. There is therefore little opportunity of originality of phrasing or of imagery; and some of the most successful passages are those in which Wyatt adopts King David's own similes:

For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth. My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread. By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin. I am like a pelican of the wilderness; I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and as a sparrow alone upon the house top. Mine enemies reproach me all the day; and they that are mad against me are sworn against me. For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.

                    Ffor like as smok my days bene past awaye,
                    My bonis dryd vp as forneis with the fyre,
My hert, my mynd is wytherd vp like haye,
                    By cawse I have forgot to take my brede,
                    My brede of lyff, the word of trowth, I saye:
And ffor my plaintfull syghes, and my drede,
                    My bonis, my strength, my very force off mynde,
                    Cleved to the flesh and from the spryte were flede,
As dispairate thy mercy for to fynd.
                    So made I me the solaine pelycane,
                    And lyke the owle that fleith by propre kynd
Lyght of the day and hath her sellff betane
                    To ruyne lyff owt off all companye.
                    With waker care that with this wo bygane,
Lik the sparow was I solytarye,
                    That sittes alone vnder the howsis effes.
                    This while my foes conspird continually,
And did provoke the harme off my dises.
                    Wherfor lik ashes my bred did me savour,
                    Of thi just word the tast myght not me ples.
Wherfore my drynk I temperd with lycour
                    Off weping teris that from myn iyes do rayne.

It may be pointed out that the Psalmist tells us he forgets to eat his bread because his heart is withered like grass; Wyatt's heart, on the other hand, is withered up like hay because he has forgotten to take the bread of life, the word of truth. This is an example of the way Wyatt adapted the Psalms to contemporary circumstances. A few years later, his friend Blage, when expecting martyrdom, complained that⁷²

The living word, the bread of life from us
By mighty hand extorted have these men,
Feigning as though it were food dangerous,
And for God's wheat feed us with bishops' bren.

(8) CONCLUSION

It will have been noticed that my views on Wyatt have been modified during the past fifteen years. My remarks on his translations of Petrarch's sonnets and on the Psalms, written in 1948, do them less than justice. But although we must be grateful for the work of Hallett Smith, Baldi, Lever and Mason, it is still true that we must distinguish between Wyatt's importance in literary history and in the humanism of the early Tudor period and his living significance as a poet. When the critics have done their best to help us to appreciate Wyatt's less popular works, it must be said that for ten people who honestly enjoy the Petrarch translations and the Penitential Psalms, there must be a thousand who take unforced pleasure in ‘The flee from me’, ‘My lute awake’, ‘Forget not yet’ and a number of other poems which are familiar from the anthologies.⁷³ This is case in which we should rejoice in concurring with the common reader. Wyatt's greatest poems are not his translations, but the lyrics for which no direct source has been discovered, though the three satires, which are adapted from foreign originals, are likewise masterly.

Wyatt has many titles to fame: as the introducer of the sonnet, terza rima, and the rondeau into England, as the first English satirist, as the poet who blended native influences with those of France and Italy, as the best of the court poets of the reign of Henry VIII, indeed as the best poet between Chaucer and Spenser, as the author of the finest metrical versions of the Psalms in the language, and, above all, as the writer of a number of great lyrics. The reader of the letters included in this volume may be inclined to add that he was a writer of eloquent and flexible prose. Several of his diplomatic dispatches, his letters to his son, and his Defence are admirable examples of a prose which had no equal in his own day and which was less laboured and pretentious than that of most Elizabethan writers.⁷⁴

Notes

1. Unpublished Poems, p. 82. The Tottel text is less exact. If we read Entended for Intendid in l. 4 we should have Anne, which is doubtless Wyatt's intention. Patricia Thomson, R.E.S. (1959), has shown that Wyatt in No. 8 used a commentary on Petrarch published in 1525, long after Roos' death.

2. The Arundel Harington Manuscript of Tudor Poetry (1960).

3. Sergio Baldi, La Poesia di Sir Thomas Wyatt (1953); H. Smith, H.L.Q., ix. 4; J. W. Lever, The Elizabethan Love Sonnet (1956); Otto Hietsch, Die Petrarcaübersetzungen Sir Thomas Wyatts (1960). See also Patricia Thomson, ‘Wyatt and the Petrarchan Commentators’, R.E.S. (1959), pp. 225-33. Hietsch makes a similar point, pp. 21ff.

4. No. 21.

5. No. 32.

6. Hietsch suggests that the final couplet may have been influenced by Chaucer's Rime Royal.

7. No. 169.

8. No. 56.

9. cf. Patricia Thomson, R.E.S. (1959), pp. 228-30.

10. No. 190.

11. R.E.S. (1959), pp. 230-3.

12. No. 269.

13. Possibly derived, as Hietsch suggests, from another sonnet (x).

14. Similar comparisons have been made by Hallett Smith (who considers No. 4), by J. W. Lever (who discusses Nos. 29, 24, 25, 9, 173), by H. A. Mason, Humanism and Poetry in the Early Tudor Period (1959), (No. 173), and by Otto Hietsch, who prints all Wyatt's imitations of Petrarch side by side with the originals, giving a full commentary.

15. op. cit. pp. 52-61.

16. Nos. 14, 22, 39, 40, 44, 48, 60, 61, 70, 76, 103.

17. No. 196.

18. Arundell Esdaile was the first to discover this. No. 104 is based on a poem by Pietro Bembo. cf. Ivy L. Mumford's article in Eng. Misc., xi, p. 23.

19. Nos. 15, 18, 19.

20. e.g. Nos. 2, 35, 45.

21. No. 176.

22. See … Unpublished Poems, p. 57.

23. Unpublished Poems, No. II.

24. Nos. 51, 155.

25. Unpublished Poems, No. XXII.

26. Unpublished Poems, p. 67.

27. op. cit., p. 133.

28. H.L.Q. ix. 4.

29. Humanism and Poetry in the Early Tudor Period (1959).

30. op. cit., p. 171.

31. op. cit., p. 212.

32. op. cit., p. 149.

33. Unpublished Poems, p. 77.

34. op. cit., p. 121.

35. op. cit., p. 134.

36. op. cit., pp. 137-8.

37. No. 55.

38. e.g. 1, 2, 4-5, 8, 11, 14-15, 20, 22-3, 26, 32, 36, 38, 47, 50, 53, 57-8, 66, 72, 74, 77, 79, 81, 83-4, 86-7, III, IV, VIII, XII, XXIV, XXV.

39. e.g. 5, 8, 11, 20, 43, 52, 56, 62, 65, 69, 74, 83-4, 86-7, 89, 104, 106, X, XXIX, XXXIV, XXXV, XLII, XLIX.

40. e.g. 1, 2, 5, 6, 11, 18, 22, 32, 42, 50, 56-7, 66-7, 89, 99, 113, 116, 119, 132, 141, 144, III, VI, XXXIV, XLVI.

41. e.g. 2, 5, 6, 8, 55, 120, 124, 143, 152, 196.

42. e.g. 2, 5, 10, 19, 23, 39, 40, 50, 70, 121, 129, 132, XVII, XXXVII.

43. e.g. 1, 5, 22, 39, 51, 99, 156, 180, 190.

44. e.g. 2, 5, 8, 43, 53, 62, 69, 79, 88, 93, 109, 120, 121, XXXVII.

45. e.g. 8, 39-40, 47, 118, 162, 187, VIII, XII.

46. e.g. 23, 27, 31, 36, 52-3, 58, 60, 62, 65, 83, 114, 121, 123, 125, 152, 155, 157-8.

47. Unpublished Poems XXXVII; Collected Poems 37.

48. sweat.

49. No. 132.

50. No. 52.

51. Nos. 157, 143. See also ‘And wylt thow leve me thus?’ No. 113.

52. XXXIII, XLVIII.

53. No. 114.

54. e.g. Nos. 51, 58, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 84, 103, 110, 112, 130.

55. No. 66.

56. No. 142.

57. The second satire is closer than the third. But Wyatt omits the visit of the town mouse to the country and substitutes a cat for Horace's dogs (Serm. II. 6). Henryson also has a cat in his version of the story and his town mouse, like Wyatt's country mouse, says ‘Pepe’. Baldi suggests that some lines were inserted from Orazio.

58. In this he may have been following contemporary Italian practice.

59. H. A. Mason rightly points out the influence of Chaucer on the style of the narrative.

60. Nos. 176, 195.

61. Berdan, Early Tudor Poetry (1920), p. 378, assumes that Bryan played the pandar for Henry VIII; but if Wyatt had any reason to doubt Bryan's integrity he would not have addressed these lines to him. Cf. No. 168. Bryan's extant verse and his translations from Guevara (S.T.C. 12431, 12448) show that he shared many of Wyatt's views, whatever his practice may have been.

62. Serm., II.5.

63. For various reasons I do not agree with H. A. Mason's view that the satires were composed after the Psalms. See below, p. 256.

64. Humanism and Poetry in the Early Tudor Period (1959), pp. 206 ff.

65. In my edition, unfortunately, the sections are numbered separately.

66. Cf. T.L.S. 27 Feb. 1953.

67. H.L.Q., ix, pp. 262-3.

68. H. A. Mason (op. cit., p. 205) argues from phrases in poems written by Surrey, supposedly in 1537, that Wyatt's Psalms were written during his imprisonment in 1536 and that the satires were written later, the third as late as 1541. I do not think we can be sure that the words in Wyatt's defence (‘I trotted continually up and down that hell through heat and stink, from councillor to ambassador, from one friend to another’) were necessarily written before similar lines in the third satire. If he were composing the Psalms directly into the Egerton manuscript, he would have had a copy of the satires with him; and even if, as I think, the Psalms were composed between the date of Cromwell's execution and his own imprisonment, there is no reason why he should not have echoed his own lines in his Defence. Wyatt, after all, frequently echoed himself.

    Mr Mason thinks that Wyatt could not be echoing Surrey in the Psalms because the phrases are direct translations. But they are not the only possible translations. The word ‘vnsupped’ (common to ‘So crewell prison’ and No. 206) and ‘susteynd my werid arme My hand my chin to ese my restles hed’, which resembles ‘his arme, his hand, susteind his chin’ (No. 210) could be explained by supposing that Wyatt, although translating, was also remembering Surrey's poems written in prison. It should be remembered that we have no evidence that Wyatt and Surrey were acquainted as early as 1537.

    Mr. Mason himself says that Wyatt left his translation of the Psalms ‘virtually unfinished’. If he had written it as early as 1536 he would have been less likely to leave it in an unfinished state than if he had written it in 1541, only a year before he died. Moreover, its position in the manuscript, after two or three poems known to have been written in Spain, makes it unlikely to have been composed before 1538—unless, indeed, these pages in Wyatt's handwriting were bound up with the collection of poems in the hand of his scribe at some later date.

69. op. cit., p. 211.

70. There are, for example, many corrections of f. 92 (Psalm 38), and some of them, perhaps all, were made at the time of composition. Line 44 was originally—

    As ken vnkynd were gone farr off.

    Wyatt inserted ‘naturall’ before ‘kyn’ to make a complete line. Then after writing the next line he realised that it would be difficult to find a rhyme for ‘off’ and he went back to correct 1.44—

    As kyn vnkynd were fardest gone at nede.

    A few lines later we find the same process at work. Wyatt first wrote—

    One word agayne ffor that to the O Lord
    I me dyrect thow shalt my helpe supplye.

    Then he saw that it would be difficult to find a rhyme for ‘Lord’ and rewrote the lines in their present form:

    One word agayne, knowyng that from thi hand
    These things procede and thow O lord shalt supplye.

    A third example occurs at the end of the Psalm. In 1.68 Wyatt wrote—

    Fforsak me not, nor be not from me farr.

    But when he came to write 1.70—

    O Lord, the lord of all my helth alone—

    he had to go back to alter the rhyme word:

    Fforsak me not; be not farr from me gone.

    As Wyatt could not have left unrhymed lines even in a first draft, there is no doubt that these changes were made at the time, and not days, weeks, or years later.

71. No. 201, ll. 97-105; No. 205, ll. 61-70; No. 213, ll. 36-48.

72. See Appendix C for the whole poem.

73. Perhaps it is relevant to add that, since my discovery of the Wyatt poems in the Blage MS, I have had enthusiastic letters from people who have admired ‘Ons in her grace’ ‘Quondam was I’ and ‘I must go walke the woodes so wyld’.

74. Patricia Thomson, H.L.Q., xxv, (1962), pp. 147-56.

Bibliography

I. Editions of Wyatt

i. Certayne Psalmes chosen out of the Psalter of David (1549).

ii. The Works of … Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder. Edited by G. F. Nott (1816).

iii. The Poetical Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt. Edited by Robert Bell (1866).

iv. The Poems of Sir Thomas Wiat. Edited by A. K. Foxwell (1913).

v. The Poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt. Edited by E. M. W. Tillyard (1929).

vi. Collected Poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt. Edited by Kenneth Muir (1949, 1960).

vii. Plutarch's Quyete of Mynde. Edited by C. R. Baskervill (1931).

viii. Unpublished Poems. Edited by Kenneth Muir (1961).

II. Manuscripts

British Museum:

Egerton MS. 2711.

Harleian MS. 78.

Harleian MS. 282.

Royal MS. 20B.

Add. MS. 5498.

Vespasian MS. C. vii.

Vespasian MS. P. xiii.

Loan MS. 15.

Public Record Office:

for Letters 3, 5, 8, 12, 38, 39, 40, 43.

Trinity College, Dublin:

D. 2. 7

III. Previous Lives

i. G. F. Nott in I. ii. above.

ii. Robert Bell in I. iii. above.

iii. W. E. Simonds: Sir Thomas Wyatt and his Poems (1889).

iv. E. M. W. Tillyard in I. v. above.

v. E. K. Chambers: Sir Thomas Wyatt and Some Collected Studies (1933).

vi. Sir Stanley Wyatt: The Wyatts and the Cheyneys (1960).

IV. Historical Sources

(i) Letters and Papers … Henry VIII. Vols. II-XVII.

(ii) Venetian Calendar.

(iii) State Papers.

(iv) Proceedings … of the Privy Council.

(v) Spanish Calendar.

(vi) E. Bapst: Deux Gentilshommes Poetes (1891).

(vii) J. Bruce: Gentleman's Magazine (June, September 1850).

(viii) E. Casady: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1938).

(ix) W. Martin Conway: Arch. Cantiana XVIII.

(x) De Molins, Crónica del Rey Henrico (1874).

(xi) H. Ellis: Original Letters (1827).

(xii) G. R. Elton: Cambridge Historical Journal (1951).

(xiii) G. R. Elton: The Tudor Constitution (1960).

(xiv) J. Foxe: Acts and Monuments (1846).

(xv) P. Friedmann: History of Anne Boleyn (1884).

(xvi) Edward Hall: Henry VIII (1904).

(xvii) H. Hall: Society in the Elizabethan Age (1887).

(xviii) N. Harpsfield: A Treatise on the Pretended Divorce (1878).

(xix) J. Kaulek: Correspondence Politique (1885).

(xx) David Lloyd: State Worthies (1766).

(xxi) C. E. Long: The Wiltshire Arch. Mag. IV.

(xxii) R. B. Merriman: Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell (1902). Vol. II.

(xxiii) N. Sander: The Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism (1877).

(xxiv) William H. Wiatt: Journal of English and Germanic Philology (1961), pp. 268-72.

(xxv) J. H. Wiffen: Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell (1833).

V. Literary Works

Sergio Baldi: La Poesia di Sir Thomas Wyatt (1953).

T. Blundeville: Three Moral Treatises (1561).

A. K. Foxwell: A Study of Sir Thomas Wyatt's Poems (1911).

Otto Hietsch: Die Petrarcaübersetzungen Sir Thomas Wyatts (1960).

Ruth Hughey: The Library, XV, pp. 388-444.

Ruth Hughey: The Arundel Harington Manuscript of Tudor Poetry (1960).

John Leland: Cygnea Cantio (1545).

John Leland: Næniae (1542).

J. W. Lever: The Elizabethan Love Sonnet (1956).

H. A. Mason: Poetry and Humanism in the Early Tudor Period (1959).

H. E. Rollins: Tottel's Miscellany (1928-9).

H. Smith: Hntington Library Quarterly, IX.

John Stevens: Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (1961).

Patricia Thomason: Review of English Studies (1959), pp. 225-33.

Patricia Thomson: Comparative Literature XIII (1961), pp. 289-315.

Patricia Thomson: Huntington Library Quarterly XXV (1962), pp. 147-56.