From the same source we learn that in this reign there ‘sprong up a new company
of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat th’ elder and Henry Earle of
Surrey were the two chieftaines, who hauing trauailed into Italie, and there tasted
the swete and stately measures and stile of the Italian poesie, as nouices newly
crept out of the schooles of Dante, Arioste, and Petrarch, they greatly pollished
our rude and homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had been before, and for
that cause may iustly be sayd the first reformers of our English meeter and stile.’
— Ubi supra, 110. i. chap. 31. Warton remarks that ‘So many of the nobility,
and principal persons about the court, writing sonnets in the Italian style, is a cir-


cumstance which must have greatly contributed to circulate this mode of compo- -


sition, and to encourage the study of the Italian poets,’ and adds to the list of
courtiers already mentioned the name of Edmund Lord Sheffield, created a baron
by King Edward the Sixth, and said by Bale to have written sonnets in the Italian
manner.—//ist. of Engl. Poetry, vol. iii. p. 63, ed. 1840, The author’s strictures
in the text may possibly refer to the unfortunate Earl of Surrey, though he was
not beheaded till 1547, and at the time of the publication of Ze Governour must
have been at the zenith of his fame; but the example set by this distinguished
man of fashion was doubtless followed at a great distance by a whole host of cour-
tiers of lesser mete,to whom Sir Thomas Elyot’s remarks would more appropriately
apply.
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213 THE GOVERNOUR.
