A PRAYER: TO THE FATHER OF HEAVEN. O radiant luminary of light interminable, Of al perfections the essenciall most perfighte; Whose magnificence is incomprehensible, Al arguments of reason which far doth excede, From whom al goodnes and vertue doth procede, Assist me, good Lorde, and graunt me of thy grace TO THE SECOND PARSONE. O benigne Jesu, my soverain lorde and kynge, The Second Parson without beginning, Both God and man our faith maketh plain relacion- Whose glorious passion our soules doth revive O pereles prynce paynted to the death, TO THE HOLY GHOST. O firy sentence, inflaméd with all grace, Enkyndeling hertes with brandes charitable, To the Father and the Son thou art communicable O water of lyfe, O wel of consolacion, Against al suggestions deadly and dampnable To whome is appropryed the Holy Ghost by name, Of perfyt love thou art the ghostlye flame, SIR THOMAS WYAT was born at Allington Castle, Kent, in 1503, and educated successively at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. He returned from continental travel to take his place at the Court of Henry VIII., with whom his interest soon became proverbial. He was celebrated as a refined and accomplished scholar, and as the most elegant and universally-gifted gentleman of his time. He fell into disfavour," to quote the words of Fuller, "about the business of Queen Anne Bullen," and was committed to the Tower at the instance of the Duke of Suffolk, with whom he had quarrelled. Upon his enlargement he was appointed to a high military command, was knighted, and made high-sheriff of his county. In 1537, Wyat was sent as ambassador to the Court of the Emperor Charles V.; and the observations he here made, and the counsels, founded upon them, which he gave to his own sovereign, sufficiently vindicate his political sagacity. Nevertheless, after his return he had to defend himself before a committee of the Council against certain malicious accusations of Bishop Bonner. These charges he successfully repelled. Urged by his eagerness to execute a commission of considerable dignity and importance which had been entrusted to him, he overheated himself by hard riding in the summer of 1541, and, after a few days' illness, died of fever at Sherborne, Dorsetshire, in the thirty-eighth year of his age. His muse was influenced by a too close study of the Italian poets. His erotic poetry, instead of the natural and the passionate, exhibits too frequently the frigid and attenuated. His style is often involved, and his vigour impaired by conceits. It is as a satirist and moralist that he holds his highest poetical position. THAT PLEASURE IS MIXED WITH EVERY PAINE. Venemous thornes that are so sharpe and kene, Bear flowers we se full fresh and faire of hue; And unto man his health doth oft renue; HE RULETH NOT, THOUGH HE REIGNE OVER If thou wilt mighty be, flee from the rage For, though thine empire stretche to Indian sea, If to be noble and high thy mind be moved, So that wretched no way may thou bee, All were it so thou had a flood of gold, Unto thy thirst yet should it not suffice; THIS patriarch of our didactic poets was born at the "fair village" of Rivenhall, in Essex; and was, as he tells us in his metrical autobiography, "of lineage good, of gentle blood." His father sent him as a chorister to Walling ford College, where he complains of the constant sufferings he had to undergo from the punishments inflicted upon him. On account of his fine voice, he was pressed for the choir of St. Paul's, and attained to a considerable proficiency in music. From St. Paul's he was sent to Eton, where the celebrated Nicholas Udall entertained him with Latin phrases and fifty-three stripes by way of welcome. Tusser entered at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, but his studies were interrupted by ill health. He was introduced at Court by Lord Paget, and remained there, probably in a musical capacity, for ten years. At the end of this period his disgust at the vices and dissensions of the nobles about the young king, Edward VI., outweighed his expectations of advancement. He accordingly betook himself to the practice of agriculture successively at Ratwood, in Suffolk, at Ipswich, and at West Dereham. At Norwich we find him, after a time, officiating as a member of the cathedral choir. Throughout his various migrations and his desultory occupations he continued faithful to the faculty of failure with which Nature had bounteously gifted him; and he died poor, in London, about the year 1580. He was buried at St. Mildred's Church, in the Poultry. His quaint and not always untuneful poem, called "A Hundred Good Points of Husbandrie," has for its great object to incite to the pursuit of gain and godliness. No one has ever whispered that he did not practise the religious precepts he inculcated; but the falling off of his life from the thriftiness which he professed has been more than once a provocative to pleasantry : "Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive, Thou, teaching thrift, thyself couldst never thrive: So, like the whetstone, many men are wont To sharpen others when themselves are blunt." |