CHAPTER XII.

THE FAIR GERALDINE.

In the reign of the second Grande Duke of Tuscany, of Lorenzo's family, (Cosmo I.) Florence, it is said, beheld a novel and extraordinary spectacle; a young traveller, from a court and a country which the Italians of that day seemed to regard much as we now do the Esquimaux,* combining the learning of the scholar and the amiable bearing of the courtier, with all the rash bravery of youthful romance, astonished the inhabitants of that queenly city, first, by rivalling her polished nobles in the splendour of his state, and gallantry of his manners, and next, by boldly proclaiming that his "lady love" was superior to all that Italy could vaunt of beauty, that she was "oltre le belle, bella," fair beyond the fairest,-and maintaining his boast in a solemn tourney held in her honour, to the overthrow of all his opponents.

This was our English Surrey; one of the earliest and most elegant of our amatory poets, and the lover of the Fair Geraldine.

It must be admitted that the fame of the Earl of Surrey does not rest merely on title, and that if the fair Geraldine had never existed, he would still have lived in history as an accomplished scholar, soldier, courtier, and been lamented as the noble victim of a suspicious tyrant. But if some fair object of romantic gallantry had not given the impulse to his genius, and excited him to try his powers in a style of which no models yet existed in his native language,t-it may be doubted whether his name would

"Those bears of English-those barbarous islanders," are common phrases in the Italian writers of that age.

+ Surrey introduced the sonnet, and the use of blank verse into our literature. It is a curious fact, that the earliest blank verse extant was written by Saint Francis.

have descended to us with all those poetical and chival rous associations which give a charm and an interest to his memory, far beyond that of a mere historical character. As for the fair-haired, blue-eyed Geraldine, the mistress of his fancy and affections, and the subject of his verse, her identity long lay entombed, as it were, in a poetical name; but Surrey had loved her, had maintained her beauty at the point of his lance-had made her "famous by his pen, and glorious by his sword." This was more than enough to excite the interest and the inquiries of posterity, and lo! antiquaries and commentators fell to work, archives were searched, genealogies were traced, and at length the substance of this beautiful poetical shadow was detected: she was proved to have been the Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, afterwards the wife of a certain Earl of Lincoln, of whom little is known-but that he married the woman Surrey had loved.

Surrey has ingeniously contrived to compress, within the compass of a sonnet, some of the most interesting particulars of the personal and family history of his mistress. The Fitzgeralds derive their origin from the Geraldi of Tuscany,—hence

From Tuscan came my ladye's worthy race,
Fair Florence was sometime their ancient seat.

She was born and nurtured in Ireland

Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast.

Her father was the Earl of Kildare, her mother allied to the blood royal.

Her sire an Earl, her dame of Princes's blood.

She was brought up (through motives of compassion, after the misfortunes of her family,) at Hunsdon, with the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, where Surrey, who frequently visited them in company with the young Duke of Richmond, first beheld her.

Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyes.

* Natural brother of the princesses; he was the son of Henry VIII. by Lady Talbot.

She was then extremely young, not above fourteen or fifteen, as it appears from comparative dates; and Surrey says very clearly,

She wanted years to understand

The grief that he did feel.

But even then her budding charms made him confess, as he beautifully expresses it

How soon a look can print a thought

That never may remove!

It was during the festivals held at Hampton Court, whither she accompanied the Princesses, that her conquest was completed; and Surrey being afterwards confined at Windsor, was deprived of her society.

Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight;
Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine,
Windsor, alas! doth chase me from her sight.

Hampton Court was the scene of their frequent interviews. Surrey mentions a certain recessed or bow window, in which, retired apart from the gay throng around them, they held "converse sweet." Here she gave him, as it seems, some encouragement; too proud of such a distinguished suitor to let him escape. He in the same moment confesses himself a very slave, and betrays an indignant consciousness of the arts by which she keeps him entangled in her chain.

In silence tho' I keep to such secrets myself,

Yet do I see how she sometimes, doth yield a look by stealth;
As tho' it seemed, I wis,—"I will not lose thee so!"

When in her heart so sweet a thought did never truly grow.

He accuses her expressly of a love of general admiration, and of giving her countenance and favour to unworthy rivals. In "The Warning to a Lover how he is abused by his Love," he thus addressed himself as the deceived lover :

Where thou hast loved so long, with heart and all thy power,
I see thee fed with feigned words, &c.

* He was imprisoned for eating meat in Lent.

I see her pleasant cheer in chiefest of thy suit:

When thou art gone, I see him come who gathers up the fruit;
And eke in thy respect, I see the base degree

Of him to whom she gives the heart, that promised was to thee !*

The fair Geraldine must have been a practised coquette to have sat for a picture so finished and so strongly marked: yet before we blame her for this disdainful trifling, it should be remembered that Lord Surrey, at the time he was wooing her with "musicke vows," was either married or contracted to another,t-a circumstance quite in keeping with the fashionable system of Platonic gallantry introduced from Italy

O Plato! Plato! you have been the cause, &c.

I forbear to continue the apostrophe.

According to the old tradition, repeated by all Surrey's biographers, he visited on his travels the famous necromancer Cornelius Agrippa, who in a magic mirror revealed to him the fair figure of his Geraldine, lying dishevelled on a couch, and, by the light of a taper, reading one of his tenderest sonnets.

Fair all the pageant, but how passing fair

The slender form that lay on couch of Ind!
O'er her white bosom strayed her hazle hair,
Pale her dear cheek, as if for love she pined.
All in her night.robe loose, she lay reclined,
And pensive read from tablet eburnine,
Some strain that seemed her inmost soul to find;—
That favoured strain was Surrey's raptured line,
That fair and lovely form, the Lady Geraldine !†

This beautiful incident is too celebrated, too touching, not to be one of the articles of our poetical faith. It was believed by Surrey's contemporaries, and in the age immediately following was gravely related by a grave historian. It shows at least the celebrity which his poetry, unequalled at that time, had given to his love, and the object of it. In fact when divested of the antique spelling, which, at the first glance, revolts by the impression it gives of difficulty and obscurity, some of the lyrics of Surrey have not + Surrey's Works: Nott's Edit. 4to.

*Lady Frances Vere.
Lay of the Last Minstrel.

since been surpassed either in elegance of sentiment, or flowing grace of expression :-for example

A Praise of his Love, wherein he reproveth them that compare their Ladies with his.

Give place ye lovers here before,

That spent your bostes and braggs in vain,
My ladye's beauty passeth more
The best of yours, I dare well sayne,
Then doth the sun the candle light,

Or brightest day the darkest night.

And thereto hath a truth as just,
As had Penelope the fair :

For what she sayeth you may it trust,
As it by writing sealed were ;
And virtues hath she many moe,

Than I with pen have skill to show.

The following sonnet is rather a specimen of versification than of sentiment: the subject is borrowed from Petrarch.

A COMPLAINT BY NIGHT, OF A LOVER NOT BELOVED.
Alas! so all things now do hold their peace,
Heaven and earth disturbed in no thing;
The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease,
And the night's car the stars about doth bring:
Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less :
So am not I, whom love, alas! doth wring
Bringing before my face the great increase
Of my desires, whereas I weep and sing,
In joy and woe, as in a doubtful case.

For my sweet thoughts, some time do pleasure bring;
But by and bye, the cause of my disease,

Gives me a pang that inwardly doth sting,

When that I think, what grief it is again

To live, and lack the thing should rid my pain.

Geraldine was so beautiful as to authorize the raptures of her poetical lover. Even in her later years, when as Countess of Lincoln, she attended on Queen Elizabeth, she retained so much of her excelling loveliness, that the adoration paid to her in youth, was not wondered at; and her celebrity as Surrey's early love, is alluded to by contemporary writers.* There can be no doubt that she was an

* Queen Elizabeth's Progresses, vol. i,