all ranks in the state; indeed, he himself was little more than the chief spy in the kingdom. Royal condescension ever makes men communicative; his perpetual smile threw those whom he addressed off their guard; and his art turned their simplicity to his advantage. In this manner, he obtained a knowledge of every man's special secrets, and had the wit to use his information so as to make himself esteemed wise, because he seemed to know so much of which other men were ignorant.

Notwithstanding his fondness for money he had some expensive tastes, as, indeed, is but common with avaricious persons. He was pleased with the possession of jewels and ornaments of the person, and bought them at a very great expense. In fourteen years he spent the enormous sum of 110,0007. in the purchase of jewels and precious stones. Perhaps he regarded them as an eligible investment for one whose usurped dominion was perpetually shaken by conspirators. He had the royal taste for forming zoological collections, and gave rewards to those who brought him lions, leopards, tigers, wild-cats, eagles, and popinjays.

His residence on the continent acquainted him with the language of the French, and throughout his life he maintained a familiarity with their best books. He also understood Latin, and seems to have had a general fondness for literature, purchasing books both printed and written, and giving money to those who were skilled in binding, and in the copying, gilting, and limning of MSS. Even as much as 237. was once given by him for a single volume. Poetry was especially patronised by him; his court was crowded by pretenders to the favour of the muses, and every one who could make a rhyme, was sure of some sort of a reward if he could but procure himself to be presented to the king. Musicians, also, from the organist to the bagpiper; players upon the tabor, and upon recorders; waits, harpers, tumblers, morris dancers, players, both French and English, minstrels, leapers, wrestlers,-all shared the royal favour. His own musical establishment contained an organist, a harper, nine trumpets, four shakbushes, three string minstrels, and a piper. Her Majesty had a fidler. Dancers were especially fortunate with him. "A little maiden that daunced" on the 7th January, 1497, was rewarded with the princely recompense of 127.; and on the 25th August, 1493, another " young damosell" similarly accomplished, and who appears to have been known about the court, so pleased the fancy of the penurious monarch as to obtain a reward of 301.-an important sum when five pair of gloves, fit for royal fingers, were purchased for 20 pence, and a quarter of wheat might be obtained for 4 or 5 shillings.

He admired costly dresses, and encouraged stately processions, jousts, and other public shews, but without interfering in them otherwise than as a spectator. Although brave, firm, and somewhat adventurous, perhaps no man was ever more totally devoid of the free, open, honourable, generous spirit of chivalry.

Restlessness and a fondness for a little speculation, generally accompany covetousness, and often render persons, who are tormented with that odious vice, card-players and gamblers upon a small scale. So it was with Henry VII. He shot at butts with the cross-bow, played at chess, tennistables, cards, and with dice, and always for money. Although a sovereign he often lost, and sometimes as much as 47., 57., and even 97. at a sitting. The same feelings prompted him, occasionally, to embark money upon the sublime speculations of the alchemist; and a desire to participate in the treasure opened up by Columbus in the west, made him an encourager of voyages of discovery.

He was partial to French manners and customs, and introduced several of them into this country; amongst which may be noticed, the riding upon small hacknies, the institution of the yeomen of the guard, and the barbarous punishment of clipping the ears.

Amongst his superstitions, perhaps, the most harmless was that he thought Saturday a lucky day. What name is to be given to the religious services with which he directed that heaven should be besieged for the remission of his sins, and the weal of his soul, I will not take upon me to determine. Amongst other things, ten thousand masses were to be said in London and Westminster, and places adjoining, within a month after his death, that is, one every four minutes, day and night, for 28 days. They were to be divided thus: 1,500 in honour of the Trinity; 2,500 in honour of the five wounds of Christ; 2,500 in honour of the 5 joys of the virgin; 450 in honour of the 9 orders of Angels; 150 in honour of the Patriarchs; 600 in honour of the 12 Apostles; and 2,300 in honour of All Saints.

Such was Henry VII. I fear I have scarcely succeeded in presenting him to the mind's eye! A happier pen than mine might, from my materials, delineate him to the life.*

How shall I picture the heroic Surrey? At the age of 30 he suffered ignominiously upon the scaffold; but even so short a life sufficed for him to acquire an everlasting fame. Surrey's death would have immortalized a dolt, but he lives in his own achievements, and not in the recollection of the malicious artifices of his enemies. The noblest of all the Howards, he stands upon the records of our aristocracy an example of high-minded nobility of character unattainable since the days of chivalry. As a warrior he yielded to no one of his time in courage or ability; as a scholar he was a ripe and good one;' as a poet he was the first in England who led back the Muses to the study of nature. He not merely earned an immortality for himself; he conferred one upon the fair and heartless Geraldine, his affection for whom takes rank in the chronicles of love with those of Abelard and Heloise, of Petrarch and Laura, of Tasso and Leonora.

Surrey did not possess that dignity of form which we are accustomed to mix up in our idea of a hero. He was somewhat small in stature, but well proportioned, and blessed with a frame capable of enduring the extremity of toil. Nor was there any peculiar comeliness in his sober and thoughtful countenance, long visage, with thick lips, and a rather large but not very prominent nose; the only indications of the capacity and quickness of his mind were to be found in a lofty forehead and a dark piercing eye. Had he lived a few years longer, it is probable that his thick-set frame would have inclined to corpulency. If it had not, he would have added one more to the many poets who have narrowly escaped being short and fat.

Although I purpose abstaining from references generally, I cannot omit an acknowledgment of the great assistance I have derived from the Privy Purse Expences of Henry VII. published in that excellent Volume the "Excerpta Historica," The want of success which occasioned the discontinuance of that work is exceedingly discreditable to the British literary public.

p. 85.

GENT. MAG. VOL. I.

2 Z

Bred up in the country, he acquired an early fondness for active pursuits. As he advanced in years the taste continued, but its direction was changed. He excelled in the joust and the tournament, and the dangers of an assault suited his ardent temperament. When no command was given to him, he joined the camp of his countrymen as a volunteer, and, under all circumstances, was ever ready to animate those around him by a display of such enthusiasm as belongs only to the heroic character. Wherever we can trace his course, whatever be the nature of his object, his soul seems on fire in the pursuit. His impetuosity was of a kind which the mean mind can neither understand nor attain to. The envious, amongst his contemporaries, hated him because he surpassed them in valour and ability; and he took no pains to seek their favour or conceal how much he disliked them. Quick in feeling, he was equally so in the expression of his thoughts. Peculiarly susceptible of affront or injury, he never hesitated a moment in resenting whatever appeared to affect his honour. "Can you believe," he exclaimed to the Court upon his trial, when a man deposed to having made him a braving answer, "Can you believe that any man should so have spoken to the Earl of Surrey, and he not have struck him?" His generosity of temper was equal to its warmth, and his anger as easily appeased as it was excited. There was no lurking malignity in his disposition he never dissembled his feelings; he never concealed them; his lips uttered what his heart prompted; he never paused to consider whether what he was about to say would be construed to his advantage or the contrary; it was the truth, and therefore he gave it utterance. Incapable of deceit himself, he did not suspect it in others, and thus easily fell into the snares laid for him by the designing. In like manner his own candour, frankness, and simple-mindedness made him easy of belief, and gave to his character a tinge of credulity.

He was skilled in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish; his intellect was as quick as his temper; and, both in conversation and in more studied speaking, he expressed himself rapidly and eagerly, with a peculiar dignity of manner and a refined elegance of phrase. Anxious of literary fame himself, he was, nevertheless, its patron in others; and not literature alone, but all the arts enjoyed his protection and encouragement. In him painting found a ready patron; architecture was encouraged by his erection of a splendid mansion called "Mount Surrey," in the neighbourhood of Norwich, which was the earliest specimen of the Grecian school in this country; music claimed him not merely as a patron, but also as a player upon the lute and a composer; and poetry was purified and exalted by the exercise of his noblest energies.

He possessed a large share of the pride of family. In such a man the memory of ancestral achievements is but an additional spur to exertion, and family pride loses that offensive shape which it assumes in the unworthy descendant of a noble house. He never scrupled to express his dislike of the new nobility" who had sprung up out of the spoils of the Church, the men whose unscrupulous cunning contrived the mesh in which he was ultimately snared. He appears to have understood heraldry; it might have been well for him if he had not done so, for that knowledge probably led to his assuming the arms of Edward the Confessor -the gravest charge against him. His style of living was sumptuous and magnificent; his expenses profuse but not extravagant; he maintained the state and dignity of a nobleman in every thing. To his servants and inferiors he was courteous, affable, and generous. In apparel he had a taste for the splendid and the fashionable; in early life his favourite colour

was scarlet, and the portrait of him, which is best known, is one in a scarlet suit, with a scarlet cap and white feather placed on his head with an evident attention to effect. He afterwards preferred dark colours or black. He had an intimate knowledge of chess; played at tennis, danced, hunted, and was skilful in the use of the spear and sword, and in all feats of arms. He put faith in judicial astrology. The nativity of his eldest son, calculated by his direction, still exists; and, which is somewhat singular, foretold some undefined misfortune to the father.

The warmth and constancy of manly attachment are finely exhibited in the instances of Surrey's friendship for Richmond, Wyatt, and Cleere. The king's son, his earliest, warmest friend, died before him. After the lapse of several years we find him pathetically lamenting his loss in strains of high poetry; the two friends now rest side by side at Framlingham. Wyatt outlived him. At Abbeville, Surrey lay upon the field dangerously wounded; the gallantry of Cleere saved his life, but at the expense of his

own.

Of Surrey's affections it is difficult to speak. That he was a careful and affectionate parent is certain. There seems no reason to doubt his kindness towards his wife; indeed it may be strongly inferred from several circumstances in his life. But how is it to be reconciled with his vaunted affection for Geraldine? This is not the place to enter upon any doubtful question; but, for my part, I regard his love for Geraldine as a mere poetical exaggeration, an affection of the imagination,-the day-dream of an ardent fancy.

Surrey was religious. Whether his belief was Catholic or Protestant is doubtful, but he possessed a strong religious feeling. The poet, however, might be traced even in his religion. One of the most ridiculous extravagances of his life was at once religious and poetical. Walking through the streets of London in the "dead waste and middle of the night," he alarmed the citizens by discharging stones from a cross-bow through their windows, and justified this wild extravagance thus :-" Observing the corrupt and licentious manners of the citizens, and that the remonstrances of their spiritual pastors had been urged in vain, I went at midnight through the streets, and shot from my cross-bow at their windows, that the stones passing noiseless through the air, and breaking in suddenly upon their guilty secrecy, might remind them of the suddenness of that punishment which the Scriptures tell us divine justice will inflict on impenitent sinners, and so lead them to a reformation.'

Surrey was an observer every where; but his poetry contains such constant and especial allusions to natural appearances that every one can perceive with how keen an eye he must have looked upon nature, "Wrapt in his careless cloak "he betook himself to the field and the wood, "in summer's sun, in winter's breath of frost,"

"And as the stricken deer withdraws himself alone,

So did he seek some secret place,"

where he might let loose his imagination and delight himself with the contemplation of those objects which he afterwards weaved into "immortal verse."

The great fault in Surrey's character was his hastiness of temper; its great peculiarity was his enthusiastic and romantic turn of mind. Had he lived longer, probably, time would have diminished his hastiness and abated his enthusiasm; as it is, his name ought to occupy a conspicuous place in the catalogue of our great men.

LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE TO SIR HORACE MANN.

(Concluded from p. 137.)

"I BELIEVE," says Walpole, you have often heard me mention a Mr. Ashton, a clergyman, who, in one word, has great preferments, and owes everything upon earth to me. I have long had reason to complain of his behaviour;-in short, my father is dead, and I can make no more Bishops. He has at last quite thrown off the mask; and in the most direct manner, against my will, has written against my friend Dr. Middleton, taking for his motto these lines :

"Nullius addictus jurare in verba magist i,

Quid verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum."

I have forbid him my house, and wrote this paraphrase under his picture : "Nullius addictus munus meminisse patroni,

Quid vacat et qui dat curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum."

Perhaps some of our readers will recollect this same amiable and disinterested gentleman, as he appears in Gray's Correspondence, who seems to have detected him before Walpole's suspicions arose. In writing to his friend Dr. Warton an account of his reconciliation with Walpole, he says, "Ashton was there, whose formalities tickled me inwardly; for he, I found, was to be angry about the letter I wrote him. However, in going home together, our hackney coach jostled us into a sort of reconciliation. He hammered out somewhat like an excuse, and I received it very readily, because I cared not twopence whether it were true or not. So we grew the best acquaintance imaginable; and I sat with him on Sunday some hours alone, when he informed me of an abundance of anecdotes, much to my satisfaction, and in short, opened, I really believe, his heart to me, with that sincerity that I had still less reason to have a good opinion of him than, if possible, I entertained before." Again, "Mr. Ashton I have had several conversations with, and do really believe he shows himself to me such as he really is; I don't tell you I like him ever the better for it." But, perhaps, the most humourous part of Gray's spleen on this head is another letter to the same correspondent, where he says, "My concern for you produced a vision, not such a one as you read in the Spectator, but actually a dream. I thought I was in t'other world, and confined in a little apartment much like a cellar, enlightened by one rush candle that burnt blue. On each side of me sate (for my sins) Mr. Davie and my friend Mr. Ashton. They bowed continually, and smiled in my face; and while one filled me out very bitter tea, the other sweetened it with brown sugar. Altogether it much resembled syrup of buckthorn. In the corner sate Tuthill, very melancholy, in expectation of the tea-leaves." So much for the Rector of Bishopsgate.

There follows a charming little interview with old Mrs. Spence, the old lady, whom her son the Critic writes of so affectionately, and who hopes Walpole finds a good neighbour in Mr. Pope, "Lord, Ma'am! he has been dead these seven years ;" and a bon-mot of Quin's, that we do not remember to have heard before, "Barry would have had him play the Ghost in Hamlet, a part much beneath the dignity of Quin, who could give no other answer, but I won't catch cold behind.' I don't know whether you remember that the Ghost is always ridiculously dressed, with a morsel of armour before, and only a black waistcoat and breech behind."