notwithstanding the splendid blazonries on
their escutcheon, the Fitzgeralds appear to
have sometimes modestly abbreviated that
euphonious designation into simply— Garret :
in Surrey's instance the noblest and the
loftiest Garret with which the name of Poet
was ever yet associated. It was at Hunsdon
House in Hertfordshire — a palace, according
to Chauncey's history of that county, built by
Henry the Eighth for the education of his
children— that the supposed lovers first encountered
each other. Then came all the witching
embellishments of the beautiful love-legend.
Surrey's chivalrous expedition to the Court of
Tuscany. The meeds of praise won, and the
deeds of daring done by him in the presence
of Paschal de Medici, the then reigning Grand
Duke of Florence. Above all, the
memorable interview at Cologne between the
Earl of Surrey and the redoubtable magician,
Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim.
Unfortunately, chronology here again
inopportunely interposes with an impertinent
reminder that we are literally counting without
our host— without the host of Surrey at that
famous interview. Cornelius Agrippa being
then yet unborn, and the record of the
incident being therefore altogether apocryphal.
If, however, incredulity be anywhere
expressed as to the reality of the feats of
arms achieved by Surrey's lance at Florence,
may we not point triumphantly to the antique
shield still preserved at Arundel Castle,
the Grand Duke's guerdon to the knightly
champion of Geraldine ? A testimony quite
as conclusive in its way as that afforded by
certain gigantic ribs of a monstrous dun cow
once upon a time slaughtered by the lordly
giant Guy, Earl of Warwick— ribs scattered
broadcast over the western counties of England
— as if Guy had exploded his forefooted
enemy precisely as the bear was
destroyed with flint and steel by Baron
Munchausen.

Ensconsing ourselves behind the impregnable
shield supplied by Dr. Nott, we have sat
down resolutely to the record of this charming
love-story, unassailably embattled. How
runs the tale as told by the sorrowful poet
himself, in the four tenderest lines of the
famous Sonnet?—

"Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyen:
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."

Here, indeed, we have in few worlds the
quintessence of the joys and woes of the
refined affection, twining together, as it were,
in a true lover's knot the sympathetic
heart-strings of the Lord Surrey and the
Lady Fitzgerald. At Hunsdon Palace—
mutually startled into love-at-first-sight.
Surrey, then a stripling gallant, going thither
on a ceremonious visit, in company with the
half-royal Duke of Richmond; Geraldine,
then a graceful slip of a girl, blooming
radiantly in the train of the Princess Royal,
afterwards Mary of the blood-red reputation.

At the Palace of Hampton Court—the
tender passion first awakening in Surrey's
breast to his own consciousness. This
delectable casualty, moreover, is presumed to
have occurred upon the occasion of one of
those gorgeous and courtly entertainments
with which Henry the Eighth delighted to
demonstrate his taste as a robustuous
Sardanapalus. Was it not here, during the dance
in that old hall, to the sound of gitern and
sackbut, that the love-smitten earl had his
sensibility first tortured by the coquettish
damsel, whose rejection of his hand for the
cotillon he himself has so quaintly and
poignantly celebrated under the fable of a
"tiff" between a wolf and a lion? Himself,
as the Lord of the Forest, prancing gallantly
towards one whom, quoth he,—

"I might perceive a wolf as white as whalesbone;
A fairer beast of fresher hue, beheld I never none!"

and from whom, to his amazement, he
receives only a slight, driving him nearly to
distraction. Saith Madame Wolf to Monsieur
Leo, with a flirt of her fan, we may presume,
and a toss of her tinkling head-gear:—

" Do way! I let thee weet, thou shalt not play with
        me ;
Go range about, where thou mayst find some meeter
        fere for thee."

Whereto, no marvel it is forthwith added, in
regard to the other personage, — obviously a
very fine fellow in the mane!—

"With that he beat his tail, his eyes began to flame;
I might perceive his noble heart much moved by the
same."

At the Palace of Windsor Castle comes not
long afterwards their first lengthened and
compulsory estrangement. There, moreover,
Surrey often directed his wistful gaze towards
the maiden's tower; his lady-love sauntering
there the while upon the leads, looking down
into the broad green tennis-court below,—her
young earl-lover, stripped to his white sleeves,
among the players, missing the ball as he
glanced aside at the witcheries of her
fluttering raiment.

Afterwards, on the premature demise of
his brother-in-law, the Duke of Richmond,
the separation of the forlorn lovers became
more absolute; but, it must be confessed,
more picturesque. Then it was that Surrey,
partly at the instigation of his mistress, partly
to assuage his own secret anguish, set forth
upon his far-famed series of knight-errant
exploits to maintain in the lists the
preeminence of his beloved Geraldine at the
point of his spear, in her own fair birth-
place of Florence. It being related of him,
moreover, as already intimated cursorily,
that when wending his way thither,
accompanied by a splendid retinue, he tarried
awhile in the metropolis of the Germanic