SOURCE: Padelford, Frederick Morgan. “Surrey's Contribution to English Poetry.” In The Poems of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Revised Edition, pp. 44-55. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1928.

In the following essay, Padelford analyzes Surrey's prosody, declaring that “Surrey's claims to distinction rest primarily upon his establishment of the Shakespeare sonnet and his introduction of blank verse.”

In the history of English literature the name of Surrey is invariably linked with that of Sir Thomas Wyatt for these two men were the most distinguished poets of the early Renaissance school. Attentive readers of the contemporary French, Italian, and Spanish poets and emulous of their achievements, they modernized English prosody and experimented successfully with poetry of varying types. With no adequate native tradition to support them, they borrowed, adapted or created artistic media and employed them for easy, graceful and spirited writing. This they accomplished by remodeling old metrical forms...