228 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



reputation de bon litterateur.' Although he said himself 

 he could never write decent Latin prose, he had distinguished 

 himself at Oxford, understood colloquial Latin and ItaHan, 

 and spoke and wrote French with ease and correctness. 

 Mr. Hep worth Dixon pays a high tribute to his elegant 

 culture, and cites him as a notable member of a progressive 

 Young England party, and an ardent partisan of hberal learn- 

 ing. ' Early in life he had begun to toy with verse, a fine 

 accomplishment of a liberal age, and by his talents he was 

 helping that revival of English poetry which his playinate 

 Wyat and his cousin Surrey were to foster into vigorous life.' ' 

 As we can hardly accord to Davis the rank of a poet, 

 Lord Eochford is the only poet of our order. 



Farewell, my Lute, this is the last 

 Labour that thou and I shall waste. 



For ended is what we began : 

 Now is the song both sung and past, 



My Lute, be still, for I have done. 



This 'farewell to his lute,' said to have been composed 

 and sung by him the night before his execution, has the 

 mother-of-pearl refinement which belongs especially to the 

 poetry of that time. 



These pages need have no concern with the truth or 

 falseness of the charges brought against the brother and 

 sister. They are matters of history ; bvit in no way afi"ect the 

 ethics of stag-hunting. On May 15, 1536, Lord Eochford was 

 arrested on a complicated charge of treason to his king. He 

 was tried next day by his peers. Long odds were laid upon 

 his acquittal. He could not be shaken in cross-examination, 

 and his defence was ably conducted ; ' he made answare,' 

 we are told, ' so prudentlie and wisely to all articles layde 

 against him, that marveil it was to heare.' But Henry VIII. 

 had by tliis time persuaded himself that the masterful 



' lli&t. of Two Queens, vol. iii. p. '285. 



