which the earliest example exists in Surry's spirited and
faithful version of one book of the AEneid.

The exalted rank, the splendid talents, the lofty spirit of this
lamented nobleman seemed to destine him to a station second to none
among the public characters of his time; and if, instead of being cut
off by the hand of violence in the morning of life, he had been
permitted to attain a length of days at all approaching to the
fourscore years of his father, it is probable that the votary of letters
would have been lost to us in the statesman or the soldier. Queen Mary,
who sought by her favor and confidence to revive the almost extinguished
energies of his father, and called forth into premature distinction the
aspiring boyhood of his son, would have intrusted to his vigorous years
the highest offices and most weighty affairs of state. Perhaps even the
suspicions of her father might have been verified by the event, and her
own royal hand might itself have become the reward of his virtues and
attachment.

Elizabeth, whose maternal ancestry closely connected her with the house
of Howard, might have sought and found, in her kinsman the earl of
Surry, a counsellor and friend deserving of all her confidence and
esteem; and it is possible that he, with safety and effect, might have
placed himself as a mediator between the queen and that formidable
catholic party of which his misguided son, fatally for himself, aspired
to be regarded as the leader, and was in fact only the instrument. But
the career of ambition, ere he had well entered it, was closed upon him
for ever; and it is as an accomplished knight, a polished lover, and
above all as a poet, that the name of Surry now lives in the annals of
his country.

Of the five children who survived to feel the want of his paternal
guidance, one daughter, married to the earl of Westmorland, was
honorably distinguished by talents, erudition, and the patronage of
letters; but of the two sons, the elder was that unfortunate duke of
Norfolk who paid on the scaffold the forfeit of an inconsiderate and
guilty enterprise; and the younger, created earl of Northampton by James
I., lived to disgrace his birth and fine talents by every kind of
baseness, and died just in time to escape punishment as an accomplice in
Overbury's murder.

The duke of Norfolk had been declared guilty of high treason on grounds
equally frivolous with his son; but the opportune death of Henry VIII.
on the day