Note 33 — SIR THOMAS WYAT. [DIED 1541.]

The first printed Poetical Miscellany, in the English language, is the Collection of Poems, edited and published by Tottel, entitled “Songes and Sonnettes of Surrey, Wyat, and of uncertain Auctors, London, 1557.”—Another edition, 1565—others in 1574, 1585, 1587. The last edition was edited by Dr. George Sewell, in 1717.—This Dr. Sewell was a physician in London; he received his early education at Eton, which he afterwards completed at Cambridge, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Physic in 1709. From thence he went to Leyden, where he studied under the celebrated Boerhaave. Not being successful in the metropolis, he removed to Hampstead, where he died on the 8th of February, 1726. As an author he possessed a considerable share of genius, and wrote in concert with several of his contemporaries, particularly in the Spectator and Tatler; he was principally concerned in the ninth volume of the former, and in the fifth of the latter, as he was also in a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and an edition of Shakespeare’s Poems. He was the author of a Tragedy, entitled “Sir Walter Raleigh,” published at London in 1719, and also of another, which he left unfinished, entitled “King Richard the First,” the fragments of which were printed in 1728.