Blank verse, which was Surrey's other gift to English poetry, was in a way a compromise between the two sources from which the English Renaissance drew its inspiration.

Latin and Greek verse is quantitative and rhymeless; Italian verse, built up on the metres of the troubadours and the degeneration of Latin which gave the world the Romance languages, used many elaborate forms of rhyme.

Blank verse took from Latin its rhymelessness, but it retained accent instead of quantity as the basis of its line.

The line Surrey used is the five-foot or ten-syllable line of what is called "heroic verse"-- the line used by Chaucer in his Prologue and most of his tales.

Like Milton he deplored rhyme as the invention of a barbarous age, and no doubt he would have rejoiced to go further and banish accent as well as rhymed endings.