Wyatt fills the most important place in the _Miscellany_, and his work, experimental in tone and quality, formed the example which Surrey and minor writers in the same volume and all the later poets of the age copied.

He tries his hand at everything--songs, madrigals, elegies, complaints, and sonnets--and he takes his models from both ancient Rome and modern Italy.

Indeed there is scarcely anything in the volume for which with some trouble and research one might not find an original in Petrarch, or in the poets of Italy who followed him.

But imitation, universal though it is in his work, does not altogether crowd out originality of feeling and poetic temper.

At times, he sounds a personal note, his joy on leaving Spain for England, his feelings in the Tower, his life at the Court amongst his books, and as a country gentleman enjoying hunting and other outdoor sports.
"This maketh me at home to hunt and hawk, And in foul weather at my book to sit, In frost and snow, then with my bow to stalk, No man does mark whereas I ride or go: In lusty leas at liberty I walk." It is easy to see that poetry as a melodious and enriched expression of a man's own feelings is in its infancy here.