Wyatt and Surrey, the two earliest of the silver poets, were great pioneers.
They stand on the very threshold of the Elizabethan era and they did much, to reform the English numbers, to restore form and balance to English prosody which had been in a chaotic state since the death of Chaucer. It was they who set the fashions which the latter poets followed. These two, both in bulk and quality, were the chief contributors to the famous Miscellany printed by Total in 1557. With them began the vogue of the short poem, and their example was widely followed.