No More Learning

Disceit is his delight, and to begile, and mock
The simple hartes whom he doth strike with froward divers strok.
It is, as the reader will see, the 'common time' of the hymn-book ;
a combination of two sixes with a fourteener; or, as later writers
preferred to have it printed, a stanza of 6686, only the second and
fourth lines riming. It is easy to write, because there is no doubt
about the accent, and because it saves rimes; and while, in feeble
hands, it can become a monotonous jog-trot, it is lyrical in quality,
and has in Wyatt's hands a strength, in Surrey's, an elegance, and
in Southwell's, a brilliance, which should redeem it from total con-
demnation. One of Surrey's most delightful poems, Complaint of
the absence of her lover being upon the sea, is written in this
metre, in the management of which, as in that of all the others he
E. L. III.
CH. VIII.
12


## p. 178 (#200) ############################################

178 The New English Poetry
attempts, he shows himself a born poet, with a good ear and a
knowledge of the necessity of relating line to line and cadence to
cadence, so that a poem may become a symphonic whole.
His clearest title to fame, however, rests on his translations
from the Aeneid of Vergil into blank verse. There is unrimed
verse even in Chaucer (Tale of Melibeus); and the movement
against rime as a piece of medieval barbarity, which was
supported, later, by Gabriel Harvey and even by Campion and
found its greatest exponent in Milton, had already begun. Still,
it is most likely that it was from Italian poetry (possibly Molza's
translation of Vergil', 1541) that Surrey immediately drew the
idea. The merits of the translation do not very much concern us ;
the merit of having introduced to England the metre of Tambur-
laine the Great, The Tempest, Paradise Lost and The Excursion
is one that can hardly be overrated. Surrey's own use of the
metre, if a little stiff and too much inclined to make a break at
the end of each line, is a wonderful achievement for his time, and
a further proof of his genuine poetical ability.
We have referred to Surrey as a perfect knight; and, in one of
his poems, which all readers will possibly agree in thinking his
best and sincerest, he gives a picture of his youth which shows in
little all the elements of the courtier-knight. This is the Elegy on
the duke of Richmond, as it has been called (So cruell prison how
coulde betide, alas), which he wrote early in 1546 during his im-
prisonment in 'proude Windsor,' the scene of his earlier and
happier days. In this, he draws a picture of the life led by himself
and his friend. We hear, first of all, of the large green courts
whence the youths were wont to look up, sighing, to the ladies in
the Maidens' Tower; then of the dances, the tales of chivalry and
love; the tennis court, where the ball was often missed because
the player was looking at the ladies in the gallery ; the knightly
exercises on horseback and on foot; the love-confidences ex-
changed; the stag-hunt in the forest; the vows of friendship, the
bright honour. Here is as clear and complete a picture of the
standard of knighthood as any that exists; and chivalry, decaying
and mainly reminiscent as it may even then have been, was the
inspiration of Surrey's life and of his poetry. It must be noted of
him, too, that he shows a fresh and original delight in nature, and
was probably the author (as stated in England's Helicon) of the
famous pastoral Phylida was a fayer mayde? .
1
1
| Published under the name of cardinal Ippolito de' Medici.
See the chapter on Song-books in volume iv.


## p. 179 (#201) ############################################

Lord Vaux.
Nicholas Grimald
179
Of the other contributors to Tottel's Miscellany, only four are
known by name: Nicholas Grimald, Thomas lord Vaux, John
Heywood and Edward Somerset. Of these, the nearest to Wyatt
and Surrey is lord Vaux, like them a courtier and trained
in the spirit of chivalry. Only two of his poems appear in
Tottel's Miscellany: Thassault of Cupid upon the fort, which was
probably suggested by Dunbar, and The aged lover renounceth
love, the song of which the grave-digger in Hamlet is singing
a corrupt version as he digs Ophelia's grave. The Paradyse of
Dayniy Devises, which will be noticed later, contains the bulk
of his surviving poetry; this falls into two main divisions : poetry
of love and chivalry, and religious poetry. A brave, simple and
musical writer, Vaux is among the best of the poets of his day.
He is by no means free from the Petrarchian conceits favoured by
his two forerunners; but his reflections on the brevity of life show
a serious and devout mind, and possibly his best poem is When
I look back, in which he craves the forgiveness of God for the
faults and follies of youth. John Heywood is better known
as a playwright than as a lyrical poet; the single poem which
appears in Tottel's Miscellany is a not unpleasing description of
the physical and moral charms of his lady, in a style which
became exceedingly common. For chastity, she is Diana, for
truth, Penelope ; after making her, nature lost the mould, and
so forth. But the freshness has not yet worn off such statements,
and the poem not only has a natural sweetness about it, but
contains one of the few simple references to country things which
are to be found in the volume. Somerset's contribution is entitled
The pore estate to be holden for best, and merely states, in two
septets of rimed twelve-syllabled lines, a favourite commonplace
with these authors. The fact that the first letters of the lines
with the last letter of the last line make up the author's name, is
significant of artificiality.
From one point of view, Grimald is a very interesting poet.
About Wyatt, Surrey and Vaux there is no trace of the professional
author. Their poetry was partly the accomplishment of their class,
partly the natural expression of feelings aroused by their own
lives and the life of their day. Grimald was no courtier, and his
literary work was that of the professed man of letters. Educated
at Cambridge and Oxford, he became chaplain to bishop Ridley,
under whom he translated a work of Aeneas Sylvius and Laurentius
Valla's book against the donation of Constantine. Early in Mary's
reign, he was imprisoned for heresy, but recanted, and is said to
have become a spy during the Marian persecutions. In 1556,
122


## p. 180 (#202) ############################################

180
The New English Poetry
Tottel had published Grimald's translation of Cicero De Officiis;
and it has been supposed, not without possibility, that he was
associated with Tottel, perhaps as editor, in the publication of the
Miscellany. The first edition (June 1557) contained forty of his
poems, and gives his name in full. In the second edition, published
a month later, at least thirty of these poems have disappeared,
and the author's name has shrunk to N. G. The facts have never
been explained. Grimald is particularly fond of 'poulter's measure'
and long lines, which, mainly by good use of his learning, he
succeeds in keeping above the level of doggerel. He excels in
complimentary and elegiac verse; and has left at least two
delightful poems: the Funerall song, upon the deceas of Annes
his mother, which is not only a quaint mixture of learning and
homeliness, but a golden tribute to the subject of the elegy, and
The Garden, which celebrates, with unquestionable enjoyment,
the pleasures and profit to be drawn from nature. In another
of his poems, The Lover asketh pardon of his dere, for feeyng
from her, in which he plays upon his lady's name of Day,
Courthope finds the Petrarchian convention replaced by the
earliest notes in English poetry of that manner which culminated
in the "metaphysical” style. ' The value of Grimald, however,
lies not so much in his matter or his music, as in his attempt to be
distinct and terse through the application of his knowledge of the
classics to English poetry. He studied and translated Latin
epigrams, and, to some extent, was a forerunner of the later
classical influence on English diction and construction.
That the remainder of the authors in Tottel's Miscellany are
declared "uncertain' does not, necessarily, mean that they were
unknown. Men, and sometimes women, wrote for the amusement
of themselves and their friends, not for publication. Their verses
were handed round, copied out into the manuscript books, of
which many survive in public and private libraries, and admired
in a small circle. Puttenham (The Arte of English Poesie, 1589)
speaks of
notable Gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably and sup-
pressed it agayne, or els suffred it to be publisht without their owne names
to it: as if it were a discredit for a Gentleman to seeme learned, and to shew
him selfe amourous of any good Art.
Tottel's Miscellany is the first symptom of the breaking down of
this bashful exclusiveness, under the desire for poetry felt by lovers
and by those outside the court circle who had begun to share in
the spread of knowledge and taste due to the renascence.
the 'book of songs and sonnets' the absence of which Master
It was


## p. 181 (#203) ############################################

>
• Uncertain' Authors
181
a
Slender lamented in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1, 1). Reading
bad gone some way towards taking the place of listening to the
bard or jongleur, and Tottel was enterprising enough to attempt
to satisfy the new demand. But the authors living and dead
remained, in many cases, anonymous. One of the poets of the
Miscellany was, probably, Wyatt's friend, Sir Francis Bryan, though
his pieces have not been identified. The range of subjects among
these uncertain' authors is limited. Of the love-poems, some
continue the Petrarchian style of Wyatt and Surrey; others
complain in more native fashion of the fickleness and frailty of
Praises of the mean estate and warnings of the un-
certainty of life and the vanity of human wishes are very
numerous. We find here the ideas introduced by Wyatt and
Surrey repeated a hundred times; and certain conceits and ideas
(e. g. that of nature losing, or breaking, the mould, the uncertain
state of a lover, 'That all thing sometime finde ease of their paine,
save onely the lover,' and so forth) are common to all. One or two
poems raise an impression of something more than fashion. In
particular, the author of a set of 'poulter's' called Of the wretched-
nes of this world seems to speak from his heart. In complaining
of the lapse of good laws and the increase of evil customs and
wicked men, he expresses, perhaps only more forcibly, and not
more sincerely, than his fellows, the feelings roused in all by the
decay of the old feudal order before the new England of Elizabeth
came to restore security and an ideal. The reigns of Edward VI
and Mary, and, to a great extent, the latter part of that of
Henry VIII, were not favourable to the growth of poetry; and
we find the fellows and successors of Wyatt and Surrey content to
carry on their tradition without improving on the versification
of the latter (one of them is guilty of the line : 'Of Henry, sonne
to sir John Williams knight') or adding to the stock of subjects
and ideas. Some of the authors, clearly, were familiar with the
work of Boccaccio—the story of Troilus and Cressida is a favourite
reference and one poem contains the earliest English translation
of a passage of Ovid, the letter of Penelope to Ulysses. As regards
the metres, 'poulter's measure’ is the most prominent; deca-
syllables and eights are common, and the rimes are often on the
scheme of the rime royal stanza. Alliteration, which Grimald
favoured to some extent, is more common among the ‘uncertain'
authors than in Wyatt and Surrey? .
1 Courthope, Hist. Eng. Poet. 11. p. 165, points out that Piers Plowman had recently
been reprinted and may have encouraged alliteration by its example.


## p. 182 (#204) ############################################

182
The New English Poetry
One of those 'uncertain' authors, according to his own
account, was Thomas Churchyard. The son of a farmer and born
near Shrewsbury, Churchyard gave some part of his long life
to war, the rest to poetry. He served under the emperor and
other famous captains in Scotland, in Ireland, in the Low Countries
and in France, where he was taken prisoner and escaped. He was,
in fact, a soldier of fortune, and, on laying down his arms, he
continued to look to fortune for a maintenance. That fortune
played him false till he was over seventy, denying him the court
place he desired and rewarding him then only with a pension from
the queen, was not the whole secret of his frequent reflections on
the vanity of human wishes, for that was a trick of the times. And
beneath his complaints lay a poetic bravery which goes far to
atone for the monotony of his style and the poverty of his thought.
Soldier-like, he ruffles it in a glittering display of similes and
comparisons. His ingenuity in this field is inexhaustible, and one
little commonplace is decked out in a hundred guises till the brain
is dazzled. The display covers very little substance, and his fond-
ness for alliteration and the monotony of his stress (which he
seems to drive home by his practice of marking his caesuras with
a blank space in the printed line) make his valiant ‘fourteeners’
‘
and “common-time' stanzas prized rather for the rarity of his
editions than for the merit of his poetry. At the same time,
Churchyard was, for his period, a smooth and accomplished
versifier, who had taken to heart the lesson taught by Wyatt and
Surrey, and who did his share of the work of restoring form and
order to English poetry.
His earliest publication seems to have been a three-leaved
poem, The myrrour of man! Early in his career he is found in
controversy, and employing a weapon which he always found
seful, the broadside. In 1563 came his best work, the long
'tragedy' of Shore's Wife in A Mirror for Magistrates. In
1575, he published the first of the books with the alliterative titles
or sub-titles which he liked-Churchyardes Chippes. In 1578, he
began to make use of matter which served him well, his military
experiences : the Wofull Warres in Flaunders of that year was
followed by the Generall Rehearsall of Warres (Churchyard's
Choise), which reviews the deeds of the soldiers and sailors of
England from the time of Henry VIII, and his descriptions of the
sieges of Leith and Edinburgh are among the best of his narrative
1 A. H. Bullen in the D. of N, B. , 8. v. The notice contains a good deal of biblio.
graphical information which it is difficult to obtain elsewhere.


## p. 183 (#205) ############################################

Thomas Tusser
183
poems. In the next year, 1579, he appears in a new light as
devising and describing 'shows' for the queen on her progresses.
Others of his principal works were The Praise of Poetrie (1595),
in which he attempted to do in verse what Sidney's Apologie had
done in prose, and The Worthines of Wales (1587), a vigorous book
which, to some extent, anticipates the Poly-Olbion of Michael
Drayton. He translated three books of Ovid's Tristia and began
a translation of Pliny which he destroyed. Grumbling, hoping,
quarrelling and making friends again, with Nashe (who realised his
merit) and others, paying fine homage to the great men of his day,
he continued writing till his voice sounded strange in the new era,
long after Colin Clout had described him as 'old Palaemon that
sung so long untill quite hoarse he grew. '
The decadence of the school of Wyatt and Surrey may be seen
in other miscellanies, which will soon be considered; but, for the
moment, we must turn aside to a poet who felt none of the Italian
influence–Thomas Tusser.
>
Tusser, who was born in Essex about 1525, became a singing
boy at St Paul's, was at Eton under Nicholas Udall, who, he
records, flogged him, and went on to King's College and Trinity Hall,
Cambridge. Leaving the university for reasons of ill-health, he
.
entered, as a musician, the service of William lord Paget, who,
later, was privy seal to Mary. Of lord Paget and his two sons,
Henry and Thomas, in succession, he considered himself ever after-
wards the retainer. In 1553, or thereabouts, he left London
for a farm near Brantham, in Suffolk, where he introduced into
England the culture of barley. In 1557, he published his
Hundreth good pointes of husbandrie, which was enlarged in
1570, or earlier, by. A hundreth good poynts of huswifery, again,
in 1573, to Five hundreth pointes of good husbandry, and again
in 1577 and 1580—to run through five more editions before the
end of the century. His life was restless. At one time we find
him a lay-clerk in Norwich cathedral, thanks to Sir Robert
Southwell, of the family of Southwell the poet; later, he is
quarrelling over tithes near Witham, in Essex, then in London,
and again in Cambridge, possibly as a choirman at Trinity Hall.
In 1580, he died in the parish of St Mildred, Poultry, where he is
buried.
The Hundreth and Five Hundreth points are an extraordinary,
but most entertaining, collection of maxims on farming, weather-
lore, forestry, agriculture, thrift, virtue, religion and life in
2


## p. 184 (#206) ############################################

184
The New English Poetry
6
general. The title-pages given in the bibliography to this chapter
are in the spirit of the work itself, which is full of a shrewd and
kindly humour, and a ripe, if pedestrian, wisdom. The book gives
a complete picture of the farmer's life of the day; and, for two
centuries at least, it was read far and wide as a practical manual
of farming. The year is divided into months; and the duties of
each month in farm, garden and house, together with many of its
customs, superstitions and observances, not without their value for
the antiquary and the student of manners, are set forth in rimed
four-foot anapaestic couplets (the metre of Bonnie Dundee), that
carry the modern reader along at a hand-gallop till he is ready to
drop, but must have proved very easy reading to the country
gentlemen and farmers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
And, the better to fix the precepts in the mind, each month has its
epitome in verse which could be learned by heart. The greater
part of Tusser's work is in the metre mentioned above; but the
prefatory poems, of which there are many, offer a more interesting
variety of metrical experiment than any work of the same date. In
the 'Epistle to Lord William Paget' he uses a stanza of six
lines of eight, rimed ababcc; the 'Epistle to Lord Thomas
Paget' is an example of metre which Swinburne was afterwards
to use with wonderful effect in combination with another: it is
the 7776, riming aaab, with double-rimes at a, which forms the
last part of the stanza of Proserpine, only Tusser doubles it
into aaabcccb. "To the Reader' is written in 'Skeltonics,' a long
(and, in Tusser's case, regular) stanza of four-syllabled iambic lines
riming aabbccdeeffggd. The other metres need not be mentioned in
detail, but two must be singled out. The Conditions of Husbandrie
consists of stanzas, of which the last two lines are Tusser's favourite
four-foot anapaests; while the first two are either among the rare
examples of the use of the amphibrach (u-u), or, more probably,
are two-foot anapaests with a double rime. The 'Preface to
the Buyer' is interesting, as the first example of the three-foot
anapaestic line which was used, later, by Shenstone and Prior, and
which is familiar to all as the metre of Cowper's 'I am monarch
of all I survey. ' Tusser's ingenuity leads him into many faults; he
affects acrostics and alliteration (in his Things Thriftie there are
twelve couplets in which every word begins with a T; every line
but the last two of his Ladder to Thrift ends in ie or y); but
these things are easily pardoned to a man who was writing, not to
please the literary circles of the town, but to fix his maxims in the
heads of the country; and the same ingenuity stood him in good


## p. 185 (#207) ############################################

Barnabe Googe
185
stead in the matter of metre. He was too good a scholar, with too
good an ear, to leave things as irregular as they had been in the
hands of Skelton. Taking measures and feet that were English
and familiar, he polished and combined them with no contemptible
skill, uniting an ease in movement with a terseness and exact-
ness of expression that were new in this field; though he lies
outside the main stream of development and has, on that account,
been too much neglected, his achievement and influence were
valuable. He has been accused of carelessness and wilfulness
in rime, perhaps unfairly. Many of the cases that have been
cited might, if studied patiently and systematically, prove to
be documents for the provincial or common pronunciation of
the day. Certain of Tusser's compressions and elisions (e. g.
his frequent use of an ablative absolute) found no imitator till
Browning.
We have seen the influence of the classics on the form of
English poetry beginning feebly to make itself felt with Grimald.
That influence must not be confounded with the study and transla-
tion of classical authors, which had begun earlier, with Barclay,
Gavin Douglas and Surrey; for, while Surrey, for instance, had
translated from the Aeneid, the influence moulding his own work
was almost entirely Italian. But the study of the classics was soon
to exercise its own influence; and, six years after the first publica-
tion of Totteľs Miscellany, we find Barnabe Googe introducing
in his Eglogs, Epytaphes and Sonettes (1563) the form of the
pastoral, which, doubtless, he had learned from Barclay's adapta-
tions of the eclogues of Mantuan. Barnabe Googe, the son of
a recorder of Lincoln, was born about 1540, educated at Cam-
bridge and Oxford and, after travelling in France and Spain
(see his poems written on starting and returning), taken into
the service of Sir William Cecil. His earliest literary work was
a translation of a satirical allegory, the Zodiacus Vitae of Mar-
cellus Palingenius. His original poems appear to have been written
before 1561, when he started for the continent, for they were then
left in the hands of his friend, Blundeston, who took them ‘all
togyther unpolyshed,' to the printer. Googe returned in time
to correct them and to finish one of the poems, Cupido Conquered.
The eclogues, epitaphs and sonnets (i. e. songs, for he has left no
sonnets proper) were his last original work. He died in or about
1594. His eclogues are eight in number, and are interesting,
partly because of the influence they must have exerted on Spenser,


## p. 186 (#208) ############################################

186
The New English Poetry
and partly from the manner of their treatment. Googe was an
earnest protestant; and he combines with the pastoral of the
classical idyllists some horror at their views of love, much devout
thought and considerable indignation against Bonner and his
works. His eclogues, indeed, are a curious mixture ; for, while the
talk is chiefly of love, the poet rarely fails to improve the occasion.
In eclogue II, for instance-one of the most beautiful of the set in
structure and rhythm-we have the death-song of Damoetas as he
dies for love of a cruel mistress. In eclogue iv, the ghost of
Damoetas visits Meliboeus and warns him to avoid love, which not
only makes men wretched in life but dooms them after death.
The eclogue is aimed against the pagan view both of love and
heroism. In the sixth eclogue, as elsewhere in Googe, we hear
that idleness is the root of love, a complaint which can be cured
by exercise and work. In the eighth, Cornix sums up in a
religious discourse. We have noticed in Tottels Miscellany the
evidence of a troubled time of transition in politics and social life.
The same evidence occurs in Googe. “Nobylitie begins to fade,
and Carters up do sprynge,' he cries; the chief. estate is in the
hands of Sir John Straw and Sir John Cur, who, though they
think themselves noble, are but fish which, ‘bred up in durtye
Pooles, wyll ever stynke of mudde. The fifth and sixth of the
eclogues are borrowed from the Diana of Montemayor, and,
possibly, are the first traces in English poetry of the influence
of the Spanish romances.
The pastoral, then, with Googe, is not a refuge from the life of
his times, but a means of giving vent to his thoughts about it; and
the third eclogue, from which we have quoted, goes some way
towards explaining why the revival initiated by Wyatt and Surrey
was not carried on with more fervour. As a metrist, Googe is
careless and often feeble. The metre of his eclogues is the
fourteener line; he cuts it into two on his page ; but, even so, is
not always certain how many feet it should contain. This practice
of division, when applied, as in his epitaphs, to decasyllabic lines,
results in a monotonous fall of the caesura after the second foot.
His songs are largely moral in tone, like his eclogues. Their
limited range of metre shows a lack of invention; and, though the
movement is free, we miss the genuine lyrical note which less
learned poets were then achieving.
In Turbervile, Googe's friend and fellow-worker, the school of
Wyatt and Surrey comes perilously near its nadir. George
Turbervile was born of a good Dorset family, and was educated


## p. 187 (#209) ############################################

Turbervile
187
at Winchester and New College. Later, he became secretary to
Thomas Randolph, and accompanied him on his embassy to
Russia, whence he wrote 'certain letters in verse,' which may
be found in the first volume of Hakluyt. Like Googe, he com-
posed very little original poetry, though he was an energetic
translator. Ovid's Heroical Epistles, Mantuan's Eclogues and
Mancinus's Plaine Path to Perfect Vertue were all translated by
him between 1567 and 1568, and the first had run through five
editions by 1605. That Turbervile was a man of taste is proved
by his lines to Surrey in the last of which, by the way, he scans
Earle's, as he always does, as a dissyllable); praising him because
our mother tongue by him hath got such light, As ruder speech
thereby is banished quite,' and because he puts each word in
place. The refining influence of Surrey was what Turbervile
admired and attempted, with some success, to carry on in his
Epitaphs, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567), his only volume of
original poetry. The praise of Surrey shows no little skill in
managing the heroic couplet with ease and point; but the in-
evitable double-six-and-fourteener had a fatal attraction for him,
and becomes in his hands little better than doggerel. The reason
was partly, no doubt, that his stock of ideas was small. He fell
back very largely on Wyatt for his matter, and, in attempting to
refine Wyatt, he waters him down sadly. Of Wyatt's eight-line
adaptation of Serafino, The furious goone, Turbervile makes
eighteen lines. Of the famous epigram about the two men, the
noose and the gold, which Plato (if he were the author of the
Greek version) wrote in two lines, Ausonius in four and Wyatt
in eight (For shamefast harm of great, and hatefull nede)
Turbervile makes twelve; Wyatt's Complaint upon Love to
Reason is imitated in 'poulter's measure' and enlarged to allow
Plato, Tullie, Plutarch, Sense and Reason herself all to speak
against Love; Turbervile's Pretie epigram of a scholer, that
having read Vergil's Aenidos, maried a curst wife, takes seven
stanzas to say what a writer in Tottel's Miscellany, whom Warton
is inclined to believe to be Sir Thomas More, had said in two; and
instances could be multiplied. Turbervile's satire addressed To
the Rayling Rout of Sycophants (by which he means critics)
throws an interesting side-light on the literary activity of the age ;
at least one of his poems, The green that you would wish me
wear, is deservedly well known for its beauty and spirit, while
his Lover is a good example of an airy and delicate use of very
short lines which Googe never accomplished.
Thomas Howell, the author of The Arbor of Amitie (1568)
a


## p. 188 (#210) ############################################

188 The New English Poetry
Newe Sonets, and pretie Pamphlets (1568) and the better known
Devises (1581), is a poet of greater variety than either Googe or
Turbervile. Two points of detail should secure his memory from
oblivion: first, that his Devises contains a poem beginning Goe
learned booke, and unto Pallas sing, believed to contain the
earliest extant reference in literature to Sidney's Arcadia, which
Howell must have seen in manuscript; and, next, that A Dreame,
in the same volume, is written in the fourteen-lined stanza, possibly
of Scots origin, which was used, later, by Montgomerie and is best
known through The Jolly Beggars of Burns. For the rest, Howell,
of whose life little is known beyond that he was born possibly at
Dunster in Somerset, educated possibly at Oxford, and was certainly
gentleman-retainer in the related families of the earls of Pembroke
and of Shrewsbury, was a close student of Tottel 8 Miscellany and
reproduced, in all sincerity, but with no spark of genius, the
thoughts and the characteristics of the school of Wyatt and Surrey.
He knew his Petrarch, and he knew his Chaucer; and he devoted
himself to repeating in the approved style of the time the approved
truths about the sorrows of love, the uncertainty of fortune and the
briefness of life. To Howell, as to his contemporaries, the fourteen-
syllabled line offered irresistible attractions; but he wins interest
by the variety of metres he attempts, and by giving, perhaps, a
foretaste of the flexibility which was shortly to constitute one of
the greatest charms of lyrical poetry.
Of Humfrey Gifford, whose Posie of Gilloflowers was published
in 1580, and of Matthew Grove, whose Historie of Pelops and
Hippodamia with the Epigrams, songes and sonnettes that follow
it, was published in 1587, little need be said. Gifford, who was
a friend of the Stafford family, was a translator from the French
and Italian and a versifier of small merit, who writes, mainly, in
decasyllabic lines, but employs, also, the popular fourteeners. He
is not above riddles, anagrams and so forth. One of his poems,
however, entitled For Souldiers, is a brave and spirited piece in a
complicated but easy-moving, swinging metre; and the prose
epistle to the reader may be mentioned as containing a sentence
which, possibly, suggested to Shakespeare lago's speech in Othello
(III, 3): 'Who steals my purse, steals trash,' etc. Of Matthew
Grove, even his publisher knew practically nothing.
Unless his
poems, too, were published (as was probably the case) some time
after they were written, his was a belated voice singing on the eve
of the Armada much as men had sung under Henry VIII, and as
if Sidney and Spenser had never been.
To return now to the miscellanies. The earliest to follow


## p. 189 (#211) ############################################

Miscellanies
189
.
Tottels Miscellany was The Paradyse of Daynty Devises (1576)
devised and written for the most part' by Richard Edwards
but not, apparently, published till ten years after his death.
Edwards was master of the children of the queen's chapel, and
is best known not by his lyrics, but by his plays. He was a poet,
however, of no small merit, and of his own poems in this volume
one, at least, rises to a high level : In going to my naked bed,
with its refrain on amantium irae, “The falling out of faithful
friends renewing is of love. ' The tone of the collection (which
opens with a translation from St Bernard) is, on the whole, very
serious and didactic; the motives of love and honour that had
inspired Wyatt and Surrey have dropped out of use, and in their
place we find but few signs of any joy in life. The pleasant woes
of the lover have given place to apprehensions of the shortness and
vanity of life and the need of preparing for death and judgment,
themes familiar to the poets of two centuries earlier. The contri-
butors to the volume, in its first (1576) and second (1578) editions,
number, in all, twenty-three, with two anonymous poems. The
author who signs himself 'My luke is losse' is an ingenious con-
triver of metrical patterns and repetitions, though a monotonous
poet; William Hunnis, Edwards's successor in office and, like
him, a dramatist, is over-ingenious, too, but one of the best of the
company; among the others are Jasper Heywood, the translator
of Seneca; M. Yloop (? Pooly); Richard Edwards himself; Thomas
lord Vaux (see above); Francis Kinwelmersh, a writer of sincere
religious poems, whose contributions include a delightful song by
A Vertuous Gentlewoman in the praise of her love and his carol
From Virgin's wombe, which was deservedly popular with the
musicians; W. R. , who, possibly, is Ralegh, though the attribution
of the single poem signed with these initials was changed in the
second edition; Richard Hill; D. S. (Dr Edwyn Sandys); Church-
yard; F. G. , who is probably young Fulke Greville ; Lodowick Lloyd
(of whose epitaph on Sir Edward Saunders the quotation of two
lines will be a sufficient criticism: “Who welnigh thirtie yeeres
was Judge, before a Judge dyd fall, A judged by that mighty Judge,
which Judge shal judge us all'); E. O. (Edward Vere, earl of
Oxford); M. Bew; George Whetstone (in the second edition only);
and M. Thom. Fulke Greville, lord Brooke (if, indeed, he be author
of the poem signed with his initials), will be discussed in a later
chapier; Edward Vere is, perhaps, more famous for his quarrel
with Sidney and for his lyric If women would be fair and yet
not fund than for all the rest of his work. This volume


## p. 190 (#212) ############################################

190
The New English Poetry
'contains more of his poetry than any later collection; but it is
early work, written before he had taken his place as the champion
of the literary party that opposed Sidney and Gabriel Harvey, or
before he had developed his special epigrammatic vein. In The
Paradyse of Daynty Devises, his work partakes of the devotional
character of the miscellany.
The next miscellany to be published was the least meritorious
of all. In A Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions (1578), the
faults that developed in the school after the death of Surrey became
more pronounced. Alliteration is almost incessant, and the metre
which we have found constantly gaining in favour and deterio-
rating in quality here runs wild. The book was edited, or, rather,
‘joyned together and builded up,' by one T. P. (Thomas Proctor),
who contributes Pretie Pamphlets or Proctor's Precepts and other
poems. Another contributor is Owen Roydon, who complains of the
'sicophantes,' by which, like Turbervile, he intends the critics. Short
gnomic verses on the virtues are common; Troilus and Cressida
are constantly to the front; loving letters (from beyond the seas
and elsewhere) are frequent; subject, indeed, and method show
a complete lack of freshness and conviction, and we are treated to
the dregs of a school. One poem, however, Though Fortune can-
not favor, is, at least, manly and downright; The glyttering showes
of Floras dames has lyrical quality; and certain Prety parables
and proverbes of love are interesting by their use of anapaests.
The Gorgious Gallery, too, contains the popular and famous song,
Sing all of green willow.
The next miscellany, which is the last book to be mentioned
here, was A Handefull of pleasant delites, by Clement Robin-
son and others, of which the only copy known, that in the British
Museum, was published, in 1584, by Richard Jones, a publisher
of ballads. The Stationers' register, however, shows that, in 1566,
a licence was issued to Clement Robinson for 'a boke of very
pleasaunte Sonettes and storyes in myter. ' The 1584 volume,
therefore, has been thought to be a later edition of the book
of 1566, into which were incorporated poems written since
that date. It may be noted that every poem in the Hande-
full has its tune assigned it by name. This practice was not
unknown in earlier anthologies—in the Gorgious Gallery, for
instance. In the Handefull, it is consistently followed. The
tunes assigned are, sometimes, those of well known dances,
the new Rogero,' the 'Quarter Brailes,' the 'Black Almaine'; or
of popular ballads, such as “Greensleeves. Of the influence of
6
>
6


## p. 191 (#213) ############################################

Miscellanies
191
music on the lyrical poetry of the age more will be said in a later
chapter. So far as the Handefull is concerned, though by no
means free from doggerel, its contents have often an honest life
and spirit about them, which are welcome after the resuscitated,
ghostly air of the Gorgious Gallery. Still, the book belongs, by
subject and treatment, to the poetical age which was closing.
Twenty-five of the poems are anonymous, and, among them, those
of the editor, Clement Robinson. The named contributors are
Leon Gibson, the author of a lively Tantara; G. Mannington, whose
Sorrowful sonet made at Cambridge Castle is parodied at length
in Chapman, Marston and Jonson's Eastward Hoe (1603); R. Picks;
Thomas Richardson; and I. Thomson—the last of whom contributes
a New Sonet of Pyramus and Thisbie, which it is hard to believe
Shakespeare had not seen. He certainly had seen the song on
flowers, which contains the line : 'Rosemarie is for remembrance,
betweene us daie and night'


## p. 192 (#214) ############################################

CHAPTER IX
A MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES
A Mirror for Magistrates constitutes an important link
between medieval and modern literature. It is a monument of
industry, extending, in its most recent edition, to more than 1400
closely printed pages, and retailing stories of misfortune and
wickedness in high places, stretching from the time of Albanact
(B. C. 1085) to that of queen Elizabeth. Its very title recalls a large
class of earlier works, of which Gower's Speculum Meditantis or
Mirour de l'Omme is a conspicuous example. Its aim is medieval,
whether we take the statement of its editor, Baldwin, in the address
to the nobility--'here as in a loking glass, you shal se if any vice be
in you, how the like hath ben punished in other heretofore, wherby
admonished, I trust it will be a good occasione to move to the
amendment'-or that in the address to the reader—' which might
be as a mirour for al men as well nobles as others to shewe the
slipery deceiptes of the wavering lady, and the due rewarde of all
kinde of vices. ' Its plan of stringing together a number of 'tragedies'
is medieval in its monotony—so much so that Chaucer put into
the mouth of both Knight and Host a vigorous protest against
it as adopted by himself in The Monk's Tale. The scheme of
the Mirror, with its medieval device of an interlocutor, was taken
over directly from Lydgate's translation (through Premierfait) of
Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, of which, indeed, the
Mirror is a continuation: originally, it was intended to be bound
up in one volume with The Fall of Princes, and the first ‘tragedy,'
in all the earlier editions, is entitled The Falle of Robert Tresilian.
On the other hand, the Mirror had a large share in the develop-
ment of historical poems and history plays in the Elizabethan
period, and Sackville's Induction is known to all who care for
English poetry.
Warton's ascription of the original design of the Mirror to
Sackville still passes current, and even later historians leave the issue
somewhat obscure. The assertion that Sackville was the originator


## p. 193 (#215) ############################################

The Original Design
193
of the whole work was not made by Niccols (editor of the 1610
version of the Mirror); Warton was misled by more recent
authorities that of Mrs Cooper, perhaps, in the Muses Library
(1738). It seems worth while to make the matter clear by quoting
what Niccols actually says in his edition as to Sackville's con-
nection with the undertaking:
This worthie president of learning, intending to perfect all this storie
himselfe from the Conquest, being called to a more serious expence of his
time in the great state affaires of his most royall ladie and soveraigne, left
the dispose thereof to M. Baldwine, M. Ferrers and others, the composers of
these tragedies, who continuing their methode which was by way of dialogue
or interlocution betwixt every tragedie, gave it onely place before the duke of
Buckingham's complaint.
There is nothing here ascribing to Sackville the original design.
Indeed, the words 'perfect' and 'continuing' imply that Sackville's
undertaking was preceded by that of Baldwin, Ferrers and others;
and this is plainly stated in Baldwin's preface of 1563. When he
proposed to read Sackville's Induction-
'Hath hee made a preface,' sayd one, 'what meaneth hee thereby, seeing
none other hath used the like order? ' 'I will tell you the cause thereof,' sayd
I, which is this; after that hee understoode that some of the counsayl would
not suffer the booke to bee printed in such order as wee had agreede and
determined, hee purposed to have gotten at my bandes all the tragedies that
were before the duke of Buckingham's, which hee would have preserved in
one volume. And from that time backward, even to the time of William the
Conquerour, he determined to continue and perfect all the story him selfe, in
such order as Lydgate (following Bochas) had already used. And therefore
to make a meete induction into the matter, hee devised this poesie. '
Stanzas 76 and 77 of the Induction and stanza 2 of The Complaynt
of Henry Duke of Buckingham show that Sackville intended to
write other complaints,' and there is some probability in Court-
hope's suggestion that “when the Council prohibited the publication
of the book, probably on account of its modern instances, he resolved
to begin with ancient history. According to the testimony of both
Baldwin and Niccols, he intended to begin at the Conquest and
to fill the gap between 1066 and 1388, which, as a matter of
fact, was not filled until 1610. But that Sackville was one of
the partners in the original design is doubtful, as he was only
eighteen years of age when the first edition of the Mirror was
being printed
Baldwin says in his ‘ Epistle dedicatory' (1559): The wurke was
begun, and part of it printed iii. years agoe,' and this statement
is borne out by a curious circumstance pointed out by W. F. Trench.
The title-page of the first edition has survived at the end of a few
E. L. III.
13
8
a
CH. IX.


## p. 194 (#216) ############################################

194
A Mirror for Magistrates
copies of Wayland's edition of Lydgate's Fall of Princes, and,
on the reverse, Wayland printed his licence, dated 20 October
1553, and beginning: 'Mary by the grace of God, Quene of
Englande, Fraunce, and Ireland, defendour of the faith and in
earth of the Churche of Englande, and also of Ireland, the
supreme head. Mary was relieved of the title "head of the
church' by a statute passed 4 January, 1555, and it was informally
dropped some months before that time. In the letter of John
Elder to the bishop of Caithness, dated 1 January 1555, and printed
by Wayland, the letters patent are reproduced with the omission
of the words italicised above. Wayland was a good Catholic
and a printer of (mainly) religious books, and, naturally, he would
make haste to conform with the law. Elder's letter, printed in
1555, shows that he did so, and A memorial of suche Princes as
since the tyme of King Richard the Seconde have been unfortunate
in the Realme of England (80 runs the original title-page) must
have been printed in 1554.
Wayland, however, was not the printer who originated the
undertaking, and his attempt to carry it into execution was
hindered by the lord chancellor, Stephen Gardiner. By the time
that a licence had been procured through the influence of lord
Stafford, Wayland had gone out of business, and the first editions
issued to the public were printed by Thomas Marsh. The first
editor of the Mirror, William Baldwin, apparently began his
connection with the work of publishing as servant to Edward
Whitchurch, who published his Treatise of Moral Philosophy
(1547) and The Canticles (1549). On the accession of queen
Mary, Whitchurch, who was a zealous protestant, apparently gave
up business, and sold his stock-in-trade to Wayland and Tottel
Baldwin then entered the service of Wayland, who had taken over
Whitchurch's office at the sign of the Sun in Fleet street; and
from his presses were issued Baldwin's Brief Memorial (1554)
and a new edition of the Moral Philosophy (1555). Whitchurch
had in hand an edition of Lydgate's Fall of Princes, and this
was taken up by both Wayland and Tottel. Tottel's edition bore
a title-page including one of Whitchurch's ornamental borders,
marked with his initials; Wayland's was issued from Whitchurch's
former office. Whitchurch, therefore, as Trench has shown, was
the printer referred to in the extract from Baldwin's address
"To the Reader'given below (1559); and this conclusion is borne
out by the fact that those concerned in the enterprise were,
with the exception of Wayland, all protestants. It leads to
6


## p. 195 (#217) ############################################

The Original Design
195
the further inference that the book was first planned in the
reign of Edward VI.
The origin of the enterprise is best set forth in Baldwin's own
words in the following extract from his address 'To the Reader'
(1559):
When the printer had purposed with hym selfe to printe Lidgate's booke
of the fall of Princes, and had made privye thereto, many both honourable
and worshipfull, he was counsailed by dyvers of them, to procure to have the
storye contynewed from where as Bochas lefte, unto this presente time,
chiefly of such as Fortune had dalyed with here in this ylande. . . which advice
liked him so well, that hee requyred mee to take paynes therein.
Baldwin refused to undertake the task without assistance, and
the printer, presumably still Whitchurch, persuaded divers learned
men to take upon them part of the work.
And when certayne of them to the nombre of seaven, were through a
generall assent at one apoynted time and place, gathered together to devise
thereupon I resorted unto them, bearing with mee the booke of Bochas,
translated by Dan Lidgate, for the better observation of his order: which
although wee liked well yet would it not conveniently serve, seeing that both
Bochas and Lidgate were deade, neyther were there any alive that medled
with like argument, to whome the unfortunate might make theyr mone. To
make therefore a state meete for the matter, they all agreede that I shoulde
usurpe Bochas' rome, and the wretched princes complayne unto mee: and
tooke upon themselves, every man for his part to be sundry personages, and
in theyr behalfes to bewaile unto mee theyr greevous chaunces, heavy des-
tenies, and woefull misfortunes.
Ferrers marvelled that Bochas had forgotten, among his miser-
able princes, those of our own nation-Britons, Danes, Saxons and
English down to his own time.
It were therefore a goodly and notable matter, to searche and discourse
our whole story from the first beginning of the inhabiting of the isle. But
seeing the printer's mind is to have us followe where Lidgate left, wee will
leave that greate laboure to other that maye entende it, and (as one being
bold first to breake the yse) I will begin at the time of Richarde the second,
a time as unfortunate as the ruler therein.
The original design was, therefore, suggested to Whitchurch,
and by him committed to Baldwin and his associates. Ferrers
thought of beginning from the time of the ancient Britons, and
it was the printer who decided that they should 'follow where
Lidgate left. ' Baldwin intended to continue the story to queen
Mary's time, but he was fain to end it much sooner. "Whan I first
tooke it in hand, I had the help of many graunted and offred of
sum, but of few perfourmed, skarce of any'('To the Nobilitie,'1559).
The original design of the Mirror was not carried out in its entirety
until 1610; all the later contributions to it were contemplated in
1342


## p. 196 (#218) ############################################

196
A Mirror for Magistrates
the plans of the original authors, and were, as we shall see, accom-
plished in consequence of their suggestions.
What were to have been the contents of the original issue in
folio, we do not know, except that they included the tragedies of
Richard II and Owen Glendower, and, probably, most of those of
part 1 (1559) and some of part II (1563).
It appears from the end-links of Clarence (Quarto 1) and Shore's
Wife (Q2) that Baldwin planned three parts or volumes: first to
the end of Edward IV's reign; then, to the end of Richard III;
and, lastly, 'to the ende of this King and Queene's reigne' (Philip
and Mary). It further appears, from a reference to 'our queene
because she is a woman, and our king because he is a straunger'
in the Blacksmith's end-link, that this tragedy was written at the
same time, although it was not given to the public until 1563. In
the Shore's Wife end-link (Q2), the tragedy of Somerset was also
mentioned, and, presumably, that also was in existence in the reign
of Philip and Mary, for a place was left for it in the first quarto,
although it was not published until the second quarto. As actually
given to the public, part I contained nineteen tragedies—those
of Tresilian, Mortimer, Gloucester, Mowbray, Richard II, Owen
Glendower, Northumberland, Cambridge, Salisbury, James I (of
Scotland), Suffolk, Cade, York, Clifford, Worcester, Warwick,
Henry VI, Clarence, Edward IV; in the prose links, mention is
made of three others-those of the duchess Eleanor and duke
Humphrey of Gloucester (printed in 1578) and that of Somerset
(printed 1563). Part II contained only eight tragedies--those of
Woodville, Hastings, Buckingham, Collingbourne, Richard III,
Shore's Wife, Somerset and the Blacksmith
In 1574, Marsh issued The First parte of the Mirour for
Magistrates, containing the falles of the first unfortunate Princes
of this lande. From the comming of Brute to the incarnation of
our saviour and redemer Jesu Christe. John Higgins, the editor,
says he was moved to the work by the words of Baldwin in his
address "To the Reader': 'the like infortunate princes offered
themselves unto me as matter very meete for imitation, the like
admonition, miter, and phrase. ' He, accordingly, took the earliest
period, up to the birth of Christ, and was inclined with time and
leisure 't'accomplish the residue til I came to the Conquest. ' His
first edition included the lives of Albanact (B. C. 1085), Humber,
Locrinus, Elstride, Sabrine, Madan, Malin, Mempricius, Bladud,
1 As to the authorship of parts I and II, see table in bibliography.
6
6


## p. 197 (#219) ############################################

>
Contents of the Parts
197
Cordila, Morgan, Forrex, Porrex, Kimarus, Morindus, Nennius,
and (in some copies) Irenglas (B. C. 51). These were all written by
himself and were reprinted in 1575 without noteworthy change.
Baldwin's first and second parts were now combined as the last
part and published by Marsh under that title in 1574 (Q 4) and,
again, in 1575 (Q5). The sixth quarto (1578) is a reprint of the
fifth, except that it includes the long promised tragedies of Eleanor
Cobham and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, by Ferrers.
The first and last parts were united in an edition published by
Marsh in 1587, and edited by Higgins, who had rewritten his own
legends of Bladud, Forrex and Porrex, and added to his list Iago,
Pinnar, Stater, Rudacke, Brennus, Emerianus, Chirinnus, Varianus,
Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, Guiderius, Hamo, Claudius, Nero,
Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Londricus, Severus, Fulgentius, Geta, Cara-
calla, making forty lives in all, and bringing his part of the work
down to A. D. 209. To the last part he added Sir Nicholas Burdet
(1441), written by himself; two poems, “pende above fifty yeares
agone,' by Francis Dingley of Munston—The Lamentation of
James IV and Flodden Field-and Cardinal Wolsey, by Church-
yard.
Meanwhile, Thomas Blenerhasset had set to work to fill the gap
left by Higgins after B. C. 51, and published in 1578 the following
tragedies, extending from A. D. 44 to 1066: Guidericus, Carassus,
Helena, Vortiger, Uther Pendragon, Cadwallader, Sigebert, Lady
Ebbe, Alurede, Egelrede, Edric, Harold. These were issued by
a different printer (Richard Webster) and, therefore, were not
included by Marsh in his edition of 1587, Higgins covering part
of the same ground, and having promised in his address ‘To the
Reader,' in 1574, to come down to the same point—the Conquest-
that Blenerhasset actually reached.
The next editor, Niccols (1610) adopted the plan suggested by
Sackville, and omitted the prose links. For the first part, he took
Higgins's Induction; for the second, Sackville's; and, for the third,
one of his own composition. The first part included the forty
tragedies by Higgins and ten of Blenerhasset's—omitting Guide-
ricus (supplied, since Blenerhasset wrote, by Higgins) and Alurede
(supplied by Niccols himself); for the latter reason, he omits
Richard III in part II and he also leaves out James I, James IV
and the Battle of Flodden, apparently out of consideration for the
Scots; part III contains ten tragedies of his own-Arthur, Edmund
Ironside, Alfred, Godwin, Robert Curthose, Richard I, John,
Edward II, Edward V, Richard III. England's Eliza, also his
own, with a separate Induction, describes the reign of queen


## p. 198 (#220) ############################################

198
A A Mirror for Magistrates
Elizabeth. Thus, the original design, projected in the reign of
Edward VI, was completed in the reign of James; but the day
of the Mirror had gone by. The new and complete edition did
not sell, and the sheets were re-issued under fresh titles in 1619,
1620 and 1621.
As to the popularity and influence of the successive editions of
A Mirror for Magistrates in the sixteenth century there can be
no doubt. Besides obvious imitations in title and method', many
other works were published similar in plan, though not in title.
Some of these, such as George Cavendish's Metrical Visions, were,
evidently, due to the example of Boccaccio's De Casibus through
Lydgate; others, such as A Poor Man's Pittance, are either
avowed or obvious imitations of the Mirror. In the last decade
of the century, isolated legends came into vogue, apparently
through the success of Churchyard's Jane Shore (Q2), which,
probably, suggested Daniel's Rosamond (1592) and this, in turn,
Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece? . Drayton's Cromwell (1607) was
actually included by Niccols in his edition of the Mirror, but,
together with his Legends of Robert Duke of Normandy, Matilda
the Chaste and Piers Gaveston (1596), Lodge's Tragical Com-
playnt of Elstred (1593) and Fletcher's Richard III (1593), it
belongs to the class of poems suggested by the Mirror rather than
to the cycle proper. Probably, the influence of the Mirror on the
public mind through the interest it aroused in the national history
did as much for literature as the direct imitations. In this way,
the Mirror contributed to the production of Daniel's Civil Wars,
Drayton's Barons' Wars, England's Heroicall Epistles and
Warner's Albion's England, though there is little evidence of
direct connection. As to the influence of the Mirror upon the
history plays, fuller investigation only serves to confirm Schelling's
summary of the probabilities:
Upwards of thirty historical plays exist, the subjects of which are treated
in The Mirour for Magistrates. And, although from its meditative and
elegiac character it is unlikely that it was often employed as an immediate
source, the influence of such a work in choice of subject and, at times, in
manner of treatment cannot but have been exceedingly great.
In critical esteem, the Mirror hardly survived the period of its
popular influence. No sooner had the book been given to the
public, than Jasper Heywood proclaimed the 'eternall fame' of its
first editor, Baldwin (prefatory verses to Seneca's Thyestes, 1560);
1 The following may be noted : the Mirror of Madness (1576), Mirror of Mutabilitie
(1579), Mirror of Modesty (1579), Mirror of Martinists (1589), Mirror of Magnanimity
(1599), Mirror of Martyrs (1601).
* Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare, p. 77.


## p. 199 (#221) ############################################

Sackville
199
Sidney, in his Apologie, praised the Mirror more discreetly as
'meetly furnished of beautiful parts’; Hake, in 1588, commended
it as 'penned by the choicest learned wits, which, for the stately
proportioned vein of the heroic style, and good meetly proportion
of verse, may challenge the best of Lydgate, and all our late
rhymers? '; and Harington, in his Ariosto (1591), praised the
tragedies without reserve as 'very well set downe, and in a good
verse. ' After this date, the fame of the Mirror became less
certain, and the modern reader will hardly feel surprise at the fate
which has overtaken it. The moralising is insufferably trite, and
unrelieved by a single spark of humour. Seldom does the style
rise to the dignity and pathos of subject and situation; the jog-trot
of the metre is indescribably monotonous, and one welcomes the
interruption of the connective passages in prose, with their quaint
phrases and no less quaint devices. Joseph Hall ridiculed its
'branded whining ghosts' and curses on the fates and fortune;
and, though Marston tried to turn the tables on Hall on this
point, his Reactio does not appear to have succeeded in impress-
ing the public. Chapman, in May Day (1611), makes fun of
Lorenzo as “an old Senator, one that has read Marcus Aurelius,
Gesta Romanorum, Mirror of Magistrates, etc. ' Edmund Bolton?
and Anthony à Wood imply that the Mirror had been rivalled, if
not superseded, in popular favour by Warner's Albion's England.
Both refer to it as belonging to a past age.
In the eighteenth century, when the Mirror was recalled to
notice in Mrs Cooper's Muses Library, it was to direct special
attention to the work of Sackville, but appreciation of the poetic
quality of Sackville was no new thing. It was the prevailing
opinion of his contemporaries that, if he had not been called to the
duties of statesmanship, he would have achieved great things in
poetry. Spenser gave expression to this view with his usual courtly
grace and in his own 'golden verse' in the sonnet addressed to
Sackville in 1590, commending The Faerie Queene to his protection:
In vain I thinke, right honourable Lord,
By this rude rime to memorize thy name,
Whose learned Muse hath writ her owne record
In golden verse, worthy immortal fame:
Thon much more fit (were leasure to the same)
Thy gracious Soverains praises to compile,
And her imperiall Majestie to frame
In loftie numbers and heroicke stile.
Some of Spenser's praise might be set down to the desire
1 Warton, ed. 1841, vol. iv, pp. 203-4.
Hypercritica, written c. 1620.
• Ed. 1813, vol. 11, p. 166.
2


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200
A Mirror for Magistrates
to conciliate an influential patron, for lord Buckhurst had just
been installed at Windsor as a knight companion of the order
of the Garter; and, in the following year, by the direct inter-
position of the queen, he was elected chancellor of the university of
Oxford. But, when all temptation to flattery had long passed away,
Pope chose him out for special commendation among the writers of
his age as distinguished by a propriety in sentiments, a dignity in
the sentences, an unaffected perspicuity of style, and an easy flow
of numbers; in a word, that chastity, correctness, and gravity of
style which are so essential to tragedy; and which all the tragic
poets who followed, not excepting Shakespeare himself, either little
understood or perpetually neglected. '
Only the small extent of Sackville's poetical work has prevented
him from inclusion among the masters of the grand style. This
distinction is the more remarkable because the occasion of which
he took advantage, and the material he used, were not particularly
favourable. He evidently felt that the vast design of Baldwin
and his fellows was inadequately introduced by the bald and
almost childish prose preface, with its frank acceptance of medieval
machinery, which had seemed sufficient to them. He turned to the
great examples of antiquity, Vergil and Dante; indeed, apparently,
he had intended to produce a Paradiso as well as an Inferno.
Sorrow says:
I shall thee guide first to the grisly lake,
And thence unto the blissful place of rest,
Where thou shall see, and hear, the plaint they make
That whilom here bare swing among the best:
This shalt thou see: but great is the unrest
That thou must bide, before thou canst attain
Unto the dreadful place where these remain.
The astonishing thing is that Sackville is not overwhelmed by the
models he has adopted. His command of his material is free and
masterful, although he has to vivify such shadowy medieval
abstractions as Remorse of Conscience, Dread, Revenge, Misery,
Care, Sleep, Old Age, Malady, Famine, Death and War.