CHAP. VIII. 1555 TO 1558. Elizabeth applies herself to classical literature.—Its neglected state.Progress of English poetry.-Account of Sackville and his works.Plan of his Mirror for Magistrates.—Extracts.-Notice of the Contributors to this collection.-Its popularity and literary merits. -Entertainment given to Elizabeth by sir Thomas Pope.-Dudley Ashton's attempt.-Elizabeth acknowledged innocent of his designs. -Her letter to the queen.-She returns to London-quits it in some disgrace after again refusing the duke of Savoy.-Violence of Philip respecting this match.-Mary protects her sister.— Festivities at Hatfield, Enfield, and Richmond.-King of Sweden's addresses to Elizabeth rejected.-Letter of sir T. Pope respecting her dislike of marriage.-Proceedings of the ecclesiastical commission.-Cruel treatment of sir John Cheke.-General decay of national prosperity-Loss of Calais.-Death of Mary. NOTWITHSTANDING the late fortunate change in her situation, Elizabeth must have entertained an anxious sense of her remaining difficulties, if not dangers; and the prudent circumspection of her character again, as in the latter years of her brother, dictated the expediency of shrouding herself in all the obscurity compatible with her rank and expectations. To literature, the never-failing resource of its votaries, she turned again for solace and occupation: and Ascham, whose qualifications as a classical scholar had caused him to be invited back to court, to fill the post of Latin secretary, was summoned to resume his lessons to his illustrious pupil. The lady Elizabeth and I' writes he to Sturmius in the year 1555, 'are reading together, in Greek, the orations of Eschines and Demosthenes. She reads before me, and at first sight she so learnedly comprehends not only the idiom of the language and the meaning of the orator, but the whole grounds of contention, the decrees of the people, and the customs and manners of the Athenians, as you would greatly wonder to hear.' The concerns of the college of which sir Thomas Pope was the founder, likewise engaged a portion of her thoughts; and this gentleman, in a letter to a friend, mentions that the lady Elizabeth, whom he served, and who was 'not only gracious but right learned.' often asked him of the course he had devised for his scholars. Classical literature was now daily declining from the eminence on which the two preceding sovereigns had laboured to place it. The destruction of monastic institutions and the dispersion of libraries, with the impoverishment of public schools and colleges through the rapacity of Edward's courtiers, had inflicted far deeper injury on the cause of learning, than the studious example of the young monarch and his chosen companions was able to compensate. The persecuting spirit of Mary, by driving into exile or suspending from the exercise of their functions the able and enlightened professors of the protestant doctrine, had robbed the church and the universities of their brightest luminaries; and it was not under the auspices of her fierce and ignorant bigotry that the cultivators of the elegant and humanizing arts would seek encouragement or protection. Gardiner, indeed, where particular prejudices did not interfere, was inclined to favour the learned; and Ascham, notwithstanding his noted attachment to the reformation, was indebted to him for the place of Latin Secretary. Cardinal Pole also, himself a scholar, was desirous to support, as much as present circumstances would permit, his ancient character of a patron of the learned; and he earnestly pleaded with sir Thomas Pope to provide for the teaching of Greek as well as Latin in his college; but sir Thomas persisted in his opinion that a Latin professorship was sufficient, considering the general decay of erudition in the country, which had caused an almost total cessation of the study of the Greek language. It was in the department of English poetry alone that any perceptible advance was affected or prepared during this deplorable æra ; and it was to the vigorous genius of one man, whose vivid personifications of abstract beings were then quite unrivalled, and have scarcely since been excelled in our language; and whose clear, copious, and forcible style of poetic narrative interested all readers, and inspired a whole school of writers who worked upon his model, that this advance is chiefly to be attributed. This benefactor to our literature was Thomas Sackville, son of sir Richard Sackville; an eminent member of queen Mary's council, and second-cousin to the princess Elizabeth by his paternal grandmother, who was a Boleyn. His birth is placed by the best authorities in the year 1536. He studied first at Oxford and afterwards at Cambridge, distinguishing himself at both universities by the vivacity of his parts and the excellence of his compositions both in verse and prose. According to the laudable custom of that age, which required that an English gentleman should acquaint himself intimately with the laws of his country before he took a seat amongst her legislators, he next entered himself of the Inner Temple; and about the last year of Mary's reign he served in parliament. But at this early period of life poetry had more charms for Sackville than law or politics; and following the bent of his genius, he first produced Gorboduc, confessedly the earliest specimen of regular tragedy in our language; but which will be noticed with more propriety when we reach the period of its representation before queen Elizabeth. He then, about the year 1557, as is supposed, laid the plan of an extensive work, 112 THE 'INDUCTION' BY SIR RICHARD SACKVILLE. to be called a 'Mirror for Magistrates': of which the design is thus unfolded in a highly poetical 'Induction.' The poet wandering forth on a winter's evening, and taking occasion from the various objects which 'told the cruel season,' to muse on the melancholy changes of human affairs, and especially on the reverses incident to greatness, suddenly encounters a 'piteous wight,' clad all in black; who was weeping, sighing, and wringing her hands, in such lamentable guise, that A wight but half so woe-begone as she.' Struck with grief and horror at the view, he earnestly desires her to 'unwrap' her woes, and inform him who and whence she is; since her anguish, if not relieved, must soon put an end to her life. She answers, 'Sorrow am I, in endless torments pained from these dismal regions she is come, she says, to bemoan the luckless lot of those 'Whom Fortune in this maze of misery, Of wretched chance most woful Mirrors chose ;' They were but shades that erst in mind thou rolled, He accepts the invitation, having first done homage to Sorrow as to a goddess; since she had been able to read his thought. The scenery and personages are now chiefly copied from the sixth book of the Æneid; but with the addition of many highly picturesque and original touches. The companions, hand in hand, enter a gloomy wood, through which Sorrow only could have found the way. 'But lo, while thus amid the desert dark His guide however encourages him, and they proceed by the 'lothly lake' Avernus; 'In dreadful fear amid the dreadful place.' Her eyes unsteadfast; rolling here and there, Tossed and tormented with tedious thought Of those detested crimes that she had wrought: All the other allegorical personages named, and only named, by Virgil, as well as a few additional ones, are pourtrayed in succession, and with the same strength and fulness of delineation; but with the exception of War, who appears in the attributes of Mars, they are represented simply as examples of Old Age, Malady, &c., not as the agents by whom these evils are inflicted upon others. Cerberus and Charon occur in their appropriate offices; but the monstrous forms Gorgon, Chimæra, &c., are judiciously suppressed; and the poet is speedily conducted to the banks of that 'main broad flood.' 'Which parts the gladsome fields from place of woe.' I wot not well it seemed that they were all Sorrow acquaints him that these are all illustrious examples of the reverses which he was lately deploring, who will themselves relate to him their fortunes; and that he must afterwards 'Recount the same to Kesar, king and peer.' The first whom he sees advancing towards him from the throng of ghosts is Henry duke of Buckingham, put to death under Richard III.: H 114 CRITIQUE ON, AND EXTRACTS FROM SACKVILLE'S WORKS. and his 'Legend,' or story, is the only one unfortunately which its author ever found leisure to complete; the favor of his illustrious kinswoman causing him on her accession to sink the poet in the courtier, the ambassador, and finally the minister of state. But he had already done enough to earn himself a lasting name amongst the improvers of poetry in England. In tragedy he gave the first regular model; in personification he advanced far beyond all his predecessors, and furnished a prototype to that master of allegory, Spenser. A greater poet than Spenser has also been indebted to him; as will be evident, I think, to all who compare the description of the figures on the shield of war in his Induction, and especially those of them which relate to the siege of Troy, with the exquisitely rich and vivid description of a picture on that subject in Shakspeare's early poem on Tarquin and Lucretia. The Legend of the duke of Buckingham is composed in a style rich, free, and forcible; the examples brought from ancient history of the suspicion and inward wretchedness to which tyrants have ever been a prey, and of the instability of popular favor, might in this age be accounted tedious and pedantic: they are, however, pertinent and well recited, and doubtless possessed the charm of novelty with respect to the majority of contemporary readers. The curses which the unhappy duke pours forth against the dependent who had betrayed him, may almost compare, in the energy and inventiveness of malice, with those of Shakspeare's queen Margaret; but they lose their effect by being thrown into the form of monologue and ascribed to a departed spirit, whose agonies of grief and rage in reciting his own death, have something in them bordering on the burlesque. The mind of Sackville was deeply fraught, as we have seen, with classic stores; and at a time when England possessed as yet no complete translation of Virgil, he might justly regard it as a considerable service to the cause of national taste, to transplant into our vernacular poetry some scattered flowers from his rich garden of poetic sweets. Thus, he has embellished his Legend with an imitation, or rather paraphrase, of the celebrated description of night in the fourth book of the Æneid. The lines well merit transcription. 'Midnight was come, when ev'ry vital thing With sweet sound sleep their weary limbs did rest; |