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 method1, 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 Lucrece2. 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 Complaynt 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).

2 Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare, p. 77.

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 rhymers1'; 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 impressing 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 Bolton2 and Anthony à Wood3 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:

Thou 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.

3 Ed. 1813, vol. 1, p. 166.

2 Hypercritica, written c. 1620.

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 interposition 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. It is not merely that his choice of phrase is adequate and his verse easy and varied. He conceives greatly, and handles his great conceptions with a sureness of touch which belongs only to the few. He was undoubtedly indebted to Chaucer and Gavin Douglas, and, in his turn, he influenced Spenser; but his verse bears the stamp of his own individuality. The Induction has not Spenser's sensuous melody; and it is far removed from Chaucer's ingenuous subtlety and wayward charm; but it has an impassioned dignity and grave majesty which are all its own.

CHAPTER X

GEORGE GASCOIGNE

GASCOIGNE, like the writers of A Mirror for Magistrates, belongs to a period of literary transition; his work is superior to theirs as a whole, though nowhere does he rise to the full and heightened style of Sackville's Induction. Like them, he was highly esteemed in his own time, and made notable contributions to the development of poetry, but his work soon came to be spoken of with an air of condescension, as possessing antiquarian rather than actual interest. Gabriel Harvey added highly appreciative notes to his copy of The Posies, still preserved in the Bodleian library, and bearing in his handwriting the date Cal. Sept. 1577; and, in Gratulationes Valdinenses (1578) he mentions Gascoigne among the poets to be included in every lady's library1. Harvey, further, wrote a Latin elegy and an English epitaph on Gascoigne at his death, and made complimentary references to the poet in his earlier correspondence. But, in 1592, he adopted a patronising tone: 'I once bemoned the decayed and blasted estate of M. Gascoigne who wanted not some commendable parts of conceit and endeavour'; and, in 1593, he mentioned Gascoigne with Elderton, Turbervile, Drant and Tarleton as belonging to an age outgrown : 'the winde is chaunged, and their is a busier pageant upon the stage.' About a year later, Sir John Davies gives point to one of his Epigrammes, by an allusion to 'olde Gascoines rimes' as hopelessly out of date. Edmund Bolton, in his Hypercritica (c. 1620), says: 'Among the lesser late poets George Gascoigne's Works may be endured'; and Drayton in his epistle Of Poets and Poesy tells the truth even more bluntly. After speaking of Surrey and Wyatt, he continues :

Gascoigne and Churchyard after them again
In the beginning of Eliza's reign,

Accounted were great meterers many a day,
But not inspired with brave fire, had they
Liv'd but a little longer, they had seen

Their works before them to have buried been.

1 Liber IV. De Aulica.

3 Harvey's Letter Book, Camden Society. 5 Pierce's Supererogation.

2 Sloane MSS, British Museum.

4 Foure Letters.

6 In Ciprium, 22.

In his attitude towards his work, Gascoigne further illustrates this transition spirit. He took up poetry as an amusement, and, somewhat unwillingly, came to acknowledge it as a profession. Lack of resolution combined with the unfavourable conditions of the time to prevent his attaining eminence. Gabriel Harvey, in his somewhat pedantic fashion, remarks, in a Censura critica written on a blank half page of Weedes, on the personal defects of the author.

Sum vanity; and more levity; his special faultes, and the continual causes of his misfortunes. Many other have maintained themselves gallantly upon some one of his qualities: nothing fadgeth with him, for want of Resolution, and Constancy to any one kind. He shall never thrive with any thing that can brooke no crosses: or hath not learned to make the best of the worst, in his profession. It is no marvel, though he had cold success in his actions, that in his studdies, and Looves, thought upon the warres; in the warres, mused upon his studdies, and Looves. The right floorishing man, in studdy, is nothing but studdy; in Loove, nothing but Loove; in warr, nothing but

Gascoigne himself, in the poem on his 'woodmanship' addressed to lord Grey of Wilton1, admits that he tried without success the professions of a philosopher, a lawyer, a courtier and a soldier, He was born of a good Bedfordshire family, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, as appears from his references to the university in The Steele Glas and the dedication of The Tale of Hemetes the heremyte, and in Dulce bellum inexpertis2 to his 'master' Nevynson3. He left the university without a degree, entered Gray's Inn in 1555 and represented the county of Bedford in parliament 1557-9. His youthful extravagances led to debt, disgrace and disinheritance by his father, Sir John Gascoigne.

'In myddest of his youth' he tells us (1. 62) he 'determined to abandone all vaine delightes and to returne unto Greyes Inne, there to undertake againe the studdie of the common Lawes. And being required by five sundry Gentlemen to write in verse somewhat worthye to bee remembred, before he entered into their fellowshippe, hee compiled these five sundrie sortes of metre uppon five sundrye theames, whiche they delivered unto him.?'

Gascoigne's ingenuous use of the word 'compiled' disarms criticism, but it makes the whole incident only the more significant of the attitude of himself and his companions towards his verse. It was occasional and perfunctory, the work neither of an inspired artist on the one hand, nor of a professional craftsman on the other. However, Gascoigne not only wrote the versified exercises

1 Cambridge edition, ed. Cunliffe, J. W., vol. 1, p. 348.

2 Stanza 199, vol. 1, p. 180 u.s.

3 Stephen Nevynson was a fellow of Trinity and proceeded M.A. in 1548.