before the Queen in 1561, the noble author being then quite a young man. This tragedy being considered as the first in our language, is certainly a curiosity, and in other respects it is also remarkable; though, perhaps, enough has been said about it. As a work of genius, it may be set down as nothing, for it contains hardly a memorable line or passage; as a work of art, and the first of its kind attempted in the language, it may be considered as a monument of the taste and skill of the authors. Its merit is confined to the regularity of the plot and metre, to its general good sense, and strict attention to common decorum. If the poet has not stamped the peculiar genius of his age upon this first attempt, it is no inconsiderable proof of strength of mind and conception sustained by its own sense of propriety alone, to have so far anticipated the taste of succeeding times as to have avoided any glaring offence against rules and models, which had no existence in his day. Or perhaps a truer solution might be, that there were as yet no examples of a more ambiguous and irregular kind to tempt him to err, and as he had not the impulse or resources within himself to strike out a new path, he merely adhered with modesty and caution to the classical models with which, as a scholar, he was well acquainted. The language of the dialogue is clear, unaffected, and intelligible without the smallest difficulty, even to this day; it has “no figures nor no fantasies," to which the most fastidious critic can object, but the dramatic power is nearly none at all. It is written expressly to set forth the dangers and mischiefs that arise from the division of sovereign power; and the several speakers dilate upon the different views of the subject in turn, like clever schoolboys set to compose a thesis, or declaim upon the fatal consequences of ambition, and the uncertainty of human affairs. The author, in the end, declares for the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance; a

doctrine which indeed was seldom questioned at that time of day. Eubulus, one of the old king's counsellors, thus gives his opinion:

"Eke fully with the duke my mind agrees,

That no cause serves, whereby the subject may
Call to account the doings of his prince;
Much less in blood by sword to work revenge:
No more than may the hand cut off the head.
In act nor speech: no, not in secret thought,
The subject may rebel against his lord,
Or judge of him that sits in Cæsar's seat,
With grudging mind to damn those he mislikes.
Though kings forget to govern as they ought,
Yet subjects must obey as they are bound."*

Yet how little he was borne out in this inference by the unbiassed dictates of his own mind, may appear from the freedom and unguarded boldness of such lines as the following, addressed by a favourite to a prince, as courtly advice:

"Know ye that lust of kingdoms hath no law:

The gods do bear and well allow in kings
The things that they abhor in rascal routs.
When kings on slender quarrels run to wars,
And then in cruel and unkindly wise
Command thefts, rapes, murder of innocents,
The spoil of towns, ruins † of mighty realms;
Think you such princes do suppose themselves
Subject to laws of kind and fear of gods?
Murders and violent thefts in private men
Are heinous crimes, and full of foul reproach;
Yet none offence, but deck'd with noble name
Of glorious conquests in the hands of kings."§

The principal characters make as many invocations to the names of their children, their country, and their

[Shakspeare Society's edition by Mr. W. D. Cooper, 1847, p. 147.] † Shakspeare Society's edition reads reigns, which does not seem to yield any sense.-ED.

So the genuine edition of 1570. The spurious edition of 1565 has suppress.-Ed.

§ [Ibid. pp. 118-19.]

friends, as Cicero in his Orations, and all the topics insisted upon are open, direct, urged in the face of day, with no more attention to time or place, to an enemy who overhears, or an accomplice to whom they are addressed; in a word, with no more dramatic insinuation or by-play than the pleadings in a court of law. Almost the only passage that I can instance, as rising above this didactic tone of mediocrity into the pathos of poetry, is one where Marcella laments the untimely death of her lover, Ferrex :

"Ah! noble prince, how oft have I beheld

Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed,
Shining in armour bright before the tilt;

And with thy mistress' sleeve tied on thy helm,
And charge thy staff to please thy lady's eye,
That bow'd the head-piece of thy friendly foe!
How oft in arms on horse to bend the mace,
How oft in arms on foot to break the sword,
Which never now these eyes may see again!" *

There seems a reference to Chaucer in the wording of the following lines:

"Then saw I how he smiled with slaying knife
Wrapp'd under cloke, then saw I deep deceit
Lurk in his face, and death prepared for me."t

Sir Philip Sidney says of this tragedy: "Our tragedies and comedies (not without cause cried out against), observing rules neither of lowest civility nor of skilful poetry, excepting Gorboduc (again, I say, of those that I have seen), which notwithstanding, as it is full of stately speeches, and well-sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style, and as full of notable morality; which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtain the very end of poetry." And Mr. Pope, whose

[Edition of 1570, pp. 143-4.]

"The smiler with the knife under his cloke."-Knight's Tale. [Apologie for Poetrie, 1595, repr. Arber, p. 63.]

D

taste in such matters was very different from Sir Philip Sidney's, says in still stronger terms, "that the writers of the succeeding age might have improved as much in other respects, by copying from him a propriety in the sentiments, an unaffected perspicuity of style, and an easy flow in the 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 Shakspeare himself, either little understood, or perpetually neglected." It was well for us and them that they did so!

The Induction to the Mirrour for Magistrates does his Muse more credit. It sometimes reminds one of Chaucer, and at others seems like an anticipation, in some degree, both of the measure and manner of Spenser. The following stanzas may give the reader an idea of the merit of this old poem, which was published in 1563 :*

"By him † lay heavy sleep, the cousin of death
Flat on the ground, and still as any stone,
A very corpse, save yielding forth a breath.
Small keep took he, whom fortune frowned on,
Or whom she lifted up unto the throne
Of high renown, but as a living death,
So dead alive, of life he drew the breath.

The body's rest, the quiet of the heart,
The travail's ease, the still night's fear was he.
And of our life in earth the better part,
Reaver of sight, and yet in whom we see
Things oft that tide, and oft that never be.
Without respect esteeming equally

King Croesus pomp, and Irus poverty.

The first edition of the Mirror for Magistrates appeared in 1559, 4to; but Sackville's Induction was first included in the reprint of 1563.-ED.

Sackville's Works, ed. 1859, p. 110, et seq.

And, next in order, sad* Old Age we found,
His beard all hoar, his eye hollow and blind,
With drooping cheer still pouring on the ground,
As on the place where Nature him assign'd
To rest, when that the sisters had untwin'd

His vital thread, and ended with their knife
The fleeting course of fast declining life.

There heard we him with broke and hollow plaint
Rue with himself his end approaching fast,
And all for nought his wretched mind torment,
With sweet remembrance of his pleasures past,
And fresh delights of lusty youth forewast.
Recounting which, how would he sob and shriek !
And to be young again of Jove beseek.†

But, and the cruel fates so fixed be,
That time forepast cannot return again.
This one request of Jove yet prayed he:
That in such withered plight, and wretched pain,
As eld (accompanied with his loathsome train)
Had brought on him, all were it woe and grief,
He might a while yet linger forth his life.

And not so soon descend into the pit:
Where death, when he the mortal corps hath slain,
With retchless hand in grave doth cover it,
Thereafter never to enjoy again

The gladsome light, but in the ground y-lain

In depth of darkness waste and wear to nought,
As he had near into the world been brought.

But who had seen him, sobbing how he stood,
Unto himself, and how he would bemoan
His youth forepast, as though it wrought him good
To talk of youth, all were his youth foregone,
He would have mus'd and marvell'd much, whereon
This wretched age should life desire so fain,

And knows full well life doth but length his pain,

* The editor of 1859 points this passage as follows: "And next, in order sad, Old Age," &c.

+ Beseech,

i.e. if.