Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth. Lucy Aikin

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СКАЧАТЬ i- 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 effected 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 since been rarely 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 lady Elizabeth by his paternal grandmother, who was a Boleyn. The time of his birth is doubtful, some placing it in 1536, others as early as 1527. 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 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−200- -vol i- 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 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

      "————never man did see

       A wight but half so woe-begone as she."

      Struck with grief and horror at the view, he earnestly requires 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

       Among the furies in th' infernal lake:"

      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:"

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      and she ends by inviting him to accompany her in her return:

      "Come, come, quoth she, and see what I shall show,

       Come hear the plaining and the bitter bale

       Of worthy men by Fortune's overthrow:

       Come thou and see them ruing all in row.

       They were but shades that erst in mind thou rolled,

       Come, come with me, thine eyes shall then behold."

      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 enter, hand in hand, a gloomy wood, through which Sorrow only could have found the way.

      "But lo, while thus amid the desert dark

       We passed on with steps and pace unmeet,

       A rumbling roar, confused with howl and bark

       Of dogs, shook all the ground beneath our feet,

       And struck the din within our ears so deep,

       As half distraught unto the ground I fell;

       Besought return, and not to visit hell."

      His guide however encourages him, and they proceed by the "lothly lake" Avernus,

      "In dreadful fear amid the dreadful place."

       "And first within the porch and jaws of hell

       Sat deep Remorse of Conscience, all besprent

       With tears; and to herself oft would she tell

       Her wretchedness, and cursing never stent

       To sob and sigh: but ever thus lament

       With thoughtful care, as she that all in vain

       Should wear and waste continually in pain.

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       Her eyes, unsteadfast rolling here and there,

       Whirled on each place as place that vengeance brought,

       So was her mind continually in fear,

       Tossed and tormented with tedious thought

       Of those detested crimes that she had wrought:

       With dreadful cheer and looks thrown to the sky,

       Longing for death, and yet she could not die.

       Next saw we Dread, all trembling how he shook

       With foot uncertain proffered here and there,

       Benumbed of speech, and with a ghastly look

       Searched every place, all pale and dead with fear,

       His cap borne up with staring of his hair." &c.

      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 fullness 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."

       "With Sorrow for my guide, as there I stood,

       A troop of men the most in arms bedight,

       In tumult clustered 'bout both sides the flood:

       'Mongst whom, who were ordained t' eternal night,

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