Lord Buckhurst. He was a poet only in his early manhood; in his later years he was a grave statesman, became under Elizabeth High Treasurer of England, and was Earl of Dorset under James I. THOMAS SACKVILLE, IN LATER LIFE. From a Painting engraved for "Lodge's Portraits." He died in 1608, nearly half a century after the date of his taking part with Thomas Norton in the writing of "Gorboduc," our first English tragedy, and when he had lived to see the greatest works of Shakespeare first produced upon the stage. In the days when he wrote "Gorboduc" he was studying law in the Inner Temple as Mr. Thomas Sackville; for the play was first acted at Christmas, 1561, and he was not knighted and made a baron as Lord Buckhurst until 1567. In the present volume Thomas Sackville is to be remembered not as dramatist but as author of an introduction or Induction to a proposed series of poems moralising for the admonition of men high in power the falls of those who had in former time risen as high as they, and been degraded from their igh estate. The plan of such a series of narratives had been first conceived by Boccaccio, and developed in a Latin prose book, "Of the Falls of Illustrious Men" ("De Casibus Illustrium Virorum "). This had been very popular in the latter part of the fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century. It suggested to Chaucer the series of "Tragedies," or records of reverse of happy fortune, in his "Monk's Tale." From a version of it by a French poet, Laurent de Premierfait, Lydgate had rhymed his "Falls of Princes."1 In Queen Mary's time, when such reverses were always before men's eyes, a printer suggested a series of such tales from English history, that was to be called a "Mirror for Magistrates," whereby they might see as in a glass the instability of power and the need of a wise use of it. Thomas Sackville who was then a youth of nineteen or twenty-his age was but twentytwo at the accession of Elizabeth, and the "Mirror" was planned in 1555-fastened upon this idea, and presently wrote a prologue or induction to the proposed series, in which Sorrow herself, personified, led the poet to the shades below, where the ghosts of the dead, as they passed by, told the sad stories of their lives on earth. Sackville wrote besides his Induction one "tragedy," the "Complaint of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham," but he wrote no more. The "Mirror" was worked out by others who introduced the book with a less lofty prelude of their own in prose. To Sackville's verses Edmund Spenser paid high tribute when in a sonnet he addressed him as one "Whose learned Muse hath writ her own recórd The series was enlarged from time to time during Elizabeth's reign by the work of different men, but none rose to the level of THOMAS SACKVILLE'S" INDUCTION TO THE MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES." Erythius, that in the cart first went,' And pale Cynthea, with her borrow'd light, And sorrowing I to see the summer flowers, To die the death, for nought long time may last; Then looking upward to the heaven's leams,* The sudden sight reduced to my mind That musing on this worldly wealth in thought, Which comes, and goes, more faster than we see The flickering flame that with the fire is wrought, My busy mind presented unto me Such fall of peers as in this realm had be; That oft I wish'd some would their woes descrive, To warn the rest whom fortune left alive. And straight forth stalking with redoubled pace, The foremost horse in the sun's chariot. 2 Stent, place of rest. See Note 15 on this page. 3 Nightes chare, the car of Night. 40 50 60 70 ♦ Leams, rays of light. First English "leóma," a ray or beam of light; "leoman" (Icelandic "ljóma"), to gleam or shine. Modern English "loom," as when a ship looms in the distance. Allied to the Latin "lux" and "lucere." 5 Reduced, led back. So, in the closing lines of Shakespeare's "Richard III.," Richard says: "Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord, That would reduce these bloody days again, And make poor England weep in streams of blood!" • More faster, a common Elizabethan form. In "King Lear," for cxample, we have (act i., scene 1)— "Avert your liking a more worthier way." "That she Most best, most dear'st should, in this trice of time. Act ii., scene 2 : "Harbour more craft and more corrupter ends." "My sister may receive it much more worse." Act ii., scene 3: "To take the basest and most poorest shape." Act ii., scene 4 : "And am fall'n out with my more hardier will." Act iii., scene 3: "More harder than the stones whereof 'tis raised. Act iv., scene 6: "Let not my worser spirit tempt me again." 7 Wight (First English "wiht"), a creature, thing, anything. The same word takes another form in the phrase "not a whit," and enters into the composition of the words "aught" and "naught." 8 Forvast, utterly wasted. The First English prefix for is equivalent to German ver. The ed in "forewasted," according to common Elizabethan usage, is dropped after the final t of the verb. Where it was not written it was often not pronounced. See Notes 4, page 88, and 7, page 96. Compare also "lament," in line 222. 9 Brast, burst. First English "berstan," past "bærst." Transpositions of r and s were common in First English. "Græs," grass, was 14 Dewle (French "deuil"), mourning. Doleful, in the next line, means full of " deuil," or dole. 15 Stint, cease. The meaning is, in the modern vulgarism, "cut it short." Icelandic "stytta," to make short; "stytting," a shortening -"stinting" in food is a shortening of the allowance; Icelandic "stuttr," stunted, scanty. A stutter in speech consists of words broken short before completion. "Stuttr" is closely akin to First English "stunt," of which the first sense is blunt, i.e., short of its head, then stupid and foolish; and the First English verb "stintan" took the same senses. Icelandic "stytti," a shortening, appears in the Morkinskinna, an old vellum containing lives of kings, as "styttni" (Cleasby and Vigfusson's Icelandic Dictionary). Insertion of n is illustrated by the relation in English and German of th to nd in such words as "muth" (mouth) and "mund,” “geoguth' (youth) and "jugend," "duguth" (virtue or valour) and "tugend." In such cases there is usually nn in Icelandic, the th or d taking its place or being joined to it in English and German. In "stytta" and "stint" there is tt in Icelandic, and the n becomes associated with it in our language. 16 Spill, destroy. First English "spillan," to spill, spoil, kill. So in the "Faerie Queene" (I. iii. 43) Spenser represents Una in the power of Sansloy, her lion slain "Her faithful guard removed, her hope dismayed, 1 Dure, last, hold out (Latin " durare," to make hard). What is hard can hold together, lasts, is durable. 2 Attaint, attainted (the ed dropped after the final t), bathed, soaked in, stained, dyed through. Latin "tingere ; " French "teindre." 3 Shright, shrieked, cried aloud. German "schreien." To-dashed. The to was an intensive prefix to verbs, like the German zer. Verbs with this prefix were often doubly emphasised by the use of the word all. 5 Eft (First English "æft" and "eft"), again. It was very commonly used as a First English prefix to verbs, equivalent to Latin "I so re-sorrowed at her sorrow." re-. They were but shades that erst in mind thou roll'd: Come, come with me, thine eyes shall them behold." What could these words but make me more aghast, 6 Avale, let fall, lower. French "avaler;" Latin "ad vallem," te the lower ground. The word is in avalanche, and is English still in the abbreviation vail, as when Sir Walter Scott writes of a man's "vailing his bonnet." Observe in reading this line and two lines lower that spirits has only the value of a monosyllable. So other poets have used it, including Milton "Laid thus low, As far as gods and heavenly essences ("Paradise Lost," I. 139). And again, line 146 "Have left us this our spirit and strength entire." 7 Spoken of a stike, spoken of a sigh, or stifled groan. The last line had been "That at thy sight I can but sigh and weep." "Steigh" is still used in Scotland, as defined by Jamieson, as "a stifled groan as from one in distress or bearing a heavy load;" "stech" and "stegh" meaning to puff and groan. Or the word may be First English "stice," a stab or piercing: "Scarcely had I spoken of myself as pierced with grief" (referring to the line in which Sackville had said he was "a man himself with sorrow slain "), and thereat, or at the naming of a heavy sigh, as before, at the naming of sorrow, Sorrow laments with keen renewal of her pain. Another word "stike" means a stanza, the sense given in Nares's Glossary to this word, with the remark, "He had exactly spoken a stanza before he says this." Such an interpretation might have served for a bad poet. 8 Bedrent, drenched. First English "drincan" was to drink; "drencan," to make drink, or drench. The prefix be, once common before verbs and often but weakly intensive, was afterwards retained or employed where it had force, and usually with a sense of "all round" completeness, as in beset, set about on all sides; besprinkled. So here bedrent, drenched all round about-with showers from the eyes of Sorrow. 9 Overthrow, overthrown. There is similar elision of the final a in line 68: "Such fall of peers as in this realm had be." 10 While ere. First English "hwil," a space of time; "hwile," for a space of time: "ér," ere, before. 5 To follow her. Sackville is led by Sorrow to the shades as Æneas was led by the Sibyl and Dante by Virgil. Sackville had both Virgil and Dante in his mind as he went on his own way to the classical Hell, and peopled it, according to the tone of his poem, with personifications all his own, not inferior to those of Dunbar in "The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins," and worthy precursors of those of Spenser in The Faerie Queene." • Astoin'd I stalk. "Astoined" is used in the original sense of the word. Servius, the grammarian, wrote, at the beginning of the fifth century, "He is properly called 'attonitus' (astonished), in whom the flash of lightning and the sound of thunders near him have caused stupor." The root, as in "thunder" (Latin "tonitru," French “ton nerre,' German "donner"), is ton din, noise. First English "stunian," to stun, make stupid with noise. Milton used the wordand the word "amazed," lost in a gulf (First English "mase," a gulf or whirlpool)-most accurately when he said of the angels prone on the gulf of fire with the pursuing thunders at their back that they lay astounded and amazed." Here, also, Sackville stalks on-i.e., advances warily-astoined with the "rumbling roar" and din struck in his ear so deep that had caused him to fall to the ground and flinch from advance. To stalk (First English "stælcan") is to go softly or warily, as in deer-stalking; so a "stalking-horse" was used that one might advance warily under cover of it. One form of wary advance was by the use of stilts, and from this the modern sense of stalking for walking, as if upon very tall legs, is derived. That is not the sense in which Sackville used the word. 7 Yeding forth, going forward. "Yede" is equivalent to "eode," went, the past of "gan," to go. It is here transformed into an independent verb, meaning to go, and was so used also by Spenser. When the Red Cross Knight was about to fight his crowning battle with the Dragon, "then bade the knight his lady yede aloof." When it had resigned, or all but resigned, its original place as a past tense to "went," yede seems to have set up as a verb on its own account. 8 Cleped, called. First English "clypian," to call. 9 Swelth, perished matter. First English "sweltan," to die; "swylt," death. 10 Cheer, the countenance. Old French "chère" and "chière;" Italian "cera " and "ciera," face, aspect; Greek kapa; Low Latin 'cara," "the head. "Faire bonne chère" is to entertain with a friendly face; "faire mauvaise chère," to hold down the head. According to the presence or absence of the face of kindly welcome, the "cheer" for a guest was good or bad. The term afterwards was transferred from the spirit to the substance, and “good cheer" soon meant abundance of good food. So in Marlowe's "Faustus," Mephistopheles proposes a visit to the Pope; Faustus doubts their welcome. Mephistopheles says that does not matter, they will take his food, and uses "good cheer" for food in direct antithesis to its Danish dud and amused (see Note 6, page 173). Amaze, amay (allied to di actul and amate senin to have been three words of similar but not duckade Bhimanning, each from a different source. The image in Wood 2 wand the "mmen" or whirlpool; amay was from " magan," to with a negative prefix. afmagt," a swoon; singars" to discourage; Spanish "desmayer; " Provençal esmay," Commpede koouch "s'esmaier," to be sad with care; But in cm tud temald, and of such relationship dismay, amay. amah, kura in a making "mat," the word used by Chaucer in the Rulat Tale, in apecking of the pity of Theseus for the suppliant doen when he saw them so pitous and so maat." This was an adwood with first sense of dead, as in Middle Latin "matare," to bill Hon of being driven into a corner and beaten (as in check-mate, 1. aloch mant, the king in dead, or dead-beaten), or of utmost deprival at pomaga whothat of bodily power, as in the German "matt," weary, in at poem of mind, as in the Italian "matto" and English “mad.' Bom low or wine that has lost its living force-become flat-is called "matt " All these etymologies produced words eluiler in annan sinaze, amay, amate; and the precise sense of one intah wow and then be given to another in the writer's mind. • the First English "feccan," to fetch; past, "feahte." • Moment, some part; deal meaning a part ("dæ'lan," to deal, or ↑ Pyces companions First English "fera," a companion. * found hardened by toil and exposure. First Euglish "tawian," bu faw or preparu hides, by soaking and beating them. And not so soon descend into the pit, The gladsome light, but, in the ground ylain, In depth of darkness waste and wear to nought, As he had ne'er into the world been brought. 300 310 320 Even peeping (even pronounced e'en), peeping in our eyes from the horizon as from ground low as ourselves, level with us as we lie. 7 Keep, heed. To "take keep" was to pay attention, to lay hold of a thing by giving attention to it. 8 Fere, companion. 9 Irus. The type of poverty is taken from the beggar in the eighteenth book of Homer's "Odyssey." Croesus and Irus had been paired by Ovid as the types of wealth and poverty: "Irus et est subitò qui modo Croesus erat" (And suddenly he is Irus who just now was Croesus). 10 And or an, if. 11 Eld, age. First English "yld" and "eld." |