Amidst the intrigues of an artful court, he preserved the integrity of a private man. His family disdained the offer of an apology for him, against some little cavils of a rival party. In the exercise of his political functions, the brilliancy of his imagination grew more correct, not less abundant. His secretaries, we are told, had difficulty to please him, he was so facete and choice in his stile.' Even in the decisions of that rigid tribunal, the Star-Chamber, which was never esteemed the school of eloquence, 'so strong (says Lloyd) was his invention, that he was called the Star-Chamber Bell.' Himself a poet, he encouraged the art, which he improved, by his liberality; and left his wit and protection of polite literature to his descendents, of whom was Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the well-known patron of Dryden and Prior :

-Whose great forefather's every grace

Reflecting, and reflected in his race;

Where other Buckhursts, other Dorsets shine,
And poets still or patriots deck the line.

He was more courted, indeed, and complimented in verse than any nobleman of his time, except Essex; whose love of literature, heroism, integrity, and generosity, made him the theme of poetical panegyric, from Spenser down to the lowest rhymer.

The pretensions however of this " patriarch of a race of genius and wit," as a poet, to the gratitude of posterity have not hitherto been fully allowed; though he may be considered as second only to Spenser, whom he preceded, in the perfection of his allegory; and to the unapproachable bard of Avon, in

his magic power of moving the passions, and the matchless excellence of his dramatic dialogue. To the heroic narratives indeed in his Induction,' the foundation of our Historic Plays, and to the boldness of his new scenes, "perhaps (says Walpole) we owe Shakspeare."

6

"The Induction,'" as Warton observes, "loses much of it's dignity and propriety, by being prefixed to a single life (that of Henry, Duke of Buckingham), and that of no great historical importance. The plan is, undoubtedly, copied from Boccace's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium,' translated by Lydgate; the Descent into Hell, from Dante's Commedia' and the sixth book of Virgil. The shadowy inhabitants of hell-gate are his own, and conceived with the vigour of a creative imagination, and described with great force of expression: they are delineated with that fulness of proportion, that invention of picturesque attributes, distinctness, animation, and amplitude, of which Spenser is commonly supposed to have given the first specimens in our language, and which are characteristical of his poetry. The readers of the Fairy Queen' will easily point out many particular passages, which Sackville's "Induction' suggested to Spenser. The Complaint of Henry, Duke of Buckingham,' is written with a force and even elegance of expression, a copiousness of phraseology, and an exactness of versification, not to be found in any other parts of the collection. On the whole, it may be thought tedious and languid; but that objection, unavoidably, results from the general plan of these pieces. It is impossible that soliloquies of such prolixity, and designed to include much historical

and even biographical matter, should every where sustain a proper degree of spirit, pathos, and interest."

In private life, he was an affectionate husband, a kind father, and a firm friend. Nor must we forget his distinguished hospitality. For the last twenty years of his life, his family consisted of a hundred persons, most of whom he entertained upon motives of charity; affording, likewise, to the poor out of doors liberal relief in seasons of sickness and scarcity. Beside his poems, there are extant several of his Lordship's letters; also a Latin letter to Dr. Bartholomew Clerke,* prefixed to that author's Latin translation of Balthazar Castiglione's Courtier from the Italian, which is no unworthy recommendation of a Treatise remarkable for it's polished latinity.

From this nobleman are descended the noble family of the Sackvilles.

* Clerke's translation was first printed at London in 1571, with the title, De Curiali, sive Aulico,' and an improved edition of it was given by S. Drake, A. M. Cant. 1713. It was ushered into the world by two other commendatory letters (from J. Caius, and Edward Vere Earl of Oxford) and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, of whom the Earl of Dorset observes: Tune literarios homunculos maledicere audere putas, cùm Illustrissima Princeps summo judicio, summâ literarum scientiâ primum illum librum, quem ego ejus Majestati mense Januario detuleram, tam apertis testimoniis approbaverit? Hic tu securus esto: nam et in illius patrocinio acquiesces, quâ sol nihil unquam clarius aut excellentius vidit; et tute æternam gloriam consequêre, qui opus tam egregium et facundum Principi tam Augustæ et Literatæ dicaveris.

The wrathful winter 'proaching on apace
With blustering blasts had all ybared the treen,
And old Saturnus, with his frosty face,

With chilling cold had pierced the tender green;
The mantles rent, wherein enwrapped been

The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown,
The tapets torn, and every bloom down blown.

The soil, that erst so seemly was to seen,

Was all despoiled of her beauty's hue;

And sote (sweet) fresh flowers, wherewith the summer's queen Had clad the earth, now Boreas' blasts down blew :

And small fowls flocking in their song did rue The winter's wrath, wherewith each thing defaced In woeful wise bewail'd the summer pass'd.

"Hawthorn had lost his motley livery,

The naked twigs were shivering all for cold:
And, dropping down the tears abundantly,
Each thing (methought) with weeping eye me told
The cruel season, bidding me withhold

Myself within; for I was gotten out

Into the fields, whereas I walk'd about.

When lo! the night with misty mantle spread

'Gan dark the day, and dim the azure skies;

And Venus in her message Hermes sped
To bloody Mars, to will him not to rise,
While she herself approach'd in speedy wise:

And Virgo, hiding her disdainful breast,

With Thetis now had laid her down to rest.

Whilst Scorpio dreading Sagittarius' dart,

Whose bow prest (ready) bent in sight the string had slipt,

Down slid into the ocean-flood apart:

The Bear, that in the Irish seas had dipt

His grisly feet, with speed from them he whipt;

For Thetis, hasting from the Virgin's bed,

Pursued the Bear, that ere she came was fled.

• And Phaeton now, near reaching to his race

With glistening beams, gold-streaming where they bent, Was prest to enter in his resting-place.

Orithyius, that in the car first went,

Had even now attain'd his journey's stent;
And fast declining hid away his head,
While Titan crouch'd him in his purple bed.

And pale Cinthia, with her borrow'd light

Beginning to supply her brother's place, Was past the noonstead six degrees in sight,

When sparkling stars amid the heaven's face With twinkling light shine on the earth apace; That, while they brought about the nighte's char, The dark had dimm'd the day ere I was 'ware.

And sorrowing I to see the summer-flowers,
The lively green, the lusty leas forlorn,
The sturdy trees so shatter'd with the showers,
The fields so fade that flourish'd so beforn;
It taught me well, all earthly things be born
To die the death, for nought long time may last :
The summer's beauty yields to winter's blast.

Then looking upward to the heaven's lemes (flames)
With nighte's stars thick-powder'd every where,
Which erst so glisten'd with the golden streams,
That cheerful Phoebus spread down from his sphere;
Beholding dark oppressing day so near,

The sudden sight reduced to my mind
The sundry changes, that in earth we find.

'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 descryve,
To warn the rest whom Fortune left alive.