so long as the mind is free. But broken spirits, and indescribable injuries and misfortunes, do not agree with the fervour required by the Muse. Hope, that 'sings of promised pleasure,' could never visit him in his dreary bondage; and Ambition, whose lights had hitherto led him through difficulties and dangers and sufferings, must now have kept entirely aloof from one, whose fetters disabled him to follow as a votary in her train. Images of rural beauty, quiet, and freedom might, perhaps, have added, by the contrast, to the poignancy of his present painful situation; and he might rather prefer the severity of mental labour in unravelling the dreary and comfortless records of perplexing History in remote ages of war and bloodshed, than to quicken his sensibilities by lingering amid the murmurs of Elysian waterfalls!
"There are times when we dare not stir our feelings or our fancies; when the only mode of reconciling ourselves to the excruciating pressure of our sorrows is the encouragement of a dull apathy, which will allow none but the coarser powers of the intellect to operate.
"The production of an Heroic Poem would have nobly employed this illustrious Hero's mighty faculties, during the lamentable years of his unjust incarceration. But how could He delight to dwell on the tale of Heroes, to whom the result of Heroism had been oppression, imprisonment, ruin, and condemnation to death?
"We have no proof that Raleigh possessed the copious, vivid, and creative powers of Spenser; nor is it probable that any cultivation would have brought forth from him fruit equally rich. But even in the careless fragments now presented to the reader, I think we can perceive some traits of attraction and excellence which,
perhaps, even Spenser wanted. If less diversified than that gifted bard, he would, I think, have sometimes been more forcible and sublime. His images would have been more gigantic, and his reflections more daring. With all his mental attention keenly bent on the busy state of existing things in political society, the range of his thoughts had been lowered down to practical wisdom; but other habits of intellectual exercise, excursions into the ethereal fields of fiction, and converse with the spirits which inhabit those upper regions, would have given a grasp and a colour to his conceptions as magnificent as the fortitude of his soul!"[642:A]
28. Sackville, Thomas, Lord Buckhurst, was born at Withyam, in Sussex, in 1527.[642:B] Though a statesman of some celebrity in the reign of Elizabeth, his fame with posterity rests entirely on his merits as a poet, and these are of the highest order. He possesses the singular felicity of being the first writer of a genuine English tragedy, and the primary inventor of "The Mirrour for Magistrates;" two obligations conferred upon poetry of incalculable extent.
Of Gorboduc, which was acted in 1561, and surreptitiously printed in 1563, we shall elsewhere have occasion to speak, confining our notice, in this place, to his celebrated Induction and Legend of Henry Duke of Buckingham, which were first published in the Second Part and Second Edition of Baldwin's Mirrour for Magistrates, printed in 1563. To this collection we are, indeed, most highly indebted, if the observation of Lord Orford be correct:—"Our historic plays," he remarks, "are allowed to have been founded on the heroic narratives in the Mirrour for Magistrates; to that plan, and to the boldness of lord Buckhurst's new scenes, perhaps we owe Shakspeare!"[642:C]
Our gratitude to this nobleman will be still further enhanced, when we recollect, that he was more assuredly a model for Spenser, the allegorical pictures in his Induction being, in the opinion of Warton, "so beautifully drawn, that, in all probability, they contributed to direct, at least to stimulate, Spenser's imagination." In fact, whoever reads this noble poem of Lord Buckhurst with attention must feel convinced, that it awoke into being the allegorical groupes of Spenser; and that, in force of imagination, in pathos, and in awful and picturesque delineation, it is not inferior to any canto of the Fairie Queen. Indeed from the nature of its plan, the scene being laid in hell, and Sorrow being the conductor of the hapless complainants, it often assumes a deeper tone and exhibits a more sombre hue than the muse of Spenser, and more in consonance with the severer intonations of the harp of Dante. How greatly is it to be lamented that the effusions of this divine bard are limited to the pieces which we have enumerated, and that so early in life he deserted the fountains of inspiration, to embark on a troubled sea of politics. Lord Buckhurst died, full of honours, at the Council-Table at Whitehall, on April 19th, 1608, aged eighty-one.
Sir Egerton Brydges, speaking of his magnificent seat at Knowle in West-Kent, tells us, that, "though restored with all the freshness of modern art, it retains the character and form of its Elizabethan splendour. The visitor may behold the same walls, and walk in the same apartments, which witnessed the inspiration of him, who composed The Induction, and the Legend of the Duke of Buckingham! He may sit under the same oaks, and behold, arrayed in all the beauty of art, the same delightful scenery, which cherished the day-dreams of the glowing poet! Perchance he may behold the same shadowy beings glancing through the shades, and exhibiting themselves in all their picturesque attitudes to his entranced fancy!"[643:A]
29. Southwell, Robert. This amiable but unfortunate Roman Catholic Priest was born at St. Faith's in Norfolk, 1560; he was