The influence and demand for the chronicles also occasioned the sudden revival, after a lapse of twenty-seven years, of The boke of Iohan Bochas descryuing the fall of Princes, Princesses, and other Nobles, translated by John Lydgate. That work was first printed by Pynson in 1494, also in 1527,[6] and then remained unnoticed until 1554, when Richard Tottell reprinted it under a new title,[7] with the incidental wood-cuts, and appending thereto the singular dance of Machabree.[8]
In the same or following year after this revival an edition was projected and executed by Wayland:[9]—a convincing evidence, as well of the fashionable cast of reading, as of the rapid demand for that work; otherwise even the rivalry of trade would never have hazarded another edition, so soon after Tottell’s copies had supplied the market.
All the authors who joined in enlarging, or completing the part first published of the Mirrour, have but slightly deviated from Lydgate’s model, which was then secure in public approbation; and they therefore, in some instances, may be suspected to have sacrificed genius and imagination at the shrine of perverted taste, in order to obtain a continuance of the same patronage. The Mirrour for Magistrates was, in fact, a common offspring of that class of historical literature, which then flourished widely.[10] The addition of rhyme was the mere variance of a minor ornament, rather than a change of its substantial nature;[11] though many inferior productions, which its popularity brought forth, seemed afterwards to give it the appearance of forming a main class of our national poetry.[12]
From those historical stores were taken the principal incidents and characters of the princes and nobles, whose vicious lives and tragical ends made them conspicuous as moral examples; and as fit beacons to check rebellion; a purpose which is ably attempted through the whole work. Indeed, so little did any one of this combination of poets venture fame, that novelty was neither attempted in subject, nor manner of composition. The whole selection of matter was from chronicles in universal circulation; as the seven-line stanza was adopted from their precursor Lydgate; and, upon this last point, there may be added, that it is doubtful if Higgins did not cancel two or three lives, first published in another measure, for the advantage of substituting others, to accord with the original plan and general taste.[13]
II. In the next division of inquiry as to the 'primary inventor’ of the Mirror for Magistrates, the discussion arises from the unfounded application of that term by Warton to that eminent genius Thomas Sackville, afterwards created Lord Buckhurst and Earl of Dorset, and which has been repeated, without examination, by subsequent writers.
It has been already stated, that the industry of Wayland effected much in obtaining the contributory aid of the popular poets; nor must the labour of Ferrers, who exerted himself in completing the original plan, be left unnoticed; but still the general formation rests principally, if not entirely, with Baldwin. His claim to the air of novelty, so successfully introduced for the purpose of connecting the whole as an unbroken series, by an intermediate and apposite dialogue, has not been disputed, any more than his finally completing the volume with an introductory Epistle and Preface.
The date at which Sackville’s communication was obtained, is decisive against the opinion, that the work found in him “its primary inventor.” If the contributors to the suppressed edition remain, like their articles, unknown and uncertain; the one published in 1559, was a complete volume, and not any communication by Sackville is there inserted. The intervention of the lord Chancellor certainly deferred, but did not destroy the work; and only on the enlargement thereof, by a SECOND PART, in 1563, is his name first mentioned, in the address prefixed to that part by Baldwin, as having “aptly ordered the duke of Buckynghams oracion.” At the distance of a few sheets after this trite notice, appears that beautifully descriptive and highly polished poem called “the Induction,” which served to envelop all the other contributors with the shade of secondary characters.
The history of its origin is given, in the intermediate dialogue, thus:
“Then sayd the reader: 'The next here whom I finde miserable are king Edwards two sonnes, cruelly murdered in the Tower of London.’ 'Haue you theyr tragedy?’ 'No surely (q; I) the Lord Vaulx vndertooke to penne it, but what he hath done therein I am not certayne, and therfore I let it passe til I knowe farder. I haue here ye Duke of Buckingham, king Richarde’s chyefe instrument, wrytten by mayster Thomas Sackuille.’ 'Read it we pray you:’ sayd they. 'Wyth a good wyl (q; I) but fyrst you shal heare his preface or Induction.’ 'Hath he made a preface (q; one) what meaneth he thereby, seeing none other hath vsed the like order?’ 'I wyl tell you the cause thereof (q; I) which is thys: After that he vnderstoode that some of the counsayle would not suffer the booke to be printed in suche order as we had agreed and determined, he purposed with himselfe to have gotten at my handes, al the tragedies that were before the duke of Buckinghams, which he would haue preserued in one volume, and from that time backeward euen to the time of William the Conquerour, he determined to continue and perfect all the story himselfe in such order as Lydgate (folowing Bocchas) had already vsed. And therfore to make a meete induction into the matter, he deuised this poesye; which in my Judgement is so wel penned, that I woulde not haue any verse therof left out of our volume.’—”
Niccols, in the last edition, has ventured, without reason, to sever the Induction from the Legend, before which it was placed, in order to fix it at the head of those collected by Baldwin, although that editor did not suffer the communication of Sackville to alter his original plan. The explanatory Advertisement of Niccols has occasioned the erroneous belief of that author being 'primary inventor’ of the whole work. “Hauing hitherto (he says) continued the storie, gentle Reader, from the first entrance of Brute into this Iland, with the falles of such Princes, as were neuer before this time in one volume comprised, I now proceed with the rest, which take their beginning from the Conquest, whose [pen-men being many and diuers, all diuerslie affected in the method of this their Mirror, I purpose only to follow the intended scope of that, most honorable personage, who, by how much he did surpasse the rest in the eminence of his noble condition, by so much he hath exceeded them all in the excellencie of his heroicall stile which with a golden pen he hath limmed out to posteritie in that worthy obiect of his minde, the Tragedie of the Duke of Buckingham, and in his preface then intituled Master Sackuil’s induction. This worthie President of learning, intending to perfect all this storie himselfe from the Conquest, being called to a more serious expence of his time in the great State-affaires of his most royall Ladie, and Soueraigne, left the dispose thereof to M. Baldwine,] M. Ferrers, and others, the composers of these Tragedies, who continuing their methode which was by way of dialogue or interlocution betwixt euery Tragedie, gaue it onely place before the Duke of Buckinghams complaint, which order I since hauing altered, haue placed the Induction in the beginning, with euery Tragedie following according to succession and the iust computation of time, which before was not obserued,” &c.