Knole in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth
THOMAS SACKVILLE
1st
Earl _of_ Dorset
§ i
Such interest as the Sackvilles have lies, I think, in their being so
representative. From generation to generation they might stand, fully
equipped, as portraits from English history. Unless they are to be
considered in this light they lose their purport; they merely share, as
Byron wrote to one of their number:
... _with titled crowds the common lot,
In life just gazed at, in the grave forgot ...
The mouldering ’scutcheon, or the herald’s roll,
That well-emblazoned but neglected scroll,
Where lords, unhonoured, in the tomb may find
One spot, to leave a worthless name behind:
There sleep, unnoticed as the gloomy vaults
That veil their dust, their follies, and their faults:
A race with old armorial lists o’erspread
In records destined never to be read_.
But let them stand each as the prototype of his age, and at the same
time as a link to carry on, not only the tradition but also the heredity
of his race, and they immediately acquire a significance, a unity. You
have first the grave Elizabethan, with the long, rather melancholy face,
emerging from the oval frame above the black clothes and the white wand
of office; you perceive all his severe integrity; you understand the
intimidating austerity of the contribution he made to English letters.
Undoubtedly a fine old man. You come down to his grandson: he is the
Cavalier by Vandyck hanging in the hall, hand on hip, his flame-coloured
doublet slashed across by the blue of the Garter; this is the man who
raised a troop of horse off his own estates and vowed never to cross the
threshold of his house into an England governed by the murderers of the
King. You have next the florid, magnificent Charles, the fruit of the
Restoration, poet, and patron of poets, prodigal, jovial, and
licentious; you have him full-length, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, in his
Garter robes and his enormous wig, his foot and fine calf well thrust
forward; you have him less pompous and more intimate, wrapped in a
dressing-gown of figured silk, the wig replaced by an Hogarthian turban;
but it is still the same coarse face, with the heavy jowl and the
twinkling eyes, the crony of Rochester and Sedley, the patron and host
of Pope and Dryden, Prior and Killigrew. You come down to the eighteenth
century. You have on Gainsborough’s canvas the beautiful, sensitive face
of the gay and fickle duke, spoilt, feared, and propitiated by the women
of London and Paris, the reputed lover of Marie Antoinette. You have his
son, too fair and pretty a boy, the friend of Byron, killed in the
hunting-field at the age of twenty-one, the last direct male of a race
too prodigal, too amorous, too weak, too indolent, and too melancholy.
§ ii
The Sackvilles are supposed to have gone into Normandy in the ninth
century with Rollo the Dane, and to have settled in the neighbourhood of
Dieppe, in a small town called Salcavilla, from which, obviously, they
derived their name. Much as I relish the suggestion of this Norse
origin, I am bound to add that the first of whom there is any authentic
record is Herbrand de Sackville, contemporary with William the
Conqueror, whom he accompanied to England. Descending from him is a long
monotonous list of Sir Jordans, Sir Andrews, Sir Edwards, Sir Richards,
carrying us through the Crusades, the French wars, and the wars of the
Roses, but none of whom has the slightest interest until we get to Sir
Richard Sackville, temp. Henry VIII-Elizabeth—from his wealth called
Sackfill or Fillsack, though not, it appears, “either griping or
penurious,” a man of some note, and thus qualified by Roger Ascham:
“That worthy gentleman, that earnest favourer and furtherer of God’s
true religion; that faithful servitor to his prince and country; a lover
of learning and all learned men; wise in all doings; courteous to all
persons, showing spite to none, doing good to many; and, as I well
found, to me so fast a friend as I never lost the like before”; and in
this same connection I may quote further from Ascham’s preface to _The
Scholemaster_, in which he records a conversation which took place in
1593 between himself and Sir Richard Sackville, when dining with Sir
William Cecil: Sir Richard, after complaining of his own education by a
bad schoolmaster, said, “But seeing it is but in vain to lament things
past, and also wisdom to look to things to come, surely, God willing (if
God lend me life), I will make this my mishap some occasion of good hap
to little Robert Sackville, my son’s son; for whose bringing up I would
gladly, if so please you, use specially your good advice.”... “I wish
also,” says Ascham, “with all my heart, that young Mr. Robert Sackville
may take that fruit of this labour that his worthy grandfather purposed
he should have done. And if any other do take profit or pleasure hereby,
they have cause to thank Mr. Robert Sackville, for whom specially this
my Scholemaster was provided.”
This Sir Richard was the founder of the family fortune, which was to be
increased by his son and squandered after that by nearly all his
descendants in succession. It was he who bought, in 1564, for the sum of
£641 5_s._ 10½_d._, “the whole of the land lying between Bridewell and
Water Lane from Fleet Street to the Thames.” This property, now of
course of almost fabulous value, included the house then known as
Salisbury House, having belonged to the see of Salisbury, which
presently became Dorset House in 1603, and presently again was divided
into Great Dorset House and Little Dorset House, as the London house of
the Sackvilles. A wall enclosed house and gardens from the existing line
of Salisbury Court south to the river, and shops and tenements in and
near Fleet Street from St. Bride’s to Water Lane (Whitefriars Street).
These were not the only London possessions of the Sackvilles. Later on
they overflowed into the Strand, and another Dorset House sprang up, on
the site of the present Treasury in Whitehall, to take the place of the
older house in Salisbury Court, which had been destroyed in the Great
Fire. It is idle and exasperating to speculate on the modern value of
these City estates.
Sir Richard Sackville died in 1566, when his son Thomas was already
thirty years of age. Very little is known about Thomas’ early life; we
only know that he went for a short time to Oxford (Hertford), and
subsequently to the Inner Temple. While at Oxford he attracted some
attention as a poet and writer of sonnets, but I have only been able to
find one of these early sonnets, written for Hoby’s translation of the
_Courtier of Count Baldessar Castilio_ (published in 1561), and which I
quote, not so much for its worth as for its interest as a little-known
work from the pen of one who, as the author of our earliest tragedy, has
a certain renown:
_These royal Kings, that rear up to the sky
Their palace tops, and deck them all with gold:
With rare and curious works they feed the eye,
And show what riches here great princes hold.
A rarer work, and richer far in worth,
Castilio’s hand presenteth here to thee:
No proud nor golden court doth he set forth
But what in court a courtier ought to be.
The prince he raiseth huge and mighty walls,
Castilio frames a wight of noble fame:
The King with gorgeous tissue clads his halls,
The court with golden virtue decks the same
Whose passing skill, lo, Hoby’s pen displays
To Britain folk a work of worthy praise._
But for the rest concerning these early poems one must take his
contemporary Jasper Heywood’s eulogy on trust:
_There Sackville’s sonnets sweetly sauced
And featly finèd be._
[Illustration:
A CONFERENCE OF ENGLISH AND SPANISH PLENIPOTENTIARIES AT SOMERSET
HOUSE IN 1604
_From the painting by_ MARC GHEERHARDTS _at the National Portrait
Gallery_
At the top right-hand corner, nearest the window, Thomas Sackville,
1st Earl of Dorset, K.G., Lord High Treasurer of England
]
It seems that Sackville’s works were all written in the first half of
his life, and that later on, as honours came to him, he altogether
abandoned what might have been a first-rate literary career for a
second-rate political one—more’s the pity. “A born poet,” says Mr.
Gosse, “diverted from poetry by the pursuits of statesmanship.” He is a
very good instance of the disadvantage of fine birth to a poet. But for
the fact that he was born the Queen’s cousin, through the Boleyns, and
the son of a father holding various distinguished offices, he might
never have entered a political arena where he was destined to have as
competitors such statesmen as Burleigh, and such favourites as Leicester
and Essex. Amongst his contemporary poets, Surrey and Wyatt both died
while Sackville was still a child; when Spenser was born, Sackville was
already sixteen; when Sidney was born, he was eighteen; when Shakespeare
was born, he was a full-grown man of twenty-eight. He had thus the good
fortune to be born at a time when English poets of much standing were
rare, an opportunity of which he might have taken greater advantage had
not the accident of his birth persuaded him to abandon poetry for more
serious things as the dilettantism of his youth. For he was
comparatively young when he wrote both _Gorboduc_ and the _Induction_ to
the _Mirror for Magistrates_. _Gorboduc_ was first performed by the
gentlemen of the Inner Temple before the Queen in 1561, when Sackville
was twenty-five, and the _Induction_ was first published in 1563, when
he was twenty-seven; but already in or about 1557, when he was only just
over twenty, he had composed the plan for the whole of the _Mirror for
Magistrates_, intending to write it himself, although subsequently from
want of leisure he left the composition of all but the induction or
introduction, and the _Complaint of Henry, Duke of Buckingham_, to
others.
By the age of twenty-one, however, responsibilities were already upon
him. He was married; and he was a member of Parliament, not merely once
but twice over, as appears from the journals of the House of Commons:
“For that Thomas Sackville, Esq., is returned for the County of
Westmoreland, and also for the Borough of East Grinstead in Sussex, and
doth personally appear for Westmoreland, it is required by this House
that another person be returned for the said borough.” How this double
election can have come about I cannot explain. It seems to have done him
no harm in his parliamentary career; not only was he returned member for
Aylesbury in 1563, but he took an active part in introducing bills, etc.
About this time he went to travel in France and Italy, where for some
mysterious reason he got himself thrown into prison; the reason was
probably pecuniary, for we are told that he was “of the height of spirit
inherent in his house,” and lived too magnificently for his means; so I
think the assumption is in favour of his having got temporarily into
debt. If, indeed, he shared in any measure the tastes of his
descendants, nothing is more likely. Back in England again, the
successes of his career rushed upon him. His father was just dead; he
was the head of his family; he inherited its wealth and estates; he was
at the propitious age of thirty; he was related to the Queen; he was
marked out to prosper. Within the next thirty years or so he was,
successively, knighted and created Lord Buckhurst of Buckhurst, in the
county of Sussex; given the house and lands of Knole by the Queen, that
she might have him near her court and councils; sent to France and the
Netherlands as special ambassador from Elizabeth; made a Knight of the
Garter; Chancellor of Oxford, where he sumptuously entertained the
Queen; made Lord High Treasurer of England in 1599; High Steward of
England at the trial of Essex, where he sat in state under a canopy and
pronounced sentence and an exhortation, says Bacon, “with gravity and
solemnity.” By this time, I imagine, he had in very truth become the
grave and solemn personage one sees in all his portraits—not that his
mind, even in early youth, can have been otherwise than grave and solemn
if at the age of twenty he had been capable of imagining a vast poem on
so dreary and Dantesque a plan as the _Mirror for Magistrates_, devised,
says Morley in his _English Literature_, “to moralise those incidents of
English history which warn the powerful of the unsteadiness of fortune
by showing them, as in a mirror, that ‘who reckless rules, right soon
may hap to rue.’” Also, from a letter written by Lord Buckhurst to Lord
Walsingham, it is clear that he had no sympathy with ostentation, but
only with honest worth: “And, Sir, I beseech you send over as few Court
captains as may be; but that they may rather be furnished with captains
here [in the Low Countries], such as by their worthiness and long
service do merit it, and do further seek to shine in the field with
virtue and valiance against the enemy than with gold lace and gay
garments in Court at home.” In 1586 Lord Buckhurst was one of the forty
appointed on the commission for the trial of Mary Stuart, and although
his name is not amongst those who proceeded to Fotheringay, nor later in
the Star Chamber at Westminster when she was condemned to death, yet he
was sent to announce the sentence to death, and received from her in
recognition of his tact and gentleness in conveying this news the
triptych and carved group of the Procession to Calvary now on the altar
in the chapel at Knole.
He was, in fact, absent from none of the councils of the nation, and I
have no doubt that he discharged his duties with all seriousness and
honesty. Poetry—a frivolous pursuit—had long since been left behind. The
poet had become the statesman. Nevertheless there were times when his
very integrity was the cause of bringing him into disfavour with the
intolerant mistress he served, notably on one occasion when he refused
to take the part of Leicester and was indignantly confined to his house
for nine or ten months by Royal mandate. And there was another occasion,
amusing as showing the extreme simplicity in which even a man like Lord
Buckhurst, who had the reputation of lavish living in his own day,
conducted his daily life. Buckhurst, then being at the royal palace of
Shene, was desired by the Queen to entertain Odet de Coligny, Cardinal
of Chatillon, and did so, but with the result made clear in the
following letter, of which I give extracts:
_To the Right Honourable the Lords of her Majesty’s Privy Council be
this delivered._
My duty to your Lordships most humbly remembered.
Returning yesterday to Shene, I received as from your Lordships how
her highness stood greatly displeased with me, for that I had not in
better sort entertained the Cardinal.
He goes on to speak of his “great grief” and his “sorrowful heart,”
especially, he says, “being to her Majesty as I am,” and proceeds with
the attempt to justify himself for his supposed niggardliness:
I brought them in to every part of the house that I possessed, and
showed them all such stuff and furniture as I had. And where they
required plate of me, I told them as troth is, that I had no plate at
all. Such glass vessel as I had I offered them, which they thought too
base; for napery I could not satisfy their turn, for they desired
damask work for a long table, and I had none other but plain linen for
a square table. The table whereon I dine myself I offered them, and
for that it was a square table they refused it. One only tester and
bedstead not occupied I had, and those I delivered for the Cardinal
himself, and when we could not by any means in so short a time procure
another bedstead for the bishop, I assigned them the bedstead on which
my wife’s waiting women did lie, and laid them on the ground. Mine own
basin and ewer I lent to the Cardinal and wanted myself. So did I the
candlesticks for mine own table, with divers drinking glasses, small
cushions, small pots for the kitchen, and sundry other such like
trifles, although indeed I had no greater store of them than I
presently occupied; and albeit this be not worthy the writing, yet
mistrusting lest the misorder of some others in denying of such like
kind of stuff not occupied by themselves, have been percase informed
as towards me, I have thought good not to omit it. Long tables, forms,
brass for the kitchen, and all such necessaries as could not be
furnished by me, we took order to provide in the town; hangings and
beds we received from the yeoman of the wardrobe at Richmond, and when
we saw that napery and sheets could nowhere here be had, I sent word
thereof to the officers at the Court, by which means we received from
my lord of Leicester 2 pair of fine sheets for the Cardinal, and from
my lord Chamberlain one pair of fine for the bishop, with 2 other
coarser pair, and order beside for 10 pair more from London.
At which time also because I would be sure your Lordships should be
ascertained of the simpleness and scarcity of such stuff as I had
here, I sent a man of mine to the Court, specially to declare to your
Lordships that for plate, damask, napery and fine sheets, I had none
at all and for the rest of my stuff neither was it such as with honour
might furnish such a personage, nor yet had I any greater store
thereof than I presently occupied, and he brought me this answer again
from your Lordships that if I had it not I could not lend it. And yet
all things being thus provided for, and the diet for his Lordship
being also prepared, I sent word thereof to Mr. Kingesmele and
thereupon the next day in the morning about nine of the clock the
Cardinal came to Shene where I met and received him almost a quarter
of a mile from the house, and when I had first brought the Cardinal to
his lodging, and after the bishop to his, I thought good there to
leave them to their repose. Thus having accommodated his Lordship as
well as might be with so short a warning, I thought myself to have
fully performed the meaning of your Lordships’ letters unto me, and
because I had tidings the day before that a house of mine in the
country by sudden chance was burned ... I took horse and rode the same
night towards those places, where I found so much of my house burned
as 200 marks will not repair....
This is not at all in accordance with his reputation for hospitality:
He kept house for forty and two years in an honourable proportion. For
thirty years of these his family consisted of little less, in one
place or another, than two hundred persons. But for more than twenty
years, besides workmen and other hired, his number at the least hath
been two hundred and twenty daily, as appeared upon check-role. A very
rare example in this present age of ours, when housekeeping is so
decayed.
I think that this reputation, and the enormous sums which he spent upon
the enlargement and beautifying of Knole, make all the more remarkable
the statements in the foregoing letter: that he had neither napery,
plate, nor sheets, and that in order to provide his guest with a basin
and ewer he was obliged to do without them himself. It is apparent also
from his will that he indulged himself in the luxury of various
musicians, “some for the voice and some for the instrument, whom I have
found to be honest in their behaviour and skilful in their profession,
and who had often given me after the labour and painful travels of the
day much recreation and contatation with their delightful harmony.”
“Musicians,” it was said, “the most curious he could have,” so that in
these extravagances he was not parsimonious, although he disregarded the
common comforts of life.
[Illustration:
LEAD PIPE-HEADS
_Put up by_ THOMAS SACKVILLE _in 1605_
Figs. 1 to 4, Stone Court. Fig. 5, Over King’s Bedroom Window. Figs. 6
and 7, South Front. Fig. 8, Stone Court. Fig. 9, Water Court.
]
In June 1566 Queen Elizabeth had presented him with Knole, but, because
the house was then both let and sub-let, it was not until 1603 that he
was able to take possession. Tradition says that the Queen bestowed
Knole upon him because she wished to have him nearer to her court and
councils, and to spare him the constant journey between London and
Buckhurst, over the rough, clay-sodden roads of the Weald, at that date
still an uncultivated and almost uninhabited district, where droves of
wild swine rootled for acorns under the oaks. He does not appear to have
spent very much time at Knole during the first years of his ownership,
for in a letter written in September 1605, to Lord Salisbury, he says:
“I go now to Horsley, and thence to Knole, where I was not but once in
the first beginnings all the year, whence for three or four days to
Buckhurst, where I was not these seven years.” This did not prevent him
from spending a great deal of money on the house; unfortunately there is
no record of what he spent between 1603 and 1607, but for the last ten
months of his life alone there is a total, spent on buildings, material,
and stock, for four thousand one hundred and seven pounds, eleven
shillings, and ninepence—an equivalent, in round figures, to forty
thousand of modern money. To account for these sums, it is known that he
built the Great Staircase, transformed the Great Hall to its present
state, and put in the plaster-work ceilings and marble chimney-pieces.
He also put up the very lovely lead water-spouts in the courtyards.
The good fortune of Lord Buckhurst did not come to an end with the death
of Queen Elizabeth. He was one of those who travelled to meet the new
King on his journey down from the North, was confirmed by him in his
tenure of the office of Lord Treasurer, and early in the following year
was created Earl of Dorset. The illuminated patents of creation are at
Knole, showing portraits of both Elizabeth and James I, not very
flattering to either; and the Lord Treasurer’s chest is at Knole
likewise, a huge coffer covered in leather and thickly studded with
large round-headed brass nails. There is a warrant, signed by him as
Lord Treasurer, for increasing the duty on tobacco, “That tobacco, being
a drug brought into England of late years in small quantities, was used
and taken by the better sort only as physic to preserve health; but
through evil custom and the toleration thereof that riotous and
disorderly persons spent most of their time in that idle vanity.” This
warrant, which is dated 1605, shows how little time had elapsed since
its introduction before tobacco established its popularity.
He was now advancing in years, and his own letters prove that his health
was not very good. In one letter, written to Cecil, he complains that he
cannot rest more than two or three hours in the night at most, also that
he is constantly subject to rheums and cold and coughs, forced to defend
himself with warmth, and to fly the air in cold or moist weathers. In
another letter, also written to Cecil, he again complains of a cough,
and says that he cannot come abroad for three or four days at least. But
his devotion to his public affairs was greater than his attention to his
health, for he says, “I have by the space of this month and more
foreborne to take physic by reason of her Majesty’s business, and now
having this only week left for physic I am resolved to prevent sickness,
feeling myself altogether distempered and filled with humours, so as if
her Majesty should miss me I beseech you in respect hereof to excuse
me.” In 1607, when the old man was seventy-one, there was a report
current in London that he was dead, but on the King sending him a
diamond, and wishing that he might live so long as that ring would
continue, “My Lord Treasurer,” says a letter dated June 1607, “revived
again.” In the following year, however, he died dramatically in harness,
of apoplexy while sitting at the Council table in Whitehall. His funeral
service took place in Westminster Abbey, but his body was taken to
Withyham, where it now lies buried in the vault of his ancestors.
§ iii
I have dealt as briefly as possible with the Lord Treasurer’s life,
because no one could pretend that the history of his embassies or his
occupations of office could have any interest save to a student of the
age of Elizabeth. But as a too-much-neglected poet I should like
presently to quote the opinions of those well qualified to judge,
showing that he was, at least, something of a pioneer in English
literature—crude, of course, and uniformly gloomy; too gloomy to read,
save as a labour of love or conscience; but nevertheless the author—or
part-author—of the earliest English tragedy, and, in some passages, a
poet of a certain sombre splendour. That he was a true poet, I think, is
unquestionable, unlike his descendant Charles, who by virtue of one song
in particular continues to survive in anthologies, but who was probably
driven into verse by the fashion of his age rather than by any genuine
urgency of creation.
The tragedy of _Gorboduc_, whose title was afterwards altered to _Ferrex
and Porrex_, was written in collaboration with Thomas Norton, although
the exact share of each author is not precisely known and has been much
argued.
To the modern reader [says Professor Saintsbury] _Gorboduc_ is
scarcely inviting, but that is not a condition of its attractiveness
to its own contemporaries. [It] is of the most painful regularity; and
the scrupulosity with which each of the rival princes is provided with
a counsellor and a parasite to himself, and the other parts are
allotted with similar fairness, reaches such a point that it is rather
surprising that _Gorboduc_ was not provided with two queens—a good and
a bad. But even these faults are perhaps less trying to the modern
reader than the inchoate and unpolished condition of the metre in the
choruses, and indeed in the blank verse dialogue. Here and there there
are signs of the stateliness and poetical imagery of the _Induction_,
but for the most part the decasyllables stop dead at their close and
begin afresh at their beginning with a staccato movement and a dull
monotony of cadence which is inexpressibly tedious.
Professor Saintsbury rightly points out that the dullness of _Gorboduc_
to our ideas is not a criterion of the effect it produced on readers of
its own day. Sir Philip Sidney, for example, while excepting it from the
particular charges he brings against all other English tragedies and
comedies, and granting that “it is full of stately speeches and
well-sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style, and
as full of notable morality, which it doth most delightfully teach, and
so obtain the very end of poesy,” finds fault with it in an unexpected
quarter, namely, that it fails in two unities, of time and place, so
that the modern criticism of its “painful regularity” was far from
occurring to a mind intent upon a yet more rigorous form.
In spite of its manifest imperfections [says the Cambridge Modern
History], the tragedy of _Gorboduc_ has two supreme claims to
honourable commemoration. It introduced Englishmen who knew no
language but their own to an artistic conception of tragedy, and it
revealed to them the true mode of tragic expression.
I might also quote here the sonnet of a greater poet, who owed much, if
not to _Gorboduc_, at least to the _Induction_—Edmund Spenser.
_In vain I think, right honourable lord,
By this rude rhyme to memorize thy name,
Whose learnèd muse hath writ her own record
In golden verse worthy immortal fame.
Thou much more fit (were leisure to the same)
Thy gracious sovereign’s praises to compile,
And her imperial majesty to frame
In lofty numbers and heroic style.
But sith thou may’st not so, give leave awhile
To baser wit his power therein to spend,
Whose gross defaults thy dainty pen may file,
And unadvisèd oversights amend.
But evermore vouchsafe it to maintain
Against vile Zoylus’ backbitings vain._
There is also a sonnet by Joshua Sylvester, of which I will only quote
the anagram prefixed to it:
Sackvilus Comes Dorsetius
_Vas Lucis_ _Esto decor Musis_
Sacris Musis celo devotus
But although there can scarcely be two opinions about _Gorboduc_—that it
is sometimes noble, and always dull—Sackville’s two other poems, the
_Induction_ to the _Mirror for Magistrates_ and the _Complaint of Henry
Duke of Buckingham_, have never met with the recognition they deserve,
save for the discriminating applause of men of letters. I do not say
that they are works which can be read through with an unvarying degree
of pleasure; there are stagnant passages which have to be waded through
in between the more admirable portions. But such portions, when they are
reached, do contain much of the genuine stuff of poetry, impressive
imagery, a surprising absence of cumbersome expression—especially when
the reader bears in mind that Sackville was writing before Spenser, and
long before Marlowe—and a diction which is consistently dignified and
suitable to the gravity of the theme. Take these stanzas for instance:
_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,
Would wear and waste continually in pain_.
_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 for fear,
His cap borne up with staring of his hair,
’Stoin’d and amazed at his own shade for dread
And fearing greater dangers than he need_.
_And next, in order sad_, Old Age _we found,
His beard all hoar, his eyes hollow and blind,
With drooping cheer still poring on the ground,
As on the place where Nature him assigned
To rest, when that the sisters had untwined
His vital thread, and ended with their knife
The fleeting course of fast-declining life_.
These stanzas are from the _Induction_. Or take the following from the
_Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham_:
_Midnight was come, and every vital thing
With sweet sound sleep their weary limbs did rest;
The beasts were still, the little birds that sing
Now sweetly slept beside their mother’s breast,
The old and all well shrouded in their nest;
The waters calm, the cruel seas did cease,
The woods, the fields, and all things held their peace._
_The golden stars were whirled amid their race,
And on the earth did with their twinkling light,
When each thing nestled in his resting place,
Forget day’s pain with pleasure of the night;
The fearful deer of death stood not in doubt,
The partridge dreamt not of the falcon’s foot._
These quotations will give some kind of idea of Sackville’s matter and
manner, and of the _Mirror_, which survives among the classic monuments
of English poetry, says Courthope, only by virtue of the genius of
Sackville. For the rest, not wishing to be thought prejudiced, I should
like to quote copiously from Professor Saintsbury’s _Elizabethan
Literature_, since therein is expressed, a great deal better than I
could express it, my own view of Sackville’s poetry, and by calling in
the testimony of so excellent, scholarly, and delightful an authority I
may be freed from the charge of partiality which I should not at all
like to incur.
The next remarkable piece of work done in English poetry after
Tottel’s _Miscellany_—a piece of work of greater actual poetic merit
than anything in the _Miscellany_ itself—was ... the famous _Mirror
for Magistrates_, or rather that part of it contributed by Thomas
Sackville, Lord Buckhurst.... The _Induction_ and the _Complaint of
Buckingham_, which Sackville furnished to it in 1559, though they were
not published till four years later, completely outweigh all the rest
in value. His contributions to the _Mirror for Magistrates_ contain
the best poetry written in the English language between Chaucer and
Spenser, and are most certainly the originals or at least the models
of some of Spenser’s finest work. He has had but faint praise of late
years.... I have little hesitation in saying that no more astonishing
contribution to English poetry, when the due reservations of that
historical criticism which is the life of all criticism are made, is
to be found anywhere. The bulk is not great: twelve or fifteen hundred
lines must cover the whole of it. The form is not new, being merely
the 7–line stanza already familiar in Chaucer. The arrangement is in
no way novel, combining as it does the allegorical presentment of
embodied virtues, vices, and qualities with the melancholy narrative
common in poets for many years before. But the poetical value of the
whole is extraordinary. The two constituents of that value, the formal
and the material, are represented here with a singular equality of
development. There is nothing here of Wyatt’s floundering prosody,
nothing of the well-intentioned doggerel in which Surrey himself
indulges and in which his pupils simply revel. The cadences of the
verse perfect, the imagery fresh and sharp, the presentation of nature
singularly original, when it is compared with the battered copies of
the poets with whom Sackville must have been most familiar, the
followers of Chaucer from Occleeve to Hawes. Even the general plan of
the poem—the weakest part of nearly all poems of this time—is
extraordinarily effective and makes one sincerely sorry that
Sackville’s taste or his other occupations did not permit him to carry
out the whole scheme on his own account. The _Induction_, in which the
author is brought face to face with Sorrow, and the central passages
of the _Complaint of Buckingham_, have a depth and fullness of
poetical sound and sense for which we must look backwards a hundred
and fifty years, or forwards nearly five and twenty....
He has not indeed the manifold music of Spenser—it would be
unreasonable to expect that he should have it. But his stanzas are of
remarkable melody, and they have about them a command, a completeness
of accomplishment within the writer’s intentions, which is very
noteworthy in so young a man. The extraordinary richness and
stateliness of the measure has escaped no critic. There is indeed a
certain one-sidedness about it, and a devil’s advocate might urge that
a long poem couched in verse (let alone the subject) of such unbroken
gloom would be intolerable. But Sackville did not write a long poem,
and his complete command within his limits of the effect at which he
evidently aimed is most remarkable.
[Illustration:
THE GREAT STAIRCASE (UPPER FLIGHT)
_Built by_ THOMAS SACKVILLE, _1604–8_
]
The second thing to note about the poem is the extraordinary freshness
and truth of its imagery. From a young poet we always expect
second-hand presentations of nature, and in Sackville’s day
second-hand presentation of nature had been elevated to the rank of a
science.... It is perfectly clear that Thomas Sackville had, in the
first place, a poetical eye to see, within as well as without, the
objects of poetical presentment; in the second place, a poetical
vocabulary in which to clothe the results of his seeing; and in the
third place, a poetical ear by aid of which to arrange his language in
the musical co-ordination necessary to poetry. Wyatt had been
notoriously wanting in the last; Surrey had not been very obviously
furnished with the first; and all three were not to be possessed by
anyone else till Edmund Spenser arose to put Sackville’s lessons in
practice on a wider scale and with a less monotonous lyre. It is
possible that Sackville’s claims in drama may have been
exaggerated—they have of late years rather been undervalued; but his
claims in poetry proper can only be overlooked by those who decline to
consider the most important part of poetry. In the subject of even his
part of the _Mirror_ there is nothing new; there is only a following
of Chaucer, and Gower, and Occleeve, and Lydgate, and Hawes, and many
others. But in the handling there is one novelty which makes all
others of no effect or interest: it is the novelty of a new poetry.