Thomas Egerton and lord Essex for negotiating an alliance with Denmark. On the trial of Essex and Southampton he sat as lord high steward. After the death of Elizabeth, her successor renewed his patent for life, as lord high treasurer, created him earl of Dorset, and appointed him one of the commissioners for executing the office of earl-marshal. But he did not long enjoy these accumulated honours, for on the 19th of April 1608, he died suddenly, while at the council-table; and was interred with great solemnity in Westminster-abbey, not, as Wood supposed, at Withiam. His funeral sermon was preached by the celebrated Dr. Abbot, afterward archbishop of Canterbury. As a man and a statist, the chroniclers of our national affairs, during his time, are all lavish in his praise. As a writer, he would doubtless have shone with superior lustre, had not the tumultuous attractions of a court drawn him so early from the tranquil fanes of the Muses.

Of all our court poets, says Cibber2, he seems to have united the greatest industry and variety of genius. It is seldom found that the sons of Parnassus can devote themselves to public business, or execute it with success. But as lord Buckhurst discharged every office with inviolable honour and consummate prudence, it is perhaps somewhat selfish in the lovers of poetry to wish he had written more and acted less.

Beside his tragedy of Gorboduc, his Induction, and Complaint of Henry Duke of Buckingham, in the Mirror for Magistrates, he appears to have written smaller

Lives of the Poets, vol. i. p. 62.

compositions, which it is to be regretted are now "lost or forgotten, from having no name to them, or that the copies are worn out 3." Jasper Heywood, in his metrical preface to the Thyestes of Seneca, 1560, speaks of

"SACKVYLDE'S Sonnets" sweetly sauste,

And featlye fyned.

Warton thinks it probable that the term sonnets here, means only verses in general, and may signify nothing more than his part in the Mirror for Magistrates, and his Gorboduc4; but Mr. Headley, with greater reason, believes it an allusion to some slighter pieces, either lost or undistinguished 5. The term sonnet, it may be added, though not rigidly applied to compositions which authorized that title, was never applied to poetry of a dramatic cast, or written in heroic stanzas, as are the extant productions of lord Buckhurst. One sonnet by his lordship occurs before Hoby's translation of Castiglione's Courtier, 1561; and an epilogue is subjoined to Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, 15986.

His animated Induction" opens with the following picturesque landscape of winter:

Athen. Oxon. vol. i. col. 347.

* Hist. of E. P. vol. iii. p. 273. Biog. Sketches, p. lxiii.

"Ritson has remarked, that the initials M. S. (peradventure those of Master Sackvile) are subjoined to a single poem in the Paradise of daintie Devises, 1600; and likewise occur in Diella, or certain Sonnets, 1596. Bibliogr. Poetica, p. 320.

The wrathfull winter, proching on apace,

With blustring blasts had all y-barde the treen; And old Saturnus with his frosty face

With chilling cold had pearst the tender greene, The mantels rent, wherein enwrapped beene The gladsome groaves that nowe lay overthrowne, The tapets torne, and every tree downe blowne.

The soyle that earst so seemely was to seen,

Was all despoyled of her beauties hewe;

And soote fresh flowers, wherewith the Sommer's queen
Had clad the earth, now Boreas' blasts downe blewe:
And small foules flocking, in their song did rewe
The winters wrath, wherewith ech thinge defast
In woful wise bewayld the summer past.

Hawthorne had lost his motley lyvery,

The naked twiggs were shivering all for cold;
And dropping downe the teares abundantly,
Ech thing, methought, with weeping eye me told
The cruell season, bidding me withold
My selfe within: for I was gotten out

Into the fields where as I walkt about.

When, loe the night, with misty mantels spred,
Gan darke the daye and dim the azure skies, &c.

The altered scene of things, says Warton, the flowers and verdure of summer deformed by the frosts and storms of winter, and the day suddenly overspread with darkness, remind the poet of the uncertainties of human life, &c.

And sorrowing I to see the sommer flowers,
The lively greene, the lusty leas forlorne,
The sturdy trees so shattred with the showers,
The fields so fade, that florisht so beforne;

It taught me well, all earthly things be born
To dye the death, for nought long time may last;
The sommers beauty yelds to winters blast⚫.]

• Mr. Warton ventures to pronounce, that Spenser caught his manner of designing allegorical personages from lord Buckhurst, and that he alludes to his Induction in a sonnet addressed to his lordship, in 1579, which opens thus:

In vaine I thinke, right honourable lord,

By this rude rime to memorize thy name,
Whose learned muse hath writ her own record
In golden verse, worthy immortal fame.
Thou much more fit, were leisure for the same,
Thy gracious soveraigne's prayses to compile,

And her imperiall majestie to frame

In loftie numbers and heroick stile.

Henry Lok, a poetaster who has been already named, hath likewise a sonnet tribute to the lord treasurer, which expresses a well-grounded apprehension that his harsh-tuned notes might be offensive to the polished writer of the Induction: -When I call to mind your pen so blest

With flowing liquor of the muses spring,

I feare your daintie care can ill digest

The harsh-tun'd notes which on my pipe I sing.

Subjoined to Sundry Christian Passions, 1597. Turbervile, a rhymer of more repute, in some lines before his Tragical Tales, recommends the translation of "loftie Lucan's verse," as "meete for noble Buckhurst's braine," and thus applauds his lordship above his poetic fellows: I none dislike, I fancie some,

But yet of all the rest,

Sance envie, let my verdite passe,

Lord Buckurst is the best.

SIR ROBERT CECIL,

EARL OF SALISBURY.

2

THIS man, who had the fortune or misfortune to please both queen Elizabeth and James the first; who, like the son of the duke of Lerma, had the uncommon fate of succeeding his own father as prime-minister, and who (unlike that son of Lerma) did not, though treacherous to every body else, supplant his own father: this man is sufficiently known. His public story may be found in all our histories; his particular, in the Biographia and if any body's curiosity is still unsatisfied about him, they may see a tedious account of his last sickness in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa.

He wrote

:

"Adversus Perduelles;"

an answer to some Popish libels3.

• After a short interval.

⚫ [Quære, says Mr. Reed, if not "An Answere to certaine scandalous Papers scattered abroad under colour of a Catholicke Admon'tion," 1606, 4to. In this answer he is stated to have declared, that he despised all the murderous threats of his adversaries, for the service of so good a cause as he was engaged in; namely, that of his religion and country. The author of Aulicus Coquinariæ says, "that most pestilent libel against his birth and honour, was answered by him, wisely,