[This noble poet, according to Fuller3, who cites Mills's Catalogue of Honour for his authority, was son4 and heir to sir Richard Sackville, chancellor and sub-treasurer of the exchequer, &c.; and was bred in the university of Oxford, where he became an excellent poet, leaving both Latin and English poems of his composing to posterity. From a domestic tuition, says Warton 5, he was removed, as it may reasonably be conjectured, to Hart hall, now Hertford college, Oxon; but he appears to have been a master of arts at Cambridge. It then was fashionable for every young man of fortune, before he began his travels, or was admitted into parliament, to be initiated in the study of the law; Mr. Sackville therefore was removed to the Inner Temple. During his residence there, says the editor of Phillips's Theatrum Poetarum, who could speak with congenial feeling on such a subject, he pursued the more pleasing study of poetry, instead of the dull and narrow trammels of the law. His high birth however, and ample patrimony, proceeds Warton, soon advanced him to more important situations

Worthies of Sussex, p. 105.

He was born, says Cibber, or Shiells, or Coxeter their guide, at Buckhurst in the parish of Withiam, Sussex; and from his childhood was distinguished for wit and manly beha viour. Lives of the Poets of G. Britain, vol. i. p. 55.

Hist. of E. P. vol. iii. p. 210.

and employments.

His eminent accomplishments and abilities having acquired the confidence and esteem of queen Elizabeth, the poet was soon lost in the statesman, and negotiations and embassies extinguished the milder ambitions of the ingenuous muse. Yet it should be remembered, continues our candid historian, that he was uncorrupted amidst the intrigues of an artful court, and that in the character of a first minister he preserved the integrity of a private man 7.

The accurate Mr. Reed informs us, that in the fourth and fifth year of queen Mary, his name is found on the parliamentary lists, and again in the fifth of Elizabeth. Not long after, he went abroad to travel, and was detained some time prisoner at Rome; but was liberated, and returned to take possession of a patrimonial inheritance which devolved to him in 1566. He was knighted by the duke of Norfolk in the queen's presence, in 1567, and at the same time promoted to the dignity of a peerage, by the title of baron Buckhurst. In 1573, his royal mistress sent him embassador to Charles the ninth of France, where he was treated with all due distinction. In 1574 he sat

To the same purport also Mrs. Cooper observes, "the courtier put an end to the poet, and he has left us just enough to eclipse all the writers that succeeded him, in the same task; and makes us wish that his preferment had been at least a little longer delayed." Muses' Library, p. 89.

7 Warton, ut sup. Modern times have furnished as rare an instance of uprightness, in our late premier Henry Addington. Biog. Dram. vol.i. p. 380; from Wood and Cibber.

In

as one of the peers on the trial of Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, at which time he was also in the privy-council. He was nominated one of the commissioners for the trial of Mary queen of Scots; and though it does not appear that he was present at her condemnation at Fotheringay castle, yet after the confirmation of her sentence he was the person made choice of, on account of his address and tenderness of disposition, to bear the unhappy tidings to her, and to see the sentence carried into execution. 1567 he went on an embassy to the states-general to accommodate a difference in regard to some remonstrances made against the conduct of lord Leicester. This commission he executed with fidelity and honour, but he incurred the displeasure of lord Burleigh, whose influence with the queen occasioned him not only to be recalled, but confined to his house for nine months. On the death of lord Leicester in 1588, his interest at court was renewed; he was made a knight of the garter, and joined with lord Burleigh in promoting a peace with Spain. On December 17, 1591, he was, in consequence of several letters from the queen in his favour, elected chancellor of the university of Oxford, in opposition to the object of her capricious passion Essex, and incorporated master of arts. Her majesty soon after visited the university, where she was entertained with splendid banquets and much solid erudition. On the death of lord Burleigh, in 1598, as a just reward for his meritorious services, he was constituted lord high treasurer. In the succeeding year he was joined in a commission with sir

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:

a 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.