The Mirror for Magistrates.

In the last year of Queen Mary's reign, Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, projected a series of poems from English history in which all the illustrious but unfortunate characters who had lived since the time of the Conquest "were to pass in review before the poet, who descends, like Dante, into the infernal regions." This work was called "The Mirror for Magistrates, wherein may be seen by example of others with howe grevous plagues vices are punished, and how frayl and unstable worldly prosperity is found even of those whom Fortune seemeth most highly to favour." It was designed to be a continuation of Lydgate's "Fall of Princes," a book which had been translated from Boccaccio's Latin work "De Casibus Principum," but which had never attained to much popularity chiefly because it mentioned no English examples. Sackville, the projector of the work, wrote only two of the poems in the "Mirror," "The Induction," or general introduction, and "The Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham."

The "Induction" is in the form of an allegory, and it is with it only that we have to speak in this chapter. It opens, not with a May morning and a stroll among birds and flowers, but with a winter's night when everything wears a dreary and deserted aspect:

Hawthorn had lost his motley livery,

The naked twigs were shivering all for cold;
And dropping down the tears abundantly,
Each thing, methought, with weeping eye me told
The cruel season, bidding me withhold
Myself within; for I was gotten out
Into the fields where as I walked about,
When lo, the night, with misty mantle spread,

Gan dark the day, and dim the azure skies.

As the poet walks, he is reminded of the uncertainties of life, and while he ponders, "a piteous wight," all dressed in black, appears before him. She tells him that her name is Sorrow, and that she dwells among the Furies where Pluto holds his throne and Lethe's deadly taste "doth reive remembrance of each thing forepast." Sorrow then conducts the poet to the infernal regions. In his description of his descent to the grisly lake, our author borrows largely from the imagery of Virgil and Dante; but his pictures of the allegorical characters which sat on the porch of hell are original, and are drawn with a master's hand. There he sees Remorse, and Dread, and Fell Revenge, Misery, Care, Sleep, the cousin of Death, Old Age, and Famine, and War, and Death himself. His description of Old Age will serve as an example.

Whoe'er had seen him sobbing how he stood

Unto himself, and how he would bemoan

His youth forepast, as though it wrought him good

To talk of youth, all were his youth foregone,

He would have mused and marvelled much, whereon
This wretched Age should life desire so fain,
And knows full well life doth but length his pain:

Crook-back'd he was, tooth-shaken, and blear-eyed;
Went on three feet, and, sometimes, crept on four;
With old lame bones, that rattled by his side;

His scalp all pil'd, and he with eld forelore,
His wither'd fist still knocking at death's door;
Fumbling, and driveling, as he draws his breath;
For brief, the shape and messenger of Death.

Passing by these shadowy inhabitants of the porch, the poet, with his guide, Sorrow, is ferried over the loathsome lake of Acheron, and comes to—

The large great kingdoms, and the dreadful reign
Of Pluto in his throne where he did dwell,
The wide waste places, and the hugie plaine;
The wailings, shrieks, and sundry sorts of pain,
The sighs, the sobs, the deep and deadly groan,
Earth, air, and all resounding plaint and moan.

Thence did we passe the threefold emperie
To the utmost bounds where Rhadamanthus reigns,
Where proud folke wail their woful misery;
Where dreadful din of thousands dragging chaines,
And baleful shrieks of ghosts in deadly paines
Tortured eternally are heard most brim
Through silent shades of night so dark and dim.

From hence upon our way we forward passe,
And through the groves and uncouth paths we go,
Which lead unto the Cyclop's walls of Brasse :
And where that maine broad flood for aye doth flow,
Which parts the gladsome fields from place of woe:
Whence none shall ever pass to the Elizium plaine,
Or from Elizium ever turne againe.

Here pul'd the babes, and here the maids unwed
With folded hands their sorry chance bewail'd,
Here wept the guiltless slain, and lovers dead,
That slew themselves when nothing else avail'd:
A thousand sorts of sorrows here, that wail'd
With sighs, and tears, sobs, shrieks, and all yfear,
That, oh, alas, it was a hell to hear.

Here a troop of men, most of them in arms, pass in order before the poet and Sorrow. These are they who have died untimely deaths, and of whom it is yet uncertain whether they will be doomed to eternal night or rewarded with everlasting bliss.

Then first came Henry, Duke of Buckingham,
His cloak of black, all pil'd, and quite forlorne,
Wringing his hands, and Fortune oft doth blame,
Which of a duke hath made him now her skorne.
And supping the tears that all his breast beraynde,
On cruel Fortune, weeping thus he playnde.

Here ends the "Induction," and the "Complaint of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham," begins. With reference to this remarkable allegory, Warton says: "The shadowy inhabitants of hell-gate are conceived with the vigor of a creative imagination, and described with great force of expression. They are delineated with that fulness of proportion, that invention of picturesque attributes, distinctness, animation, and amplitude of which Spenser is commonly supposed to have given the first specimens in our language, and which are characteristic of his poetry. We may venture to pronounce that Spenser at least caught his manner of designing allegorical personages from this model, which so greatly enlarged the former narrow bonds of our ideal imagery, as that it may be deemed an original in that style of painting."

The Purple Esland.

AN ingenious allegorical poem, interesting chiefly for its strange conceits, is "The Purple Island; or, the Isle of Man," written by Phineas Fletcher,1 and published in 1633.

An isle I fain would sing, an island fair;

A place too seldom view'd, yet still in view;
Near as ourselves, yet farthest from our care;
Which we by leaving find, by seeking lost;
A foreign home, a strange, though native coast;
Most obvious to all, yet most unknown to most.

This "isle" is the body of man; and the poem is an allegorical and yet minute and elaborate description of the physical and intellectual nature of man. The work includes twelve cantos, each of which is represented as being sung by a shepherd to the neighboring shepherds and shepherdesses, it being begun in the morning "and finished by folding-time in the evening." The first five cantos refer to the human body. The muscles, bones, arteries, and veins are pictured as hills, dales, streams, and rivers, and their various appearances and meanderings are described with great minuteness. The poet then proceeds in the remaining cantos to speak of

1 Phineas Fletcher, a brother of the more famous Giles Fletcher, was born in 1582. He died in 1650.