no ships can arrive here? Ye are the eldest man that I can espy in all this company, so that if any man can tell any cause of it, ye, of likelihood, can say most in it, or, at leastwise, more than any other man here assembled.' 'Yea, forsooth, good master,' quoth this old man, 'for 1 am well-nigh an hundred years old, and no man here in this company any thing near unto mine age.' 'Well, then,' quoth Master More, 'how say you in this matter? What think ye to be the cause of these shelves and flats that stop up Sandwich Haven?' 'Forsooth,' quoth he, ‘I am an old man; I think that Tenterden Steeple is the cause of Goodwin Sands. For I am an old man, sir,' quoth he, and I may remember the building of Tenterden Steeple, and I may remember when there was no steeple at all there. And before that Tenterden Steeple was in building, there was no manner of speaking of any flats or sands that stopped the haven; and, therefore, I think that Tenterden Steeple is the cause of the destroying and the decay of Sandwich Haven.' And even so, to my purpose, is preaching of God's word the cause of rebellion, as Tenterden Steeple was cause Sandwich Haven is decayed."

There is one sentence of English words uttered by this same divine, which has a deeper and more enduring interest, and that was when he and Ridley stood in their dread fellowship of martyrdom at the stake; when the fagot, kindled with fire, was brought and laid at Ridley's feet, Latimer, happy, as the martyr's crown was poised above his brow, on which four-score years had placed their crown of glory, spake in this manner: "Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this

day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as, I trust, shall never be put out."*

planned by

The gentle Edward's reign had too quickly given place to his sister's-that hateful reign-when the palace of England's monarchs grew dark with the power of the detested Spaniard, and the long list of martyrs fastened forever the title of "blood" to the sweetest of female names. Just at the close of Queen Mary's reign, English literature produced one work, showing a force of imagination which would have placed its author in the highest rank of our poets, had he not turned his genius away from poetic study to devote it, during a very long life, to the political service of his country. "The Mirror of Magistrates" is the title of a work Thomas Sackville-Lord Buckhurst-and intended to comprise a series of poetic narratives of the disasters of men eminent in English story. The first of these, on the Duke of Buckingham, with the preface, or "Induction," as it is styled, was all that was accomplished; but those four hundred lines displayed an inventive energy which was a foreshadowing of the allegorical imagination which soon after rose in "The Faery Queen." Sackville's Induction stands as the chief, the only great poem between the times of Chaucer and of Spenser. Allegorical poetry presents no more vivid imagination than his personification of war, or of old age, in that single line

"His withered fist still striking at death's door."

What a gloomy conception was the plan of the poem! It has been likened to a landscape which the sun never shines on. More than that might be said, when we think

*Life of Latimer, prefixed to his Sermons, vol. i. p. clvii.

how congenial it was to the time of its composition. There hung on Sackville's genius not only a dark gloom, but it may be thought to have caught a ghastly complexion from the lurid lights of the flames of religious persecution. We may picture this thoughtful poet, turning his footsteps beyond the confines of London, on a winter's day, the dreary season described at the opening

of the poem

"Wandering till nightfall,

The darke had dimm'd the day ere I was 'ware."

And what was the spectacle he might have encountered? The dispersing throng that had just gathered round the stake, where flames had wrapped a martyr's body, the fire not yet burnt out in the smouldering ashes; perhaps the desolate family, the outcast wife and children, lingering near the spot where a spiritual hero had sealed his faith. It was a fit season for poetry's darkest imaginings, and well might Sackville frame his gloomy personification of sorrow to guide him in fancy into the realms of death, to hear there, from the lips of the dead, the stories of their woes. Under this dreary guidance, his genius entered into the shadowy domains of imagination; but soon after he brought the powers of his mind forth into the world's political service, in which he continued during the whole of Elizabeth's reign, and part of that of her successor, when the hand of death was laid upon the veteran statesman suddenly, at the council-board of James I. It is a remarkable fact that, in actual life, he personally witnessed two reverses of fortune-political downfalls transcending any his tragic muse could have called up in his mournful poem. Sackville was one of the judicial tribunal which pronounced the doom of Mary Stuart: it was from his

lips that the unhappy Queen received the message of her doom; and it was part of his stern duty to behold the last look of that royal fair one, the "long array of woes and degradations" at length closing, and to witness the blow which severed from a now wasted body the head that once had glittered with the diadems of France and of Scotland. It was also Lord Buckhurst's lot (and these were perhaps the only two calamities of his long and honourable career) to sit in judgment on the Earl of Essex, when that nobleman fell from his high place of queenly favour.

The reign of Mary was followed by a period more propitious to the national literature, in the latter part of the sixteenth century. That half century, almost entire, was the time of her sister's reign. In styling it the Elizabethan literature, there is a propriety beyond mere chronological convenience, for the influences of her reign were in manifold ways favourable to the development of the mind, to the expression of thought and feeling. The heart of the sovereign beat with the heart of the people; and chivalry mingled with loyalty to do honour to the woman-monarch. Such was the predominant feeling, passing, indeed, often into the extravagance of adulation, but outlasting all her pomp and powers; for, in the preface to our English version of the Bible she stands recorded in the glowing phrase, "that bright occidental star, Queen Elizabeth, of most happy memory." In her sway, there was a magnanimity, which she had learned not in the luxuries of regal childhood, but in the school of adversity and a doubtful destiny. History presents no finer contrast than between those two days of her life: the first, when, a culprit on suspicion of treason, she was brought in custody along the Thames, to be committed to the Tower, and perceiving

that the barge was steering to the traitor's gate, she refused to enter that guilty portal, and in the utter destitution of a young and unfriended woman, called God to witness she was innocent; when the first intelligence that reached her as a prisoner was that the scaffold had already drunk the blood of a meeker victim, the Lady Jane Grey, and she knew it was thirsting for hers. After a few, though weary and dismal years, she was again an inmate of the ancient fortress of the metropolis, but it was to go forth the Queen of a rejoicing nation, surrounded by cohorts of her devoted nobles, and multitudes of a happy people; and when before the crown was set upon her brow, lifting her eyes to heaven, she poured forth her fervid thankfulness to the Almighty for his wondrous dealings, for his wondrous mercies. "Wherever she moved," says the record of this the first of her magnificent progresses, "it was to be greeted by the prayers, the shouts, the tender words, and uplifted hands of the people: to such as bade 'God save your grace,' she said again, 'God save you all;' so that on either side there was nothing but gladness, nothing but prayer, nothing but comfort."*

Such was the fit opening of a reign for which was destined the highest glory that has dwelt with the nation's language and literature. An impulse was given by the civil and ecclesiastical condition of the realm, for it abounded in all that could cheer and animate a nation's heart. There was repose from the agony of spiritual persecution, submission to Rome was at an end, and the church in England was once more standing on its ancient

*Hollinshed, as quoted in Miss Strickland's "Queens of England," vol. vi. chap. iv, p. 127, Am. ed.