scholars, and he earnestly pleaded with sir Thomas Pope to provide for
the teaching of Greek as well as Latin in his college; but sir Thomas
persisted in his opinion that a Latin professorship was sufficient,
considering the general decay of erudition in the country, which had
caused an almost total cessation of the study of the Greek language.

It was in the department of English poetry alone that any perceptible
advance was effected or prepared during this deplorable aera; and it was
to the vigorous genius of one man, whose vivid personifications of
abstract beings were then quite unrivalled, and have since been rarely
excelled in our language, and whose clear, copious, and forcible style
of poetic narrative interested all readers, and inspired a whole school
of writers who worked upon his model, that this advance is chiefly to be
attributed. This benefactor to our literature was Thomas Sackville, son
of sir Richard Sackville, an eminent member of queen Mary's council, and
second-cousin to the lady Elizabeth by his paternal grandmother, who was
a Boleyn. The time of his birth is doubtful, some placing it in 1536,
others as early as 1527. He studied first at Oxford and afterwards at
Cambridge, distinguishing himself at both universities by the vivacity
of his parts and the excellence of his compositions both in verse and
prose. According to the custom of that age, which required that an
English gentleman should acquaint himself intimately with the laws of
his country before he took a seat amongst her legislators, he next
entered himself of the Inner Temple, and about the last year of Mary's
reign he served in parliament. But at this early period of life poetry
had more charms for Sackville than law or politics; and following the
bent of his genius, he first produced "Gorboduc," confessedly the
earliest specimen of regular tragedy in our language; but which will be
noticed with more propriety when we reach the period of its
representation before queen Elizabeth. He then, about the year 1557 as
is supposed, laid the plan of an extensive work to be called "A Mirror
for Magistrates;" of which the design is thus unfolded in a highly
poetical "Induction."

The poet wandering forth on a winter's evening, and taking occasion from
the various objects which "told the cruel season," to muse on the
melancholy changes of human affairs, and especially on the reverses
incident to greatness, suddenly encounters a "piteous wight," clad