foamy boar feared not the hunter's spear:
All things were still in desert, bush and breer.
With quiet heart now from their travails ceast
Soundly they slept in midst of all their rest."

The allusion to bear-bating in the concluding stanza may offend the
delicacy of a modern reader; but let it be remembered that in the days
of Mary, and even of Elizabeth, this amusement was accounted "sport for
ladies."

The "Mirror for Magistrates" was not lost to the world by the desertion
of Sackville from the service of the muses; for a similar or rather
perhaps the same design was entertained, and soon after carried into
execution, by other and able though certainly inferior hands.

During the reign of Mary,--but whether before or after the composition
of Sackville's Induction does not appear,--a certain printer, having
communicated to several "worshipful and honorable persons" his
intention of republishing Lydgate's translation in verse of Boccacio's
"Fall of Princes," was by them advised to procure a continuation of the
work, chiefly in English examples; and he applied in consequence to
Baldwyne, an ecclesiastic and graduate of Oxford. Baldwyne declined to
embark alone in so vast a design, and one, as he thought, so little
likely to prove profitable; but seven other contemporary poets, of whom
George Ferrers has already been mentioned as one, having promised their
assistance, he consented to assume the editorship of the work. The
general frame agreed upon by these associates was that employed in the
original work of Boccacio, who feigned, that a party of friends being
assembled, it was determined that each of them should contribute to the
pleasure of the company by personating some illustrious and unfortunate
character, and relating his adventures in the first person. A
contrivance so tame and meagre compared with the descent to the regions
of the dead sketched with so much spirit by Sackville, that it must have
preceded, in all probability, their knowledge at least of his
performance. The first part of the work, almost entirely by Baldwyne,
was written, and partly printed, in Mary's time, but its publication was
prevented by the interference of the lord-chancellor,--a trait of the
mean and cowardly jealousy of the administration, which speaks volumes.
In the first year of Elizabeth lord Stafford, an enlightened patron of
letters, procured a licence for its appearance. A second part soon
followed, in which Sackvil