THOMAS SACKVILLE, LORD BUCKHURST (1536–1608)

About the year 1553, certain English printers projected a continuation of John Lydgate's Fall of Princes, a version of Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, the design of these printers being to add stories of famous unfortunates from the period with which Boccaccio ended unto this presente time.' The project, under the general title A Mirror for Magistrates, was printed in gradually enlarged editions between the years 1555 and 1610. Although probably not a partner to the original plan, Sackville early became an associate and a contributor. The Induction, written as an introduction to such stories as he should contribute, and The Complaint of Henry, Duke of Buckingham, the only tragedy' actually contributed by Sackville, appeared in the edition of 1563.

The Induction is commonly accounted the best achievement in English poetry between Chaucer and Spenser. Although in writing his description of the lower world Sackville evidently had in mind both the sixth book of Virgil's Eneid and medieval allegory, the superb vivifying of such abstractions as Remorse of Conscience, Dread, Revenge, and the like, is to be credited to the genius of the English poet. Sackville owes his inspiration, perhaps, to Virgil, and his verse form, certainly, to Chaucer; his masterly control of his material and his power of phrasing are surely his own.