In bulk Sackville’s poetry does not amount to much, but in merit it is of much consequence. Two poems, _The Induction_ and _The Complaint of Henry, Duke of Buckingham_, appeared in a miscellany called _The Mirror for Magistrates_ (1555). Both are composed in the rhyme royal stanza, are melancholy and elegiac in spirit and archaic in language, but have a severe nobility of thought and a grandeur of conception and of language quite unknown since the days of Chaucer. The poems undoubtedly assisted Spenser in the composition of _The Faerie Queene_. Sackville collaborated with Norton in the early tragedy of _Gorboduc_ (see p. 77). We add a few stanzas from _The Induction_ to illustrate the somber graphical power of the poem: And, next in order, sad Old Age we found, His beard all hoar, his eyes hollow and blind, With drooping cheer still poring on the ground, As on the place where nature him assigned To rest, when that the Sisters had untwined His vital thread, and ended with their knife The fleeting course of fast-declining life. There heard we him, with broke and hollow plaint, Rue with himself his end approaching fast, And all for nought his wretched mind torment With sweet remembrance of his pleasures past, And fresh delights of lusty youth forwaste;[96] Recounting which, how would he sob and shriek, And to be young again of Jove beseek! * * * * * Crook-backed he was, tooth-shaken, and blear-eyed, Went on three feet, and sometime crept on four; With old lame bones, that rattled by his side; His scalp all piled,[97] and he with eld forelore; His withered fist still knocking at Death’s door; Fumbling and drivelling as he draws his breath; For brief, the shape and messenger of Death. =4. George Gascoigne (1535–77)= is another of the founders of the great Elizabethan tradition. He was born in Bedfordshire, educated at Cambridge, and became a lawyer. Later in life he entered Parliament. In addition to a large number of elegant lyrics, he composed one of the first regular satires in the language, _The Steel Glass_ (1576). This poem has the additional importance of being written in blank verse. Among his other numerous works we can mention his tragedy _Jocasta_ (1566), a landmark in the growth of the drama (see p. 77); his _Supposes_ (1566), an important early comedy which was the basis of Shakespeare’s _Taming of the Shrew_; and _Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the Making of Verse in English_ (1575), one of our earliest critical essays. In ease and versatility Gascoigne is typical of the best early Elizabethan miscellaneous writers.