“You have made out (he writes) a strong case; and some of your inferences cannot be controverted: but I think that others are pressed a little too far. That no contribution of Sackville appeared in the first edition of the Mirror cannot be denied. That Sackville was not one of the party engaged in the original design stopped by the Lord Chancellor, is at least equivocal. According to my construction of Baldwin’s words, he was one of that party, who, when a stop was put to the plan adopted by him, in common with his partners, purposed to execute the work by himself on a new plan of his own; and, in aid of that work, intended to obtain of Baldwin what had been finished by others, and to fit them to his own scheme. It is clear, that this happened before the publication of the first edition of the Mirror, because it was while the prohibition was in force. “How happened it then,” it may be asked, “that Sackville’s pieces did not appear in the first edition?” Perhaps because the hope of completing his own design, though delayed, might not then have been abandoned. The delay might have caused his coadjutors not to wait for him, though he himself might not yet be prepared to bend his own nobler scheme to theirs. Four important years from 1559 to 1563, the interval which elapsed between the appearance of the first and second edition, might, and if we examine the history of his life, most probably would effect this change. In the days of Q. Mary he had the opportunity of cultivating and ripening into fruit his poetical genius, which would require, as in most other cases, the nurture of leisure and solitude. The accession to the throne at this time of a Princess, to whom he was nearly allied, and with whom he soon became, and always continued, a favourite, opened to him other and more active prospects. The paths of ambition, however thorny and full of dangers they might prove to long experience, were too alluring to an high fancy and vigorous talents, when thus invited. At first he might be still unwilling to abandon the pursuits of his youth, of which he could not be insensible to the dignity and the virtue, and which the conscious grandeur of genius must tell him that wealth and birth could not rival, and princes could not qualify him for. But he who once accustoms himself to the intoxicating cup of worldly ambition, too generally feels that it gradually undermines the strength of his higher intellect and nobler resolves; and that he sinks into the common notions, feeble sentiments, and groveling amusements of ordinary men. In four short years, the vigorous and inspired hand of Sackville might no longer possess either the impulse, or the skill, or the strength, to strike the lyre, which formerly returned to his touch alternate strains of sublime morality and glowing description. In this state of mental apostacy or dereliction, he might finally abandon his youthful project of poetical glory, and give the mighty fragment