Mrs. Cooper, in the _Muses Library_, 1738, says of Sackville: “It appears to me, by a preface of Mr. Niccols, that the _Original Plan_ of the Mirror for Magistrates, was principally owing to him.”--Collins, in the _English Peerage_, having transcribed the passage given above in brackets, is referred to by Lord Orford, in the _Royal and Noble Authors_, as his authority for asserting, that “the original thought was his Lordship’s.” And might not this concatenation of error extend further by the construction of Lord Orford and have misled Warton? That luminous historian of our native poetry, says: “More writers than one were concerned in the execution of this piece: but its PRIMARY INVENTOR, and most distinguished contributor, was Thomas Sackville the first lord Buckhurst, and first earl of Dorset. About the year 1557, he formed the plan of a poem, in which all the illustrious but unfortunate characters of the English history, from the conquest to the end of the fourteenth century, were to pass in review before the poet, who descends like Dante into the infernal region, and is conducted by Sorrow. Although a descent into hell had been suggested by other poets, the application of such a fiction to the present design, is a conspicuous proof of genius and even of invention. Every personage was to recite his own misfortunes in a separate soliloquy. But Sackville had leisure only to finish a poetical preface called an _Induction_, and one Legend, which is the life of Henry Stafford duke of Buckingham. Relinquishing therefore the design abruptly, and hastily adapting the close of his _Induction_ to the appearance of Buckingham, the only story he had yet written, and which was to have been the last in his series, he recommended the completion of the whole to Richard Baldwyne and George Ferrers.”-- “Baldwyne and Ferrers,” it is afterwards observed, “perhaps deterred by the greatness of the attempt, did not attend to the series prescribed by Sackville, but inviting some others to their assistance, among which are Churchyard and Phayer, chose such lives from the newly published chronicles of Fabyan and Hall, as seemed to display the most affecting catastrophes, and which very probably were pointed out by Sackville.”-- The observations of Warton were either written at various times, or he depended too implicitly upon loose extracts from authorities no longer possessed, as he refers to one edition when quoting another.[14] The hypothesis of Sackville being 'primary inventor,’ &c. shows that he relied upon, and at the same time mistook, the meaning of Niccols, (whose corrupt text of _the Induction_ he reprinted,) and never discovered that his position was negatived by the interlocutory matter given above from the edition of 1563, when Sackville made his first and only known communication.