Cordelia gropes for the sword, or fatall knife, in the dark, which DESPAIR places in her hand.

DESPAYRE to ayde my senceless limmes was glad,

And gave the blade: to end my woes she bad.

At length, Cordelia's sight fails her so that she can see only DESPAIR, who exhorts her to strike.

And by her elbowe DEATH for me did watch.

DESPAIR at last gives the blow. The temptation of the Redcrosse knight by DESPAIR in Spenser's FAERIE QUEENE, seems to have been copied, yet with high improvements, from this scene. These stanzas of Spenser bear a strong resemblance to what I have cited from CORDELIA's Legend.

Then gan the villaine" him to oueraw,

And brought unto him swords, ropes, poysons, fire,

And all that might him to perdition draw;

And bade him chuse what death he would desire:

For death was due to him that had prouokt God's ire.

But when as none of them he sawe him take,
He to him raught a dagger sharpe and keene,
And gaue it him in hand: his hand did quake
And tremble like a leafe of aspin greene,
And troubled bloud through his pale face was seene
To come and goe, with tydinges from the hart,

As it a running messenger had beene.

At last, resolv'd to worke his finall smart

He lifted up his hand that backe againe did start.*

The three first books of the FAERIE QUEENE were published in 1590; Higgins's Legend of Cordelia in 1587 [1574].

At length the whole was digested anew with additions, in 1610, by Richard Niccols, an ingenious poet, of whom more will be said hereafter, under the following title: "A MIRROUr for MAGISTRATES, being a true Chronicle-history of the vntimely falles of such vnfortunate princes and men of note as have happened since the first entrance of Brute into this Iland vntill this our age. NEWLY ENLARGED with a last part called a WINTER NIGHT'S VISION being an addition of such Tragedies especially famous as are exempted in the former Historie, with a poem annexed called ENGLANDS ELiza. At London, imprinted by Felix Kyngston, 1610"." Niccols arranged his edition thus.

w That is, Despair.

* Faer. Qu. i. x. 50.

Of the early use in the middle ages of the word Speculum, as the title of a book, see Joh. Finnaeus's Dissertatio

historica-Litteraria, prefixed to the
KONGS-SKUGG-SIO, or Royal Mirrour,
an ancient prose work in Norwegian,
written about 1170, printed in 1768, 4to.
fol. xviii.
A thick quarto.

Higgins's INDUCTION is at the head of the Lives from Brutus to the Conquest. Those from the Conquest to LORD CROMWELL'S legend written by Drayton and now first addeda, are introduced by Sackville's INDUCTION. After this are placed such lives as had been before omitted, ten in number, written by Niccols himself, with an INDUCTION". As it illustrates the history of this work, especially of Sackville's share in it, I will here insert a part of Niccols's preface prefixed to those TRAGEDIES which happened after the Conquest, beginning with that of Robert Tresilian. "Hauing hitherto continued the storie from the first entrance of BRVTE into this iland, with the FALLES of Svch PRINCES as were neuer before this time in one volume comprised, I now proceed with the rest, which take their beginning from the Conquest: whose penmen being many and diuerse, all diuerslie affected in the method of this their MIRROUR, I purpose onlie to follow the intended scope of that most honorable personage, who by how mvch he did surpasse the rest in the eminence of his noble condition, by so mvch he hath exceeded them all in the excellencie of his heroicall stile, which with golden pen he hath limmed out to posteritie in that worthie object of his minde the TRAGEDIE OF the Duke of BUCKINGHAM, and in his Preface then intituled MASTER SACKUILS INDUCTION. This worthy president of learning intended to perfect all this storie of himselfe from the Conquest. Being called to a more serious expence of his time in the great state affaires of his most royall ladie and soueraigne, he left the dispose thereof to M. Baldwine, M. Ferrers, and others, the composers of these Tragedies: who continving their methode, which was by way of dialogue or interlocvtion betwixt euerie Tragedie, gaue it onlie place before the dvke of Bvckingham's COMPLAINT. Which order I since hauing altered, haue placed the INDUCTION in the beginninge, with euerie Tragedie following according to svccession and ivst compvtation of time, which before was not obserued"."

In the Legend of King Richard the Third, Niccols appears to have copied some passages from Shakspeare's tragedy on that history. In the opening of the play Richard says,

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings;
Our dreadfull marches to delightfull measures*.
Grim-visaged War hath smoothed his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds,

Drayton wrote three other legends on this plan, Robert duke of Normandy, Matilda, and Pierce Gaveston, of which I shall speak more particularly under that writer.

b Fol. 555.

Fol. 253. Compare Baldwyne's Pro

*

logue at fol. cxiv. b. edit. 1559. ut supr.
[A measure was, strictly speaking, a
court-dance of a stately turn; but the word
was also employed to express dances in
general. Steevens apud Shakspeare.-
PARK.]

To fright the souls of fearfull adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

These lines evidently gave rise to part of Richard's soliloquy in Niccols's Legend.

.....

The battels fought in field before
Were turn'd to meetings of sweet amitie:

The war-god's thundring cannons dreadfull rore,
And rattling drum-sounds warlike harmonie,
To sweet-tun'd noise of pleasing minstralsie.

God Mars laid by his Launce and tooke his Lute,
And turn'd his rugged frownes to smiling lookes;
In stead of crimson fields, warres fatall fruit,
He bathed his limbes in Cypre's warbling brookes,
And set his thoughts upon her wanton lookes.d

Part of the tent-scene in Shakspeare is also imitated by Niccols.
Richard, starting from his horrid dream, says,

Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd
Came to my tent; and every one did threat
Tomorrow's vengeance on the head of Richard.e

So Niccols,

I thought that all those murthered ghosts, whom I
By death had sent to their vntimely graue,
With balefull noise about my tent did crie,
And of the heauens with sad complaint did craue,
That they on guiltie wretch might vengeance haue:
To whom I thought the iudge of heauen gaue eare,
And 'gainst me gaue a iudgement full of feare1.

But some of the stanzas immediately following, which are formed on Shakspeare's ideas, yet with some original imagination, will give the reader the most favourable idea of Niccols as a contributor to this work.

For loe, eftsoones, a thousand hellish hags,
Leauing th' abode of their infernall cell,

Seasing on me, my hatefull body drags

From forth my bed into a place like hell,

Where fiends did naught but bellow, howle and yell,
Who in sterne strife stood 'gainst each other bent,
Who should my hatefull bodie most torment.

Tormented in such trance long did I lie,
Till extreme feare did rouze me where I lay,
And caus'd me from my naked bed to flie:
Alone within my tente I durst not stay,
This dreadfull dreame my soule did so affray :
When wakt I was from sleepe, I for a space
Thought I had beene in some infernall place.

About mine eares a buzzing feare still flew,
My fainting knees languish for want of might;
Vpon my bodie stands an icie dew;

My heart is dead within, and with affright
The haire vpon my head doth stand vpright:
Each limbe abovt me quaking, doth resemble
A riuers rush, that with the wind doth tremble.

Thus with my guiltie soules sad torture torne
The darke nights dismall houres I past away:
But at cockes crowe, the message of the morne,
My feare I did conceale, &c.8

If internal evidence was not a proof, we are sure from other evidences that Shakspeare's tragedy preceded Niccols's legend. The tragedy was written about 1597. Niccols, at eighteen years of age, was admitted into Magdalene college in Oxford, in the year 1602h. It is easy to point out other marks of imitation. Shakspeare has taken nothing from Seagars's Richard the Third, printed in Baldwine's collection, or first edition, in the year 1559. Shakspeare, however, probably catched the idea of the royal shades, in the same scene of the tragedy before us, appearing in succession and speaking to Richard and Richmond, from the general plan of the MIRROUR FOR MAGISTRATES: more especially, as many of Shakspeare's ghosts there introduced, for instance, King Henry the Sixth, Clarence, Rivers, Hastings, and Buckingham, are the personages of five of the legends belonging to this poem.

Pag. 764.

Registr. Univ. Oxon. He retired to

Magdalene Hall, where he was graduated in Arts, 1606. Ibid.

SECTION LI.

View of Niccols's edition of the Mirrour for Magistrates. High estimation of this Collection. Historical Plays, whence.

BY way of recapitulating what has been said, and in order to give a connected and uniform view of the MIRROUR FOR MAGISTRATES in its most complete and extended state, its original contents and additions, I will here detail the subjects of this poem as they stand in this last or Niccols's edition of 1610, with reference to two preceding editions, and some other incidental particularities.

Niccols's edition (after the Epistle Dedicatorie prefixed to Higgins's edition of 1587, an Advertisement to the Reader by Niccols, a Table of Contents, and Thomas Newton's recommendatory verses above-mentioned,) begins with an Induction called the AUTHOR'S INDUCTION, written by Higgins*, and properly belonging to his edition. Then follow these Lives.

Vitellius.

Albanact youngest son of Brutus. Humber king of the Huns. King Locrine eldest son of Brutus. Queen Elstride concubine of Locrine. Sabrina daughter of Locrine. King Madan. King Malin. King Mempric. King Bladud. Queen Cordelia. Morgan king of Albany. King Jago. Ferrex. Porrex. King Pinnar slain by Molucius Donwallo. King Stater. King Rudacke of Wales. King Kimarus. King Morindus. King Emerianus. King Cherinnus. King Varianus. Irelanglas cousin to Cassibelane. Julius Cesar. Claudius Tiberius Nero. Caligula. King Guiderius. Lelius Hamo. Tiberius Drusus. Domitius Nero. Galba. Londric the Pict. Severus. Fulgentius a Pict. Geta. Caracalla. All these from Albanact, and in the same order, form the first part of Higgins's edition of the year 1587. But none of them are in Baldwyne's, or the first, collection, of the year 1559; and, as I presume, these lives are all written by Higgins. Then follow in Niccols's edition, Carausius, Queen Helena, Vortigern, Uther Pendragon, Cadwallader, Sigebert, Ebba, Egelred, Edric, and Harold, all written by Thomas Blener Hasset, and never before printed +. We have next a new titled, "The variable Fortvne and vnhappie Falles of svch princes as hath happened since the Conquest. Wherein may be seene, &c. At London, by Felix Kyngston. 1609." Then, after an Epistle to the Reader, subscribed

* [In 17 seven-line stanzas, altered from that in the edition of 1575, which had 21 stanzas.-HERBERT.]

a Pag. 1.

Ending with pag. 185.

Where they end at fol. 108 a. [Blenerhasset's contributions to this edition had been previously and separately printed in 1578.-PRICE.]

d After p. 250.