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Midnight was come, and every vital thing

With sweet sound sleep their weary limbs did rest;

The beasts were still, the little birds that sing

Now sweetly slept beside their mother’s breast,

The old and all well shrouded in their nest;

The waters calm, the cruel seas did cease,

The woods, the fields, and all things held their peace.

The golden stars were whirled amid their race,

And on the earth did with their twinkling light,

When each thing nestled in his resting place,

Forget day’s pain with pleasure of the night;

The fearful deer of death stood not in doubt,

The partridge dreamt not of the falcon’s foot.

These quotations will give some kind of idea of Sackville’s matter and manner, and of the Mirror, which survives among the classic monuments of English poetry, says Courthope, only by virtue of the genius of Sackville. For the rest, not wishing to be thought prejudiced, I should like to quote copiously from Professor Saintsbury’s Elizabethan Literature, since therein is expressed, a great deal better than I could express it, my own view of Sackville’s poetry, and by calling in the testimony of so excellent, scholarly, and delightful an authority I may be freed from the charge of partiality which I should not at all like to incur.