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He has not indeed the manifold music of Spenser—it would be unreasonable to expect that he should have it. But his stanzas are of remarkable melody, and they have about them a command, a completeness of accomplishment within the writer’s intentions, which is very noteworthy in so young a man. The extraordinary richness and stateliness of the measure has escaped no critic. There is indeed a certain one-sidedness about it, and a devil’s advocate might urge that a long poem couched in verse (let alone the subject) of such unbroken gloom would be intolerable. But Sackville did not write a long poem, and his complete command within his limits of the effect at which he evidently aimed is most remarkable.

THE GREAT STAIRCASE (UPPER FLIGHT)

Built by Thomas Sackville, 1604–8

The second thing to note about the poem is the extraordinary freshness and truth of its imagery. From a young poet we always expect second-hand presentations of nature, and in Sackville’s day second-hand presentation of nature had been elevated to the rank of a science.... It is perfectly clear that Thomas Sackville had, in the first place, a poetical eye to see, within as well as without, the objects of poetical presentment; in the second place, a poetical vocabulary in which to clothe the results of his seeing; and in the third place, a poetical ear by aid of which to arrange his language in the musical co-ordination necessary to poetry. Wyatt had been notoriously wanting in the last; Surrey had not been very obviously furnished with the first; and all three were not to be possessed by anyone else till Edmund Spenser arose to put Sackville’s lessons in practice on a wider scale and with a less monotonous lyre. It is possible that Sackville’s claims in drama may have been exaggerated—they have of late years rather been undervalued; but his claims in poetry proper can only be overlooked by those who decline to consider the most important part of poetry. In the subject of even his part of the Mirror there is nothing new; there is only a following of Chaucer, and Gower, and Occleeve, and Lydgate, and Hawes, and many others. But in the handling there is one novelty which makes all others of no effect or interest: it is the novelty of a new poetry.