fect at which he evidently aimed is most remarkable.

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. Here the new
school--Surrey, Wyatt, and their followers--even if he had studied them,
could have given him little or no help, for great as are the merits of
Tottel's _Miscellany_, no one would go to it for representations of nature.
Among his predecessors in his own style he had to go back to Chaucer
(putting the Scotch school out of the question) before he could find
anything original. Yet it may be questioned whether the sketches of
external scenery in these brief essays of his, or the embodiments of
internal thought in the pictures of Sorrow and the other allegorical
wights, are most striking. 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 too much to seek in the
last; Surrey had not been very obviously furnished with the first; and all
three were not to be possessed by any one 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 Occleve, 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.

It has already been remarked that these two important books were not
immediately followed by any others in poetry corresponding to their
importance. The poetry of the first half of Elizabeth's reign is as
mediocre as the poetry of the last half of her reign is magnificent.
Although it had taken some hints from Wyatt and Surrey it had no