ABSTRACT
Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset (1536-1608) was an Elizabethan courtier-poet, whose chief contribution to the non-dramatic literature is found in A Myrroure for Magistrates (1563). The following stanza is taken from a manuscript addition, not included in early printed versions of The Mirror, to Buckingham's complaint: St John's College, Cambridge MS. 364. It is printed in Lily B. Campbell's edition (Cambridge, 1938; Barnes & Noble, 1960), in Appendix C, p. 545. The addition expounds the idea that no poet—not ‘Maro’ (Virgil), Chaucer, Wyatt, Surrey, and ‘lest of all’the author—has been able to express the ‘houge dolours’ of Richard Ill's victim, the Duke of Buckingham.
not worthy wiat, worthiest of them all,
whom Brittain hath in later yeres furthbrought,
his sacred psalmes wherein he singes the fall
of David dolling for the guilt he wrought,
and Vries deth which he so dereli bought, 1
not his hault vers that tainted hath the skie,
for mortall domes to hevenlie and to hie.
