Note 50 — The Mirror for Magistrates.

Richard Niccols was the offspring of respectable parents residing in London, and born about 1584. When about twelve years of age he embarked in a vessel called the Ark, which sailed with the expedition against Cadiz in June 1596, and was present at the great and complete victory obtained both by sea and land on that occasion. Whether this voyage was the result of boyish ardour, or that he was originally intended to be actively employed for his country in either marine or military service, is not known. He appears on his return to have resumed his studies, and in 1602 was entered a student in Magdalen College, Oxford. He took the degree of bachelor of arts in 1606, and was then esteemed among the “ingenious persons of the university.” In 1610, he impliedly says, he should have continued the Mirror for Magistrates further, if his own affairs would have suffered him to proceed, but being called away by other employments, he of force left the completion to others. What designation those employments gave him for the remainder of his life, beyond that of a poet, is not known. In that character his talents would appear over-rated by Headley, who considered him “a poet of great elegance and imagination,” had not Warton, unwittingly, gone further. Niccols, on reprinting the Induction, found the rhyme too perfect, and the language too polished, to allow the attempting any of his supposed emendations; but towards the conclusion of the poem, he was bold enough to reject one stanza, and foist in four of his own composing; and it is to his credit that Warton, in analysing the whole, reprinted two of those, as the genuine production of Sackville.[51] Such a compliment cannot be exceeded. He first published The Cuckow, 1607, quarto, and he says, “Cuckow-like of Castae’s wrongs, in rustick tunes did sing.” 2. He reprinted the Mirror for Magistrates, in 1610, edited in a manner that had left his volume without any value, but for the adding his own poems: viz. First the fall of Princes, and last A Winter Night’s Vision. This Vision was probably composed as long before as August 1603, as that was the last calamitous year when the plague ravaged extensively previous to its being published.[52] On that occasion our author retired for safety to Greenwich; where wandering through the walks, long-favoured by Elizabeth, the circumstance of it being her natal place, combined with her then recent death, appears to have awakened his youthful Muse to attempt this metrical history of her life. 3. His next effusion was The Three Sisters Teares, shed at the late Solemne Funerals of the Royall deceased Henry Prince of Wales, &c. 1613, qto. 4. The Fvries, with Vertves Encomium, or, the Image of Honour. In two bookes of Epigrammes. 1614. oct. 5. Monodia, or Waltham’s Complaint vpon the death of that most vertuous and noble Ladie lately deceased, the Lady Honor Hay, &c. 1615. oct. 6. London’s Artillery, briefly containing the noble practise of that worthie Societie, &c. 1616, qto. For an account of this Poem, see British Bibliographer, Vol. I. p. 363. 7. Sir Thomas Overbury’s Vision, &c. 1616. Reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, 1811. Vol. VII. p. 178. The author makes the ghost of Overbury, in his address to him, say,