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popular suspicion. In return for his services, he hoped for a certain place in office presumably the laureateship and made sure of getting it; but he was unaccountably overlooked, and the post was given to his rival, Samuel Daniel. This ingratitude gave a wound to Drayton's sensitive nature from which he never wholly recovered; it embittered his life, and increased his naturally irritable temper. In his subsequent poems he complains long and grievously of worldly crosses and the evil times, and never quite forgave either King James or Daniel; but it is characteristic of his simple constancy that he did not attribute his ill-success to any want of zeal on the part of the Astons, and suffered it to make no breach in his friendship with Sir Walter. He himself appears to have considered some over-freedom of expression the cause of offence, for in a letter to a friend in Virginia he warns him to expect no political news for (he says):

I fear as I do stabbing this word State.
and further on-

It was my hap before all other men
To suffer shipwreck for my forward pen.
When King James entered at which joyful
time

I taught his title to this isle in rime*
When cowardice had tied up every tongue
And all stood silent, yet for him I sung,
Yet had not my cleere spirit in fortune's

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writers, the outlandish and frivolous language of the Euphuists, and the general triviality of the unpatriotic and "lunatique Age." One person he specially exempts from the storm of his rebuke, and this is his "truly noble friend Sir Walter Aston, who hath given me the best of those hours whose leasure hath effected that which I now publish."

The "Polyolbion" appeared in 1609, and was dedicated to Henry, Prince of Wales. It is a choregraphical description of Great Britain, written in the heavy twelve-syllabled line, which few beside Chapman have wielded with success. Both metre and idea were suggested by an earlier work, the "Albion's England" of Warner, a poem much admired by Drayton, who calls it "fine, cleere, and new;" though these adjectives are not precisely those that would suggest themselves to a modern reader. The "Polyolbion" is wonderfully correct as a topographical work, and was long considered a standard book of reference. As a poem, it must appear less excellent, for the subject admits of little display of Drayton's chief merits, delicate imagination and lyrical beauty, and under his management the long lines of the iambic hexameter become ponderous without dignity. Has not some critic said of Spenser's "Faery Queen" that it is a poem impossible to read through, but delightful to read in? The same remark (longissimo sane intervallo) may be applied to the "Polyolbion," whose length and sameness render it unendurable as a whole, but which abounds in curious details of forgotten customs and legends and in descriptions of scenery always picturesque

This congratulatory poem (1603) is not bound up with Drayton's other works, but single copies of it still exist. It is noticed in an obscure Latin epigram by John Stradling.

and antiquarian. Before the second part appeared Prince Henry was dead, and his elegy had been sung by nearly every poet of reputation. Drayton,although he wrote no poem, was not behind the others in his sorrow, and could make his second dedication to Charles, Prince of Wales, scarcely civil through unconcealed regret for the loss of his intelligent and much-loved brother. Other circumstances had contributed to heighten Drayton's dissatisfaction with the times. Most of the race of giants were dead, and the palmy days of verse had died with Queen Elizabeth. Drayton's poem had not been received with success, and he prefaces this second part with an indignant and pathetic remonstrance, "To any that will read it."

This would seem to have been more effectual than the generality of good advice, for the poet lived to see his magnum opus pass through three editions. During the next fifteen years Drayton produced nothing remarkable. Several historical poems, of which the best are the pathetic " Miseries of Queen Margaret," and the stirring "Bataile of Agincourt," together with two somewhat clumsy satires represent the sum of his work. But in his old age he collected his Lyrics and pastoral Odes, and, having written some later ones, published a volume of verses in 1627, which insure him a place among the most charming of our pastoral poets.

The collection is prefaced by a characteristic dedication : "To you those noblest of Gentlemen of these Renowned Kingdomes of Great Britain who in these declining times have yet in your brave bosoms the sparkes of that sprightly fire of your couragious Ancestors; and to this houre retaine the seedes of their magnanimitie and greatnesse, who out of

the vertue of your mindes love and cherish neglected Poesie, the delight of Blessed Soules and the language of angels. To you are these my Poems dedicated."

There is nothing in Drayton's verse quite so delightful as three poems in this book-the Nimphidia," "The Shepherd's Sirena," and the "Quest of Cynthia." Of these the first is the longest and the most fanciful, the second the sweetest, the third the most simple. Let us begin with the "Nimphidia." It is a whimsical fairy tale, written in easy and natural verse, relating how the poet, on his way home from Fairyland, falls in with the fay Nimphidia, who tells him all the secrets of the place. They come to the fairy palace, standing in the air yet unshaken by any hurricane:

The walls of spiders' legs are made,
Well morticéd and finely laid,
He was the master of his trade

It curiously that builded:
The windows of the eyes of cats,
And for the roof, instead of slats,
'Tis cover'd with the skinns of bats,

With moonshine that are gilded.

Notwithstanding all this splendour the poet finds poor King Oberon unhappy as any mortal because he fears a certain fairy knight, Pigwiggen, is grown too gracious in the eyes of fair Queen Mab. All the difficulties that ensue, and their happy ending, are told in a light-hearted, humourous way that reveals a new side of the dignified and melancholy scholar.

The Shepherd's Sirena is full of a tenderer charm.

It tells how Dorilus, a shepherd, sits mournfully on a hill in autumn, having thrown away crook and pipe, reading a letter from Sirena, a fair shepherdess, who has left the Trent to winter among the hills. She bids him come to her because she loves him, and then she bids him keep

away, because the floods are out, and he will certainly be drowned. Dorilus is musing which advice to take, sitting alone, and very disconsolate, when a band of his fellow - shepherds come upon

him

from behind, singing a merry song he had written in Sirena's honour when she lived near Trent. The sudden remembrance of past happiness (nessun maggior dolore) makes his present loneliness seem unbearable, and he turns angrily to rebuke his companions, when one of them interrupts him, saying that Olcon and his swineherds have come with staves to take their sheep-walks from them, and that every good shepherd is out with sheephook and cur to fight for his downs. Dorilus forgets Sirena, whistles to his dog, and goes along

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fashion his adventures in seeking and finding his Cynthia,

Whose name so often from the hills
The echoes wondered at.

Drayton has written lyrics of sterner merit. His Ballad of Agincourt should rank among the first of English war songs, and has had the honour of supplying Mr. Tennyson with the model for his " Charge of the Light Brigade." There is much spirit and vigour in several of his Odes, especially one to "Himself and the Harp," where he justifies his attempt to revive lyric poetry, and in those "To His Rival," "To His Coy Love," and in a rather lengthy one on the "Virginian Voyage." But these are chiefly of an earlier date; the year 1629 saw the last of Drayton's singing days. His "Muses Elizium," published in 1630, is without life or charm, and has no merit but that of a somewhat senile devotion.

Drayton was now growing old; many of his friends were dead, and with them the dignified and lovely verse that still sheds a glory on the reign of Elizabeth. He was left alone in a world to whose changed conditions of life and thought the obstinate constancy of his nature would not permit him to reconcile himself. His life had been melancholy, for its one love and its one ambition had been denied him, and he lived to see the strength and power of the England of his youth overshadowed by the gloom of coming troubles and disquiet. His biography has not yet been written; but, from what we can gather from his own writings and those of his contemporaries, his character appears to have been of an anxious, irritable, but not ungentle cast. He was certainly faithful and sincere in his attachment to his friends, of whom he seems to have had many, if we

may judge by the frequency of his the introductory panegyrics to verses of other poets; and as his enemies were rather principles than persons, his indignant denunciation of faults that he (not without reason) believed to forbode the ruin of his country never gave way to the coarseness of personal invective too common then and now. His passion as well as his hatred was somewhat ideal; it may be doubted whether he ever loved his earthly mistress half so well as those visions of patriotism and poetry to which he consecrated his life. The singular purity of his verse and its gentle grace, are, may be, the result of this impersonal temper of thought and emotion.

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We have ventured to draw a comparison between the Fairie Queen and some of Drayton's poetry, and the critics of those days were evidently of opinion that our poet was a follower of Spenser rather than Shakespeare. In a curious passage from Holland's "Romancio-Mastix," we find Elysium in an uproar, Ben Jonson characteristically pronouncing himself the king of English poets, while Skelton, Gower, and Lydgate declare for Chaucer, and Spenser is waited on by the best bookmen in the world, Chapman, Drayton, his rival Daniel, and some others.

Shakespeare also puts in a claim to the crown, but only as coheir with Fletcher, and these two are championed by a whole troop of dramatists, as well as by In one of Suckling and Carew. the best of his elegies Drayton shows very plainly the same preference for "grave, morall Spenser," whom he declares the worthy successor of Homer, while he passes over Shakespeare with a few lines, assuring us in somewhat condescending fashion that he possesses "smooth comick vein," and

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were

All air and fire, which made his verses cleere,

For that fine madness, still he did retaine Which rightly should possess a poet's braine.

It is amusing to note that Drayton prefers against Daniel a charge that might equally well have served for himself to be too much historian in verse; " but it is not an uncommon failing to be more awake to the faults of our rivals than to our own.

Drayton died in 1631; in death he found the honour, and, let us hope, the peace that he complained too often were denied to him in life. He lies in the south end of Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer and Edmund Spenser. Ben Jonson wrote his epitaph, which runs as follows:

MICHAEL DRAYTON.

A memorable Poet of his age, Changed his laurels for a crown of glory. 1631.

Do, pious marble let thy readers know
What they and what their children owe
To Drayton's name, whose sacred dust
We recommend unto thy trust,
Protect his memory and preserve his
story,

Remain a lasting monument of his glory,
And when thy ruins shall disclaim
To be the treasurer of his name,
His name, that cannot fade, shall be
An everlasting monument to thee.

Years have falsified the pro

phecy; the withered praises read but sadly now, and predict a warning their writer did not mean them to foretell, for, alas, who can say what name ranked high to-day and assured of immortality shall stand the cruel test of time? Our children may forget those that we honour and extol, even as we have forgotten Michael Drayton. Some

thing of the melancholy that shaded his life still hangs about his name, and makes even they that love him think of him always with a little sadness, as of an Alceste that neither in life nor in remembrance found the just and happy country he went out to seek.

A. MARY F. ROBINSON.

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