INTRODUCTION.

O poet is more thoroughly English than Michael Drayton; there is not a poem in our literature that breathes a finer spirit of patriotism than the Ballad of Agincourt; and who loved better than the author of the "Polyolbion" all the highways and byways of England, its hills and dales, its woods and streams? In an age remarkable for powerful intellects Michael Drayton held a distinguished place. He cultivated many kinds of poetry, and much of his work is of rare excellence. Many of his lyrics are wonderfully spirited; a few of his sonnets are quite first-rate; for fantastic grace his fairy poem, the "Nimphidia," is unequalled; his long chorographical poem, the "Polyolbion," carries the reader along through hundreds of pages in the swing and sweep of the bounding verse; and the "Muses Elizium," published (one year before his death) when he had nearly attained the age of threescore years and ten, takes us into that old pastoral world, of which we never tire, where there was "truth on every shepherd's tongue," and no lack of clouted cream and syllabub.

Alas, the world grows older and life more sombre. The gospel of science is spreading it has been demonstrated that the "orbed maiden with white fire laden, whom mortals call the Moon," is a heap of extinct volcanoes; the revels of Oberon have long ago been broken up, and no village slattern lives in dread of Robin Goodfellow. Marrowbone Park, where the wild deer ranged; Hoxton, where the 'prentices treated their sweethearts to cream and custard; the duck ponds at Islington-alack, what changes have they seen! Not the Sicily of Theocritus is more remote than the London of Shakespeare.

Everywhere in "damnable iteration" stretch long miles of unlovely streets, and it is no easy matter, even if one's legs are good, to walk out into the country from central London. But the gates of Arcady stand wide open for evermore in the pages of Drayton, Wither, Herrick, and Browne.

Drayton's collected works contain not far short of sixty thousand lines; and it cannot-be denied that his voluminousness has been a serious drawback to his popularity. Unsympathetic critics, annoyed at the multiplicity of the old poet's gifts-for nothing can exceed a critic's vexation at being unable to place his poet-have confidently declared that he tried everything and succeeded in nothing. He is represented as a pretender to genius, an intruder on the slopes of Parnassus, and no true-born child of the Muses. Not so did he appear to his contemporaries; not so to Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt. In his charming Epistle to Henry Reynolds he tells us how, even in his childhood, when he was a proper goodly page, much like a Pigmy, scarce two years of age," his one ambition had been to become a poet. The Muses heard his prayer; they tipped his tongue with eloquence and filled his heart with fire. His articulation is not always clear; not unfrequently we have to regret the occurrence of harsh constructions, and it must be allowed that he is sometimes found nodding when he ought to be wide awake. Yet he is a true poet, and, though fame is capricious and fashions change, his name will always be held in honour so long as English literature is seriously studied.

Michael Drayton was born at Hartshill near Atherstone, in Warwickshire, in 1563. He tells us that he was "a proper goodly page," but we do not know the name of the family to which he was attached. Probably he was not a member of either university, but on this point we are without certain information. Some critics have conjectured that he served as a soldier in early manhood: "believe as ye list" is all an editor can say. His earliest patron was Sir Henry Goodeve, of Powlesworth, by whom he was introduced to the famous Lady Lucy, Countess of Bedford. This lady (to whom, it will be remembered, Ben Jonson addressed one of the finest compliments ever

penned) seems to have paid Drayton much attention at first, but afterwards to have neglected him. In the Eclogues, originally published under the title of "Idea, the Shepheard's Garland," in 1593, and republished in "Poemes Lyrick and Heroick" (circ. 1605), there are many allusions to contemporary poets and patrons, but at this date it cannot be discovered to whom some of the allusions refer. The following passage (from the eighth eclogue), found only in the second edition and suppressed afterwards, would certainly seem to be directed against the Countess of Bedford, under the name of Selena, although it is strange that the poet should have written with such freedom of so distinguished a lady :

"So once Selena seemed to reguard

That faithfull Rowland her so highly praysed,

And did his travell for a while reward

As his estate she purpos'd to have raysed :
But soone she fled him and the swaine defies,
Ill is he sted that on such faith relies.

And to deceitefull Cerberon she cleaves,
That beastly clowne to [o] vile of to be spoken,
And that good shepheard wilfully she leaves,
And falsly all her promises hath broken;

And all those beautyes whilom that her graced
With vulgar breath perpetually defaced.

What dainty flower was yet ever there found,
Whose smell or beauty might the sence delight,
Wherewith Eliza when she lived was crowned,

In goodly chapplets he for her not dighte!

Which became withered soone as ere she ware them,
So ill agreeing with the brow that bare them.

Let age sit soone and ugly on her brow;
No shepheards praises living let her have;

To her last end noe creature pay one vow

Nor flower be strew'd on her forgotten grave;
And to the last of all devouring time

Nere be her name remembered more in rime."

Rowland is the pastoral name which Drayton adopted for himself,

and which is often applied to him by his contemporaries; but Cerberon's personality remains undiscovered. Certain it is that when Drayton in 1603 republished his "Mortemeriados" (issued originally in 1596) under the title of the "Barrons Warres," he withdrew the Dedication to the Countess of Bedford, and carefully cancelled all the references to his patroness that he had scattered up and down the first edition of the poem.

In was in 1591 that Michael Drayton gave the first proof of his poetical ability by the publication of the "Harmonie of the Church," a metrical rendering of portions of the Old and New Testament. For some reason this book gave offence, and was condemned by public order to be destroyed; but Archbishop Whitgift gave directions that forty copies should be preserved at Lambeth Palace. Only one copy (belonging to the British Museum) is now known to exist; it would have been no great loss if the destruction had been complete. Metrical versions of the scriptures are as a rule singularly dull and spiritless, and the utmost that can be said in Drayton's favour is that where success was impossible he has not wholly failed. The best thing in the book is a rendering of the "Song of Solomon;" but the subject could not have been a very congenial one, for there is not the least tinge of Oriental feeling in Drayton's temperament. It is difficult to see why the authorities were anxious to stop the sale of the book. Certainly the most rigid stickler for orthodoxy would be unable to find the slightest irregularity in the "Harmonie of the Church;" but perhaps it was thought that a metrical version of the "Song of Solomon" was unnecessary or (it may be) injurious.

Probably the young poet cared little for his first volume of verse. At least he was not seriously discouraged; for two years later, in 1593, he published his little book of Eclogues. In the early poems the sugar-plums are thickly strewn, and one's appetite is quickly cloyed with the insipid sweetness. Moreover, the reader is continually

Some copies that had escaped destruction were issued in 1610; for "A Heavenly Harmonie of Spirituall Songs and Holy Hymnes" (believed to be unique), published in that year, is merely a re-issue of the suppressed book, with a different title-page (Hazlitt's Handbook, sub "Drayton ").

vexed by very awkward constructions; violent inversions in the grammatical order of words occur again and again; the subject of a sentence is left standing without a verb, and participles are used as principal verbs with the most arbitrary freedom. Fluency of language and of versification is the first essential of pastoral poetry, and it must be confessed that in this respect the Eclogues are sadly wanting. But much of the lyrical part is undeniably excellent, and the poems underwent considerable revision before the issue, in 1605, of a second edition. In 1593 appeared also the first of Drayton's historical poems, "Piers Gaveston." The fallen favourite is brought "from gloomy shadows of eternal night" to relate in a hundred tedious stanzas the story of his doleful tragedy. Another of these "legends," dealing with the fortunes of "Matilda the fair and chaste Daughter of the Lord Robert Fitzwater," was published in 1594. Both pieces underwent revision and appeared again in 1596, with the addition of "The Tragicall Legend of Robert Duke of Normandie." In the last-named poem there are some symbolical passages of much strength and beauty. A poem in rhymed heroics on the subject of "Endymion and Phoebe " (1594) is a smooth piece of versification, pretty and quaint.

Before leaving Warwickshire Drayton seems to have made the acquaintance of a lady who was a native of Coventry, and who lived close to the river Ankor. To her he addressed, in 1594, a series of sonnets, under the title of "Ideas Mirrour." She never became his wife, but for years he continued to pay her poetical compliments with the most exemplary fidelity. One famous sonnet (" Since there's no helpe, come, let us kisse and part") seems certainly to speak the language of deep and genuine passion. The "Hymne to his Lady's Birth-place" no doubt gave pleasure to the object of his attentions, but the lady must have felt somewhat embarrassed at being complimented in the following strain of excessive gallantry :

"Had she beene borne in former age
That house had beene a pilgrimage,
And reputed more divine

Than Walsingham or Becket's shrine.