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Michael Drayton 
 
 A Critical Study 
 
 With a Bibliography 
 
 By 
 
 Oliver Elton, M.A 
 
 ProfessoJ- of English Literature 
 in the University of Liverpool 
 
 London 
 Archibald Constable and Company 
 
 Limited 
 . 1905 
 
This book is an enlarged and fully revised 
 edition, with a fresh Bibliography, of the 
 monograph published in 1895 by the Spenser 
 Society together with their Limited Reprint 
 of part of Drayton's works. 
 
'f 
 
Frontisi'Ieck to I III.: Tokms, 1619. 
 
TO 
 
 M. E. SADLER 
 
 IN RECOLLECTION 
 OF DRAYTON'S COUNTRYSIDE 
 
 292659 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This monograph was produced ten years 
 ago for the Spenser Society of Manchester. 
 After issuing many useful reprints of 
 Drayton's and other EHzabethan poetry, the 
 Society dissolved : but An Introduction to 
 Michael Drayton appeared as its last issue, 
 and was soon out of print. Owing to this 
 obscure method of publication, the new 
 biographical and other matter escaped the 
 notice of some of the historians of literature, 
 including Mr. Courthope and the writer 
 in Chambers's new Cyclopcedia of English 
 Literature. I regret that Mr. Courthope 
 was not saved some of the labour of his 
 independent inquiries, and hope that my 
 reasons may relieve him of some serious 
 doubts he has expressed in regard to 
 
 2fr2(^r^Q 
 
viii MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Drayton's behaviour. If Drayton acted as 
 Mr. Courthope thinks, he was the less a 
 gentleman : but if the charge is not true, 
 no other is left against his personal char- 
 acter. I also find more poetry in Drayton 
 than Mr. Courthope can concede ; and 
 there are signs that the old poet is now 
 coming to his rights. Mr. A. R. Waller 
 has now in hand, fortunately, a variorum 
 text of his poems ; and a selection and 
 criticism are promised by Mr. A. Symons, 
 whose encouragement has quickened my 
 wish to rescue this Introduction. I have 
 largely rewritten it, have added more quo- 
 tation and remark than the limited space of 
 the Spenser Society permitted, and have 
 noticed the stray fresh lights that have 
 been cast on Drayton during the last ten 
 years. Not much has been done, but Mr. 
 Beeching s selection, whilst all too short, must 
 have overcome the shyness of many readers 
 to encounter a dim, voluminous poet who, 
 they had vaguely felt, was well worth avoid- 
 ing. To save mere duplication of labour, I 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 have dropped some of the tabular matter 
 which the variorum edition of the text will 
 supersede. 
 
 Drayton's life, like that of most Eliza- 
 bethan writers, has sown the pages of 
 scholars with controversies, often tiny 
 enough. I have touched on these chiefly 
 in footnotes, the less to interrupt the text. 
 Nearly everything as yet known about this 
 poet ought to be found in this brief volume ; 
 * there is some charm in the experiment of 
 collecting the whole wreckage, which is 
 hardly possible with more modern writers. 
 I have been obliged to many helpers in local 
 and genealogical researches: among them to 
 my friend Mr. E. K. Chambers, of the Educa- 
 tion Office, especially for information on the 
 Goodere families and Rainsford ; to Mr. J. 
 Challenor Smith, of the Probate Registry, 
 Somerset House ; and to Mrs. and Miss 
 Annesley, of Clifford Chambers. 
 
 If the professors of bibliography had not 
 been proved as generous of trouble and 
 advice as their craft is severe, I should 
 
X MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 hardly, as a layman in that craft and work- 
 ing far from the large libraries, have ven- 
 tured in their province. But the reader, 
 wandering through the maze of Drayton's 
 editions and revisions, often feels the need of 
 a bibliography, and none of any completeness 
 yet exists. My friends Mr. John Sampson, 
 University Librarian in Liverpool, and 
 Mr. Charles Sayle at Cambridge, have 
 spared no pains in suggestion and emenda- 
 tion ; neither has Mr. Jenkinson, the Cam- 
 bridge University Librarian. None of these 
 experts must be held to answer for any 
 errors, and the entries of the modern re- 
 prints are probably incomplete. The titles 
 and descriptions of all editions in the British 
 Museum have been carefully checked and 
 often transcribed by Miss P. Osier, and those 
 of works peculiar to the Bodleian by Mr. 
 F. C. Wellstood. Thanks are also offered 
 for help of various kinds to the authorities 
 of the libraries of Trinity College, Dublin, 
 of the University and the Advocates' 
 Libraries in Edinburgh, of the By lands 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 Library in Manchester ; to the owner of a 
 private library containing some unique early 
 copies ; to Mr. G. Gregory Smith, to Mr. 
 A. E. Waller, and to Mr. Gordon Duff. I 
 hope the bibliography may be right as far as 
 it goes, and save some work to any professional 
 hand that may perfect it hereafter. I am 
 also indebted to the authorities of the Dul- 
 wich Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, 
 and the British Museum, for leave to re- 
 produce pictures. Drayton's signature is 
 also from the Henslowe MS. at Dulwich. 
 
 The modern works that do most to shorten 
 the way to the original authorities are 
 Collier's rare Roxburghe edition of some of 
 Drayton's poems : the article in the Diet. 
 Nat. Biog. by Mr. A. H. Bullen, and his 
 Selections, now long out of print ; and the 
 rash yet useful and instructive pages of Mr. 
 Fleay in his Biographical History of the 
 English Drama. The first renewal of in- 
 terest in Drayton came in 1748, after a 
 century of silence. The second was in the 
 time of Charles Lamb, and the labours of the 
 
xii MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 three scholars I have named are a worthy 
 late aftermath of that enthusiasm. There 
 seems to be a third revival now : there are 
 hopes that the true rank of Drayton may 
 be clearly discerned and admitted, and his 
 whole works made accessible. Sunt aliquid 
 manes ; and the living fame, that he pro- 
 mised to his own verses, should not alto- 
 gether fail him. 
 
 O. E. 
 
 Liverpool, May 1905. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. EARLIER YEARS 
 II. AN ELIZABETHAN POET . 
 
 III. SATIRES, ODES, AND POLY-OLBION 
 
 IV. THE RENEWAL OF DRAYTON : 
 
 WORKS . . 
 
 V. CRITICAL 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 LATER 
 
 INDEX 
 
 1 
 
 26 
 
 94 
 
 120 
 
 148 
 
 157 
 206 
 211 
 
 xiii 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FRONTISPIECE TO THE POEMS, 1619 . . Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MICHAEL DRAYTON, AGED 36 .... 80 
 
 {From the National Portrait Oallery) 
 
 DRAYTON'S SIGNATURE IN FACSIMILE . . 86 
 
 MICHAEL DRAYTON, AGED 50 . . . .107 
 
 {Hole's engraved Portrait in the Poems o/"1619) 
 
 TITLE-PAGE OF THE POEMS, 1637 . . .133 
 
 MICHAEL DRAYTON, AGED 65 . . . .144 
 
 {From the Dtclwich Gallery) 
 
MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 EARLIER YEARS 
 
 My native country then, which so brave spirits hast bred, 
 
 If there be virtue yet remaining in thy earth, 
 
 Or any good of thine thou breath'd'st into my birth, 
 
 Accept it as thine own, whilst now I sing of thee. 
 
 Of all thy later brood th' unworthiest though I be. 
 
 Poly-Olbion, Song 13. 
 
 Michael Drayton, or Draiton, was born at 
 Hartshill/ near Atherstone, Warwickshire, 
 in 1563. The time and place are first re- 
 corded on the frontispiece to poems,^ which 
 he reprinted in 1619 with his own correc- 
 tions. If we can trust to the legend that 
 surrounds the portrait on the title-page, in 
 1613 he was in his fiftieth year.^ There 
 
 1 Not at Atherstone, as stated by Fuller, Worthies, iii. 285 
 (ed. 1840), and by Aubrey. 
 
 2 Bibliography, § xv. 5. 
 
 3 Effigies Michaelis Drayton, armigeri, looetm clariss. cetat. 
 sure L, A. Chr. GIODCXIII. The inscription runs : — 
 
 A 
 
2 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 is no other proof of his age. The register 
 of the Hartshill births is still at the 
 parent village of Mancetter, where they 
 were always entered at that date. It 
 does not begin till 1576, but offers circum- 
 stantial evidence for the descent of the 
 poet. 
 
 Of his kindred nothing is certainly estab- 
 lished but that he had a brother, Edmund,^ 
 who after his death administered his estate. 
 There is but one Edmund Drayton in the 
 Mancetter list : he was the son of William 
 Drayton. The name of Elizabeth, daughter 
 of William, and born in 1576, is the first 
 entry in all the register. These were not 
 improbably the brother, father, and sister 
 of Michael Drayton. The objection is that 
 Michael is much older than Elizabeth. 
 His father would have died at a very 
 ripe age. The testament of William, who 
 died in 1622, has not been found. ^ But a 
 
 Lux Hareshulla tihi Warwici villa, tenehris 
 
 Ante tuas cunas ohsita prima fuit. 
 Arma, viros, veneres, patriam, modulamine, dixti ; 
 
 Te patriae resonant arma, viri, veneres. 
 
 1 See letters of administration quoted post. 
 
 2 Either in the Somerset House, Lichfield, or Worcester 
 indexes. 
 
EARLIER YEARS 3 
 
 table ^ extracting a part of his pedigree 
 will show that he had five brothers living 
 at Atherstone, Hartshill, and Mancetter, 
 late in the sixteenth century. The Man- 
 cetter entries are much occupied with the 
 names of their offspring. Their father, 
 Christopher, was a butcher, and their 
 mother's name was Margerie. Aubrey'^ was 
 derided for saying that the poet was a 
 butcher's son ; he was, perhaps, one genera- 
 tion out. If the two Edmunds are the 
 same, we have an inkling of Drayton's birth 
 and quality. His family would be of the 
 well-to-do trading class, who overran from 
 
 ^ Conjectural family tree of Michael Drayton : 
 
 Christopher Drayton, of= Margerie. (Will, 1559.) 
 Atherstone, butcher. I 
 (Will proved 155i3.) | 
 
 \ 
 
 II I I I I 
 
 John, Christopher, Thomas. William, Edward. Hugh, 
 I t 1624. I t ltJ:^2. I t 1629. 
 
 Margt. Bridget, Sarah, Annas, | Edw. Hugh, 
 
 b. 157i3. b. 157S. b. 1595. b. 1597. I b. 1570. b. 1578. 
 
 [? Michael, Eliz. Edw. Edmund, = Dorothy, Susannali, ? Ralph, 
 15(53-1031.] 1570- b. 1580. 1579-1044.1 t 1025. t 1580. t 1643. 
 
 leis. 
 
 Dorothy, 
 t 1625. 
 
 This table is made from information, for which I am indebted 
 to Mr, J. Challenor Smith, of Somerset House, and the Rev. 
 G. F. Mathews, Vicar of Mancetter. 
 2 Lives, ii. 335 (ed 1813). 
 
4 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Atherstone with their crowd of children 
 and settled at Hartshill. They may have 
 gone back to some stray bough of the 
 noble house of Drayton, said to be extinct 
 in the fifteenth century/ It is better to 
 believe with Burton^ that his neighbours 
 family originally brought their name from 
 Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire, one of the 
 many villages that show the compound form. 
 They had relatives at Atherstone who 
 verged on gentility and left a pedigree.^ 
 
 1 Halstead's Succinct Genealogies, p. 73. The Harleian 
 Society's genealogies also mark the extinction of the male 
 line. 
 
 2 Burton, Description of Leicestershire, ed. 1777, p. 85. 
 ' This place [Fenny Drayton] gave the name to the pro- 
 genitors of that ingenious Poet, Michael Drayton, Esq., my 
 near countryman and old acquaintance ; who, though those 
 Transalpines account us Transmontani, rude and barbar- 
 ous . . . yet may compare either with their old Dante, 
 Petrarch, or Boccace, or their Neoterick Marinella. . . . But 
 why should I go about to commend him whose own works 
 and worthiness have sufficiently proved to the world V 
 
 3 The College of Heralds tells us nothing of Michael, not 
 even recording any grant of the arms (see p. 95) which he 
 assumed at some unknown date. In the Visitation of 
 Warwickshire, 1683, preserved there in MS., a pedigree is 
 given oi another WiWiiim Drayton, of Atherstone (died 1G42), 
 who had among his descendants two Harrington Draytons, 
 father and son. Michael was a client of the house of Har(r)- 
 ington (see p. 14). Now this William Drayton of Atherstone 
 married a Mary or Alice Grey. Hunter MS., Chorus Vatum, 
 vol. i., s.v. 'Grey,' names a rare book Panthea, an elegy on 
 
 I 
 
EARLIER YEA'RS 5 
 
 By some chance, or through the brightness 
 of his parts, Michael Drayton, while yet a 
 little boy, was picked out and made a 
 man of by a house of gentlefolk in the 
 same countryside. To his rearing by the 
 Gooderes he refers in The Owl (1604), if 
 it is himself he calls ' nobly bred and well 
 allied ' ; and not, as some have argued, to 
 any high descent. 
 
 Drayton's country (as a fantast might 
 say) befits his utterance — rather pedestrian, 
 seldom of the rarest, but often coming near 
 it — and lies a httle off the most enchanted 
 parts of Warwickshire, away from the dells 
 and waters of Shakespeare ; it stands at a 
 certain height, but near the plain. The 
 quarry village of Hartshill, on the north- 
 eastern edge of the shire, climbs the last 
 and steepest ripple of the quietly rolling 
 land, before it drops into the Leicestershire 
 levels. Behind, up to the crest of the 
 
 Elizabeth Grey, who is in it said 'by her sister Mrs. Mary 
 Drayton to be allied to the prince of English poets, Michael 
 Drayton, Esq.' This only shows, what the name would 
 show by itself, that William of Atherstone and William of 
 Hartshill were kin, but it brings us no nearer to Michael, 
 To name all this may save others from straying up the same 
 blind alleys. 
 
6 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 ridge, hangs a profound wood, damasked in 
 July with splashes of foxglove-bloom ; and 
 on the top is Oldbury, part of the old 
 Manduessedum of the Romans, and en- 
 trenched by them with the circle of ditch 
 that now encompasses a Georgian house. 
 Downwards on the east is a wide flat, with 
 Charnwood in the distance; and south- 
 easterly is the road to Nuneaton and 
 Coventry, whose patroness Godiva was to 
 Drayton a ' type' of Anne Goodere, born in 
 that city. In Hartshill itself, which is high 
 enough to be saved from any pollution 
 by the pillared smoke of factories, is still 
 pointed out, by old inhabitants, ' Drayton's 
 cottage.' It rests amidst a plot of roses 
 and lilies, clean and trimly kept. The tale 
 connecting it with the poet can be traced 
 back some fifty years. In the middle of the 
 last century it was used as a tiny meeting- 
 house, and in a map of 1748 it is marked as 
 a chapel. 
 
 Polesworth, then usually spelt Powls- 
 worth, the only other spot known to have 
 witnessed Drayton's youth, lies some miles 
 off in the valley beyond Atherstone. It now 
 
EARLIER YEARS 7 
 
 consists chiefly of a street of ruddy-roofed 
 black-and-white cottagfes, with the church 
 and adjoining vicarage. Under the bridge 
 crawls Drayton's river, the Ancor, as if in 
 its sleep, like one of his own sluggish alex- 
 andrines. It is navigable by boats upwards 
 and downwards for some distance, and 
 winds among thick reeds, meadow-sweet, 
 and willows, into the Tame : 
 
 His Tarn worth at the last, he in his way doth win : 
 There playing him awhile, till Ancor should come in, 
 Which, trifling 'twixt her banks, observing state, so 
 
 slow. 
 As though into her arms she scorn'd herself to 
 
 throw. 
 
 The vicarage of Poles worth, formerly owned 
 by the Chetwynd family, stands on the 
 ground of the old nunnery, which on being 
 dissolved in 1545 was sold to the family of 
 the Gooderes. The auditorium, or as some 
 say the refectory, of the nuns, was turned 
 into the great hall, and is now the large room 
 of the vicarage, spaciously lit and panelled, 
 with the ancient tracery on the fireplace 
 fined away but still visible. It must have 
 been by this hearthstone that Drayton sat 
 and listened to the harper. Long after, he 
 
8 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 says of his own odes, addressing the younger 
 Sir Henry Goodere : 
 
 They may become John Hcwes his lyre, 
 Which oft at Polesworth by the fire 
 Hath made us gravely merry. ^ 
 
 Who knows but that this Mr. Hewes, or 
 Hughes, hummed to his own accompaniment 
 those rough dactyls of the old folk- ballad 
 Agincourt, Agincourt, which gallop through 
 Drayton's own monumental war-chant ? He 
 may, from his name, have been one of *my 
 friends, the Camber-Britons, with their 
 harp/ to whom it is addressed. 
 
 Polesworth Hall must have been Dray- 
 ton's headquarters during boyhood and 
 early youth. There is a charming passage 
 in the Epistle to Reynolds (1627) relating 
 his boyish bent : 
 
 For from my cradle you must know that I 
 
 Was still inclin'd to noble poesy. 
 
 And when that once Pueriles I had read 
 
 And newly had my Cato construed, 
 
 In my small self I greatly marvell'd then 
 
 Amongst all other, what strange kind of men 
 
 These poets were ; and, pleased with the name, 
 
 To my mild tutor merrily I came 
 
 Dedication in ed. 1619 of collected poems. 
 
EARLIER YEARS 9 
 
 (For I was then a proper goodly page, 
 Much like a pigmy, scarce ten years of age) 
 Clasping my slender arms about his thigh : 
 ' 0, my dear master ! cannot you,' quoth I, 
 * Make me a poet ? Do it if you can, 
 And you shall see I '11 quickly be a man.' 
 Who me thus answered, smiling, 'Boy,' quoth he, 
 ' If you '11 not play the wag, but I may see 
 You ply your learning, I will shortly read 
 Some poets to you.' 
 
 Besides Virgil's Eclogues, they read ' honest 
 Mantuan/ the Carmelite Baptista of Man- 
 tua, whose railing Latin ' pastorals ' were still 
 in fashion, in part perhaps as a text-book 
 against hireling shepherds.^ We hear no- 
 thing more of Drayton's childhood or book- 
 learning. The usual outfit in Horace, Ovid, 
 and Seneca^ may be imagined. It is little 
 proof of his knowing Greek that in the pre- 
 face to the Odes he talks of Anacreon and 
 Pindar with a certain familiarity. But, 
 as his first book will show, he studied the 
 songs of the Old Testament. We cannot 
 put a date to any of these studies, nor to 
 
 1 O moral Mantuan ! live thy verses long ! 
 Honour attend thee and thy reverend song. 
 
 The Owl, 1604. 
 
 2 Are you the man that studied Seneca, 
 Pliny's most learned letters ? 
 
 Epistle to the Lady L. S., 1627. 
 
10 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 the limits of his dependence on Polesworth 
 Hall ; but he tells us himself what he owed 
 to its masters. 
 
 The head of the household, when Drayton 
 was a child, was Sir Henry Goodere the 
 elder/ His elder daughter, Frances, married 
 her first cousin. Sir Henry Goodere the 
 younger, Donne's intimate correspondent ; 
 the younger daughter was Anne. Of all 
 
 Sir Francis Goodere of Polesworth. 
 I 
 
 Ann G. Thomas G. Sir Henry G. = Frances Lowther. William G. 
 the elder, I I 
 
 d. 1595. I 
 
 I I 
 
 Sir Henry AnL„ j^ ^ 
 
 the younger, (m. 1595). I (1577-1G22). the younger. 
 
 I I 
 
 Frances = Sir Henry Anne = Sir Henry Rainsford Sir Henry 
 
 I I I 
 
 William. Henry. Francis. 
 
 From Visitatio7i of Warwickshire, 1619, Harleian Soc. Puhl. 
 V. 67. (which however wrongly makes Anne the elder sister), 
 corrected by Dugdale's Warivickshire, ed. 1765 (copy of 1656 
 ed.), p. 159, and by Dray ton's own statement inEclogue 8 (1606) : 
 see p. 20 2^ost The elder Sir Henry's will was proved in 
 1595 : copy in Somerset House, Prerogative Court of Canter- 
 bury, ' Book Scott, fol. 29.' To Anne was bequeathed ^1500, 
 and she was an executor. Frances received the rents accruing 
 from Polesworth, and lived on there. Dugdale explains that 
 the testator, failing of male issue, and ' desiring that his lands 
 might continue unto his posterity and name, married 
 Fraunces, his elder daughter, unto his own brother's son.' See 
 2)ost, p. 128, on the relations of Drayton and Eainsford, and 
 Hunter MS., Chorus Vahim, vol. iii., s.v. 'Eainsford.' — 
 These dates and residences will throw light on Drayton's 
 biography. 
 
EARLIER YEARS 11 
 
 these we hear afterwards through Drayton. 
 In 1595 the elder Sir Henry died, and 
 Drayton was a witness to his will, of which 
 only a copy is extant. In 1597, dedicating 
 one of the Heroical Epistles (Isabel to 
 Eichard) to the Earl of Bedford, the poet 
 paid his thanks to the memory of his patron 
 'that learn'd and accomplished gentleman. 
 Sir Henry Goodere, not long since deceased, 
 whose I was whilst he w^as, whose patience 
 pleased to bear with the imperfections of 
 my heedless and unstayed youth. That 
 excellent and matchless gentleman w^as the 
 first cherisher of my muse, which had been 
 by his death left a poor orphan to the world, 
 had he not before bequeathed it to that 
 lady' (the Countess of Bedford). In the 
 same volume is a dedication (of the Epistle of 
 Lady Jane Grey) to Lady Frances Goodere ; 
 • the love and duty I bare unto your father 
 whilst he lived, now after his decease is to 
 you hereditary.' He adds that he has wit- 
 nessed the education of this lady, ' ever from 
 your cradle.' Lastly, the Epistle of Mary 
 to Suffolk is dedicated to Sir Henry the 
 younger : and another tribute is paid ' to 
 
12 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 the happy and generous family of the 
 Gooderes, to which I confess myself behold- 
 ing to for the best part of my education.' 
 It may be seen from this that Drayton was 
 taken quite young by the Gooderes to be 
 civilised. He never forgot them ; and to 
 one of them he came to bear something 
 more than gratitude. The inmate of Poles- 
 worth Hall whom he never names in any of 
 his dedications is Anne Goodere, the younger 
 daughter, who married Sir Henry Ptainsford 
 in the year of her father's death, or the 
 next year. The proof that she is the 
 ' Idea,' whom he celebrated, will appear 
 later. Drayton, if his word is to be taken, 
 did not ' lose his wit ' on her account till 
 1591 or 1593, perhaps because they had 
 been brought up together.^ 
 
 All these early years of his life are obscure. 
 It is unknown how long he was at Poles- 
 worth, or whether he went to a university. 
 A couplet printed by Sir Aston Cokain 
 
 ^ ' 'Tis nine years now since first I lost my wit.' This line 
 occurs in the sonnet ' To Lunacie,' first printed in 1602 ed. of 
 the Heroical Epistles (Bibl. § ix. 5) : unless it was in the 1 600 
 ed,, which I have failed to see. The sonnet is numbered ninth 
 in the 1605 ed. 
 
EARLIER YEARS 13 
 
 twenty years after Drayton's death cannot, 
 despite the versifier's pious regard, and 
 his connection with Pooley Hall at Poles- 
 worth, outweigh the silence of all other 
 records ; ^ and what knowledge of the 
 classics is shown by the poet of Endimion 
 and Phoebe he might well have got for him- 
 self. It is equally uncertain when he went 
 to London ; but he was there by Feb. 1591.^ 
 Something may be gleaned about his 
 means of support near the time of his first 
 arrival. His career, like that of so many 
 poets, was to be a series of honourable 
 dependences. The Gooderes, the Haring- 
 tons, the Astons, the Rainsfords, and the 
 
 ^ Small Poems of Divers Sorts, 1658, p. 11 : 
 
 Oxford, our other academy . . . 
 Here smooth-tongu'd Drayton was inspired by 
 Mnemosyne's manifold progeny. 
 Cokain, ib., p. 66, laments Drayton's death. 
 
 Mr Fleay, Biog. Chron., i. 145, states, without furnishing any 
 evidence, that Drayton was ' sent to a university, most likely 
 to Cambridge, at Sir Henry Goodere's expense.' 
 
 2 Dedication of The Harmony of the Church, 1591, to Lady 
 Jane Devereux, sister-in law of the Earl of Essex. On this 
 letter Mr. Collier built a figment that Michael might have 
 been a page in the Earl's service. It does not serve or hinder 
 his hypothesis to find that a poem in the Camden Miscellany 
 shows Essex to have been popularly called ' Kobin,' and that 
 in the third eclogue of 1594 Robin is said to have ' gene to 
 his roost.' 
 
14 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Cliffords, fostered him in turn ; and now, 
 before passing to his writings, may be told 
 what is known of his alliance with the 
 houses of Harlngton and Russell. Sir Henry 
 Goodere must have seen that Drayton 
 would not dream always by the Ancor, but 
 was sure to drift to London, and that once 
 there he must have a patron. But to a 
 patron's eye his poverty, his high temper, 
 and a genius as yet latent, would be feeble 
 testimonials. Goodere might not command 
 in London the needful position ; but he left 
 his young friend to the care of a family 
 which gave him subsistence, courage, and 
 repute, during the galliDg years when he 
 was forced to climb. In those days the 
 protector could throw out a rope and let 
 down provisions, while the poet cut his foot- 
 hold up the rock. 
 
 Some perplexities have gathered about 
 Drayton's subsequent dealings with the 
 house of Russell ; his loyalty, and even his 
 decency, have been put in question ; but a 
 little bibliography will, I think, clear his 
 character. The detail may appear less 
 tedious, if we remember that it cancels 
 
EARLIER YEARS 15 
 
 the one aspersion ever cast upon Drayton. 
 In 1593 he pubHshed the first version of 
 his pastorals, Idea, the Shepherd's Gar- 
 land ; where in the fifth eclogue, without 
 disclosing who is meant, he offers con- 
 ceited compliments to 'Idea.' Next year 
 Matilda was dedicated to Lucy Haring- 
 ton ; and he also published his first sonnets, 
 called Amours; or, Idea's Mirror, with no 
 dedication at all. Idea is an abstract 
 title, possibly conveyed from an obscure 
 poet, De Pontoux. There is no sign who is 
 intended. Neither Anne Goodere nor Lucy 
 Harington is named in the book. The 
 poems range from icy fantasy to delicate 
 devotion. In 1595 Drayton produced 
 Endimion and Phoebe. Lucy Harington 
 had married the Earl of Bedford in Decem- 
 ber 1594, and to her is addressed a prefatory 
 sonnet : 
 
 To THE Excellent and Most Accomplished 
 Lady, Lucy, Countess of Bedford 
 
 Great Lady, essence of my chiefest good, 
 Of the most pure and finest temper'd spirit, 
 
 Adorn'd with gifts, ennobled by thy blood. 
 Which by descent true virtue dost inherit ; 
 
16 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 That virtue which no fortune can deprive, 
 
 Which thou by birth tak'st from thy gracious 
 mother, 
 
 Whose royal minds with equal motion strive 
 Which most in honour shall excel the other : 
 
 Unto thy fame my Muse herself shall task, 
 
 Which rain'st upon me thy sweet golden 
 showers. 
 And, but thy self, no subject will I ask, 
 Upon whose praise my soul shall spend her 
 powers. 
 Sweet Lady, then, grace this poor Muse of mine. 
 Whose faith, whose zeal, whose life, whose all is 
 thine. 
 
 Your Honour's humbly devoted 
 
 Michael Drayton. 
 
 An unknown admirer, ' E. P.', next accosts 
 Drayton in a sonnet by his shepherd-name of 
 Rowland, and tells him that even when he 
 had merely tuned his pastoral pipe unto the 
 river Ancor, the fame of the chaste Idea 
 had thus been made immortal. At the end 
 of Endimion and Phoebe, after making 
 excuse to Spenser, Daniel, and Lodge, 
 Drayton continues : 
 
 And if, ^weet maid, thou deign'st to read this story, 
 Wherein thine eyes may view thy virtues' glory, 
 Thou purest spark of Vesta's kindled fire, 
 Sweet nymph of Ancor, crown of my desire. . . . 
 
EARLIER YEARS 17 
 
 Where thou dost live, there let the graces be, 
 Which want their grace, if only wanting thee. 
 
 Not even thus is Idea discovered. It 
 would have been natural to praise the 
 same person at the end of the poem, as in 
 its inscription. But these are not the 
 terms in which Drayton could have 
 addressed the lately married noble lady, 
 whom he had thanked by name as the 
 Countess of Bedford, and to whom doubtless 
 this poem was his wedding-gift. It is true 
 that Combe Abbey, on the Ancor, was one 
 of Sir John Harington's abodes. But Poles- 
 worth, the home of Anne Goodere, is also 
 on Ancor. 
 
 The sonnet, ' Great Lady/ was steadily 
 reprinted. It appears in the second edition 
 of the sonnets, called Idea, 1599, and in the 
 changed editions of 1602 (reprinted 1603) 
 and 1605. On the last four occasions the 
 sonnets accompanied England's Heroical 
 Epistles. He reprinted the sonnet in 1608, 
 1610, 1613, and 1631. Between 1596 and 
 1599 three other poems of Drayton were in- 
 scribed to Lady Bedford. Before Mortimeri- 
 ados (1596) comes a long series of stanzas in 
 
 B 
 
18 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 her honour, and next year the Legend of 
 Robert has a compliment to her in prose. In 
 1597 the first edition of the Heroical Epistles, 
 Drayton s most popular book, is addressed to 
 her as a whole, while separate epistles are 
 prefaced by words to her mother, Lady Anne 
 Harington, and to her husband, the Earl of 
 Bedford. Thus Drayton had recited his 
 gratitude to his patroness during almost 
 every year from 1594 to 1605, except in 
 1601, when he published nothing. Mean- 
 while there is no fresh allusion to Idea, no 
 fresh clue to her identity. The Epistles 
 contain dedications to several of the 
 Gooderes, but not to Anne. The sonnets, 
 even if we take a fanatical view of their 
 literary and artificial nature, would not be 
 addressed to Lady Bedford without ab- 
 surdity or impertinence. They profess, at 
 least, the tones of passion, remonstrance, and 
 regret. The reasonable deduction thus far 
 is that Drayton's devotion and promises of 
 fame to his patroness lasted without inter- 
 ruption for twelve years ; and that he also 
 sang of a different person. Idea, who was 
 unmarried in the year after Lucy Harington 
 was married. 
 
EARLIER YEARS 19 
 
 In 1603 Mortimeriados was rewritten' 
 throughout in another metre, pubhshed as 
 the Barond Wars, and dedicated to Sir 
 Wilham Aston. Every allusion in it to 
 Lady Bedford is erased, both the opening 
 stanzas and passage in the body of the 
 poem. But in the same vokime comes Idea^ 
 and the familiar sonnet to the great lady 
 who rains sweet golden showers. In 1605 
 this work was reprinted with Idea and the 
 sonnet. It is not possible that the extirpa- 
 tion of her name should be due to any 
 quarrel, when this sonnet was twice re- 
 printed with the same work. Why Drayton 
 made the change of patron in his dedication 
 has never been known, but the poem was in 
 effect a new poem, and the benefactor a new 
 benefactor. The last enigma is found in the 
 rewritten pastorals of 1606. There, in 
 eclogue the eighth, is a tirade against one 
 Selena, a capricious patroness who had 
 baulked the writer's ambition. These lines 
 were afterwards withdrawn. Viciously he 
 imprecates a swift old age and ugliness upon 
 her brow. And in the same eclogue Idea is 
 named anew, but this time with clearer 
 
20 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 features. Of two sisters, one, Panape, keeps 
 her flock by Ancor : 
 
 The younger than her sister not less good, 
 Bred where the other lastly doth abide, 
 
 Modest Idea, flower of womanhood 
 That Eowland hath so highly deified. 
 
 Idea is now 
 
 Driving her flocks unto the fruitful Meen 
 
 Which daily looks upon the lovely Stour, 
 Near to that vale, which of all vales is queen, 
 Lastly forsaking of her former bower ; 
 And of all places holdeth Cotswold dear, 
 Which now is proud, because she lives it near. 
 
 This is decisive. Anne Goodere had married 
 Sir Henry Eainsford in 1595 or 1596. She 
 now lived at Clifford Chambers, near Strat- 
 ford - on - Avon, in Evesham Yale, on the 
 Stour, and north of Meon Hill, an out- 
 lying spur of Cotswold. Her sister Frances 
 married her cousin and stayed at Poles- 
 worth. Now, in 1606, for the first time 
 we learn who was Idea. It is natural to 
 suppose that the same person had always 
 borne that name in Drayton's verse. Some 
 strong reason to show the contrary would 
 be needful. In Tlte Barouii Mars, 1603 
 
EARLIER YEARS 21 
 
 (ii. 68), Drayton says that, but for the hor- 
 rors of these wars, 
 
 My lays had been still to Idea's bower, 
 Of my dear Ancor, or her lov^d Stour. 
 
 The passage is not in the version of 1596. 
 To complete the evidence, which was first 
 noted by Mr. Fleay,^ there is the thirteenth 
 song of PoIif-OIbion: Anne is not there 
 termed Idea, but Coventry is honoured as 
 her birthplace : ' An-cor prophesies her 
 Christian name and God-iv^ half her sur- 
 name.' And in the Hymn to his Ladys 
 Birthplace, later, it appears that Anne 
 was born in the street of Coventry called 
 Mich Park [Great Park] on a fourth of 
 August. 
 
 Before taking up the tale of Drayton's 
 poetical and personal ties with Anne Rains- 
 ford, a different explanation of these obscuri- 
 ties and allusions must be cited. It is said 
 that the praise of Idea in the eclogues of 
 1593 was 'merely a pastoral translation' of 
 the dedication to Endimion and Phoebe ; 
 
 1 Biog. Chron.,\. 14G. Mr. Fleay's indepeudent inquiries 
 were partially forestalled by Hunter, Chorus Vatnm, MS. 24, 
 489, s.v. ' Sir Henry Rainsford.' 
 
22 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 that the praise of Idea at the end of the 
 latter poem must refer, like the dedication, 
 to Lady Bedford, since 'to suppose that 
 Drayton meant to flatter two ladies at once 
 is to conclude him wanting equally in poeti- 
 cal ingenuity and in knowledge of human 
 nature ' ; and that the presence of Combe 
 Abbey on the banks of Ancor serves further 
 to show that the ' sweet nymph ' was Lady 
 Bedford. On this original error, which 
 has been exposed already, is based a heavy 
 charge, which can, I think, be disabled. It 
 is that Drayton's excision of the Countess's 
 name in The Barons Wars was due to a 
 pique caused by the withdrawal of patron- 
 age. But in the same book the sonnet 
 commending her munificence is kept. If, 
 then, there was a rupture, it must have been 
 between the issue of the volume of 1 GO 5 and 
 that of the volume of IGOG, entered in April. 
 It is suggested that in the lines on Selena 
 Drayton dealt a low buflet in verse to Lucy, 
 Countess of Bedford, whom he had honoured 
 consistently for twelve years, graiide spatmm 
 mortalis aevi. It is scarcely credible, and 
 it is unproved. Of his other friendships he 
 
EARLIER YEARS 23 
 
 is known to have been tenacious. No one 
 knows who Selena was, but the burden of 
 proof lies with the prosecution. 
 
 The theory I have referred to has further 
 to account for Anne Goodere being ad- 
 mittedly afterwards praised under the style 
 of Idea. The explanation given deprives 
 Drayton of character. It is said that in pure 
 spite he transferred the name, Idea, from 
 Lady Bedford to Anne Goodere, now Lady 
 Rainsford : but, ' by a very subtle stroke of 
 art, she was transformed into the younger 
 sister of Panape (Lady Bedfdrd being the 
 elder of Lord Harington's two daughters), 
 and had her abode in Gloucestershire in- 
 stead of in Warwickshire.' The 'mingled 
 spite and ingenuity of Drayton's revenge' 
 is compared to that of Pope. But we have 
 seen the lack of any reason for supposing 
 that Drayton had ever entitled Lady Bed- 
 ford Idea. We must therefore dismiss the 
 only accusation that has ever been brought 
 against his behaviour as unproven and 
 improbable.^ 
 
 * W. J. Courthope, History of English Poetry, vol. iii. pp. 
 22-46. The wide vogue of this History, whose philosophical 
 
24 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 The later history of Drayton's friendship 
 with Anne Goodere and her husband may 
 be deferred. And before passing to his true 
 poetry, his first publication, which is only 
 an experiment, may be mentioned. The 
 Harmony of the Chirch does not suggest 
 the work of a man of twenty-eight who 
 was presently to be a poet. It falls into 
 the crowd of paraphrases. The songs of 
 Deborah, Judith, and others, are metrified 
 into the jogging distich of fourteen syllables 
 which the band of Tottel had invented, 
 Warner had improved, but Chapman had 
 not yet redeemed. Truthfulness to the text 
 warms the transcript of the Song of Songs 
 
 quality I may be allowed to say I have recognised elsewhere, 
 makes it the more needful to rectify the unnecessary slur on 
 Drayton. To do full justice to the hypothesis, two minor 
 heads may be dealt with. Mr, Courthope thinks that 'Dray- 
 ton recast Endimion and Phoehe as The Man in the Moon, 
 taking from it all those allusions personal to Idea which ouce 
 assocTatfed it"c1ugBiy with Lady Bedford.' But if Idea was 
 not Lady Bedford, the changes have no such force as is im- 
 plied. Secondly, ' the pastorals were reissued with a pre- 
 fatory discourse on bucolic poetry, thus suggesting to the 
 reader that they were merely a literary exercise,' But this 
 discourse (first printed 1019) says that though the subject and 
 language of pastorals ' ought to be poor, silly, and of the 
 coarsest woof in appearance, nevertheless the niost high and 
 most noble matters of the world may be shadowed in them, 
 and for certain sometimes are.' 
 
EARLIER YEARS 25 
 
 into somewhat more fervid colour than the 
 rest. This, it has been thought, was the 
 quality scented by the puritan inquisitors ; 
 and there is little else to account for the 
 doom of a book so innocent and so tedious. 
 In the Stationers' Registers for 1591 Mr. 
 Collier found an entry proving that the edi- 
 tion was seized by order, ^ and given over to 
 a Mr. Bishop for destruction ; although forty 
 copies were saved by express rule of Whit- 
 gift, and kept in Lambeth. None survive 
 there now, and only one copy of the first 
 edition, preserved in the British Museum, 
 seems to be known. Why the seizure 
 was made, and why Whitgifb interposed, 
 and why, in IGIO, the author thought 
 his paraphrase worth reprinting,^ is now 
 obscure. 
 
 1 ' Whereas all the seised books, mentioned in the last ac- 
 coumpte before this, were sould this yere to Mr. Byshop. Be 
 it remembered that fortye of them, being Harmonies of the 
 Churche, rated at ij^ le peece, were had from him by warrante 
 of my lordes grace of Canterburie, and remayne at Lambithe 
 with Mr. Doctor cosen ; and for some other of the saide 
 bookes, the said Mr. Bishop hath paid iij^', as appeareth in 
 the charge of this accoumpte, and the residue remayne in 
 the Hall to th' use of Yarrette James.' (Quoted by Collier, 
 pp. xi-xii.) 
 
 2 For full titles here and elsewhere see Bibliograpliy. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 AN ELIZABETHAN POET 
 
 Moke than the masters, the explorers of 
 unknown forms, the original breakers -up of 
 the wilderness, Drayton has the title of an 
 Elizabethan poet, of a representative. He 
 tells of the current achievements and aims 
 of his age in poetic art. What others lend 
 him, he appropriates with power and rede- 
 livers, and he comes honestly by the pleasure 
 that his work gives him. The rarer part 
 of a truly originative mind like Spenser's — 
 his nicety of colour or his sense of the terror 
 of the sea — only isolates him from contem- 
 porary feeling : it is usually best felt by 
 far posterity, and it offers no hold to 
 discipleship. Drayton was no such weaver 
 of new hues and stories upon the arras of 
 dreams ; his delight is to utter sincerely the 
 ruling Elizabethan thoughts and ardours, 
 
 20 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 27 
 
 though he too, as will appear, struck, after 
 a while, on some fortunate inventions, and 
 heard rhythms of his own. He tried nearly 
 every kind of verse that was the mode during 
 the last ten years of the queen's reign, 
 except moral allegory. He wrote pastoral, 
 sonnet, paraphrase, vidian fable, narrative 
 chronicle, legend, and panegyric. If no 
 other poetry were left but his, we could 
 discover from it many of the imaginative 
 interests of those years. The assurance of i 
 fame, the praise of queen and patroness, the j 
 passion for the past of England, and the *' 
 curiosity for the world of the west ; the 
 feeling for the beauty of youth, the cordial 
 extravagance in friendship, the fashion of 
 loving; the conventions, too, of handling 
 accepted for all these themes ; are found irl 
 Drayton. ^ They are treated, doubtless, with 
 imperfect and fitful power, but poetry is 
 never far off. From those ten years, to us 
 foreshortened and so populous, a kind of 
 part-song upon all these motives seems to 
 arise, voice repeating and overlapping voice. 
 The darker and wearier strain is only casu- 
 ally present, and then chiefly in the Faerie 
 
28 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Queene ; it is better heard in the reign of 
 James, from the lips of Timon or of Donne, 
 of De Flores or of Webster. The common 
 mood is unreserved and even exultant ; the 
 very conceits, which are everywhere, come 
 from high vitahty and critical inexperience ; 
 the moods of sadness are seldom due to the 
 conscious and dreary ebb of hopeful passion ; 
 and the enigmatic, questioning element in 
 poetic thought has seldom to be counted 
 with. The rougher and untruer use of the 
 term ' Elizabethan ' for early seventeenth- 
 century verse has concealed these distinc- 
 tions from us. And the temper of the earlier 
 time is well seen in Drayton, who treads at 
 high noon upon the frequented roads of 
 poetry, shunning twilight and the woven 
 shadows of the forest. His inequality is 
 that which besets almost all of his genera- 
 tion except Spenser. Like others, he 
 seldom writes a perfect poem, or one without 
 perfect lines. Some of the species he 
 attempted proved unresourceful in his 
 hands, like the legend, the chronicle, and 
 the satire ; others, like the ode and pastoral, 
 prospered ; and in one style, that of the 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 29 
 
 Heroical Epistles, he found an unborrowed 
 tune. He frankly submits to the sway 
 exercised by Sidney, by Spenser, and by 
 Daniel, upon the last verse written under 
 the Tudors, but his artistic tie with each of 
 them is different, and tells upon different 
 parts of his poetry. 
 
 The praise of Spenser is found in the 
 verse of Drayton at intervals over five-and- 
 thirty years, and if the influence fades, 
 admiration remains. The younger poet was 
 ever revising, and knew of the knots and 
 obstacles in his own talent, naturally level 
 and sturdy rather than gracious or dexterous, 
 and he was put to shame by the sure hand of 
 the always poetical Spenser. In E^idimioit 
 and Phoebe, 1595, he cries: 
 
 Dear Colin, let our Muse excused be, 
 Which rudely thus presumes to sing by thee ; 
 Although the strains be harsh, untuned, and ill, 
 Nor can attain to thy divinest skill. 
 
 And writing in the reign of Charles he still 
 
 honours ' Colin ' 
 
 On his shawm so clear 
 Many a high-pitched note that had. 
 
 And to the last ho regarded 'grave, moral 
 
30 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Spenser' as 'in all high knowledge surely 
 
 excellent/ and awarded him a kind of 
 
 Homeric scope for the bravery of his 
 invention : 
 
 I am persuaded there was none 
 
 Since the blind bard his Iliads up did make, 
 
 Fitter a task like that to undertake. ^ 
 
 And this loyalty, filial, not servile, had 
 its reward when Drayton began himself to 
 be called ' golden-mouthed,' or to be com- 
 mended for the * purity and preciousness of 
 his phrase ' : epithets that we can still apply 
 to him at his best. Spenser, it will be seen, 
 served Drayton most in the fields of the 
 pastoral and the sonnet ; the debt extends 
 to subject and to cadence as well as to many 
 a strain of sentiment, whether pessimistic, 
 defiant, or Platonic. And he also infected 
 Drayton with his lofty and proud concep- 
 tion of what the poet's calling really is, when 
 it is confronted with the brute and bastard 
 ambitions of the world. Drayton often 
 exhales this feeling, and it became the cry 
 of a kind of caste numbering men so different 
 
 * Epistle to Reynolds^ 1627. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 31 
 
 as Jonson, Chapman, and Marston. Poets, 
 he says in The Oivl, are 
 
 Those rare Promethei, fetching fire from heaven, 
 To whom the functions of the gods are given, 
 Kaising frail dust with their redoubled flame, 
 Mounted with hymns upon the wings of fame. 
 
 It should be remembered that in such 
 deliverances the word poetry, though its 
 first application might be to verse, meant all 
 imaginative writing, all Dichtung : and we 
 trace in them the spirit of challenge that 
 animated Drayton's other master, Sidney, 
 and his companion Daniel, who found that 
 poetry, in such a sense, required defending, 
 like a newcomer with doubtful introductions. 
 By one of the chances of history, the 
 pastoral eclogue, arranged in a cycle of 
 months, had served, rather than any larger 
 form, to announce in 1579 the coming of the 
 new poetry. The Shepherd's Calendar, with 
 the variety of its adventures in rhythm, and 
 its flashes of the nobler style, had at once 
 caught attention, and found imitators. Of 
 Thomas Watson little can be said ; but, 
 fourteen years after, Drayton was the first 
 worthy pastoral follower of Spenser, and 
 
32 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 began his true poetical life as Spenser's 
 student. Idea, the Shepherd's Garland, 
 fashioned in nine Eglogs ; Rowland's Sacrifice 
 to the Nine Muses, was published in 1593. 
 Drayton here turns away from the shepherd 
 dialect that, to speak the truth, makes the 
 Calendar tiresome, as well as from that 
 habit of prudently obscure invective against 
 Church or State, which is traceable at last to 
 the Latin pastorals of Petrarch. But, like 
 Spenser, he uses the eclogue in one of its 
 most primitive extensions, for eulogy. The 
 third number contains an ode to Elizabeth, 
 which may well compare with the earlier 
 April. Splendour and onset are not want- 
 ing here, and the lengthy lines, which Dray- 
 ton always favoured, have the weight of a 
 broad and tumbling wave. 
 
 Trim up her golden tresses with Apollo's sacred tree : 
 O happy sight unto all those that love and honour 
 
 thee! 
 The blessed angels have prepared 
 A glorious crown for thy reward ; 
 Not such a golden crown as haughty Ciesar wears, 
 But such a glittering starry crown as Ariadne bears. 
 
 Make her a goodly chapilet of azur'd columbine, 
 
 And wreathe about her coronet with sweetest eglantine; 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 83 
 
 Bedeck our Beta all with lilies, 
 And the dainty dafFadillies, 
 
 With roses damask, white, and red, and fairest flower- 
 de-lice, 
 With cowslips of Jerusalem, and cloves of paradise. 
 
 O, thou fair torch of heaven, the day's most dearest light, 
 And thou, bright-shining Cynthia, the glory of the 
 
 night; 
 You stars the eye of heaven. 
 And thou, the gliding leven,i 
 And thou, O gorgeous Iris ! with all strange colours 
 
 dyed, 
 When she streams forth her rays, then dashed is all 
 
 your pride. 
 
 The other conventions of this kind of 
 
 verse are also accepted. Drayton, like 
 
 Spenser, uses the mask of a shepherd for 
 
 himself — whom he calls Eowland ^ — and his 
 
 friends, and is slighted by the world, and by 
 
 a harsh lady, but meditates a higher strain 
 
 in consolation, like Colin in the October 
 
 eclogue of the Calendar : 
 
 My simple reed 
 Shall with a far more glorious rage infuse. 
 
 And if the boast was borne out by the 
 
 1 Lightning. 
 
 2 Barnfield, in his Affectionate She2)herd, 1594, couples 
 ' Rowland ' with Colin and Astrophel as ' suflfering great 
 annoy ' from the ' peevishness ' (perverse folly) of Cupid. 
 Collier, p. xix. 
 
 C 
 
34 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Faerie Queene and the Hymn to Beauty, it 
 was borne out also by the Heroical Bpistles, 
 by parts of the Poly-Olhion, and by the 
 Ballad of Agincourt. Drayton also copes 
 with other familiar themes, such as the 
 rustic singing-match, a pleasant manner of 
 duet that strikes back to the Sicihan roots 
 of the pastoral ; and another ancient contest 
 that he versifies is that of youth and age. 
 He prefers to use the ten- syllabled line, and 
 he does his part with Spenser in beating it 
 out into shape and loveliness, preferably in 
 stanzas of five lines or six. And in these 
 measures he not only commands the strenu- 
 ous style : 
 
 No fatal dreads, nor fruitless vain desires, 
 Low caps and court'sies to a painted wall, 
 Nor heaping rotten sticks on needless fires, 
 Ambitious ways to climb, or fears to fall, 
 Nor things so base do I affect at all : 
 
 but his verse also springs into tenderness 
 and colour : 
 
 Shepherd, farewell, the skies begin to lower : 
 Yon pitchy cloud that hangeth in the west 
 Shows us ere long that we shall have a shower : 
 Come, let us home, for so I think it best, 
 For to their cotes our flocks are gone to rest. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 85 
 
 It is here also, in the eighth eclogue, that 
 Drayton first uses the jingle of the old 
 rhymed romances in a sportive way to which 
 he afterwards — thirty and more years after- 
 wards — gave his fullest finish in Nymphidia 
 and the Shepherds Sirena. This echo of 
 Chaucer's Sir Thopas may have come to him 
 through Spenser; and he finds just the 
 right, flat sheep-bell tinkle, and the right, 
 faded-archaic diction, miniveer, Dowsahel, 
 Ghanteclere, that is the far echo of a bur- 
 lesque of something itself long perished. 
 Otherwise there is, one may fear, some 
 commonness and extravagance in The Shep- 
 herd's Garland ; in the celebrations of 
 Sidney under the name of Elphin,^ and of 
 his sister under that of Pandora, and in 
 many other places. But thirteen years 
 
 ^ In Notes and Queries^ Fourth Series, vol. xii. p. 442, Mr. 
 Brinsley Nicholson quoted two lines from N[athanier?] 
 B[axter'?]'3 Sir Philip Sidney's Ourania, 1606 : 
 
 noble Drayton ! well didst thou rehearse 
 
 Our damages in dryrie sable verse. 
 This certainly refers to Drayton's eclogue, since the name 
 Elfin is quoted later in the piece. But the inference of Mr. 
 Nicholson and others, that his eclogue was written about 1587, 
 does not follow. It may well be later. Spenser's A ttrophel, 
 for instance, came out long after Sidney's death. — There is 
 also a reference in Ourania to Drayton's Oiol. 
 
36 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 later, in 1606, Drayton re-edited these 
 pastorals thoroughly, and did them good, 
 although he inserted new enigmas. Quarrels 
 have meanwhile arisen with persons who 
 cannot now be identified under their classi- 
 cal costume of Olcon and Selena, the one an 
 ungrateful friend and the other a capricious 
 patroness. We care the less to fathom these 
 disputes, as they did not lead to excellent 
 poetry. The friendly lady Sylvia, who once 
 lived by the Trent, but is now in a Kentish 
 home, may be a member of the house of Sir 
 William Aston of Tixall, who by 1606 was 
 Drayton's protector.^ Frances and Anne 
 Goodere are, we saw, called Panape and 
 Idea. The improvements in this version 
 show the unabated sway of Spenser and 
 his perennial power to ennoble Drayton's 
 language. In the renewed praises of Sir 
 Philip Sidney, whose worth and honour, we 
 are told, some have been rashly censuring, 
 
 * Many unsubstantial theories have been woven out of the 
 fancy dresses assumed in the two editions of the eclogues. 
 They are one of the amusements of this kind of bal masqve. 
 Mr. Fleay thinks that Mirtilla and her brothers were ' cer- 
 tainly ' Elizabeth, John, and Francis Beaumont the poet. Mr. 
 Fleay's inferences may be found in his Biog. Chron., i. 143-9 ; 
 they deserve and need sifting. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 37 
 
 a few lines have the plangeiicy of their 
 original, the Ruins of Time : 
 
 And, learned shepherd, thou to time shalt live 
 When their great names are utterly forgotten, 
 
 And fame to thee eternity shall give 
 
 When with their bones their sepulchres are 
 rotten. 
 
 Nor mournful cypress nor sad widowing yew 
 About thy tomb to prosper shall be seen, 
 
 But bay and myrtle which be ever new, 
 In spite of winter flourishing and green. 
 
 Drayton shows also more of that power 
 of pure singing, which came to him late and 
 slow. He could not learn it from Spenser 
 who hardly practised in short lyric measures. 
 More than once we have a presentiment of 
 the music that the long-living Drayton was 
 to discover in himself twenty years later 
 still ; the riches of lyrical sound, the magic 
 of Carew and the age of Charles. To the 
 pastoral, of a lighter and more lovely shape, 
 he was to return in his old age, as The 
 Muses Elizium testifies. 
 
 It is likely ^ that Spenser soon requited his 
 chief lieutenant in pastoral with a famous 
 
 * I accept the view, though not all the reasons, of Todd, 
 Minto, and Fleay, for identifying .^tion with Droyton. See 
 
38 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 verse. In 1595 he published Colin Clout's 
 come Home agcdn, and among the poets in 
 repute mentions one, ' ^tion ' ; 
 
 And there, though last, not least, is ^tion : 
 A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found, 
 
 Whose Muse, full of high thoughts' invention, 
 Doth like himself heroically sound. 
 
 ^tion [aiTLov] means an eaglet, and in 1594, 
 working nobly in an ancient convention,^ 
 Drayton had built a sonnet upon the com- 
 parison of his thoughts to ' eaglet-birds of 
 love.' These he sent forth from their nest 
 to prove if they could gaze upon the sun : 
 
 But now their plumes, full summed with sweet desire, 
 To show their kind began to climb the skies : 
 
 Do what I could, my eaglets would aspire. 
 Straight mounting up to thy celestial eyes : 
 
 Fleay, Guide to Chaucer and Spenser, 1877, pp. 93-95. 
 The references fit Drayton better than Shukespeiire, who had 
 made no pastorals. Mr. Fleay adds some curious but 
 inconclusive evidence that ^tion is aXnov, and has in Eliza- 
 bethan dictionaries the sense of cause, beginning, being thus 
 the philosophic equivalent of the word Idea, tSe'a. 
 
 ' *The sonnet was probably suggested by Watson's 
 'KKaTo^naOia (No. xcix.), which is itself an imitation of Serafino 
 (1550 ed., Sonnetto Primo) ; but the tradition of the genuine 
 eagle's visual capacity was quite as accessible, in the shape 
 that Drayton handled it, in French and Latin verse as in 
 Italian and English,' (Lee, Mizabethqn Sonnets, i. xc.^ This 
 is an instance of a good sonnet being little the worse for a 
 fair pedigree. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 89 
 
 And thus, my fair ! my thoughts away be flown, 
 And from my breast into thine eyes be gone. 
 
 Spenser might also well praise the author of 
 the Gaiiand as the gentlest of shepherds, 
 the nearest to himself of his own band. 
 The masque-name of Rowland (Orlando) 
 was full of * heroical ' associations ; and the 
 same word well fitted the patriot verse that 
 Drayton had already published. 
 
 Certainly those eclogues, like much that 
 Drayton did in these years, are helpless 
 enough at times in their broken grammar 
 and halting melody ; and this is true, too, 
 of the Legends to which he next betook 
 himself For he assisted in prolonging a 
 mediaeval form that might well be thought 
 to have had its day. Monks and preachers 
 had turned to account the dreary images, 
 truly classical in origin, but harped on out 
 of all measure when the great body of 
 thought into which they fitted was for- 
 gotten, of the whims of Fortune's wheel and 
 the falls of the mighty. But the poets, in 
 their inveterately secular way, had made a 
 kind of bastard epic, exemplified in Lyd- 
 gate's enormous Falls of Princes, and in a 
 
40 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 later day by the Mirror for Magistrates ; the 
 first edition of which had come in 1559, but 
 a new and enlarged one as late as 1587. 
 Long before, Chaucer had twice begun 
 something of the sort ; but, both in the 
 Monk's Tale and in the Legend of Good 
 Women t he had, what with his humour, 
 what with his artist's horror of an impos- 
 sible task, wearied of the plan ; seeing, 
 doubtless, what two centuries later his 
 floundering successors were still failing to 
 see, that a chain-gang of illustrious victims, 
 united only by scevitia Fortimce, was a 
 subject capable of impressive passages, but, 
 being without change, end, or beginning, 
 unfit for art. Yet this was the subject that 
 the penmen who accumulated the Mirror 
 were reviving in the public service, at a 
 season when the new patriotism assured 
 them readers, and the new chronicle — not 
 yet history proper — gave them matter. 
 And the fashion was still fresh when the 
 last decade of the century began ; so that 
 Daniel, and Drayton after him, fell to mak- 
 ing solemn compositions in this style, often 
 a little abortive. Warner's Albion s Eng- 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 41 
 
 land, 1586, is an earlier, plainer, equally 
 patriotic treatment of history, largely mythi- 
 cal. But Warner wrote more for the people, 
 and had no literary ' regrets,' though he also 
 made Legends : and the term Legend usually 
 implied a pathetic or tragical treatment of 
 a subject drawn from English history since 
 the Conquest. It is clear ^ that the Legends 
 form a kind of little affluent to the Mirror 
 and the chronicle play ; and the whole body 
 of historic narrative verse must be regarded 
 as a defeated rival of the chronicle play, 
 equally popular perhaps for a while, but in 
 true achievement far behind it. Daniel's 
 Complaint of Rosamond, the first poem of 
 this kind possessing any savour since Sack- 
 ville's, was entered in 1592. Drayton's 
 Legend of Piers Gaveston appeared in 1593. 
 In Marlowe's Edward the Second, entered 
 July of the same year, the tale of Isabel, 
 Mortimer, Gaveston, and Edward, was cast 
 once for all into clear and enduring form. 
 Yet Drayton returned to the subject with 
 
 ^ See the striking list in Fleay, Biog. Ghron., i. 141-2, of 
 the kindred poems and plays written about this time on 
 subjects drawn from the Chronicles. 
 
42 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 blind fascination both in his Mortimeriados 
 and his Heroical Epistles. The rivalry was 
 idle ; and the incident figures the whole 
 destiny of the historic * epic ' in its race for 
 life with the historic play. 
 
 Yet the Legeiids give more than promise 
 of a poet. Gaveston's ghost, prosing in 
 sextains after the approved fashion, may be 
 too circumstantial ; and the catastrophe is 
 absurdly hurried over. In Matilda, whose 
 narrative is told with pathos, there are lines 
 that recall the Shakespeare of the opening 
 sonnets, where he cries out to his friend 
 the Elizabethan text of the obligation 
 that beautiful persons are under not to 
 die without leaving children. But the 
 most poetical of the Legends (not excluding 
 the later and tamer one on Cromtvell, Earl of 
 Essex ^) is that o^ Robert, Duke of Normandy, 
 1596. The story runs obscure and sluggish 
 as a canal ; but no verse written afterwards 
 
 ^ See Bibliography, § xvii., for dates and titles. The 
 second edition is much altered. There is a curious introduc- 
 tion in it of Pierce the Plowman, and of a passage from the 
 Vidon. Langland had been revived, as is well known, by 
 the reformers as an early authority against corrupt Papists. 
 Selden quotes him in his illustrations to the Foly-Olbion. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 43 
 
 in English is so mediseval as the preliminary 
 * flyting ' between the two great personifica- 
 tions, Fame and Fortune, who had spread 
 their dark wings over much poetic homilis- 
 ing. Drayton, as this passage alone would 
 prove, had his momentary share of the 
 melancholy of Du Bellay and Spenser, so 
 deep, in spite of being a literary heirloom. 
 Some lines, which follow closely a passage 
 in the House of Fame, are among the latest ^ 
 traced upon the walls of that abode before 
 it came into the hands of Pope, the eminent 
 eighteenth-century restorer. 
 
 In the year 1594 it was hard not to be 
 inditing sonnets, and Drayton happily was 
 drawn into the vogue. He was led by his 
 ' ever kind Maecenas,' Anthony Cooke, after- 
 wards knighted, to make a first garland 
 public, which had already, it seems, been 
 some time composed. 
 
 Vouchsafe to grace these rude uiipolish'd rhymes, 
 Which long, dear friend, have slept in sable night. 
 
 The second line was altered in the issue of 
 1599 to 
 
 Which but for you had slept in sable night. 
 
 * See Milton, In Q^iintuni Novembris ; Samson^ 971. 
 
44 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 » Besides this dedication there are fifty-one 
 numbers oi Ideas Mirror, Amours in Quator- 
 zains. Long after the mode had begun to 
 pass, Drayton continued to send out changed 
 editions under the name of Idea. There 
 are four such recensions, in 1599, 1602, 
 1605, and 1619, not to speak of reprints. 
 In each of these there was much addition, 
 rejection, and reburnishing, not always to 
 the best advantage,^ and in the end Drayton 
 had added some fifty more sonnets. He has 
 thus left more than a century of these poems, 
 written in many moods, and at many stages of 
 his skill, during some four-and-twenty years. 
 
 1 See Bibliography, ^i v. By the edition of 1605, Dray- 
 ton's selection from his own works, there remain twenty-five 
 Amours^ often more or less rewritten, and forty-five new 
 sonnets have been added, including dedications. By the vol. 
 of 1619, there remain twenty Amours ; seventeen sonnets 
 which first appeared in 1599 ; eight that first appeared in 
 1602 (reprinted 1603) ; seven that first ajjpeared in 1605 
 (reprinted in 1608, 1610, and 1613). Seven were printed in 
 1619 for the first time. Some of these figures are given in 
 Mr. Sidney Lee's Elizabethan Sonnets (re-edition of An 
 English Garner^ 1904), vol. ii. p. 180. See also the notes in 
 Collier, and those in Fleay, Biog. Chron., i. 153. Mr. Waller's 
 variorum edition may be expected to give the full gathering 
 and collations for the first time. Some of these details, as 
 will be seen, have their artistic bearing. A table is printed 
 at p. 207 below of first lines of all the sonnets, and of the 
 editions where they occur. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 45 
 
 But in 1594 the first flush of the sonneteers 
 was unabated. Astrophel and Stella had 
 been three years an example ; and Delia ^ 
 by Daniel, Drayton's nearest companion in 
 poetry, had thrice been issued. Lodge 
 and Constable and others had hastened to 
 publish in their wake. This old Southern 
 art-form, which had been revived in the 
 Italian and then in the French Renaissance, 
 was now used to the English climate, though 
 its prime was not for very long. It was still 
 entangled in the phase of translation and 
 adjustment ; and its unique transmissive 
 power was amply proven. A thought or 
 theme, a verbal modelling, an emotion, that 
 had once found sure expression in sonnet- 
 shape, above all from Petrarch's hand, ac- 
 quired a lease of poetic life, now in poorer, 
 now in richer embodiment, but apparently 
 without limit. We talk of the debts of this 
 man to that ; but in such a case the creditor 
 is a messenger rather than a giver. And 
 every such debt is a challenge to original 
 power of treatment, and is cancelled if that 
 be forthcoming. Treatment is all ; but then 
 the power to treat depends on the poet's soul 
 
46 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 and experience. When Drayton first wrote, 
 the studious and formal practice of the 
 sonnet was at its height. Mr. Sidney Lee, 
 for whose learned material and lucid order- 
 ing I am grateful, though we draw different 
 inferences therefrom, has shown, for the first 
 time, that the sonnet was the chief medium 
 through which French poetry influenced 
 ours during the last ten years of the century. 
 To this even the Italian influence was 
 second. Many of the Amours and their 
 successors are exercises, now in chill con- 
 ceits, now in the plastic beauty of word and 
 rhyme. In the dedication Drayton exclaims 
 that he does not ' filch from Portes' or from 
 Petrarch's pen,' and he echoes Sidney's 
 
 denial : 
 
 I am no pickpurse of another's wit. 
 
 He did, however, handle and pass the 
 current coin of sonneteering fancy which 
 Desportes and many more had sent into 
 England. The actual translations or borrow- 
 ings are less obvious than the origin of 
 Drayton's title. There is not much Platon- 
 ism in his composition; once, in his later 
 eclogues, he poises gracefully on the fancy 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 47 
 
 that love is the chain linking all things' in 
 the universe together ; but his nature was 
 alien to covert and subtle meanings, and this 
 side of Spenser's thought he did not try to 
 appropriate.^ But the Platonic keyword, 
 Idea, tSea, the type of perfection and beauty, 
 of which all other things are shadows and 
 faint gustations, was familiar in our meta- 
 physical verse from Lodge to Drummond, 
 who aptly gives its sense : 
 
 My mind me told, that in some other place 
 I elsewhere saw the Idea of that face, 
 And loved a love of heavenly pure delight. 2 
 
 Drayton does not make much of this 
 thought, but his title, as Mr. Lee has dis- 
 covered, had its precedent in a sonnet-series, 
 published in 1579, by a doctor of Chalons, 
 Claude de Pontoux, and entitled L'Idee. 
 There is thus the usual immigrant element 
 in his verses. But, not to go too hastily, we 
 
 ^ See J. S. Harrison, Platonism in English Foetry of the 
 xvi"' and xvii^^ Centuries. Columbia University Press, 1903, 
 p. 125. The lines are in eclogue seven of the edition of 1606, 
 not in that of 1593. 
 
 ^ See Fleay, Guide to Chaucer and Spenser, p. 95, for this 
 and other examples ; and the amplest exposition in Wynd- 
 ham, Foems of Shakespeare, introduction. 
 
48 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 find that even in the Amours, and even in 
 those numbers of them that Drayton too 
 diffidently cast away in later issues, there is 
 noble movement and cadence. Were the 
 following sonnets translations, their beauty 
 would be the same. But often — and this 
 is the truth about the Tudor and Stuart 
 sonnet-writing at large — they are neither 
 borrowings, nor yet need they transcribe 
 direct experience. They are plastic experi- 
 ments where the original impulse of love or 
 compliment is transfigured in the joy of the 
 fashioning : much as when a man should 
 begin to paint his mistress's face upon a fan, 
 but should find that it did not suit the 
 spaces and design, and then should alter it 
 into some happy pattern, perhaps inspired 
 by another artist ; but should still send her 
 the offering as his handiwork in her honour. 
 This kind of mood will be undreamed of, if 
 we forget that a shy gift may hide itself 
 in a line of translation, or in what seems 
 purely scholar's practice ; that the presence 
 of a common theme in many artists, per- 
 haps influencing one other, is a poor proof 
 of the insincerity of any of them ; and 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 49 
 
 that the existence of weaker work on the 
 same theme elsewhere or by the same hand 
 does not prejudice the quality of a noble or 
 graceful poem. Two sonnets, only once, 
 I believe, reprinted since 1594, may illus- 
 trate these points, and may vindicate the 
 Amours ; Spenserian here and there, they 
 cannot be called echoes of the Amoretti, 
 which were not published. 
 
 The glorious sun went blushing to his bed, 
 When my soul's sun from her fair cabinet, 
 
 Her golden beams had now discovered, 
 Lightening the world eclipsed by his set. 
 
 Some mused to see the earth envy the air, 
 Which from her lips exhaled refined sweet : 
 
 A world to see ! yet, how he joy'd to hear 
 The dainty grass make music with her feet ! 
 
 But my most marvel was when from the skies 
 So comet-like each star advanc'd her light, 
 
 As though the heaven had now awak'd her eyes 
 And summon'd angels to this blessed sight ; 
 
 No cloud was seen, but crystalline the air, 
 Laughing for joy upon my lovely fair. 
 
 If chaste and pure devotion of my youth. 
 Or glory of my April-springing years. 
 
 Unfeigned love in naked simple truth, 
 
 A thousand vows, a thousand sighs and tears : 
 D 
 
50 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Or if a world of faithful service done, 
 
 Words, thoughts, and deeds devoted to her 
 honour, 
 
 Or eyes that have beheld her as their sun, 
 With admiration ever looking on her : 
 
 A life that never joy'd but in her love, 
 A soul that ever hath ador'd her name, 
 
 A faith that time and fortune could not move, 
 A Muse that unto heaven hath rais'd her fame : 
 
 Though these, nor these, deserved to be embrac'd, 
 Yet, fair unkind ! too good to be disgrac'd. 
 
 The sonnets that Drayton added to this 
 series from time to time range from vain 
 conceit to gallant inspiration. So do Shake- 
 speare's, and so do the sonnets of all their 
 contemporaries. An artist, unlike a chain, 
 is to be judged by his strongest part ; and 
 out of such a test Drayton comes with some- 
 thing like triumph, though no poet of merit 
 has ever been less equal, and like AVords- 
 worth he lies at the mercy of the wind of 
 the spirit. Only once, throughout a sonnet, 
 which first appears in the garland of 1619, 
 does he attain full power and felicity. 
 There are races like the old Greeks or the 
 Highlanders who can weep without shame 
 and without detriment to their sorrow ; but 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 51 
 
 this wonderful dry-eyed poem comes from 
 another stock. The emotion of the sovereign 
 and sudden return, after the full accept- 
 ance of despair, of a fluttering hope, which 
 cannot believe in itself, must have been 
 something experienced ; or, if not in fact 
 experienced, it could only be imagined, with 
 a half-dramatic conviction, after some deep 
 schooling. Here, then, Drayton comes to 
 his highest fortune in passionate expression ; 
 in the sonnet" ' Since there 's no help, come 
 let us kiss and part.'!' I cannot agree with 
 one good critic who would withhold this 
 poem from Drayton on the ground of its 
 excellence. The external evidence is uncon- 
 tested : one such thought, one such hour of 
 poetical felicity in a lifetime, is not too much 
 to concede to a man even of slighter gift ; 
 and there are many seams and veins of the 
 same metal in Drayton. There are lines 
 and phrases elsewhere sealed with the same 
 assured style, the same hravura now so long 
 lost and mocking the literary mimicry of 
 studious versifiers : 
 
 Love in an humour play'd the prodigal, 
 And bids my senses to a solemn feast. 
 
0^1 
 
 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Ov:— 
 
 An evil spirit your beauty haunts me still, 
 
 Wherewith, alas, I have been long possessed, 
 Which ceaseth not to tempt me unto ill, 
 
 Nor gives me once but one pure minute's rest. 
 
 Ill another sonnet, where the pride of style 
 is upheld throughout, is heard that Shake- 
 spearean sound, which has been supposed 
 to reflect on the author's originality : 
 
 Whilst thus my pen strives to eternise thee. 
 Age rules my lines with wrinkles in my face. 
 
 Where, in the map of all my misery, 
 
 Is modelled out the world of my disgrace ; 
 
 Whilst, in despite of tyrannising times, 
 Medea-like, I make thee young again. 
 
 Proudly thou scorn'st my world-outwearing 
 rhymes. 
 And murderest virtue with thy coy disdain : 
 
 And though in youth my youth untimely perish. 
 To keep thee from oblivion and the grave, 
 
 Ensuing ages yet my rhymes shall cherish. 
 Where I, entomb'd, my better part shall save : 
 
 And though this earthly body fade and die. 
 My soul shall mount unto eternity. 
 
 This was first printed in 1599, when 
 Drayton published a revision of Amours. 
 He had his share in settling the high 
 Tudor tradition of the sonnet ; and it is 
 unnecessary to show at length how the 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 5?? 
 
 Italian stanza, so carefully poised just after 
 its rigid octave, and shrinking from the 
 clang of the final couplet, had passed, 
 through the various intervening forms of 
 Sidney and Spenser,^ into the measure with 
 claims of its own so magnificent, where the 
 couplet crowns three quatrains of independ- 
 ent rhyme : so that the whole poem, with its 
 centre now shifted far forward, is tuned as 
 under no other metrical scheme it could be 
 to the loud Elizabethan chord of pride or 
 desire or defiance or desperation. 
 
 Then, sweet Despair, awhile hold up thy head, 
 Or all my hope for sorrow shall be dead. 
 
 Drayton wrote that ; and in spite of all his 
 sinkings into flatness, it is never safe to say 
 that he will not suddenly write likewise when 
 he speaks of his own fame, or of his poetic 
 sincerity, or when he gives utterance to the 
 pride of the rejected, or to the old Catullan 
 counsel to his mistress to enjoy before Time 
 has encroached. 
 
 The original power, as well as the adap- 
 
 ^ One such form Drayton at times uses himself, '' in 
 his earlier sonnets ; abba cddc tfft gg, fnot the usual ah«b 
 cdcd efef gg. Fleay, Biog. Chron., i. 153. 
 
54 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 tive craft of Drayton, is shown by his 
 relation to the sonneteers around him. He 
 catches, but he blends, rays from them all ; 
 from Spenser, from Daniel, from Sidney, 
 and probably from Shakespeare. Canon 
 Beeching, in his edition of Shakespeare's 
 sonnets, has pointed out that the style of 
 Daniel — and I would add that of Spenser — is 
 apparent in the sonnets of 1594, while those 
 of 1599 betray the study of Astrophel and 
 Stella. ' Sidney,' he well puts it, * employs 
 a line of swift simplicity, with little orna- 
 ment, while Daniel's line is slow, sometimes 
 a little sluggish, often precieuxJ Yes, and 
 Sidney's higher mood is passionate, while 
 Daniel's is meditative. The same writer 
 notes that Drayton's first sonnet of 1594, 
 ' Read here, sweet maid, the story of my 
 woe,' is founded upon Daniel's * Read in my 
 face a volume of despair.' But if it begins 
 with the servility of a pencil tracing, it 
 rises to a lofty heat of adoration that was 
 almost beyond Daniel, when Drayton swears 
 
 By my strong faith ascending to thy fame, 
 
 My zeal, my hope, my vows, my praise, my prayer, 
 
 My soul's oblations to thy sacred name. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 55 
 
 As a rule, Drayton does not echo the best 
 of Sidney ; but ' Since there 's no help,' 
 while Sidney never rose so high for so long, 
 has Sidney's direct and lifelike tone, as of 
 a declaration flung out face to face with 
 the person addressed. 
 
 How far the two Warwickshire poets 
 were acquainted is unknown. Drayton is 
 heard of as a part-author of the curious play 
 Sir John Oldcastle, which was provoked by 
 the success of Henry IV. ; and as sharing 
 in the probably mythical orgy said to have 
 shortened the life of Shakespeare. In his 
 Legend of Matilda he had inserted, but 
 later dropped, an allusion to Lucrece. He 
 has been guessed to follow a passage of the 
 same poem in his sixth sonnet (first printed 
 1592), to Harmony, where his heart is the 
 treble that makes the air, while his sighs 
 bear the base, or ' diapason ' ; a piece of 
 wit he afterwards withdrew. But this and 
 other likenesses, which have been carefully 
 mustered by critics, show little, except that 
 both poets dipped their hand in the poetical 
 currency of the hour. Sometimes, as in the 
 poems quoted already, they promise that their 
 
56 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 verse will outbrave time, a topic that has been 
 treated as a conceit, but is a sincere thought 
 and an immemorial hope, of far classical 
 ancestry.^ Others turn on the metaphysical 
 identity between lover and beloved, others 
 on the strife of blood and judgment, others 
 on the wakeful or dream-beleaguered nights 
 of the poet. On the whole there is more 
 likeness between Drayton and Shakespeare 
 as sonneteers than between either of them 
 and any other writer. This cannot be 
 wholly chance ; but if not, the question 
 which of the two was the lender is insoluble, 
 so long as we only know that some of Shake- 
 speare's sonnets were in private circulation 
 in 1598, while two were printed by^tTaggard 
 in 1599, and the rest not till ten years 
 later. The passages in Drayton with that 
 deeper sound, which we have learnt to call 
 Shakespearean, hardly begin till his editions 
 of 1599 or 1602.^ The evidence is only 
 
 * For an elaboration of this see a paper on Poetic Fame, 
 A Renaissance Study, in Otia Merseiana, Transactions of 
 of the Arts Faculty, Liverpool University, 1904, by the 
 present writer. 
 
 2 See T. Tyler, ShakesjJcare's Sonnets, 1890, pp. 38-43. The 
 resemblances cited, however, are more in the rhyme endings 
 and general complexion than in the actual ideas. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 57 
 
 cumulative, and how uncertain may be 
 gauged from one example. In Shakespeare's 
 116th sonnet he says of his own love for his 
 friend : 
 
 no ! it is an ever-fixed mark 
 
 That looks on tempests, and is never shaken ; 
 It is the star to every wandering bark, 
 
 Whose worth 's unknown, although his height be 
 taken. 
 
 Drayton's 43rd sonnet, first found in 1605, 
 runs : 
 
 So doth the plowman gaze the wandering star, 
 And only rests contented with the light, 
 
 That never learned what constellations are, 
 Beyond the bent of his unknowing sight.^ 
 
 Still, as there is some tie between the two 
 poets, it is natural to think that Drayton, 
 glancing round after his assimilative fashion, 
 early caught some deep accents and noble 
 
 1 For this and other suggestions of the kind, see Wyndham, 
 Poems of Shakesijeare, pp. cv, 255-8, 319. (The inference 
 that the sonnet 
 
 To nothing better can I thee compare 
 
 Than to the son of some rich pennyfather, 
 must have been written to a man, is hazardous.) The point is 
 further vexed in Fleay, Biog. Chron., ii. 226 ; and Lee {Liff, of 
 Shalcespeare, pp. 110 sq.\ iind Eliz. Sonnets^ Ic, is controverted, 
 I think, happily by Beeching {Sonnets, pp. 132-140), who 
 pleads for Shakespeare's influence. 
 
58 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 rhythms from Shakespeare's poems, which he, 
 like others, may have seen unprinted. His 
 interesting allusion to his own work in the 
 theatre (Son. 47, first out in 1605), which has 
 been adduced as a parallel, may quite well 
 be due to his experience ; the thought is 
 not Shakespearean at all, and the whole 
 may be given as a last example of his grave 
 sentiment and powerful handicraft, now and 
 then only just above prose, but showing 
 how Drayton can put his own stamp even 
 on what Shakespeare may have lent him. 
 
 In pride of wit, when high desire of fame 
 Gave life and courage to my labouring pen, 
 
 And first the sound and virtue of my name 
 Won grace and credit in the ears of men : 
 
 With those the thronged theaters that press, 
 I in the circuit for the laurel strove, 
 
 Where the full praise, I freely must confess, 
 In heat of blood and modest mind might move : 
 
 With shouts and claps at every little pause, 
 When the proud round on either side hath rung, 
 
 Sadly I sit unmoved with the applause. 
 As though to me it nothing did belong : 
 
 No public glory vainly I pursue, 
 The praise I strive, is to eternise you. 
 
 In all the eight sonnets first printed in 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 59 
 
 1619 Drayton stands essentially free from 
 his masters ; he is hot and earnest and does 
 not spare a reckless but manly irony, as in 
 his scoif at the 
 
 Paltry, foolish, painted things. 
 
 That now in coaches trouble every street. 
 
 Such a poet, however reminiscent, is never 
 at the last a slave to models. 
 
 The excellence of these poems, and also 
 the veracity of their emotion, have both been 
 questioned ; but the two points must be 
 distinguished. As poetry, the best of them 
 speak for themselves ; who cannot hear it, 
 would not be convinced were it proved that 
 Drayton had never read another man's verses 
 in his life. It is nothing that some of them, 
 good or bad, are adaptations, or at times 
 half-translated. The presence of De Pontoux 
 in the shadowy background does not make 
 the lines other than they are. As to the 
 veracity, let the style also speak ; there is 
 no other canon available. But the progress 
 of creation in our Renaissance poets is often 
 ill-understood, even by those who are best 
 acquainted with its historic roots. The 
 
60 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 study of the past of poetry may as easily dull 
 us to its essential beauty and to the nature 
 of artistic appropriation as the study of the 
 past of dress. How far dress is a part of the 
 person, is another metaphysical question, 
 and one not to be asked. It is the same 
 with the fashion of poetical loving, which 
 at any moment is partly traditional and 
 codified, and partly due to the individual. 
 To find traces of the same costume of 
 feeling in the thirteenth century, or in Italy, 
 shows the long continuance and the wide 
 extension of the fashion. By such modes a 
 true and heartfelt experience may become 
 transfigured in presentment. Once more, no 
 one who has written verses, however mean, 
 is ignorant that their impelling occasion 
 does not always remain their theme. What 
 I am suffering, and wish to record, becomes 
 clay in my hands ; it may not prove a subject, 
 as it stands, for verse ; but it leads me to 
 find a subject, in which the motive is 
 changed, while the force of the original 
 passion is yet manifested. And one or 
 other of the thoughts, worn smooth by 
 greater predecessors, may prove the easiest 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 61 
 
 mould. The Kenaissance sonnet has lent 
 itself to such vicissitudes more than any 
 other form of verse. Drayton, fitful as his 
 inspiratio*hs are, writes at his best with a 
 proud mastery that enforces our question 
 to the sceptics — How then would he have 
 written, had he been sincerely moved ? 
 
 The authentic poetry and warmth of the 
 best of these sonnets have been obscured by 
 another cause : by Drayton's habit, in which 
 he followed the mode, of binding under one 
 abstract title poems of various mood and occa- 
 sion. They are not all love-lyrics. He tried 
 to save what he thought were his best 
 sonnets upon any subject. Some are of the 
 grotesque-satiric tone, so familiar in Donne, 
 and easily toppling over to the monstrous. 
 In one he says that his remedy for his love 
 shall be compounded of the powdered heart 
 of a woman who was in life impassive ' to 
 gold or honour,' and of other ingredients that 
 could never exist, since women are what 
 they are.^ Elsewhere Drayton, returning 
 
 ^ It is hard to concur with Mr. Lee's view that this is 
 ' clearly intended to apply to the simples out of which the 
 conventional type of sonnet was for the most part exclusively 
 compounded.' It is apiece of strained and cracked misogj'ny. 
 
62 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 on his trail, warns the reader that he is 
 not always to expect passion and sincerity ; 
 and more than once, honestly, invites him to 
 expect changefulness and even caprice : 
 
 And in all humours sportively I range ; 
 
 My active Muse is of the world's right strain 
 
 That cannot long one fashion entertain. 
 
 And again : 
 
 My wanton verse ne'er keeps one certain stay : 
 . . . Madding, jocund, and irregular.^ 
 
 This is the spirit in which to read him, and 
 he will bide the touch. 
 
 Before ploughing further that stubborn 
 glebe, the verse -chronicle, by the side of 
 Daniel, Drayton, open of taste and appre- 
 hensive as ever, turned aside to decorative 
 poetry. Hero and Leauder, not published 
 till 1598, had been entered after the murder 
 of its author in 1593, and it must have been 
 
 known in manuscript. Venus and Adoiiis 
 
 » 
 
 ^ Were we sure that Drayton had read Shakespeare's lOoth 
 sonnet^ 
 
 Therefore my verse, to constancy confin'd, 
 One thing expressing, leaves out difference. 
 Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument — 
 
 we might think he was playfully disclaiming any likeness in 
 Ills own muse. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 63 
 
 came out in the same year, and it was long 
 common for the young poets, Shakespeare, 
 Beaumont, and others, to introduce them- 
 selves by studies of the kind. Usually the 
 work bore a double mythological title ; it 
 was founded on Ovid, and was in the Italian 
 taste. Often it echoed those cadences of 
 Marlowe, which he first had bestowed upon 
 the couplet, or it was touched with his deli- 
 cate tracery of image. But seldom did others 
 attain to the lucid glow, as of a burning ala- 
 baster lamp of Greek design, that fills Hero 
 cmd Leander ; there alone was the secret of 
 satisfying form, pure amid its richness. 
 Seldom did they escape the dalliance with 
 phrase and the blurring of colour, then so 
 nearly universal, but fatal to a love -tale 
 drawn from the clear, ancient fountains. Yet 
 in these pieces, as in the second and third 
 books of the Faerie Queene, can best be 
 studied the great early school of plastic 
 ornament and colouring in the poetry of our 
 Renaissance. Harmony, beauty, grouping, 
 posture, are sought for rather than life and 
 passion ; this, at least, is the spirit in which 
 I read Venus and Adonis and also Drayton's 
 
64 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 experiment, though in Marlowe Hfe and 
 passion are by miracle superadded. Endi- 
 mion and Phoebe, Idea's Latonus, entered in 
 1595, probably came out soon afterwards, 
 though it bears no date. It is alluded to 
 in Lodge's Fig for Monius, of that year, 
 which contains both an eclogue and an 
 epistle inscribed to Drayton — * Pieria's 
 Michael.' ^ The two poets were well enough 
 acquainted for Drayton to refer to Lodge, 
 under an anagram, as 
 
 Goldey, which in summer days 
 Hast feasted us with merry roundelays, 
 And, when my Muse was able scarce to fly, 
 Didst imp her wings with thy sweet poesy. 
 
 But Endimio7i and Phoebe shows the un- 
 acknowledged influence of Marlowe, crossing 
 the more familiar one of Spenser. It is well 
 worthy of being rescued by some enthusiast 
 from the darkness of very rare editions. It 
 is a bright and silvery love-story, or rather 
 a row of pictures or panels, not unmarred 
 by pedantry and misplaced philosophising, 
 
 ^ ' I have perused thy learned nines and threes ' ; refer- 
 rincj to some jargonish verse in Endimion and Phoebe on the 
 nine hierarchies and the like, drawn ultimately from the 
 pseudo-Dionysius. See Collier, p. 236. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 65 
 
 but showing a livelier motion towards pure 
 beauty than anything else written by Dray- 
 ton. As in the case of his continuator, 
 Chapman, Marlowe could for a moment 
 sway and clear a gift that was distant from 
 his own, and much more uncertain. 
 
 She laid Endimion on a grassy bed, 
 With summer's arras richly overspread, 
 Where, from her sacred mansion next above, 
 She might descend and sport her with her love, 
 Which thirty years the shepherd safely kept. 
 Who in her bosom soft and soundly slept. 
 Yet as a dream he thought the time not long, 
 Remaining ever beautiful and young, 
 And what in vision there to him befell, 
 My weary Muse some other time shall tell. 
 
 This is nearer the manner of the dead 
 shepherd than much of the Endymion of 
 Keats. The poem is not always so pure in 
 diction, but its verse keeps up the tune. It 
 is of historical as well as artistic note, as an 
 early piece in which one of the perfect 
 varieties of the English couplet is sustained. 
 For the metre ripples easily, yet is firmly 
 embanked and swift of current ; far alike 
 from the rough, interrupted, snaggy measure 
 found in Donne and the satirists and often 
 
66 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 in Ben Jonson, and from the balanced oratory 
 of the classic rhymers like Dryden — oratory 
 which Drayton also forecasts, as we shall 
 see, in the Heroical Epistles. It avoids that 
 sweet and slothful overflow of line into line 
 which Keats learned in youth from Leigh 
 Hunt, and he from the Jacobean Browne : 
 
 He cannot love, and yet forsooth he will ; 
 He sees her not, and yet he sees her still ! 
 He goes unto the place she stood upon 
 And asks the poor soil whither she was gone. 
 Fain would he follow her, yet makes delay ; 
 Fain would he go, and yet fain would he stay ; 
 He kissed the flowers depressed with her feet, 
 And swears from her they borrow'd all their 
 
 sweet. 
 Fain would he cast aside this troublous thought ; 
 But still, like poison, more and more it wrought ; 
 And to himself thus often would he say, 
 ' Here my love sat, in this place did she play, 
 Here in this fountain hath my goddess been, 
 And with her presence hath she grac'd this 
 
 green.' 
 
 That is good verse-craft, and would be so 
 at any date. We seem to see Drayton in 
 his studio, ranging attentively from pattern 
 to pattern, and doing his very best, often 
 trying to eke out by care what might fail 
 him in natural gift, and repeatedly shaping 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 67 
 
 the same stuff, sometimes for the better. 
 Endimion and Phoebe is tapestry- work ; 
 he would use and vary a design or tint of 
 Spenser's, laying in plenty of orient pearl 
 and vermeil. He promised to pursue the 
 story, but kept his promise less than 
 happily. Endimion and Phoebe Drayton 
 never reissued ; it was doubtless quenched 
 in popularity by Venus and Adonis ; but in 
 1606 he wove many lines of it into a non- 
 descript poem called The Man in the Moon, 
 which is full of ill-cohering fancies, and 
 rightly falls amongst his adventures in 
 satire. The close of Endimion and Phoebe 
 shows the writer's continued admiration for 
 Daniel, by whose side, a little in the rear, he 
 had been pacing as a verse-historian. It is 
 the respect of a consciously harsh writer for 
 one who had without effort won to height 
 and ease ; 
 
 And then, the sweet Musseus of these times, 
 Pardon my rugged and unfiled rhymes, 
 Whose scarce invention is too mean and base 
 When Delia's glorious Muse doth come in place. 
 
 Drayton had not much to fear even in 
 the neighbourhood of Daniel. In old age. 
 
 L^ 
 
68 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 writing the Upistle to Reynolds, he has 
 moved away from old models and idolatries, 
 and thinks with some others that Daniel's 
 ' manner better fitted prose ' ; so approach- 
 ing Coleridge's more just and pertinent 
 description of that author as a 'model of 
 the middle style.' 
 
 On the same page the dwelling of Idea 
 by the Ancor, which we saw was Poles- 
 worth, is bravely celebrated : 
 
 Let stormy winter never touch the clime, 
 But let it flourish as in April's prime : 
 Let sullen earth that soil ne'er overcloud, 
 But in thy presence let the earth be proud. 
 
 It has been shown that under the abstract, 
 borrowed, and unrhythmical name of Idea, 
 Anne Goodere was signified ; and it is 
 pleasing to find that something further is 
 known of Anne personally. On the testi- 
 mony of her own doctor, the son-in-law of 
 Shakespeare,^ she was ' beautiful, and of a 
 
 ^ John Hall, Select Observations of English Bodies, tr. 1657 
 by Cooke, Obs. 48, p. 203. This was Hall's case-book, with 
 list of cures, written in Latin. He cured her, then Lady 
 Eainsford, of some pains after childbirth. This notice proves 
 that she was married before the age of twenty-seven. John 
 Hall, ^6., p. 26, at some date unnientioned, also cured Drayton 
 himself, ' an excellent English poet, labouring of a tertian.' 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 69 
 
 gallant structure of body,' when in the 
 twenty-eighth year of her age. As we have 
 seen, Drayton, if the arithmetic of a sonnet 
 can be trusted, dates his devotion to her 
 from about 1592, when he had already 
 left for London ; and in the eclogues of 
 the following year he celebrates her. Had 
 he said no more, his gallantry might be 
 purely literary : for a counterpart, real or 
 manufactured, to Spenser's Rosalind was a 
 necessity in a pastoral book of the kind ; 
 and there is no note of passion in it. But, 
 in the sonnets of-15£L4^and after, though 
 much, as in Astrophel and Stella, is merely 
 verbal, the fancy, like Sidney's, has become 
 serious. Many of the poems, though they 
 lack the strength of some of those he added 
 later, show Drayton singing in earnest. (Re- 
 jected, he is galled and wrung as no mere 
 book-amorist could be. About a year later, 
 in 1595, after her father's death, Anne 
 Goodere married, as we saw, Sir Henry 
 Rainsford,^ of Clifford Chambers, who was 
 
 ^ See references on pp. 128-9. The monument to Sir 
 Henry in Ciitford Church states explicitly that Rainsford 
 was born in 1576, and died in 1622. I can find no record 
 of the age of Anne, her death not being in the Clifford 
 
70 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 afterwards to be Drayton's cherished and 
 hospitable friend. The history of this regard 
 can be not unfairly conjectured. For nearly 
 a quarter of a century after the marriage of 
 the lady, sonnets, some of them merely 
 gallant, some fervent, were written and 
 published by Drayton to ' Idea.' The evi- 
 dence given above, especially the passage 
 from the Poly-Olhion, forbids us to suppose 
 that ' Idea ' became a mere label for offer- 
 ings really intended to many loves. ^ In 
 1605^ the wooer repeats his vow: 'I am 
 
 registers ; but she was married to Sir Henry twenty-seven 
 years, and as she plainly outlived him, this would put the 
 date of the marriage about 1595 or 1596. The Polesworth 
 registers are only extant from 1635 ; those at Coventry 
 also begin too late. The young Sir Henry Goodere, her 
 brother-in-law and cousin, who put up the monument, was 
 the correspondent of Donne, and subject of Jonson's Forest, 
 Nos. 85 and 86. 
 
 ^ As Canon Beeching, op. cit., p. 133, has detected, a 
 sonnet inscribed in 1603 'to the Lady L. S. ' (whom it would 
 be satisfactory to identify), had by 1619 slipped in among 
 the sonnets to Idea. 'A bachelor poet,' he pleasantly says, 
 ' may be excused for an occasional shifting of his ideal, 
 especially after the marriage of its first incarnation.' He 
 may ; but to bind under one title many high and fervent 
 poems really addressed to diflerent women would have been 
 a kind of spiritual promiscuity little in character. I now 
 agree with Canon Beeching that the poem ' Since there 's no 
 help ' is not likely to have been written early. 
 
 2 In a sonnet (51, repeated 1619), which was composed 
 after 1603, as it names the death of Elizabeth. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 71 
 
 still inviolate to you ' ; and the sonnet of 
 1599, 'An evil spirit, your beauty haunts 
 me still,' had its startlingly Shakespearean 
 ring of sincerity. It might therefore be that 
 Drayton kept, for long after her marriage, 
 a regard, sometimes passionate, for Lady 
 Hainsford. But the feeling, we may judge 
 from other poems, finally weakened, or rose, 
 into a friendship, which spoke often in terms 
 of mere compliment, but lasted none the 
 less. The ' Hymn to his Lady's Birthplace,' 
 first published in 1627, though undated, 
 bears the stamp of his later, nicer, and more 
 ingenious handiwork ; it may well be as late 
 as the age of Charles. The ' elegies ' ' On 
 his Lady's not coming to Town,' and on her 
 husband, are in the same spirit. There is 
 no record of Drayton ever having married.^ 
 I now return to his early writings. 
 
 In 1594 the Contention of the Two Houses 
 of York and Lancaster was acted. Daniel's 
 
 1 Gayton, Pleasant Notes on Don Quixote^ 1654, p. 150, 
 says, indeed : ' Our nation also hath had its poets and they 
 their wives. To pass the bards . . . My father Ben begat 
 sons and daughters ; so did Spenser, Drayton, Shakspere, 
 and more might be reckoned.' As Mr. BuUen, to whom this 
 reference is due, remarks, Gayton is 'no very sure guide.' 
 
72 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 History of the Civil Wars was entered in 
 the same year, and bears traces of being 
 written in rivalry with the play. Drayton, 
 once more a zealous follower of Daniel, ac- 
 complished also a long epic founded on the 
 chronicles. Mortimeriados, published in 
 1596, was first written in the seven-line 
 stanza of Chaucer's Troilus and Spenser's 
 Hymns. No poem of Drayton's was more 
 sedulously filed. In 1603 it appeared wholly 
 remodelled as The Barons' Wars. The sub- 
 stitution of compliments to Sir W. Aston 
 for those to the Countess of Bedford has 
 been noticed already. But, besides a mass 
 of textual alterations, the measure of seven 
 lines (abahhcc) is expanded into the ottava 
 rima (ahabahcc) by the addition of a line 
 after the fourth.^ The preface on the various 
 stanzas available for heroic story, and their 
 several powers and faults, is as full and 
 sound a piece of metrical criticism as we 
 find in English for generations. Of the 
 seven-line stave : 
 
 1 For a valuable table of Drayton's metres see Fleay, 
 Biog. Chron., i. 7-9, though it is going far to find in them a 
 chronological test. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 73 
 
 The often harmony softened the verse more 
 than the majesty of the subject would permit, 
 unless they had all been Geminels, or couplets. 
 Therefore (but not without fashioning the whole 
 frame) I chose Ariosto's stanza, of all other the 
 most complete and best proportioned, consisting 
 of eight — six interwoven, and a couplet in base. 
 The Quadrin [abab] doth never double, or to use 
 a word of heraldry, never bringeth forth Gemells : 
 the Quinzain [ababb], too soon. The Sestin 
 [ababcc] hath twins in the base, but they detain 
 not the music or the close (as musicians term it) 
 long enough for an epic poem. The stanza of 
 seven is touched before. This of eight both holds 
 the tune clean through to the base of the coluran 
 (which is the couplet, the foot, or bottom) and 
 closeth not but with a full satisfaction to the ear 
 for so long detention. Briefly, this sort of stanza 
 hath in it majesty, perfection, and solidity, 
 resembling the pillar which in architecture 
 is called the Tuscan, whose shaft is of six 
 diameters, and bases of two. The other reasons 
 this place will not bear, but generally in my 
 opinion all stanzas are but tyrants and tor- 
 turers, when they make invention obey their 
 number, which sometime would otherwise scantle 
 itself. 
 
 We would have given much for a dis- 
 course of this kind from Spenser : but no- 
 thing better could be said of the measures 
 which all the poets had been exploring, in 
 
74 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 their dream of finding one that should be 
 perfect for the long poem, the heroic narra- 
 tive, itself supreme, as they believed, above 
 all other forms as a canvas for heroic char- 
 acter. Of blank verse for such a purpose, 
 and outside the drama, no one yet dreamed. 
 Spenser's stanza and the couplet chiefly sur- 
 vived in the struggle for life among the 
 metres. We see Drayton haunted with 
 the sense, which underlay the practice of a 
 century later, that the true satisfaction to 
 the ear must come in a rhymed couplet, but 
 he felt that some prelude in the way of an 
 interlinked stave of due and dignified length 
 was wanted to give the couplet value. In 
 his Poly-Olhion he tried the couplet, but 
 the lines were too long. He speaks nobly of 
 the Italian octave, and its ' majesty, perfec- 
 tion, and solidity,' though not of its room 
 for irony and caprice — its capacity for 
 being as nobly modelled, and as swift of 
 change, as a cloud. The Barons' Wars 
 attains more dignity than its predecessor. 
 Most of the classical tags and crude strokes 
 disappear. But the writer has already left 
 some of his youth behind him : he has 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 75 
 
 passed from the land of Marlowe and 
 Spenser^ into that of Daniel and the his- 
 tories of Shakespeare : which indeed he must 
 carefully have read.^ And he seems to feel 
 that the staple of an historical poem should 
 be grave, gnomic, perhaps a little dull ; and 
 one of the few and fortunate remnants of 
 his earlier freshness is visible in the final 
 interview, full of perfume and misty colour, 
 of luxury and invading bloodshed, between 
 Mortimer and Isabel. Here Drayton once 
 more turns to mural decoration, forcing his 
 usually not too supple hand to Renaissance 
 
 ^ He ouiits these Spenserian lines : 
 
 Tiie cheerful morning clears her cloudy brows, 
 
 The vapoury mists are all dispersed and spread ; 
 
 Now sleepy time his lazy limbs doth rouse, 
 
 And once beginneth to hold up his head ; 
 
 Hope bloometh fair whose root was well near dead, 
 
 The clue of sorrow to the end is run ; 
 
 The bow appears to tell the flood is done. 
 2 See MorL, ed. Collier, p. 254 : 'As when we see the 
 spring-begetting sun In heaven's black night-gown covered 
 from the night.' In The Barons' TVars, 1603, not only is the 
 night-gown [dressing-gown] omitted, but the lines are re- 
 modelled with what is, to my ear, a reminiscence of Prince 
 Henry's famous speech in Henry IV., i. ii. end (1598). There 
 is also the allusion to Lucrece in the earlier edition of Matilda ; 
 and for recollections of Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, see Nymphidia. The parallels in the sonnets 
 have been noted. 
 
76 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 broiderers' work. Behind the tapestry of 
 the room — 
 
 The naked nymphs, some up and down descending, 
 Small scattering flowers at one another flung, 
 With nimble turns their limber bodies bending, 
 Cropping the blooming branches lately sprung 
 (Upon the briars their coloured mantles rending) 
 Which on the rocks grew here and there among. 
 Some comb the hair, some making garlands by 
 As with delight might satisfy the eye. 
 
 Drayton's Edward the Second, like Shake- 
 speare's Clarence, had bad dreams : 
 
 And still aff'righted in his fearful dreams 
 With raging fiends and goblins that he meets, 
 Of falling down from steep rocks into streams, 
 Of tombs, of burials, and of winding sheets, 
 Of wandering helpless in far foreign realms. 
 Of strong temptation, by seducing sprites : 
 Wherewith awak'd, and calling out for aid. 
 His hollow voice doth make himself afraid. 
 
 Such a verse, as so often with Drayton, 
 shows the right kind of power ; but it is un- 
 wrought, and is spoilt by his worst technical 
 fault, want of clear construction, which hurts 
 many a good poem of his making. Drayton 
 does not tell a tale clearly, or make it move. 
 He produces a number of set pictures, and 
 moralises between the slides. And he 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 77 
 
 can invoke, adjure, commemorate ; and he 
 has energy and loftiness. But this is to 
 anticipate; for by the time he wrote The 
 Barons' Wars, he had long carried to their 
 height his powers of lyrical monologue in 
 the most popular of all his poems. Eng- 
 land's Heroical Bpistles came out in 1597, 
 but may have been circulated some years 
 earlier.^ They were more sounding, more 
 telling, better adjusted to his public than 
 anything Drayton had written ; they fixed 
 his popularity, and deserved to fix it. With 
 their many editions, they were the 
 Macaulay's Lays of that period, lacking 
 power to last as a whole, sometimes un- 
 deniably flashing into reality, ever fluent 
 and adroit, and now and then splendid in 
 their versification. Drayton, who ' professed 
 himself a pupil ' of the poet of the Heroides, 
 enlarged and reproduced his model, for 
 a patriotic purpose, with variations. The 
 characters, both heroine and companion 
 hero, are drawn from the same field as 
 the Legends and the Mirror and the 
 
 1 The Address to the Reader begins, 'Seeing these Epistles 
 are now to the world made public' 
 
78 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 History plays ; and of this whole school of 
 verse the Epistles are certainly the fairest 
 fruit. 
 
 The long-drawn pathetic argument, with 
 its opportunities for lyrical declamation, 
 suited Drayton well ; and it was here that 
 he made his most skilful and prophetic use 
 of the couplet. In Endimion and Phoebe it 
 had been Marlowesque ; it is here the equi- 
 valent of Ovid's elegiac, and is used for a 
 reasoned lament, with an epigram lurking in 
 each pair of lines, which is complete in itself 
 like the Latin hexameter and pentameter. 
 Such a model as the Heroides can only have 
 sharpened that isolation of the individual 
 couplets from one another, which we mark 
 with wonder in so early a writer as Dray- 
 ton. Not Marlowe, nor Spenser save here 
 and there, had gone so far in this practice, 
 though we hear something like it in the early 
 histories of Shakespeare, where they are 
 rhymed. But in diction, as in cadence, we 
 are ever reminded by these poems of Dray- 
 ton, not so much of his own contemporaries, 
 as of the stentorian but gallant senti- 
 ment of Dryden ; — the Dryden, however, 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 79 
 
 of the heroic plays, not the Dryden of 
 The Medal 
 
 The depth of woe with words we hardly sound ; 
 Sorrow is so insensibly profound. 
 
 The placing and cadence of the word 
 insensibly, longer and louder than the words 
 about it, are absolute Dryden : but the lines 
 come from the Epistle of the Lady Jane 
 Grey to Lord Gilford Dudley. Indeed 
 a feature of the Epistles is the modernness 
 of hundreds of their couplets. * Waller was 
 smooth ' ; ^ but Drayton was smooth earlier ; 
 and who does not hear, in such verse as the 
 following, the overture to the rhetoric that 
 was to rule a whole province of our poetry, 
 from Tyrannic Love, and from the Elegy to 
 an Unfortunate Lady, down to the last years 
 of Crabbe ? 
 
 And is one beauty thought so great a thing 
 To mitigate the sorrows of a king ? 
 
 ^ This is put in the eighteenth-century way, in reference 
 to the Shepherd's Sirena, etc., by the unknown writer of the 
 Historical Essay prefixed to the 1748 edition of Drayton. 
 These poems ' fully refute the notion that the harmony of 
 numbers in English poesy was unknown till Waller stole the 
 secret from Fairfax.' 
 
80 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Barred of that choice the vulgar often prove, 
 Have we than they less privilege in love ? 
 Is it a king, the woful widow hears ? 
 Is it a king dries up the orphan's tears ? 
 Is it a king regards the client's cry ? 
 Gives life by law to him condemned to die 1 
 
 In other places, where Drayton speaks of 
 spring, youth, and the reappearance of 
 flowers, he is more of his own time, and 
 some of his Hnes might serve as a text 
 for the new Tudor poetry itself, which had 
 come up as sudden and cordial as the spring 
 in Russia. 
 
 Thy presence hath repaired in one day 
 What many years and fortunes did decay, 
 And made fresh beauties' fairest branches spring 
 From wrinkled furrows of Time's ruining. 
 Even as the hungry winter-starved earth. 
 When she by nature labours towards her birth, 
 Still as the day upon the dark world creeps, 
 One blossom forth after another peeps, 
 Till the small flower whose root is now unbound, 
 Gets from the frosty prison of the ground, 
 Spreading the leaves unto the powerful noon, 
 Deck'd in fresh colours, smiles upon the sun. 
 
 Not many Elizabethans besides Marlowe and 
 Shakespeare write in this measure more easily 
 or changefully. And the quality was noticed 
 by admirers. 'The author is termed in 
 
Mil H\Ki. Drayton, aged 36. 
 
 I''ror,i the Xatioiial Forty ait Gallciy. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 81 
 
 FitzgeofFrey's Drakey Golden-mouthed/ for 
 the purity and preciousness of his phrase.' 
 Meres, who thus speaks in his Palladis 
 Tamia of 1598, is the fullest witness to 
 Drayton's reputation. He names him in f 
 the best of company as one ' by whom the 
 English tongue is mightily enriched,' and 
 praises him for his histories, epistles, lyrics, 
 and love-poems. He is also the chief but 
 by no means the only witness to his char- 
 acter. 'As Aulus Persius Flaccus was 
 reported among all writers to be of an 
 honest disposition and upright conversation, 
 so Michael Drayton, quern toties honoris 
 causa nomino, among scholars, soldiers, 
 poets, and all sorts of people, is held for a 
 man of virtues and well-governed carriage, 
 which is almost miraculous among good wits 
 of this declining and corrupt time.' In the 
 same year Barnfield, in his Lady Pecunia, 
 names him beside Spenser, Daniel, and 
 Shakespeare for his ' well- written tragedies 
 
 ^ In that ungainly work, Guilpin's Shialetheia, 1598, it is 
 stated : 
 
 Drayton 's condemned of some for imitation, 
 But others say, 'tis the best poets' fashion . . . 
 Drayton's justly surnamed ' golden-mouth'd.' 
 
 F 
 
82 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 and sweet Epistles/ and for his * stately 
 numbers.' ^ So Fuller says, long after : ' He 
 was a pious poet, his conscience having 
 always the command of his fancy, very 
 temperate in his life, slow of speech, and 
 inoffensive in company.' Equally well 
 known is the testimony in the Return from 
 Parnassus (1600), that he 'wants one true 
 note of a poet of our times, and it is this : 
 he cannot swagger it well at a tavern, or 
 domineer at a hot-house ' (brothel). We also 
 hear of what his letters and works confirm, 
 his humanity and good nature. The young 
 Charles Fitzgeofirey, in the Latin lines pre- 
 ceding his AffanicB (1601), records that his 
 master did not only not deride his efforts, 
 but even condescended to polish them, limd 
 sua : and, in the poem on Sir Francis Drake 
 (1596), which is written on the model of 
 the Legends, he speaks of ' golden-mouthed 
 Dfayton musical' as a disciple of Sidney. 
 Lastly, in the poetical commonplace book 
 called England's Parnassus (1604), edited 
 by R. Allot, Drayton's verses, especially the 
 Epistles, are quoted, often wrong, but nearly 
 two hundred times. Upon the publica- 
 
 ^ Collier, p. xxxix. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 83 
 
 tion of these Epistles, he was probably at 
 the height of his vogue, his luck, and his 
 popularity. His * purity and preciousness 
 of phrase ' was the flower of a severe life and 
 a fortunate temper, not yet crossed with 
 uncouth rhetorical rancour against society, 
 or overtasked by the Poly-Olhion. 
 
 The career of Drayton to the end of the 
 reign was divided between the revision of 
 his works and his novel industry of play- 
 writing. He was a theatre hack, and often 
 a partner with fourth-rate men. Plays were 
 then written on the sand as much as a modern 
 review or leader, and saved for print by 
 happy chance. Often the titles only remain 
 by an accident. In 1598, when he was most 
 active, he is named by Meres as one of those 
 who are ' best for tragedy.' An anonymous 
 work, of the same year. Poems of Divers 
 Humours, speaks of his ' well - written 
 tragedies.' Of all the twenty pieces (ex- 
 cluding separate parts) in which Drayton's 
 name figures, only one remains in which he 
 took a share, but the names tell us of his 
 dramatic bent. He had exhausted the 
 chances of the chronicle poem, and to the 
 chronicle drama, which had largely beaten 
 
84 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 it out of the field under the leading of 
 Marlowe and Shakespeare, he turned by 
 instinct. His earlier legends boded ill for 
 his dramatic power, but we can hardly judge 
 how far he possessed any. He wrought 
 almost always in partnership, and we should 
 expect him to contribute the tirades, mono- 
 logues, and sententious parts rather than the 
 living scenes. Henry I., Earl Godtvin, Piers 
 of Exton, Richard Cordelions Funeral, Piers 
 of Winchester, The Civil Wars in France (in 
 three parts), William Long sword, Sir John 
 Oldcastle, Owen Tudor, and the Rising of 
 Cardinal Wolsey, were all ' histories ' ; that 
 is, they handled some reign or episode of an 
 English reign later than the Norman Con- 
 quest. In the first six of these, and in four 
 other pieces, Drayton took his share during 
 the years 1598. The rest, and three other 
 pieces to which his name is attached, are 
 sprinkled over the years 1599 to (May) 1602. 
 The table ^ will show that during the first two 
 
 1 The list of titles may be summarised from Henslowe ; 
 and see Fleay, Biog. Chron., I 157. The fire coadjutors are 
 denoted by initials ; Dekker by D. ; Munday by M. ; Wilson 
 by W. ; Middleton and Webster by name. 
 
 1597, December. Mother Redcap, M. 
 
 1598. Famous Wars of Henry I. and the Prince of Wales, 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 85 
 
 years and a half he was partner of Chettle, 
 Dekker, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson, 
 and once of one Smith ; but in the later 
 period the very different names of Middleton 
 and Webster are also associated with his. 
 Of the earlier group, only Dekker was a 
 poet worthy to be his companion, and the 
 play- writing of Dekker is often scrapwork. 
 
 The main witness for this dreary episode 
 is Henslowe, in whose diary are set down 
 the names of the plays, the authors, and the 
 sums ' paid in full,' paid in parts, ' or lent in 
 earnest ' of the work not yet finished or not 
 delivered. Drayton, about Christmas 1597, 
 seems to have drifted among the needy 
 syndicates that were dependent upon 
 
 C. D. Earl of Godwin and his three sons, two parts, C. D. W. 
 Piers of Exton, same. Black Batman of the North, part i.,same. 
 Richard Cordeliori's Funeral, C. M. W. The Madman's 
 Morris, J). W. Hannibal and Hermes, Worse Feared than 
 Hurt, perhaps two plays, D. W. Piers of Winchester, D. W. 
 Chance Medley, M. D. W. Civil Wars in France, three parts, 
 
 D. Connan (corrected by Fleay Corin, cf. Poly-Olbion, Song 
 I.), Prince of Cornwall, D. 
 
 1599. William Longsword, receipt signed by Drayton, no 
 partner named. Sir John Oldcastle, two parts, first part 
 extant, M. H. W. 
 
 1600. Owen Tudor, H. M. W. June 3rd, Fair Constance of 
 Rome, part 1., D. H. M. 
 
 1601, Oct. 10. Rising of Cardinal Wolsey, C. M., Smith. 
 
 1602, May 29. Ccesar's Fall, M., Webster, Middleton, and 
 others. Two Harp[i]es, D. M., Webster, Middleton. 
 
86 
 
 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN POET 87 
 
 Henslowe. Each play or part of a play 
 usually cost Henslowe about £6, and it has 
 been reckoned that Drayton had from first 
 to last about £52 from this source. About 
 £40 of this came in his year of hardest 
 piecework, 1598. Taking the buying power 
 of money to be seven times what it is at 
 present, this would give a total of £300, of 
 which £280 came in 1598. It was a barren 
 chapter, both materially and for Drayton's 
 fame. Half a century later he was for- 
 gotten as a playwright. In The Great 
 Assizes holden at Parnassus, 1645, he is 
 coupled with Sandys and Sylvester, and 
 discriminated from Beaumont and others, as 
 a poet who did not write dramas. He toiled 
 in haste with others to satisfy the vogue for 
 chronicle plays while it lasted. Kepeatedly 
 moneys are entered to his sole name, or to 
 his name in conjunction with one or two 
 more, as ' lent in earnest ' : once the loan 
 was as little as ten shillings. The only 
 signature of his that is known to survive, 
 and which is given opposite in facsimile, 
 shows him receiving an advance on the one 
 play he is known to have written unaided, 
 
88 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Longsivord} Once he shared in a nameless 
 ' comedy of the court ' ; ' Mr Drayton hath 
 given his word for the work to be done 
 within one fortnight ' is a significant entry, 
 and may imply that he was a kind of leader 
 among his group ; indeed, he often had the 
 largest share, and doubtless earned it, of the 
 pittance that was the market-price. It is a 
 sorry record, which it is idle to fill out by 
 fine conjecture. 
 
 Once the heart of Henslowe was glad, and 
 he presented ten shillings — it is entered * as 
 a gift ' — for division amongst four authors, 
 Munday, Hathway, Wilson, and Drayton. 
 This was for the successful part of Sir John 
 Oldcastle, which is preserved. Drayton 
 received nearly half of the total earnings for 
 the two parts of this play, and we may 
 assume the sum answered to his share in the 
 composition. The first part was probably 
 played in the first week of November, 1599. 
 An edition was entered August 11, 1600, 
 
 * He did not also write a play Longheard, as Collier sug- 
 gests (Henslowe's Diary, 1845, p. 142). Mr. Stretton, the 
 librarian at Dulwich, wrote me that Malone was correct in 
 reading this entry Longsword ; the name in the other entry 
 of our facsimile (see ib., p. 95). 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 89 
 
 and published that year, giving no author's 
 name, but stating that the play was printed 
 ' as it hath been lately acted ' by the 
 Admiral's Servants. Either earlier or later 
 in that year came another issue, differing 
 by the addition of the impudent words, 
 'Written by William Shakespeare.' We 
 must not charge Drayton with this piratical 
 proceeding. In fact the play, as Mr Wynd- 
 ham has pointed out, was a curious counter- 
 blast, written part in theatrical rivalry, part 
 in Protestant resentment, to Shakespeare's 
 Henry IV.,^ the two parts of which had pros- 
 pered during the years 1598-9. Falstaff, 
 and Hotspur in part, had made their fortune. 
 The First Fart had already run through 
 two editions, having been first entered 25th 
 February 1598. It is well known that the 
 name of Falstaff was substituted for the 
 original one of the Lollard victim of Henry 
 v., Sir John Oldcastle, whom Shakespeare 
 may have inadvertently taken over from the 
 old play, the Famous Histories of Henry V. 
 The printed text retains a jest founded on 
 this name, when the Prince calls Falstaff 
 
 ^ Poems of Shakespeare, pp. 1, li. 
 
90 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 ^ my old lad of the castle/ and it also retains 
 the word Old. in a stage direction. The 
 descendants of Oldcastle had protested, and 
 Shakespeare proceeded to borrow the name of 
 a different person, Sir John Fastolfe. But 
 in 1600 the feeling still smouldered against 
 his original mistake, and it broke out in the 
 extant play of which Drayton was part- 
 author. This, as Mr. Wyndham says, was 
 written 'specifically in reply to Shakespeare's 
 abuse of Oldcastle's name ' : 
 
 It is no pampered glutton we present, 
 
 Nor aged Counsellor to youthful sin ; 
 
 But one, whose virtue shone above the rest, 
 
 A valiant martyr and a virtuous Peer. 
 
 . . . Let fair truth be grac'd. 
 
 Since forg'd invention former time defac'd. 
 
 Twelve days later (August 23rd) the 
 Second Part of King Henry IV. was entered, 
 and in the epilogue of the printed quarto, 
 after the advice, which was a natural finale, 
 to ' kneel to the queen,' came an addition 
 containing the sentences where ' our humble 
 author ' promises to continue the story, and 
 to cause Falstaff to ' die of a sweat ' ; 'for 
 Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 01 
 
 man.' This addition may have been made 
 when the new name finally supplanted the 
 old one. And the change may have been 
 quickened by the appearances of Oldcastle 
 at the rival house. The play is a flat one ; 
 full of echoes and allusions to the First Part 
 of Henry IV., with an obvious attempt to 
 make an impartial hero of Henry V., as 
 Shakespeare was promising to do. Cobham 
 is glorified in a way that Holinshed, 
 and still more modern history, does not 
 authorise, as a pattern of loyalty. The 
 conspiracy of Scroope and Grey is detected 
 and disclosed by him rather meanly, and is 
 told at length. Perhaps this was why Shake- 
 speare discharges the same story so abruptly 
 at us in Henry V., where the plot is full-blown 
 and already discovered, and where nothing 
 is said of its inception, which was still so 
 familiar on the rival stage. Oldcastle seems 
 to have kept a certain market value, for in 
 1626 the widow of the printer Pavier trans- 
 ferred the copyright of it together with that 
 of Henry V.^ 
 
 ^ I am indebted for some points to an article, Michael 
 Drayton as a Dramatist^ by Dr. Lemuel Whitaker, in the 
 
92 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Publications of the Modern Language Association of America^ 
 vol. xviii. No. 3. Dr. Whitaker disputes some views of 
 Mr. Fleay, and also some remarks in my former edition of this 
 work : not, however, without ascribing to me far more agree- 
 ment with Mr. Fleay than was the case. His main doubt, 
 whether Drayton was really poor and struggling during this 
 period, his own analysis of Henslowe's entries seems to set at 
 rest, but unfavourably. It was not my opinion that Drayton's 
 'dramatic career was consequent upon the failure of his 
 patron's promises,' for I argued that the evidence for his 
 rupture with the Eussells was not valid. It is, however, un- 
 likely that he would have served Henslowe without necessity. 
 Dr. Whitaker saddles me with sundry other references, and 
 I do not see how the ' whole record presents a picture of a 
 talented, hard-working, and prosperous man.' Mr. Fleay 
 says : 'In the four years, 1599-1603, during which Drayton 
 continued to write for the stage, he only assisted in producing 
 six plays for Henslowe. It seems probable that during this 
 time he must have been writing also for another company ; he 
 had to live, and had lost his patronage from the Bedford 
 family, and certainly produced nothing for the press. Is there 
 any trace left of what he produced for the theatre ? ' {Biog. 
 Chron., i. 151.) Mr. Fleay states the problem clearly, but his 
 answer is unconvincing. He suggests that Drayton assisted 
 in writing for Shakespeare's company at the Globe, and reasons 
 thus : Oldcastle was, in some of the first issues, published as 
 by Shakespeare ; Drayton was one of its four authors. The 
 Life and Death of Cromwell, published 1602, and The London 
 Prodigal, 1605, were also printed as by Shakespeare. The 
 Merry Devil of Edmonton was traditionally given to Shake- 
 speare, and resembles parts of Oldcastle in style. Drayton 
 must have done something from 1599-1602 besides his work 
 for Henslowe. All this is true, but it makes very poor evi- 
 dence for Drayton's authorship of any but the plays named by 
 Henslowe. The fact that he was one oi four authors of Old- 
 castle makes every inference highly doubtful. The passage 
 quoted (Biog. Chron., i. 161) from Robert of Normandy, 'So 
 many years,' etc., in comparison with 3 Henry VI., ii, v. 31- 
 40, merely shows imitation by Drayton, for which cf. our 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN POET 93 
 
 quotations, p. 75. The list, on the contrary, in Biog. Chron., 
 p. 142, throws great light on the whole movement of what 
 may be called historical heUes lettres, and claims study. 
 Mr. Fleay's unfounded assumption throughout his previous 
 Life of Shaksjjere, that Drayton wrote the Merry Devil of 
 Edmonton, rests partly on the assertion of Coxeter that he 
 had once seen an old MS. in which the work is said to be 
 Drayton's, and partly on the resemblance in some comic 
 scenes between this play and Oldcastle. Drayton's share 
 in this is unknowable. But comedy was probably not his 
 gift. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SATIRES, ODES, AND ' POLY-OLBION 
 
 Drayton did not write for the theatre after 
 the accession of James, but came back for 
 good to his proper work. Meres tells us in 
 1598 that * Michael Drayton is now penning 
 in English verse a poem called Poly-Olhion ' : 
 and he can have spared little enough time to 
 write or travel or buy the books requisite for 
 what he calls his ' strange Herculean toil.' 
 But by 1603 he had found a new patron in 
 an old friend, Walter Aston of Tixall in 
 Staffordshire, whose 'generous and noble 
 disposition ' he had praised six years earlier. 
 The tie was now to be closer ; for Aston, on 
 being invested by James with the Knight- 
 hood of the Bath, made Drayton one of his 
 ' esquires,' ^ a style which henceforth appears 
 on his title-pages. 
 
 ^ Douglas, Peerage of Scotland, i. 147. As was said before, 
 there is no record in the College of Heralds of any grant of 
 
 94 
 
SATIRES, ODES, ETC. 95 
 
 Between 1602 and 1607 no less than five 
 works ^ are dedicated to Sir Walter Aston ; 
 and in the twelfth song of Poly-Olhion, 1612 
 he speaks of Tixall, ' which oft the Muse hath 
 found her safe and sweet retreat.' The pre- 
 face to the poem is yet plainer, and says, 
 memorably enough : ' Whatever is hercrn 
 that tastes of a free spirit I thankfully con- 
 fess it to proceed from the continual bounty 
 of my truly noble friend Sir Walter Aston ; 
 which hath given me the best of those hours 
 whose leisure hath effected this which I now 
 publish.' 
 
 But Aston had to console his friend for 
 the loss of richer hopes, incurred by joining 
 too soon in the stampede for front places 
 which attended the advent of the literary 
 
 arms to the poet. There is a drawiog in a book of grants of 
 arms, Harl. MS. 6140, fol. 45 back : ' On a field azure, gutty 
 d'eau, a winged horse argent, with the crest on the sun in 
 his glory or a cap of Mercury vert, winged argent.' Above 
 is written ' Michaell Drayton of Warwickshire Esq.' Authori- 
 tative or not, this is a pleasant and apt symbol of Drayton's 
 muse. 
 
 1 See Bibliography. Collier notes that two of these last 
 are addressed ' to the deserving memory of my esteemed 
 patron,' who lived till 1639 ; and suspects some angry irony 
 inspired by a suspension of funds. But the words only 
 promise fame to Aston. Compare Tixall Poetry^ edited by 
 A. Clifford, Edinb. 1813, appendix. 
 
/ 
 
 96 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 king. After ' the quiet end of that long- 
 living queen/ Drayton, who had not, so far 
 as we know, had a farthing from her or a 
 word of encouragement, omitted to cry La 
 reine est morte, and confined his lament 
 almost to a single line of verse. But at such 
 times there is supposed to be a threnody, 
 and also a fair interval before the compli- 
 ments begin to the living. According to 
 Chettle, his Gratulamy Poem (1603), and 
 his Pcean Triumphal, made for the entry 
 into London, were ignored for this reason. 
 
 Think, 'twas a fault to have thy verses seen 
 Praising the king, ere they had mourned the queen. 
 
 At the reception of his eulogies (which may 
 be sufficiently described by a line in one of 
 them, ' Panting for breath flies our elaborate 
 song ') Drayton was deeply hurt. ' I in- 
 stantly saw all my long-nourished hopes 
 buried alive before my face. ' Nearly a quarter 
 of a century later, in the Epistle to George 
 Sandys (1627), he confirms Chettle's explana- 
 tion of his failure. 
 
 It was my fault before all other men 
 To suffer shipwreck by my fonvard jjcn 
 When King James entered. . . . 
 
/ 
 
 SATIRES, ODES, ETC. 97 
 
 When cowardice had tied up every tongue, 
 And all stood silent, yet for him I sung ; 
 And when before by danger I was dar'd, 
 I kick'd her from me, nor a jot I spar'd ; 
 Yet had not my clear spirit in fortune's scorn 
 Me above earth and my afflictions borne. 
 He, next my God on whom I built my trust. 
 Had left me trodden lower than the dust. 
 
 Thus, while Jonson and Daniel and so many 
 others were accepted, he was put aside. 
 The poem called The Owl (1604) he asserts 
 in its preface ^ to have been written before 
 this event ; but it is full of strain and 
 obscure allegory, behind which we seem to 
 divine a rage ineffectually smouldering. 
 Mother HuhhardJs Tale and the Parliament 
 of Birds are in some measure his models. 
 The Eagle is the monarch ; the Owl, sharp- 
 sighted in the darkness, is the satiric 
 observer of the evils of court and society, 
 and is therefore spurned and ignored. 
 Attacked by various ohscence volucres, she 
 pleads her case to the Eagle in a long tirade 
 
 1 'A year is almost past since this small poem was lastly 
 finished ; at which time it gave place by my enforcement, 
 undertaking then in the general joy ... to write a poem 
 gratulatory.' In Beaumont and Fletcher, The Scornful Lady, 
 ii. 2, there is an allusion to the poem, as hard for a lover to 
 ' expound,' and also to the Heroical Epistles. 
 
 G 
 
98 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 against the lust and jobbing of courts. The 
 poet himself may or may not be figured by 
 the ragged and wretched Crane, who laments : 
 
 Weary at length, and trusting to my worth, 
 I took my flight into the happy North ; 
 Where, nobly bred as I was well allied, 
 I hoped to have my fortune there supplied ; 
 But, there arrived, disgrace was all my gain. . . . 
 Other had got for which I long did serve. 
 Still fed with words, while I with wants did 
 sterve. 
 
 This is the only evidence for the figment, 
 which has passed into some biographies, and 
 seems to be first named and refuted by 
 Oldys (1750), that Drayton was introduced 
 by Aston to James, and sent to Scotland on 
 some unsuccessful public mission. No fresh 
 light has been cast on the allusion, except 
 that he did actually go northwards before 
 1606 : one of the best of his odes being 
 written from the Peak, and praising 
 ' Buxton's delicious baths.' 
 
 In 1605 Drayton published the first 
 anthology of all his hitherto published 
 poetry that seemed worth reclaiming. To 
 atone for his facility, he had the sound habit 
 of thrusting much hastily begotten verse 
 
SATIRES, ODES, ETC. 99 
 
 into silence. Little of any worth but 
 Endimion and Phoebe was sacrificed. Our 
 Bibliography (§ xv. 1) will show what this 
 volume contained, and what reprints of it 
 were speedily called for. His wholly new 
 lyrics he included in a separate book, the 
 Poemes Lyrick and Pastorall; Odes and 
 Eglogs, 1606. Of the revised 'Eglogs' 
 something has been said ; but nothing he 
 wrote is more his own than the Odes. His 
 lyric gift had come late, he was forty-three ; 
 but it grew finer and lighter as he lived, for 
 at the age of fifty-six, in the volume of 1619, 
 he added seven more odes, including the 
 amended version of the Ballad of Agincourt. 
 After the Heroical Epistles, the Odes are 
 the first poems in which Drayton forbore to 
 lean upon an English model, and they are, 
 of their species, the earliest in our tongue. 
 Some of them are among the best odes we 
 have. If our pleasure is checked by a 
 rude inversion and an obscure build of 
 sentence, those are the obstacles of any poet 
 who uses measures of four or six syllables. 
 Short is the roll of our English masters of 
 the curt, heroic, and harping metres. Cowper 
 
100 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 and Campbell and Tennyson have few fit 
 predecessors except Drayton. The ode was 
 a classical, and therefore a E-enaissance 
 form : it had been lifted by Ronsard and his 
 companions into sonority and splendour. 
 Drayton's preface of 1606 warns us that he 
 .desires to follow 'the inimitable Pindarus,' 
 as well as the odes of Anacreon, ' the very 
 delicacies of the Grecian Erato, which Muse 
 seemed to have been the minion of that 
 Teian old man which composed them.' His 
 own odes are to be mixed, the ' arguments 
 being amorous, moral, or what else the 
 muse pleaseth.' He left it, however, to Ben 
 Jonson to initiate the regular or irregular 
 Pindaric ode. Horace and the pseudo-Anac- 
 reon are Drayton's nearest models. Once 
 he lapses into ' Skelton's rhyme.' But he 
 was chiefly haunted by the loud and sharp 
 accompaniment of the Irish or British harp ; 
 and its twangle, its decisive note, passed 
 into the loudest of his verses : 
 
 And why not I, as he 
 That 's greatest, if as free, 
 
 In sundry strains that strive 
 (Since there so many be) 
 
 Th' old lyric kind revive 1 
 
SATIRES, ODES"/ ETC lOl 
 
 I will, yea, and I may : 
 Who shall oppose my way ? 
 
 For what is he alone, 
 That of himself can say 
 
 He 's heir of Helicon 1 
 
 Apollo and the Nine 
 Forbid no man their shrine 
 
 That Cometh with hands pure ; 
 Else they be so divine, 
 
 They will not him endure. 
 
 There is a struggling melody in all this, 
 and in other cases it is achieved : in the ode 
 To the New Year, in that To the Virginian 
 Voyage, in his Ballad of Agincourt. In the 
 first of these there is one stanza that makes 
 us think of the sure and silken web of Mr. 
 Swinburne's falling rhymes. It might have 
 come out of the Poems and Ballads of the 
 year 1866 : 
 
 Give her th' Eoan brightness 
 Wing'd with that subtle lightness 
 
 That doth transpierce the air : 
 The roses of the morning 
 The rising heaven adorning 
 
 To mesh with flames of hair. 
 
 Drayton speaks of his ' ode, or, if thou wilt, 
 ballad ' ; but the cadence of his pieces is as 
 far from the march of the nobler folk-ballad, 
 
102 MIGKAEL DRAYTON 
 
 as it is from the slouch of the inferior. Often 
 it has the true music, as of the harp speeding 
 a vessel that is launched with colours flying 
 to win some new continent of odorous 
 tropic fruits and illimitable gold. The 
 Virginian Voyage has some wonderful 
 words, sassafras, Hachluit, that make the 
 fortune of their rhymes, and the relief is 
 heightened by the subtle — not really 
 prosaic — soberness of their epithets: indus- 
 trious Hackluit, tiseful sassafras, like words 
 almost in the ordinary pitch interjected in a 
 chant. This ode runs more easily than the 
 others in spite of the lacework of its rhymes : 
 
 You brave heroic minds, 
 
 Worthy your country's name, 
 That honour still pursue, 
 Go, and subdue, 
 Whilst loitering hinds 
 
 Lurk here at home for shame. 
 
 The oars plash to the loud and hopeful 
 thrumming of the player, as he faces out- 
 ward to where beyond the Pillars a far 
 world awaits him, one day to be populous 
 with poets and heroes, the descendants of 
 the high-hearted voyagers. In the odes of 
 
SATIRES, ODES, ETC. 103 
 
 love or compliment we are in a later 
 day, far from Sidneian flights, nearer the 
 dexterous and delicate that we associate 
 with the verse of Carew or Suckling. In 
 1619, when most of these pieces were in- 
 serted, the strain is lessened, and there is 
 something like gaiety, as in the ode His 
 Rival, or the lovely canzonet To his coy 
 Love. Then also came The Heart, which is 
 one of Drayton's few dealings in metaphysical 
 fancy ; is there one heart or two ? and if but 
 one, where is it ? Then also the poem To 
 his Valentine, which Donne might have 
 written on a day when all his demons 
 except the rarest were in attendance. 
 
 But lo, in happy hour, 
 
 The place wherein she lies, 
 In yonder climbing tower, 
 
 Gilt by the glimmering rise : 
 Jove, that in a shower, 
 
 As once that thund'rer did, 
 When he in drops lay hid, 
 That I could her surprise. 
 
 If this was written, as it was published, 
 after the age of fifty, few poets are so late 
 susceptible to so alien a genius. The mark 
 of the best metaphysical verse of that period 
 
104 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 is the irregular and inconstant feeling of 
 shock, which does not amount to jar or dis- 
 cord, but wins the imagination over by the 
 sense of beauty, the poet bringing out his 
 remote image suddenly, from his pocket, as 
 a sailor might his sea-borne occidental 
 treasure. But this was in 1619 ; in 1606 
 the style is still Elizabethan. It was not 
 many years since the great theatrical suc- 
 cess of Henry V. ; and the most famous of 
 Drayton's odes may be taken as a lyrical 
 epilogue, or rather intermezzo, by Shake- 
 speare's countryman. It has been so 
 arranged by Mr. Henley in his Lyra 
 Heroica, Usually known as the Ballad of 
 Agincourt, it was first entitled ' To my 
 Friends the Camber-Britons and their 
 Harp.' The old popular ditty, Agioicourt, 
 Agincourt, was in the writer's ears. He 
 liked his poem, if we may judge by his nice 
 and numerous improvements. The earlier 
 version suffers from ungainliness or elliptical 
 grammar ; a few remaining traces of them 
 in the later one are the only interruption to 
 its felicity. There is also a tendency to 
 multiply the spondees, the better to hear 
 
SATIRES, ODES, ETC. 105 
 
 the thud of the marching army — left, right. 
 A few lines can show the change. 
 
 (1) 1606 ' 1619 
 
 Fair stood the wind for Fair stood the wind for 
 
 France France 
 
 When we our sails advance When we our sails advance 
 
 And now to prove our Nw now to prove our 
 
 chance chance 
 
 Longer not tarry : Longer will tarry : 
 
 But j9ii/ unto the main But putting to the main 
 
 At Kaux the mouth of At Kaux the mouth of 
 
 Seine Seine 
 
 With all his warlike train With all his martial train 
 
 Landed King Harry. Landed King Harry. 
 
 (2) 
 
 And now preparing were Lord, how hot they were 
 Fm- the false Frenchmen. On the false Frenchmen. 
 
 ^hen now that noble king This, while our noble king 
 His broadsword brandish- His broadsword brandish- 
 ing iug 
 
 Into the host did fling Down the French host did 
 
 As to o'erwhelm it. 
 
 As to o'erwhelm it. 
 
 This poem, the fine flower of old patriot 
 lyric, shows a happier and more sensitive use 
 of proper names than the play of Henry V. 
 Shakespeare, in his list of those who fell at 
 Agincourt, uses names for purely memorial 
 reasons, copying Holinshed like an inscrip- 
 
/ 
 
 106 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 tioii ; and ' Sir E,ichard Ketley, Davy Gam, 
 esquire/ is the worst line in his works. 
 * Ferrers and Fanhope ' in the ballad have a 
 different value to the ear. 
 
 After 1606 Drayton was almost silent 
 for six years, only producing the last and 
 flattest of his Legends, that of The Great 
 Cromwell, Earl of Essex. He was labouring 
 at Poly-Olhion, but how much he wandered 
 over England in order to write it is un- 
 certain. He was enabled to keep to his 
 task not only by Aston's bounty, but by 
 assistance from high quarters. The first 
 instalment of the poem (1612) is offered 
 to the prince who within a year was to be 
 cut off. Drayton writes to Henry in a 
 strain of proud gratitude, of a man escaping 
 from the sickness of discouragement : 
 
 ' My soul, which hath seen the extremity of 
 Time and Fortune, cannot yet despair. The 
 influence of so glorious and fortunate a star may 
 also reflect upon me : which hath power to give 
 me new life, or leave me to die more willingly and 
 contented. My poem is genuine, and first in this 
 kind. It cannot want envy: for, even in the 
 birth, it already finds that. Your gracious accept- 
 ance, mighty prince, will lessen it.' 
 
10 V 
 
 '^ i*i t ^i 
 
 ■iij..^.' ^'i^i{i<''' U^anvici VI fui.fr m(^ri%, 
 f^- ■i/<i-^ i !ini!s.ofs{td)9iimi1Jyat. 
 
 MiciiAKi. IJkayion, acki) 50. 
 
 Hole's Ciiiirared />ortyait in iltc rociiis ()/ 1619. 
 
SATIRES, ODES, ETC. 107 
 
 By the dedication of 1622 it appears that 
 Charles I. had continued the bounty of 
 Prince Henry, which ' gave me much en- 
 couragement to go on with this second part.' 
 What obstacles he met with in publishing 
 the whole poem, will be seen in his letters 
 to William Drummond. But meanwhile the 
 gift of Henry was more than timely. To a 
 man of Drayton's temper, sensitive to the 
 manner of a gift, and justly taking it more 
 as a pension for merit than as alms, Henry's 
 usage, ever considerate to poets, must have 
 counted for more than the money fee. But 
 this annuity of £10, whenever it was 
 begun, together with the help of Aston, 
 made him more independent of the stage. It 
 was continued after Henry's death, though 
 it does not appear for how long.^ 
 
 In 1613 we see Drayton's features. He 
 
 ^ P. Cunningham, Accounts of Bevels, p. xvii. Among 
 'Anuyties and Pencons' is noted by Sir D. Murray 'Mr. 
 Drayton a poett for one yeare x^V The heads of the House- 
 hold, after the Prince's death in 1612, recommended to the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer persons ' whoe by the co- 
 maundement of the late prince w^'^out anie graunte in 
 wrytinge were allowed yerely somes by way of Anuyties or 
 Pencons out of the privie purse of the said late prince : 
 viz. Joshua Silvester a poett xx^'. Mr. Drayton a poett x^*, 
 etc' (p. xviii.). 
 
108 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 was now fifty ; and his portrait, engraved 
 by Hole, is in the volume of 1605. It shows 
 the * swarth and melancholy face ' of which 
 he speaks himself.^ A harassed, half-sub- 
 merged but unbeaten doggedness, a mal- 
 content energy, a temper with which life has 
 gone hard, speak from its lines. The picture 
 in the National Portrait Gallery, dated 1598, 
 of less sure date and origin, is more youthful 
 and buoyant ; it figures the hopeful Eliza- 
 bethan poet, with laurels still fresh. It 
 formerly belonged to Lady Mary Thompson, 
 of Sheriff Sutton Park in Yorkshire, a 
 daughter of the fifth Earl Fitzwilliam. 
 The Dulwich portrait was taken fifteen 
 years later, being dated 1628, when he was 
 sixty -three ; it is mellower, and has more of 
 prosperous dignity. The face in both is wide, 
 the forehead well modelled, crowned with 
 laurel ^ in the engraving. The Abbey bust 
 is vacant of expression. 
 
 1 Legend of Robert, 1596, stanza ix. 
 
 '^ The Dulwich picture, dated 1628, and marked cet. 65. 
 was given by Cartwright the actor ; the artist is unknown. 
 A reproduction may be seen as our frontispiece. Oldys, 
 Biog. Brit, 1750, names some other pictures, which are lost : 
 one, ' a delicate portrait of him in miniature,' said to have 
 been painted by Peter Oliver. 
 
SATIRES, ODES, ETC. 109 
 
 The first eighteen Songs of the Poly- 
 Olhion appeared in 1612: the other twelve 
 were not out till 1622, though they were 
 finished before 1619/ 
 
 The great poem was brought to the birth 
 with as much ceremony as an heir- 
 apparent. Only the stately reprint by 
 the Spenser Society can do full justice to 
 the frontispiece with its attendant verses, 
 representing Albion with the symbols of 
 power and plenty, framed in an archway 
 whose background is the sail-clad ocean : 
 and on the pillars beside her are her princes, 
 from Brutus to Csesar, and Caesar to the 
 Normans. The title-page consists of one 
 hundred words. There are more verses, 
 besides the prose dedication, opposite the 
 noble full-length engraving by Hole of 
 Prince Henry, who stands with his lance 
 in rest. There is a ' table ' of the chief 
 passages : epistles by the author of the 
 poem *to the general reader,' and ' to my 
 friends, the Cambro-Britons ' ; and another 
 from the author of the * illustrations,' John 
 Selden, whose notes bristle after each of the 
 
 ^ See p. 124, second letter to Drummond. 
 
no MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 first eighteen Songs. It is plain in what 
 temper the poem was written. Into^Dray- 
 ton^ English as he was, had sunk the Ilenais- 
 sance feeling of the wreck and destruction 
 accomjpjished„.bj JTime upon beauty, and 
 power ,_aiid-Jiiihla_jrisiHe_.inon^ a ,n d 
 
 %^^JJ. 9l^l^^^^^' From the Triumphs 
 of Petrarch down to the Ruins of Du Bellay 
 and Spenser, that sense of the mingled loss 
 and salvage from antiquity, itself so newly 
 rediscovered, had inspired many a lament 
 oyer the passing of oldand splendid things; 
 and sometimes over newer potentates_^nd 
 lordly families, which_ had. gone, they -also, 
 the way of the others. The same spirit had 
 T)een carried into English history and legend 
 by the school of Sackville, which Drayton 
 had already followed. He now turns, in 
 the wake of Camden, to the huge task of 
 collecting the memories and sagas of Great 
 Britain. He will fight with Time to save 
 L, Antiquity, which men are disregarding: 
 ^ and it is his affair, by 'world-outwearing 
 
 j^ rhymes,' to stay the oblivion that endangers 
 
 ^J^ the 'delicacies, delights and rarities' of 
 k ws England and Wales. 
 
 *^' I .-t -X 
 
 ^ 
 
 '/X/yi' 
 
SATIRES, ODES, ETC. Ill 
 
 O Time, what earthly thing with thee itself can trust, 
 When thou in thine own course art to thyself unjust 1 
 Dost thou contract with Death, and to oblivion give 
 Thy glories, after them yet shamefully dar'st live 1 
 
 (Song 21.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 So, when injurious Time such monuments doth lose 
 (As, what so great a work by Time that is not wrackt "?), 
 We utterly forgo that memorable act : 
 But, when we lay it up within the minds of men. 
 They leave it their next age ; that leaves it hers again. 
 
 (Song 10.) 
 
 Alas ! the great poem, like an over- 
 freighted galleon, has foundered. It has 
 become an antiquity underseas, and is left 
 to the divers, the antiquaries and antho- 
 logists, who bring up fragments for the 
 glass-cases of museums. 
 
 Drayton did not invent his geographical 
 scheme, nor was he the first to watch the 
 natural scenery and monuments of England 
 in anxiety for their preservation. It has 
 been thought that the Itinerary of Leland 
 offered him his plan, but there is little in 
 those arid entries that could serve him. 
 Nor could he with Leland say that ' there is 
 almost neither cape nor bay, haven, creek, 
 or pier, river or confluence of rivers, 
 
112 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 breaches, washes, lakes, meres, fenny waters, 
 mountains, valleys, moors, heaths, forests, 
 woods, cities, boroughs, castles, principal 
 manor places, monasteries, colleges, but I 
 have seen them, and in so doing noted a 
 whole world of things very memorable/ 
 Drayton shows no signs of having travelled 
 thus; perhaps he was too light of pocket. 
 Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Gloucestershire, 
 Kent, and London, these places and more 
 he knew himself : but derives much of the 
 animating spirit of his poem, and his actual 
 route, from Camden s Britannia. ' I would 
 restore Antiquity to Britain, and Britain 
 to his Antiquity. Who is so skilful, that, 
 struggling with Time in the foggy dark sea 
 of Antiquity, may not run upon rocks ? ' 
 The Latin original of this passage, here 
 cited from the noble translation (1616) of 
 Philemon Holland, was printed in 1586, 
 long before Drayton had begun. The 
 traditional opening in praise of the 
 tempered climate of England is taken from 
 Camden, whose journey ' The Muse ' of 
 Poly-Olhion painfully follows for several of 
 the Songs, beginning with Cornwall, and 
 
SATIRES, ODES, ETC. 113 
 
 working through ' Devon, Dorset, Hamp, 
 Wilt, Somerset.' After this she pursues the 
 main river-systems, and draws now much 
 and now little from Britannia, whilst in 
 Wales she discovers, from her book, many 
 such curiosities as the one-eyed fish in the 
 Snowdon tarns. But the greater part of 
 the Songs of Wales are concerned with the 
 chronicle or the personifications, both of 
 which are foreign to Camden. Then comes 
 the most unborrowed portion of the poem, 
 from the tenth Song to the eighteenth, as 
 the way lies from Cheshire to the Western 
 midlands towards London, on the upward 
 road. The Cambridge dikes, the Lincoln 
 fens, the Derbyshire mines, and the journey 
 through Yorks, are described chiefly from 
 the book ; but the close of the Poly-Olbion, 
 where the Muse stumbles to her rest 
 among the hills of Westmorland, is from 
 some other authority. 
 
 Drayton has no constant poetical vision 
 for the face of nature, and it is often un- 
 certain if he saw what he writes of, or is 
 adapting it from a book. The list of the 
 plants of his own shire, Warwick, might 
 
 H 
 
114 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 have come from a herbal, with its receipts 
 for sauces and purges. In observing, his 
 manner is likely to be hard and docu- 
 mentary ; spirited without illumination. 
 Shakespeare's wrongly praised specification 
 of the horse in Venus and Adonis is near to 
 the habitual manner of his countryman ; but 
 Drayton never came to hear the tunable 
 bay of the Spartan hounds of Theseus, or 
 even the Dauphin's boast over his charger 
 on the eve of Agincourt. And, much as he 
 uses Camden, he often misses his vividness. 
 Camden, crossing the Wharfe upon his cob, 
 stumbles on the slippery stones, and adds : 
 'he runneth with a swift speedy stream, 
 making a great noise as he goeth, as if he 
 were froward, turbid, and angry ; and is 
 made more full and testy with the number 
 of stones lying in his channel' : and this 
 gives the essential raging life of the swollen 
 river better than Poly-Olbion with all its 
 personifying. 
 
 But the glitter of a crowded, civilised 
 river suited Drayton better. His view of 
 London from the water is full of change and 
 motion. He does not allow himself to wait 
 
SATIRES, ODES, ETC. 115 
 
 long; and thus he can paint instead of 
 merely counting. The passage well shows 
 the pitch oi PoJy-Olhion in its braver mood. 
 Drayton is parenthetical, he never seems to 
 be out of sight either of prose or of poetry, 
 and his curious middle style soon pleases. 
 
 But now this mighty Flood, upon his voyage prest 
 (That found how, with his strength, his beauties still 
 
 increas'd 
 From where brave Windsor stood in tiptoe to behold 
 The fair and goodly Thames, so far as ere he could, 
 With kingly houses crowned, of more than earthly 
 
 pride, 
 Upon his either banks, as he along doth glide) 
 With wonderful delight, doth his long course pursue, 
 Where Otlands, Hampton Court, and Richmond he 
 
 doth view. 
 Then Westminster the next great Thames doth enter- 
 tain : 
 That vaunts her palace large, and her most sumptuous 
 
 fane : 
 The land's tribunal seat, that challengeth for hers, 
 The crowning of our kin^-: their famous sepulchres. 
 Then goes he on along by that most beauteous Strand, 
 Expressing both the wealth and bravery of the land 
 (So many sumptuous bowers, within so little space, 
 The all-beholding Sun scarce sees in all his race). 
 And on by London leads, which like a crescent lies. 
 Whose windows seem to mock the star-befreckled 
 
 Besides her rising spires so thick themselves that shov/- 
 As do the bristling reeds within his banks that grow : 
 
116 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 There sees his crowded wharfs, and people-pestered 
 
 shores, 
 His bosom over-spread with shoals of labouring oars : 
 With that most costly bridge, that doth him most 
 
 renown, 
 With which he clearly puts all other rivers down. 
 
 The river then pronounces a catalogue of 
 the kings and queens since the Norman con- 
 quest. Personification and legend beguile 
 the long journey of the poet. Matter is 
 inwrought from Geoffrey of Monmouth, 
 Matthew of Paris, Higden, Holinshed, and 
 other annalists. There are dreary rolls of 
 sovereigns and battles : the legends, indeed, 
 furnish better poetry than the chronicles. 
 There is no line between legend and fact; 
 both are matter for the Muse, both have to 
 be saved from forgetfulness. There is not 
 much humour ; but one of the few glimpses 
 of it is to be found in Selden's erudite notes, 
 when he applies a gentle and sympathetic 
 cautery to the figment that the English 
 monarchy is descended from Brutus the 
 Trojan. For this belief the poet pleaded 
 not without generous heat. Were such tales, 
 forsooth, spurious because Julius Caesar had 
 known nothing of them ? Drayton is at 
 
SATIRES, ODES, ETC. 117 
 
 his best when he works up this kind of 
 legend, or history with a film of legend. The 
 songs of Wales ring of Merlin, the Cornish 
 of Corineus ; who suggests at once a picture 
 of the local style of wrestling. The Danes 
 recall the tale of Guy of Warwick, which is 
 excellently told. In Sherwood there are 
 Robin Hood and his men, of whom Drayton 
 knew in the best of the English ballads. 
 All these things were part of the native 
 record, not different in essence from the 
 tale of our naval heroes or of the English 
 saints. 
 
 It is not clear if Drayton took his trick 
 of personifying river and hill from the map- 
 makers, whose moonstruck tutelar nymphs 
 and Pans agreeably answer to his text. It 
 is needless to suppose this, for the literary 
 fancy wrought up, for instance, by Geoffrey 
 of Monmouth had long peopled Thames or 
 Severn with mythic figures. The poet of 
 Comus took leave to reassociate the Severn- 
 goddess, Sabrina, with her legendary scene. 
 Drayton doggedly works in the same device 
 through thirty chapters. To hill and stream 
 he applies the same half-humanising, half- 
 
118 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 abstracting process, made by Spenser delight- 
 ful in variety, but becoming a little worn in 
 the hands of the masque-makers and their 
 stage artists. Once more Spenser asserts his 
 influence : the meeting of Thames and Isis in 
 the fifteenth Song oi Poly-Olhion is a lavish 
 imitation of the marriage of the Thames 
 and Medway in the Faerie Queene. The 
 address of the North Wind to the vale of 
 Cluyd (Song 10) has a gorgeous tasteless- 
 ness that is delightful. It was indeed hard 
 deliberately to go back to this more primi- 
 tive state of thought, which was once, long 
 ago, in the ' angel infancy ' of the world's 
 imagination, taken seriously. 
 
 In the old age of a literary period the 
 desire of great things outlives the perform- 
 ance. Hence arise works like the Poly- 
 Olhion and The Purple Island. In the 
 reign of James the drama came to its full 
 power, but outside the drama the strength 
 of our poetry was lyrical. Eoly -Olhion owes 
 i^s incej)tion to the spirit. q£ the- reign, before, 
 but_was carried out when that inspiration 
 was fading down.. It is written in the alex- 
 andrine, or rhyming couplet of twelve 
 
SATIRES, ODES, ETC. 119 
 
 syllables, with a uniform break in the midst. 
 Drayton, it is likely, brings out of this 
 lumbering measure most of the effects of 
 which it is capable under such terms. It is 
 often apt for long bravura passages, it has a 
 kind of heavy dignity, like a Lord Mayor's 
 coach. To the huge poem as a whole — often 
 bare and dry, never mean — if we treat it 
 as an antique itself, the lines well apply, 
 which show both Drayton's tender zeal for 
 what is old, and his natural spaciousness of 
 style : 
 
 Even in the aged'st face, where beauty once did dwell, 
 
 And nature in the least but seemed to excel, 
 
 Time cannot make such waste, but something will 
 
 appear, 
 To show some little tract of delicacy there. 
 
CHAPTER lY 
 
 THE RENEWAL OF DRAYTON ! LATER WORKS 
 
 The Poly-Olhion was hard to publish, and 
 the first instalment fell flat. ' Some of the 
 stationers, that had the selling of the first 
 part of this poem, because it went not so 
 fast away in the sale as some of their 
 beastly and abominable trash . . . have 
 either despitefully left out, or at least care- 
 lessly neglected, the Epistles to the readers, 
 and so have cozened the buyers with un- 
 perfected books/ So writes the author in 
 his letter 'To any that will read it,' 1622. 
 He did not find a London publisher for the 
 last twelve Songs without much trouble, 
 and at one time made an eflbrt to bring the 
 book out in Edinburgh. The history of this 
 affair and of this chief literary friendship 
 is found in the correspondence exchanged 
 with Drummond of Hawthornden from 1618 
 
 120 
 
LATER WORKS 121 
 
 onwards. For a nearly full text of all the 
 letters, and a commentary, should be con- 
 sulted Dr. Masson's Life of Drummond} 
 The four letters written by Drayton (the 
 only ones, exclusive of dedications and the 
 like, that have been saved) deserve quoting 
 in full. Written to one whom he had never 
 met, they testify to his hearty, generous 
 temper, in terms that are special not so 
 much to himself as to the high language of 
 friendship in that age. 
 
 Drummond had long studied and admired 
 the author of the Epistles and Poly-Olhio7i, 
 and in his Characters of Several Poets, 
 written about 1614, is loud in his praise. 
 Correspondence did not begin till 1618, 
 when Drummond composed a long and 
 weary compliment to the king on his Scot- 
 tish progress. It may have been the Forth 
 Feasting that drew the notice of Drayton in 
 London. More probably, the tie began 
 
 1 Pp. 78 seqq., 112 seqq., 180 seqq. Drayton's letters are 
 originally given in the 1711 ed. of Drummond's Works, pp. 
 154, 233 ; and copied in the Transactions, 1828 to 1836, of 
 the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (Arch(eologia Scotica), 
 vol. iv. pp. 90 seqq. ; the extracts were ruade by Laing. The 
 MSS. of them seem to be now lost, not surviving among the 
 Drummond papers in the hands of the Society. 
 
122 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 through a common friend, Sir William 
 Alexander of Menstrie, who passed to and 
 fro between North and South, and whose 
 name comes constantly in the letters. 
 Whatever the cause, Drayton seized the 
 occasion of a certain Joseph Davies visiting 
 Scotland to send to Hawthornden a message 
 of friendly encouragement, the terms of 
 which are lost. Drummond replied with 
 grateful, slightly mannered cordiality, reveal- 
 ing himself an admirer of long standing, 
 whom ' your most happy Albion \_Poly- 
 Olbion] put into a new trance ' ; and, like 
 others, observes upon Drayton's ' great love, 
 courtesy, and generous disposition/ Two 
 other notes in a similar strain follow, before 
 the first reply was received from Drayton. 
 It runs thus : 
 
 To Tny Honourable friend, 
 Mr. William Drummond of Hawthornden. 
 
 My Dear Noble Drummond, — Your letters 
 were as welcome to me as if they had come from 
 my mistress, which I think is one of the worthiest 
 living. Little did you think how oft that noble 
 friend of yours, Sir William Alexander, that man 
 of men, and I, had remembered you before we 
 
LATER WORKS 123 
 
 trafficked in friendship. Love me as much as 
 you can, and so I will you. I can never hear of 
 you too often, and I will ever mention you with 
 much respect of your deserved worth. I enclosed 
 this letter in a letter of mine to Mr. Andrew 
 Hart of Edinburgh, about some business I have 
 with him, which he may impart to you. Fare- 
 well, noble Sir, and think me ever to be your 
 faithful friend, 
 
 Michael Drayton. 
 
 London, 9 Nov. 1618. 
 
 Joseph Davis is in love with you.^ 
 
 As Dr. Masson suggests, the work about 
 which Drayton wrote to Hart was almost 
 certainly the Poly-Olhion. On 20th Decem- 
 ber 1618 Drummond replies: *I have been 
 earnest with him in that particular. How 
 I would be over-joyed to see our North once 
 honoured with your works as before it was 
 with Sidney's ' (an edition of the Arcadia). 
 The next letter from Drayton rages at his 
 further embarrassments. It may be recalled 
 that Ben Jonson's famous walk to Scotland 
 and visit to Hawthornden occurred in the 
 interval, at the Christmas of 1618. 
 
 ^ Works of Drummond, 1711, p. 153. 
 
124 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 To my noble friend Mr. William Drummond 
 of Hawthornden in Scotland. 
 
 My Noble Friend, — I have at last received 
 both your letters, and the last in a letter of Sir 
 William Alexander's enclosed sent to me into the 
 country, where I have been all this winter, and 
 came up to London not above four days before 
 the date of this my letter to you. I thank you, 
 my dear sweet Drummond, for your good opinion 
 oi Poly-Olhion. I have done twelve books more, 
 that is from the eighteenth book, which was Kent, 
 if you note it ; all the East part and North to 
 the river Tweed ; but it lies by me ; for the book- 
 sellers and I are in terms [bargaining] ; they are 
 a company of base knaves, whom I both scorn 
 and kick at. Your love, worthy friend, I do 
 heartily embrace and cherish, and the oftener 
 your letters come the better they shall be wel- 
 come. And so, wishing you all happiness, I 
 commit you to God's tuition, and rest ever your 
 assured friend, Michael Drayton. 
 
 I have written to Mr. Hart a letter which comes 
 with him. 
 
 London, 14 Ajpril 1619.^ 
 
 The business with Hart came to nothing, 
 and Drummond did not, it would seem, 
 answer this letter. The next is dated more 
 than two years afterwards. 
 
 ^ Works of Drummond^ 1711, p. 153. 
 
LATER WORKS 125 
 
 To Tny dear Noble friend Mr. WilliaTn Drwmniond 
 
 of Hawthornden in Scotland. 
 
 Noble Mr. Drummond, — I am often thinking 
 whether this long silence proceeds from you or 
 from me, whether I know not ; but I would have 
 you take it upon you to excuse me ; and then I 
 would have you lay it upon me, and excuse your- 
 self; but you will, if you think it our fault as I 
 do, let us divide ; and both, as we may, amend it. 
 My long being in the country this summer, from 
 whence I had no means to send my letter, shall 
 partly speak for me; for believe me, worthy 
 William, I am more than a fortnight's friend. 
 Where I love, I love for years, which I hope you 
 shall find. When I wrote this letter, our general 
 friend, Sir William Alexander, was at court at 
 Newmarket; but my lady promises me to have 
 this letter sent to you. Let me hear how you 
 do so soon as you can; I know that I am and 
 will be ever your faithful friend, 
 
 Michael Drayton. 
 
 London, 22 November, 1621, in haste. ^ 
 
 The letter travelled at leisure, for Drum- 
 mond did not receive it till 20th April in 
 the next year. He replies in his high- 
 pitched strain : 
 
 'Of our long silence let us both excuse our- 
 selves, and as our first parents did, lay the fault 
 
 1 Works of Drummond, p. 154. 
 
126 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 upon some Third . . . and [I] testify that neither 
 years nor fortune can ever so affect me, but that 
 I shall ever reverence your worth and esteem 
 your friendship as one of the best conquests of 
 my life, which I would have extended if possible, 
 and enjoy even after death; that, as this time, so 
 the coming after, might know that I am and 
 shall ever be your loving [friend].' ^ 
 
 In a further letter,""^ of uncertain date, but 
 appearing to refer to the expected poems of 
 1627, the same language is kept up. But 
 nothing comes back from Drayton until the 
 year before his death, and this, the last of 
 his extant letters, is one of the best. 
 
 To my worthy and ever honoured friend 
 
 Mr. William Drummond of Hawthornden 
 
 in Scotland. 
 
 Sir, — It was my chance to meet with this 
 bearer Mr. Wilson at a knight's house in 
 Gloucestershire, to which place I yearly use to 
 come in the summer-time to recreate myself, 
 and to spend some two or three months in the 
 country; and, understanding by him that he 
 was your countryman, and after a time inquiring 
 of some few things, I asked him, if he had heard 
 of such a gentleman, meaning yourself; who told 
 me he was your inward acquaintance, and spake 
 
 1 Arch. Scot.j vol. iv. p. 90. ^ ji^^,^ ^ 91 
 
LATER AVORKS 127 
 
 much good to me of you. My happiness of 
 having so convenient a messenger gave me the 
 means to write to you and to assure you that I 
 am your perfect faithful friend in spite of destiny 
 and time. Not above three days before I came 
 from London (and I would have been there above 
 four days) I was with your noble friend and mine 
 Sir William Alexander, when we talked of you. 
 I left him, his lady, and family, in good health. 
 This messenger is going from hence, and I am 
 called upon to do an earnest business for a friend 
 of mine. And so I leave you to God's protection, 
 and remain ever your faithful servant, 
 
 Michael Drayton. 
 
 Clifford in Gloucestershire, 14 July 1631, in haste. 
 
 Next year, writing to Sir William Alex- 
 ander, Drummond had to pour out his 
 lament for the old friend whom he had 
 never seen. No other letters by Drayton 
 remain ; but in these four his character is 
 shown answering to the high language 
 which he instinctively uses : a language 
 with its serious, invincible bravado, which 
 only a few old poets like himself remem- 
 bered, the language of a man nurtured 
 upon a day which had passed for England. 
 His perfect faithful Jrieiidship in spite of 
 destiny or time, and / commit you to God's 
 
128 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 tuitio7i, are phrases Elizabethan in the true 
 sense. 
 
 These letters furnish some other notices 
 of his later life. ' Where I love, I love for 
 years.' Unless the sonnets printed for the 
 first time in 1619 were all written much 
 earlier, the cult of ' Idea ' was tenacious. 
 Anne, now for more than twenty years past 
 Lady Rainsford, was doubtless the mistress 
 praised in the letter of 1619 as * one of the 
 worthiest living.' But by this time such 
 utterances were tokens of gallantry, with 
 friendship behind it. The Epistle Of his 
 Ladys not coming to Toivn, published 1627, 
 and written in the defter and later style, is 
 ingenious, but sincere in its note. Certainly 
 Drayton's intercourse with the E-ainsfords 
 was kept up for many years before his death. 
 The letter of 1631 speaks of his yearly resort 
 in summer to their seat of Clifford Hall, and 
 the country visits named in the second and 
 third letters were probably to the same 
 place. In Poly-Olhion, he says that Clifford 
 hath ^been many a time the Muses' quiet 
 port.' And, in Sir Henry Rainsford, he 
 found a friend of whom he writes with 
 
LATER WORKS 129 
 
 a flash of the spirit of Hamlet praising 
 Horatio/ 
 
 Could there be words found to express my loss, 
 There were some hope that thus my heavy cross 
 Might be sustained, and that wretched I 
 Might once find comfort ; but to have him die 
 Past all degrees that was so dear to me ! 
 As, but comparing him with others, he 
 Was such a thing, as if some Power should say, 
 ' I '11 take man on me to show Man the way 
 What a friend should be.' But words come so 
 
 short 
 Of him, that when I thus would him report, 
 I am undone, and having nought to say. 
 Mad at myself, I throw my pen away, 
 And beat my breast, that there should be a woe 
 So high, that words cannot attain thereto, 
 'Tis strange that I, from my abundant breast, 
 Who others' sorrows have so well exprest. 
 Yet I by this in little time am grown 
 So poor, that I want to express my own. 
 
 I think the Fates, perceiving me to bear 
 My worldly crosses without wit or fear. 
 Nay, with what scorn I ever have derided 
 Those plagues, that for me they have oft provided, 
 Drew them to council ; nay, conspired rather. 
 And in this business laid their heads together 
 
 ^ Neither this elegy nor three others (see Bibl. § xix.) 
 seem to have been reprinted since the earliest editions. 
 There is a fine image in that to Mr. JeflFrey. Virtue cannot 
 get into kings' cabinets : 
 
 For Ignorance against her stands in state 
 Like some proud porter at a palace gate. 
 
 I 
 
180 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 To find some one plague that might me subvert 
 
 And at an instant break my stubborn heart : 
 
 They did indeed, and only to this end 
 
 They took from me this more than man or friend. . . . 
 
 . . . Methinks that man, unhappy though he be. 
 
 Is now thrice happy in respect of me. 
 
 Who hath no friend ; for that, in having none, 
 
 He is not stirred, as I am to bemoan 
 
 My miserable loss, who but in vain 
 
 May ever look to friend the like again : — 
 
 This more than mine own self ; that, who had seen 
 
 His care of me wherever I have been, 
 
 And had not known his active spirit before 
 
 Upon some brave thing working evermore, 
 
 He would have sworn, that to no other end 
 
 He had been born, but only for my friend. 
 
 These lines, in which the lapidary notes a 
 want of gloss, and the grammarian a harsh- 
 ness of construction, have a plain Jonsonian 
 manliness and faithfulness in their regret, 
 and rise once or twice to the high imaginative 
 style that our time has lost. To Drayton, a 
 man of reserved and retentive heart, words 
 are a metal that is but slowly hammered into 
 a glow — into a noble if not a consummate 
 outline. They are hard to say, but once said 
 he will never take them back, their sincerity 
 enduring, to re-quote his phrase, ' in spite 
 of destiny and time.' Sir Henry died on 
 
LATER WORKS 131 
 
 27th Jan. 1622; and Drayton continued, 
 as appears, his visits to the family. The 
 * knight,' whose house in 1631 he had ' yearly 
 visited,' was the younger Sir Henry Rains- 
 ford, now long since grown up.^ It is not 
 clear when Anne died.-^ 
 
 Drayton's last eight years (1623-31) were 
 productive; even Poly- Olhion did not leave 
 him effete. Before referring to his other 
 friendships and his latter days, there is more 
 verse to notice. In 1619 he had published 
 a revised selection, what would now be 
 called a definitive edition, of all that he 
 had written up to that time, apart from 
 his great work (see Bibl. § xv. 5). A book 
 of wholly fresh matter followed in 1627, and 
 yet another in 1630. The first of these con- 
 tains The Battle of Agincourt, The Miseries 
 of Queen Margaret, Nymphidia, The Quest 
 of Cynthia, The Shepherd's Sirena, The 
 
 ^ Anne's son and heir wrote lines before Sandys' Fara- 
 phrase of Job, etc., 1638, and seems to have belonged to the 
 set of Falkland. He was a strong royalist; his estates were 
 sequestered in the war, and he compounded for £900. See 
 Rudder, New History of Gloucestershire^ 1779, p. 375, under 
 ' Clifford Chambers.' Also The Genealogist, first series, ii. 105- 
 108, for a full pedigree of the Rainsford family. 
 
 '-^ Doubtless after 1627, when the Epistle on her * not 
 coming to town ' was published. (See p. 70.) 
 
132 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Mooncalf, and the Elegies. The volume of 
 1630 contains The Muses' Elizium, and the 
 three biblical paraphrases, Noah's Flood, 
 Moses his Birth and Miracles, and David 
 and Goliah. In these volumes, if certain 
 faculties have faded, new ones have been 
 born. The torch of the old man's passion is 
 low, he has begun to forget what once he 
 felt ; the high oratorical tones of the Epistles 
 are gone for ever. Over some of the longer 
 compositions, excepting the Epistle to 
 Reynolds and some other ' elegies,' lies the 
 burden of that dullness, which in Poly- 
 Olhion had been frequent. The most spirited 
 of them — for the Miseries of Margaret is an 
 exercise of the old kind — is the Battle of 
 Agincourt. But the energy, which in the 
 Ballad is heated to a glow, is here frittered 
 over pages. Of the Ballad, not the Battle, 
 Jonson should have written : 
 
 I hear again thy drum to beat 
 A better cause, and strike the bravest heat 
 That ever yet did fire an English blood. 
 
 The Mooncalf is Drayton's contribution to 
 the censorious school of Hall and Marston, 
 
TllLK-rAGE Ul JllE I'UKMS, lOj/. 
 
LATER WORKS 133 
 
 with its affectation, its distorted bloodshot 
 vision of society. It is a rank satire of the 
 conventional stamp, containing amidst its 
 splutter against avarice and luxury some 
 quaint documents of frivolous or corrupt 
 manners. The Mooncalf, a bastard son of 
 the world and the devil, represents the 
 ignorant sot, who in youth is a wanton, 
 but who rises on the strength of his vices to 
 place and consideration above the good. He 
 is to be seen 
 
 In his caroche, with four white Frieslands drawn, 
 
 And he is pied and garish as the Pawn, 
 
 With a set face, in which, as in a book, 
 
 He thinks the world for grounds of state should 
 
 look. . . . 
 Eats capons cooked at fifteen crowns apiece 
 With their fat bellies stufF'd with ambergris ; 
 And, being to travel, he sticks not on to lay 
 His post-caroches still upon his way ; 
 And, in some six days' journey, doth consume 
 Ten pounds of suckets and the Indian fume. 
 For his attire, when foreign parts are sought. 
 He holds all vile in England that is wrought, 
 And into Flanders sendeth for the nonce. 
 Twelve dozen of shirts providing him at once, 
 Laid in the seams with costly lace, that be 
 Of the smock fashion, whole below the knee. . . . 
 With the ball of 's foot the ground he may not feel, 
 But he must tread upon his toe and heel ; 
 
134 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Doublet and cloak with plush and velvet lined ; 
 Only his headpiece, that is filled with wind. 
 Rags, running horses, dogs, drabs, drinks, and dice 
 The only things that he doth hold in price. 
 
 The whip is heartily used, but the fables 
 
 that fill the poem are turbid. Of the 
 
 scriptural poems, the history of Moses (the 
 
 work of 1604 altered) is stolidly enough 
 
 expanded from the original, but has a touch 
 
 of Drayton's human and compassionate 
 
 temper. The joy of the mother of Moses 
 
 when the princess unwittingly calls on her 
 
 to tend her own child, like the scene of the 
 
 parting of kindred in the Battle ofAgincourt, 
 
 refreshes the wastes of narrative. Of David 
 
 and Goliah there is little to say : but the 
 
 overture to Noah's Flood deserves to be 
 
 known for its dignity, its presentiment of a 
 
 greater sacred diction : 
 
 let thy glorious angel which since kept 
 That gorgeous Eden, where once Adam slept. 
 When tempting Eve was taken from his side. 
 Let him, great God, not only be my guide. 
 But with his fiery fauchion still be nigh, 
 To keep affliction far from me, that I 
 With a free soul thy wondrous works may show. 
 Then like that deluge shall my numbers flow, 
 Telling the state wherein the earth then stood, 
 The giant race, the universal flood. 
 
LATER WORKS 135 
 
 In these final poems such music is rare 
 enough ; but one class of them discovers not 
 so much a renewal of youthful grace as an 
 unsealing in the old poet's spirit of fresh, 
 sweet, and unsuspected sources. Certain 
 late lyrics of Landor and Tennyson, and the 
 Sad Shepherd of Ben Jonson, come to our 
 memory. The fragment of Jonson is the 
 closest of all ; for it was now the second age 
 of pastoral, when the direct influence of 
 Spenser was beginning to confine itself to a 
 caste or school, and was losing that wide 
 predominance which had marked it for 
 thirty years after the Calendar. The 
 pastoral dramas of Italy, which had lain on 
 the desks of Jonson and of Fletcher, had 
 inspired, not merely a preference for the 
 theatrical form, but a change of the ruling 
 motives in pastoral ; or rather, a kind of 
 even and pure elegance, with a marked ab- 
 sence of those allusions to the poet's loyalty, 
 assurance of immortality, and personal pride, 
 which had marked the earlier eclogues, and 
 Drayton's, as we have seen, among them. 
 We do not know that Drayton had read 
 Tasso or Guarini ; neither did he pass be- 
 
136 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 yond the simple and familiar form of dia- 
 logue in song. But to compare the Shep- 
 herd's Ga7iand with The Muses' Elizium is 
 to feel that the first is an Elizabethan 
 poem, while the second is a Caroline poem, 
 written under the same class of influences, 
 with the same flow and glory of rhythm, as 
 the verse of Carew. 
 
 O let not those life-lightening eyes 
 
 In this sad veil be shrouded, 
 Which into mourning puts the skies 
 
 To see them overclouded. 
 
 my Mertilla, do not praise 
 These lamps so dimly burning : 
 
 Such sad and sullen lights as these 
 Were only made for mourning ! 
 
 Much of The Shepherd's Sirena, The Quest 
 of Cynthia, and The Muses Elizium, is in 
 this style. Over Drayton's pastoral has 
 come a light playfulness and a fancy for 
 tripping rhyme. The real shepherd life, 
 with its pasture-craft and country fare, is 
 noted far more than in his earlier Ga^iand, 
 although there is once a kid mentioned that 
 will follow its master for a whole furlong on 
 its hind feet. The eighth eclogue, like the 
 
LATER WORKS 137 
 
 lyrical part of a masque, describes a fairy 
 wedding, and links the whole collection 
 with the finest of all seventeenth-century 
 fantasies, Nymphidia. To conceive common 
 things wholly in miniature, fitted to the 
 needs of an elf ; to plant the faintest sting 
 of satire in a gay parody of the well-nigh 
 forgotten chivalrous ballads ; to carry the 
 vein of Sir Thopas into the world of Oberon ; 
 it is all done, and yet without one touch of 
 the sufiusing imagination of Shakespeare's 
 Dream, which Drayton had before him. 
 The Nymphidia does not move in the land 
 of dreams at all, their wings do not brush 
 it. The smallest things described are in 
 clear daylight. But the verses are kept 
 fresh by the nicety of their cutting. This 
 poem was a favourite in the mid-seven- 
 teenth century, unlike most of Drayton's 
 works, and was often reprinted later. A 
 loan is gracefully levied on it, not only by 
 Herrick, but perhaps by Margaret, Duchess 
 of Newcastle, in her Poems and Fancies, 
 1653, on the Pastime and Recreation of the 
 Queen of Fairies. 
 
 The Elegies are complimentary letters, 
 
138 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 or conversational satires, or reminiscence. 
 Their couplets no longer glide as in En- 
 dimion or the Heroical Epistles. They 
 are sudden, rugged, familiar, sometimes 
 high - inspired : they are not unlike the 
 epistles of Ben Jonson. Traces of the 
 angry old platitude remain when Dray- 
 ton harps on the ill-treatment of poets 
 and the vileness of the world. But it 
 was also the age of queerness in verse, 
 and the elegy on the Lady Penelope 
 Clifton might have furnished Dr. Johnson 
 with further illustrations at the cost of 
 ' metaphysical poetry.' Others are ad- 
 dressed to Drayton's Jacobean friends, for 
 so we may call them ; to William Browne, 
 and to the travelling poet George Sandys 
 on his departure for Virginia. The elegy 
 on Sir Henry Kainsford has been heard 
 already. Another, To my most dearly 
 loved friend, Heiiry Reynolds, Esquire, of 
 Poets and Poesy, is none the less genial 
 for being addressed to a warm admirer. 
 Henry Reynolds, in 1628, produced a 
 translation of Tasso's Aminta, and later 
 an Ovidian poem on the tale of Narcissus. 
 
LATER WORKS 139 
 
 In an epilogue to this work, My thorny stes,^ 
 Eeynolds, after praising Chaucer, Sidney, 
 Spenser, and Daniel, proceeds : ' We have 
 among us a late- writ Poly-Olhioii also, and 
 an Agincourt, wherein I will only blame 
 their honest author's ill fate, in not having 
 laid him out some happier clime, to have 
 given honour and life to, in some happier 
 language.' Drayton was in a good vein 
 when he wrote his review of the English 
 poets from Chaucer to Sir William Alex- 
 ander. It is the evening talk of a whole- 
 some, strenuous old man, who knows better 
 than to burden us with reasons, even for his 
 prejudices, and who rhymes out his tastes 
 and distastes, stopping now and then for the 
 right epithet, which will give the impres- 
 sion that long years have formed. Some of 
 the names are those of his masters — part of 
 his own poetical life ; some of those he 
 praises, more tepidly than posterity, are the 
 greatest ; but therein lies the interest. To 
 see the change of taste, of estimates, when 
 
 ^ This poem, and prose extracts, have been edited by Mr. 
 James Starkey of Dublin from Dr. Grosart's transcript, and 
 are to be published in Englische IStudien. 
 
140 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 we read the judgment of a contemporary, 
 ought not to make us modest in judging 
 our own time ; rather it should make us 
 franker, if we can write as well as Drayton : 
 for then we shall be interesting. The praise 
 of Chaucer only echoes that uttered by all 
 the great Elizabethans like Spenser and 
 Daniel; but, like them, Drayton is under 
 the illusion that Chaucer wrought in a 
 rugged and imperfect tongue : 
 
 As much as then 
 The English language could express to men 
 He made it do. 
 
 The patronage of John Gower by later critics 
 was also foreshadowed by Drayton. The 
 ' princely ' Surrey, the ' reverence ' borne to 
 Wyatt, and the ' dainty passages ' of their 
 wit — we feel the old poet has hit the right 
 words. Spenser, as we saw, is praised for 
 his epic enterprise rather than for the 
 kinds that Drayton himself had imitated. 
 It is curious to hear of Sidney only as the 
 redeemer of English prose from the euphu- 
 ism of Lyly ; Drayton does not say that 
 Sidney's own prose was wrought in a differ- 
 
LATER WORKS 141 
 
 ent artifice. Three famous judgments may- 
 be quoted, to illustrate the manner of the 
 elegy : 
 
 Next 1 Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs, 
 Had in him those brave translunary things 
 That the first poets had ; his raptures were 
 All air and fire, which made his verses clear ; 
 For that fine madness still he did retain 
 Which rightly should possess a poet's brain. 
 
 And surely Nash, though he a proser were, 
 A branch of laurel yet deserves to bear. 
 Sharply satiric was he, and that way 
 He went, since that his being to this day 
 Few have attempted, and I surely think 
 Those words shall hardly be set down with ink 
 Shall scorch and blast so as his could, where he 
 Would inflict vengeance ; and be it said of thee, 
 Shakespeare, thou hadst as smooth a comic vein 
 Fitting the sock, and in thy natural brain 
 As strong conception and as clear a rage. 
 As any one that traflicked with the stage. 
 
 This praise has been considered, wrongly, 
 feeble ; the incommensurable part of Shake- 
 speare was after all little seen by contempo- 
 raries, who honoured those gifts akin to their 
 own, which he was seen to have in greater 
 measure than they, not the gifts that only 
 came in sight on the eve of the nineteenth ' 
 
 ^ The original text has ' Neat Marlowe.' 
 
142 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 century. The praise is as great as could be 
 hoped for. ' As strong conception and as 
 clear a rage ' ; — ' clear ' is noble, illustrious, 
 and ' rage ' is the power that possesses the 
 poet : ' conception ' applies to plotting and to 
 hold on character ; so that Drayton spoke 
 highly here. Jonson is distinguished, in 
 perfectly apt and even modern terms, for his 
 ^ knowledge,' for being ' lord of the theatre,' 
 and as one who 'made our learned'st to stick,' 
 or halt behind, both in comedy and tragedy. 
 The last great name is Chapman's, and he is 
 celebrated as a translator of Homer and 
 Hesiod, and of Musseus, that is, as the poet 
 of Hero and Leander ; he was, along with 
 Drayton himself, the disciple of Marlowe. The 
 rest of the elegy is on the writer's friends. 
 In these verses there is much of Drayton's 
 own life, of his own admirations : it is a 
 curious and beautiful study in distances and 
 values, to see his admiration of Sandys' ' un- 
 usual grace ' and * neatness ' — which are 
 exactly his qualities. The couplets of 
 Sandys may well have been balanced and 
 cleared and smoothed by the example of 
 Drayton's earlier ones. Perhaps the con- 
 
LATER WORKS 143 
 
 eluding lines, concerning those who send 
 their poems ^ by transcription daintily ' and 
 ' through private chambers,' glance at Donne. 
 Drayton cares not for such ; and certainly 
 he had himself never shown any fastidious- 
 ness in facing the printer. Drummond also 
 receives his tribute ; but three other poets, 
 * my dear companions whom I freely chose 
 my bosom friends,' are particularly named, 
 who must, unlike Drummond, have been 
 personal associates. One was Francis Beau- 
 mont ; the second was Sir John Beaumont, 
 whose death in 1627 led Drayton to offer 
 desolately, in the prefatory verses to Bos- 
 luorth Field, ' this poor branch of my wither- 
 ing bays ' ; the third was William Browne,^ 
 by whom Drayton is often mentioned with 
 regard. We know little else about his 
 dealings with other men of letters. With 
 the dictator, Jonson, who survived him 
 six years, his relations were cordial. His 
 stilted, but essentially hearty epistle, pre- 
 fixed in 1627 to Drayton's folio, may be 
 
 1 See Poems of W. Browne, ed. Gordon Goodwin (Lawrence 
 and Bullen ; reissued by Koutledge), London, 1894, index to 
 vol. ii., s,v. 'Drayton.' 
 
144 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 taken to efface his remark (thrown out 
 years before over Drummond's table, and 
 sedulously chronicled) that ' Drayton feared 
 him, and he [Jonson] esteemed not of him/ 
 Energy, hatred of sham, a tendency to shout 
 too loud, some lack of the finer vision, and 
 a manly, almost heroic, acceptance of for- 
 tune, were qualities common to both poets, 
 and stayed with both to the end. 
 
 Drayton was latterly assisted by the Earl 
 and Countess of Dorset (born Mary Clifford). 
 We do not know when they began to favour 
 him ; but in the dedication to the Earl, pre- 
 fixed to The Muses Elizium, he states that 
 * the durableness of your favours hath now 
 made me one of the family.' The ' Divine 
 Poems ' in the same volume are addressed to 
 'your religious Countess.' There is reason 
 to suppose that whatever support could thus 
 be given was needed, and that Drayton died 
 in poor circumstances. Not only the deed 
 of administration quoted below, but a curi- 
 ous independent notice, confirms this tradi- 
 tion. According to Peacham, a contemporary 
 writer, ' Honest Mr. Michael Drayton had 
 about some five pounds lying by him at his 
 
Michael Draviox, a(;ki) 05. 
 
 J''ro!i: tlic Duiivick Callcry. 
 
LATER WORKS 145 
 
 death, which was satis viatici ad ccelum.' ^ 
 With friends to bury him, this or a little 
 more was enough for a bachelor. 
 
 Drayton died at the end of 1631 ; there is 
 no evidence for the month or day,^ even in 
 the registers of the Abbey, where he was 
 buried. Our only account of his end is from 
 Aubrey, who says : * He lived at the bay 
 window next the east end of St. Dunstan's 
 Church in Fleet St. Sepult. in north of 
 Westminster Abbey. The Countess of 
 Dorset (Clifford) gave his monument. Mr. 
 Marshall the stone-cutter who made it told 
 it me.' Aubrey then quotes the inscription, 
 * Do, pious Marble, etc.,' commonly put down 
 to Jonson,^ and states, on the authority of 
 the same Mr. Marshall, that the verses were 
 'made by Mr. Francis Quarles.'* There is 
 
 ^ H. Peacham, Truth of our Times, 1638, p. 37, quoted in 
 Grosart's Introduction to the Foems of Sylvester, vol. i. p. xix. 
 
 2 Though 23rd December is named, I know not on what 
 authority, by Laing, Arch. Scot, I.e. supra, iv. 93. I have 
 seen this date quoted in almanacs. See Appendix B for the 
 MS. verses supposed to be written 'the nyght before he 
 dyed.' They are metaphysical in fantasy, and Drayton some- 
 times fell into that strain. 
 
 3 Printed as Underwoods, No. 17. 
 
 * Lives of Eminent Men, reprint of 1813, London, vol. ii. 
 p. 335. 
 
 K 
 
146 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 a corroboration of Aubrey's statement that 
 Drayton was not buried in Poets' Corner, 
 where his bust, by an unknown hand, stands 
 crowned with laurel and inscribed with the 
 tributary verses. The Apjjeal of Injured 
 Innocence, 1639, printed at the end of 
 Fuller's Church History, is cast in the form 
 of a dialogue between Heylin and Fuller. 
 Fuller names the resting-place of the poet ; 
 and Heylin then answers that ' Drayton is 
 not buried in the south aisle of that [West- 
 minster] Church, but under the North wall 
 and in the main body of it, not far from 
 the little door that opens into one of the 
 prebend's houses . . . though, since, his 
 Statue hath been set up in another place.' 
 Heylin adds that he is sure of this, because 
 he happened to be bidden to the funeral. 
 Fuller asks, ' Have then stones learnt to lie, 
 and must there needs be a fiction in the 
 epitaph of a poet ? ' ^ 
 
 The burial, in the case of a person so^ not- 
 able, may well have been semi-public and 
 fully attended. Drayton did not leave a 
 
 1 This reference is named in Collier's preface, last page. 
 Church History, ed. 1659, ii. 42. 
 
LATER WORKS 147 
 
 will. In default of it, his brother Edmund,^ 
 who lived on till 1644, took out letters of 
 administration which were granted 17th 
 January 1632.^ They are to the effect that 
 the poet died, as Aubrey implies, in St. 
 Dunstan's parish ; that administration was 
 granted to his lawful brother Edmund ; that 
 the final formalities were to be completed 
 next Ascension ; and that his effects were 
 valued at a little under £25. 
 
 1 Dorothy, the daughter of Edmund, was buried 26th 
 March 1625, and Dorothy his wife on 4th April 1625, both 
 at Mancetter. 
 
 2 This was first, I believe, noted in Mr. Goodwin's ed. of 
 William Browne, 1894, ii. 32. The full document is here 
 extracted from the principal Registry of the Probate Division, 
 in the Commissary Court of London. 
 
 'Mense Januarii, 1631 [1632 N.S.]. 
 
 Michael Drayton. Decimo septimo die p[er] m[agist]rum 
 Willmum lames legum D[o]c[t]orem Surrogatum &c. Em[an]- 
 avi[t] Com[m]issio Edmundo Drayton fr[atr]i natural[i] et 
 l[egi]timo Michael Drayton nup[er] p[ar]o[chia]e S[anct]i 
 Dunstan in occiden[te] London ab intestato Defunct[o] Ad 
 administrand[a] bona, &c., de bene, &c., ac de pleno, &c., 
 necnon de vero, &c., Jurat., &c., Salvo iure, &c. 
 
 Civit. London. 
 
 Ascen[sione] In[ventorium] ex[pedituni]. 24'' 2^ 8'^' 
 
/ 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 CRITICAL 
 
 / 
 
 In aweary satire, printed in 1645, and im- 
 puted to George Wither, The Great Assizes 
 liolden in Parnassus by Apollo and his 
 Assessors, the weekly Mercuries and casual 
 press of that hour are accused of slandering 
 literature. The judges, with Apollo presid- 
 ing, range from Erasmus and Pico della 
 Mirandula to Bacon and Grotius. The 
 jurors are Jacobean and Caroline poets, 
 from Shakespeare to May, and include 
 Drayton. They are challenged in turn by 
 the accused ; Drayton on the score of his 
 Poly-Olhion, that 'rude embryon of wit.' 
 Apollo then utters his eulogy at length ; 
 praises his * sonnets sweet of love heroic,' 
 his ' illustrious poem,' Agincourt, and even 
 his earlier 'Tragic legends' and their 
 * pathetic fancies.' 
 
 148 
 
CRITICAL 149 
 
 Thus spake Apollo ; and old Drayton smil'd 
 To see him curb'd that had him thus revil'd. 
 
 Such a scrap of driftwood shows a current 
 of opinion. Drayton was not yet merely one 
 of the lesser Elizabethans famous in their 
 day. But there remain few allusions to him 
 for another hundred years, and it was not 
 till 1748 that his works were reprinted. 
 This anonymous edition was a fruit of that 
 requickened love of our poetry which was 
 working in Gray and Tyrwhitt and Hurd 
 and Percy. Goldsmith's Chinaman, walking 
 in Westminster Abbey,^ was pointed by his 
 guide 
 
 * to a particular part of the temple. " There," says 
 the gentleman, pointing with his finger, " there is 
 the poets' corner ; there you see the monuments 
 of Shakespeare, and Milton, and Prior, and 
 Drayton." — " Drayton 1 " I replied, " I never heard 
 of him before ; but I have been told of one Pope 
 — is he there ? " " It is time enough," replied my 
 guide, " these hundred years ; he is not long dead ; 
 people have not done hating him yet." ' 
 
 The Chinaman, like Goldsmith, had formed 
 his taste in the classical age. It was the 
 
 1 The Citizen of the World, 1760, Letter xiii. 
 
150 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 new spirit, whose backward view was not 
 blocked by Pope and Prior, that had begun 
 to recognise Shakespeare's companions. But 
 there were reasons why Drayton should 
 suffer eclipse during the day of Dryden and 
 Pope ; for he had begun to be obscured 
 even earlier. He had overlived the bitter 
 end of the great patriotic age of which 
 he tried to be the voice ; he had produced 
 much that died at once ; and his instinct 
 to absorb and copy, though he is far too 
 strong to be called a mimic, did not always 
 enable him to shape his materials. In 
 his big work he attempted so much that 
 it is hard to rescue attention for its noble 
 episodes. He left no school, though he had 
 created some original forms like the Heroi- 
 cal Epistles, the Odes, and the Nymphidia. 
 The last of these leaves a tiny wake behind 
 it in the history of our poetry. 
 
 But the change of poetical taste also un- 
 duly marred his fame. He and not Milton 
 is the last Elizabethan in the truer sense. 
 He had sounded the bugle -calls of the older 
 generation ; he had sung his fervent and 
 chivalrous love and his hope of enduring 
 
CRITICAL 151 
 
 verse, and his love for the land and all its 
 ancient things. In the middle of the seven- 
 teenth century the themes of Milton and 
 those around him were different, and Dray- 
 ton's somewhat fitful executive talent failed 
 to buoy up his reputation. But with Mar- 
 lowe and Chapman to share his oblivion he 
 was in good society. 
 
 If Drayton left no school, he had never 
 been vowed to any. He touched and 
 studied poets, from Spenser to Carew, who 
 were of different worlds. During his first 
 twenty years we can tell from his verse 
 what kinds of non-dramatic poetry were 
 in acceptance, and how a gallant and cap- 
 able craftsman could realise them. He was 
 justified in his courage, but it is curious to 
 see the frequent struggle of his strong and 
 stiff-grained spirit with subjects that call for 
 a sure and supple hand. Often he seems to 
 prevail, in the English way, by pure force of 
 toil and character. But the variety of his 
 successes is imposing. He wrote hardly 
 anything that is not luminous here and 
 there, that fails of articulate and beautiful 
 passages, and he wrote much that is 
 
152 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 sustained. If we are to name his most in- 
 superable flaw, apart from his bluntness, it 
 can be seen by any pedagogue ; it is that 
 want of clear and right grammar, which 
 raises smoke and friction in the axles of his 
 chariot. But in youth and age he was 
 often a master of the eclogue and its en- 
 chanting artifice. As sonneteer he could 
 step into the circle of Shakespearean splen- 
 dour and intensity, and once he leapt full 
 into the centre, having murmured the right 
 incantation. He had his days of decorative 
 felicity, when he made Endimion and Phoebe, 
 and not then only. He moved easily in the 
 Ovidian declamatory style, harping on love 
 and desiderium. Even in satire and religious 
 verse, his least fortunate field, he struck out 
 flashes. No man tried in so many forms to 
 utter the passion for England, the passion 
 of England for itself In some he failed, 
 but he v\^ent on undismayed to others not 
 less exacting. He is least impeded and 
 bravest and most musical in several of his 
 odes. Age brought him a lighter hand ; he 
 achieves the pitch of good-natured and 
 manly gaiety in his epistles on himself and 
 
CRITICAL 158 
 
 his friends. But he is latterly happiest in 
 lyric of the gallant, faintly mannered, 
 not too vehement kind, where he is think- 
 ing of his cadence and enjoying it. His- 
 torians have begun to talk as if they 
 were ashamed of Drayton, but theirs is the 
 sacrifice. 
 
 His importance in the musical, and not 
 only in the mechanic, evolution of our verse 
 is real and distinct. He gave an accent of 
 his own to nearly every measure that he 
 practised ; and he practised sextain, rhyme 
 royal, sonnet, Italian octave, heroic couplet, 
 short-lined ode, octosyllabic couplet, dithy- 
 rambic stanza, and alexandrines. There is 
 not one of these that he did not sometimes 
 write as well as any poet of the English 
 Renaissance. It was in the ode and the 
 couplet that his tunes, if not very subtle 
 or abstrusely harmonised, were most his 
 own, and most fertile as examples. The 
 angel of rhythm visits him forgetfully and 
 capriciously, and like Wordsworth he goes 
 on doggedly in its absence. But he has 
 notes at first of the shawm and trumpet, 
 and latterly of the flute as well. 
 
154 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Near to the silver Trent 
 
 Siren a dwelleth, 
 She to whom nature lent 
 
 All that excelleth : 
 By which the Muses late, 
 
 And the neat Graces 
 Have for their greater state 
 
 Taken their places ; 
 Twisting an anadem 
 
 Wherewith to crown her, 
 As it belonged to them 
 
 Most to renown her. 
 
 The slight ruggedness in these verses is not 
 unpleasing, and saves their nerve. And else- 
 where Drayton is among the first to strike 
 out the tune that is heard all through the 
 seventeenth century in Cowley, in Rochester, 
 in Dryden, down to the darker days of lyric : 
 
 I pray thee, love, love me no more, 
 
 Call home the heart you gave me, 
 I but in vain that saint adore 
 
 That can, but will not save me ; 
 These poor half-kisses kill me quite ; 
 
 Was ever man thus served. 
 Amidst an ocean of delight 
 
 For pleasure to be starved ? 
 
 To learn to write this after sixty shows a 
 great vitality of assimilation or invention ; 
 how far Drayton has travelled in his musical 
 
CRITICAL 155 
 
 art from his Spenserian days, or from the 
 style of 1597, — from this ! — 
 
 When heaven would strive to do the best it can, 
 And put an angel's spirit into man, 
 The utmost power it hath, it then doth spend, 
 When to the world a Poet it doth intend. . . . 
 When Time shall turn those amber locks to grey. 
 My verse again shall gild and make them gay. 
 And trick them up in knotted curls anew. 
 And to thy autumn give a summer's hue : 
 That sacred power, that in my ink remains. 
 Shall put fresh blood into thy withered veins, 
 And on thy red decayed, thy whiteness dead, 
 Shall set a white more white, a red more red. 
 
 And yet, as we have seen, this earlier 
 oratory has its own line of descendants, and 
 will startle those who think that it began 
 with Sandys or with Waller. We cannot 
 say of Drayton, in the pedigree of literature, 
 as we must of so many poets, ohiit sine prole. 
 Nor is his interest at all purely of the damn- 
 ing historical kind, which is only another 
 name for a second death, unless it be rein- 
 forced by absolute excellence : for to this 
 excellence he often attains, and in the register 
 of the poets he is himself, not simply one of 
 our ancestors who made experiments. If he 
 does not rank without question among the 
 
156 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 highest, he is an athlete, suspected of half- 
 Olympian and half-terrestrial blood, who is 
 of commanding stature and can lift many 
 weighty burdens ; with a sturdy, dignified 
 beauty of his own, and a soft, musical grace ; 
 and speaking now and then with something 
 of the divine accent. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY^ 
 
 I. THE HARMONY OF THE CHURCH 
 
 1 1591. The I Harmonie | of the Church. \ 
 
 Containing, | The Spirituall Songes and 
 I holy Hymnes, of godly men, Patriarkes 
 and I Prophetes : all, sweetly sounding, to 
 the praise | and glory of the highest. | 
 Now (newlie) reduced into sundrie kinds 
 of I English Meeter : meete to be read or 
 sung, I for the solace and comfort of the 
 godly. I By M. D. | [Device.] | London. | 
 Printed by Richard Ihones, | at the Rose 
 and Crowne, neere Holborne | Bridge. 
 1591. I 
 
 Quarto : pp. 48, blk. lett. (no pagination). Dedica- 
 tion : ' To the Godly and vertuoiis Lady, the Lady 
 lane Deuoreux, of Meriuale,' dated from London by 
 Drayton, 10 February 1590 (1591), and letter ' To the 
 curteous Reader.' Entered 1 February 1591, as 
 ' The Triumphes of the Churche.' 
 
 Copy in Brit. Mus. 
 
 2 1610. A I Heauenly Har- | monie of Spirituall | 
 
 * The University Library, Cambridge, is here denoted by 
 U.L.C. ; that of Trinity College, Cambridge, by T.C.C. ; and 
 that of Trinity College, Dublin, by T.C.D. 
 
 167 
 
158 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Songes, and holy Himnes, of | godly Men, 
 Patriarkes, and Prophets. | Imprinted at 
 London. | 1610. | 
 
 Quarto : pp. 46, blk. lett. Reissue of 1 -with a 
 new title-page and without the leaf of dedication. 
 Copy in a private library. 
 
 3 1843. In Percy Society Publications, vol. vii. 
 
 Reprint edited by Dyce. 
 
 4 1856. In Works (§ xv. 13). 
 
 5 1876. In Works (§ xv. 14). 
 
 II. IDEA, THE SHEPHERD'S GARLAND 
 
 1593. Idea | The | Shepheards | Garland, | 
 Fashioned in nine Eglogs. | Rowlands 
 Sacrifice | to the nine Muses. | EfFugiunt 
 auidos Carmina sola rogos. | [Device with 
 garland] By Peace Plenty. By Wisdome 
 Peace. T. 0. | Imprinted at London for 
 Thomas Woodcocke, dwelling in Pauls | 
 Churchyarde, at the signe of the black 
 Beare. 1593. | 
 
 Quarto : 70 pages. 
 Dedication to Kobert Dudley. 
 Entered 23 April 1593. 
 Copy in Brit. Mus. 
 
 [1606]. In Poemes Lyrick And Pastoral 
 (§ XVI. 1) 
 
 as Eglogs. Each of the 9 eclogues is much revised, 
 and one new one, the 9th in 2, is added. The 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 159 
 
 numbering of four is changed : No. 4 in 1 becomes 
 No. 6 in 2, No. 6 becomes No. 8, No. 8 becomes 
 No. 4, and No. 9 becomes No. 10. In the new 
 No. 8 is the passage (see p. 19 ante) about Selena, 
 Cerberon, Idea, Panape, etc. 
 
 3 1619. In Poems (§ xv. 5). 
 
 This is 2 with some further changes, such as 
 omission of the passage about Selena, and under 
 title of Pastorals Containing Eglogues. 
 
 4 1620. In Poems (§ xv. 6). As in No. 3. 
 
 5 1748. In Works (§ xv. 9), Appendix; as in 
 
 No. 3. 
 
 6 1753. In Works (§ xv. 10). The same; as in 
 
 No. 3. 
 
 7 1795. In Works (§ xv. 11). As in No. 3. 
 
 8 1810. In Works (§ xv. 12). As in No. 3. 
 
 9 1856. In Poems (Collier, § xv. 13). The first 
 
 and only full reprint of 1 (1593). 
 
 10 [?1870]. Idea | [surrounded by garland, and 
 
 musicians with various musical instru- 
 ments on either side] The | Shepheards 
 I Garland, | Fashioned in nine Eglogs. | 
 Rowlands Sacrifice | to the nine Muses. | 
 Effugiunt auidos Carmina sola rogos. | 
 [Device : By Peace Plenty ; by Wis- 
 dome Peace. T. 0.] Imprinted at London 
 for Thomas Woodcocke, dwelling in Pauls 
 
160 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 I Churchyarde, at the signe of the black 
 Beare. 1593. 
 
 Edited by John Payne Collier. 
 
 Quarto : 4 pp. and 70 pp. 
 
 [In Introduction : ' The following tract is a typo- 
 graphical facsimile of Michael Drayton's second 
 publication. ... In reprinting these Pastorals we 
 have not merely imitated the types, but we have 
 followed the pagination, the spelling, and even the 
 corrupt punctuation.'] 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl. 
 
 11 1891. In Poemes, | Lyrick and Pastoral! | 
 
 By I Michaell Drayton, Esquire. | Printed 
 For The Spenser Society. | 1891. | 
 
 4 pp. blank ; title as above and 1 p. : then reprint 
 page by page of 2 (1606) ; with original pagination 
 at foot (pp. 1-120) as noted under 2 : total pp. 126. 
 
 12 1896. In An English Garner . . . edited by 
 
 Edward Arber . . . vol. viii. . . . 1896. 
 
 III. LEGEND OF GAVESTON 
 
 I [1593 or 1594]. Peirs Gaueston | Earle Of Corn- 
 wall. I His life, death, and fortune. | Effu- 
 giunt auidos carmina sola rogos. [Device.] 
 At London, | Printed by I. R. for N. L. 
 and John | Busby, and are to be sold at 
 the West | doore of Paules. 
 
 Quarto : pp. 78 (no pagination). 
 Dedicated to ' Maister Henry Cauendish, Esquire.' 
 Entered 3 Dec. 1593, and named in Preface to 
 Matilda (§ iv. 1., 1594) as * already successful.' 
 Copy in a private library. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 161 
 
 2 [1595]. [Peirs, etc.] 
 
 A second, faulty and surreptitious edition, named 
 in preface to Legend of Kobert (§ viii. 1) according 
 to Heber. 
 
 3 1596. In § VIII. 1, ' newly corrected and aug- 
 
 mented ' : q.v. for later editions. 
 
 IV. LEGEND OF MATILDA 
 
 1 1594. Matilda. | The faire and chaste | Daughter 
 
 of the Lord Robert | Fitzwater. | The Trve 
 Glorie Of The | Noble Hovse Of | Svssex. | 
 Phoebus erit nostri princeps, et carminis 
 author. | At London, | Printed by lames 
 Roberts, for N. L. and | lohn Busby. 1594. 
 
 Quarto : pp. 64 (no pagination). 
 
 Dedicated to ' Mistres Lucie Harrington ' ; pre- 
 fatory address 'To the Honourable Gentlemen of 
 England, and true fauorers of Poesie.' 
 
 Not entered in Stationers' Registers. 
 
 Copy in a private library. 
 
 2 1594. Matilda . . . author. Printed by Valen- 
 
 tine Simmes for N. L. and John Busby 1594. 
 This is 1, with a different title-page. 
 
 3 1596. In § VIII. 1 ; q.v. for later editions. 
 
 ' Much altered ' according to Heber. 
 
 V. SONNETS : IDEA 
 
 I 1594. Ideas | Mirrovr. | Amovrs | In Qvator- 
 zains. | Che serue e tace assai domanda. | 
 
 L 
 
162 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 [Device] At London, | Printed by lames 
 Roberts, for Nicholas | Linge. Anno. 
 1594. I 
 
 Quarto : pp. 56 (no pagination). 
 
 Dedicatory sonnet to Anthony Cooke by Drayton ; 
 sonnet by ' Gorbo il fidele,' unidentified, but named 
 also in the Eclogues. Contains 51 sonnets, entitled 
 * Amour 1, Amour 2,' etc. 
 
 Description from Collier, § xv. 13. 
 
 Entered 30 May 1594. 
 
 Copy in a private library. 
 
 For index of first lines of all Drayton's sonnets 
 and their numbering in Nos. 1, 2, 4, 6, 10 (the only 
 five really difi'erent editions), see Appendix B, and 
 note on p. 44. 
 
 2 1599. In England's Heroical Epistles . . . with 
 
 Idea (§ IX. 3), q.v. 
 
 Here there are 59 sonnets, no longer labelled 
 Amours ; the original Amours are sometimes re- 
 tained, sometimes altered, sometimes omitted; and 
 new sonnets are added. 
 
 3 1600. In Englands Heroical . . . with Idea 
 
 (§ IX. 4). 
 
 Probably 2 reprinted. 
 
 4 1602. With Englands Heroicall Epistles 
 
 (§ IX. 5) 
 
 Here there are 67 sonnets, including some fresh 
 ones. The third real edition. 
 
 5 1603. With The Barrens Wars (§ vii. 3). 
 
 Here there are 67 sonnets, including alterations 
 and additions. No. 4 repeated. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 163 
 
 6 1605. In [Collected] Poems (§ xv. 1). 
 
 Here there are 3 prefatory sonnets, 62 to Idea, 
 and 5 more, called Certaine other Sonnets to great 
 and worthy Personages. The fourth real edition, 
 which Nos. 7-9 repeat. 
 
 7 1608. In Poems (§ xv. 2). 
 
 8 1610. In Poems (§ xv. 3). 
 
 9 1613. In Poems (§ xv. 4). 
 
 10 1619. In Poems (§ xv. 5). 
 
 Here there are 63 sonnets, including more altera- 
 ' tions and additions. The fifth and last real edition. 
 
 1 1 1620. In Poems (§ xv. 6). 
 
 12 1630. In Poems (§ xv. 7). 
 
 1 2a 1631. In Poems (§ xv. 7a). 
 
 13 1637. In Poems (§ xv. 8). 
 
 14 1748. In Works (§ xv. 9). 
 
 15 1753. In Works (§ xv. 10). 
 
 16 1795. In Works (§ xv. 11). 
 
 17 1810. In Works (§ xv. 12). 
 
 Nos. 11-16 reprint the 1619 edition of the Sonnets. 
 
 18 1856. In Works (§ xv. 13). Collier reprints 
 
 Ideas Mirrovr (1) on pp. 145-175, for the 
 first time since 1594, with notes. Also, 
 under the heading Sonnets Under the Title 
 of Idea (pp. 439-465), he gives 'all those 
 sonnets which were not originally inserted 
 
164 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 in "Ideas Mirrour/" with notes. 'Our 
 text,' he adds, ' has usually been that of the 
 impression of Drayton's Poems in 1605'; 
 and in the notes ' the most material varia- 
 tions ' are pointed out. Thus Collier's 
 edition is at present the only work in 
 which every one of Drayton's sonnets, in 
 one of its forms, can be read. For a full 
 collation we must await the complete 
 variorum text. 
 
 19 1883. An English Garner . . . edited by 
 
 Edward Arber . . . vol. vi. pp. 289-322. 
 A reprint of 10, the 1619 edition. 
 
 20 1887. In The Barons' Wars . . . with an 
 
 introduction by Henry Morley . . . 1887. 
 The 1619 edition once more, in pp. 216-247. 
 
 21 1888. In Poems . . . 1605. Printed for the 
 
 Spenser Society. 1888. (§ xv. 15.) 
 Keprint of No. 6 of this section. 
 
 22 1897. In Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles. Edited 
 
 by M. F. Crow . . . 1897. 
 
 No. 10 ; in the vol. containing also sonnets by 
 Griffin and Smith. 
 
 23 1904 In An English Garner . . . Elizabethan 
 
 Sonnets newly arranged and edited by 
 Sidney Lee . . . Westminster. Archibald 
 Constable & Co. 1904. In 2 vols. 
 
 No. 10 reprinted with notes in vol. ii. pp. 179-212. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 165 
 
 VI. ENDIMION AND PHOEBE 
 
 1 [1595]. Endimion | and Phoebe. | Ideas Latmvs. | 
 
 Phoebus erit nostri princeps, et | carminis 
 Author. I At London, | Printed by lames 
 Roberts, for | lohn Busbie. | 
 
 Quarto. 
 
 Dedicatory sonnet signed by Drayton to Lucy, 
 Countess of Bedford : Verses by E. P. and S. G. 
 Entered 12 April 1595. 
 
 Description of title-page from Collier, § xv. 13. 
 
 2 1606. Portion inserted with changes in The 
 
 Man in the Moon (§ xvi. 1) : q.v. for later 
 editions. 
 
 3 1856. In Works (§ xv. 13) = 1 reprinted. 
 
 4 Endimion | and Phoebe. | Ideas Latmvs. | 
 
 Phoebus erit nostri princeps, et | carminis 
 Author. I At London, | Printed by James 
 Roberts for | John Busbie. | 
 
 Edited by John Payne Collier. London. 1870 1 
 Reprint of 1. 
 
 In Introduction : ' Only 2 copies of " Endimion 
 and Phoebe" are extant, and of one of them (the 
 only perfect exemplar) the following pages are a 
 typographical facsimile, with all its peculiarities. 
 We were fortunate enough to have procured the 
 imperfect copy before 1837; until then the poem had 
 never been heard of : the perfect copy is also in a 
 private collection.— J. P. C 
 
 Copy in Brit. Mus., Bodl. 
 
166 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 VII. MORTIMERIADOS, afterwards 
 THE BARONS' WARS 
 
 1 1596. Mortimeriados. | The Lamen- | table 
 
 ciuell wanes of | Edward the Second and 
 the I Barrens. | At London, | Printed by 
 I. R. for Mathew Lownes, | and are to bee 
 solde at his shop in S. Dunstons | Church- 
 yard. 1596. I 
 
 Quarto : 136 pages (no pagination). 
 
 Stanzas of dedication by Drayton to Lucy, 
 Countess of Bedford. Sonnet to the same by E. B. 
 There are no books or cantos marked in this version 
 of the poem, except by spacings in the printing. 
 
 Entered 15 April 1596. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., T.C.C. 
 
 2 [1596 ?]. Mortimeriados . . . Printed by I. R. 
 
 for Humfrey Lownes . . . Churchyard. 
 
 Another issue of 1 ; ' only differs in the imprint ' 
 (Collier). 
 
 * No doubt the two Lownes, Mathew and Henry, 
 had a joint interest in the publication' (Collier). 
 
 Copy in Bodleian. 
 
 3 1603. The | Barrons Wars | in the raigne of 
 
 Edward | the second, | with Englands | 
 Heroicall Epistles. | By Michaell Drayton. ] 
 [Device.] At London, | Printed by I. R. for 
 N. Ling. I 1603. 
 
 Octavo. 
 
 Barons' Wars, pp. 169. Epistles, 103 leaves. 
 Idea, not paged. 
 
 Dedication to Master Walter Aston ; Sonnets 
 by Thomas Greene and J. Beaumont ; and address 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 167 
 
 To the Keader, explaining the reasons of the very 
 great changes made in the poem and its metre (see 
 supra, p. 72). Drayton also now divides the work 
 into six 'books' or 'cantos,' with an 'argument' 
 heading each. The Barons' Wars is reprinted in the 
 following, Nos. 4-12. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodleian (imperfect). 
 
 4 1605. In (Collected) Poems (§ xv. 1). 
 
 5 1608. In Poems (§ xv. 2). 
 
 6 1610. In Poems (§ xv. 3). 
 
 7 1613. In Poems (§ xv. 4). 
 
 8 1619. In Poems (§ xv. 5). 
 
 9 1620. In Poems (§ xv. 6). 
 9a 1631. In Poems (§ xv. 7a). 
 
 10 1748. In Works (§ xv. 9). 
 
 11 1753. In Works (§ xv. 10). 
 
 12 1795. In Works (§ xv. 11). 
 
 13 1810. In Works (§ xv. 12). 
 
 14 1856. In Poems, ed. Collier (§ xv. 13). 
 
 The first and only reprint of 1, Mortimeriados, 
 with valuable notes, pp. 241-376. 
 
 1 5 1887. In The Barons' Wars, etc. H. Morley's 
 
 Selections (§ xxi. 2). 
 
 16 1888. In Poems . . . printed for the Spenser 
 
 Society. 1888. 
 
 A reprint of 4, the Poems of 1605 (§ xv. 15). 
 
168 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 VIII. LEGENDS OF ROBERT, MATILDA, AND 
 GAVESTON 
 
 1 1596. The | Tragicall Legend of Ro | bert, 
 
 Duke of Normandy, surna | med Short- 
 thigh, eldest Sonne to | William Conqueror. 
 I With the Legend of Matilda the | chast, 
 daughter to the Lord Robert Fitzwa | ter, 
 poysoned by King | lohn. | And the Legend 
 of Piers Gaueston, the | great Earle of 
 Cornwall : and mighty fauorite | of king 
 Edward the second. | By Michaell Drayton. 
 I The latter two, by him newly corrected 
 and I augmented. | At London, | Printed 
 by la. Roberts for N. L. and | are to be 
 soldo at his shop at the West | doore of 
 Paules. I 1596. | 
 
 8vo : 222 pages (no pagination). 
 
 Dedication to Lucy Countess of Bedford in prose 
 and to the Lady Anne Harington in verse. Verses 
 by H. G., R. L., * Mirocinius.' 
 
 Entered 21 November. 
 
 Copy in Brit. Mus. 
 
 2 1605. In (Collected) Poems (§ xv. 1). 
 
 3 1608. In Poems (§ xv. 2). 
 
 4 1610. In Poems (§ xv. 3). 
 
 5 1613. In Poems (§ xv. 4). 
 
 6 1619. In Poems (§ xv. 5). 
 
 7 1620. In Poems (§ xv. 6). 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 169 
 
 8 1630. In Poems (§ xv. 7). 
 8a 1631. In Poems (§ xv. 7a). 
 
 9 1637. In Poems (§ xv. 8). 
 
 10 1748. In Works (§ xv. 9). 
 
 11 1753. In Works (§ xv. 10). 
 
 12 1795. In Works (§ xv. 11). 
 
 13 1810. In Works (§ xv. 12). 
 
 14 1888. In Spenser Society's reprint (§ xv. 15) 
 
 of Poems of 1605. 
 
 IX. ENGLAND'S HEROICAL EPISTLES 
 
 1 1597. Englands | Heroicall | Epistles. | By 
 
 Michael Drayton. | [Device] At London, | 
 printed by I. R. for N. Ling, and are to 
 be I sold at his shop at the West doore of | 
 Poules. 1597. | 
 
 Octavo : 164 pp. ; 8 unpaged, 77 fols. + 1 fol. blank. 
 
 Dedication to Countess of Bedford. 
 
 Verses by E. Sc, Gent. 
 
 Dedicatory Epistles to The Keader, Lord Mount- 
 eagle, Lady Anne Harrington, Earl of Bedford, 
 Lord Henry Howard, Mistress Elizabeth Tanfield, 
 Sir T. Mounson, Sir H. Goodere, and Lady F. 
 Goodere. 
 
 Entered 12 October 1597. 
 
 Copies in Bodleian. 
 
 2 1598. Englands | Heroicall | Epistles. | Newly 
 
 enlarged, | by Michaell Drayton. | At 
 London, | Printed by P. S. for N. Ling, 
 
170 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 and are to be | sold at his shop at the West 
 doore of | Poules. 1598. | 
 
 Octavo : 208 pp. ; 4 unpaged, 99 fols. + 1 fol. blank. 
 
 Dedicated to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and 
 verses by Thos. Hassall, and address to Reader. 
 
 The ' new enlargements ' consist of Epistles be- 
 tween Edward the Black Prince and Countess of 
 Salisbury. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodleian. 
 
 3. 1599. Englands | Heroicall | Epistles. | Newly 
 Enlarged. | With Idea. | By Michaell 
 Drayton. | [Device.] At London, | Printed 
 by I. K for N. L. and are to be sold | at 
 his shop at the West doore of | Poules. 
 1599. I 
 
 Octavo : 121 fols. ; paged up to fol. 105. 
 Dedication to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and 
 verses by E. Sc. and T. Hassall. Address to Reader. 
 New : Epistles between Elinor Cobham and Duke 
 Humfrey, and Epistle of H. Howard, Earl of Surrey, 
 to Geraldine (not Geraldine's to Surrey). 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodleian. 
 
 4 1600. Englands Heroicall Epistles newly cor- 
 
 rected with Idea. 
 
 Not in Brit. Mus., etc. 
 
 Hazlitt : 'only one copy known.' 
 
 5 1602. Englands | Heroicall | Epistles | newly 
 
 corrected with Idea. | By Michaell Drayton. | 
 At London | Printed by I. R. for N. L. and 
 are to be sold | at his shop in Fleetstreete, 
 neere Saint | Dunstones Church. 1602. 
 Octavo : 124 fols. (unpaged). 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 171 
 
 Dedication to Lady Bedford. Verses as before. 
 
 New : dedication (of Elinor's Ep.) to James Huish, 
 and Epistle of Geraldine to Surrey. 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodleian, T.C.C. 
 
 6 1603. In the Barrons Wars (§ vii. 3). 
 
 7 1605. In Poems (§ xv. 1). 
 
 New : dedication (of Ep. of Katharine) to Sir 
 John Swinerton. 
 
 8 1608. In Poems (§ xv. 2). 
 
 9 1610. In Poems (§ xv. 3). 
 
 10 1613. In Poems (§ xv 4). 
 
 11 1619. In Poems (§ xv. 5). 
 
 12 1620. In Poems (§ xv. 6). 
 
 13 1630. In Poems (§ xv. 7). 
 13a 1631. In Poems (§ xv. 7a). 
 
 14 1637. In Poems (§ xv. 8). 
 
 15 [169-]. England's | Heroical Epistles, | 
 
 written | In Imitation of the Stile and 
 Manner | of | Ovid's Epistles : | with | An- 
 notations I of I The Chronicle History. | 
 By Michael Drayton Esq.; | Newly Cor- 
 rected and Amended. | Licensed according 
 to Order. | London, | Printed for S. Smeth- 
 wick, in Dean's Court, and | R. Gilford, 
 without Bishops-Gate. 
 
 Octavo : 225 pp. (paginated). No dedications. 
 Prose address to reader, verses by J. W. and B. C, 
 Sir E. Sadleyr, and T. B. 
 
 Copy in Brit. Mus. 
 
172 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 i6 1697. England's Heroical Epistles, | Written | 
 In Imitation of the Stile and Manner | of [ 
 Ovid's Epistles : | with | Annotations | of | 
 The Chronicle History. | By M. Drayton 
 Esq. ; newly corrected and Amended. | 
 Licensed according to Order. | London, | 
 Printed for J. Conyers, at the Bible and 
 Anchor | in Cornhil, 1697. | 
 
 Octavo : 225 pp. (paginated) pastoral illustration. 
 
 Address to Keader. Verses by Sir E. Sadleyr, 
 T. B., J. W., and B. 0. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Advocates. Same ed. as 
 15, with varied title. 
 
 17 1737. England's | Heroical Epistles, | written | 
 
 In Imitation of the Stile and Manner | of | 
 Ovid's Epistles. | with | annotations. | By 
 Michael Drayton, Esq.; j London: | Printed 
 in the Year m.dcc.xxxvii. 
 
 Duodecimo : 272 pages (paginated). 
 
 Dedication by R. Dodsley to H.R.H. the Princess 
 of Wales. 
 
 With a pastoral illustration. Author's Preface. 
 Verses by Thos. Hassall, E. St., and Wm. Alexander. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., T.0.0. 
 
 18 1748. In Works (§ xv. 9). 
 
 19 1753. In Works (§ xv. 10). 
 
 20 1788. Corser names an 8° edition ' with 
 
 Notes and Illustrations by Rev. James 
 Hurdis, D.D.' : not found under either 
 Hurdis or Drayton in B. M. Catalogue. 
 
 21 1795. In Works (§ xv. 11). 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 173 
 
 22 1810. In Works (§ xv. 12). 
 
 23 1888. In Spenser Society's reprint (§ xv. 14) 
 
 of Poems of 1605. 
 
 Selections : 
 
 24 1653. The Epistles of Henry and Rosamond, 
 
 and also a rendering of them into Latin 
 verse are in : 
 Amanda ... by N. H[ookes] . . . 1653. 
 
 25 1658. The Epistle of Henry to Rosamond is 
 
 in Deliciae Poetarum Anglicanorum, which 
 is published in Birkhead's Otium Literatum, 
 etc., by H. Stubbe, according to Hazlitt. 
 Otium Literatum is not in Brit. Mus. 
 
 26 The Epistle of Rosamond to Henry is in 
 
 The I Unfortunate Royal Mistresses, | Rosa- 
 mund Clifford, I and | Jane Shore, | Con- 
 cubines I to King Henry the Second, | and | 
 Edward the Fourth, | with | Historical and 
 Metrical Memoirs | of those | Celebrated 
 Persons. | by Sir Thomas More, Michael 
 Drayton, | Thomas Hearne, &c. | London: | 
 Printed by and for William Cole, | 10, 
 Newgate-Street. | 
 
 For other selections see § xxii. 1, 2, 3. 
 
 X. SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE 
 
 I 1600. The first part | Of the true and bono | r- 
 able historic, of the life of Sir | John Old- 
 castle, the good | Lord Cobham. | As it 
 
174 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 hath been lately acted by the right honor- 
 able the Earle of Notingham | Lord high 
 Admirall of England | his seruants. | 
 [Device.] London | Printed by V. S. for 
 Thomas Pauier, and are to be solde at | 
 his shop at the signe of the Catte and 
 Parrots | neere the Exchange. | 1600. 
 
 Octavo : 40 leaves (no pagination). 
 
 Entered 11 August 1600. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl. 
 
 2 [1600]. The first part | Of the true and 
 
 bono- I rable history, of the Life of | Sir 
 John Old-castle, the good | Lord Cobham. | 
 As it hath bene lately acted by the Right | 
 honorable the Earle of Notingham | Lord 
 High Admirall of England, | his Seruants. | 
 Written by William Shakespeare. | [Device 
 Heb Ddiev Heb ddim] | London printed 
 for T. P. I 1600. I 
 
 40 leaves (no pagination). Slight differences in 
 text and directions. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl. 
 
 The device is Welsh : ' Without God, without all.' 
 
 3 1780. In Supplement | to the Edition of | 
 
 Shakspeare's Plays | published in 1778 | 
 by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens | 
 . . . London . . . mdcclxxx. 2 vols. 
 This play is in vol. ii. pp. 265-370. 
 
 4 1810. In The Ancient British Drama [called ' a 
 
 drama ... by A. Munday? M.D. ? and 
 others ' in Cat. of B. M.] 
 Vol. i. pp. 318-349. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 175 
 
 5 1848. In I A Supplement To The Plays | Of | 
 
 William Shakspeare . . . Comprising The 
 Seven Dramas | ... Sir John Oldcastle | 
 [&c.] . . . Edited By William GiUmore 
 Simms | . . . New York | . . . 1848. | 
 Pp. 87-115. 
 
 6 1852. In The | Supplementary Works | Of | 
 
 William Shakspeare | Comprising | His 
 Poems And Doubtful Plays | . . . A New 
 Edition, | By William Hazlitt, Esq. | 
 London | . . . 1852. | 
 Pp. 105-164. 
 
 7 1887. In The Doubtful Plays | Of | Wilham 
 
 Shakspeare | . . . by | William HazHtt. 
 London | George Routledge And Sons | 
 . . . 1887. I 
 Pp. 105-164. 
 
 8 1894. In Shakespeare's Doubtful Plays | The 
 
 First Part | Of | Sir John Oldcastle | 
 Edited With An Introduction | By | A. F. 
 Hopkinson | London | M. E. Simms and 
 Co. I . . . 1894. 
 
 Octavo : pp. 4 (unpaged) + xxiii -i- 97. 
 The only separate edition, apparently, of this 
 play ; the editor's introduction attempts, on slender 
 evidence, to distinguish Drayton's share in the 
 work. 
 
 XI. TO KING JAMES 
 
 I 1603. To the Ma | iestie of King | James. | A 
 gratulatorie Poem | by Michaell Drayton. | 
 
176 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 At London | Printed by lames Roberts, 
 for T. M. I and H. L. 1603. | 
 
 Quarto : seven leaves (unpaginated) ; To the 
 Reader, and plate are at end of the book. 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl. 
 
 XII. THE OWL 
 
 1 1604. The | Ovvle. | by Michaell Drayton | 
 
 Esquire. | Noctuas Athenas. | [Illustration: 
 owl on a tree and birds flying; device, 
 suspended from tree, Prvdens non 
 Loqvax.] | London | Printed by E. A. for 
 E. White and N. Ling: | and are to | be 
 soldo neere the litle north doore of S. 
 Paules Church, j at the signe of the Gun. 
 1604. I 
 
 Quarto : 27 leaves. 
 
 Dedication to Sir W. Aston, and address to the 
 Reader. Latin lines by A. Greneway. 
 
 Entered 8 Feb. 1604. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl., Rylands. 
 
 2 1619. In Poems (§ xv. 5). 
 
 3 1748. In Works (§ xv. 9), Appendix. 
 
 4 1753. In Works (§ xv. 10). 
 
 5 1795. In Works (§ xv. 11). 
 
 6 1810. In Works (§ xv. 12). 
 
 XIII. A P^AN TRIUMPHAL 
 
 I 1604. A Pa3an Trivmphall | composed for the 
 Societie of I the Goldsmiths of London : 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 177 
 
 congratulating his High- ] nes magnificent 
 entring the citie. | To the Maiestie of the 
 King. I By Michael Drayton. | Dicite io 
 psean, io bis dicite psean. London | printed 
 for lohn Flasket, and are to be sold at his 
 shop in I Pauls Churchyard at the signe of 
 the black Beare. 1604. 
 
 Octavo : 8 leaves (first and last blank), no pagina- 
 tion. 
 
 Entered 20 March 1604. 
 
 Copy in Bodl, T.C.D. 
 
 2 1828. In The | Progresses, | Processions, and 
 Magnificent Festivities, | of | King James 
 the First, | his royal consort, family and 
 Court, I collected from | Original Manu- 
 scripts . . &c. . . . I By John Nichols, F.S.A. 
 Lond. Edinb. and Perth. | Volume i. | 
 London . . . 1828. Vol. i. pp. 402-407. 
 
 XIV. MOSES 
 
 1 1604. Moyses | in a Map of | his Miracles. \ 
 
 By Michael Drayton | Esqvire. | [Device.] 
 At London | Printed by Humfrey Lownes, 
 and are to be sold by | Thomas Man the 
 Younger. | 1604. | 
 
 Quarto : 90 pages (paginated), 5 pages unpaginated. 
 
 Dedication in verse to Sir W. Aston ; letter to the 
 Keader. Lines by (Sir) J. Beaumont ; to Drayton and 
 Aston by Beale Sapperton, lines by T. Andrewe 
 
 Entered 25 June 1604. Copy in Brit. Mus., Bodl. 
 
 2 1630. Altered as Moses, his Birth and Miracles, 
 
 in § XXI. 1. 
 
 M 
 
178 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 3 1748. In Works (§ xv. 9), Appendix. 
 
 4 1753. In Works (§ xv. 10). 
 
 5 1795. In Works (§ xvi. 11). 
 
 6 1810. In Works (§ xv. 12). 7 1892. § xxi. 6. 
 
 XV. COLLECTED POEMS 
 
 1 1605. Poems: | ByMichaellDraiton | Esquire. | 
 
 [Device] London, | Printed for N. Ling. | 
 1605. 
 
 Octavo : 500 pp. 
 
 Arguments, verse to Sir W. Aston, Address to 
 Reader, verses by T. Greene and J. Beaumont on 
 unnumbered pp. Barons Wars pp. 1-159. Another 
 address to Reader, verses by E. St. [not E. Sc, as in 
 earlier edd.], &c., on unnumbered pp. Englands H. 
 Epistles (with new dedication to Sir J. Swinerton 
 added in midst), 104 pages, commencing paging 
 again ; Sonnets, and 3 Legends on unnumbered pp. 
 
 Coi^ies in Brit. Mus., Bodl. 
 
 2 1608. Poems : | by Michael Drayton | Esquire. 
 
 Newly corrected by the | Author. | London | 
 Printed for lohn Smethwicke, and | are to 
 be sold at his Shop in | Saint Dunstones 
 Church- I yard, vnder the Diall. | 1608. | 
 
 Octavo : pp. 500. 
 
 Same contents as 1. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl, Edin. Univ. 
 
 3 1610. Poems ... by | Michael Drayton | Es- 
 
 qvire. | Newly Corrected by the | Author. | 
 London | Printed for John Smethwicke, 
 and to bee | sold at his Shop in Saint 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 179 
 
 Dunstanes | Church-yard, vnder the Diall. I 
 1610. 
 
 Octavo : paging as No. 1. 
 
 Same contents, with additional sonnets by John 
 Selden, and by E. Heyward 'To his friend the 
 Author.' 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus. 
 
 4 1613. Poems : | by I Michael Drayton | Esqvire, | 
 
 Newly Corrected by the | Author. | [De- 
 vice.] I London | Printed by W. Stansby 
 for John Smethwicke, | and are to bee sold 
 at his Shop in Saint Dunstanes Church- 
 yard, vnder | the Diall. 1613. | 
 
 Octavo : paged in part ; contents as in No. 3. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl., T.C.C., Chatsworth. 
 
 5 1619. Poems : ( by | Michael | Drayton | Es- 
 
 qvire I Viz. I The Barons Warres, | Eng- 
 lands Heroicall Epistles, | Idea, | Odes, | 
 The Legends | of Kobert, Duke of Nor- 
 mandie, | Matilda, | Pierce Gaveston ! And, 
 Great Cromwell, | The Owle, | Pastorals, 
 Contayning Eglogues, | With the Man in 
 the Moone. | [Device] Peto I.S. Non Altum. 
 London, | Printed by W. Stansby for lohn 
 Smethwicke, and are to be sold | at his 
 Shop in Saint Dunstanes Church-yard in | 
 Fleet-streete vnder the Diall. [No date.] 
 The titles are in a vertical list on the title-page. 
 
 There is alscP a frontispiece with title : 
 
 Poems I by | Michael Drayton | Esquyer. | 
 Collected into | one Volume | With | 
 sondry Peeces i inserted I neuer before Im- 
 
180 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 printed. | London | printed for | John | 
 Smethwick. | 
 
 Fresh title-page for each section : 
 
 Englands | Heroicall \ Epistles. | By | Michael 
 Drayton, | Esquire. | With | Some short 
 Annotations of the Chronicle | Historie 
 to the same: To which, the | Reader is 
 directed, by this Marke * | in the begin- 
 ning of euery Line, to | which the Annota- 
 tions I are pertinent. | London, | Printed 
 for lohn Smethvvicke. | 1619. 
 
 Address to Keader. 
 
 Idea. I In | Sixtie three | Sonnets. | By 
 Michael Drayton, | Esquire. | London, | 
 Printed for lohn Smethvvicke. | 1619. | 
 
 Address in verse to Keader. 
 
 Odes. I With | Other Lyrick | Poesies. | By | 
 Michael Drayton, | Esquire. | London, j 
 Printed for lohn Smethvvicke. | 1619. 
 
 Verses to Sir Henry Goodere — Address to Keader. 
 
 The I Legends | of | Robert, Duke of Nor- 
 mandie. ] Matilda the Faire. | Pierce 
 Gaveston, Earle of Cornwall. ] Thomas 
 Cromwell, Earle of Essex. | By | Michael 
 • Drayton, | Esquire. | London, | Printed for 
 lohn Smethvvicke. | 1619. 
 
 Verses to Sir W. Aston — Address to Keader. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 181 
 
 The I Owle. | By 1 Michael Drayton, | Es- 
 quire. I Noctuas Athenas. | London, | 
 Printed for lohn Smethvvicke. | 1619. 
 
 Verse to Sir W. Aston— Address to Keader— 
 Latin Verse In Noctuani Draytoni by A. Grenewai. 
 
 Pastorals. | Contayning | Eglogves, | With 
 the I Man in the Moone. | By | Michael 
 Drayton, | Esqvire. | London, [ Printed for 
 John Smethvvicke. | 1619. 
 
 Dedicated to Sir W. Aston — Address to Keader. 
 
 The whole work is 487 pages folio. 
 
 Dedication to Sir W. Aston. Address to Headers 
 of Barons' Wars. Lines by T. Greene, J. Beaumont, 
 E. Heyward, J. Selden, Thos. Hassell, W. Alexander 
 and E. Scory. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Miis., Bodl, T.C.C., Advocates. 
 
 With portrait of Drayton engraved by William 
 Hole, garland stating his age (see p. 1 supra), and 
 Latin lines Lux Hareshulla, &c. It is not known 
 why this portrait, dated 1613, only appeared in 1619. 
 We are not to be misled by the pasted copy named 
 under § xviii. 1. 
 
 1620. Poems .... 1620. 
 
 Identical with 4 and 5 but for date and spacing 
 of words at bottom of page. Imprint here as follows : 
 London, | Printed by William Stansby for lohn | 
 Smethwicke, and are to be sold at his Shop | in 
 Saint Dunstans Church-yard in | Fleetstreete. 1620. 
 
 1630. Poems | by | Michael | Drayton | Es- 
 quyer. | Newly Corrected | & Augmented | 
 London | Printed title-page on illustrated 
 
leS2 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 plate I by Willi : | Stansby | for John | 
 SmetliAvick. 
 
 Octavo : 496 pp. (pagination). 
 
 Prose dedication to Sir W. Aston, and address to 
 the Keader : the lines by T. Greene, J. Beaumont, 
 Heyward, Selden. 
 
 Contains The Barons Warres, England's Heroicall 
 Epistles, with separate title, the four Legends, with 
 separate title, and Idea (ed. 1619). 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl, U.L.C. (wants general 
 title-page). 
 
 Separate title-page: — Englands | Heroicall 
 Epistles. I By | Michael Drayton, | Esqvire. | 
 With I Some short Annotations of the | 
 Chronicle Historie to the same : | To which 
 the Reader is directed, | by this Marke * 
 in the beginning | of euery Line, to which 
 the I Annotations are pertinent. | [Device.] | 
 London, | Printed for lohn Smethwicke, 
 1630. I 
 
 Separate title-page: — The | Legends | of | 
 Robert, Duke of Normanclie | Matilda, the 
 Faire. | Pierce Gaveston, Earle of Corn- 
 wall. I Thomas Cromwel, Earle of Essex. | 
 By I Michael Drayton, | Esqvire. | [Device.] | 
 London, | Printed for lohn Smethwicke. | 
 1630. I 
 
 7a [? 1631]. 
 
 Poems: | by | Michael Drayton | Esqvire, | 
 Newly Corrected by the | Avthor. | [De- 
 vice.] I London, | Printed by William 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 183 
 
 Stansby, for lohn Smethwicke, and | are to 
 be sold at his Shop in Saint Dunstanes | 
 Church-yard, vnder the Dyall. | 
 Octavo. 
 
 Dedication in verse to Sir W, Aston, Epistle to 
 Eeader, Verses by J. Selden, E. Heyward, J. Beau- 
 mont, and Greene. 
 
 Contains The Barons Warres, Englands Heroicall 
 Epistles, Idea, Legends of Robert, Matilde and Pierce 
 Gaveston. Before Epp. is another Epistle to Reader, 
 and verses by E. St., W. Alexander, Dedication to 
 Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and Sonnet to the same. 
 Copy in Brit. Mus. [catalogue dates ? 1631], Bodl. 
 
 8 1637. Poems | by | Michael Dray ton | Esquyer. | 
 
 Collected into | one Volume. | Newly 
 Corrected | mdc.xxxvil | London | Printed 
 for I John Smethwick. 
 
 Duodecimo : 487 pp. Title-page with wreathed 
 head of Drayton (not half-length as in Hole's, of 
 whose portrait this head looks like a partial copy) 
 on pedestal, with female figures either side, and male 
 figures below, and a dog. The title is on a slab 
 in the middle : ' William Marshall sculp: '. 
 
 The last new edition of Drayton's collected works 
 for over a century. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl., Advocates (no title- 
 page). 
 
 9 1748. The | Works | Of | Michael Drayton, 
 
 Esq. ; I A Celebrated Poet in the Reigns of | 
 Queen Elizabeth, King James i. and 
 Charles i. | Containing | I. The Battle of 
 Agincourt. | II. The Barons [sic] Wars. | 
 III. England's Heroical Epistles. | IV. The 
 Miseries of Queen Margaret, the | Un- 
 fortunate Wife of the most Unfor I tunate 
 
184 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 King Henry vi. | V. Nymphidia: or the 
 Court of I Fairy. | VI. The Moon-Calf. | 
 YII. The Legends of Robert Duke of | 
 Normandy, Matilda the Fair, Pierce j 
 Gaveston, and Tho. Cromwell E. of Essex. | 
 VIII. The Quest of Cynthia. | IX. The 
 Shepherd's Sirena. | X. Poly-Olbion, with 
 the Annotations of j the learned Selden. | 
 XL Elegies on several Occasions. | XIL 
 Ideas [sic]. Being all the Writings of that 
 celebrated Author, | Now first collected 
 into One Volume. | [Device.] | London: 
 Printed by J. Hughs, near Lincoln's-Inn- 
 Fields, I And Sold by R. Dodsley, at TuUy's- 
 Head, Pall-Mall : J. JollifFe in St. James's |- 
 Street: and W. Reeve in Fleet-Street. 
 
 MDCCXLVIII. 
 
 Folio : pp. 400 ; pp. 3-12 contain An Historical 
 Essay On The Life and Writings of Michael Drayton, 
 Esq. : This anonymous biograj)hy is the first 
 attempt of the kind after the casual notices of 
 Fuller, Phillips, and Winstanley. Oldys, in Biogra- 
 phia Britannica, 1750, s.v. 'Drayton,' controverts it 
 and increases the material. There are separate title- 
 pages (not the old ones) for most of the poems, and 
 engravings heading each principal poem. In some 
 copies, without mention of date, the pagination is 
 contmued to page 490 by the addition of an ap- 
 pendix with the following title-page : 
 
 Appendix | to the | Works j Of Michael Drayton, 
 Esq. I Containing \ The Owl. | The Man in the 
 Moon. I Odes, with other Lyrick Poems. | Eclogues. | 
 The Muses [sic] Elysium, &c. | Since the Publication 
 of Mr. Drayton's Works by Subscription | in 1748, 
 the Publisher has been favoured with the follow- 
 ing I Pieces of that Author, extracted from the 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 185 
 
 Cabinets of the | Curious, which did not come to 
 hand in time to be inserted in | the former Collection. 
 
 The Odes are the recension of 1619. The ' Pas- 
 torals containing Eclogues' are those of 1606 [§ xvi. 
 1]. The ' &c. ' means Noah's Flood, Moses His Birth 
 and Miracles, and David and Goliah. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl., etc. 
 
 10 1753. The | Works | of | Michael Drayton 
 
 Esq.; I A Celebrated JPoet in the Reigns 
 of I Queen Elizabeth, King James i. and 
 Charles i. | Containing [&c.] . . . London : 
 Printed for W. Reeve, at Shakespear's 
 Head in Fleet-street, mdccliii. 
 
 Octavo : 4 vols. A reprint of the folio 1748 
 edition and its Appendix. Illustrated plate repre- 
 senting tomb, with bust. 
 
 Copy in Brit. Mus. 
 
 11 1795. The | Works | of the | British Poets. | 
 
 With Prefaces, | Biographical And Criti- 
 cal, I by Robert Anderson, M.D. | Volume 
 Third : | Containing | Drayton, Carew, and 
 Suckling. I London | . . . 1795. | 
 
 With a separate title-page : — 
 
 The I Poetical Works j of | Michael Drayton, 
 Esq. I Containing his 
 
 Poly-Olbion, 
 Barons Wars, 
 England's Heroical 
 
 Epistles, 
 Battle of Agincourt, 
 Elegies, 
 
 &c. &c. &c i 
 
 Legends, 
 Ideas, [sic] 
 Nymphidia, 
 Quest of Cynthia, 
 Sonnets, 
 
186 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 To which is prefixed | The Life Of The 
 Author. I [Verses from Kirkpatrick's Sea- 
 Piece.] I Edinburgh : | Printed By Mundell 
 and Son, Royal Bank Close, | Anno 1793. 
 
 Octavo : pp. vi. 1-670 occupied with Drayton. 
 The ' &c.' inchides The Miseries of Queen Margaret, 
 The Mooncalf, The Owl, The Man in the Moon, 
 Odes, 'Pastorals containing Eclogues,' The Muses 
 [sic] Elysium, Noah's Flood, Moses' Birth and 
 Miracles, David and Goliah. 
 
 The ' Life ' is meag-re, inexact, and of no value. 
 
 12 1810. The Works of the English Poets The 
 
 Additional Lives by Alexander Chalmers. 
 . . . Vol. IV. . . . 1810. 
 
 Same contents in same order, plus some more of 
 the dedications by and to Drayton. Another but 
 equally bad Life. 
 
 13 1856. Poems | By | Michael Drayton, | From 
 
 The I Earliest And Rarest Editions, | Or 
 From unique Copies. | Edited By | J. 
 Payne Collier, Esq. | Printed For The | 
 Roxburghe Club. | London : | J. B. Nichols 
 And Sons, 25 Parliament Street. | 
 
 MDCCCLVI. I 
 
 With a frontispiece page also : — 
 
 Poems by Michael Drayton | [Engraving.] | 
 Roxburghe Club. 
 
 Quarto : Ten pages unnumbered ; then Introduc- 
 tion, pp. i-li and one blank ; and pp. 1-173 and one 
 blank ; and 2 pp. blank. 
 
 Contains Collier's valuable Introduction ; The 
 Harmony of the Church ; Idea, The Shepherd's 
 Garland ; Idea's Mirror ; Endimion and Phoebe : 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 187 
 
 Mortimeriados, The Lamentable Civil Wars, &c. ; 
 Poems Lyric And Pastoral ; Idea, Sonnets by- 
 Michael Drayton (from the editions of 1599 and 1613). 
 With the original title-pages copied of all these 
 works except the last, and Collier's notes after each 
 poem. 
 
 This volume contains nearly all of the important 
 works that are not reprinted in any other number of 
 this section. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl., U.L.C. 
 
 14 1876. The complete works of | Michael 
 
 Drayton, | now first collected. | With 
 introductions and notes by | the Rev. 
 Richard Hooper, M.A. | Vicar of Upton 
 and Aston Upthorpe, Berks, | and editor 
 of Chapman's Homer, Sandys' Poetical 
 Works, etc. | London, | John Russell 
 Smith, I Soho Square, | 1876. 
 
 3 vols. 8vo, published in the Library of Old 
 Authors, and containing : Hole's portrait, introduc- 
 tion, reprint in modern spelling of 1622 edition of 
 Poly-Olbion, and of The Harmony of the Church. 
 No more of this edition of Drayton has appeared. 
 
 15 1888. Poems: | By Michael Draiton, Esquire. | 
 
 Printed for the Spenser Society. | 1888. 
 
 Quarto : 2 pp. blank, 4 pp. containing above title, 
 then pp. 1-500. Bound in Two Parts (Part i. is 
 pp. 1-256) + 2 pp. blank. Title-page of 1605 edition 
 and its separate pagination given. 
 
 XVI. POEMS LYRIC AND PASTORAL 
 
 I [1606?]. Poemes | Lyrick and pastorall. | Odes, | 
 Eglogs, I The man in the Moone. | By 
 
188 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Michaell Drayton, | Esquier. | At London, | 
 Printed by R. B. for N. L. and I. Flasket, | 
 
 Octavo : 119 pages (no pagination). 
 
 Prose address to Reader. 
 
 No date. 
 
 Dedication : ' To the deseriiing memory of my | 
 most esteemed Patron and friend, | Sir Walter 
 Aston, . . .' 
 
 Entered 19 April 1606. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl., Edin. Univ. 
 
 2 1856. In Poems, ed. Collier (§ xv. 13). 
 
 3 1891. Poemes, | Lyrick and Pas tor all. | By 
 
 Michaell Drayton, Esquire. | Printed for 
 the Spenser Society. | 1891. | 
 
 Quarto : 2 pp. with above title and printer's 
 mark ; then reprint of 1, with title-page, pp. 1-120. 
 
 For reprints of Eclogues see under § ii. 
 
 Other reprints of Odes and The Man in the 
 Moon : — 
 
 4 1619. In Poems (§ xv. 5). 
 
 5 1620. In Poems (§ xv. 6). 
 
 6 1748. In Works (§ xv. 9), Appendix. 
 
 7 1753. In Works (§ xv. 10). 
 
 8 1795. In Works (§ xv. 11). 
 
 9 1810. In Works (§ xv. 12). 
 
 lo 1896. In 
 
 An English Garner . . . edited by 
 Edward Arber . . . Vol. viii. . . . 1896. 
 (The Odes and Eclogues.) 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 189 
 
 II 1903. In 
 
 An English Garner. Some Longer Eliza- 
 bethan Poems, with An Introduction by 
 A. H. Bullen . . . 1903. 
 Odes of 1606 and 1619. 
 
 XVII. LEGEND OF CROMWELL 
 
 1 1607. The | Legend | Of Great Cromwel. | By 
 
 Michael Drayton | Esquier. [Device.] At 
 London | Printed by Felix Kyngston, and 
 are to be sold by I. Flasket, | dwelling in 
 Paules Churchyard at the signe of | the 
 black Beare. 1607. 
 
 Quarto, pp. 50, no pagination. 
 
 Dedicated ' to the deseruing memorie of Sir W. 
 Aston.' 
 
 Entered 12 October 1607. Copy in a private 
 library. 
 
 2 1609. The | Historic | of the Life | and Death 
 
 of the I Lord Cromwell, sometimes | Earle 
 of Essex, and Lord Chancel | lor of Eng- 
 land. I By Michael Drayton | Esquier. | 
 At London, | Imprinted by Felix Kyng- 
 ston, for { William Welby, dwelling in 
 Pauls Churchyard | at the signe of the 
 Greyhound. | 1609. 
 
 Quarto : 40 pages (pagination). Text altered 
 (Hazlitt). 
 
 Dedication to Sir W. Aston. Words To the 
 Reader. Verses by I. Cooke, H. Lucas, Chr. Brooke. 
 
 Identical with 1 but for title-page. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus. (imperfect), Bodl. 
 
190 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 3 1610. In A I Mirour | for Magi- | strates : Being 
 
 a trve Chronicle | Historic of the Vn timely 
 I falles of such vnfortunate Princes and men 
 of note, I as haue happened since the first 
 entrance of Brute | into this Hand, vntill 
 this our I latter Age. | Newly Enlarged 
 with a Last | part, called A Winter nights 
 Vision, being an addition of such Tragedies, 
 especially famous, as are exempted | in the 
 former Historic, with a Poem annexed, | 
 called Englands Eliza. | At London. | Im- 
 printed by Felix Kyngston. | 1610. | 
 
 Pp. 520-547. 
 
 Copy in Brit. Mus., s.v. ' Higgins, John,' in 
 catalogue. 
 
 4 1619. In Poems (§ xv. 5). 
 
 5 1620. In Poems (§ xv. 6). 
 
 6 1748. In Works (§ xv. 9). 
 
 7 1753. In Works (§ xv. 10). 
 
 8 1795. In Works (§ xv. 11). 
 
 9 1810. In Works (§ xv. 12). 
 
 10 1815. In A Mirror for Magistrates. | edited by | 
 Joseph Haslewood. | Volume ii. | London : | 
 Printed for | Lackington, Allen and Co. 
 Finsbury Square ; | and | Longman, Hurst, 
 Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row. | 
 1815. I 
 
 Pp. 502-539. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 191 
 
 XVIII. POLY-OLBION 
 
 1613. Poly-Olbion | or | A Chorographicall 
 Description of Tracts, Riuers, | Mountaines, 
 Forests, and other Parts of this renowned 
 Isle I of Great Britaine, 1 With intermix- 
 ture of the most Bemarquable Stories, 
 Antiquities, Wonders, | Rarityes, Plea- 
 sures, and Commodities of | the same : | 
 Digested in a Poem | By Michael Dray- 
 ton, I Esq. 1 With a Table added, for 
 direction to those occurrences of Story and 
 Antiquitie, | whereunto the Course of the 
 Volume easily leades not. | [Device.] — 
 London, Printed by H. L. for Matthew 
 Lownes : I. Browne : I. Helme, | and I. 
 Busbie. 1613. 
 
 Succeeding this title-page is a frontispiece repre- 
 senting Albion, and labelled ' Great Britaine ' ; a 
 woman with the sceptre and a cornucopia. Castle 
 and forest are speckled over her robe. Behind is the 
 open sea, with ships, visible through the archway. 
 On the columns of the arch stand jfigures of the 
 Princes whom 'Time hath seen ambitious of her.' 
 The wording runs : — 
 
 Poly-Olbion | By | Michaell Drayton | Esqr. : | 
 London printed for M. Lownes, I. Browne | 
 I. Helme. I. Busbie \ Ingraue by W. Hole. 
 
 Folio : 303 pp. and 15 unnumbered leaves, con- 
 taining verses ' Vpon the Frontispiece,' the frontis- 
 piece, title-page, dedication, verses, &c., and a table. 
 Dedication in prose to Prince Henry ; portrait of 
 ' Henricus Princeps,' full-length, with pike in aim, 
 and plumed helmet on the ground, ' William Hole | 
 sculp :', and verses opposite concerning the portrait ; 
 
192 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 epistle to The Generall Keader, and another to My 
 friends, the Cambro-Britans ; preface From the 
 Author Of The Illustrations, namely, John Selden, 
 dated ' from the Inner Temple,' May 9, 1612. These 
 Illustrations, or notes, follow each of the Eighteen 
 Songs in the volume. Eighteen double-page engraved 
 maps, one to each Song. Entered 7 Feb. 1612. 
 
 In some copies the frontispiece is absent, and in 
 some the Illustrations. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl., U.L.C., T.C.C., 
 Rylands, T.C.D. 
 
 In Brit. Mus. an earlier and undated issue [? 1612], 
 with no title-page ; a frontispiece, verses, dedication, 
 portrait (earlier state, without Henricus Princeps) 
 of Prince Henry, epistles, etc., as in 1613 edition, 
 18 songs. Folio, 303 pp. and 10 unpaginated leaves, 
 no table, maps before each song. A copy of this 
 issue in the Edinb. Univ. Library has Hole's portrait 
 of the 1619 ed. of the Poems carefully pasted in ; 
 the watermark shows that it was not part of the 
 original book. 
 
 2 1622. A I Chorographicall | Description Of 
 All I the Tracts, Rivers, | Mountains, 
 Forests, | and other Parts of this Re- 
 nowned I Isle of Great Britain, | With 
 intermixture of the most Remarkeable | 
 Stories, Antiquities, Wonders, Rarities, 
 Pleasures, | and Commodities, of the 
 same. | Diuided into two Bookes ; the 
 latter containing | twelue Songs, neuer 
 before Imprinted. | Digested into a Poem | 
 By I Michael Drayton, Esquire. | With a 
 Table added, for direction to those Occur- 
 rences I of Story and Antiquitie, where- 
 unto the Course of the | Volume easily 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 193 
 
 leades not. | London, | Printed for John 
 Marriott, lohn Grismand, | and Thomas 
 Dewe. 1622. | [No frontispiece, and no 
 picture of Prince Henry. Dedications, 
 &c., as before; but before Song Nineteen 
 comes separate title-page : — ] 
 
 The I second part, | or | A Continvance | Of 
 Poly-Olbion | From The Eight | eenth 
 Song. I Containing all the Tracts, Riuers, 
 Moun I taines, and Forrests: | Intermixed 
 with the most remarkable Stories, | Anti- 
 quities, Wonders, Rarities, Pleasures, and 
 Com I modities of the East, and Northerne 
 parts of this Isle, | lying betwixt the two 
 famous rivers of | Thames and Tweed. | 
 London, | Printed by Augustine Mathewes 
 for lohn Marriott, | lohn Grismand, and 
 Thomas Dewe. | 1622. Dedication to 
 Prince Charles : letter ' To any that will 
 read it.' Verses by W. Browne, George 
 Wither, John Reynolds. 
 
 Folio : 12 leaves (impaginated) ; pp. 1-303 (and 
 one blank) include the first 18 Songs ; then, preced- 
 ing the Second Part, 7 leaves (unpaginated), and pp. 
 1-168 include Songs 19 to 30 = 254 flf. 
 
 Entered 6 March 1622. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl., U.L.C., T.C.C., T.C.D. 
 
 There are variations and difficulties in the collation 
 of Poly-Olbion, especially at the beginning, and a 
 full comparison of the copies has yet to be made. 
 
 3 1748. In Works (§ xv. 9). 
 
 4 1753. In Works (§ xv. 10), 
 
 N 
 
194 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 5 1795. In Works (§ xv. 11). 
 
 6 1810. In Works (§ xv. 12). 
 
 7 1831. In Select Works of the British Poets, 
 
 edited by R. Southey (without Selden's 
 illustrations). 
 
 8 1876. In Works, ed. Hooper (§ xv. 14). 
 
 9 1890. The | Poly-Olbion : | A | Chorographicall 
 
 Description of | Great Britain. | By | Michael 
 Drayton. | Printed for the Spenser Society. | 
 1890. I 
 
 Facsimile reprint of 2 in Publications of the 
 Spenser Society, New Series, Issue No. 1. 
 
 Folio : 4 pp. blank ; title as above ; then reprint 
 of 2 as above. In three parts, the third part begin- 
 ning Song 10 (' The Second Part') of Poly-Olbion. 
 
 XIX. ELEGIES 
 
 I 1618. An Elegie on the Lady Penelope Clifton, 
 by M. Dr. ; and 
 An Elegie on the death of the three sonnes 
 of the Lord Sheffield, drowned neere where 
 Trent falleth into Humber. 
 
 In 
 
 Certain | Elegies, | done | by Svndrie | Ex- 
 cellent Wits. I With I Satyrs and Epigrames. 
 [Device] London, | Printed by B: A: for 
 Miles Partriche, and are | to be solde at 
 his shoppe neare Saint | Dunstons Church 
 in Fleet | streete. 1618. | 
 Copy in Brit. Mus. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 195 
 
 2 1620. In ^ n • ,T. 
 
 Certain | Elegies, | Done by Sundrie |Ex- 
 cellent Wits. With Satyrs and Epigrams. 
 [Device] | London. | Printed for Thomas 
 lones, and are to be sold at | his shop m 
 Chancery Lane, over a- | gainst the Roles. 
 1 1620. 
 
 Another edition. 
 
 For later reprints of these see under § xx. 
 
 Copy in Bodl. 
 
 XX. THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT, Etc. 
 
 I 1627. The | Battaile | of | Agincovrt. \ Fovght 
 by Henry the | fift of that name, King of 
 England, a | gainst the whole power of the 
 French: | vnder the Raigne of their Charles 
 I the sixt, Anno Dom. 1415. | The Miseries 
 of Queene Margarite, | the infortunate wife 
 of that most in | fortunate King Henry the 
 sixt. I Nimphidia, the Court of Fayrie. | 
 The Quest of Cinthia. | The Shepheard's 
 Sirena. 1 The Moone-Calfe. | Elegies vpon 
 sundry occasions. 1 By Michaell Drayton | 
 Esquire. | London, | printed for William 
 Lee, at the Turkes Head | in Fleete- 
 Streete, next to the Miter and Phaenix. | 
 1627. 1 
 
 Folio : pp. 218. 
 
 Portrait as in Poems of 1613 (§ xv. 4) by W. 
 Hole. Dedication by Drayton 'To you, &c., those 
 Noblest Gentlemen, &c.' : verses on 'Battle of Agin- 
 court' by I. Vaughan. Sonnet by John Reynolds. 
 
196 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 ' Vision of Ben. lonson, on the Mvses of his Friend 
 M. Drayton.' 
 
 Entered 16 April 1627. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl., U.L.C., T.C.C. 
 Rylands, 
 
 2 1631. The Battaile . . . London, printed by 
 
 A. M. for William Lee . . . Phoenix. 1631. 
 
 As No. 1. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl. 
 
 3 1748. In Works (§ xv. 9), excepting the four 
 
 Elegies upon the death of Sir Henry Rains- 
 ford, upon the death of the Lady Olive 
 Stanhope, To Master William Jeffreys, and 
 upon the death of Mistress Elinor Fallow- 
 field. 
 
 4 1753. In Works (§ xv. 9), with the same excep- 
 
 tions as in 3. 
 
 5 1795. In Works (§ xv. 10), with the same 
 
 exceptions. 
 
 6 1810. In Works (§ xv. 11), with the same 
 
 exceptions. 
 
 REPRINTS OF SEPARATE POEMS 
 The Battle of Agincourt. 
 
 7 1893. The Battaile of Agincourt | by Michael 
 
 Drayton: | with introduction and | notes 
 by Richard Garnett | London printed and 
 issued by | Charles Whittingham & Co at 
 I the Chiswick Press, mdcccxciii. 
 
 Octavo : pp. xxiii. 120. 
 
 Contains Hole's and the Dulwich portraits. The 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 197 
 
 latter portrait is partly reproduced in Harding's 
 Biographical Mirrour, 1795, vol. i. p. 102. K. 
 Clamp sculpt. 
 
 Nymphidia 
 
 8 1751. The | History | of | Queen Mab; | or, the 
 
 I Court of Fairy. | Being | The Story upon 
 which the Entertain | ment of Queen Mab, 
 now exhibiting at | Drury-lane, is founded. 
 I By Michael Drayton, Esq. ; | Poet Laureat 
 to King James i. and King Charles i. | 
 London : | Printed for M, Cooper in Pater- 
 noster-row, 1751. I 
 
 Quarto : 24 pp. (paginated). 
 
 Nymphidia reprinted. 
 
 9 1814. Nymphidia | The Court of Fairy: | [verses 
 
 and woodcut] | Kent : | Printed at | The 
 private press of Lee Priory. | By Johnson 
 and Warwick. | 1814. 
 
 Edited by Sir Egerton Brydges. Contains also 
 verses by Jonson ; Advertisement, Address to 
 Eeader ; verses by Wm. Browne, George Wither, 
 Th. Greene, J. Beaumont, E. Heyward, John Selden, 
 W. Selden, W. Alexander, E. Scory ; verses by 
 Drayton to W. Brown, and to Sir Henry Goodere ; 
 the Epistle to Eeynolds, and Sonnet to river Ankor 
 beginning, 'Clear Ankor, on whose silver-sanded 
 shore.' 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., T.C.D., Bodl., U.L.C., T.C.C. 
 
 10 1819. In The Works of the British Poets . . . 
 
 by Ezekiel Sanford. Philadelphia. 1819. 
 In vol. ii., together with the Mooncalf. 
 
 1 1 1831. In Select Works of British Poets, edited 
 
 by R. Sou they. 
 
198 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 12 1883. In § XXII. 1. 
 
 13 1887. In § XXII. 2. 
 
 14 1887. In CasselFs National Library, vol. 79, 
 
 with Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 
 15 1896. In Nymphidia and the Muses Elizium 
 
 . . . Edited by John Gray . . . [Ballantyne 
 Press] London. 1896. 
 
 16 1899. In § XXII. a 
 
 There are probably other modern reprints. 
 
 XXL THE MUSES ELIZIUM, Etc. 
 
 I 1630. The Mvses | Elizium, | Lately discouered, 
 I By A New Way Over | Parnassvs. | The 
 passages therein, being the subiect of | ten 
 sundry Nymphalls, | Leading three Diuine 
 Poemes, | Noahs Floud, | Moses, his Birth 
 and Miracles | David and Goliah. | By 
 Michael Drayton Esquire. | London, | 
 Printed by Thomas Harper, for lohn 
 Waterson, and | are to be sold at the signe 
 of the Crowne in | Pauls Church-yard. 
 1630. I 
 
 Quarto : 6 pp. (unpaginated) : pp. 1-207 and one 
 blank = 107 ff. 
 
 Dedication to Edward, Earl of Dorset ; address To 
 The Reader. Separate dedication (p. 87) of the 
 Divine Poems to Mary, Countess of Dorset. 
 
 Entered 6 March 1630. 
 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl., U.L.C. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 199 
 
 2 1748. In Works (§ xv. 9), Appendix. 
 
 3 1753. In Works (§ xv. 10). 
 
 4 1795. In Works (§ xv. 11). 
 
 5 1810. In Works (§ xv. 12). 
 
 6 1892. The Mvses Elizium. | By | Michael 
 
 Drayton, Esquire. | Reprinted from the 
 Edition of 1630. | Printed for the Spenser 
 Society. | 1892. | 
 
 Quarto : 2 pp. with above title ; then reprint of 1, 
 with its pagination, but also with pagination at foot 
 of the reprint, pp. 1-215 and one blank. This is 
 Issue No. 5 of Publications of the Spenser Society, 
 New Series. 
 
 7 1896. With Nymphidia in § xx. 13. 
 
 XXII. MODERN SELECTIONS 
 
 1 1883. Selections from the Poems | of | Michael 
 
 Drayton. | Edited by | A. H. BuUen. | 
 Privately Printed by | Unwin Brothers, 
 Chilworth. | 1883. 
 Quarto. 
 
 A valuable Introduction and notes. Of entire 
 poems are reprinted here Ballad of Dowsabel, and 
 various short poems, Nimphidia, the Court of Fayrie, 
 the Quest of Cynthia, The Shepherd's Sirena. 
 Copies in Brit. Mus., Bodl. 
 
 2 1887. The Barons' Wars | Nymphidia | And 
 
 Other Poems | By | Michael Drayton. | 
 With An Introduction by Henry Morley | 
 LL.D., Professor of English Literature at 
 
200 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 I University College, London | London | 
 George Routledge and Sons | . . . 1887. | 
 
 Octavo : pp. 1-288. 
 
 The ' Other Poems ' include 4 of the Heroical 
 Epistles, Idea (63 numbers, ed. 1619), 4 Elegies 
 (including that to Jeffries), and Quest of Cynthia. 
 No table of contents. 
 
 3 1899. A Selection | From the Poetry Of | 
 Samuel Daniel | & \ Michael Drayton | 
 With an Introduction and Notes by | The 
 Rev. H. C. Beeching, M.A. | London | J. M. 
 Dent & Co I ... I 1899. | 
 
 Octavo : pp. xxiii ^and one blank ; pp. 1-196. 
 Valuable introduction and notes ; table of dates ; 
 Dulwich and Hole's portraits of Drayton ; pp. 57- 
 end are devoted to selections from Drayton. Ten of 
 the Odes are given, 21 Sonnets, Nymphidia, Shep- 
 herd's Sirena, several Nymphalls from Muses' 
 Elizium, Elegy to Reynolds, and extracts from other 
 pieces. 
 
 XXIII. PREFATORY LINES, Etc. 
 
 1 1595. ' Such was old Orpheus' cunning.' 
 
 In A First Book of Ballets . . . T. Morley 
 . . . 1595. 
 
 Headed : ' Mr. M. D. to the Author.' In Bodl. 
 
 2 1600. Poems by Drayton : — ' Rowlands Song in 
 
 praise of the fairest Beta/ 'A Roundelay 
 betweene two Sheepheards/ 'Rowland's 
 Madrigall,' and ' The Sheepheards An- 
 theme,' 
 In 
 Englands | Helicon. | Casta placent superis, | 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 201 
 
 pura cum veste venite, | Et Manibus puris | 
 sumite fontis aquam. | [Device] At London | 
 Printed by I. R. for lohn Flasket, and are | 
 to be sold in Paules Church-yard, at the 
 signe I of the Beare. 1600. | 
 Quarto. 
 
 2a InEnglands | Helicon: | or | TheMvses | Har- 
 mony. I The Courts of Kings heare no such 
 straines, | As daily lull the Rusticke 
 Swaines. | [Device.] London: | Printed for 
 Richard More, and are to | be sould at his 
 shop in S. Dunstanes | Church-yard. 
 1614. 
 
 Contains the above 4 poems and ' The Shepherd's 
 Daffodil.' 
 
 Octavo. 
 
 In Brit. Mus. 
 
 2b And in 
 
 Englands Helicon . . . London . . . 1614 : 
 reprinted by A. H. Bullen, 1887. 
 
 3 1600. ' Like as a man, on some aduenture 
 bound.' 
 In 
 
 The I Legend | of Hvmphrey | Duke of 
 Glo I cester. | by Chr: Middleton. | 
 Device. . . . London | Printed by E. A. for 
 Nicholas Ling, and are | to be soldo at his 
 shop at the west doore of | S. Paules 
 Church. 1600. | 
 
 Octavo : unpaginated 23 leaves. Poem is headed 
 ' To his friend, Master Chr. M. his Booke.' 
 
 In Brit. Mus., Bodl. 
 
202 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 4 1607. Lines in 
 
 The I Perfect Vse | of Silk-Wormes, | and 
 their benefit. | With the exact planting, 
 and artificiall handling of | Mulberrie trees 
 whereby to nourish them, and the fi- | gures 
 to know how to feede the Wormes, and | 
 to winde off the Silke. | And the fit maner 
 to prepare the barke of the white Mulberrie 
 to I make fine linnen and other workes 
 thereof. | Done out of the French original! 
 of D'Oliuier de Serres Lord | of Pradel into 
 English, bj Nicholas Geffe Esquier. | 
 With an annexed discourse of his owne, of 
 the meanes and | sufficiencie of England for 
 to haue abundance of fine silke by feeding | 
 of Silke-wormes within the same; as by 
 apparent proofes by | him made and con- 
 tinued appeareth. For the generall vse | 
 and vniuersall benefit of all those his 
 countrey | men which embrace them. 
 Neuer the like yet here discouered by 
 any. | Au despit d'enuie. | At London | 
 Imprinted by Felix Kyngston, and are to 
 be sold by Richard Sergier | and Christo- 
 pher Purset, with the assignment of | 
 William Stallenge. 1607. | Cum Pri- 
 uilegio. I 
 
 Octavo : 75 leaves (partly paginated). Poem ' To 
 Master Nicholas Geffe ' by Michael Drayton, com- 
 mencing ' As thou deare friend with thy industrious 
 hand,' Quarto. 
 
 In Brit. Mus. 
 
 5 1609. * Such men as hold intelligence with 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 203 
 
 letters.' In ' The | Holy | Roode ' . . . | by 
 lohn Davies [of Hereford] . . . London . . . | 
 for N. Butter. 
 
 Reprinted by Grosart in Works of J. D. Vol. i. 
 1878. 
 
 6 1611. ' In new attire.' 
 
 In Sophonisba by David Murray. 
 
 Octavo. 
 
 No title-page. 35 leaves (unpaginated). Said poem 
 headed ' To my kinde friend Da: Murray.' 
 
 6a 1611. 'Many there be that write before thy 
 book' 
 In Coryat's Crudities . . . 1611. 
 
 7 1616. Two pieces, one commencing 'Describe 
 
 what is faire painting of the face/ the other 
 ' To what may I a painted wench compare ? ' 
 In 
 
 A I Treatise | against Pain- | ting and 
 Tinctvring | of Men and Women : ... By 
 Thomas Tuke. 
 
 Signed Thos. Draiton, however. A Thomas 
 Drayton, D.D., was writing in 1665. 
 Quarto. In Brit. Mus., Bodl. 
 
 8 1618. ' Chapman ; We finde by thy past-prized 
 
 fraught,' headed ' To my worthy friend 
 Mr. George Chapman, and his translated 
 Hesiod.' 
 In 
 
 The I Georgicks | of | Hesiod, | by George 
 Chapman | Translated Elaborately | out 
 of the Greek: | Containing Doctrine of 
 Husbandrie, Moralitie, I and Pietie; with 
 
204 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 a perpetuall Calendar of Good | and Bad 
 Dales; Not superstitious, but necessarie | 
 (as farre as naturall Causes compell) for 
 all I Men to obserue, and difference in fol~ | 
 lowing their affaires. | Nee caret vmbra 
 Deo. I [Device] | London, | Printed by 
 H. L. for Miles Partrich, and are to be 
 solde I at his Shop neare Saint Dunstans 
 Church in | Fleetstreet. 1618. | 
 
 Quarto. 
 
 39 paginated pp. ; 7 unpaginated. In Brit. Mus., 
 Bodl. 
 
 9 1619. 'If in opinion of judicial wit.' 
 
 In The | famovs and Renowned | Historic of 
 Primaleon of Greece, | Sonne to the great 
 and mighty Prince | Palmerin d'Oliva, 
 Emperour | of Constantinople. | Describing 
 his Knightly deedes of Armes, as also | the 
 Memorable Aduentures of Prince Edward 
 of I England : And continuing the former 
 History of | Palmendos, Brother to the 
 fortunate | Prince Primaleon, &c. | The 
 first Booke. | Translated out of French and 
 Italian, into English, by A. M. | [Device.] | 
 London : | Printed by Thomas Snodham. | 
 1619. 
 
 Octavo. The translator is Munday. The lines face 
 p. 1 of bk. ii. in Bodl. copy. Copy also in Brit. Mus. 
 
 10 [1621.] In Manvdvctio | ad | Artem | Rhe- 
 
 toricam, Thomas Vicars. 
 
 In Brit. Mus. only 1621 and 1628 editions, 
 wherein nothing by Michael Drayton. Named by 
 Bullen, s.v. ' Drayton,' in Diet. Nat. Biog. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 205 
 
 11 1622. 'To my friend M. A. H.' commencing 
 
 'By this one line, my Holland, we may 
 see.' 
 In Navmachia, or | Hollands | Sea-fight. | 
 [Surrounded by device.] Non equidem 
 inuideo. | [Device of ship in full sail] 
 London, Printed by T. P. for Thomas Law, 
 and William (by Abra : Holland) Garrat. | 
 An. Dom. 1622. | 
 
 Quarto. 
 
 18 leaves (unpaginated). In Brit. Mus. 
 
 12 1629. 'This posthumous, from the brave 
 
 parent's name.' 
 In 
 
 Bosworth-field : | ... by Sir John Beau- 
 mont I . . . London | . . . 1629. 
 
 Reprinted by Grosart in Works of Sir J. B. 1889. 
 
 13 1636. 'Dover, to do thee right who will not 
 
 strive.' 
 In Annalia Dvbrensia. | Vpon the yeerely 
 celebration of | Mr. Robert Dovers Olim- 
 pick I Games vpon Cotswold-Hills. | Written 
 by I Michaell Dray ton, Esq. | lohn Trvssell, 
 Gent. . . . Ben lohnson . . . Owen Felltham, 
 Gent. . . . William Basse, Gent. . . . Thomas 
 Heywood, Gent. | London. | . . . 1636. 
 
 Reprinted in Grosart's Occasional Issues . . . 
 Vol. iv. . . . 1877. 
 
APPENDIX k 
 
 INDEX AND EDITIONS OF THE SONNETS 
 
 Many inferences have been drawn as to the 
 poets whom Drayton imitated in his sonnets, but 
 they often turn on questions of priority and 
 bibliography. There is also no full and correct 
 account of the sonnets which were added or with- 
 drawn in the successive editions (following that of 
 1594) of 1599, 1602, 1603, and 1619. See the 
 Bibliography. No other editions come in question, 
 for that of 1603 repeats 1602, and those of 1610 
 and 1613 repeat 1605, while those of 1630 and 
 1637 repeat 1619. The five relevant editions may 
 therefore be numbered a, h, c, d, and e. The table 
 of first lines gives in alphabetical -order all the 
 sonnets printed at any time by Drayton in con- 
 nection with ' Idea.' The numbers in the columns 
 show the place each sonnet occupies in each edition 
 where it is found. The counting has usually gone 
 wrong, partly because in d (1605) three different 
 sonnets are numbered 61 (61* in table) and two 
 are numbered 62 (62* in table), and also because 
 sonnets are often more or less rewritten, with a 
 different first line. In all such cases the earliest 
 version is numbered and quoted first in the table, 
 
APPENDIX A 
 
 207 
 
 the variants of the first line being appended 
 and named again in cross-references. Thus in LV. 
 the version a of 1594 is that numbered LV. ; the 
 versions of 1599 (6) and of 1619 (e) follow, and are 
 found in cross-references under * Taking my pen ' 
 . . . and ' Yet read at last,' which are unnumbered. 
 
 bed 
 1594 1699 1602 1606 1619 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 XXV, 
 
 XXVI, 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 XXXIII, 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 An evil spirit, your beauty haunts me still, 
 As in some countries far remote from hence 
 As love and I late harboured in one inn, 
 As other men, so I myself do muse, . 
 A witless gallant, a young wench that woo'd 
 Beauty sometime in all her glory crown'd . 
 Black pitchy night, companion of my woe,. 
 Bright star of beauty, on whose eyelids sit . 
 Calling to mind, since first my love begun, 
 Clear Ankor, on whose silver-sanded shore 
 Cupid, dumb idol, peevish saint of love, 
 Cupid, I hate thee, which I 'd have thee know, 
 Dear, why should you command me to my rest 
 Define my love, \ and tell the joys of heaven, a 
 
 weal, e ) 
 Die, die, my soul, and never taste of joy, . 
 Eyes with your teares, blind if you be. 
 Go you, my lines, embassadors of love. 
 Great Lady, essence of my chiefest good, . 
 
 [End. and Phoebe, 1595.] 
 How many paltry, foolish, painted things, . 
 I ever love where never hope appears. 
 If chaste and pure devotion of my youth, . 
 If ever wonder could report a wonder, 
 If he from heaven that filched that living fire 
 If those ten regions registered by fame 
 I gave my faith to Love, Love his to me, , 
 I hear some say, this man is not in love. 
 In former times such as had store of coin 
 In the whole world is but one Phoenix found a 
 Within the compass of this spacious round b, J- 1 
 'Mongst all the creatures in this spacious round 
 In pride of wit, when high desire of fame . 
 Into these loves who but for passion looks, 
 Is not love here as 'tis in other climes 
 Letters and lines we see are soon defac'd, . 
 Like an adventrous seafarer am I, 
 , Looking into the glass of my youth's miseries, a 
 Viewing the glass of my youth's miseries, b, 
 
 
 45 
 
 22 
 
 66 
 
 62 
 
 64 61 
 
 I 
 29 1 26 
 
 14 
 
 27 
 24 
 68 
 
 16 
 
 47 
 pref. 
 
 13 
 15 
 
208 
 
 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 XXXV 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 XXXIX, 
 
 XL, 
 XLI, 
 
 XLII, 
 XLIII, 
 XLIV, 
 XLV, 
 XLVI, 
 XLVII 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 XLIX 
 
 L. 
 
 LI, 
 LII. 
 
 LIII, 
 LIV. 
 
 LV. 
 
 LVI. 
 LVII, 
 
 LVIII. 
 LVIX. 
 LX. 
 LXI. 
 LXII. 
 LXIII. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 LXXI. 
 LXXII. 
 
 , Love, banish' d heaven, on earth was held in scorn 
 Love in a humour play'd the prodigal, 
 
 . Love once would dance Avithin my mistress' eye 
 
 , Madam, my words cannot express my mind, 
 [To Lady A. Harington.] 
 Many there be excelling in this kind, . 
 
 , Marvel not, love, though thy power admire, 
 Methiuks I see some crooked mimic jeer, . 
 ['Mongst all the creatures. See xxviii.] 
 Muses, which sadly sit about my ehair, 
 
 , My fair, had I not erst adorned my lute, . 
 
 , My fair, if thou wilt register my love, 
 
 . My fair, look from those turrets of thine eyes, 
 My heart, imprisoned in a hopeless isle, 
 
 , My heart, the anvil where my thoughts do 
 
 beat, 
 
 My heart was slain, and none but you and I, 
 
 , My love makes hot the fire whose heat is spent, 
 My thoughts, bred up with eagle birds of love, a, " 
 When like an eaglet I first found my love, h, 
 Nothing but no and I, and I and no, . 
 Not thy grave counsels, nor thy subjects' love, . 
 
 [To James I.] 
 Now love, if thou wilt prove a conqueror, . 
 eyes, behold your happy Hesperus, 
 Oft taking pen in hand with words to cast my ^ 
 woes, <x, ..... . 
 
 Taking my pen with words to cast my woe, h, J 
 thou unkindest fair, most fairest she, . ."' 
 Our flood's queen, Thames, for ships and swans 
 
 is crown'd, 
 
 why should nature niggardly restrain 
 Phoebe, look down, and here behold in mu 
 Plac'd in the forlorn hope of all despair, . 
 Plain-path'd experience, the unlearned's guide, 
 Bare offspring of my thoughts, my dearest love,^- 
 Read here, sweet maid, the story of my woe, a, j 
 Yet read at last the story of my woe, h, . j 
 Reading sometime my sorrows to beguile, . 
 See, chaste Diana, where my harmless lieart. 
 Since holy vestal laws have been neglected. 
 Since there 's no help, come let us kiss and part, 
 Since to obtain thee nothing will me stead. 
 Sitting alone, love bids me go and write, . 
 Some atheist or vile infidel in love, a, 1 
 
 Some misbelieving and profane in love, b, j 
 
 Some men there be which like my method well, 
 Some, when in ryme, they of their love do tell, a, 
 time, d \ 
 rhime, e] 
 
 h c \ d 
 159 4 1599 1602 1606 1619 
 
 10 
 
 24 26 i 23 
 10 i 10 ' 7 
 9 6 
 
 58 65 i 62* 
 
 40 
 
 ... 
 
 24 
 
 32 
 
 
 25 
 
 
 11 
 
 42 
 
 
 41 
 
 
 1 
 
 49 
 
 20 
 
 36 
 
 35 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 31 
 
 37 
 
 12 
 
 35 
 
 28 
 
 42 
 
 18 
 
 38 
 
 63 
 
 6 6 
 
APPENDIX A 
 
 209 
 
 LXXIV 
 LXXV 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 LXXXII, 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 LXXXVII. 
 .XXXVIII. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 xc. 
 
 XCI. 
 
 XCII 
 XCIII. 
 
 XCIV. 
 
 xcv. 
 
 XCVI, 
 
 XCVII. 
 XCVIII. 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 c. 
 
 CI. 
 CII. 
 
 cm. 
 
 CIV. 
 
 cv. 
 
 CVI. 
 
 stay, speedy time, behold or ere thou pass, <i, \ 
 Stay, stay, sweet time, b, / 
 
 Sweet secrecy, what tongue can tell thy words, i 
 Sweet sleep, so arm'd with beauty's arrows 
 
 darltng, 
 
 [Taking ray pen. See No. lv.] 
 That learned father which so firmly proves 
 The glorious sun went blushing to his bed, 
 The golden sun upon his fiery wheels, 
 There 's nothing grieves me but that age should 
 
 haste, 
 
 The world's fair rose, and Henry's frosty fire, . 
 Three sorts of serpents do resemble thee, 
 Thine eyes taught me the alphabet of love. 
 Those priests which first the vestal fires began. 
 Those tears which quench my life still kindle 
 my desire, ...'... 
 Thou leaden brain, which censur'st what I write, 
 Thou purblind boy, since thou hast been so slack. 
 Thou who dost guide this little world of love, . 
 To nothing fitter can I thee compare. 
 To such as say thy love I overprize, . 
 
 [To this our world. See No. xci.] 
 Truce, gentle love, a parley now I' crave, . 
 Unto the world, to learning and to heaven, a, '\ 
 To this our world, e. / 
 
 [Viewing the glass. See No. xxxiv.] 
 , Virtue's idea in virginity, ..... 
 
 Vouchsafe to grace these rude unpolisht rhymes, 
 
 [To Cooke.] 
 What, dost thou mean to cheat me of my heart, 
 When conquering love did first ray heart assail, 
 When I first ) ended, then I first began, a, . 
 first I, & / 
 [When like an eaglet. See No. L.] 
 Whilst tlius my pen strives to eternise thee. 
 Whilst thus ) mine eyes do surfet with delight, a, 
 
 yet, 6/ 
 Who list to pi-aise the day's delicious light, \ 
 Why do I speak of joy or write of love, . 
 Why should your fair eyes with such sovereign 
 grace, ........ 
 
 With fools and children good discretion bears, 
 
 [Within the corapass. See No. xxviii.] 
 Wonder of heaven, glass of divinity, 
 
 [Yet read at last. See No. lv.] 
 Youbestdiscernedof/my interior eyes, d, ) 
 ( my mind's in ward eyes, e, / 
 Yoii cannot love, ray pretty Heart, and why, . 
 You not alone when you are still alone, . 
 
 32 
 
 16 
 pref. 
 
 50 
 
 23 
 
 b 
 1599 
 
 19 
 
 69 
 
 40 
 
 c d 
 1602 160S 
 
 20 
 
 15 
 
 17 
 
 12 
 
 pref. 
 
 i' 
 
 30 
 
 49 
 
 21 
 10 
 
 28 
 
 62* 
 
 18 
 
 e 
 1619 
 
 17 
 
 12 
 
 30 
 
 64 
 
 41 
 
 ^52 r; 
 
 29 >^ 
 62 
 
 41 
 
APPENDIX B^ 
 
 VERSES FROM ASHMOLE, 38, f. 77. 
 
 These verses weare made by Michaell Drayton 
 Esquier Poett Laureatt the night before he dyed. 
 
 1. Soe well I love thee, as w%out thee I 
 
 Love nothing, yf I might chuse, I 'de rather dye 
 Than bee on day debarde thy companye. 
 
 2. Since Beasts, and plants doe growe and live and move, 
 Beasts are those men, that such a life approve 
 
 Hee only lives, that Deadly [sic] is in love. 
 
 3. The Corne that in the ground is so wen first dies 
 And of on seed doe manye eares arise 
 
 Love this worlds corne by dying multiplies. 
 
 4. The seeds of love first by thy eyes weare throwne 
 Into a grownd untild, a harte unknowne 
 
 To beare such fruitt, tyll by thy hande 'twas sowen. 
 
 5. Looke as your Looking glass by chance may fall 
 Devyde and breake in manye peycies small 
 And yet shews forth, the selfe same face in all. 
 
 6. Proportions, Features, Graces, just the same 
 And in the smalest peyce, as well the name 
 
 Of Fayrest one deserves as in the richest frame. 
 
 7. Soe all my thoughts arc peyces but of you 
 Whiche put together makes a glass soe true 
 
 As I therein noe others face but yours can Veiwe. 
 
 ^ I have to thank Professor Firth for this transcript. 
 210 
 
INDEX 
 
 The roman figures {preceded by §) refer to sections of the 
 bibliography. 
 
 * ^TiON,' 37 and n. 
 Agincourt^ Ballad of, 99, 104- 
 
 106, 139, 148. 
 Agincourt, Battle of, 132, § xx. 
 Alexander, Sir W., 122, 125, 
 
 127, 139. 
 Allot, R. See England^s Par- 
 nassus, 82. 
 Amours. See Idea's Mii^ror. 
 Ancor, river, 17, 20, 21, 22. 
 Anderson's British Poets, § xv. 
 
 11. 
 Annalia Duhrensia, § xxiii. 
 
 13. 
 Arber, Dr. E., § ii. 12 ; § v. 19. 
 Arms of Drayton, 94, and 
 
 cover. 
 Ariosto's octave stanza, 73. 
 Aston, Sir W., 19, 36, 72, 94- 
 
 95, 106-107. 
 Atherstone, 1, 3, 4. 
 Aubrey, 1 n., 145, 147. 
 
 Barnfield, W., 33 n., 81. 
 B[axter], N., his Ourania, 35. 
 Barons' Wars, The. SeeMorti- 
 
 meriados. 
 Beaumont, Francis, 36, 63, 97 
 
 n., 143. 
 
 Beaumont, Sir John, 143, § 
 
 xxiii. 11. 
 Bedford, Lucy (Harington), 
 
 Countess of, 11, 14, 23, 72. 
 Beeching, Canon, 54, 57 n., 
 
 § xxii. 3. 
 Browne, WilHam, 66, 143 and n. 
 BuUen, Mr. A. H., ix, x, 199, 
 
 § xxii. 1. 
 Burton, 4. 
 
 Camden's Brlttannia, 110, 112- 
 
 113. 
 
 Carew, 103, 130, 151. 
 
 Chalmers' British Poets, § xv. 
 
 12. 
 
 Chapman, George, 142 ; lines 
 
 of D. to, § xxiii. 8. 
 
 Charles I., 107. 
 
 Chaucer, House of Fame, 43 ; 
 
 MonTc's Tale and Legend of 
 
 Good Women, 40 ; Troilus 
 
 and Cressida, 72; Parlia- 
 
 j ment of Birds, 37 ; ■S'tV 
 
 j Thopas, 137; Praise of 
 
 1 Chaucer, 140. 
 
 j Chettle, Henry, 85 and n. 
 
 Civil Wars in France, The, 84, 
 
 . 85 n. 
 
 211 
 
212 
 
 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Clifford Chambers, 20, 126- 
 
 128. 
 Cobham, Lord, 91. 
 Cokain, Sir Aston, 12-13. 
 Collected Poems of D., 98, 99, 
 
 131-134, § XV. 
 College of Heralds, 94. 
 Collier,J.P.,ix.,13?i.,25,33n., 
 
 82?i.,95??-.,146w. ; §ii. 10; § 
 
 V. 18 ; § vi. 4 ; § xv. 13, etc. 
 Combe Abbey, 22. 
 Constable, Henry, 45. 
 Contention of Two Houses, etc. , 
 
 71. 
 Cooke, (Sir) A., 43. 
 Coryate, § xxiii. 6^ 
 Courthope, Prof. W. J., vii, 
 
 viii, 23-24 and n. 
 
 Daniel, Samuel, Gom2)laint of 
 Rosamond, 41, 62, 67 ; Delia, 
 45, 54 ; History of the Civil 
 Wars, 72. 
 
 David and Goliah, 132, 134. 
 
 Davies, John, of Hereford, 
 § xxiii. 5. 
 
 Dekker, 84-85 and n. 
 
 De La Serres, 0., § xxiii. 4. 
 
 Desportes, Philippe { ' Portes '), 
 46. 
 
 Donne, John, 61, 103, 143. 
 
 Dorset, Earl and Countess of, 
 144-145. 
 
 Drayton family and pedigree, 
 2-5. 
 
 Drayton, Edmund, 2, 3, 147. 
 
 Drayton, Michael, passim. 
 
 Drummond, William, corre- 
 spondence witli Drayton, 
 121-12S, 121 n., 144. 
 
 Dryden, 66, 78-79. 
 
 Du Bellay, 43. 
 
 Elegies, 128-129, 137-144, § 
 xix, § XX (see Epistles). 
 
 'Elphin,' pastoral name for 
 Sidney, 35. 
 '-Endimion and Phoebe, 21, 64- 
 68, 78, 99, 138, 152, § vi. 
 
 England's Helicon, § xxiii. 2. 
 
 England's Heroical Epistles, 
 11, 17, 42, 77-80, 138, 150, 
 §ix. 
 
 England's Parnassus, 82. 
 
 Epistles: Of His Lady's Not 
 Coming to Town, 128 ; To 
 Reynolds, 68, 139-143 ; to 
 G. Sandys, 96; on Sir H. 
 Rainsford, 131. 
 
 Essex, Robert, Earl of, 13 n. 
 
 Famous Victories of Henry V. , 
 
 89. 
 Fitzgeoffrey's Affaniae and 
 
 Drake, 81, 82 ; his Elegies, § 
 
 xix. 1. 
 Fleay, Rev. F. G., x., 13 ?i., 21 
 
 and n. , 36 n. , 37 n. , 41 7i. , 47, 
 
 53 ?i., 57 n., S5n., 92-93 ?^. 
 Fuller, 82, 146. 
 
 Gayton, Edwakd, 71 n. 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 116- 
 
 117. 
 Godwin, Earl, 84. 
 ' Goldey. ' See Lodge. 
 Goldsmith, Citizenofthe World, 
 
 149. 
 Goodere or Goodyere family, 
 
 genealogy, 10 n. 
 Goodere, Anne, or ' Idea,' 6, 
 
 10-12, 20; Lady Rainsford, 
 
 20, 21, 23, 68-71, 128. 
 Goodere, Frances, 10-12, 20, 
 
 36. 
 
INDEX 
 
 213 
 
 Gooderc, Sir Henry the elder, 
 
 7-12. 
 Goodere, Sir Henry the 
 
 younger, 10, 11. 
 Gower, 140. 
 Qratulatory Poem, 96. 
 Great Assizes, etc., 148-149. 
 * Great Lady, essence' (sonnet), 
 
 16-19. 
 Guilpin's Skialetheia, 81 n. 
 
 Hall, John, 68 and w. 
 
 Harington, Lady Anne and Sir 
 John, of Exton, 17-18. 
 
 Harington, Lucy. See Bed- 
 ford, Countess of. 
 
 Harmony of the Ghtirch, 24-25, 
 §i. 
 
 Harrison, J. S., on Platonism, 
 47 n. 
 
 Hartshill, 1, 5, 6. 
 
 Hathway, 85 and n., 88. 
 
 Henley, Lyra Heroica, 104. 
 
 Henry, Prince, 106-107, 109, 
 191-192. 
 
 Henry I. , 84. 
 
 Henslowe, Philip, 85-88, 92. 
 
 Heroical Epistles. See Eng- 
 land's Her. Ep. 
 
 Hewes, John, 8. 
 
 Heylin, P., 146. 
 
 Hole, W., engraver, 108, 109, 
 181. 
 
 Holland's Naumachia, § xxiii. 
 11. 
 
 Holland, Philemon, tr. of 
 Camden, 112. 
 
 Hooper, Rev. R., edition of 
 Drayton, § xv. 14. 
 
 Horace, 100. 
 
 Hunter's MS. Chorus Valum, 
 4 w., 21 n. 
 
 Hymn to his Lady's Birth- 
 place, 21. 
 
 * Idea,' Anne Goodere, q.v. 
 
 Idea; The Shepherd's Garland 
 (eclogues), 32-39, 136, § ii. 
 
 Idea's Mirrour, afterwards 
 Idea (or Ideas), sonnets, 17, 
 44-55, § v., and App. A. 
 
 James i. , 94. See A Pman 
 Triumjfhal and To the 
 Majesty of K. J. 
 
 Jefifrey, Mr., epistle to, 129 n. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 100, 123, 135, 
 138, 142, 143, 145. 
 
 Laing, 121 n. 
 
 Langland's Vision of William 
 concerning Piers the Plough- 
 man, 42 n. 
 
 Legends, 39-43 ; of Cromwell, 
 106, § xvii. ; of Gaveston, 
 § iii. ; of Matilda, 42, 55, 
 § iv. ; of Robert, 18, 42, 108, 
 § viii. 
 
 Lee, Mr. Sidney, 38 n., 46-47, 
 57 ?i., 61 n., 164. 
 
 Leigh Hunt, 66. 
 
 helaxid.' a Itinerary, 111-112. 
 
 L'Idde, of De Pontoux, 47, 59. 
 
 Lines ivritten the night before 
 he died, App. B. 
 
 Longsioord, William, 84, 85n., 
 88. 
 
 Lydgate's Falls of Princes, 
 39. 
 
214 
 
 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Macaulay's Lays, 77. 
 
 Man in the Moon, The, 67, 
 
 § XV. 5. 
 Mancetter, 2, 3, 147. 
 Mautuanus, Baptista, 9. 
 Margaret, Duchess of New- 
 castle, 187. 
 Marlowe, Christopher, 78, 80, 
 
 141-142; Hero and Leander, 
 
 62-66; Edward II., 141. 
 Masson, Dr., 121, 123. 
 Meres, Francis, 81, 83, 94. 
 Merry Devil of Edmonton, The, 
 
 91-93 n. 
 Metrical criticism by D., 73. 
 Middleton, Chr., § xxiii. 3. 
 Middleton, Thos., 85 and n. 
 Milton, 43 ?i., 117, 150, 151. 
 Mirror for Magistrates, The, 
 
 40-41. 
 ' Mirtilla,' 36 n. 
 Miseries of Queen Margaret, 
 
 131-132, § XX. 
 Monday, A., 84-85, 204; 
 
 § xxiii. 9. 
 Mooncalf The, 132-134, § xx. 
 Morley, H., § xxii. 2. 
 Morley, T., § xxiii. 1. 
 Mortimeriados, 17, 19 ; revised 
 
 as The Barons' Wars, 72-74, 
 
 77, § vii. 
 Moses in a Map of his Miracles, 
 
 132, 134, § xiv. ; his Birth 
 
 and Miracles, § xxi. 
 Muses' Elizium, The, 37, 132, 
 
 136, 144, § xxi. 
 Mythomystes, by H. Reynolds, 
 
 138. 
 
 Narcissus, by H. Reynolds, 
 138. 
 
 Nash, Thomas, 141. 
 
 Noah's Flood, 132, 134, § xxi. 
 
 Nymphidia, or. The Court of 
 
 Fairy, 131, 137, 150, § xx. 
 
 1 and 8-15. 
 
 Odes, 99-103, 150, § xvi. ; To 
 
 the Neio Year, 101 ; To the 
 Virginian Voyage, 101-102. 
 
 '01con,'36. 
 
 Oldcastle, Sir John, 84, 85, 88- 
 91, 92 w., §x. 
 
 Oldys, John, 98. 
 
 Otia Merseiana, 56 n. 
 
 Ovid, Heroides, 77, 78. 
 
 Oioen Tudor, 84, 85 n. 
 
 Owl, The, 5, 97-98, § xii. 
 
 Poian Triumphal, -4, 96, § xiii. 
 'Panape,'20, 23. 
 ' Pandora,' 35. 
 Peacham, H., 144-145. 
 Petrarch, 45-46, 110. 
 Piers of Winchester, 84, 85 n. 
 Platonism, 46-47, 47 n. 
 Plays by Drayton, 83-93. 
 Poems, Lyric and Pastoral, 99, 
 
 §xvi. 
 Polesworth, 6-8, 17, 20. 
 Poly - Olblon, 21, 83, 94-95, 
 
 109-122, 124, 128, 139, 148, 
 
 § xviii. 
 Pontoux, Claude de, L'Idce, 
 
 47, 59. 
 Poems of Divers Humours, 83. 
 Portraits of Drayton, 107-108. 
 Prince Henry, 106-107, 109. 
 
 QuARLKS, Francis, 145. 
 
INDEX 
 
 215 
 
 Quest o/Gynthia, The, 131, 136, 
 §xx. 
 
 Kainsford, Sir Henry, 12, 
 
 20, 128-131, 131 n. 
 Return from Parnassus, The, 
 
 82. 
 Richard Gordelion's Funeral, 
 
 84, 85 n. 
 Rising ofCardinalWolsey, The, 
 
 84, 85 n. 
 Reynolds, Epistle to Henry, 
 
 138-143; Mi/thomystes, 139 
 
 and n. 
 ' Robin,' 13 n. 
 Ronsard, 100. 
 'Rowland,' 33, 39. 
 
 Sandys, Geo., 87, 142, 155. 
 
 Scornful Lady, The, 97 n. 
 
 Selden, John, 42 ; illustrations 
 to Poly - Olbion, 109 - 110, 
 116. 
 
 Selections from Drayton, x., 
 § xxii. 
 
 ♦ Selena,' 19, 22-23, § ii, 2, 3. 
 
 Seneca, 9. 
 
 Shakespeare, 54-60, 75, 78, 80, 
 141 ; Venus and Adonis, 63, 
 67, 114 ; Lucrece, 55, 75 n. ; 
 Richard III. , 76 ; Henry I V. , 
 55, 75 71., 89-91; Henry V., 
 91, 105; Sonnets, relation to 
 Drayton's, 50, 55-59; iMid- 
 siimmer Ni(jht's Dream, 137. 
 
 Shex)herd''s Garland. See Idea ; 
 The Shepherd's Garland. 
 
 Shepherd's Sirena, The, 79 n., 
 132, 136, § XX. 
 
 Sidney, Lady Mary, 35. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 35 and n., 
 36, 45, 53-55, 69, 123, 140. 
 
 ' Since there's no help,' Sonnet, 
 61, 152. 
 
 Smith or Smythe, playwright, 
 85 and n. 
 
 Sonnets of Drayton. See 
 Amours; Idea's Mirror; Sid- 
 ney, Shakespeare, Spenser. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 26-34, 37, 
 38, 39, 43, 49, 53, 67, 69, 73, 
 75, 135, 151 ; Shepherd's 
 Gdlendar, 32, 69 ; Faerie 
 Queene, 27; Astrophel and 
 Stella, 35; Ruins of Time, 
 37 ; Golin Glout, 38 ; Mother 
 Hubbard's Tale, 97 ; Hymns, 
 72. 
 
 Spenser Society reprints of 
 Drayton, § xv. 15, § xvi. 3, 
 § xviii. 9, § xxi. 6. 
 
 Surrey, Earl of, 140. 
 
 Swinburne, Mr., 101. 
 
 * Sylvia,' 36. 
 
 Tasso, 135, 138. 
 
 Thames, verse-picture of, 115. 
 
 Tixall, 95. 
 
 To his Coy Love, 103. 
 
 To his Valentine, 103. 
 
 To the Majesty of King James, 
 
 §xi. 
 Tuke, § xxiii. 7. 
 Tyler, T., on Shakespeare's 
 
 Sonnets, 56 n. 
 
 'Verses on the night before 
 he (Drayton) died,' 210, 
 App. B. 
 
 Versification of Drayton, 24, 
 32, 34, 53, 65, 66, 72-74, 78- 
 80, 99-106, 118-119, 15.3. 
 
 Vicars' Afanuductio, § xxiii. 
 10. 
 
216 
 
 MICHAEL DRAYTON 
 
 Waller, Mr. A. R., ix. 44. 
 
 Waller, E., 155. 
 
 Warner, William, Albion's 
 
 England, 40-41. 
 Watson, T., 38 n. 
 Webster, John, 85 and n. 
 Whitaker, Dr. L.,91m. 
 
 Whitgift, Archbishop, 25. 
 Wither, 148. 
 Wordsworth, 50, 153. 
 Wyatt, 140. 
 
 Wyndham, Rt. Hon. G., 47 n. 
 57 n: 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh Univovsity Press 
 
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