He should be bold, but kneeling, to embrace ; Her grace to show and guide him to the town. This fair and fil'd speech then shew'd this was he: If of the Gods, that th' ample heavens embrace, So near as to the chaste-born birth of Jove, You promise of her very perfectness. If sprung of humans, that inhabit earth, Thrice blest are both the authors of your birth; Arrived, that render'd me most wretched then, A grace like thee; for Earth had never none Of all her sylvan issue so adorn'd. Into amaze my very soul was turn'd, To give it observation; as now thee Past admiration strikes me, join'd with fear THE SONG THE SIRENS SUNG. [From Odyssey XII.] "Come here, thou worthy of a world of praise, For we know all things whatsoever were ODYSSEUS REVEALS HIMSELF TO HIS FATHER. [From Odyssey XXIV.] All this haste made not his staid faith so free The gifts he vow'd at giving of my name. Of this fair orchard, that I ask'd of you For his best eating. Not a grape did grow In best men's sufferings, yet as sure as strong Their messengers dispatch'd to win to friend MICHAEL DRAYTON. [MICHAEL DRAYTON was born at Hartshull in Warwickshire about the year 1563. He died on the 23rd of December, 1631, and lies buried in Westminster Abbey. In 1591 he published The Harmony of the Church, which was for some unknown reason refused a licence, and has never been reprinted till recently. It was followed by Idea and The Pastorals, 1593; Mortimeriados (the Barons' Wars), 1595; The Heroical Epistles (one had been separately printed 1598); The Owl, 1604; Legends of Cromwell and others, 1607-1613; Polyolbion (first eighteen books 1612, whole 1622); The Battle of Agincourt, 1626; 'besides minor works at intervals.] The sentence which Hazlitt allots to Drayton is perhaps one of the most felicitous examples of short metaphorical criticism. 'His mind,' says the critic, 'is a rich marly soil that produces an abundant harvest and repays the husbandman's toil; but few flaunting flowers, the garden's pride, grow in it, nor any poisonous weeds.' Such figurative estimates must indeed always be in some respects unsatisfactory, yet in this there is but little of inadequacy. It is exceedingly uncommon for the reader to be transported by anything that he meets with in the author of the Polyolbion. Drayton's jewels five words long are of the rarest, and their sparkle when they do occur is not of the brightest or most enchanting lustre. But considering his enormous volume, he is a poet of surprisingly high merit. Although he has written some fifty or sixty thousand lines, the bulk of them on subjects not too favourable to poetical treatment, he has yet succeeded in giving to the whole an unmistakeably poetical flavour, and in maintaining that flavour throughout. The variety of his work, and at the same time the unfailing touch by which he lifts that work, not indeed into the highest regions of poetry, but far above its lower confines, are his most remarkable characteristics. The Polyolbion, the Heroical Epistles, the Odes, the Ballad of Agincourt, and the Nymphidia are strikingly unlike each other in the qualities required for suc cessful treatment of them, yet they are all successfully treated. It is something to have written the best war song in a language, its best fantastic poem, and its only topographical poem of real value. Adverse criticism may contend that the Nymphidia and the Polyolbion were not worth the doing, but this is another matter altogether. That the Ballad of Agincourt was not worth the doing, no one who has any fondness for poetry or any appreciation of it will attempt to contend. In the lyric work of the Odes, scanty as it is, there is the same evidence of mastery and of what may be called thoroughness of workmanship. Exacting critics may indeed argue that Drayton has too much of the thoroughly accomplished and capable workman, and too little of the divinely gifted artist. It may be thought, too, that if he had written less and concentrated his efforts, the average merit of his work would have been higher. There is, at any rate, no doubt that the bulk of his productions, if it has not interfered with their value, has interfered with their popularity. The Barons' Wars, which, according to some theories, should have been Drayton's best work, is perhaps his worst. The stanza, which he has chosen for good and well-expressed reasons, is an effective one, and the subject might have been made interesting. As a matter of fact it has but little interest. The somewhat 'kiteand-crow' character of the disturbance chronicled is not relieved by any vigorous portraiture either of Mortimer or of Edward or of the Queen. The first and last of these personages are much better handled in the Heroical Epistles. The level of these latter and of the Legends is decidedly high. Not merely do they contain isolated passages of great beauty, but the general interest of them is well sustained, and the characters of the writers subtly differenced. One great qualification which Drayton had as a writer of historical and geographical verse was his possession of what has been called, in the case of M. Victor Hugo, la science des noms. No one who has an ear can fail to recognise the felicity of the stanza in Agincourt which winds up with 'Ferrars and Fanhope,' and innumerable examples of the same kind occur elsewhere. Without this science indeed the Polyolbion would have been merely an awkward gazetteer. As it is, the 'strange herculean task,' to borrow its author's description of it, has been very happily performed. It may safely be assumed that very few living Englishmen have read it through. But those who have will probably agree that there is a surprising interest in it, and that this interest |