For some reason, Drayton never reissued
Endimion
and Phoebe.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v04
Drayton uses it without spirit or
1 By Elton, p. 8.
2 See Meres, Palladis Tamia; Fuller, Worthies; and The Returne from Parnassus,
&ct 1, 8c. 2.
## p. 171 (#193) ############################################
The Harmonie of the Church
171
a
novelty, and it may not be unfair to regard The Harmonie of the
Church as intended merely to acquire for the author a very
respectable introduction to the public of his day. The statement,
long current, that the book was confiscated in the year of its
publication has been proved erroneous! Drayton reissued the
work in 1610 under the title, A Heavenly Harmonie of Spirituall
Songes.
For something over two years, Drayton was silent. Then, in
April 1593, there was entered at Stationers' Hall a book which
showed a different influence from that revealed in The Harmonie
of the Church, and one which proved its author's title to the name
of poet. Throughout his life, Drayton maintained a fervent
admiration for Spenser, and Spenser was the model whom he
followed in his second publication. In 1579, the voice of what
was then the new poetry had spoken for the first time in Spenser's
Shepheards Calender. In 1593, Drayton's Idea, the Shepheard's
Garland, Fashioned in nine Eglogs. Rowlands Sacrifice to the
Nine Muses, carried on the same form, though not entirely with
the same end in view. In 1619, when he issued a third edition of
Idea under a new title (in the volume entitled Poems, including
The Barons Warres, England's Heroicall Epistles, Idea, Odes. . .
Pastorals, Contayning Eglogues, etc. ), Drayton prefixed to it a
brief discourse on pastoral in general, which contains this character-
istically ungrammatical sentence:
The subject of Pastorals, as the language of it ought to be poor, silly, and
of the coarsest woof in appearance; nevertheless, the most high, and most
noble matters of the world may be shadowed in them, and for certain some-
times are.
Notably so, of course, in Spenser's Shepheards Calender. But
Drayton, much as he owes to his great forerunner's work, shows
two points of difference. His language is not 'poor, silly, and
of the coarsest woof. ' It almost entirely avoids the archaisms in
which Spenser rejoiced, and it rises, when occasion demands, to
a nobility which makes these eclogues one of his finest achieve-
ments. Secondly, he almost entirely discards the tradition which,
starting in England, perhaps, from the study of Mantuan, had
forcibly affected all the writers of pastoral from Googe to Watson,
and was to reappear in Lycidas. Idea moralises but little, and
includes few complaints of the decay of nobility, misgovernment
1 By R. B. MºKerrow in The Library, 3rd Series, October 1910, pp. 348–350.
## p. 172 (#194) ############################################
172
Michael Drayton
in church and state and so forth. There is, in other words, little
trace upon the work of that change from the decayed order of
chivalry to a newly organised social scheme, which is the real
,
topic of much previous pastoral. The 'high and noble matters'
of which it treats comprise only love, panegyric and poetry.
In these eclogues as they first appeared, there is, it must be
admitted, a good deal that is old-fashioned. In the first,
Drayton, under his pastoral name Rowland, laments his sins and
his misery; and there is small promise of a new poet in such
lines as :
My sorrowes waxe, my joyes are in the wayning,
My hope decayes, and my despayre is springing,
My love hath losse, and my disgrace hath gayning,
Wrong rules, desert with teares her hands sits wringing:
Sorrow, despayre, disgrace, and wrong, doe thwart
My Joy, my love, my hope, and my desert.
The second eclogue gives us a debate between age and youth-in
the persons of Wynken and Motto-about love; the third is in
praise of Beta-that is, queen Elizabeth ; the fourth is a lament
for Elphin, Sir Philip Sidney; and the fifth sings the praises of
Idea. Of the identity of the person intended by this name more
must be said later. In the sixth eclogue, the departed worthies of
England are touched upon; but the main theme of the poem is the
panegyric of Pandora, who, probably, stands for the countess of
Pembroke. In the seventh, we have another contest between an
old man and a young about love; the eighth describes the pastoral
golden age; and the ninth and last is another lament from Rowland,
this time for unrequited love.
In 1606, Drayton, who spent much labour in the revision of his
previously published poems, issued a new edition of Idea, the
Shepheard's Garland, in his volume of Poemes Lyrick and
Pastoral. The differences from the first edition are many. The
title is changed to Eglogs, the dedication to Robert Dudley is
omitted, a new eclogue is added, the order is rearranged and the
text is much altered and much improved. The few archaisms
have disappeared, and so have all such outworn tricks as that
exemplified in the stanza quoted above. We find a fresher,
sweeter and stronger music, a rejection of the conventional in
image and scenery, and a greater freedom from that clumsiness
of grammar and construction which was Drayton's besetting
poetical sin all his life.
To the modern reader, nothing is more enjoyable in the Idea
of 1593 than the songs introduced into the dialogue. In the
## p. 173 (#195) ############################################
Idea, the Shepheard's Garland
173
6
Eglogs of 1606, these are even better; of the old songs, five have
disappeared, four of them to be replaced by others much less
'conceited,' much fresher and more purely lyrical and showing
something of the light and dainty music, the secret of which
Drayton was to master later in life. The two which remain are
polished, to their great benefit. One of these is the peculiarly
brave and swinging song in praise of Beta, which uses the old
‘sixes and eights' (with shorter lines between each pair) with
a skill and movement of which the author of The Harmonie of
the Church would never be supposed capable; the other is a
delightful ballad, in the metre of Chaucer's Sir Thopas, concerning
Dowsabell and her shepherd boy, in which archaic terms are intro-
duced to the best and quaintest effect. The new eclogue, the ninth,
contains three songs, all among Drayton's best. It may be noted,
too, that, in these pastorals, Drayton first makes the high claim for
poets and poetry which he had learned from Spenser, and which he
maintained throughout his life.
The pastorals of 1606 are of considerable interest on the
biographical side. In the first place, the poet speaks more directly
from the heart and more particularly of himself. It is only
necessary to compare the two versions of the last eclogue (ix in
1593, x in 1606), to see the difference. The one is a vague,
purely poetical and conventional complaint; the other, the very
voice of the man who had passed through disappointment and
sorrow. The references to other persons need further examina-
tion? . A few, about which there is no difficulty, have been mentioned
above; and to these may be added the reference in eclogue VIII to
a certain Sylvia, who may well be supposed to be a lady of the
family of Sir William Aston, by 1606 Drayton's patron. But who
is Idea, who Panape, who the 'great Olcon,' that has deserted
Rowland and the sheepfold, and who Selena, who is roundly
cursed by the poet for jilting Rowland in favour of deceitful
Cerberon '?
The questions are of importance in the biography of Drayton,
since they affect his honour as a man. Now, for the first time
in his writings, he gives, in this eclogue VIII of 1606, unmistakable
evidence of the identity of Idea. A previous mention (in Endimion
and Phoebe, ? 1595) had supplied the fact that she was then an
unmarried woman, living by the river Ancor. In the eclogue, we
1 In Fleay, Biog. Chronicle of the Eng. Drama, 1, pp. 143—5 there is a list of
interesting, if not always secure, identifications of Drayton's pastoral characters with
actual persons.
## p. 174 (#196) ############################################
174
Michael Drayton
are told that she is the younger sister of Panape, who still lives
by the Ancor, and that she has lately moved to another part of
England
The younger then, her sister not less good,
Bred where the other lastly doth abide,
Modest Idea, flower of womanhood,
That Rowland hath so highly deified;
Whom Phoebus' daughters worthily prefer,
And give their gifts abundantly to her.
Driving her flocks up to the fruitful Meene,
Which daily looks upon the lovely Stowre,
Near to that vale, which of all vales is queen,
Lastly, forsaking of her former bow'r:
And of all places holdeth Cotswold dear,
Which now is proud, because she lives it near.
Of the two daughters of Sir Henry Goodere, the patron of Dray-
ton's boyhood, the elder, Frances, had married her cousin and lived
on at Polesworth; the younger, Anne, had married, in 1595 or
1596, Sir Henry Rainsford of Clifford Chambers, 'in Evesham vale,
on the Stour, and north of Meon Hill, an outlying spur of Cotswold". '
There can be little doubt that, by 1606, at any rate, Idea was
Anne Rainsford, née Goodere. Further evidence comes from
The Barrons Wars (1603):
My lays had been still to Idea's bower,
Of my dear Ancor, or her loved Stour;
and from the thirteenth song of Poly-Olbion (1613), where Drayton,
singing of Coventry and Godiva, has these lines :
The first part of whose name, Godiva, doth fore-reed
Th' first syllable of hers, and Goodere half doth sound;
and states that 'her being here was by this name fore-shown,'
while
as the first did tell
Her sir-name, so again doth Ancor lively spell
Her christen'd title Anne.
The passage ends by informing us that Coventry was Anne Goodere's
birth-place. Once more, in the Hymn to his Ladies Birth-Place,
among the Odes of 1619, he states that Godiva was the type of
Idea, and that Idea was born in ‘happy Mich-Parke,' the 'best and
most frequent'street of Coventry.
There seems here ample evidence that, from 1595 to 1619-
from Drayton's thirty-second to his fifty-sixth year—Idea was
Anne Goodere ; and his long friendship with lady Rainsford and
1 Elton, p. 20.
## p. 175 (#197) ############################################
The Identity of 'Idea'
175
her husband is, also, well attested. Was Idea always Anne Goodere?
And is the Idea of the eclogues of 1593, and of the sonnets of 1594
and later years, which offer no evidence, the same person? It
would be natural to suppose that they were, and that Drayton
was faithful throughout to his ‘lady. As we have seen, he
. '
distinctly states in eclogue VIII of 1606 that the Idea of that
eclogue was the lady whom Rowland hath so highly deified'—that
is, to whom Drayton had addressed the sonnets. But it has been
suggested' that there was a change, and a very violent change,
in Drayton's allegiance, and that the attack on Selena in
eclogue VIII of 1606 is intimately connected with this change 2.
Endimion and Phoebe ( 1595), was ushered in by a glowing sonnet
addressed to Lucy countess of Bedford, the famous daughter of lord
Harington, whose seat was at Combe Abbey on the banks of the
Ancor. The sonnet thanks her for her bounty, and vows the poet's
devotion; it is, in fact, the stock tribute of client to patron. The
last twenty-two lines of Endimion and Phoebe form an address to
a 'sweet mayd,' the 'purest spark of Vesta's kindled fire,' the
'sweet Nymph of Ancor, crowne of my desire. ' It has been argued
that the sonnet to the patroness and the closing lines of the poem
must refer to the same person; to which it may be objected that
the two tributes are quite different in tone, and that the phrases
quoted above are very inaptly applied to a married woman, and
very aptly to one who was still unmarried and who seems to have
been the object of the poet's love, rather than of his reverence
or gratitude. If, however, the Idea of Endimion and Phoebe
be the countess of Bedford, it is fair to conclude that so is the Idea
of the eclogues of 1593 and the sonnets of 1594. In 1596, Drayton
dedicated to the countess of Bedford his Mortimeriados; in the
same year, his legend of Robert Duke of Normandy; and, in 1597,
his Englands Heroicall Epistles. Then, in 1603, in issuing his
Mortimeriados in a new form, he dedicated it, not to lady Bedford
but to Sir William Aston, and omitted all the references to that
lady. Finally, in eclogue VIII of 1606, comes the attack on Selena.
It has been supposed that the countess of Bedford had withdrawn
1 By Courthope, III, pp. 29 et seq.
? There is a puzzle in eclogue iv of 1593. What is meant by saying of the un.
faithful nymph that
Her lippes prophane Ideas sacred name,
And sdayne to read the annals of her fame?
The obvious explanation is that Anne Goodere had seen the sonnets to Iden in
manuscript (cf. the introductory sonnet to Anthony Cooke), and made light of them;
but this seems hardly satisfactory.
## p. 176 (#198) ############################################
176
Michael Drayton
a
her patronage; that Drayton, in revenge, took from her the
dedication of the new form of Mortimeriados; and that, in the
Idea of 1606, taking advantage of the fact that both ladies had
dwelt by the Ancor, he turned Idea into Anne Goodere and made
the countess of Bedford the hated and perfidious Selena. Unless
it can be proved that the Idea of Endimion and Phoebe was the
countess of Bedford, the accusation seems to break down; and
it must be remembered that, though the new form of Morti-
meriados was dedicated to Sir William Aston, the sonnet to the
countess of Bedford was reprinted in the same volume, and con-
tinued to be reprinted with the other sonnets till Drayton's death.
It seems possible, therefore, that Drayton effected the change of
patron without grossly insulting his former benefactress or even
quarrelling with her, and that he remained faithful in love
throughout to a single lady, to whom he consistently gave the title
of Idea. Who Selena was, who Cerberon and who Olcon, must
remain uncertain. In a later and revised edition of these pastorals,
published in 1619, the lines on Selena are omitted.
In 1594, still following the poetical fashion, Drayton published
a historical 'legend. ' Readers of Elizabethan literature have no
need to be reminded how ardently, in the last twenty years of
Elizabeth's reign, the newly awakened patriotism of England
turned to the history of past achievements. The form which
Drayton chose for the expression of this sentiment was still the
popular form, although it dated from the days of A Mirror for
Magistrates and was beginning to be shaken from its hold on the
public by the success of the chronicle play. Perhaps a discerning
admiration for Samuel Daniel's Complaynt of Rosamond, published
in 1592, may have helped to incline Drayton towards this form, for
Daniel was one of his three chief poetical masters.
The legend of Peirs Gaveston Earle of Cornwall was followed, in
1594, by that of Matilda, the faire and chaste daughter of the Lord
Robert Fitzwater; in 1596, both were revised and issued together
with a third, The Tragicall Legend of Robert Duke of Normandy;
w and, in 1607, Drayton, for some reason, turned back to the old
form, and published The Legend of Great Cromwel. On these
legends, there is little need to dwell. They suffer from the faults
common to all their kind: monotony, and an incomplete assimila-
tion of the historical and poetical matter, whereby the facts, as
they occur in the careful record, let the poetry down with a thud.
1 On the whole question, see Courthope, ut supra; Elton, pp. 14–23.
See vol. ni of the present work, chap. IX; and, for Drayton, p. 198.
## p. 177 (#199) ############################################
Legends
177
One or two points, however, may be noticed. Perhaps the best
passage in any of the four legends is the charming description of
the poet's betaking himself on a summer morning to the banks of
Thames, there to fall asleep and dream the quaint, old-fashioned
estrif between Fortune and Fame over Robert of Normandy. It
gives a foretaste of that love for the glory and beauty of his own
land which was later to inspire and enrich Poly-Olbion. The
legend of Matilda shows a warm humanity and some real pathos ;
and it is not too much to say that, when all allowance is made for
Drayton's incorrigible clumsiness in grammar and construction,
certain passages in Great Cromwel are the most remarkable
example of the use of poetry for reasoning that occurs before
Dryden. The versification is seldom attractive. Robert, Duke of
Normandy and Matilda are in rime royal; Peirs Gaveston in
stanzas of six; and Great Cromwel in stanzas of eight; but in
none does Drayton use the decasyllabic line with much individuality
or beauty.
His next work, in its first form, showed once more the influence
of Daniel. In 1594, sonnet sequences were in the height of fashion.
Astrophel and Stella had found its way into print in 1591; but it
was not till some years later that Drayton's sonnets were to show
the influence of Sidney. When he published Ideas Mirrour, in
1594, his model was rather Daniel, of whose Delia three editions
had appeared in 1592. In 1594, Ideas Mirrour consisted of fifty-
one sonnets, which, as we learn from the additional dedicatory
sonnet to Anthony Cooke, had 'long slept in sable night. ' The
form of sonnet which Drayton principally affects is the typically
Elizabethan form of three quatrains and a final couplet, not the
strict Petrarchian form. Of these fifty-one sonnets, however, two
consist of four quatrains with a final couplet, two are written
mainly in alexandrines, which are also scattered through certain
other sonnets, and, in eighteen, each quatrain is rimed not abab,
but on the rarer principle of abba.
Any independence which these and a few other variations may
be thought to show can find little counterpart in the material of
the sonnets of Ideas Mirrour. In this earliest edition, it is very
seldom that the poet shakes himself free of the conventions of the
day, or so uses them as to convey an impression of the sincerity
with which, of course, their use is never incompatible. Of two
sonnets which connect Idea with the river Ancor, the first (Amour
XIII) has a personal touch, the second (Amour XXIV) displays the
knowledge of the streams of England which was to stand Drayton
12
E. L. IV.
CH. X,
## p. 178 (#200) ############################################
178
Michael Drayton
in good stead in the future; but Amour xxxvIII is alone among
these early efforts in its simple, convincing force and directness.
If chaste and pure devotion of my yonth,
Or glorie of my Aprill-springing yeares,
Unfained love in naked simple truth,
A thousand vowes, a thousand sighes and teares;
Or if a world of faithful service done,
Words, thoughts, and deeds devoted to her honor,
Or eyes that have beheld her as theyr sunne,
With admiration ever looking on her:
A lyfe that never joyd but in her love,
A soule that ever hath ador'd her name,
A fayth that time nor fortune could not move,
A Muse that unto heaven hath raised her fame.
Though these, nor these deserve to be imbraced,
Yet faire unkinde, too good to be disgraced.
The fact that the couplet shows Drayton's weakness in grammar
cannot undo the effect of the quatrains. It is, however, in
scattered lines and passages rather than in any complete sonnet
that the value of the earliest Amours will be found to lie. Into
the vexed question of the genuineness of the sentiments expressed
in these and other Elizabethan sonnets, this is not the place to
enter. It is, perhaps, generally recognised that the adoption of a
poetic convention does not necessarily denote insincerity in the
poet; and the question is not whether or whence he borrowed his
conventions, but whether he has subdued them to his own genius.
The fact that Drayton borrowed, as it appears, the title of Idea
(and, as it also appears, little, if anything, else) from a French
poet? , and his material and machinery from the poetical stores of
his day, does not prove that these Amours of 1594 are a mere
literary exercise. Nor does the mention of the river Ancor in two
of the sonnets prove them sincere outpourings of his heart. The
workmanship proves that Drayton was not yet poet enough to
subdue the conventions of form to the matter of his own thoughts
and emotions, and it is therefore that his earliest sonnets stumble
and leave us cold.
Ideas Mirrour was much admired Eleven new issues were
called for between its first publication and the author's death in
1631. On none of his productions did Drayton spend so much care
in revision. The issues of 1599, 1600, 1602, 1605 and 1619, are all
6
i Claude de Pontoux, author of L'Idée, 1579. See vol. II of the present work,
pp. 263—4; and, on the Elizabethan use of the Platonic · idea,' see Elton, p. 47 and
references.
* See Daniel's Delia and Drayton's Idea; ed. Esdaile, A. , p. 149.
## p. 179 (#201) ############################################
Ideas Mirrour
179
new editions, in which new sonnets are constantly included and
old ones rearranged, omitted altogether, or polished, sometimes
almost beyond recognition! It is not always possible to agree
with Drayton's own ideas of improvement; but the general result
of all this care is that, as time goes on, the character of the collec-
tion changes. The rather heavy, elaborate model provided by
Daniel gives place to the simpler and more direct style of Sidney.
Conventions disappear, or are turned to good account; and, though
there is, in the general opinion, only one masterpiece among all
Drayton's sonnets, the edition of 1619 includes few sonnets that
have not something masterly in them. The masterpiece referred
to is the well-known sonnet: 'Since there's no helpe, Come let us
kisse and part. ' It suggests, irresistibly, a record of a definite
moment in the actual relations between the poet and some woman;
and, in general, it may be said that the sonnets, as time goes on,
bear less and less the mark of the literary exercise and more and
more that of the expression of genuine feeling. It is true that, in
the editions of 1599, 1602 and 1605, Drayton introduced two
sonnets: 'Into these loves who but for passion looks,' and 'Many
there be excelling in this kind,' in which the reader is warned
that
My verse is the true image of my mind,
Ever in motion, still desiring change,
To choyce of all varietie inclin'd,
And in all humours sportively I range;
and that
My wanton verse nere keepes one certain stay,
But now, at hand; then, seekes invention far,
And with each little motion rupnes astray,
Wilde, madding, jocond, and irreguler;
but such statements, it may be submitted, mean nothing more than
that love is not the only subject of which he intends to treat;
while such sonnets as “Since there's no helpe'; 'How many paltry,
foolish, painted things'; 'An evill spirit your beauty haunts me still’;
'Whilst thus my pen strives to eternize thee,' compel a belief in
their sincerity.
Much has been written, and much more, doubtless, will be
1 Elton, pp. 207–9, gives a table of one hundred and seven sonnets in the five
editions. Brett, pp. 1–55, prints one hundred and eight (the extra sonnet being that to
Sir Walter Aston, 1605) in their earliest forms, without variants; and, in an appendix,
T'p. 250, 251, gives three complimentary sonnets prefixed to works of other authors.
12--2
## p. 180 (#202) ############################################
180
Michael Drayton
written, on the relation of Drayton's sonnets to Shakespeare's. It
has been well said that
the question which of the two was the lender is insoluble, so long as we only
know that some of Shakespeare's sonnets were in private circulation in 1598,
while two were printed by Jaggard in 1599, and the rest not till ten years
laterl.
After the first edition of the sonnets, Drayton's next publication
was Endimion and Phoebe, entered at Stationers' Hall in April
1595, and, presumably, published in the same year. This is one of
the most beautiful and interesting of Drayton's poems. In it the
sweetness and simplicity of pastoral are exalted by the touch of
the heroic; and the occasional display of philosophy and quaint
learning, astronomical, medical and what not, though it sometimes
brings the poetry perilously near to doggerel, is not without its
historical interest or its charm. At the close of the poem, Drayton
commends it, humbly, to three other poets, Spenser (Collin), Daniel
(Musaeus) and Lodge (Goldey). The influence of the first two
is plain in the poem, but a stronger influence still is that of
Marlowe, whose Hero and Leander (published in 1598) Drayton
must have seen in manuscript. Endimion and Phoebe has not the
passion of Marlowe's work; or of Venus and Adonis, which, no doubt,
Drayton had also seen. His are cool, moonlight loves; but the
exquisite delicacy of rather fantastic ornament, combined with a
freshness of atmosphere in the narrative and descriptive passages,
shows a lighter touch and a suppler mind than anything the poet
had yet produced. The poem recalls irresistibly some Italian
painting of the renascence, where nymphs and satyrs occupy a
quiet, spacious and purely decorative world. Endimion and
Phoebe has its claims, moreover, on the side of poetical craftsman-
ship. However he may stumble in his learned nines and threes'
(as Lodge called his description of the celestial orders)? , in his
narrative, Drayton's movement is swift and graceful. The poem is
written in rimed decasyllabic couplets, which, at their best, are not
echoes of Marlowe, Spenser or Daniel, but Drayton's own, with a
distinctive cadence, and not a little of that ease which he was by
time and labour to acquire.
The couplets avoid both the wearisome, epigrammatic certainty
of pause which this form acquired in the eighteenth century, and
1 Elton, p. 56. See the whole passage, which inclines slightly to the view that
Drayton was the borrower. See also Beeching, Sonnets of Shakespeare, pp. 132–140.
? In A Fig for Monius (1595). For nines and threes,' see also the eighth Amour
of Ideas Mirrour, 1594,
6
## p. 181 (#203) ############################################
Mortimeriados
181
the straggling looseness with which it has been used since.
Without jerkiness or shapelessness, they flow as brightly and
smoothly along as any of the streams of Latmus.
For some reason, Drayton never reissued Endimion and Phoebe.
Years later, he returned to the idea, and incorporated parts of his
beautiful early poem in an uninteresting work, The Man in the
Moone, 1606, which has a body of crabbed learning with a head
and tail of satire.
For the next few years, Drayton devoted himself to historical
poetry, and, in the course of them, hit upon what his contem-
poraries and the two following centuries considered his best
production. With his ardour for Daniel still unabated, he pub-
lished, in 1596, the Mortimeriados, of which mention has been
made above. It is not among his most successful efforts. The
story of the wars between Edward II and the barons, down to
the capture of Mortimer at Nottingham castle by Edward III, is
told in rime royal, and at great length. Drayton's struggles with
history induce the faults observable, also, in Daniel. The narrative
of events is not clear, and it is continually standing in the way of
the dramatic interest in the characters. Nevertheless, there are
admirable passages in this long and comprehensive epic, every line
of which shows Drayton hard at work in his dogged, persevering
way; determined to hammer out the best poetry he can, seldom
slovenly, though often crabbed, and now and then meeting with
the reward of his conscientious labours. Mortimer's escape from
the Tower, his meeting with queen Isabella in France, the unhappy
state of England, the scene of Edward's deposition at Kenilworth
and his lament at Berkeley, are at least vigorously told; while the
description of the queen's bower at Nottingham gives Drayton an
opportunity for letting his fancy run free in renascence ornament.
Seven years later, Drayton rewrote the whole poem, under the
new title The Barrons Wars, and in a new metre, expanding his
seven-lined stanza into an eight-lined stanza. The reason for this
change is set out in a preface which is interesting, not only for the
excellence of its matter, but for its testimony to the conscientious-
ness and to the sound knowledge of poetry on which Drayton based
his prolonged and determined efforts to be a poet. In the stanza
of seven lines, in which there are two couplets,
the often harmony 'thereof soften’d the verse more than the majesty of the
subject would permit, unless they had all been geminals, or couplets. . . . The
Quadrin doth never double, or to use a word of Heraldry, never bringeth
forth gemells: The Quinzain too soon. The Sestin hath twins in the base,
but they detain not the musick nor the close, as Musicians term it, long
## p. 182 (#204) ############################################
182
Michael Drayton
enough for an Epic Poem. . . . This of eight both holds the time clean through
to the base of the column, which is the couplet at 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, resem-
bling the pillar which in Architecture is called the Tuscan, whose shaft is of
six diameters, and base of two.
In spite of this, The Barrons Wars is free from none of the
essential faults of Mortimeriados, and even discards some of its
fresher beauties, though the careful revision of diction was not
without its good effect.
Drayton discovered the means of dispensing with those essential
faults in 1597, when (having meanwhile published the Legends of
Robert, Matilda and Gaveston referred to above) he produced the
famous Englands Heroicall Epistles. These are a series of letters
from heroic lovers, with, in every case, the answer. The amount
of history is reduced to a minimum; yet Drayton is enabled to
celebrate the great men and women of his country, and to fan in
others that flame of patriotism which burned steadily in himself.
The first edition of these Epistles was evidently soon exhausted;
in 1598, they were reissued with additions; the number was again
enlarged in 1599 and in 1602; and, altogether, between the first
issue and the poet's death, the Heroicall Epistles were issued
thirteen, possibly fourteen, times. They have been reprinted since
more often than any other of Drayton's works. Twelve couples
exchange letters. Henry II and Fair Rosamund; king John and
Matilda Fitzwater; queen Isabel and Mortimer; the Black Prince
and the countess of Salisbury; Richard II and his wife Isabel;
queen Catherine and Owen Tudor; Eleanor Cobham and her
husband, Humphrey of Gloucester; William de la Pole duke of
Suffolk and queen Margaret; Edward IV and Jane Shore; the
queen of France and Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk; Surrey and
Geraldine; lady Jane Grey and lord Guilford Dudley. Two of
these pairs, Drayton had already treated in other poems; to all, he
gives a life and vigour for which we may look in vain in his more
strictly historical poems. It cannot be said that he has a keen
sense of character; but he has at least enough to avoid sameness
in a work where sameness would have been easy. There is no
confusing, for instance, the letter of Jane Shore with that of lady
Jane Grey; and, in each case, Drayton bears carefully in mind the
character as well as the circumstances. And the poems abound
in pleasant features. The appeal of Mary to Suffolk is charming,
for all the peculiarity of the conditions under which it was made.
Geraldine describes delightfully her life in the country grange
## p. 183 (#205) ############################################
Englands Heroicall Epistles
183
where she will await Surrey's return; and Matilda Fitzwater's
reply to John is a noble piece of eloquence.
The form of these letters was due, it appears, to Ovid's Heroides;
and, with the form, Drayton took something, also, of his model's
versification. In Englands Heroicall Epistles, we find completed
the improvement of the rimed couplet which was begun in
Endimion and Phoebe. Nowhere is it better used during the
Elizabethan epoch. To the smoothness and the crispness (always
stopping short of epigram), which remind us of Ovid's elegiacs,
there are added other good qualities. Drayton's years of hard
work were having their effect. When not overburdened with his
subject (and he was too ready to undertake subjects that would
have overburdened greater poets), he moves more easily and yet
more strongly than any except the supreme pair of his age,
Spenser and Shakespeare. And in the work under notice he did, in
1597, what Edmund Waller has gained all the credit of doing
nearly thirty years later, in the 'smoothening' of English verse.
Further, to this 'smoothness' he adds a skill in the choice and
placing of words for the effect of sonority and point which is not
found again till Dryden.
After this achievement, Drayton might have been expected to
forge ahead and make profitable use of the years of his prime. He
was now famous and should have been prosperous; but his out-
put for the next few years consisted only of revisions of, and
additions to, his Heroicall Epistles and sonnets. He was turning
his energy into other channels. For one thing, as Meres states in
Palladis Tamia, 1598, he had already embarked upon that huge
undertaking, Poly-Olbion; for another, he had been drawn into
the net of the theatre. It may not be permissible to declare him
unwise; but his work for the theatre brought him no enduring
fame (and, as it appears, but little immediate reward), while Poly-
Olbion was to embitter him with disappointment and vexation
while he lived, and leave an easy mark for the scorn of impatient
judges for centuries after his death? .
It must not be supposed that the years 1598—1604 were barren.
Besides so much of Poly-Olbion as they may have seen completed,
they produced some of Drayton's best sonnets and several new and
good Heroicall Epistles. But they do not show the marked advance
1 Drayton's work for the theatre will be discussed elsewhere in this work. Refer.
ence may here be made to Elton, pp. 83–93; Greg's Henslowe's Diary and Henslowe
Papers ; Fleay, Biog. Chron. 8. v. 'Drayton'; and the article by Whitaker discussed
by Elton, pp. 91–93.
## p. 184 (#206) ############################################
184
Michael Drayton
that might have been expected from a man in his prime, with such
a point d'appui as he had made for himself in those Epistles.
In 1603, came 'the quiet end of that long-living Queene,' Eliza-
beth. Drayton owed her nothing, though she owed to him one of
the sweetest songs ever sung in her praise, the song to 'Beta' in
Idea. Within the year before her death, in the sonnets of 1602,
he had already celebrated James VI of Scotland as prince and
poet; and, when Elizabeth died, he turned immediately, without à
word of regret for the star that had sunk, to hymn the star that was
rising. His haste was considered indecent? ; his gratulatory poem,
To the Majestie of King James, received no attention, either from
the public or the prince. A little later, he wrote a Paean
Triumphall for the society of the Goldsmiths of London; but
there can be no doubt that his disappointment was keen. Fortun-
ately for himself, he found, about this time, a new patron, Walter
Aston, of Tixall, who, on receiving knighthood from James I, made
Drayton one of his esquires, an honour which the poet was careful
to claim on his future title-pages.
It appears significant that the first of Drayton's satires should
have been published in 1604; but, while it doubtless implies a
mood of disappointment and depression, it cannot be taken for
certain to refer to the king's neglect of his advances. In the
preface, Drayton states that The Owle, entered at Stationers'
Hall in February 1604, had been 'lastly finished' almost a year
before; and, therefore, it is unsafe to find in it any autobiographical
references. Nevertheless, the mere fact that Drayton should have
included satire at all in the list of the then common forms of poetry
which he seems to have considered it his duty as a poet to practise
is some indication that he was not happy or content. The owl, in his
satire, is the keen-eyed, disinterested observer. Nagged at by little
birds, and attacked by the fear and jealousy of crows, kites, ravens
and other marauders, he is rescued by the kingly eagle, to whom he
describes the abuses he has seen carried on by evil birds who prey
on the commonwealth of fowls. The poem is inspired, doubtless,
by The Parlement of Foules; but it imitates neither the metre
nor the good qualities of that work. More than once in his works,
Drayton makes use of birds, of which, however, he betrays no
more than common knowledge; and the opening of The Owle con-
tains a pretty enough description of the surroundings in which the
poet fell asleep to dream his satire. In the satire itself, there is
i See Chettle, Englandes Mourning Garment (1603), D. 3, and Drayton, Epistle to
George Sandys (1627), Il. 11, 19–26.
## p. 185 (#207) ############################################
His Satires
185
not sufficient trenchancy, originality, or humour to make the poem
interesting, and the rimed couplets run sluggish and dull. The
Man in the Moone has already been mentioned, and it may be
convenient to dismiss the subject of Drayton's satires by saying
here that, in 1627, at the age of sixty-three, he published, in a
volume containing better things, The Moone-Calfe. It is plea-
santest to think of this as inspired by his conscientious wish to
leave no poetical stone unturned; and yet it was so long since
Marston had published a satire that the attempt to follow in his
steps was belated. The Moone-Calfe is a coarse, clumsy and brutal
piece of work, redeemed only by the vigour of its sketches of con-
temporary manners.
In the same year as The Owle (1604), appeared Moyses in a
Map of his Miracles, to be revised and published twenty-six years
later, as Moses, his Birth and Miracles. Here Drayton once more
makes a high claim for poetry,
That from full Jove takes her celestial birth,
And quick as fire, her glorious self can raise
Above this base abominable earth;
6
and, in the days before the Authorised Version, he may be
pardoned for thinking that he could do something for the story of
Moses greater than had been done for it by 'that sacred and
canonic writ. ' He had before him, also, the example of Du Bartas
and Sylvester, to whom he renders generous tribute. Unfortunately,
his treatment of the story does not raise it in the eyes of modern
readers; the poem throughout lacks exaltation and grandeur, and
its chief interest lies in certain human moments, where the drama
of the episodes is happily amplified by the poet's sturdy humanity.
But Moses is not a negligible poem in any study of Drayton. It
shows here and there his progress in the management of the
decasyllabic line, and now and then strangely anticipates later
workmanship. Of such a line as the second of these:
Muse, I invoke the utmost of thy might,
That with an armed and auspicious wing,
Drayton is not the poet who would be guessed as the author by one
unacquainted with its provenance.
Of the importance of a publication of two years later, however,
there can be no question. The Odes of 1606 were Drayton's second
striking effort to plough a field untilled by his contemporaries.
The Pindaric ode had already been imitated by Jonson: it went on
being imitated with an irregularity that Congreve was the earliest
## p. 186 (#208) ############################################
186
Michael Drayton
author to reprehend. Drayton's model is the Anacreontic or
Horatian ode. With these odes, as with most, indeed, of the works
of so stern a critic of himself and so slowly developed a genius as
Drayton, we have to wait for the final edition before we can see
them at their best. The Odes of 1606 were revised and issued
with additions and omissions in 1619; and in that edition they
are best studied.
It was Drayton's endeavour to revive 'Th' old Lyrick kind'-
the kind, perhaps, that was sung to the harp by Hewes at Poles-
worth, fortified and polished by the influence of Horace and
Anacreon. His odes are nearly all composed in short, decisive
lines, a medium that English poetry has always found difficult. If
the charge against Drayton of being merely a laborious, imitative
bungler were ever revived, a sufficient answer would be a few
selections, showing how unusually sensitive he was to the faults
and merits of his medium. The faults of a long line are monotony
and unwieldiness. Drayton is often monotonous and unwieldy.
The faults of a short line are jerkiness and excessive compression.
Drayton is guilty of both. But in all cases he succeeds, when he
is at his best, in bringing out the possible merits of his metre, the
smoothness and progression of the long line, the delicate, involved
patterns and the range of tones, from the trumpet to the flute,
that are possible with the short line. In the Odes, there is plenty
of compression and some jerkiness; but they cannot be regarded
as otherwise than a remarkable achievement in the creation of a
new music in English poetry. Their range, in their final form,
is extraordinary; and, in nearly every case, their music is an
anticipation of something that was to be more perfectly achieved
later.
As those Prophetike strings
Whose sounds with fiery Wings
Drave Feinds from their abode,
Touch'd by the best of Kings,
That sang the Holy Ode.
Is there any sound like that between Drayton and Milton ? ? The
ode To His Rivall contains these stanzas :
Therefore boast not
Your happy lot,
Be silent now you have her;
The time I knew
She slighted you,
When I was in her favour.
1 Elton, p. 101, notes a curiously prophetic • Swinburnian 'stanza in the ode To
The New Yeere.
## p. 187 (#209) ############################################
Odes
187
None stands so fast,
But may be cast
By Fortune, and disgraced :
Once did I weare
Her Garter there,
Where you her Glove have placed ;
stanzas brave and playful which anticipate Suckling. And the
exquisite canzonet, To His Coy Love, which begins as follows:
I pray thee leare, 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 halfe Kisses kill me quite;
Was ever man thus served ?
Amid an Ocean of Delight,
For Pleasure to be sterved;
have the true cavalier ring. In these later Odes, too, Drayton
sometimes touches the 'metaphysical' poetry of Donne and Cowley,
a kind which he did not often affect.
Two of the odes have won more fame than the others; and
both reveal that sturdy Elizabethan patriotism which, in Drayton,
was to be proof against the solvent influence of the reign of
James I. A long and interesting essay might be founded upon
the contrast between the tone of Drayton's ode To the Virginian
Voyage and Marvell's 'Where the remote Bermudas ride. ' In the
former, we have all the bravery of the golden days of the ad-
venturers.
Britans, you stay too long,
Quickly aboard bestow you,
And with a merry Gale
Swell your stretch'd Sayle,
With Vowes as strong,
As the Winds that blow you.
6
And cheerefully at Sea,
Successe you still intice,
To get the Pearle and Gold,
And ours to hold,
Virginia,
Earth's onely Paradise.
And as there Plenty growes
Of Lawrell every where,
Apollo's Sacred tree,
You may it see,
A Poets Browes
To crowne, that may sing there.
## p. 188 (#210) ############################################
188
Michael Drayton
>
a
The other of the two odes referred to is the most famous of
Drayton's poems, the swinging Ballad of Agincourt, dedicated
“To the Cambro-Britans and their Harpe. ' Here, more than
anywhere, is heard the echo of Hewes and his like. Drayton
worked upon the text of it to good purpose between 1606 and
1619, removing snags and obstructions in the course of its rhythm,
and making clearer and clearer the ringing tramp of the marching
army? With its stanzas of eight short, crisp lines, riming aaabcccb,
it is the model for a war-poem; and the brave old song has as
much power to-day to quicken the heart-beats as has the Henry V
of Shakespeare, the success of which, doubtless, helped to inspire
its composition.
To The Legend of Great Cromwel, Drayton's solitary publi-
cation in 1607, reference has been made above. During the next
six years he published nothing but two reprints, with slight
changes, of a collected edition of his poems which he had brought
out in 1605. There was a reason for this. He was now steadily
engaged on what he hoped was to be his real title to fame, his
Poly-Olbion. Of this ‘Herculean labour,' the first eighteen 'Songs'
were published in 16132. The necessary leisure had been secured
to Drayton partly by the patronage of Sir William Aston, partly
by a pension of £10 a year paid him by prince Henry, and continued,
for a period not yet determined, after the death of that prince
in November, 1612.
The magnum opus fell flat. In his preface, the author com-
plains that,
Verses are wholly deduced to chambers, and nothing esteemed in this lunatic
age, but what is kept in cabinets and must pass only by transcription. . . .
The idle humorous world must hear of nothing that either savours of
antiquity, or may awake it to seek after more than dull and slothful ignor-
ance may easily reach unto: these, I say, make much against me.
This, doubtless, was true, in part; nevertheless, it was not wise of
the poet to fling his work at the head of the public in so con-
temptuous a fashion, with such outspoken remarks on the prevalent
'stupidity and dulness. ' But Drayton had not yet recovered the
serenity which he had lost by reason of his 'distressed fortunes'
and his disappointment of instant recognition by James at his
accession, to which he refers in the same preface. The public,
partly, no doubt, through its 'stupidity and dulness,' and partly,
perhaps, frightened away by this mode of introduction, paid little
1 C1. Elton, pp. 104-5.
2 There appears to have been an earlier edition of 1612 (? ). See Elton, p. 192.
6
## p. 189 (#211) ############################################
2
Poly-Olbion
189
heed to the book. The author's grief, however stoutly he may
have prepared himself for failure, must have been great. This
was the work upon which he had been engaged since his thirty-
fifth year at the latest. He was now fifty, overtaken by times
which he, with all other Elizabethans, felt and knew to be evil;
and, therefore, he was all the more anxious, like a true Elizabethan,
to rescue from oblivion the glories of his beloved country by
the only means which he recognised as secure, that is by poetry.
Into Poly-Olbion, he poured all his not inconsiderable learning
and observation, all his patriotism and his fancy. The poem was
his darling, his
Tempe and fields of the Muses, where, through most delightful groves, the
angelic harmony of birds shall steal thee to the top of an easy hill, where in
artificial caves, cut out of the most natural rock, thou shalt see the ancient
people of this isle delivered thee in their lively images; from whose height
thou may'st behold both the old and later times, as in thy prospect, lying far
under thee; then conveying thee down by a soul-pleasing descent through
delicate embroidered meadows, often veined with gentle-gliding brooks, in
which thou may'st fully view the dainty nymphs in their simple naked
beauties, bathing them in crystalline streams; which shall lead thee to most
pleasant downs, where harmless shepherds are, some exercising their pipes,
some singing roundelays to their gazing flocksl.
Thus, with a voice as of an earlier age, he spake to the age of
James, which would not hear him. Worse than that: it seems to
have scoffed.
Some of our outlandish, unnatural, English, (I know not how otherwise to
express them) stick not to say that there is nothing in this Island worth
studying for, and take a great pride to be ignorant in anything thereof; for
these, since they delight in their folly, I wish it may be hereditary from them
to their posterity, that their children may be begg'd for fools to the fifth
generation until it may be beyond the memory of man to know that there
was ever other of their families 2.
He wishes them oblivion--the heaviest lot that a man of his time
and temper could imagine. And so, with a round curse on the
degenerate age, the sturdy old pilgrim grasps his staff and sets out
again on his high mission. The reception of the first eighteen
Songs' could not deter him from carrying on what he held to be
his duty to his country and his great calling. In spite of all odds,
including the very serious difficulty of finding a publishers, he
brought out twelve more 'Songs' in 1622, with a reprint of the
first eighteen, and the statement that the public's neglect and
1 • Epistle to the Generall Reader,' Poly-Olbion, 1613.
2 Preface to Second Part, 1622.
3 See his letters to William Drummond of Hawthornden, with whom he corre-
sponded between 1618 and 1631.
## p. 190 (#212) ############################################
190
Michael Drayton
folly could not 'deter me from going on with Scotland, if means
and time do not hinder me, to perform as much as I have
promised in my First Song. ' Means and time were not forth-
coming, and Poly-Olbion ‘stumbles to rest' with its thirtieth
'Song. '
The course of the itinerary, on the whole, is fairly regular.
From the Channel islands, the pilgrim comes to Cornwall, and
thence, by Devon and part of Somerset, down through the New
Forest to Southampton and Wight. Thence, he goes north-west to
Salisbury, and more or less straight on to the Avon and the Severn.
Round the Severn and in Wales—a country whose inhabitants
he always regarded kindly as the remains of the original Britons-
he lingers long, with a little excursion to Hereford and Malvern ;
gradually working his way north to Chester, where he turns south-
east past the Wrekin to the midlands, to celebrate Warwick,
Coventry and his beloved Ancor. With a circuit through the vale
of Evesham and the Cotswolds, hallowed to him, as were the spots
he had just left, by their association with Anne Goodere, he follows
the river from Oxford to London. Thence, he starts afresh south-
east, down the Medway, through Surrey and Sussex into Kent,
there to turn and work by degrees up the eastern counties, through
Cambridge and Ely, to Lincolnshire and the fens, Trent and the
forest of Sherwood. From there, he crosses England to Lancashire
and Man, thence to work back to Yorkshire, and so to Northumber-
land, to end his pilgrimage in Westmorland.
He has covered practically the whole of England, and little
has escaped him on the way. Perfunctorily, but conscientiously,
he has described the fauna, and especially the flora, the river-
systems and mountain-ranges, making free use of the then old-
fashioned device of personification in order to beguile and lure
on his reader. But the present interests him little compared with
the past. His real object is to preserve whatever history or legend
(both are of equal importance in his eyes, and he draws no clear
distinction between the two) has recorded of great deeds, and
great men, be they heroes of myth like Guy of Warwick, Corineus
of Cornwall, or Elidure the Just, saints like those in the roll he
celebrates at Ely, or historic kings and captains. Leaning chiefly
on Camden's Britannia, he has ransacked also the chroniclers and
poets, the songs of the harpers and minstrels, every source that he
knew of information on that precious past which must be preserved
against time's proud hand. And, to fortify what he records in
rime, he has secured from the learned John Selden a set of notes
## p. 191 (#213) ############################################
Poly-Olbion
191
or 'illustrations' to each song, in which, though the antiquary's
science sometimes smiles at the poet's faith, the general tenor
of the poem is buttressed by a brave show of erudition and
authority.
How much of the ground Drayton had covered in person, it is
impossible to tell from the poem itself. Of the places which it
is certain that he knew, he sings no otherwise than of some which
it is very unlikely that he had ever seen. And, in fact, the point is
unimportant. The purpose of his narrative was not, as was that of
the narratives collected by the 'industrious Hackluit' whom he
celebrates in one of his odes, to make known the unknown present,
but to eternise the known past; and vividness and authenticity of
description are not among the essentials of such a work as his. .
Industry was the chief requisite, and of industry Drayton had as
much as Hakluyt himself.
More industry, it must be admitted, than inspiration went to
the making of Poly-Olbion. Drayton must have worked, like
Wordsworth on The Excursion, in season and out of season,
trusting to the importance of what he had to say to make his
verses worthy of his subject. But Poly-Olbion is at least no
nearer to being dull than is The Excursion. Drayton, in fact,
took more pains than Wordsworth to diversify his poem. His
rivers dispute, relate, or wed; his mountains and plains take on
character and personality ; criticism, as of the poetry of the Welsh
bards ; argument, as in the spirited and remarkably philosophic
protest against historical scepticism in song vi; description, which,
if sometimes lifeless, is sometimes bravely vivid, as in the view
from his boat as it drops down from Windsor to London in
song XVII; and admirable story-telling, as in the account of
Guy of Warwick in song XIII; all take their turn in variegating
the prospect. There are stretches, it must be confessed, of dulness
-long catalogues of princes and events where the desire to record
has clearly been stronger than the power to sing; but the ‘historian
in verse' (to use Drayton's own words of Daniel) seldom leaves us
long without the reward of the dainty nymphs in their simple
naked beauties' or some other of the delights promised in his first
epistle of 1613.
Drayton, whom we have seen from the preface to The Barrons
Wars to have had a philosophy of metre, doubtless chose the
metre of Poly-Olbion with care.
1 By Elton, p. 8.
2 See Meres, Palladis Tamia; Fuller, Worthies; and The Returne from Parnassus,
&ct 1, 8c. 2.
## p. 171 (#193) ############################################
The Harmonie of the Church
171
a
novelty, and it may not be unfair to regard The Harmonie of the
Church as intended merely to acquire for the author a very
respectable introduction to the public of his day. The statement,
long current, that the book was confiscated in the year of its
publication has been proved erroneous! Drayton reissued the
work in 1610 under the title, A Heavenly Harmonie of Spirituall
Songes.
For something over two years, Drayton was silent. Then, in
April 1593, there was entered at Stationers' Hall a book which
showed a different influence from that revealed in The Harmonie
of the Church, and one which proved its author's title to the name
of poet. Throughout his life, Drayton maintained a fervent
admiration for Spenser, and Spenser was the model whom he
followed in his second publication. In 1579, the voice of what
was then the new poetry had spoken for the first time in Spenser's
Shepheards Calender. In 1593, Drayton's Idea, the Shepheard's
Garland, Fashioned in nine Eglogs. Rowlands Sacrifice to the
Nine Muses, carried on the same form, though not entirely with
the same end in view. In 1619, when he issued a third edition of
Idea under a new title (in the volume entitled Poems, including
The Barons Warres, England's Heroicall Epistles, Idea, Odes. . .
Pastorals, Contayning Eglogues, etc. ), Drayton prefixed to it a
brief discourse on pastoral in general, which contains this character-
istically ungrammatical sentence:
The subject of Pastorals, as the language of it ought to be poor, silly, and
of the coarsest woof in appearance; nevertheless, the most high, and most
noble matters of the world may be shadowed in them, and for certain some-
times are.
Notably so, of course, in Spenser's Shepheards Calender. But
Drayton, much as he owes to his great forerunner's work, shows
two points of difference. His language is not 'poor, silly, and
of the coarsest woof. ' It almost entirely avoids the archaisms in
which Spenser rejoiced, and it rises, when occasion demands, to
a nobility which makes these eclogues one of his finest achieve-
ments. Secondly, he almost entirely discards the tradition which,
starting in England, perhaps, from the study of Mantuan, had
forcibly affected all the writers of pastoral from Googe to Watson,
and was to reappear in Lycidas. Idea moralises but little, and
includes few complaints of the decay of nobility, misgovernment
1 By R. B. MºKerrow in The Library, 3rd Series, October 1910, pp. 348–350.
## p. 172 (#194) ############################################
172
Michael Drayton
in church and state and so forth. There is, in other words, little
trace upon the work of that change from the decayed order of
chivalry to a newly organised social scheme, which is the real
,
topic of much previous pastoral. The 'high and noble matters'
of which it treats comprise only love, panegyric and poetry.
In these eclogues as they first appeared, there is, it must be
admitted, a good deal that is old-fashioned. In the first,
Drayton, under his pastoral name Rowland, laments his sins and
his misery; and there is small promise of a new poet in such
lines as :
My sorrowes waxe, my joyes are in the wayning,
My hope decayes, and my despayre is springing,
My love hath losse, and my disgrace hath gayning,
Wrong rules, desert with teares her hands sits wringing:
Sorrow, despayre, disgrace, and wrong, doe thwart
My Joy, my love, my hope, and my desert.
The second eclogue gives us a debate between age and youth-in
the persons of Wynken and Motto-about love; the third is in
praise of Beta-that is, queen Elizabeth ; the fourth is a lament
for Elphin, Sir Philip Sidney; and the fifth sings the praises of
Idea. Of the identity of the person intended by this name more
must be said later. In the sixth eclogue, the departed worthies of
England are touched upon; but the main theme of the poem is the
panegyric of Pandora, who, probably, stands for the countess of
Pembroke. In the seventh, we have another contest between an
old man and a young about love; the eighth describes the pastoral
golden age; and the ninth and last is another lament from Rowland,
this time for unrequited love.
In 1606, Drayton, who spent much labour in the revision of his
previously published poems, issued a new edition of Idea, the
Shepheard's Garland, in his volume of Poemes Lyrick and
Pastoral. The differences from the first edition are many. The
title is changed to Eglogs, the dedication to Robert Dudley is
omitted, a new eclogue is added, the order is rearranged and the
text is much altered and much improved. The few archaisms
have disappeared, and so have all such outworn tricks as that
exemplified in the stanza quoted above. We find a fresher,
sweeter and stronger music, a rejection of the conventional in
image and scenery, and a greater freedom from that clumsiness
of grammar and construction which was Drayton's besetting
poetical sin all his life.
To the modern reader, nothing is more enjoyable in the Idea
of 1593 than the songs introduced into the dialogue. In the
## p. 173 (#195) ############################################
Idea, the Shepheard's Garland
173
6
Eglogs of 1606, these are even better; of the old songs, five have
disappeared, four of them to be replaced by others much less
'conceited,' much fresher and more purely lyrical and showing
something of the light and dainty music, the secret of which
Drayton was to master later in life. The two which remain are
polished, to their great benefit. One of these is the peculiarly
brave and swinging song in praise of Beta, which uses the old
‘sixes and eights' (with shorter lines between each pair) with
a skill and movement of which the author of The Harmonie of
the Church would never be supposed capable; the other is a
delightful ballad, in the metre of Chaucer's Sir Thopas, concerning
Dowsabell and her shepherd boy, in which archaic terms are intro-
duced to the best and quaintest effect. The new eclogue, the ninth,
contains three songs, all among Drayton's best. It may be noted,
too, that, in these pastorals, Drayton first makes the high claim for
poets and poetry which he had learned from Spenser, and which he
maintained throughout his life.
The pastorals of 1606 are of considerable interest on the
biographical side. In the first place, the poet speaks more directly
from the heart and more particularly of himself. It is only
necessary to compare the two versions of the last eclogue (ix in
1593, x in 1606), to see the difference. The one is a vague,
purely poetical and conventional complaint; the other, the very
voice of the man who had passed through disappointment and
sorrow. The references to other persons need further examina-
tion? . A few, about which there is no difficulty, have been mentioned
above; and to these may be added the reference in eclogue VIII to
a certain Sylvia, who may well be supposed to be a lady of the
family of Sir William Aston, by 1606 Drayton's patron. But who
is Idea, who Panape, who the 'great Olcon,' that has deserted
Rowland and the sheepfold, and who Selena, who is roundly
cursed by the poet for jilting Rowland in favour of deceitful
Cerberon '?
The questions are of importance in the biography of Drayton,
since they affect his honour as a man. Now, for the first time
in his writings, he gives, in this eclogue VIII of 1606, unmistakable
evidence of the identity of Idea. A previous mention (in Endimion
and Phoebe, ? 1595) had supplied the fact that she was then an
unmarried woman, living by the river Ancor. In the eclogue, we
1 In Fleay, Biog. Chronicle of the Eng. Drama, 1, pp. 143—5 there is a list of
interesting, if not always secure, identifications of Drayton's pastoral characters with
actual persons.
## p. 174 (#196) ############################################
174
Michael Drayton
are told that she is the younger sister of Panape, who still lives
by the Ancor, and that she has lately moved to another part of
England
The younger then, her sister not less good,
Bred where the other lastly doth abide,
Modest Idea, flower of womanhood,
That Rowland hath so highly deified;
Whom Phoebus' daughters worthily prefer,
And give their gifts abundantly to her.
Driving her flocks up to the fruitful Meene,
Which daily looks upon the lovely Stowre,
Near to that vale, which of all vales is queen,
Lastly, forsaking of her former bow'r:
And of all places holdeth Cotswold dear,
Which now is proud, because she lives it near.
Of the two daughters of Sir Henry Goodere, the patron of Dray-
ton's boyhood, the elder, Frances, had married her cousin and lived
on at Polesworth; the younger, Anne, had married, in 1595 or
1596, Sir Henry Rainsford of Clifford Chambers, 'in Evesham vale,
on the Stour, and north of Meon Hill, an outlying spur of Cotswold". '
There can be little doubt that, by 1606, at any rate, Idea was
Anne Rainsford, née Goodere. Further evidence comes from
The Barrons Wars (1603):
My lays had been still to Idea's bower,
Of my dear Ancor, or her loved Stour;
and from the thirteenth song of Poly-Olbion (1613), where Drayton,
singing of Coventry and Godiva, has these lines :
The first part of whose name, Godiva, doth fore-reed
Th' first syllable of hers, and Goodere half doth sound;
and states that 'her being here was by this name fore-shown,'
while
as the first did tell
Her sir-name, so again doth Ancor lively spell
Her christen'd title Anne.
The passage ends by informing us that Coventry was Anne Goodere's
birth-place. Once more, in the Hymn to his Ladies Birth-Place,
among the Odes of 1619, he states that Godiva was the type of
Idea, and that Idea was born in ‘happy Mich-Parke,' the 'best and
most frequent'street of Coventry.
There seems here ample evidence that, from 1595 to 1619-
from Drayton's thirty-second to his fifty-sixth year—Idea was
Anne Goodere ; and his long friendship with lady Rainsford and
1 Elton, p. 20.
## p. 175 (#197) ############################################
The Identity of 'Idea'
175
her husband is, also, well attested. Was Idea always Anne Goodere?
And is the Idea of the eclogues of 1593, and of the sonnets of 1594
and later years, which offer no evidence, the same person? It
would be natural to suppose that they were, and that Drayton
was faithful throughout to his ‘lady. As we have seen, he
. '
distinctly states in eclogue VIII of 1606 that the Idea of that
eclogue was the lady whom Rowland hath so highly deified'—that
is, to whom Drayton had addressed the sonnets. But it has been
suggested' that there was a change, and a very violent change,
in Drayton's allegiance, and that the attack on Selena in
eclogue VIII of 1606 is intimately connected with this change 2.
Endimion and Phoebe ( 1595), was ushered in by a glowing sonnet
addressed to Lucy countess of Bedford, the famous daughter of lord
Harington, whose seat was at Combe Abbey on the banks of the
Ancor. The sonnet thanks her for her bounty, and vows the poet's
devotion; it is, in fact, the stock tribute of client to patron. The
last twenty-two lines of Endimion and Phoebe form an address to
a 'sweet mayd,' the 'purest spark of Vesta's kindled fire,' the
'sweet Nymph of Ancor, crowne of my desire. ' It has been argued
that the sonnet to the patroness and the closing lines of the poem
must refer to the same person; to which it may be objected that
the two tributes are quite different in tone, and that the phrases
quoted above are very inaptly applied to a married woman, and
very aptly to one who was still unmarried and who seems to have
been the object of the poet's love, rather than of his reverence
or gratitude. If, however, the Idea of Endimion and Phoebe
be the countess of Bedford, it is fair to conclude that so is the Idea
of the eclogues of 1593 and the sonnets of 1594. In 1596, Drayton
dedicated to the countess of Bedford his Mortimeriados; in the
same year, his legend of Robert Duke of Normandy; and, in 1597,
his Englands Heroicall Epistles. Then, in 1603, in issuing his
Mortimeriados in a new form, he dedicated it, not to lady Bedford
but to Sir William Aston, and omitted all the references to that
lady. Finally, in eclogue VIII of 1606, comes the attack on Selena.
It has been supposed that the countess of Bedford had withdrawn
1 By Courthope, III, pp. 29 et seq.
? There is a puzzle in eclogue iv of 1593. What is meant by saying of the un.
faithful nymph that
Her lippes prophane Ideas sacred name,
And sdayne to read the annals of her fame?
The obvious explanation is that Anne Goodere had seen the sonnets to Iden in
manuscript (cf. the introductory sonnet to Anthony Cooke), and made light of them;
but this seems hardly satisfactory.
## p. 176 (#198) ############################################
176
Michael Drayton
a
her patronage; that Drayton, in revenge, took from her the
dedication of the new form of Mortimeriados; and that, in the
Idea of 1606, taking advantage of the fact that both ladies had
dwelt by the Ancor, he turned Idea into Anne Goodere and made
the countess of Bedford the hated and perfidious Selena. Unless
it can be proved that the Idea of Endimion and Phoebe was the
countess of Bedford, the accusation seems to break down; and
it must be remembered that, though the new form of Morti-
meriados was dedicated to Sir William Aston, the sonnet to the
countess of Bedford was reprinted in the same volume, and con-
tinued to be reprinted with the other sonnets till Drayton's death.
It seems possible, therefore, that Drayton effected the change of
patron without grossly insulting his former benefactress or even
quarrelling with her, and that he remained faithful in love
throughout to a single lady, to whom he consistently gave the title
of Idea. Who Selena was, who Cerberon and who Olcon, must
remain uncertain. In a later and revised edition of these pastorals,
published in 1619, the lines on Selena are omitted.
In 1594, still following the poetical fashion, Drayton published
a historical 'legend. ' Readers of Elizabethan literature have no
need to be reminded how ardently, in the last twenty years of
Elizabeth's reign, the newly awakened patriotism of England
turned to the history of past achievements. The form which
Drayton chose for the expression of this sentiment was still the
popular form, although it dated from the days of A Mirror for
Magistrates and was beginning to be shaken from its hold on the
public by the success of the chronicle play. Perhaps a discerning
admiration for Samuel Daniel's Complaynt of Rosamond, published
in 1592, may have helped to incline Drayton towards this form, for
Daniel was one of his three chief poetical masters.
The legend of Peirs Gaveston Earle of Cornwall was followed, in
1594, by that of Matilda, the faire and chaste daughter of the Lord
Robert Fitzwater; in 1596, both were revised and issued together
with a third, The Tragicall Legend of Robert Duke of Normandy;
w and, in 1607, Drayton, for some reason, turned back to the old
form, and published The Legend of Great Cromwel. On these
legends, there is little need to dwell. They suffer from the faults
common to all their kind: monotony, and an incomplete assimila-
tion of the historical and poetical matter, whereby the facts, as
they occur in the careful record, let the poetry down with a thud.
1 On the whole question, see Courthope, ut supra; Elton, pp. 14–23.
See vol. ni of the present work, chap. IX; and, for Drayton, p. 198.
## p. 177 (#199) ############################################
Legends
177
One or two points, however, may be noticed. Perhaps the best
passage in any of the four legends is the charming description of
the poet's betaking himself on a summer morning to the banks of
Thames, there to fall asleep and dream the quaint, old-fashioned
estrif between Fortune and Fame over Robert of Normandy. It
gives a foretaste of that love for the glory and beauty of his own
land which was later to inspire and enrich Poly-Olbion. The
legend of Matilda shows a warm humanity and some real pathos ;
and it is not too much to say that, when all allowance is made for
Drayton's incorrigible clumsiness in grammar and construction,
certain passages in Great Cromwel are the most remarkable
example of the use of poetry for reasoning that occurs before
Dryden. The versification is seldom attractive. Robert, Duke of
Normandy and Matilda are in rime royal; Peirs Gaveston in
stanzas of six; and Great Cromwel in stanzas of eight; but in
none does Drayton use the decasyllabic line with much individuality
or beauty.
His next work, in its first form, showed once more the influence
of Daniel. In 1594, sonnet sequences were in the height of fashion.
Astrophel and Stella had found its way into print in 1591; but it
was not till some years later that Drayton's sonnets were to show
the influence of Sidney. When he published Ideas Mirrour, in
1594, his model was rather Daniel, of whose Delia three editions
had appeared in 1592. In 1594, Ideas Mirrour consisted of fifty-
one sonnets, which, as we learn from the additional dedicatory
sonnet to Anthony Cooke, had 'long slept in sable night. ' The
form of sonnet which Drayton principally affects is the typically
Elizabethan form of three quatrains and a final couplet, not the
strict Petrarchian form. Of these fifty-one sonnets, however, two
consist of four quatrains with a final couplet, two are written
mainly in alexandrines, which are also scattered through certain
other sonnets, and, in eighteen, each quatrain is rimed not abab,
but on the rarer principle of abba.
Any independence which these and a few other variations may
be thought to show can find little counterpart in the material of
the sonnets of Ideas Mirrour. In this earliest edition, it is very
seldom that the poet shakes himself free of the conventions of the
day, or so uses them as to convey an impression of the sincerity
with which, of course, their use is never incompatible. Of two
sonnets which connect Idea with the river Ancor, the first (Amour
XIII) has a personal touch, the second (Amour XXIV) displays the
knowledge of the streams of England which was to stand Drayton
12
E. L. IV.
CH. X,
## p. 178 (#200) ############################################
178
Michael Drayton
in good stead in the future; but Amour xxxvIII is alone among
these early efforts in its simple, convincing force and directness.
If chaste and pure devotion of my yonth,
Or glorie of my Aprill-springing yeares,
Unfained love in naked simple truth,
A thousand vowes, a thousand sighes and teares;
Or if a world of faithful service done,
Words, thoughts, and deeds devoted to her honor,
Or eyes that have beheld her as theyr sunne,
With admiration ever looking on her:
A lyfe that never joyd but in her love,
A soule that ever hath ador'd her name,
A fayth that time nor fortune could not move,
A Muse that unto heaven hath raised her fame.
Though these, nor these deserve to be imbraced,
Yet faire unkinde, too good to be disgraced.
The fact that the couplet shows Drayton's weakness in grammar
cannot undo the effect of the quatrains. It is, however, in
scattered lines and passages rather than in any complete sonnet
that the value of the earliest Amours will be found to lie. Into
the vexed question of the genuineness of the sentiments expressed
in these and other Elizabethan sonnets, this is not the place to
enter. It is, perhaps, generally recognised that the adoption of a
poetic convention does not necessarily denote insincerity in the
poet; and the question is not whether or whence he borrowed his
conventions, but whether he has subdued them to his own genius.
The fact that Drayton borrowed, as it appears, the title of Idea
(and, as it also appears, little, if anything, else) from a French
poet? , and his material and machinery from the poetical stores of
his day, does not prove that these Amours of 1594 are a mere
literary exercise. Nor does the mention of the river Ancor in two
of the sonnets prove them sincere outpourings of his heart. The
workmanship proves that Drayton was not yet poet enough to
subdue the conventions of form to the matter of his own thoughts
and emotions, and it is therefore that his earliest sonnets stumble
and leave us cold.
Ideas Mirrour was much admired Eleven new issues were
called for between its first publication and the author's death in
1631. On none of his productions did Drayton spend so much care
in revision. The issues of 1599, 1600, 1602, 1605 and 1619, are all
6
i Claude de Pontoux, author of L'Idée, 1579. See vol. II of the present work,
pp. 263—4; and, on the Elizabethan use of the Platonic · idea,' see Elton, p. 47 and
references.
* See Daniel's Delia and Drayton's Idea; ed. Esdaile, A. , p. 149.
## p. 179 (#201) ############################################
Ideas Mirrour
179
new editions, in which new sonnets are constantly included and
old ones rearranged, omitted altogether, or polished, sometimes
almost beyond recognition! It is not always possible to agree
with Drayton's own ideas of improvement; but the general result
of all this care is that, as time goes on, the character of the collec-
tion changes. The rather heavy, elaborate model provided by
Daniel gives place to the simpler and more direct style of Sidney.
Conventions disappear, or are turned to good account; and, though
there is, in the general opinion, only one masterpiece among all
Drayton's sonnets, the edition of 1619 includes few sonnets that
have not something masterly in them. The masterpiece referred
to is the well-known sonnet: 'Since there's no helpe, Come let us
kisse and part. ' It suggests, irresistibly, a record of a definite
moment in the actual relations between the poet and some woman;
and, in general, it may be said that the sonnets, as time goes on,
bear less and less the mark of the literary exercise and more and
more that of the expression of genuine feeling. It is true that, in
the editions of 1599, 1602 and 1605, Drayton introduced two
sonnets: 'Into these loves who but for passion looks,' and 'Many
there be excelling in this kind,' in which the reader is warned
that
My verse is the true image of my mind,
Ever in motion, still desiring change,
To choyce of all varietie inclin'd,
And in all humours sportively I range;
and that
My wanton verse nere keepes one certain stay,
But now, at hand; then, seekes invention far,
And with each little motion rupnes astray,
Wilde, madding, jocond, and irreguler;
but such statements, it may be submitted, mean nothing more than
that love is not the only subject of which he intends to treat;
while such sonnets as “Since there's no helpe'; 'How many paltry,
foolish, painted things'; 'An evill spirit your beauty haunts me still’;
'Whilst thus my pen strives to eternize thee,' compel a belief in
their sincerity.
Much has been written, and much more, doubtless, will be
1 Elton, pp. 207–9, gives a table of one hundred and seven sonnets in the five
editions. Brett, pp. 1–55, prints one hundred and eight (the extra sonnet being that to
Sir Walter Aston, 1605) in their earliest forms, without variants; and, in an appendix,
T'p. 250, 251, gives three complimentary sonnets prefixed to works of other authors.
12--2
## p. 180 (#202) ############################################
180
Michael Drayton
written, on the relation of Drayton's sonnets to Shakespeare's. It
has been well said that
the question which of the two was the lender is insoluble, so long as we only
know that some of Shakespeare's sonnets were in private circulation in 1598,
while two were printed by Jaggard in 1599, and the rest not till ten years
laterl.
After the first edition of the sonnets, Drayton's next publication
was Endimion and Phoebe, entered at Stationers' Hall in April
1595, and, presumably, published in the same year. This is one of
the most beautiful and interesting of Drayton's poems. In it the
sweetness and simplicity of pastoral are exalted by the touch of
the heroic; and the occasional display of philosophy and quaint
learning, astronomical, medical and what not, though it sometimes
brings the poetry perilously near to doggerel, is not without its
historical interest or its charm. At the close of the poem, Drayton
commends it, humbly, to three other poets, Spenser (Collin), Daniel
(Musaeus) and Lodge (Goldey). The influence of the first two
is plain in the poem, but a stronger influence still is that of
Marlowe, whose Hero and Leander (published in 1598) Drayton
must have seen in manuscript. Endimion and Phoebe has not the
passion of Marlowe's work; or of Venus and Adonis, which, no doubt,
Drayton had also seen. His are cool, moonlight loves; but the
exquisite delicacy of rather fantastic ornament, combined with a
freshness of atmosphere in the narrative and descriptive passages,
shows a lighter touch and a suppler mind than anything the poet
had yet produced. The poem recalls irresistibly some Italian
painting of the renascence, where nymphs and satyrs occupy a
quiet, spacious and purely decorative world. Endimion and
Phoebe has its claims, moreover, on the side of poetical craftsman-
ship. However he may stumble in his learned nines and threes'
(as Lodge called his description of the celestial orders)? , in his
narrative, Drayton's movement is swift and graceful. The poem is
written in rimed decasyllabic couplets, which, at their best, are not
echoes of Marlowe, Spenser or Daniel, but Drayton's own, with a
distinctive cadence, and not a little of that ease which he was by
time and labour to acquire.
The couplets avoid both the wearisome, epigrammatic certainty
of pause which this form acquired in the eighteenth century, and
1 Elton, p. 56. See the whole passage, which inclines slightly to the view that
Drayton was the borrower. See also Beeching, Sonnets of Shakespeare, pp. 132–140.
? In A Fig for Monius (1595). For nines and threes,' see also the eighth Amour
of Ideas Mirrour, 1594,
6
## p. 181 (#203) ############################################
Mortimeriados
181
the straggling looseness with which it has been used since.
Without jerkiness or shapelessness, they flow as brightly and
smoothly along as any of the streams of Latmus.
For some reason, Drayton never reissued Endimion and Phoebe.
Years later, he returned to the idea, and incorporated parts of his
beautiful early poem in an uninteresting work, The Man in the
Moone, 1606, which has a body of crabbed learning with a head
and tail of satire.
For the next few years, Drayton devoted himself to historical
poetry, and, in the course of them, hit upon what his contem-
poraries and the two following centuries considered his best
production. With his ardour for Daniel still unabated, he pub-
lished, in 1596, the Mortimeriados, of which mention has been
made above. It is not among his most successful efforts. The
story of the wars between Edward II and the barons, down to
the capture of Mortimer at Nottingham castle by Edward III, is
told in rime royal, and at great length. Drayton's struggles with
history induce the faults observable, also, in Daniel. The narrative
of events is not clear, and it is continually standing in the way of
the dramatic interest in the characters. Nevertheless, there are
admirable passages in this long and comprehensive epic, every line
of which shows Drayton hard at work in his dogged, persevering
way; determined to hammer out the best poetry he can, seldom
slovenly, though often crabbed, and now and then meeting with
the reward of his conscientious labours. Mortimer's escape from
the Tower, his meeting with queen Isabella in France, the unhappy
state of England, the scene of Edward's deposition at Kenilworth
and his lament at Berkeley, are at least vigorously told; while the
description of the queen's bower at Nottingham gives Drayton an
opportunity for letting his fancy run free in renascence ornament.
Seven years later, Drayton rewrote the whole poem, under the
new title The Barrons Wars, and in a new metre, expanding his
seven-lined stanza into an eight-lined stanza. The reason for this
change is set out in a preface which is interesting, not only for the
excellence of its matter, but for its testimony to the conscientious-
ness and to the sound knowledge of poetry on which Drayton based
his prolonged and determined efforts to be a poet. In the stanza
of seven lines, in which there are two couplets,
the often harmony 'thereof soften’d the verse more than the majesty of the
subject would permit, unless they had all been geminals, or couplets. . . . The
Quadrin doth never double, or to use a word of Heraldry, never bringeth
forth gemells: The Quinzain too soon. The Sestin hath twins in the base,
but they detain not the musick nor the close, as Musicians term it, long
## p. 182 (#204) ############################################
182
Michael Drayton
enough for an Epic Poem. . . . This of eight both holds the time clean through
to the base of the column, which is the couplet at 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, resem-
bling the pillar which in Architecture is called the Tuscan, whose shaft is of
six diameters, and base of two.
In spite of this, The Barrons Wars is free from none of the
essential faults of Mortimeriados, and even discards some of its
fresher beauties, though the careful revision of diction was not
without its good effect.
Drayton discovered the means of dispensing with those essential
faults in 1597, when (having meanwhile published the Legends of
Robert, Matilda and Gaveston referred to above) he produced the
famous Englands Heroicall Epistles. These are a series of letters
from heroic lovers, with, in every case, the answer. The amount
of history is reduced to a minimum; yet Drayton is enabled to
celebrate the great men and women of his country, and to fan in
others that flame of patriotism which burned steadily in himself.
The first edition of these Epistles was evidently soon exhausted;
in 1598, they were reissued with additions; the number was again
enlarged in 1599 and in 1602; and, altogether, between the first
issue and the poet's death, the Heroicall Epistles were issued
thirteen, possibly fourteen, times. They have been reprinted since
more often than any other of Drayton's works. Twelve couples
exchange letters. Henry II and Fair Rosamund; king John and
Matilda Fitzwater; queen Isabel and Mortimer; the Black Prince
and the countess of Salisbury; Richard II and his wife Isabel;
queen Catherine and Owen Tudor; Eleanor Cobham and her
husband, Humphrey of Gloucester; William de la Pole duke of
Suffolk and queen Margaret; Edward IV and Jane Shore; the
queen of France and Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk; Surrey and
Geraldine; lady Jane Grey and lord Guilford Dudley. Two of
these pairs, Drayton had already treated in other poems; to all, he
gives a life and vigour for which we may look in vain in his more
strictly historical poems. It cannot be said that he has a keen
sense of character; but he has at least enough to avoid sameness
in a work where sameness would have been easy. There is no
confusing, for instance, the letter of Jane Shore with that of lady
Jane Grey; and, in each case, Drayton bears carefully in mind the
character as well as the circumstances. And the poems abound
in pleasant features. The appeal of Mary to Suffolk is charming,
for all the peculiarity of the conditions under which it was made.
Geraldine describes delightfully her life in the country grange
## p. 183 (#205) ############################################
Englands Heroicall Epistles
183
where she will await Surrey's return; and Matilda Fitzwater's
reply to John is a noble piece of eloquence.
The form of these letters was due, it appears, to Ovid's Heroides;
and, with the form, Drayton took something, also, of his model's
versification. In Englands Heroicall Epistles, we find completed
the improvement of the rimed couplet which was begun in
Endimion and Phoebe. Nowhere is it better used during the
Elizabethan epoch. To the smoothness and the crispness (always
stopping short of epigram), which remind us of Ovid's elegiacs,
there are added other good qualities. Drayton's years of hard
work were having their effect. When not overburdened with his
subject (and he was too ready to undertake subjects that would
have overburdened greater poets), he moves more easily and yet
more strongly than any except the supreme pair of his age,
Spenser and Shakespeare. And in the work under notice he did, in
1597, what Edmund Waller has gained all the credit of doing
nearly thirty years later, in the 'smoothening' of English verse.
Further, to this 'smoothness' he adds a skill in the choice and
placing of words for the effect of sonority and point which is not
found again till Dryden.
After this achievement, Drayton might have been expected to
forge ahead and make profitable use of the years of his prime. He
was now famous and should have been prosperous; but his out-
put for the next few years consisted only of revisions of, and
additions to, his Heroicall Epistles and sonnets. He was turning
his energy into other channels. For one thing, as Meres states in
Palladis Tamia, 1598, he had already embarked upon that huge
undertaking, Poly-Olbion; for another, he had been drawn into
the net of the theatre. It may not be permissible to declare him
unwise; but his work for the theatre brought him no enduring
fame (and, as it appears, but little immediate reward), while Poly-
Olbion was to embitter him with disappointment and vexation
while he lived, and leave an easy mark for the scorn of impatient
judges for centuries after his death? .
It must not be supposed that the years 1598—1604 were barren.
Besides so much of Poly-Olbion as they may have seen completed,
they produced some of Drayton's best sonnets and several new and
good Heroicall Epistles. But they do not show the marked advance
1 Drayton's work for the theatre will be discussed elsewhere in this work. Refer.
ence may here be made to Elton, pp. 83–93; Greg's Henslowe's Diary and Henslowe
Papers ; Fleay, Biog. Chron. 8. v. 'Drayton'; and the article by Whitaker discussed
by Elton, pp. 91–93.
## p. 184 (#206) ############################################
184
Michael Drayton
that might have been expected from a man in his prime, with such
a point d'appui as he had made for himself in those Epistles.
In 1603, came 'the quiet end of that long-living Queene,' Eliza-
beth. Drayton owed her nothing, though she owed to him one of
the sweetest songs ever sung in her praise, the song to 'Beta' in
Idea. Within the year before her death, in the sonnets of 1602,
he had already celebrated James VI of Scotland as prince and
poet; and, when Elizabeth died, he turned immediately, without à
word of regret for the star that had sunk, to hymn the star that was
rising. His haste was considered indecent? ; his gratulatory poem,
To the Majestie of King James, received no attention, either from
the public or the prince. A little later, he wrote a Paean
Triumphall for the society of the Goldsmiths of London; but
there can be no doubt that his disappointment was keen. Fortun-
ately for himself, he found, about this time, a new patron, Walter
Aston, of Tixall, who, on receiving knighthood from James I, made
Drayton one of his esquires, an honour which the poet was careful
to claim on his future title-pages.
It appears significant that the first of Drayton's satires should
have been published in 1604; but, while it doubtless implies a
mood of disappointment and depression, it cannot be taken for
certain to refer to the king's neglect of his advances. In the
preface, Drayton states that The Owle, entered at Stationers'
Hall in February 1604, had been 'lastly finished' almost a year
before; and, therefore, it is unsafe to find in it any autobiographical
references. Nevertheless, the mere fact that Drayton should have
included satire at all in the list of the then common forms of poetry
which he seems to have considered it his duty as a poet to practise
is some indication that he was not happy or content. The owl, in his
satire, is the keen-eyed, disinterested observer. Nagged at by little
birds, and attacked by the fear and jealousy of crows, kites, ravens
and other marauders, he is rescued by the kingly eagle, to whom he
describes the abuses he has seen carried on by evil birds who prey
on the commonwealth of fowls. The poem is inspired, doubtless,
by The Parlement of Foules; but it imitates neither the metre
nor the good qualities of that work. More than once in his works,
Drayton makes use of birds, of which, however, he betrays no
more than common knowledge; and the opening of The Owle con-
tains a pretty enough description of the surroundings in which the
poet fell asleep to dream his satire. In the satire itself, there is
i See Chettle, Englandes Mourning Garment (1603), D. 3, and Drayton, Epistle to
George Sandys (1627), Il. 11, 19–26.
## p. 185 (#207) ############################################
His Satires
185
not sufficient trenchancy, originality, or humour to make the poem
interesting, and the rimed couplets run sluggish and dull. The
Man in the Moone has already been mentioned, and it may be
convenient to dismiss the subject of Drayton's satires by saying
here that, in 1627, at the age of sixty-three, he published, in a
volume containing better things, The Moone-Calfe. It is plea-
santest to think of this as inspired by his conscientious wish to
leave no poetical stone unturned; and yet it was so long since
Marston had published a satire that the attempt to follow in his
steps was belated. The Moone-Calfe is a coarse, clumsy and brutal
piece of work, redeemed only by the vigour of its sketches of con-
temporary manners.
In the same year as The Owle (1604), appeared Moyses in a
Map of his Miracles, to be revised and published twenty-six years
later, as Moses, his Birth and Miracles. Here Drayton once more
makes a high claim for poetry,
That from full Jove takes her celestial birth,
And quick as fire, her glorious self can raise
Above this base abominable earth;
6
and, in the days before the Authorised Version, he may be
pardoned for thinking that he could do something for the story of
Moses greater than had been done for it by 'that sacred and
canonic writ. ' He had before him, also, the example of Du Bartas
and Sylvester, to whom he renders generous tribute. Unfortunately,
his treatment of the story does not raise it in the eyes of modern
readers; the poem throughout lacks exaltation and grandeur, and
its chief interest lies in certain human moments, where the drama
of the episodes is happily amplified by the poet's sturdy humanity.
But Moses is not a negligible poem in any study of Drayton. It
shows here and there his progress in the management of the
decasyllabic line, and now and then strangely anticipates later
workmanship. Of such a line as the second of these:
Muse, I invoke the utmost of thy might,
That with an armed and auspicious wing,
Drayton is not the poet who would be guessed as the author by one
unacquainted with its provenance.
Of the importance of a publication of two years later, however,
there can be no question. The Odes of 1606 were Drayton's second
striking effort to plough a field untilled by his contemporaries.
The Pindaric ode had already been imitated by Jonson: it went on
being imitated with an irregularity that Congreve was the earliest
## p. 186 (#208) ############################################
186
Michael Drayton
author to reprehend. Drayton's model is the Anacreontic or
Horatian ode. With these odes, as with most, indeed, of the works
of so stern a critic of himself and so slowly developed a genius as
Drayton, we have to wait for the final edition before we can see
them at their best. The Odes of 1606 were revised and issued
with additions and omissions in 1619; and in that edition they
are best studied.
It was Drayton's endeavour to revive 'Th' old Lyrick kind'-
the kind, perhaps, that was sung to the harp by Hewes at Poles-
worth, fortified and polished by the influence of Horace and
Anacreon. His odes are nearly all composed in short, decisive
lines, a medium that English poetry has always found difficult. If
the charge against Drayton of being merely a laborious, imitative
bungler were ever revived, a sufficient answer would be a few
selections, showing how unusually sensitive he was to the faults
and merits of his medium. The faults of a long line are monotony
and unwieldiness. Drayton is often monotonous and unwieldy.
The faults of a short line are jerkiness and excessive compression.
Drayton is guilty of both. But in all cases he succeeds, when he
is at his best, in bringing out the possible merits of his metre, the
smoothness and progression of the long line, the delicate, involved
patterns and the range of tones, from the trumpet to the flute,
that are possible with the short line. In the Odes, there is plenty
of compression and some jerkiness; but they cannot be regarded
as otherwise than a remarkable achievement in the creation of a
new music in English poetry. Their range, in their final form,
is extraordinary; and, in nearly every case, their music is an
anticipation of something that was to be more perfectly achieved
later.
As those Prophetike strings
Whose sounds with fiery Wings
Drave Feinds from their abode,
Touch'd by the best of Kings,
That sang the Holy Ode.
Is there any sound like that between Drayton and Milton ? ? The
ode To His Rivall contains these stanzas :
Therefore boast not
Your happy lot,
Be silent now you have her;
The time I knew
She slighted you,
When I was in her favour.
1 Elton, p. 101, notes a curiously prophetic • Swinburnian 'stanza in the ode To
The New Yeere.
## p. 187 (#209) ############################################
Odes
187
None stands so fast,
But may be cast
By Fortune, and disgraced :
Once did I weare
Her Garter there,
Where you her Glove have placed ;
stanzas brave and playful which anticipate Suckling. And the
exquisite canzonet, To His Coy Love, which begins as follows:
I pray thee leare, 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 halfe Kisses kill me quite;
Was ever man thus served ?
Amid an Ocean of Delight,
For Pleasure to be sterved;
have the true cavalier ring. In these later Odes, too, Drayton
sometimes touches the 'metaphysical' poetry of Donne and Cowley,
a kind which he did not often affect.
Two of the odes have won more fame than the others; and
both reveal that sturdy Elizabethan patriotism which, in Drayton,
was to be proof against the solvent influence of the reign of
James I. A long and interesting essay might be founded upon
the contrast between the tone of Drayton's ode To the Virginian
Voyage and Marvell's 'Where the remote Bermudas ride. ' In the
former, we have all the bravery of the golden days of the ad-
venturers.
Britans, you stay too long,
Quickly aboard bestow you,
And with a merry Gale
Swell your stretch'd Sayle,
With Vowes as strong,
As the Winds that blow you.
6
And cheerefully at Sea,
Successe you still intice,
To get the Pearle and Gold,
And ours to hold,
Virginia,
Earth's onely Paradise.
And as there Plenty growes
Of Lawrell every where,
Apollo's Sacred tree,
You may it see,
A Poets Browes
To crowne, that may sing there.
## p. 188 (#210) ############################################
188
Michael Drayton
>
a
The other of the two odes referred to is the most famous of
Drayton's poems, the swinging Ballad of Agincourt, dedicated
“To the Cambro-Britans and their Harpe. ' Here, more than
anywhere, is heard the echo of Hewes and his like. Drayton
worked upon the text of it to good purpose between 1606 and
1619, removing snags and obstructions in the course of its rhythm,
and making clearer and clearer the ringing tramp of the marching
army? With its stanzas of eight short, crisp lines, riming aaabcccb,
it is the model for a war-poem; and the brave old song has as
much power to-day to quicken the heart-beats as has the Henry V
of Shakespeare, the success of which, doubtless, helped to inspire
its composition.
To The Legend of Great Cromwel, Drayton's solitary publi-
cation in 1607, reference has been made above. During the next
six years he published nothing but two reprints, with slight
changes, of a collected edition of his poems which he had brought
out in 1605. There was a reason for this. He was now steadily
engaged on what he hoped was to be his real title to fame, his
Poly-Olbion. Of this ‘Herculean labour,' the first eighteen 'Songs'
were published in 16132. The necessary leisure had been secured
to Drayton partly by the patronage of Sir William Aston, partly
by a pension of £10 a year paid him by prince Henry, and continued,
for a period not yet determined, after the death of that prince
in November, 1612.
The magnum opus fell flat. In his preface, the author com-
plains that,
Verses are wholly deduced to chambers, and nothing esteemed in this lunatic
age, but what is kept in cabinets and must pass only by transcription. . . .
The idle humorous world must hear of nothing that either savours of
antiquity, or may awake it to seek after more than dull and slothful ignor-
ance may easily reach unto: these, I say, make much against me.
This, doubtless, was true, in part; nevertheless, it was not wise of
the poet to fling his work at the head of the public in so con-
temptuous a fashion, with such outspoken remarks on the prevalent
'stupidity and dulness. ' But Drayton had not yet recovered the
serenity which he had lost by reason of his 'distressed fortunes'
and his disappointment of instant recognition by James at his
accession, to which he refers in the same preface. The public,
partly, no doubt, through its 'stupidity and dulness,' and partly,
perhaps, frightened away by this mode of introduction, paid little
1 C1. Elton, pp. 104-5.
2 There appears to have been an earlier edition of 1612 (? ). See Elton, p. 192.
6
## p. 189 (#211) ############################################
2
Poly-Olbion
189
heed to the book. The author's grief, however stoutly he may
have prepared himself for failure, must have been great. This
was the work upon which he had been engaged since his thirty-
fifth year at the latest. He was now fifty, overtaken by times
which he, with all other Elizabethans, felt and knew to be evil;
and, therefore, he was all the more anxious, like a true Elizabethan,
to rescue from oblivion the glories of his beloved country by
the only means which he recognised as secure, that is by poetry.
Into Poly-Olbion, he poured all his not inconsiderable learning
and observation, all his patriotism and his fancy. The poem was
his darling, his
Tempe and fields of the Muses, where, through most delightful groves, the
angelic harmony of birds shall steal thee to the top of an easy hill, where in
artificial caves, cut out of the most natural rock, thou shalt see the ancient
people of this isle delivered thee in their lively images; from whose height
thou may'st behold both the old and later times, as in thy prospect, lying far
under thee; then conveying thee down by a soul-pleasing descent through
delicate embroidered meadows, often veined with gentle-gliding brooks, in
which thou may'st fully view the dainty nymphs in their simple naked
beauties, bathing them in crystalline streams; which shall lead thee to most
pleasant downs, where harmless shepherds are, some exercising their pipes,
some singing roundelays to their gazing flocksl.
Thus, with a voice as of an earlier age, he spake to the age of
James, which would not hear him. Worse than that: it seems to
have scoffed.
Some of our outlandish, unnatural, English, (I know not how otherwise to
express them) stick not to say that there is nothing in this Island worth
studying for, and take a great pride to be ignorant in anything thereof; for
these, since they delight in their folly, I wish it may be hereditary from them
to their posterity, that their children may be begg'd for fools to the fifth
generation until it may be beyond the memory of man to know that there
was ever other of their families 2.
He wishes them oblivion--the heaviest lot that a man of his time
and temper could imagine. And so, with a round curse on the
degenerate age, the sturdy old pilgrim grasps his staff and sets out
again on his high mission. The reception of the first eighteen
Songs' could not deter him from carrying on what he held to be
his duty to his country and his great calling. In spite of all odds,
including the very serious difficulty of finding a publishers, he
brought out twelve more 'Songs' in 1622, with a reprint of the
first eighteen, and the statement that the public's neglect and
1 • Epistle to the Generall Reader,' Poly-Olbion, 1613.
2 Preface to Second Part, 1622.
3 See his letters to William Drummond of Hawthornden, with whom he corre-
sponded between 1618 and 1631.
## p. 190 (#212) ############################################
190
Michael Drayton
folly could not 'deter me from going on with Scotland, if means
and time do not hinder me, to perform as much as I have
promised in my First Song. ' Means and time were not forth-
coming, and Poly-Olbion ‘stumbles to rest' with its thirtieth
'Song. '
The course of the itinerary, on the whole, is fairly regular.
From the Channel islands, the pilgrim comes to Cornwall, and
thence, by Devon and part of Somerset, down through the New
Forest to Southampton and Wight. Thence, he goes north-west to
Salisbury, and more or less straight on to the Avon and the Severn.
Round the Severn and in Wales—a country whose inhabitants
he always regarded kindly as the remains of the original Britons-
he lingers long, with a little excursion to Hereford and Malvern ;
gradually working his way north to Chester, where he turns south-
east past the Wrekin to the midlands, to celebrate Warwick,
Coventry and his beloved Ancor. With a circuit through the vale
of Evesham and the Cotswolds, hallowed to him, as were the spots
he had just left, by their association with Anne Goodere, he follows
the river from Oxford to London. Thence, he starts afresh south-
east, down the Medway, through Surrey and Sussex into Kent,
there to turn and work by degrees up the eastern counties, through
Cambridge and Ely, to Lincolnshire and the fens, Trent and the
forest of Sherwood. From there, he crosses England to Lancashire
and Man, thence to work back to Yorkshire, and so to Northumber-
land, to end his pilgrimage in Westmorland.
He has covered practically the whole of England, and little
has escaped him on the way. Perfunctorily, but conscientiously,
he has described the fauna, and especially the flora, the river-
systems and mountain-ranges, making free use of the then old-
fashioned device of personification in order to beguile and lure
on his reader. But the present interests him little compared with
the past. His real object is to preserve whatever history or legend
(both are of equal importance in his eyes, and he draws no clear
distinction between the two) has recorded of great deeds, and
great men, be they heroes of myth like Guy of Warwick, Corineus
of Cornwall, or Elidure the Just, saints like those in the roll he
celebrates at Ely, or historic kings and captains. Leaning chiefly
on Camden's Britannia, he has ransacked also the chroniclers and
poets, the songs of the harpers and minstrels, every source that he
knew of information on that precious past which must be preserved
against time's proud hand. And, to fortify what he records in
rime, he has secured from the learned John Selden a set of notes
## p. 191 (#213) ############################################
Poly-Olbion
191
or 'illustrations' to each song, in which, though the antiquary's
science sometimes smiles at the poet's faith, the general tenor
of the poem is buttressed by a brave show of erudition and
authority.
How much of the ground Drayton had covered in person, it is
impossible to tell from the poem itself. Of the places which it
is certain that he knew, he sings no otherwise than of some which
it is very unlikely that he had ever seen. And, in fact, the point is
unimportant. The purpose of his narrative was not, as was that of
the narratives collected by the 'industrious Hackluit' whom he
celebrates in one of his odes, to make known the unknown present,
but to eternise the known past; and vividness and authenticity of
description are not among the essentials of such a work as his. .
Industry was the chief requisite, and of industry Drayton had as
much as Hakluyt himself.
More industry, it must be admitted, than inspiration went to
the making of Poly-Olbion. Drayton must have worked, like
Wordsworth on The Excursion, in season and out of season,
trusting to the importance of what he had to say to make his
verses worthy of his subject. But Poly-Olbion is at least no
nearer to being dull than is The Excursion. Drayton, in fact,
took more pains than Wordsworth to diversify his poem. His
rivers dispute, relate, or wed; his mountains and plains take on
character and personality ; criticism, as of the poetry of the Welsh
bards ; argument, as in the spirited and remarkably philosophic
protest against historical scepticism in song vi; description, which,
if sometimes lifeless, is sometimes bravely vivid, as in the view
from his boat as it drops down from Windsor to London in
song XVII; and admirable story-telling, as in the account of
Guy of Warwick in song XIII; all take their turn in variegating
the prospect. There are stretches, it must be confessed, of dulness
-long catalogues of princes and events where the desire to record
has clearly been stronger than the power to sing; but the ‘historian
in verse' (to use Drayton's own words of Daniel) seldom leaves us
long without the reward of the dainty nymphs in their simple
naked beauties' or some other of the delights promised in his first
epistle of 1613.
Drayton, whom we have seen from the preface to The Barrons
Wars to have had a philosophy of metre, doubtless chose the
metre of Poly-Olbion with care.
