Why lives Drayton when the times refuse
Both means to live, and matter for a muse,
Only without excuse to leave us quite,
And tell us, durst we act, he durst to write?
W. BROWNE.
Drayton published his Polyolbion first in eighteen parts; and the
second portion afterwards. In this interval we have a letter to
Drummond, dated in 1619:--
"I thank you, my dear sweet Drummond, for your good opinion of
Polyolbion. I have done twelve books more, that is, from the 18th
book, which was Kent (if you note it), all the east parts and north to
the river of Tweed; _but it lieth by me, for the booksellers and I are
in terms_; they are a company of base knaves, whom I scorn and kick
at."
The vengeance of the poet had been more justly wreaked on the buyers
of books than on the sellers, who, though knavery has a strong
connexion with trade, yet, were they knaves, they would be true to
their own interests. Far from impeding a successful author,
booksellers are apt to hurry his labours; for they prefer the crude to
the mature fruit, whenever the public taste can be appeased even by an
unripened dessert.
These "knaves," however, seem to have succeeded in forcing poor
Drayton to observe an abstinence from the press, which must have
convulsed all the feelings of authorship. The second part was not
published till three years after this letter was written; and then
without maps. Its preface is remarkable enough; it is pathetic, till
Drayton loses the dignity of genius in its asperity. In is inscribed,
in no good humour--
"TO ANY THAT WILL READ IT!
"When I first undertook this poem, or, as some have pleased to term
it, this Herculean labour, I was by some virtuous friends persuaded
that I should receive much comfort and encouragement; and for these
reasons: First, it was a new clear way, never before gone by any; that
it contained all the delicacies, delights, and rarities of this
renowned isle, interwoven with the histories of the Britons, Saxons,
Normans, and the later English. And further, that there is scarcely
any of the nobility or gentry of this land, but that he is some way or
other interested therein.
"But it hath fallen out otherwise; for instead of that comfort which
my noble friends proposed as my due, I have met with barbarous
ignorance and base detraction; such a cloud hath the devil drawn over
the world's judgment. Some of the stationers that had the selling of
the first part of this poem, because _it went not so fast away in the
selling_ as some of their beastly and abominable trash (a shame both
to our language and our nation), have despightfully left out the
epistles to the readers, and so have cousened the buyers with
imperfected books, which those that have undertaken the second part
have been forced to amend in the first, for _the small number that are
yet remaining in their hands_.
"And 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. As for these cattle, _odi profanum vulgus, et
arceo_; of which I account them, be they never so great."
Yet, as a true poet, whose impulse, like fate, overturns all
opposition, Drayton is not to be thrown out of his avocation; but
intrepidly closes by promising "they shall 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." Who could have imagined that
such bitterness of style, and such angry emotions, could have been
raised in the breast of a poet of pastoral elegance and fancy?
Whose bounding muse o'er ev'ry mountain rode,
And every river warbled as it flow'd.
KIRKPATRICK.
It is melancholy to reflect that some of the greatest works in our
language have involved their authors in distress and anxiety: and that
many have gone down to their grave insensible of that glory which soon
covered it.