"THE POLY-OLBION" of DRAYTON is a stupendous work, "a strange Herculean
toil," as the poet himself has said, and it was the elaborate production
of many years. The patriotic bard fell a victim to its infelicitous but
glorious conception; and posterity may discover a grandeur in this
labour of love, which was unfelt by his contemporaries.
The "Poly-olbion" is a chorographical description of England and Wales;
an amalgamation of antiquarianism, of topography, and of history;
materials not the most ductile for the creations of poetry. This poem is
said to have the accuracy of a road-book; and the poet has contributed
some notices, which add to the topographic stores of CAMDEN; for this
has our poet extorted an alms of commendation from such a niggardly
antiquary as Bishop Nicholson, who confesses that this work affords "a
much truer account of this kingdom than could be well expected from the
pen of a poet."
The grand theme of this poet was his fatherland! The muse of Drayton
passes by every town and tower; each tells some tale of ancient glory,
or of some "worthy" who must never die. The local associations of
legends and customs are animated by the personifications of mountains
and rivers; and often, in some favourite scenery, he breaks forth with
all the emotion of a true poet. The imaginative critic has described the
excursions of our muse with responsive sympathy. "He has not," says
Lamb, "left a rivulet so narrow that it may be stepped over without
honourable mention, and has associated hills and streams with life and
passion beyond the dreams of old mythology." But the journey is long,
and the conveyance may be tedious; the reader, accustomed to the
decasyllabic or heroic verse, soon finds himself breathless among the
protracted and monotonous Alexandrines, unless he should relieve his ear
from the incumbrance, by resting on the caesura, and thus divide those
extended lines by the alternate grace of a ballad-stanza. The artificial
machinery of Drayton's personifications of mountains and rivers, though
these may be often allowed the poet, yet they seem more particularly
ludicrous, as they are crowded together on the maps prefixed to each
county, where this arbitrary mythology, masculine and feminine, are to
be seen standing by the heads of rivers, or at the entrances of towns.
This extraordinary poem remains without a parallel in the poetical
annals of any people; and it may excite our curiosity to learn its
origin. The genealogy of poetry is often suspicious; but I think we may
derive the birth of the "Poly-olbion" from LELAND's magnificent view of
his designed work on "Britain," and that hint expanded by the
"Britannia" of CAMDEN, who inherited the mighty industry, without the
poetical spirit of LELAND: DRAYTON embraced both.
It is a nice question to decide how far history may be admitted into
poetry; like "Addison's Campaign," the poem may end in a rhymed gazette.
And in any other work of invention, a fiction, by too free an infusion
of historical matter, can only produce that monster called "the Romance
of History," a nonsensical contradiction in terms, for neither can be
both; or that other seductive and dangerous association of real persons
and fictitious incidents, the historical romance! It is remarkable that
DRAYTON censures DANIEL, his brother poet, for being _too historical_ in
his "Civil Wars," and thus transgressing the boundaries of history and
poetry, of truth and invention. Of these just boundaries, however, he
himself had no clear notion. Drayton in his "Baron's Wars" sunk into a
grave chronicler; and in the "Poly-olbion," we see his muse treading a
labyrinth of geography, of history, and of topography!
The author of the "Poly-olbion" may truly be considered as the inventor
of a class of poems peculiar to our country, and which, when I was
young, were popular or fashionable. These are loco-descriptive poems.
Such were Denham's "Cooper's Hill,"[1] and its numerous and, some,
happy imitations. In these local descriptions some favoured spot in the
landscape opens to the poet not only the charm of its natural
appearance, but in the prospect lie scenes of the past. Imagination,
like a telescope fixed on the spot, brings nearer to his eyes those
associations which combine emotion with description; and the contracted
spot, whence the bard scattered the hues of his fancy, is aggrandized by
noble truths.
The first edition of the "Poly-olbion," in 1613, consisted of eighteen
"Songs," or cantos, and every one enriched by the notes and
illustrations of the poet's friend, our great national antiquary,
SELDEN, whose avarice of words in these recondite stores conceals almost
as many facts as he affords phrases. This volume was ill received by the
incurious readers of that age. Drayton had vainly imagined that the
nobles and gentlemen of England would have felt a filial interest in the
tale of their fathers, commemorated in these poetic annals, and an
honourable pride in their domains here so graphically pictured. But no
voice, save those of a few melodious brothers, cheered the lonely
lyrist, who had sung on every mountain, and whose verse had flowed with
every river. After a hopeless suspension of nine years, the querulous
author sent forth the concluding volume to join its neglected brother.
It appeared with a second edition of the first part, which is nothing
more than the unsold copies of the first, to which the twelve additional
"Songs" are attached, separately paged. These last come no longer
enriched by the notes of Selden, or even embellished by those fanciful
maps which the unfortunate poet now found too costly an ornament.
Certain accidental marks of the printer betray the bibliographical
secret, that the second edition was in reality but the first.[2] The
preface to the second part is remarkable for its inscription, in no good
humour,