Michael Drayton was born in 1563, at Hartshill, near Atherstone, in
Warwickshire, where a cottage, said to have been his, is still shown. He
early became a page to Sir Henry Goodere, at Polesworth Hall: his own
words give the best picture of his early years here.[1] His education
would seem to have been good, but ordinary; and it is very doubtful if
he ever went to a university.[2] Besides the authors mentioned in the
Epistle to Henry Reynolds, he was certainly familiar with Ovid and
Horace, and possibly with Catullus: while there seems no reason to doubt
that he read Greek, though it is quite true that his references to Greek
authors do not prove any first-hand acquaintance. He understood French,
and read Rabelais and the French sonneteers, and he seems to have been
acquainted with Italian.[3] His knowledge of English literature was
wide, and his judgement good: but his chief bent lay towards the
history, legendary and otherwise, of his native country, and his vast
stores of learning on this subject bore fruit in the _Polyolbion_.
While still at Polesworth, Drayton fell in love with his patron's
younger daughter, Anne;[4] and, though she married, in 1596, Sir Henry
Rainsford of Clifford, Drayton continued his devotion to her for many
years, and also became an intimate friend of her husband's, writing a
sincere elegy on his death.[5] About February, 1591, Drayton paid a
visit to London, and published his first work, the _Harmony of the
Church_, a series of paraphrases from the Old Testament, in
fourteen-syllabled verse of no particular vigour or grace. This book was
immediately suppressed by order of Archbishop Whitgift, possibly because
it was supposed to savour of Puritanism.[6] The author, however,
published another edition in 1610; indeed, he seems to have had a
fondness for this style of work; for in 1604 he published a dull poem,
_Moyses in a Map of his Miracles_, re-issued in 1630 as _Moses his Birth
and Miracles_. Accompanying this piece, in 1630, were two other 'Divine
poems': _Noah's Floud_, and _David and Goliath_. _Noah's Floud_ is, in
part, one of Drayton's happiest attempts at the catalogue style of
bestiary; and Mr. Elton finds in it some foreshadowing of the manner of
_Paradise Lost_. But, as a whole, Drayton's attempts in this direction
deserve the oblivion into which they, in common with the similar
productions of other authors, have fallen. In the dedication and preface
to the _Harmony of the Church_ are some of the few traces of Euphuism
shown in Drayton's work; passages in the _Heroical Epistles_ also occur
to the mind.[7] He was always averse to affectation, literary or
otherwise, and in Elegy viij deliberately condemns Lyly's fantastic
style.
Probably before Drayton went up to London, Sir Henry Goodere saw that he
would stand in need of a patron more powerful than the master of
Polesworth, and introduced him to the Earl and Countess of Bedford.
Those who believe[8] Drayton to have been a Pope in petty spite,
identify the 'Idea' of his earlier poems with Lucy, Countess of Bedford;
though they are forced to acknowledge as self-evident that the 'Idea' of
his later work is Anne, Lady Rainsford. They then proceed to say that
Drayton, after consistently honouring the Countess in his verse for
twelve years, abruptly transferred his allegiance, not forgetting to
heap foul abuse on his former patroness, out of pique at some temporary
withdrawal of favour. Not only is this directly contrary to all we know
and can infer of Drayton's character, but Mr. Elton has decisively
disproved it by a summary of bibliographical and other evidence. Into
the question it is here unnecessary to enter, and it has been mentioned
only because it alone, of the many Drayton-controversies, has cast any
slur on the poet's reputation.
In 1593, Drayton published _Idea, the Shepherds Garland_, in nine
Eclogues; in 1606 he added a tenth, the best of all, to the new edition,
and rearranged the order, so that the new eclogue became the ninth. In
these Pastorals, while following the _Shepherds Calendar_ in many ways,
he already displays something of the sturdy independence which
characterized him through life. He abandons Spenser's quasi-rustic
dialect, and, while keeping to most of the pastoral conventions, such as
the singing-match and threnody, he contrives to introduce something of a
more natural and homely strain. He keeps the political allusions,
notably in the Eclogue containing the song in praise of _Beta_, who is,
of course, Queen Elizabeth. But an over-bold remark in the last line of
that song was struck out in 1606; and the new eclogue has no political
reference. He is not ashamed to allude directly to Spenser; and indeed
his direct debts are limited to a few scattered phrases, as in the
_Ballad_ of _Dowsabel_. Almost to the end of his literary career,
Drayton mentions Spenser with reverence and praise.[9]
It is in the songs interspersed in the Eclogues that Drayton's best work
at this time is to be found: already his metrical versatility is
discernible; for though he doubtless remembered the many varieties of
metre employed by Spenser in the _Calendar_, his verses already bear a
stamp of their own. The long but impetuous lines, such as 'Trim up her
golden tresses with Apollo's sacred tree', afford a striking contrast to
the archaic romance-metre, derived from _Sir Thopas_ and its fellows,
which appears in _Dowsabel_, and it again to the melancholy, murmuring
cadences of the lament for Elphin. It must, however, be confessed that
certain of the songs in the 1593 edition were full of recondite conceits
and laboured antitheses, and were rightly struck out, to be replaced by
lovelier poems, in the edition of 1606. The song to Beta was printed in
_Englands Helicon_, 1600; here, for the first time, appeared the song of
_Dead Love_, and for the only time, _Rowlands Madrigal_. In these songs,
Drayton offends least in grammar, always a weak point with him; in the
body of the Eclogues, in the earlier Sonnets, in the Odes, occur the
most extraordinary and perplexing inversions. Quite the most striking
feature of the Eclogues, especially in their later form, is their bold
attempt at greater realism, at a breaking-away from the conventional
images and scenery.
Having paid his tribute to one poetic fashion, Drayton in 1594 fell in
with the prevailing craze for sonneteering, and published _Ideas
Mirrour_, a series of fifty-one 'amours' or sonnets, with two prefatory
poems, one by Drayton and one by an unknown, signing himself _Gorbo il
fidele_. The title of these poems Drayton possibly borrowed from the
French sonneteer, de Pontoux: in their style much recollection of
Sidney, Constable, and Daniel is traceable. They are ostensibly
addressed to his mistress, and some of them are genuine in feeling; but
many are merely imitative exercises in conceit; some, apparently, trials
in metre. These amours were again printed, with the title of 'sonnets',
in _1599_[10], 1600, _1602_, 1603, _1605_, 1608, 1610, 1613, _1619_, and
1631, during the poet's lifetime. It is needless here to discuss whether
Drayton were the 'rival poet' to Shakespeare, whether these sonnets were
really addressed to a man, or merely to the ideal Platonic beauty; for
those who are interested in these points, I subjoin references to the
sonnets which touch upon them.[11] From the prentice-work evident in
many of the _Amours_, it would seem that certain of them are among
Drayton's earliest poems; but others show a craftsman not meanly
advanced in his art. Nevertheless, with few exceptions, this first
'bundle of sonnets' consists rather of trials of skill, bubbles of the
mind; most of his sonnets which strike the reader as touched or
penetrated with genuine passion belong to the editions from 1599
onwards; implying that his love for Anne Goodere, if at all represented
in these poems, grew with his years, for the 'love-parting' is first
found in the edition of 1619. But for us the question should not be, are
these sonnets genuine representations of the personal feeling of the
poet? but rather, how far do they arouse or echo in us as individuals
the universal passion? There are at least some of Drayton's sonnets
which possess a direct, instant, and universal appeal, by reason of
their simple force and straightforward ring; and not in virtue of any
subtle charm of sound and rhythm, or overmastering splendour of diction
or thought. Ornament vanishes, and soberness and simplicity increase, as
we proceed in the editions of the sonnets. Drayton's chief attempt in
the jewelled or ornamental style appeared in 1595, with the title of
_Endimion and Phoebe_, and was, in a sense, an imitation of Marlowe's
_Hero and Leander_. _Hero and Leander_ is, as Swinburne says, a shrine
of Parian marble, illumined from within by a clear flame of passion;
while _Endimion and Phoebe_ is rather a curiously wrought tapestry, such
as that in Mortimer's Tower, woven in splendid and harmonious colours,
wherein, however, the figures attain no clearness or subtlety of
outline, and move in semi-conventional scenery. It is, none the less,
graceful and impressive, and of a like musical fluency with other poems
of its class, such as _Venus and Adonis_, or _Salmacis and
Hermaphrodius_. Parts of it were re-set and spoilt in a 1606 publication
of Drayton's, called _The Man in the Moone_.
In 1593 and 1594 Drayton also published his earliest pieces on the
mediaeval theme of the 'Falls of the Illustrious'; they were _Peirs
Gavesson_ and _Matilda the faire and chaste daughter of the Lord Robert
Fitzwater_. Here Drayton followed in the track of Boccaccio, Lydgate,
and the _Mirrour for Magistrates_, walking in the way which Chaucer had
derided in his _Monkes Tale_: and with only too great fidelity does
Drayton adapt himself to the dullnesses of his model: fine rhetoric is
not altogether wanting, and there is, of course, the consciousness that
these subjects deal with the history of his beloved country, but neither
these, nor _Robert, Duke of Normandy_ (1596), nor _Great Cromwell, Earl
of Essex_ (1607 and 1609), nor the _Miseries of Margaret_ (1627) can
escape the charge of tediousness.[12] _England's Heroical Epistles_ were
first published in 1597, and other editions, of 1598, 1599, and 1602,
contain new epistles. These are Drayton's first attempt to strike out a
new and original vein of English poetry: they are a series of letters,
modelled on Ovid's _Heroides_,[13] addressed by various pairs of lovers,
famous in English history, to each other, and arranged in chronological
order, from Henry II and Rosamond to Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guilford
Dudley. They are, in a sense, the most important of Drayton's writings,
and they have certainly been the most popular, up to the early
nineteenth century. In these poems Drayton foreshadowed, and probably
inspired, the smooth style of Fairfax, Waller, and Dryden. The metre,
the grammar, and the thought, are all perfectly easy to follow, even
though he employs many of the Ovidian 'turns' and 'clenches'. A certain
attempt at realization of the different characters is observable, but
the poems are fine rhetorical exercises rather than realizations of the
dramatic and passionate possibilities of their themes. In 1596, Drayton,
as we have seen, published the _Mortimeriados_, a kind of epic, with
Mortimer as its hero, of the wars between King Edward II and the
Barons.[14] It was written in the seven-line stanza of Chaucer's
_Troilus and Cressida_ and Spenser's _Hymns_. On its republication in
1603, with the title of the _Barons' Wars_, the metre was changed to
_ottava rima_, and Drayton showed, in an excellent preface, that he
fully appreciated the principles and the subtleties of the metrical art.
While possessing many fine passages, the _Barons' Wars_ is somewhat
dull, lacking much of the poetry of the older version; and does not
escape from Drayton's own criticism of Daniel's Chronicle Poems: 'too
much historian in verse, ... His rhymes were smooth, his metres well did
close, But yet his manner better fitted prose'.[15] The description of
Mortimer's Tower in the sixth book recalls the ornate style of _Endimion
and Phoebe_, while the fifth book, describing the miseries of King
Edward, is the most moving and dramatic. But there is a general
lifelessness and lack of movement for which these purple passages barely
atone. The cause of the production of so many chronicle poems about this
time has been supposed[16] to be the desire of showing the horrors of
civil war, at a time when the queen was growing old, and no successor
had, as it seemed, been accepted. Also they were a kind of parallel to
the Chronicle Play; and Drayton, in any case even if we grant him to
have been influenced by the example of Daniel, never needed much
incentive to treat a national theme.
About this time, we find Drayton writing for the stage. It seems
unnecessary here to discuss whether the writing of plays is evidence of
Drayton's poverty, or his versatility;[17] but the fact remains that he
had a hand in the production of about twenty. Of these, the only one
which certainly survives is _The first part of the true and honorable
historie, of the life of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham,_ &c.
It is practically impossible to distinguish Drayton's share in this
curious play, and it does not, therefore, materially assist the
elucidation of the question whether he had any dramatic feeling or
skill. It can be safely affirmed that the dramatic instinct was nor
uppermost in his mind; he was a Seneca rather than a Euripides: but to
deny him all dramatic idea, as does Dr. Whitaker, is too severe. There
is decided, if slender, dramatic skill and feeling in certain of the
_Nymphals_. Drayton's persons are usually, it must be said, rather
figures in a tableau, or series of tableaux; but in the second and
seventh _Nymphals_, and occasionally in the tenth, there is real
dramatic movement. Closely connected with this question is the
consideration of humour, which is wrongly denied to Drayton. Humour is
observable first, perhaps, in the _Owle_ (1604); then in the _Ode to his
Rival_ (1619); and later in the _Nymphidia_, _Shepheards Sirena_, and
_Muses Elyzium_. The second _Nymphal_ shows us the quiet laughter, the
humorous twinkle, with which Drayton writes at times. The subject is an
[Greek: agon] or contest between two shepherds for the affections of a
nymph called Lirope: Lalus is a vale-bred swain, of refined and elegant
manners, skilled, nevertheless, in all manly sports and exercises;
Cleon, no less a master in physical prowess, was nurtured by a hind in
the mountains; the contrast between their manners is admirably
sustained: Cleon is rough, inclined to be rude and scoffing, totally
without tact, even where his mistress is concerned. Lalus remembers her
upbringing and her tastes; he makes no unnecessary or ostentatious
display of wealth; his gifts are simple and charming, while Cleon's are
so grotesquely unsuited to a swain, that it is tempting to suppose that
Drayton was quietly satirizing Marlowe's _Passionate Shepherd_. Lirope
listens gravely to the swains in turn, and makes demure but provoking
answers, raising each to the height of hope, and then casting them both
down into the depths of despair; finally she refuses both, yet without
altogether killing hope. Her first answer is a good specimen of her
banter and of Drayton's humour.[18]
On the accession of James I, Drayton hastened to greet the King with a
somewhat laboured song _To the Maiestie of King James_; but this poem
was apparently considered to be premature: he cried _Vivat Rex_, without
having said, _Mortua est eheu Regina_, and accordingly he suffered the
penalty of his 'forward pen',[19] and was severely neglected by King and
Court. Throughout James's reign a darker and more satirical mood
possesses Drayton, intruding at times even into his strenuous
recreation-ground, the _Polyolbion_, and manifesting itself more
directly in his satires, the _Owle_ (1604), the _Moon-Calfe_ (1627), the
_Man in the Moone_ (1606), and his verse-letters and elegies; while his
disappointment with the times, the country, and the King, flashes out
occasionally even in the Odes, and is heard in his last publication, the
_Muses Elizium_ (1630). To counterbalance the disappointment in his
hopes from the King, Drayton found a new and life-long friend in Walter
Aston, of Tixall, in Staffordshire; this gentleman was created Knight of
the Bath by James, and made Drayton one of his esquires. By Aston's
'continual bounty' the poet was able to devote himself almost entirely
to more congenial literary work; for, while Meres speaks of the
_Polyolbion_ in 1598,[20] and we may easily see that Drayton had the
idea of that work at least as early as 1594,[21] yet he cannot have been
able to give much time to it till now. Nevertheless, the 'declining and
corrupt times' worked on Drayton's mind and grieved and darkened his
soul, for we must remember that he was perfectly prosperous then and was
not therefore incited to satire by bodily want or distress.
In 1604 he published the _Owle_, a mild satire, under the form of a
moral fable of government, reminding the reader a little of the
_Parlement of Foules_. _The Man in the Moone_ (1606) is partly a
recension of _Endimion and Phoebe_, but is a heterogeneous mass of
weakly satire, of no particular merit. The _Moon-Calfe_ (1627) is
Drayton's most savage and misanthropic excursion into the region of
Satire; in which, though occasionally nobly ironic, he is more usually
coarse and blustering, in the style of Marston.[22] In 1605 Drayton
brought out his first 'collected poems', from which the _Eclogues_ and
the _Owle_ are omitted; and in 1606 he published his _Poemes Lyrick and
Pastorall_, _Odes_, _Eglogs_, _The Man in the Moone_. Of these the
_Eglogs_ are a recension of the _Shepherd's Garland_ of 1593: we have
already spoken of _The Man in the Moone_. The _Odes_ are by far the most
important and striking feature of the book. In the preface, Drayton
professes to be following Pindar, Anacreon, and Horace, though, as he
modestly implies, at a great distance. Under the title of _Odes_ he
includes a variety of subjects, and a variety of metres; ranging from an
_Ode to his Harp_ or _to his Criticks_, to a _Ballad of Agincourt_, or a
poem on the Rose compared with his Mistress. In the edition of 1619
appeared several more Odes, including some of the best; while many of
the others underwent careful revision, notably the _Ballad_. 'Sing wee
the Rose,' perhaps because of its unintelligibility, and the Ode to his
friend John Savage, perhaps because too closely imitated from Horace,
were omitted. Drayton was not the first to use the term _Ode_ for a
lyrical poem, in English: Soothern in 1584, and Daniel in 1592 had
preceded him; but he was the first to give the name popularity in
England, and to lift the kind as Ronsard had lifted it in France; and
till the time of Cowper no other English poet showed mastery of the
short, staccato measure of the Anacreontic as distinct from the Pindaric
Ode. In the _Odes_ Drayton shows to the fullest extent his metrical
versatility: he touches the Skeltonic metre, the long ten-syllabled line
of the _Sacrifice to Apollo_; and ascends from the smooth and melodious
rhythms of the _New Year_ through the inspiring harp-tones of the
_Virginian Voyage_ to the clangour and swing of the _Ballad of
Agincourt_. His grammar is possibly more distorted here than anywhere,
but, as Mr. Elton says, 'these are the obstacles of any poet who uses
measures of four or six syllables.' His tone throughout is rather that
of the harp, as played, perhaps, in Polesworth Hall, than that of any
other instrument; but in 1619 Drayton has taken to him the lute of Carew
and his compeers. In 1619 the style is lighter, the fancy gayer, more
exquisite, more recondite. Most of his few metaphysical conceits are to
be found in these later Odes, as in the _Heart_, the _Valentine_, and
the _Crier_. In the comparison of the two editions the nobler, if more
strained, tone of the earlier is obvious; it is still Elizabethan, in
its nobility of ideal and purpose, in its enthusiasm, in its belief and
confidence in England and her men; and this even though we catch a
glimpse of the Jacobean woe in the _Ode to John Savage_: the 1619 Odes
are of a different world; their spirit is lighter, more insouciant in
appearance, though perhaps studiedly so; the rhythms are more fantastic,
with less of strength and firmness, though with more of grace and
superficial beauty; even the very textual alterations, while usually
increasing the grace and the music of the lines, remind the reader that
something of the old spontaneity and freshness is gone.
In 1607 and 1609, Drayton published two editions of the last and weakest
of his mediaeval poems--the _Legend of Great Cromwell_; and for the next
few years he produced nothing new, only attending to the publication of
certain reprints and new editions. During this time, however, he was
working steadily at the _Polyolbion_, helped by the patronage of Aston
and of Prince Henry. In 1612-13, Drayton burst upon an indifferent world
with the first part of the great poem, containing eighteen songs; the
title-page will give the best idea of the contents and plan of the book:
'Poly-Olbion or a Chorographicall Description of the Tracts, Riuers,
Mountaines, Forests, and other Parts of this renowned Isle of Great
Britaine, With intermixture of the most Remarquable Stories,
Antiquities, Wonders, Rarityes, Pleasures, and Commodities of the same:
Digested in a Poem by Michael Drayton, Esq. With a Table added, for
direction to those occurrences of Story and Antiquities, whereunto the
Course of the Volume easily leades not.' &c. On this work Drayton had
been engaged for nearly the whole of his poetical career. The learning
and research displayed in the poem are extraordinary, almost equalling
the erudition of Selden in his Annotations to each Song. The first part
was, for various reasons, a drug in the market, and Drayton found great
difficulty in securing a publisher for the second part. But during the
years from 1613 to 1622, he became acquainted with Drummond of
Hawthornden through a common friend, Sir William Alexander of Menstry,
afterwards Earl of Stirling. In 1618, Drayton starts a correspondence;
and towards the end of the year mentions that he is corresponding also
with Andro Hart, bookseller, of Edinburgh. The subject of his letter was
probably the publication of the Second Part; which Drayton alludes to in
a letter of 1619 thus: 'I have done twelve books more, that is from the
eighteenth book, which was Kent, if you note it; all the East part and
North to the river Tweed; but it lies by me; for the booksellers and I
are in terms; they are a company of base knaves, whom I both scorn and
kick at.' Finally, in 1622, Drayton got Marriott, Grismand, and Dewe, of
London, to take the work, and it was published with a dedication to
Prince Charles, who, after his brother's death, had given Drayton
patronage. Drayton's preface to the Second Part is well worth quoting:
'_To any that will read it._ When I first undertook this Poem, or, as
some very skilful in this kind have pleased to term it, this Herculean
labour, I was by some virtuous friends persuaded, that I should receive
much comfort and encouragement therein; and for these reasons; First,
that it was a new, clear, way, never before gone by any; then, 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 in some way or other by
his Blood interested therein. But it hath fallen out otherwise; for
instead of that comfort, which my noble friends (from the freedom of
their spirits) 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, whose opinion is in few years fallen so far below all
ballatry, that the lethargy is incurable: nay, some of the Stationers,
that had the selling of the First Part of this Poem, because it went not
so fast away in the sale, as some of their beastly and abominable trash,
(a shame both to our language and nation) have either despitefully left
out, or at least carelessly neglected the Epistles to the Readers, and
so have cozened the buyers with unperfected books; which these 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 any thing
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:
neither can this 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:
Till through the sleepy main, to _Thuly_ I have gone,
And seen the Frozen Isles, the cold _Deucalidon_,
Amongst whose iron Rocks, grim _Saturn_ yet remains
Bound in those gloomy caves with adamantine chains.
And as for those cattle whereof I spake before, _Odi profanum vulgus, et
arceo_, of which I account them, be they never so great, and so I leave
them. To my friends, and the lovers of my labours, I wish all happiness.
_Michael Drayton._'
The _Polyolbion_ as a whole is easy and pleasant to read; and though in
some parts it savours too much of a mere catalogue, yet it has many
things truly poetical. The best books are perhaps the xiij, xiv, and xv,
where he is on his own ground, and therefore naturally at his best. It
is interesting to notice how much attention and space he devotes to
Wales. He describes not only the 'wonders' but also the fauna and flora
of each district; and of the two it would seem that the flowers
interested him more. Though he was a keen observer of country sights and
sounds (a fact sufficiently attested by the _Nymphidia_ and the
_Nymphals_), it is evident that his interest in most things except
flowers was rather momentary or conventional than continuous and
heart-felt; but of the flowers he loves to talk, whether he weaves us a
garland for the Thame's wedding, or gives us the contents of a maund of
simples; and his love, if somewhat homely and unimaginative, is apparent
enough. But the main inspiration, as it is the main theme, of the
_Polyolbion_ is the glory and might and wealth, past, present, and
future, of England, her possessions and her folk. Through all this
glory, however, we catch the tone of Elizabethan sorrow over the 'Ruines
of Time'; grief that all these mighty men and their works will perish
and be forgotten, unless the poet makes them live for ever on the lips
of men. Drayton's own voluminousness has defeated his purpose, and sunk
his poem by its own bulk. Though it is difficult to go so far as Mr.
Bullen, and say that the only thing better than a stroll in the
_Polyolbion_ is one in a Sussex lane, it is still harder to agree with
Canon Beeching, that 'there are few beauties on the road', the beauties
are many, though of a quietly rural type, and the road, if long and
winding, is of good surface, while its cranks constitute much of its
charm. It is doubtless, from the outside, an appalling poem in these
days of epitomes and monographs, but it certainly deserves to be rescued
from oblivion and read.
In 1618 Drayton contributed two _Elegies_ to Henry FitzGeoffrey's
_Satyrs and Epigrames_. These were on the Lady Penelope Clifton, and on
'the death of the three sonnes of the Lord Sheffield, drowned neere
where Trent falleth into Humber'. Neither is remarkable save for
far-fetched conceits; they were reprinted in 1610, and again, with many
others, in the volume of 1627. In 1619 Drayton issued a folio collected
edition of his works, and reprinted it in 1620. In 1627 followed a folio
of wholly fresh matter, including the _Battaile of Agincourt_; _the
Miseries of Queene Margarite_, _Nimphidia_, _Quest of Cinthia_,
_Shepheards Sirena_, _Moone-Calfe_, and _Elegies upon sundry occasions_.
The _Battaile of Agincourt_ is a somewhat otiose expansion, with purple
patches, of the _Ballad_; it is, nevertheless, Drayton's best lengthy
piece on a historical theme. Of the _Miseries of Queene Margarite_ and
of the _Moone-Calfe_ we have already spoken. The most notable piece in
the book is the _Nimphidia_. This poem of the Court of Fairy has
'invention, grace, and humour', as Canon Beeching has said. It would be
interesting to know exactly when it was composed and committed to paper,
for it is thought that the three fairy poems in Herrick's _Hesperides_
were written about 1626. In any case, Drayton's poem touches very
little, and chiefly in the beginning, on the subject of any one of
Herrick's three pieces. The style, execution, and impression left on the
reader are quite different; even as they are totally unlike those of the
_Midsummer Night's Dream_. Herrick's pieces are extraordinary
combinations of the idea of 'King of Shadows', with a reality
fantastically sober: the poems are steeped in moonlight. In Drayton all
is clear day, or the most unromantic of nights; though everything is
charming, there is no attempt at idealization, little of the higher
faculty of imagination; but great realism, and much play of fancy.
Herrick's verses were written by Cobweb and Moth together, Drayton's by
Puck. Granting, however, the initial deficiency in subtlety of charm,
the whole poem is inimitably graceful and piquant. The gay humour, the
demure horror of the witchcraft, the terrible seriousness of the battle,
wonderfully realize the mock-heroic gigantesque; and while there is not
the minute accuracy of Gulliver in Lilliput, Drayton did not write for a
sceptical or too-prying audience; quite half his readers believed more
or less in fairies. In the metre of the poem Drayton again echoes that
of the older romances, as he did in _Dowsabel_. In the _Quest of
Cinthia_, while ostensibly we come to the real world of mortals, we are
really in a non-existent land of pastoral convention, in the most
pseudo-Arcadian atmosphere in which Drayton ever worked. The metre and
the language are, however, charmingly managed. _The Shepheards Sirena_
is a poem, apparently, 'where more is meant than meets the ear,' as so
often in pastoral poetry[23]; it is difficult to see exactly what is
meant; but the Jacobean strain of doubt and fear is there, and the poem
would seem to have been written some time earlier than 1627. The
_Elegies_ comprise a great variety of styles and themes; some are really
threnodies, some verse-letters, some laments over the evil times, and
one a summary of Drayton's literary opinions. He employs the couplet in
his _Elegies_ with a masterly hand, often with a deliberately rugged
effect, as in his broader Marstonic satire addressed to William Browne;
while the line of greater smoothness but equal strength is to be seen in
the letters to Sandys and Jeffreys. He is fantastic and conceited in
most of the threnodies; but, as is natural, that on his old friend, Sir
Henry Rainsford, is least artificial and fullest of true feeling. The
epistle to _Henery Reynolds. Of Poets and Poesie_ shows Drayton as a
sane and sagacious critic, ready to see the good, but keen to discern
the weakness also; perhaps the clearest evidence of his critical skill
is the way in which nearly all of his judgements on his contemporaries
coincide with the received modern opinions.
In his later years Drayton enjoyed the patronage of the third Earl and
Countess of Dorset; and in _1630_ he published his last volume, the
_Muses Elizium_, of which he dedicated the pastoral part to the Earl,
and the three divine poems at the end to the Countess. The _Muses
Elizium_ proper consists of Ten Pastorals or Nymphals, prefaced by a
_Description of Elizium_. The three divine poems have been mentioned
before, and were _Noah's Floud_, _Moses his Birth and Miracles_, and
_David and Goliah_. The _Nymphals_ are the crown and summary of much of
the best in Drayton's work. Here he departed from the conventional type
of pastoral, even more than in the _Shepherd's Garland_; but to say that
he sang of English rustic life would hardly be true: the sixth
_Nymphal_, allowing for a few pardonable exaggerations by the
competitors, is almost all English, if we except the names; so is the
tenth with the same exception; the first and fourth might take place
anywhere, but are not likely in any country; the second is more
conventional; the fifth is almost, but not quite, English; the third,
seventh, and ninth are avowedly classical in theme; while the eighth is
a more delicate and subtle fairy poem than the _Nymphidia_. The fourth
and tenth _Nymphals_ are also touched with the sadder, almost satiric
vein; the former inveighing against the English imitation of foreigners
and love of extravagance in dress; while the tenth complains of the
improvident and wasteful felling of trees in the English forests. This
last _Nymphal_, though designedly an epilogue, is probably rather a
warning than a despairing lament, even though we conceive the old satyr
to be Drayton himself. As a whole the _Nymphals_ show Drayton at his
happiest and lightest in style and metre; at his moments of greatest
serenity and even gaiety; an atmosphere of sunshine seems to envelope
them all, though the sun sink behind a cloud in the last. His music now
is that of a rippling stream, whereas in his earlier days he spoke
weightier and more sonorous words, with a mouth of gold.[24]
To estimate the poetical faculty of Drayton is a somewhat perplexing
task; for, while rarely subtle, or rising to empyrean heights, he wrote
in such varied styles, on such various themes, that the task, at first,
seems that of criticizing many poets, not one. But through all his work
runs the same eminently English spirit, the same honesty and clearness
of idea, the same stolidity of purpose, and not infrequently of
execution also; the same enthusiasm characterizes all his earlier, and
much of his later work; the enthusiasm especially characteristic of
Elizabethan England, and shown by Drayton in his passion for England and
the English, in his triumphant joy in their splendid past, and his
certainty of their future glory. As a poet, he lacked imagination and
fine fury; he supplied their place by the airiest and clearest of
fancies, by the strenuous labour of a great brain illumined by the
steady flame of love for his country and for his lady. Mr. Courthope has
said that he lacked loftiness and resolution of artistic purpose;
without these, we ask, how could a man, not lavishly dowered with poetry
in his soul, have achieved so much of it? It was his very fixity and
loftiness of purpose, his English stubbornness and doggedness of
resolution that enabled him to surmount so many obstacles of style and
metre, of subject and thought. His two purposes, of glorifying his
mistress and his friends, and of sounding England's glories past and
future, while insisting on the dangers of a present decadence, never
flagged or failed. All his poetry up to 1627 has this object directly or
secondarily; and much after this date. Of the more abstract and
universal aspects of his art he had not much conception; but he caught
eagerly at the fashionable belief in the eternizing power of poetry; and
had it not been that, where his patriotism was uppermost, he was
deficient in humour and sense of proportion, he would have succeeded
better: as it is, his more directly patriotic pieces are usually the
dullest or longest of his works. He requires, like all other poets, the
impulse of an absolutely personal and individual feeling, a moment of
more intimate sympathy, to rouse him to his heights of song. Thus the
_Ballad of Agincourt_ is on the very theme of all patriotic themes that
most attracted him; Virginian and other Voyages lay very close to his
heart; and in certain sonnets to his lady lies his only imperishable
work. Of sheer melody and power of song he had little, apart from his
themes: he could not have sat down and written a few lark's or
nightingale's notes about nothing as some of his contemporaries were
able to do: he required the stimulus of a subject, and if he were really
moved thereby he beat the music out. Only in one or two of the later
Odes, and in the volumes of 1627 and 1630, does his music ever seem to
flow from him naturally. Akin to this quality of broad and extensive
workmanship, to this faculty of taking a subject and when writing, with
all thought concentrated on it, rather than on the method of writing
about it, is his strange lack of what are usually called 'quotations'.
For this is not only due to the fact that he is little known; there are,
besides, so few detached remarks or aphorisms that are separately
quotable; so few examples of that _curiosa felicitas_ of diction: lines
like these,
Thy Bowe, halfe broke, is peec'd with old desire;
Her Bowe is beauty with ten thousand strings....
are rare enough. Drayton, in fact, comes as near controverting the
statement _Poeta nascitur, non fit_, as any one in English literature:
by diligent toil and earnest desire he won a place for himself in the
second rank of English poets: through love he once set foot in the
circle of the mightiest. Sincere he was always, simple often, sensuous
rarely. His great industry, his careful study, and his great receptivity
are shown in the unusual spectacle of a man who has sung well in the
language of his youth, suddenly learning, in his age, the tongue spoken
by the younger generation, and reproducing it with individuality and
sureness of touch. It is in rhetoric, splendid or rugged, in argument,
in plain statement or description, in the outline sketch of a picture,
that Drayton excels; magic of atmosphere and colouring are rarely
present. Stolidity is, perhaps, his besetting sin; yet it is the sign of
a slow, not a dull, intellect; an intellect, like his heart, which never
let slip what it had once taken to itself.
As a man Drayton would seem to have been an excellent type of the
sturdy, clear-headed, but yet romantic and enthusiastic Englishman;
gifted with much natural ability, sedulously increased by study; quietly
humorous, self-restrained; and if temporarily soured by disappointment
and the disjointed times, yet emerging at last into a greater serenity,
a more unadulterated gaiety than had ever before characterized him. It
is possible, but from his clear and sane balance of mind improbable,
that many of his light later poems are due to deliberate self-blinding
and self-deception, a walking in enchanted lands of the mind.
Of Drayton's three known portraits the earliest shows him at the age of
thirty-six, and is now in the National Portrait Gallery. A look of
quiet, speculative melancholy seems to pervade it; there is, as yet, no
moroseness, no evidence of severe conflict with the world, no shadow of
stress or of doubt. The second and best-known portrait shows us Drayton
at the age of fifty, and was engraved by Hole, as a frontispiece to the
poems of 1619. Here a notable change has come over the face; the mouth
is hardened, and depressed at the corners through disappointment and
disillusionment; the eyes are full of a pathos increased by the puzzled
and perturbed uplift of the brows. Yet a stubbornness and tenacity of
purpose invests the features and reminds us that Drayton is of the old
and sound Elizabethan stock, 'on evil days though fallen.' Let it be
remembered, that he was in 1613, when the portrait was taken, in more or
less prosperous circumstances; it was the sad degeneracy, the meanness
and feebleness of the generation around him, that chiefly depressed and
embittered him. The final portrait, now in the Dulwich Gallery,
represents the poet as a man of sixty-five; and is quite in keeping with
the sunnier and calmer tone of his later poetry. It is the face of one
who has not emerged unscathed from the world's conflict, but has
attained to a certain calm, a measure of tranquillity, a portion of
content, who has learnt the lesson that there is a soul of goodness in
things evil. The Hole portrait shows him with long hair, small 'goatee'
beard, and aquiline nose drawn up at the nostrils: while the National
portrait shows a type of nose and beard intermediate between the Hole
and the Dulwich pictures: the general contour of the face, though the
forehead is broad enough, is long and oval. Drayton seems to have been
tall and thin, and to have been very susceptible of cold, and therefore
to have hated Winter and the North.[25] He is said to have shared in the
supper which caused Shakespeare's death; but his own verses[26] breathe
the spirit of Milton's sonnet to Cyriack Skinner, rather than that of a
devotee of Bacchus.
He died in 1631, possibly on December 23, and was buried under the North
wall of Westminster Abbey. Meres's[27] opinion of his character during
his early life is as follows: 'As Aulus Persius Flaccus is reported
among al writers to be of an honest life and vpright conuersation: so
Michael Drayton, _quem totics honoris et amoris causa nomino_, among
schollers, souldiours, Poets, and all sorts of people is helde for a man
of uertuous disposition, honest conversation, and well gouerned cariage;
which is almost miraculous among good wits in these declining and
corrupt times, when there is nothing but rogery in villanous man, and
when cheating and craftines is counted the cleanest wit, and soundest
wisedome.'[28] Fuller also, in a similar strain, says, 'He was a pious
poet, his conscience having the command of his fancy, very temperate in
his life, slow of speech, and inoffensive in company.'
In conclusion I have to thank Mr. H.M. Sanders, of Pembroke College,
Oxford, for help and advice, and Professor Raleigh and Mr. R.W. Chapman
for help and criticism while the volume was in the press. Above all, I
am at every turn indebted to Professor Elton's invaluable _Michael
Drayton_,[29] without which the work of any student of Drayton would be
rendered, if not impossible, at least infinitely harder.
CYRIL BRETT.
ALTON, STAFFORDSHIRE.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Elegy viij, _To Henery Reynolds, Esquire_, p. 108.]
[Footnote 2: Sir Aston Cokayne, in 1658, says that he went to Oxford,
while Fleay asserts, without authority, that his university was probably
Cambridge.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. the motto of _Ideas Mirrour_, the allusions to
_Ariosto_ in the _Nymphidia_, p. 129; and above all, the _Heroical
Epistles_; Dedic. of _Ep._ of _D._ of _Suffolk to Q. Margaret_: 'Sweet
is the _French_ Tongue, more sweet the _Italian_, but most sweet are
they both, if spoken by your admired self.' Cf. _Surrey to Geraldine_,
ll. 5 sqq., with Drayton's note.]
[Footnote 4: Cf. Sonnet xij (ed. 1602), p. 42, ''Tis nine years now
since first I lost my wit.' (This sonnet may, of course, occur in the
supposed 1600 ed., which would fix an earlier date for Drayton's
beginning of love.)]
[Footnote 5: Elegy ix, p. 113.]
[Footnote 6: Cf. Morley's ed. of _Barons' Wars_, &c. (1887), p. 6.]
[Footnote 7: Cf. _E.H. Ep._ 'Mat. to K.J.,' 100 sqq., &c.]
[Footnote 8: Professor Courthope and others. There was some excuse for
blunders before the publication of Professor Elton's book; and they have
been made easier by an unfortunate misprint. Professor Courthope twice
misprints the first line of the Love-Parting Sonnet, as 'Since there's
no help, come let us _rise_ and part', and, so printed, the line
supports better the theory that the poem refers to a patroness and not
to a mistress. Cf. Courthope, _Hist. Eng. Poetry_, iii. pp. 40 and 43.]
[Footnote 9: Cf. _E. and Phoebe_, sub fin.; _Shep. Sir._ 145-8; _Ep. Hy.
Reyn._ 79 sqq.]
[Footnote 10: Those reprints which were really new _editions_ are in
italics.]
[Footnote 11: 1594 ed., Pref. Son. and nos. 12, 18, 28; 1599 ed., nos.
3, 31, 46; 1602 ed., 12, 27, 31; and 1603 ed., 47.]
[Footnote 12: Meres thought otherwise. Cf. _Palladis Tamia_ (1598), 'As
Accius, M. Atilius, and Milithus were called _Tragediographi_, because
they writ tragedies: so may wee truly terme Michael Drayton
_Tragaediographus_ for his passionate penning the downfals of valiant
Robert of Normandy, chast Matilda, and great Gaueston.' Cf. Barnefield,
_Poems: in diuers humors_ (ed. Arber, p. 119), 'And Drayton, whose
wel-written Tragedies, | And Sweete Epistles, soare thy fame to skies. |
Thy learned name is equall with the rest; | Whose stately Numbers are so
well addrest.']
[Footnote 13: Cf. Meres, _Palladis Tamia_ (1598), 'Michael Drayton doth
imitate Ouid in his _England's Heroical Epistles_.']
[Footnote 14: Cf. id., _ibid._, 'As Lucan hath mournefully depainted the
ciuil wars of Pompey and Caesar: so hath Daniel the ciuill wars of Yorke
and Lancaster, and Drayton the civill wars of Edward the second and the
Barons.']
[Footnote 15: Cf. Elegy viij. 126-8.]
[Footnote 16: Cf. Morley's ed., _Barons' Wars_, &c., 1887, pp. 6-7.]
[Footnote 17: Cf. Elron, pp. 83-93, and Whitaker, _M. Drayton as a
Dramatist_ (Public. Mod. Lang. Assoc. of America, vol. xviij. 3).]
[Footnote 18: Cf. _Nl._ ij. 127 sqq., p. 172.]
[Footnote 19: Cf. Elegy ij. 20.]
[Footnote 20: Cf. _Palladis Tamia_: 'Michael Drayton is now in penning,
in English verse, a Poem called _Poly-olbion_, Geographicall &
Hydrographicall of all the forests, woods, mountaines, fountaines,
riuers, lakes, flouds, bathes, & springs that be in England.']
[Footnote 21: Cf. _Amours_ (1594), xx and xxiv.]
[Footnote 22: Cf. Sonnet vj (1619 edition); which is a dignified summary
of much that he says more coarsely in the _Moone-Calfe_.]
[Footnote 23: Cf. Morley's ed. _Barons' Wars, &c._, p. 8.]
[Footnote 24: Charles FitzGeoffrey, _Drake_ (1596), 'golden-mouthed
Drayton musical.' Guilpin, _Skialetheia_ (1598), 'Drayton's condemned of
some for imitation, But others say, 'tis the best poet's fashion ...
Drayton's justly surnam'd golden-mouth'd.' Meres, _Palladis Tamia_
(1598),' In Charles Fitz-Jefferies _Drake_ Drayton is termed
"golden-mouth'd" for the purity and pretiousnesse of his stile and
phrase.']
[Footnote 25: Cf. _E. H. E._, pp. 90, 99 (ed. 1737); Elegy i; and _Ode
written in the Peak_.]
[Footnote 26: Elegy viij, ad init.]
[Footnote 27: _Palladis Tamia_ (1598).]
[Footnote 28: Cf. _Returne from Parnassus_, i. 2 (1600) ed. Arb. p. 11.]
[Footnote 29: _Michael Drayton. A Critical Study_. Oliver Elton, M.A.
London: A. Constable & Co., 1905.]