Drayton has the additional apology of the “brave neglect” which so correct a writer as Pope accounted a virtue in Homer, but which Tennyson never had the nerve to permit himself.

Comparisons between modern and ancient poets must necessarily be very imperfect; yet our Drayton might not inaptly be termed the English Theocritus. If not so distinctly superior to every other English pastoral poet as Theocritus was to every other Greek, he yet stands in the front rank. He is utterly free from affectation, the great vice of pastoral poetry; his love of the country is sincere; his perception of natural phenomena exquisite; his shepherds and shepherdesses real swains and lasses; he has happily varied the conventional form of the pastoral by a felicitous lyrical treatment. Paradoxical as it may appear, Drayton was partly enabled to approach Theocritus so nearly by knowing him so imperfectly. Had he been acquainted with him otherwise than through Virgil, he would probably have been unable to refrain from direct imitation; but as matters stand, instead of a poet striving to write as Theocritus wrote in Greek, we have one actually writing as Theocritus would have written in English. But the most remarkable point of contact between Drayton and Theocritus is that both are epical as well as pastoral poets. Two of the Idylls of Theocritus are believed to be fragments of an epic on the exploits of Hercules; and in the enumeration of his lost works, amid others of the same description, mention is made of the “Heroines,” a curious counterpart of Drayton’s “Heroicall Epistles.” Had these works survived, we might not improbably have found Drayton surpassing his prototype in epic as much as he falls below him in pastoral; for the more exquisite art of the Sicilian could hardly have made amends for the lack of that national pride and enthusiastic patriotism which had died out of his age, but which ennobled the strength and upbore the weakness of the author of “The Battaile of Agincourt.”

Richard Garnett.

 


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[The preceding page is a reduced reproduction of the title-page of the first edition, which contains, as will be seen, several poems besides “The Battaile of Agincourt” which are not included in the present reprint.]