e 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 fla