inly 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.