ht rather inexplicable ways, is some of the most
characteristic, if very far from being some of the best, work of the whole
poetical period with which we are now busied. In passing, moreover, from
the group of miscellaneous poets to these two schools, if we lose not a
little of the harmony and lyrical sweetness which characterise the best
work of the Elizabethan singer proper, we gain greatly in bulk and dignity
of work and in intrinsic value. Of at least one of the poets mentioned in
the last paragraph his modern editor--a most enthusiastic and tolerant
godfather of waifs and strays of literature--confesses that he really does
not quite know why he should be reprinted, except that the original is
unique, and that almost every scrap of literature in this period is of some
value, if only for lexicographic purposes. No one would dream of speaking
thus of Drayton or of Daniel, of Lodge, Hall, Donne, or Marston; while even
Warner, the weakest of the names to which we shall proceed to give separate
notice, can be praised without too much allowance. In the latter case,
moreover, if not in the first (for the history-poem, until it was taken up
in a very different spirit at the beginning of this century, never was a
success in England), the matter now to be reviewed, after being in its own
kind neglected for a couple of generations, served as forerunner, if not
exactly as model, to the magnificent satiric work of Dryden, and through
his to that of Pope, Young, Churchill, Cowper, and the rest of the more
accomplished English satirists. The acorn of such an oak cannot be without
interest.

The example of _The Mirror for Magistrates_ is perhaps sufficient to
account for the determination of a certain number of Elizabethan poets
towards English history; especially if we add the stimulating effect of
Holinshed's _Chronicle_, which was published in 1580. The first of the
so-called historians, William Warner, belongs in point of poetical style to
the pre-Spenserian period, and like its other exponents employs the
fourteener; while, unlike some of them, he seems quite free from any
Italian influence in phraseology or poetical manner. Nevertheless _Albion's
England_ is, not merely in bulk but in merit, far ahead of the average work
of our first period, and quite incommensurable with such verse as that of
Grove. It appeared by instalments (1586-1606-1612). Of its author, William
Warner, the old phrase has to be repeated, that next to nothi