hus the course of things must run,
He looks thereon not strange, but as fore-done.

"And whilst distraught ambition compasses,
And is encompass'd; whilst as craft deceives,
And is deceiv'd: whilst man doth ransack man
And builds on blood, and rises by distress;
And th' inheritance of desolation leaves
To great-expecting hopes: he looks thereon,
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,
And bears no venture in impiety."

In sharp contrast with this the passage from _Hymen's Triumph_,

"Ah, I remember well, and how can I,"

shows the sweetness without namby-pambyness which Daniel had at constant
command. Something of the same contrast may be found between the whole of
_Hymen's Triumph_ and the _Queen's Arcadia_ on the one side, and
_Cleopatra_ and _Philotas_ on the other. All are written in mixed blank and
rhymed verse, much interlaced and "enjambed." The best of the historical
poems is, by common consent, _Rosamond_, which is instinct with a most
remarkable pathos, nor are fine passages by any means to seek in the
greater length and less poetical subject of _The Civil Wars of York and
Lancaster_. The fault of this is that the too conscientious historian is
constantly versifying what must be called mere expletive matter. This must
always make any one who speaks with critical impartiality admit that much
of Daniel is hard reading; but the soft places (to use the adjective in no
ill sense) are frequent enough, and when the reader comes to them he must
have little appreciation of poetry if he does not rejoice in the foliage
and the streams of the poetical oasis which has rewarded him after his
pilgrimage across a rather arid wilderness.

Michael Drayton was much better fitted for the arduous, and perhaps not
wholly legitimate, business of historical poetry than Daniel. If his genius
was somewhat less fine, it was infinitely better thewed and sinewed. His
ability, indeed, to force any subject which he chose to treat into poetry
is amazing, and can hardly be paralleled elsewhere except in a poet who was
born but just before Drayton's death, John Dryden. He was pretty certainly
a gentleman by birth, though not of any great possessions, and is said to
have been born at Hartshill, in Warwickshire, in the year 1563. He is also
said, but not known, to have been a member of the University of Oxford, and
appears to have been fairly provided with patrons, in the family of some
one of who