command
displayed in that masterpiece. In fact, if ever there was a poet who could
write, and write, perhaps beautifully, certainly well, about any
conceivable broomstick in almost any conceivable manner, that poet was
Drayton. His historical poems, which are inferior in bulk only to the huge
_Polyolbion_, contain a great deal of most admirable work. They consist of
three divisions--_The Barons' Wars_ in eight-lined stanzas, the _Heroic
Epistles_ (suggested, of course, by Ovid, though anything but Ovidian) in
heroic couplets, _The Miseries of Queen Margaret_ in the same stanza as
_The Barons' Wars_, and _Four Legends_ in stanzas of various form and
range. That this mass of work should possess, or should, indeed, admit of
the charms of poetry which distinguish _The Faerie Queene_ would be
impossible, even if Drayton had been Spenser, which he was far from being.
But to speak of his "dull creeping narrative," to accuse him of the
"coarsest vulgarities," of being "flat and prosaic," and so on, as was done
by eighteenth-century critics, is absolutely uncritical, unless it be very
much limited. _The Barons' Wars_ is somewhat dull, the author being too
careful to give a minute history of a not particularly interesting subject,
and neglecting to take the only possible means of making it interesting by
bringing out strongly the characters of heroes and heroines, and so
infusing a dramatic interest. But this absence of character is a constant
drawback to the historical poems of the time. And even here we find many
passages where the drawback of the stanza for narrative is most skilfully
avoided, and where the vigour of the single lines and phrases is
unquestionable on any sound estimate.

Still the stanza, though Drayton himself defends it (it should be mentioned
that his prose prefaces are excellent, and constitute another link between
him and Dryden), is something of a clog; and the same thing is felt in _The
Miseries of Queen Margaret_ and the _Legends_, where, however, it is again
not difficult to pick out beauties. The _Heroical Epistles_ can be praised
with less allowance. Their shorter compass, their more manageable metre
(for Drayton was a considerable master of the earlier form of couplet), and
the fact that a personal interest is infused in each, give them a great
advantage; and, as always, passages of great merit are not infrequent.
Finally, Drayton must have the praise (surely not quite irrelevant) of a
most ardent a