they not like this better than what they can read
through before Mrs. Williams comes down stairs? a morning work at most?"

The "Polyolbion" was completed by 1619, though the concluding part was
not published until 1623. "The Battaile of Agincourt," the poem now
reprinted, appeared with others in 1627. As none of the pieces comprised
in it had appeared in the collected edition of Drayton's works (the
"Polyolbion" excepted) which he had published in 1620, it is reasonable
to conclude that they had been composed between that date and 1627. They
prove that his powers were by no means abated. "Nimphidia," in
particular, though lacking the exquisite sweetness of some of his lyric
pastorals, and the deep emotion of passages in his "Heroicall Epistles,"
excels all his other productions in airy fancy, and is perhaps the best
known of any of his poems. Nor does the "Battaile" itself indicate any
decay in poetical power, though we must agree with Mr. Bullen that it is
in some parts fatiguing. This wearisomeness proceeds chiefly from
Drayton's over-faithful adherence, not so much to the actual story, as
to the method of the chronicler from whom his materials are principally
drawn. It does not seem to have occurred to him to regard his theme in
the light of potter's clay. Following his authority with servile
deference, he makes at the beginning a slip which lowers the dignity of
his hero, and consequently of his epic. He represents Henry the Fifth's
expedition against France as originally prompted, not by the restless
enterprise and fiery valour of the young king, much less by supernatural
inspiration as the working out of a divine purpose, but by the craft of
the clergy seeking to divert him from too nice inquiry into the source
and application of their revenues. Henry, therefore, without, as modern
investigators think, even sufficient historical authority, but in any
case without poetical justification, appears at the very beginning of
the poem that celebrates his exploits in the light of a dupe.
Shakespeare avoids this awkwardness by boldly altering the date of
Henry's embassy to France. His play opens, indeed, with the plots of the
ecclesiastics to tempt the king into war, but it soon appears that the
embassy claiming certain French dukedoms has been despatched before they
had opened their lips, and that they are urging him to a course of
action on which he is resolved already. Spenser or Dryden would have
escaped from the diff