ssuredly have perceived how greatly such an appeal
tended to exalt his hero's character, and what an opening it afforded
for impressive rhetoric. Nor could the incident have escaped his notice,
for there is abundant internal evidence of his acquaintance with
Shakespeare's drama in the closet as well as on the stage. It can only
be concluded that he did not choose to be indebted to Shakespeare, or
despaired of rivalling him. His notice of his great contemporary in the
"Epistle to Reynolds" is surprisingly cold; but the legend, however
unauthentic, of Shakespeare's death from a fever contracted at a
merry-making in Drayton's company, seems incompatible with any serious
estrangement, and Shakespeare's son-in-law was Drayton's physician when
the latter revisited his native Warwickshire. The same jealousy of
obligation must have influenced his treatment of the incident of the
Dauphin's derisive present of tennis balls, which both Shakespeare and
he have adopted from Holinshed or his authorities, but of which the
former has made everything and the latter nothing. Nor can the omission
of the highly dramatic incident of the conspiracy of Scroop and
Cambridge, found in Holinshed, be otherwise well accounted for. In
compensation, Drayton introduces two episodes entirely his own, the
catalogue of Henry's ships, and that of the armorial ensigns of the
British counties. Ben Jonson may be suspected of a sneer when he
congratulates Drayton on thus outdoing Homer, as he had previously
outdone, or at least rivalled, Virgil, Theocritus, Ovid, Orpheus, and
Lucan. Ben might have said with perfect sincerity that Drayton's
descriptions are fine pieces of work, showing great command of language,
and only open to criticism from some want of proportion between them and
the poem of which they are but subordinate episodes. This censure would
have been by no means just if the whole piece had been executed on the
scale of the description of the siege of Harfleur. It is difficult to
imagine what could have tempted Drayton to spend so much time upon an
episode treated by Holinshed with comparative brevity. Some of the
stanzas are exceedingly spirited, but as a whole the description
certainly fatigues. If the same is to some extent the case with the
description of the Battle of Agincourt itself, the cause is not so much
prolixity as the multitude of separate episodes, not always derived from
the chroniclers, and the consequent want of unity which has be