in the enumeration Marlowe's "Edward the
Second" and the anonymous "Edward the Third," England possesses a
national epic inferior to that of no country in the world, although the
form be dramatic. In one respect, indeed, this epic is superior to any
but the Homeric poems, standing one remove less apart from the poetry of
the people. The impression of primitive force which the Homeric poems
convey by their venerable language is equally well imparted by
Shakespeare's spontaneity and his apparent and probably real innocence
of all purely literary intention.

Epic poets, however gifted, could be but gleaners after such a harvest.
Yet not every excellent poet, even of that dramatic age, was endowed
with the dramatic faculty, and two of especial merit, singularly devoid
of dramatic gift, but inferior to none in love of their country and
self-consecration to its service, turned their attention to the epic.
These were Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton. The latter is our subject,
but something should also be said of the former. Drayton not unfairly
hit the blot in his successful rival when he said of him:

"His rimes were smooth, his meeters well did close,
But yet his maner better fitted prose."

This is one way of putting it; from another point of view Daniel may be
regarded as almost the most remarkable literary phenomenon of his time;
he is so exceedingly modern. He outran the taste of his own period by a
hundred years, and without teacher or example displayed the excellences
which came to be preferred to all others in the eighteenth century.
"These poems of his," says his editor in that age (1718), "having stood
the test of above a century, and the language and the versification
being still pure and elegant, it is to be hoped they will still shine
among his countrymen and preserve his name." At this time, and for long
afterwards, Drayton, save for an occasional reprint of his "Nimphidia"
among miscellaneous collections, was utterly neglected. Even after the
editions of 1748 and 1753 he is alluded to by Goldsmith as a type of the
poet whose best title to fame is his tomb in Westminster Abbey.

The nineteenth century has reversed this with other critical verdicts of
the eighteenth, and, with all due respect to Daniel, Drayton now stands
higher. Yet, where the two poets come most directly and manifestly into
competition, Drayton's superiority is not so evident. As a whole,
Daniel's "Civil War" is a better poem than Dray