ton's "Barons' Wars." The
superiority of the latter lies in particular passages, such as the
description of the guilty happiness of Isabella and Mortimer, quoted in
Mr. Arthur Bullen's admirable selection. This is to say that Drayton's
genius was naturally not so much epical as lyrical and descriptive. In
his own proper business as a narrative poet he fails as compared with
Daniel, but he enriches history with all the ornaments of poetry; and it
was his especial good fortune to discover a subject in which the union
of dry fact with copious poetic illustration was as legitimate to the
theme as advantageous to the writer. This was, of course, his
"Polyolbion," where, doing for himself what no other poet ever did, he
did for his country what was never done for any other. Greece and Rome,
indeed, have left us versified topographies, but these advance no
pretension to the poetical character except from the metrical point of
view, though they may in a sense claim kinship with the Muses as the
manifest offspring of Mnemosyne. If any modern language possesses a
similar work, it has failed to inscribe itself on the roll of the
world's literature. The difficulties of Drayton's unique undertaking
were in a measure favourable to him. They compelled him to exert his
fancy to the uttermost. The tremendous difficulty of making topography
into poetry gave him unwonted energy. He never goes to sleep, as too
often in the "Barons' Wars." The stiff practical obstacles attendant
upon the poetical treatment of towns and rivers provoke even the
dragging Alexandrine into animation; his stream is often all foam and
eddy. The long sweeping line, of its wont so lumbering and tedious, is
perfectly in place here. It rushes along like an impetuous torrent,
bearing with it, indeed, no inconsiderable quantity of wood, hay, and
stubble, but also precious pearls, and more than the dust of gold. Its
"swelling and limitless billows" mate well with the amplitude of the
subject, so varied and spacious that, as has been well said, the
"Polyolbion" is not a poem to be read through, but to be read in.
Nothing in our literature, perhaps, except the "Faery Queen," more
perfectly satisfies Keats's desideratum: "Do not the lovers of poetry
like to have a little region to wander in, where they may pick and
choose, and in which the images are so numerous that many are forgotten
and found new in a second reading: which may be food for a week's stroll
in the summer? Do