he features and reminds us that Drayton is of the old
and sound Elizabethan stock, 'on evil days though fallen.' Let it be
remembered, that he was in 1613, when the portrait was taken, in more or
less prosperous circumstances; it was the sad degeneracy, the meanness
and feebleness of the generation around him, that chiefly depressed and
embittered him. The final portrait, now in the Dulwich Gallery,
represents the poet as a man of sixty-five; and is quite in keeping with
the sunnier and calmer tone of his later poetry. It is the face of one
who has not emerged unscathed from the world's conflict, but has
attained to a certain calm, a measure of tranquillity, a portion of
content, who has learnt the lesson that there is a soul of goodness in
things evil. The Hole portrait shows him with long hair, small 'goatee'
beard, and aquiline nose drawn up at the nostrils: while the National
portrait shows a type of nose and beard intermediate between the Hole
and the Dulwich pictures: the general contour of the face, though the
forehead is broad enough, is long and oval. Drayton seems to have been
tall and thin, and to have been very susceptible of cold, and therefore
to have hated Winter and the North.[25] He is said to have shared in the
supper which caused Shakespeare's death; but his own verses[26] breathe
the spirit of Milton's sonnet to Cyriack Skinner, rather than that of a
devotee of Bacchus.

He died in 1631, possibly on December 23, and was buried under the North
wall of Westminster Abbey. Meres's[27] opinion of his character during
his early life is as follows: 'As Aulus Persius Flaccus is reported
among al writers to be of an honest life and vpright conuersation: so
Michael Drayton, _quem totics honoris et amoris causa nomino_, among
schollers, souldiours, Poets, and all sorts of people is helde for a man
of uertuous disposition, honest conversation, and well gouerned cariage;
which is almost miraculous among good wits in these declining and
corrupt times, when there is nothing but rogery in villanous man, and
when cheating and craftines is counted the cleanest wit, and soundest
wisedome.'[28] Fuller also, in a similar strain, says, 'He was a pious
poet, his conscience having the command of his fancy, very temperate in
his life, slow of speech, and inoffensive in company.'

In conclusion I have to thank Mr. H.M. Sanders, of Pembroke College,
Oxford, for help and advice, and Professor Raleigh and Mr. R.W. Chapman
for h