e: Pope's celebrated verse,--
"Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring,"--
is "conveyed" from this passage of Drayton.]

Comparisons between modern and ancient poets must necessarily be very
imperfect; yet our Drayton might not inaptly be termed the English
Theocritus. If not so distinctly superior to every other English
pastoral poet as Theocritus was to every other Greek, he yet stands in
the front rank. He is utterly free from affectation, the great vice of
pastoral poetry; his love of the country is sincere; his perception of
natural phenomena exquisite; his shepherds and shepherdesses real swains
and lasses; he has happily varied the conventional form of the pastoral
by a felicitous lyrical treatment. Paradoxical as it may appear, Drayton
was partly enabled to approach Theocritus so nearly by knowing him so
imperfectly. Had he been acquainted with him otherwise than through
Virgil, he would probably have been unable to refrain from direct
imitation; but as matters stand, instead of a poet striving to write as
Theocritus wrote in Greek, we have one actually writing as Theocritus
would have written in English. But the most remarkable point of contact
between Drayton and Theocritus is that both are epical as well as
pastoral poets. Two of the Idylls of Theocritus are believed to be
fragments of an epic on the exploits of Hercules; and in the enumeration
of his lost works, amid others of the same description, mention is made
of the "Heroines," a curious counterpart of Drayton's "Heroicall
Epistles." Had these works survived, we might not improbably have found
Drayton surpassing his prototype in epic as much as he falls below him
in pastoral; for the more exquisite art of the Sicilian could hardly
have made amends for the lack of that national pride and enthusiastic
patriotism which had died out of his age, but which ennobled the
strength and upbore the weakness of the author of "The Battaile of
Agincourt."

RICHARD GARNETT.

[Illustration:

EFFIGIES MICHAELIS DRAYTON ARMIGERI, POETAE CLARISS.
AETAT. SVAE L. A. CHR. [M].DC.XIII

_Lux Hareshulla tibi Warwici villa, tenebris,
Ante tuas Cunas, obsita Prima fuit.
Arma, Viros, Veneres, Patriam modulamine dixti:
Te Patriae resonant Arma, Viri, Veneres._]

THE
BATTAILE
OF
AGINCOVRT.

FOVGHT BY HENRY THE
fift of that name, King of _England_,
against the whole power of the _French_: