And therefore I will come to thee, And take my fortune there. CHAPTER III SPENSER'S SUCCESSORS PASTORALISM OF THE COURT AND THE COUNTRY: MICHAEL DRAYTON: WILLIAM BROWNE WITH less steadiness of artistic purpose and with a far less elevated spirit, yet with as much industry, perhaps more learning, and certainly greater versatility, Michael Drayton, in his poetical career, proceeded in many directions on the same lines as Daniel, but illustrates in quite another aspect the influence of the Court on English poetry. Drayton has left behind him more personal references than most poets of his age, and from these it is happily possible, in the absence of a biographer, to recover some idea of the course of his fortunes and the character of his poetical motives. He was born at Hartshill in Warwickshire in 1563.2 In his poem called The Owl he says that he was "nobly bred and well allied," and in his Epistle to Henry Reynolds on Poets and Poetry he gives an extremely interesting account of his early inclination to verse: For from my cradle you must know that I 1 Lux Hartshulla tibi (Warwici villa tenebris Ante tuas cunas obsita) prima fuit. Lines on Drayton's portrait in Dulwich College. 2 His portrait, engraved by W. Hole and published in 1613, states that it was painted in his fiftieth year. In my small self I greatly marvelled then, (For I was then a proper goodly page, Much like a pigmy, scarce ten years of age), "O my dear master, cannot you (quoth I) And you shall see I'll quickly be a man.” I scorned your ballad then, though it were done, From the dedication of two of England's Heroical Epistles to the Earl of Bedford, we learn that the knight in whose household he was being educated at the time he speaks of, and possibly his actual instructor in poetry, was Sir Henry Goodere.2 His earliest poetical attempt, entitled The Harmonie of the Church, was dedicated to the Lady Jane Devereux in 1590. It consisted of a paraphrase in verse of various passages of the Bible, "so exactly translated as the prose would permit "; but for some reason (probably an irregularity in publishing), after being entered at the Stationers' Hall, it was seized by public order, doubtless issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury as Licenser of the Press, who directed forty copies to be preserved at Lambeth. There is nothing in this work which suggests ardour in poetical composition, but Drayton's next production was just of the kind which his account of his poetical education would lead us to expect. Published in 1 A writer of doggerel ballads in Elizabeth's reign. Died about 1592. 2 "Whose I was whilst he was, whose patience pleased to bear with the imperfections of my heedless and unstayed youth. That excellent and matchless gentleman was the first cherisher of my Muse." 1593, it was called Idea: The Shepherd's Garland, and contained nine eclogues modelled on on The Shepherd's Calendar-in other words, pastoral dialogues in archaic English, alluding to persons and events of the day. Drayton's imitative tendency reveals itself in the form of the eclogues, which, in the rustic names of the speakers and the quasi-Doric or provincial style of the diction, were a close copy of Spenser's manner. The inspiring motive of the composition, however, was not, as is usually the case with Spenser, theological, but purely complimentary. Three ladies are celebrated in the eclogues, of whom Beta, the most illustrious, is clearly called after the last part of the Queen's name; the second, Pandora, was Sidney's sister, the all-accomplished Mary, Countess of Pembroke; the third, Idea, who is the object of the poet's most enthusiastic praise, has been hitherto supposed to be some unknown lady with whom Drayton was himself in love. But the style of the pastorals, as well as of Idea's Mirror, a set of sonnets which followed them in 1594, entirely wanting as it is in natural sentiment and emotion, proclaims plainly both publications to be tributes from a poet to his patroness; and a close examination of the changes afterwards made by Drayton in the form of these poems leaves me in no doubt as to the person whom he intended to praise. Idea was Lucy, Countess of Bedford, to whose protection Sir Henry Goodere, when on his death-bed, commended the ingenious page trained in his household and hitherto patronised by himself.1 This famous lady was the eldest daughter of John Harington, afterwards Baron Harington, of Exton, in the county of Rutland, and was married to Edward, third Earl of Bedford. She divided with the Countess of Pembroke the admiration of the Court, and took pride and pleasure in advancing the fortune of the best writers of the day. Daniel, Jonson, and Donne, have each of them honoured her with compliments in verse, but Drayton surpassed all his contemporaries in the extravagance of his flattery. To Lady Bedford he dedicated his Endimion 1 Dedication of Heroical Epistles. and Phabe in (probably) 1595, and his Mortimeriados in 1596. In the dedicatory lines prefixed to the latter poem he says his purpose is That Virtue lively pictured forth in thee May truly be discerned what she should be; and in the poem itself he speaks of her as the "mirror of virtue." In both dedications he describes the Countess as the source and origin of his inspiration. The sonnet prefixed to Endimion and Phabe shows that the praises lavished upon the patroness were rewarded in the timehonoured fashion that the scop or scald expected : Unto thy fame my Muse her self shall task, That the bounteous Countess was also the lady whose praises are so enthusiastically sounded under a fictitious name both in The Shepherd's Garland and in Idea's Mirror is an inference which can hardly be resisted in view of the following facts. The first mention of Idea is found in the "Fifth Eglog" of The Shepherd's Garland as it appeared in 1593, where the shepherd Rowland is called upon by his companion To tune his reed unto Idea's praise, And teach the woods to wonder at her name : this being merely a pastoral translation of what Drayton himself says to the Countess when personally addressing her in the dedicatory lines cited above; while the identity of Lady Bedford with the goddess of The Shepherd's Garland is further indicated both by an anonymous poet E. P.-in a sonnet praising Idea, placed before Endimion and Phabe, next to Drayton's sonnet addressed to the Countess in person-and by Drayton himself, who not only calls the poem just mentioned by the sub-title Idea's Latmus, but concludes it with an address to the "sweet nymph of Ankor ": 1 See vol. i. p. 83, and pp. 432-433. |