exampled. Probably no such attempt to "poetise" wholly recalcitrant material, if ever made, has met with like success. For the verdict cannot be "magnificent but unreadable." The poem can be read and read with pleasure. There is somehow life in it. It is easy to say of such a work that it exhibits presumption in a higher degree than genius, but once afloat on these long rolling lines, no good reader-I do not say will ever nod-will ever lose sympathy with the poet, will ever feel resentment or disgust. Fauna and flora, hill and stream, city and hamlet, forest and fen, sport and labour, trade and war, fact and fiction, a hundred thousand topics occupy him as he marches bravely in thirty "songs" through England and Wales, county by county, from north to south and east to west. If the Polyolbion be a failure, and of course in a sense it was doomed from its inception, there is no English poem among failures which so extorts our admiration for its author. It is a failure which excites no ridicule, for had Drayton written nothing else only a surly critic would deny to him the title "illustrious."

Though to such a long and various poem no justice can be done by extracts, one or two may be given from which its general character in the movement of the verse can partially be seen. Drayton is doubtless at his best when he versifies his country's favourite legends, like that of Guy of Warwick, the “English Hercules," in Song XIII., which contains also the spirited account of a stag hunt; and some of his descriptions like that of Cotswold (Song XIV.) or London (Song XVI.) are charming in themselves. Here is a passage from "the marriage of the Thames and Isis," which exhibits the personification of which he makes constant and skilful use

"Ye daughters of the hills, come down from every side
And due attendance give upon the lovely bride:

Go, strew the paths with flowers, by which she is to pass.
For be ye thus assur'd, in Albion never was

A beauty (yet) like hers: where have you ever seen
So absolute a nymph in all things, for a queen?
Give instantly in charge, the day be wondrous fair,
That no disordered blast attempt her braided hair.
Go, see her state prepar'd, and everything befit,
The bride chamber adorn'd with all beseeming it.
And for the princely groom, who ever yet could name
A flood that is so fit for Isis as the Thame?

Ye both so lovely are, that knowledge scarce can tell,
For feature whether he, or beauty she excel;
That ravished with joy each other to behold
When as your crystal waists you closely do enfold,
Betwixt your beauteous selves you shall beget a son,
That when your lives shall end, in him shall be begun.
The pleasant Surryan shores shall in that flood delight,
And Kent esteem herself most happy in his sight." I

Industrious and patriotic undertakings like those of Daniel and Drayton have a claim upon us even when unsuccessful in the accepted sense. They do more than display the greatness of the age and the men it bred. They assist us in measuring, as minor elevations among mountains enable us to estimate the giants, how far beyond the reach of common minds are the achievements of the world poets, how high rise the peaks beside which the poems of such men, great even in a great age, are inconsiderable, how rare are the gifts equal to the performance of tasks of the first poetic magnitude. So spacious is the work of these writers, so full of fine strokes, that one is in difficulty to explain their lack of a more complete success. Where in poetry of our own day are we to look for the spaciousness which they have almost at command, as here, for example?—

"A world of mighty kings and princes I could name
From our god Neptune sprung; let this suffice, his fame
Incompasseth the world; these stars which never rise,
Above the lower south, are never from his eyes;
As those again to him do every day appear,
Continually that keep the northern hemisphere;
Who like a mighty king doth cast his watched robe,
Far wider than the land, quite round about the globe.
Where is there one to him that may compared be,
That both the poles at once continually doth see;
And giant-like with Heaven as often maketh wars;
The islands in his power as numberless as stars,
He washeth at his will, and with his mighty hands
He makes the even shores oft mountainous with sands:
Whose creatures which observe his wide imperial seat,
Like his immeasur'd self, are infinite and great."

To explain to ourselves the success of some, the failure of others in poetry, we may call to our assistance the enigmatic word "style." Style is the loadstone, the author's secret of attention. But what style? Daniel at his best has style, Drayton also. Yes, but only at their best. They attract, but 1 Polyolbion, Song xv. Polyolbion, Song xx.

1

as often fail to attract; they are discontinuous. They forget how short must be the intervals which separate the passages where style is in evidence. The absence of vivid words, the intrusion of the insipid or lifeless provoke inattention. The successful style then must be sustained, unwearying, like the heavens divinely upheld. Again, it must be clear, yet not too clear. The style of Pope on the one hand, admirable as it is, yields up all it contains of meaning too readily, that of Donne, on the other, too much of a puzzle, wearies attention in the pursuit. The perfect style at once allures and conceals, allures by its ease and clarity, but leaves room and provides food for further thought. It is neither forbiddingly difficult nor smoothly exhaustive. The poet who would please all readers at all times must do them a mental service, but enlist their own efforts, he must make the path to meaning easy, but withhold its complete and final exposition. " Poetry gives more pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood," said Coleridge. "An imaginative book," says Emerson, "renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive at the precise sense of the author." It is for this reason that figures, or images, transport us. They are a sudden light in darkness.

"I shall keep your honour safe;

With mine I trust you, as the sculptor trusts
Yon marble woman with the marble rose

Loose on her hand, she never will let fall." 1

For it is their nature to illuminate, and at the same moment to increase the mind's activity, so as to be not only bright in themselves, but, as it were, the parents of further brightness. 1 Browning, Colombe's Birthday.

CHAPTER X

THE CLASSICAL EPIC-MILTON

"I should not think of devoting less than twenty years to an epic poem," said Coleridge. "Ten years to collect materials and warm my mind with universal science the next five in the composition of the poem, and the five last in the correction of it. So would I write—haply not unhearing of that divine and nightly whispering voice which speaks to mighty minds of predestinated garlands, starry and unwithering." Such was Coleridge's estimate, the estimate of a poet and critic, of a man, we may allow, qualified to judge, who knew, perhaps none better, the magnitude of this mountain labour. Poetry came easily to him if to any man, one would think, yet the conquest of such a peak was, he knew, no holiday excursion, nor even for genius an easy victory. Turn to Milton, who accomplished what was for Coleridge only a spacious dream. How similar is the estimate. To the "inward prompting" must be added, he held," industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and generous acts and affairs." Having calculated the cost, he paid the price, not sparing himself, in a life-long discipline, devoted, in the words of Keats, "rather to the ardours than the pleasures of song." No such deliberate and prolonged preparation as Milton's for a great poem appears to be anywhere recorded in history, a preparation which amazes as much perhaps by its confidence and determination as by its extent. Educated for literature by the "ceaseless diligence and care" of his father, encouraged by his masters-surely not unworthy of praise, these men—who found that the style of his earliest compositions " by certain vital signs it had was likely to live," his thoughts when a lad at Cambridge were already with the subjects to which the "deep transported mind" was yet to soar. At Horton, where his

studies were protracted far beyond the usual limits, though already a scholar, "I in the most perfect leisure had my time entirely free for going through the Greek and Latin writers." He was "pluming his wings for a flight." When he returned from his travels abroad he was still without any profession save that of poet, still supported by the conviction that "by labour and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after times as they should not willingly let it die." In this confidence he thought it not shame to covenant with any knowing reader that for some years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted." The few years passed, almost a generation, indeed, before the debt was paid. Other and less congenial tasks, in which he had, as

it were, the use but of his " left hand," prose works upon a

multitude of controversial subjects, occupied him, he steered through a troubled sea of noises and harsh disputes." But the unwavering resolution held, and in 1667, when the poet had almost reached his sixtieth year, Paradise Lost was at length finished-" A yet unwasted pyramid of fame." Genius one perceives in this man of course, one perceives also, what is less common in poets, a will of iron.

Nothing in speculative matters appears more certain than that genius may be fortunate or unfortunate in its hour of birth. M. Taine, indeed, in a theory, much talked of a generation ago—the theory of race, surroundings, epoch-made genius, talent, almost superfluous in the description of a work of art, so much in the work, it seemed, might be withdrawn from individual endowment and otherwise accounted for. M. Taine's theory, in the opinion of some of us, attractive and brilliant as it was, hardly surprised the last secrets of art or poetry, but its value apart, one must, at least, acknowledge that like other men the child of his time, the poet or artist meets day by day forces friendly or unfriendly to his peculiar gifts and temperament. Lay aside influences from family, home, education, and the traditions, the doings, the manners, the conventions of that larger family his race, that larger home, his country, may well