DRAYTON AND DANIEL.
Drayton is a sweet poet, and Selden's notes to the early part of the Polyolbion are well worth your perusal. Daniel is a superior man; his diction is pre-eminently pure,—of that quality which I believe has always existed somewhere in society. It is just such English, without any alteration, as Wordsworth or Sir George Beaumont might have spoken or written in the present day.
Yet there are instances of sublimity in Drayton. When deploring the cutting down of some of our old forests, he says, in language which reminds the reader of Lear, written subsequently, and also of several passages in Mr. Wordsworth's poems:—
——"our trees so hack'd above the ground,
That where their lofty tops the neighbouring countries
crown'd,
Their trunks (like aged folks) now bare and naked stand,
As for revenge to Heaven each held a wither'd hand." [1]
That is very fine.
[Footnote 1: Polyol VII.
"He (Drayton) was a poet by nature, and carefully improved his talent; one who sedulously laboured to deserve the approbation of such as were capable of appreciating and cared nothing for the censures which others might pass upon him." 'Like me that list,' he says,
——'my honest rhymes Nor care for critics, nor regard the times.'
And though he is not a poet virum volitarc per ora, nor one of those whose better fortune it is to live in the hearts of their devoted admirers,—yet what he deemed his greatest work will be preserved by its subject; some of his minor poems have merit enough in their execution to ensure their preservation; and no one who studies poetry as an art will think his time misspent in perusing the whole, if he have any real love for the art he is pursuing. The youth who enters upon that pursuit without a feeling of respect and gratitude for those elder poets, who by their labours have prepared the way for him, is not likely to produce any thing himself that will be held in remembrance by posterity."-The Doctor, &c. c. 36. P.I.
I heartily trust that the author or authors, as the case may be, of this singularly thoughtful and diverting book will in due time continue it. Let some people say what they please, there has not been the fellow of it published for many a long day.—ED.]