PIGWIGGEN'S EQUIPMENT. 83 MICHAEL DRAYTON. (1563-1631.) DRAYTON was born of comparatively humble parentage in the parish of Atherstone in Warwickshire. In the capacity of page he obtained the patronage of the great. From his earliest years he displayed a warm enthusiasm to become a poet. He is one of the most voluminous of "the rhyming tribe;" his works extend to above 100,000 verses. His "Baron's Wars," a poetical narrative of the civil wars of Edward II.'s reign, were a tribute to the prevailing taste for poetized history. The work on which Drayton's fame rests is the Polyolbion, a minute chorographical description of England, county by county, stream_by stream, and hill by hill, in thirty books of Alexandrine metres. Part of the poem is illustrated with notes by the antiquary Selden. He has left also England's Heroical Epistles," and some smaller pieces. Drayton is a pleasing and sparkling writer; but with no remarkable elevation of fancy or depth of feeling. His great poem tires by the monotony of the measure, and the sameness of its fantastic personifications. It is full, however, of fine descriptive passages. Though esteemed to have been of service to James in the intrigues which preceded his accession to the English throne, Drayton was neglected by the king. The facility of his muse was singular; most of his principal pieces were published before he was thirty years of age. 66 FROM "NYMPHIDIA; THE COURT OF FAIRY." His helmet was a beetle's head, Himself he on an earwig set, Ere he himself could settle: He made him turn, and stop, and bound, He scarce could stand on any ground, FROM "THE POLYOLBION." PERSONIFICATION OF THE RIVER SEVERN. Fifth Song. Now Sabrine, as a queen miraculously fair, Is absolutely placed in her imperial chair Of crystal richly wrought, that gloriously did shine, And as her god-like self, so glorious was her throne, In which himself to sit great Neptune had been known; Whereon there were engraved those nymphs the god had wooed, And every several shape wherein for love he sued; Each daughter, her estate and beauty, every son; What nations he had ruled, what countries he had won. 1 English poetry frequently personifies rivers as feminine, Shakespeare has Severn masculine, I. Henry IV. Act i. Sc. 3.; but Tiber feminine, Julius Cæsar, Act i. Sc. 1.. 2 Azure; said to be derived from the name of a blue cloth manufactured at Watchet in Worcestershire. 3 Neptune's queen. THE STAG HUNT. 85 THE STAG HUNT. Thirteenth Song. Now when the hart doth hear The often bellowing hounds to vent his secret leir,1 And makes amongst the herds, and flocks of shag wool'd sheep, Put quite out of his walk, the ways and fallows tries. Whom when the ploughman meets, his team he letteth stand T'assail him with his goad; so with his hook in hand, The shepherd him pursues, and to his dog doth hollo: When, with tempestuous speed, the hounds and huntsmen follow; Until the noble deer, through toil bereaved of strength, His long and sinewy legs then failing him at length, The villages attempts, enraged, not giving way To anything he meets now at his sad decay. The cruel ravenous hounds and bloody hunters near, Some bank or quickset finds: to which his haunch opposed, 1 Lair. 2 Thickets. 3 One of the measures in winding the horn. 4"A deer is imboss'd when it throws forth bosses or bubbles of foam, or when it swells at the knees with hard hunting. As a dismayéd deer in chase embost,' Spencer, F. Queen III. 12."-Richardson. The hunter, coming in to help his wearied hounds, The neglect of Shakespeare by his countrymen, immediately after his own age, or rather the slight attention then paid to the personal history of poets, has left to the anxious curiosity of modern admiration slight materials for the construction of his biography. Official documents, tradition, and scattered notices in various writers, have been carefully gleaned to procure facts from which we may trace the great poet's living career. He was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, and baptized 26th April 1564. His father seems to have been descended from a family of yeomen settled at Snitterfield, near Warwick, and marrying a rustic heiress, Mary Arden (who inherited a farm of some value), he went to Stratford to reside as a glover, but also engaged in agricultural pursuits. He became high-bailiff of the town, and possessed several houses in Stratford, but his circumstances declined. It is conjectured that a short course in the Stratford grammar school was all the regular education Shakespeare ever received. The necessity of assistance in his 1 "The hart weepeth at his dying: his tears are held to be precious in medicine." -Compare Shakesp. "As you like it," Act ii. Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE. 87 business is supposed to have forced his father to withdraw him early from school. The traditionary anecdotes of his youth indicate anything but the earnest student anxiously expanding the rudimentary acquirements he had received; and yet the question of his learning has employed the elaborate, and often sarcastic and angry erudition of hostile critics. But Shakespeare's "wit" was "made of Atalanta's heels :" an hour of a mind like his could extract the honey, the acquisition of which employed the days and nights of less vigorous intellects. If we cannot believe, in all its circumstances, the traditionary tale of the deer-stealing in Charlecote Park, the angry vengeance of Sir Thomas Lucy, and the forced flight of the poet from his native place; we can yet discern in the compelled hurry of his marriage that the ardour of his temperament had involved him in irregularities and imprudences. Before he had reached the age of nineteen he married the daughter of a "substantial yeoman" of Shottery, near Stratford. His wife, Anne Hathaway, was eight years older than himself, and bore him three children. The period of three or four years between his marriage and removal to London is a blank in the poet's history, but it is probable that he ventured on composition, and imbibed a passion for the stage during the occasional visits of the metropolitan players to Stratford. In London we soon find the poet in comparative opulence. He rapidly acquired fame and fortune. The order in which he produced his dramatic compositions has been a subject of keen inquiry; but the minute researches of editors elicit few satisfactory results. In whatever order his dramas were produced, he soon vindicated the immense superiority of his genius by universal popularity. He was the companion of the nobles and the wits of the time, and a favourite of Elizabeth herself, at whose request one of his plays, it is said, was written. The wealth which his genius realized enabled him, comparatively early in life, to retire from his professional career. He had invested 1020 in houses and lands at Stratford and its neighbourhood, and probably continued to write for the stage after his retirement from London. He died in 1616 on the 23d of April-St. George's day, and, according to tradition, the anniversary of the poet's birth-and was buried on the north side of the chancel in the church of Stratford. His bust is placed in the wall over his grave: on the stone beneath is the following epitaph :Good Friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear To dig the dust inclosed here. Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones. His only son had died early; all the children of his married daughters died without issue. The works of Shakespeare consist of thirty-seven plays, tragedies, comedies, and histories; the poems "Venus and Adonis," and "Tarquin and Lucrece," with a collection of sonnets. Of the thirty-seven plays, Titus Andronicus, Pericles, and I. Henry VI., with portions of some others, have been doubted by critics to be Shakespeare's; and some have claimed for him other anonymous pieces of the period. The total want of care to preserve and to authenticate the productions of his genius has been supposed to indicate the poet's perfect indifference to fame; but may have been caused by his premature death. The worship with which Shakespeare is universally regarded in this country disposes us to love him on trust, and the estimation of his contemporaries and rivals proves him not undeserving of this regard. The "gentle Shakespeare" was universally beloved. Gifford has extracted |