The Polyolbion as a whole is easy and pleasant to read; and though in some parts it savours too much of a mere catalogue, yet it has many things truly poetical.  The best books are perhaps the xiij, xiv, and xv, where he is on his own ground, and therefore naturally at his best.  It is interesting to notice how much attention and space he devotes to Wales.  He describes not only the ‘wonders’ but also the fauna and flora of each district; and of the two it would seem that the flowers interested him more.  Though he was a keen observer of country sights and sounds (a fact sufficiently attested by the Nymphidia and the Nymphals), it is evident that his interest in most things except flowers was rather momentary or conventional than continuous and heart-felt; but of the flowers he loves to talk, whether he weaves us a garland for the Thame’s wedding, or gives us the contents of a maund of simples; and his love, if somewhat homely and unimaginative, is apparent enough.  But the main inspiration, as it is the main theme, of the Polyolbion is the glory and might and wealth, past, present, and future, of England, her possessions and her folk.  Through all this glory, however, we catch the tone of Elizabethan sorrow over the ’Ruines of Time’; grief that all these mighty men and their works will perish and be forgotten, unless the poet makes them live for ever on the lips of men.  Drayton’s own voluminousness has defeated his purpose, and sunk his poem by its own bulk.  Though it is difficult to go so far as Mr. Bullen, and say that the only thing better than a stroll in the Polyolbion is one in a Sussex lane, it is still harder to agree with Canon Beeching, that ‘there are few beauties on the road’, the beauties are many, though of a quietly rural type, and the road, if long and winding, is of good surface, while its cranks constitute much of its charm.  It is doubtless, from the outside, an appalling poem in these days of epitomes and monographs, but it certainly deserves to be rescued from oblivion and read.

In 1618 Drayton contributed two Elegies to Henry FitzGeoffrey’s Satyrs and Epigrames.  These were on the Lady Penelope Clifton, and on ’the death of the three sonnes of the Lord Sheffield, drowned neere where Trent falleth into Humber’.  Neither is remarkable save for far-fetched conceits; they were reprinted in 1610, and again, with many others, in the volume of 1627.  In 1619 Drayton issued a folio collected edition of his works, and reprinted it in 1620.  In 1627 followed a folio of wholly fresh matter, including the Battaile of Agincourt; the Miseries of Queene Margarite, Nimphidia, Quest of Cinthia, Shepheards Sirena, Moone-Calfe, and Elegies upon sundry occasions.  The Battaile of Agincourt is a somewhat otiose expansion, with purple patches, of the Ballad; it is, nevertheless, Drayton’s best lengthy piece on a historical theme.  Of