The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IV. Prose and Poetry: Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton.
§ 10. His Satires and Odes
It appears significant that the first of Drayton’s satires should have been published in 1604; but, while it doubtless implies a mood of disappointment and depression, it cannot be taken for certain to refer to the king’s neglect of his advances. In the preface, Drayton states that The Owle, entered at Stationers’ Hall in February, 1604, had been “lastly finished” almost a year before; and, therefore, it is unsafe to find in it any autobiographical references. Nevertheless, the mere fact that Drayton should have included satire at all in the list of the then common forms of poetry which he seems to have considered it his duty as a poet to practise is some indication that he was not happy or content. The owl, in his satire, is the keen-eyed, disinterested observer. Nagged at by little birds, and attacked by the fear and jealousy of crows, kites, ravens and other marauders, he is rescued by the kingly eagle, to whom he describes the abuses he has seen carried on by evil birds who prey on the commonwealth of fowls. The poem is inspired, doubtless, by The Parlement of Foules; but it imitates neither the metre nor the good qualities of that work. More than once in his works, Drayton makes use of birds, of which, however, he betrays no more than common knowledge; and the opening of The Owle contains a pretty enough description of the surroundings in which the poet fell asleep to dream his satire. In the satire itself, there is not sufficient trenchancy, originality, or humour to make the poem interesting, and the rimed couplets run sluggish and dull. The Man in the Moone has already been mentioned, and it may be convenient to dismiss the subject of Drayton’s satires by saying here that, in 1627, at the age of sixty-three, he published, in a volume containing better things, The Moone-Calfe. It is pleasantest to think of this as inspired by his conscientious wish to leave no poetical stone unturned; and yet it was so long since Marston had published a satire that the attempt to follow in his steps was belated. The Moone-Calfe is a coarse, clumsy and brutal piece of work, redeemed only by the vigour of its sketches of contemporary manners.
In the same year as The Owle (1604), appeared Moyses in a Map of his Miracles, to be revised and published twenty-six years later, as Moses, his Birth and Miracles. Here Drayton once more makes a high claim for poetry,
Of the importance of a publication of two years later, however, there can be no question. The Odes of 1606 were Drayton’s second striking effort to plough a field untilled by his contemporaries. The Pindaric ode had already been imitated by Jonson: it went on being imitated with an irregularity that Congreve was the earliest author to reprehend. Drayton’s model is the Anacreontic or Horatian ode. With these odes as with most, indeed, of the works of so stern a critic of himself and so slowly developed a genius as Drayton, we have to wait for the final edition before we can see them at their best. The Odes of 1606 were revised and issued with additions and omissions in 1619; and in that edition they are best studied.
It was Drayton’s endeavour to revive “Th’ old Lyrick kind”—the kind, perhaps, that was sung to the harp by Hewes at Polesworth, fortified and polished by the influence of Horace and Anacreon. His odes are nearly all composed in short, decisive lines, a medium that English poetry has always found difficult. If the charge against Drayton of being merely a laborious, imitative bungler were ever revived, a sufficient answer would be a few selections, showing how unusually sensitive he was to the faults and merits of his medium. The faults of a long line are monotony and unwieldiness. Drayton is often monotonous and unwieldy. The faults of a short line are jerkiness and excessive compression. Drayton is guilty of both. But in all cases he succeeds, when he is at his best, in bringing out, perhaps in being the first to bring out, the possible merits of his metre, the smoothness and progression of the long line, the delicate, involved patterns and the range of tones, from the trumpet to the flute, that are possible with the short line. In the Odes, there is plenty of compression and some jerkiness; but they cannot be regarded as otherwise than a remarkable achievement in the creation of a new music in English poetry. Their range, in their final form, is extraordinary; and, in nearly every case, their music is an anticipation of something that was to be more perfectly achieved later.
Two of the odes have won more fame than the others; and both reveal that sturdy Elizabethan patriotism which, in Drayton, was to be proof against the solvent influence of the reign of James I. A long and interesting essay might be founded upon the contrast between the tone of Drayton’s ode To the Virginian Voyage and Marvell’s “Where the remote Bermudas ride.” In the former, we have all the bravery of the golden days of the adventurers.