meant; but the Jacobean strain of doubt and fear is there, and the poem would seem to have been written some time earlier than 1627. The _Elegies_ comprise a great variety of styles and themes; some are really threnodies, some verse-letters, some laments over the evil times, and one a summary of Drayton's literary opinions. He employs the couplet in his _Elegies_ with a masterly hand, often with a deliberately rugged effect, as in his broader Marstonic satire addressed to William Browne; while the line of greater smoothness but equal strength is to be seen in the letters to Sandys and Jeffreys. He is fantastic and conceited in most of the threnodies; but, as is natural, that on his old friend, Sir Henry Rainsford, is least artificial and fullest of true feeling. The epistle to _Henery Reynolds. Of Poets and Poesie_ shows Drayton as a sane and sagacious critic, ready to see the good, but keen to discern the weakness also; perhaps the clearest evidence of his critical skill is the way in which nearly all of his judgements on his contemporaries coincide with the received modern opinions. In his later years Drayton enjoyed the patronage of the third Earl and Countess of Dorset; and in _1630_ he published his last volume, the _Muses Elizium_, of which he dedicated the pastoral part to the Earl, and the three divine poems at the end to the Countess. The _Muses Elizium_ proper consists of Ten Pastorals or Nymphals, prefaced by a _Description of Elizium_. The three divine poems have been mentioned before, and were _Noah's Floud_, _Moses his Birth and Miracles_, and _David and Goliah_. The _Nymphals_ are the crown and summary of much of the best in Drayton's work. Here he departed from the conventional type of pastoral, even more than in the _Shepherd's Garland_; but to say that he sang of English rustic life would hardly be true: the sixth _Nymphal_, allowing for a few pardonable exaggerations by the competitors, is almost all English, if we except the names; so is the tenth with the same exception; the first and fourth might take place anywhere, but are not likely in any country; the second is more conventional; the fifth is almost, but not quite, English; the third, seventh, and ninth are avowedly classical in theme; while the eighth is a more delicate and subtle fairy poem than the _Nymphidia_. The fourth and tenth _Nymphals_ are also touched with the sadder, almost satiric vein; the former inveighing against the English imitation of foreigners and love of extravagance in dress; while the tenth complains of the improvident and wasteful felling of trees in the English forests. This last _Nymphal_, though designedly an epilogue, is probably rather a warning than a despairing lament, even though we conceive the old satyr to be Drayton himself. As a whole the _Nymphals_ show Drayton at his happiest and lightest in style and metre; at his moments of greatest serenity and even gaiety; an atmosphere of sunshine seems to envelope