Michael Drayton--_Odes_ [drawn from _Poems Lyrick and Pastorall_, 1606, and the later _Poems_ of 1619], 405 *The items indicated by an asterisk are new additions to _An English Garner_. INTRODUCTION As there is no need to adopt a strictly chronological order for the poems included in the present volume, I have begun with the _Orchestra_ and _Nosce Teipsum_ of Sir John Davies (1569-1626), who was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant figures of the Elizabethan Age. Well-born and gently bred, educated at Winchester and at New College, Oxford, Davies was exceptionally fortunate in escaping the pecuniary cares that harassed so many Elizabethan men of letters. From the Middle Temple he was called to the bar in 1595 (at the age of twenty-six). In the previous year _Orchestra_ had been entered in the Stationers' Register, but the poem was first published in 1596. From the dedicatory sonnet to Richard Martin we learn that it was written in fifteen days. There are, however, no signs of haste in the writing, and it may fairly be claimed that this poem in praise of dancing is a graceful monument of ingenious fancy. Lucian composed a valuable and entertaining treatise on dancing, and I suspect that Περὶ ᾽Ορχήσεως gave Davies the idea of writing _Orchestra_. In the opening stanzas[1] we are presented with a picturesque description of 'The sovereign castle of the rockly isle Wherein Penelope the Princess lay,' lit with a thousand lamps on a festal night when the suitors had assembled, at the queen's invitation, to hear the minstrel Phoemius sing the praises of the heroes who had fought at Troy. With such beauty shone Penelope that the suitors were abashed at their temerity in having dared to woo her. But one 'fresh and jolly knight,' Antinous, so far from being dismayed, 'boldly gan advance And with fair manners wooed the Queen to dance.' She blushingly declined, and mildly chided him for trying to persuade her to new-fangled follies. Forthwith he launched into a rapturous disquisition on the antiquity of dancing, which began when Love persuaded the jarring elements--fire, air, earth, and water--to cease from conflict and observe true measure. The sun and moon, the fixed and wandering stars, the girdling sea and running streams, all 'yield perfect forms of dancing.' With exuberant fancy, fetching his illustrations from near and far, he pursues his theme through many richly-coloured stanzas. It may be worth while to remark (as his editors have been silent on the subject) that Davies does not scruple to borrow freely from Lucian. Take, for instance, stanza 80:--