Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion is a work of great length and of unabated freshness and vigour in itself, though the monotony of the subject tires the reader. He describes each place with the accuracy of a topographer, and the enthusiasm of a poet, as if his Muse were the very _genius loci_. His Heroical Epistles are also excellent. He has a few lighter pieces, but none of exquisite beauty or grace. His mind is a rich marly soil that produces an abundant harvest, and repays the husbandman’s toil, but few flaunting flowers, the garden’s pride, grow in it, nor any poisonous weeds. P. Fletcher’s Purple Island is nothing but a long enigma, describing the body of a man, with the heart and veins, and the blood circulating in them, under the fantastic designation of the Purple Island. The other Poets whom I shall mention, and who properly belong to the age immediately following, were William Brown, Carew, Crashaw, Herrick, and Marvell. Brown was a pastoral poet, with much natural tenderness and sweetness, and a good deal of allegorical quaintness and prolixity. Carew was an elegant court-trifler. Herrick was an amorist, with perhaps more fancy than feeling, though he has been called by some the English Anacreon. Crashaw was a hectic enthusiast in religion and in poetry, and erroneous in both. Marvell deserves to be remembered as a true poet as well as patriot, not in the best of times.—I will, however, give short specimens from each of these writers, that the reader may judge for himself; and be led by his own curiosity, rather than my recommendation, to consult the originals. Here is one by T. Carew. ‘Ask me no more where Jove bestows, When June is past, the fading rose: For in your beauties, orient deep These flow’rs, as in their causes, sleep. Ask me no more, whither do stray The golden atoms of the day; For in pure love, Heaven did prepare Those powders to enrich your hair. Ask me no more, whither doth haste The nightingale, when May is past; For in your sweet dividing throat She winters, and keeps warm her note. Ask me no more, where those stars light, That downwards fall in dead of night; For in your eyes they sit, and there Fixed become, as in their sphere. Ask me no more, if east or west The phœnix builds her spicy nest; For unto you at last she flies, And in your fragrant bosom dies.’ The Hue and Cry of Love, the Epitaphs on Lady Mary Villiers, and the Friendly Reproof to Ben Jonson for his angry Farewell to the stage, are in the author’s best manner. We may perceive, however, a frequent mixture of the superficial and common-place, with far-fetched and improbable conceits.