This list, which is not exhaustive, will show that the forty years of Drayton’s known activity were remarkably well filled. And the quality of this great bulk of work was not less remarkable than the quantity. It may be allowed at once, and without conceding too much to the eighteenth-century criticism, which talked of his “creeping narrative,” that much of his poetry is dull to other readers than those who find all dull except the last smart short story or newspaper scandal. The reader who can master _The Battle of Agincourt_ (not the Ballad), _The Miseries of Queen Margaret_, and _The Barons’ Wars_ without an effort may hold himself armed against the more laborious forms of study. Drayton indeed tempted dulness when he chose for subject the Barons’ War of Edward II.’s reign, and did not also decide to make the “she-wolf of France” his heroine and to throw history to the winds. Yet even in these the strong poetical faculty of the writer can never be forgotten. The longest of all his poems--the _Polyolbion_, or “Chorographical Description of all the Tracts, Rivers, Mountains, Forests, and other parts of Great Britain,” which may be described as a poetical guide-book to his native country--is not dull, though it cannot be praised as exciting. Drayton may have made an error when he decided to write it in the long twelve-syllable line, and not in his favourite eight-line stanza, which, in the words of his preface to _The Barons’ Wars_, “both holds the time clean through to the base of the column, which is the couplet at the foot or bottom, and closeth not but with a full satisfaction to the ear for so long detention.” Yet he has mastered his unwieldy verse, and after a time, when the reader’s ear has become attuned to the melody, his at first rather strange mixture of topography, legend, and vigorous romantic flashes rolls on in a majestic course. It is a proof of the essential strength of Drayton that his most delicate work--the fairy poetry of the _Nymphidia_ and the _Nymphalls_ or _Muses’ Elysium_--belongs to his later years. He grew sweet as he mellowed. [SN: _The Satiric Poets._]