But his greatest work is the Poly-Olbion, in twenty Cantos or Songs, of which the first is here given, with the Author’s Notes or Illustrations, as it contains a description of Cornwall, commencing with a Dialogue between St. Michael’s Mount and the Bar of Hayle, which must have passed immediately over Tredrea the Editor’s House. The singular title of his great work is derived from the Greek Πόλυς many and also very; and Ολβιὸς happy; some neuter substantive understood, perhaps the Latin _Regnum_; and founded on one of the idle fancies current in the middle ages, which derived Albion (a name of this island) in some way or another from Ολβιὸς. * * * * * Michael Drayton commences his national poem with the western point of the Country, and his First Song is as follows: THE ARGUMENT. _The sprightly Muse her wing displays, And the French islands first surveys; Bears up with Neptune, and in glory Transcends proud Cornwal’s promontory; There crowns Mount-Michael, and descries How all those riverets fall and rise; Then takes in Tamer, as she bounds The Cornish and Devonian grounds. And whilst the Devonshire nymphs relate Their loves, their fortunes, and estate, Dert undertaketh to revive Our Brute, and sings his first arrive: Then northward to the verge she bends, And her first song at Ax she ends._ Of Albion’s glorious isle the wonders whilst I write, The sundry varying soils, the pleasures infinite, (Where heat kills not the cold, nor cold expells the heat, The calms too mildly small, nor winds too roughly great, Nor night doth hinder day, nor day the night doth wrong, The summer not too short, the winter not too long,) What help shall I invoke to aid my muse the while? Thou Genius of the place (this most renowned isle) Which lived’st long before the all-earth-drowning flood, Whilst yet the world did swarm with her gigantic brood, Go thou before me still thy circling shores about, And in this wand’ring maze help to conduct me out: Direct my course so right, as with thy hand to show Which way thy forests range, which way thy rivers flow; Wise Genius, by thy help that so I may descry How thy fair mountains stand, and how thy vallies lie; From those clear pearly cliffs which see the morning’s pride, And check the surly imps of Neptune when they chide, Unto the big-swoln waves in the[51] Iberian stream, Where Titan still unyokes his fiery-hoofed team, And oft his flaming locks in luscious nectar steeps, When from Olympus’ top he plungeth in the deeps: That from[52] th’ Armoric sands, on surging Neptune’s leas, Through the Hibernic gulf (those rough Vergivian seas) My verse with wings of skill may fly a lofty gait, As Amphitrite clips this island fortunate, Till through the sleepy main to[53] Thuly I have gone, And seen the frozen isles, the cold[54] Deucalidon,