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If these eclogues formed Drayton's only claim upon our attention as a pastoral poet there would be no excuse for lingering over him. He left other work, however, which, if but slightly pastoral in subject, is at least thoroughly so in form and spirit. The Muses Elizium did not appear till 1630, and it is consequently not a little premature to speak of it in this place.
How is it then, we may pause a moment to inquire, that in spite of its crudities of language and even of metre, in spite of its threadbare themes but half repatched with homelier cloth, in spite of its tedious theological controversies, its more or less conventional loves and more or less exaggerated panegyrics how is it that in spite of all this we still regard the Shepherd's Calender as serious literature; while with all its exquisite justness, as of ivory carved and tinted by the hand of a master and encrusted with the sparkle of a thousand gems, the Muses' Elizium remains a toy?
In 1630 he published another volume of poems in 4to, intitled the Muses Elizium, in ten sundry Nymphals, with three different poems on Noah's flood; Moses his birth and miracles, and David and Goliath. The pastoral poems are addressed to Edward Sackville Earl of Dorset, and Lord Chamberlain, who had now made him one of his family.
In other words, the Shepherd's Calender lay in the main stream of literature, and reflected the mind of the age, while the Muses' Elizium, in common with so much pastoral work, did not. These considerations open up an interesting field of speculation.
Your husband holds his pleasure Of early hunting constant, and when he Pursues the tymerous hare to morrow morne, Cupid will waite to bring me to Elizium, Your bed, where every kisse shall new create us. La. You must be wise in your excuse, to quit His importunitie. Fra. Leave that to me: I weare not worth the name of him that serv'd you To loose my glorious hope for want of such A thinne device.
The style, though now and again clumsy, is in general free from affectation except for an occasional weakness in the shape of a play upon words. Such is the connexion of Eliza with Elizium, in a passage already quoted, and the time-honoured non Angli sed angeli
It is, however, so important as illustrating the freer and more spontaneous vein traceable in many English pastoralists from Henryson onwards, that it is worth while to place it for comparison side by side with the more orthodox tradition as exemplified, in spite of his originality, in the work of Spenser. The Muses Elizium is in truth the culmination of a long sequence of pastoral work.
Heere first loues Queene put on mortalitie, And with her beautie all the world inflamed. Heatfns chambers harboring firie cherubines, Are not with thee in glorie to compare, Lightning it is not light which in thee shines, None enter thee but straight entranced are. O if Elizium be aboue the ground, Then here it is where nought but ioy is found.
The name of the musician, I suppose; but the reading of the MS. is somewhat illegible. The passage at first ran as follows: "Umh, how long have I slept, or am I buried and walke in Elizium as the poets faine? Goe to, where are they? in the ayre? I can percieve nothing nor remember anything has been don or said!" 'Grimes. Soe, now retire a little.
a world, in short, in which the nymphs may strew the laureate hearse, not only with all the flowers and fruits of earth, but with the Amaranth of paradise and the stars of heaven if the fancy takes them. Of a spirit compounded of these elements and of its quintessence are the 'Nymphals' of the Muses Elizium.
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