Drayton adapt himself to the dullnesses of his model: fine rhetoric is
not altogether wanting, and there is, of course, the consciousness that
these subjects deal with the history of his beloved country, but neither
these, nor _Robert, Duke of Normandy_ (1596), nor _Great Cromwell, Earl
of Essex_ (1607 and 1609), nor the _Miseries of Margaret_ (1627) can
escape the charge of tediousness.[12] _England's Heroical Epistles_ were
first published in 1597, and other editions, of 1598, 1599, and 1602,
contain new epistles. These are Drayton's first attempt to strike out a
new and original vein of English poetry: they are a series of letters,
modelled on Ovid's _Heroides_,[13] addressed by various pairs of lovers,
famous in English history, to each other, and arranged in chronological
order, from Henry II and Rosamond to Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guilford
Dudley. They are, in a sense, the most important of Drayton's writings,
and they have certainly been the most popular, up to the early
nineteenth century. In these poems Drayton foreshadowed, and probably
inspired, the smooth style of Fairfax, Waller, and Dryden. The metre,
the grammar, and the thought, are all perfectly easy to follow, even
though he employs many of the Ovidian 'turns' and 'clenches'. A certain
attempt at realization of the different characters is observable, but
the poems are fine rhetorical exercises rather than realizations of the
dramatic and passionate possibilities of their themes. In 1596, Drayton,
as we have seen, published the _Mortimeriados_, a kind of epic, with
Mortimer as its hero, of the wars between King Edward II and the
Barons.[14] It was written in the seven-line stanza of Chaucer's
_Troilus and Cressida_ and Spenser's _Hymns_. On its republication in
1603, with the title of the _Barons' Wars_, the metre was changed to
_ottava rima_, and Drayton showed, in an excellent preface, that he
fully appreciated the principles and the subtleties of the metrical art.
While possessing many fine passages, the _Barons' Wars_ is somewhat
dull, lacking much of the poetry of the older version; and does not