Herrick's verses were written by Cobweb and Moth together, Drayton's by
Puck. Granting, however, the initial deficiency in subtlety of charm,
the whole poem is inimitably graceful and piquant. The gay humour, the
demure horror of the witchcraft, the terrible seriousness of the battle,
wonderfully realize the mock-heroic gigantesque; and while there is not
the minute accuracy of Gulliver in Lilliput, Drayton did not write for a
sceptical or too-prying audience; quite half his readers believed more
or less in fairies. In the metre of the poem Drayton again echoes that
of the older romances, as he did in _Dowsabel_. In the _Quest of
Cinthia_, while ostensibly we come to the real world of mortals, we are
really in a non-existent land of pastoral convention, in the most
pseudo-Arcadian atmosphere in which Drayton ever worked. The metre and
the language are, however, charmingly managed. _The Shepheards Sirena_
is a poem, apparently, 'where more is meant than meets the ear,' as so
often in pastoral poetry[23]; it is difficult to see exactly what is
meant; but the Jacobean strain of doubt and fear is there, and the poem
would seem to have been written some time earlier than 1627. The
_Elegies_ comprise a great variety of styles and themes; some are really
threnodies, some verse-letters, some laments over the evil times, and
one a summary of Drayton's literary opinions. He employs the couplet in
his _Elegies_ with a masterly hand, often with a deliberately rugged
effect, as in his broader Marstonic satire addressed to William Browne;
while the line of greater smoothness but equal strength is to be seen in
the letters to Sandys and Jeffreys. He is fantastic and conceited in
most of the threnodies; but, as is natural, that on his old friend, Sir
Henry Rainsford, is least artificial and fullest of true feeling. The
epistle to _Henery Reynolds. Of Poets and Poesie_ shows Drayton as a
sane and sagacious critic, ready to see the good, but keen to discern
the weakness also; perhaps the clearest evidence of his critical skill
is the way in which nearly all of his judgements on his contemporaries