Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/472

452 also, appeared another historical poem, The Legend of Robert, Duke of Normandy, and a similar piece on Piers Gaveston. In 1597 appeared England s Heroical Epistles, a series of historical studies, in imitation of those of Ovid. These last poems, written in the heroic couplet, contain some of the finest passages in Drayton s writings. &quot;With the year 1597 the first half of the poet s literary life closes. He had become famous by this rapid production of volumes, and he rested on his oars. It would seem that he was much favoured at the court of Elizabeth, and he hoped that it would be the same with her successor. But when, in 1603, he addressed a poem of compliment to James I. on his accession, it was ridiculed, and his services rudely rejected. His bitterness of spirit found expression in a satire, The Oui, which he printed in ICOi, although he had no talent in this kind of composition. Not much more en tertaining was his scriptural narrative of Moses in a Map of his Miracles, a sort of epic in heroics printed the same year. In 1G05 Drayton reprinted his most important works, that is to say, his historical poems and the Idea, in a single volume, which ran through eight editions during his lifetime. He also collected his smaller pieces, hitherto unedited, in a volume undated, but probably published in 1605, under the title of Poems Lyric and Pastoral ; these consisted of odes, eclogues, and a fantastic satire, called The Man in the Moon. Some of the odes are extremely spirited. He then adopted the extraordinary resolution of celebrating all the points of topographical or antiquarian interest in the island of Great Britain, and on this laborious work he was engaged for many years. At last, in 1613, the first part of this vast work Avas published under the title of Poly- Olbion, eighteen books being produced, to which the learned Selden supplied notes. The success of this great work, which has since become so famous, was very small at first, and not until 1622 did Drayton succeed in finding a pub lisher willing to undertake the risk of bringing out twelve more books in a second part. This completed the survey of England, and the poet, who had hoped to &quot; crown Scot land with flowers,&quot; and arrive at last at the Orcades, never crossed the Tweed. In 1627 he published another of his miscellaneous volumes, and this contains some of his most characteristic and exquisite writing. It consists of the following pieces : The Battle of Agincourt, an historical poem in ottava rima, and The Miseries of Queen Margaret, written in the same verse and manner ; Nimphidia, the Court of Faery, a most joyous and graceful little epic of fairyland ; The Quest of Cinthia and The Shepherd s /Sirena, two lyrical pastorals ; and finally The Moon Calf, a sort of satire. Of these Nimphidia is perhaps the best thing Drayton ever wrote, except his famous ballad on the Battle of Agincourt ; it is quite unique of its kind, and full of rare fantastic fancy. The last of Drayton s voluminous publications was The Muses 1 Elizium in 1630. He died in London on the 23d of December 1631, was buried in Westminster Abbey, and had a monument placed over him by the countess of Dorset, with memorial lines attri buted to Ben Jonson. Of the particulars of Drayton s life we know almost nothing but what he hiuself tells us ; he en joyed the friendship of some of the best men of the age. He corresponded familiarly with Drumniond ; Jonson, Browne, Wither, and others were among his friends. In one of his poems, an &quot; elegy &quot; or epistle to Mr Henry Reynolds, he has left some valuable criticisms on poets whom he had known. He was even engaged in the labour of the dramatists ; at least he had a share, with Munday, Chettle, and Wilson, in writing Sir John Oldcastle, which was printed in 1600. That he was a restless and discontented, as well as a worthy man, may be gathered from his own admissions. The works of Drayton are bulky, and, in spite of the high, place that lie Lolas iu critical esteem, it cannot be pretended that he is much read. For this his ponderous style is much to blame. The Poly-Olbion, the most famous but far from the most successful of his writings, is tedious and barren in the extreme. The metre in which it is com posed, a couplet of Alexandrines, like the French classical measure, is wholly unsuited to our language, and becomes excessively wearisome to the reader, who forgets the learn ing and ingenuity of the poet in labouring through the harsh and overgrown lines. His historical poems, which he was constantly rewriting and improving, are much more interesting, and often rise to a true poetic eloquence. His pastorals are brilliant, but overladen with colour and sweet to insipidity. Ho is, with one or two magnificent exceptions, an indifferent sonneteer. The poet with whom it is most natural to compare him is Daniel ; ho is rnoro rough and vigorous, more varied and more daring than the latter, but Daniel surpasses him in grace, delicacy, and judgment. Iu their elegies and epistles, however, the two writers frequently resemble each other. Drayton, however, approaches the very first poets of the Elizabethan era in his charming Nimphidia, a poem which inspired Herrick with his sweet fairy fancies, and which stands alone of its kind in our literature ; while some of his odes and lyrics are inspired by noble feeling and high imagination.

1em  DREAM. Dreams are a variety of a large class of mental phenomena which may be roughly defined as states of mind which, though not the result of the action of external objects, resume the form of objective perceptions. To this class belong the fleeting images which occasionally present themselves during waking hours, and especially before sleep, the &quot;visions &quot; which occur in certain exalted emotional conditions, as in religious ecstasy, the hallucina tions of the insane, the mental phenomena observable in certain artificially produced states (hypnotism), &c. Theso and other mental conditions resemble one another in many important respects, to be spoken of by and by. At the same time they are roughly marked off by certain special circumstances. Thus, dreaming may be distinguished from the other species of the class as depending on the most complete withdrawal of the mind from the external world. All products of the imagination which take the aspect of objective perceptions must, it is clear, involve a partial aberration of the intellectual processes. Yet in all cases except that of dreaming including even somnambulism the mind preserves certain limited relations to external objects. In dreams, on the contrary, the exclusion of the external world from consciousness is for the most part complete. Sleep has under normal circumstances the effect both of closing the avenues (sensory nerves) by which external impressions are conveyed to consciousness, and of cutting off from the mind that mechanism (the voluntary- motor nerves and muscles) through which it maintains and regulates its varying relations to the outer world. Dreams cover a great variety of mental states, from fleeting momentary fancies to extended series of imaginations. Again, dreams have certain constant or approximately con stant features, while in other respects they manifest wide diversity. Among the most general characteristics is to be named the apparent objectivity of dream-experience. The presence of this objective element in dreams is clearly indi cated iu their familiar appellation &quot; visions,&quot; which also points to the well-recognized fact that a large part of our dream-imagination simulates the form of visual perception. 