The following notes are taken, for the most part, from Anderson's Collection of British Poets, in thirteen volumes, the same in the blank pages of which the rhymed sketches, published among the Poems, were originally written. The remarks on Pope are taken from one of the Author's numerous common-place books, and those on Burns from the margins of Allan Cunningham's edition in eight volumes. NOTES ON BRITISH POETS. DRAYTON. "He wanted neither fire nor imagination, and possessed great command of his abilities. He has written no masques; his personifications of the passions are few; and that allegorical vein which the popularity of Spenser's works may fairly be supposed to have rendered fashionable, but seldom occurs in him."-HEADLEY, quoted in the Life of Drayton. WHAT is the Polyolbion but an allegory? and as for personification, I should think the Passions were as capable of it as the Counties. Why it should have been a peculiar commendation to have written no masques, I cannot perceive. Would Milton have been greater had he not written Comus? Are not Ben Jonson's and Daniel's masques replete with lovely poetry? And does not the masque in general bear the same relationship to the Faery Queen as the Greek Tragedies to the Iliad and the Odyssey? Neither Mr. Headley nor Dr. Anderson seem to have been aware that Drayton was a dramatic writer, which it is evident from Collier's Annals of the Stage that he was. Besides the Merry Devil of Edmonton. which Charles Lamb. would fain believe his, he is entered in Henslowe's. Diary as the author of two plays, neither of which have been discovered; Mother Redcap, in which he assisted Antony Munday, 1577, acted by the Lord Admiral's servants; and William Longsword, regarding which there is the following entry: "I received forty shillings of Mr. Philip Hinslowe in part of 31. for the playe of Willm. Longsword, to be delivd psent wth 2 or three dayes: the xxth of feverary 1598. Michael Drayton." His signature is a vile scrawl. Drayton was also concerned with Chettle in the famous Wars of Henry I. and the Prince of Wales, and with Antony Munday, Wentworth, Smith, and Henry Chettle, in the History of Cardinal Wolsey. It is difficult to conceive how four authors contrived to unite in composing one play. Perhaps they were not all engaged at the same time, but in successive alterations or reformations. CAREW. "Tom Carew was neat, but he had a fault That would not well stand with a laureat ; His muse was hide-bound, and the issue of 's brain If the laureates of either Charles' days had no more to perform than their successors since the Revolution, the most hide-bound muse might have managed the brace of odes. But in the days of "Masque and antique |