The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IV. Prose and Poetry: Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton.
§ 6. Ideas Mirrour
His next work, in its first form, showed once more the influence of Daniel. In 1594, sonnet sequences were in the height of fashion. Astrophel and Stella had found its way into print in 1591; but it was not till some years later that Drayton’s sonnets were to show the influence of Sidney. When he published Ideas Mirrour, in 1594, his model was rather Daniel, of whose Delia three editions had appeared in 1592. In 1594, Ideas Mirrour consisted of fifty-one sonnets, which, as we learn from the additional dedicatory sonnet to Anthony Cooke, had “long slept in sable night.” The form of sonnet which Drayton principally affects is the typically Elizabethan form of three quatrains and a final couplet, not the strict Petrarchian form. Of these fifty-one sonnets, however, two consist of four quatrains with a final couplet, two are written mainly in alexandrines, which are also scattered through certain other sonnets, and, in eighteen, each quatrain is rimed not abab, but on the rarer principle of abba.
Any independence which these and a few other variations may be thought to show can find little counterpart in the material of the sonnets of Ideas Mirrour. In this earliest edition, it is very seldom that the poet shakes himself free of the conventions of the day, or so uses them as to convey an impression of the sincerity with which, of course, their use is never incompatible. Of two sonnets which connect Idea with the river Ancor, the first (Amour
Ideas Mirrour was much admired. Eleven new issues were called for between its first publication and the author’s death in 1631. On none of his productions did Drayton spend so much care in revision. The issues of 1599, 1600, 1602, 1605 and 1619, are all new editions, in which new sonnets are constantly included and old ones rearranged, omitted altogether, or polished, sometimes almost beyond recognition. It is not always possible to agree with Drayton’s own ideas of improvement; but the general result of all this care is that, as time goes on, the character of the collection changes. The rather heavy, elaborate model provided by Daniel gives place to the simpler and more direct style of Sidney. Conventions disappear, or are turned to good account; and, though there is, in the general opinion, only one masterpiece among all Drayton’s sonnets, the edition of 1619 includes few sonnets that have not something masterly in them. The masterpiece referred to is the well-known sonnet: “Since there’s no helpe, Come let us kisse and part.” It suggests, irresistibly, a record of a definite moment in the actual relations between the poet and some woman; and, in general, it may be said that the sonnets, as time goes on, bear less and less the mark of the literary exercise and more and more that of the expression of geniune feeling. It is true that, in the editions of 1599, 1602 and 1605, Drayton introduced two sonnets: “Into these loves who but for passion looks,” and “Many there be excelling in this kind,” in which the reader is warned that
Much has been written, and much more, doubtless, will be written, on the relation of Drayton’s sonnets to Shakespeare’s. It has been well said that