find some mention made of him, as being in esteem with the gentlemen of the army.  He early addicted himself to the amusement of poetry, but all who have written of him, have been negligent in informing us how soon he favoured the public with any production of his own.  He was distinguished as a poet about nine or ten years before the death of Queen Elizabeth, but at what time he began to publish cannot be ascertained.  In the year 1593, when he was but 30 years of age, he published a collection of his Pastorals; likewise some of the most grave poems, and such as have transmitted his name to posterity with honour, not long after saw the light.  His Baron’s wars, and England’s heroical Epistles; his Downfals of Robert of Normandy; Matilda and Gaveston, for which last he is called by one of his contemporaries, Tragdiographus, and part of his Polyolbion were written before the year 1598, for all which joined with his personal good character; he was highly celebrated at that time, not only for the elegance and sweetness of his expressions, but his actions and manners, which were uniformly virtuous and honourable; he was thus characterised not only by the poet; and florid writers of those days, but also by divines, historians, and other Scholars of the most serious turn and extensive learning.  In his younger years he was much beloved and patronized by Sir Walter Aston of Tixhall in Staffordshire, to whom for his kind protection, he gratefully dedicates many of his poems, whereof his Barons Wars was the first, in the spring of his acquaintance, as Drayton himself expresses it; but however, it may be gathered from his works, that his most early dependance was upon another patron, namely, Sir Henry Goodere of Polesworth, in his own county, to whom he has been grateful for a great part of his education, and by whom he was recommended to the patronage of the countess of Bedford:  it is no less plain from many of his dedications to Sir Walter Ashton, that he was for many years supported by him, and accommodated with such supplies as afforded him leisure to finish some of his most elaborate compositions; and the author of the Biographia Britannica has told us, ’that it has been alledged, that he was by the interest of the same gentleman with Sir Roger Ashton, one of the Bedchamber to King James in his minority, made in some measure ministerial to an intercourse of correspondence between the young King of of Scots and Queen Elizabeth:’  but as no authority is produced to prove this, it is probably without foundation, as poets have seldom inclination, activity or steadiness to manage any state affairs, particularly a point of so delicate a nature.

Our author certainly had fair prospects, from his services, or other testimonies of early attachment to the King’s interest, of some preferment, besides he had written Sonnets, in praise of the King as a poet.  Thus we see Drayton descending to servile flattery to promote his interest, and praising a man as a poet contrary to his own judgment, because he was a King who was as devoid of poetry as courage.