Samuel Daniel’s "Musophilus: Containing a General Defense of All Learning"; edited, with introduction and notes

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Samuel Daniel’s TUSOPHILUS: Containing A General Defense of all Learning

Edited, with introduction and notes, by Raymond Simelick

Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English Indiana University 1950

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Pag© PREFACE

INTRODUCTION: I.

Samuel Daniel . . . .

1

II.

The State of Poetry .

42

Musophxlus. . . . . .

3B

Ill* IV. V. s

VI. VII.

Sources and Analogues

0

*

u

*

Author Revision •

»

6

«

*

*

Critical Estimate .

*

*

*

*

67 39

...........

Bibliographical Data,

*

103 131

nD

VIII.

Notes on the Methods. . . .

TEXT

............ 133

* 13?

not:

l1

BIBLIC3AAPRY

270

PREFACE In his "To the Reader" Daniel expressed quiet con­ fidence in his verse: I know I shalbe read, among the rest So long as men speak english, and so long As verse and vertue shalbe in request Or grace to honest industry belong:*.. The prophecy has not been wholly inaccurate; but, until recent years at least, he was read too literally "among the rest," occupying some modest niche in anthologies where he was often represented by his least characteristic work.

In 1885 Grosart applied his enormous, but sometimes

erratic, zeal to bringing out The Complete Works in Verse and Prose.

It was a limited edition, however; and complete

works are perhaps too awesome to appeal to any but the most indefatigable or the writer of a doctoral dissertation. In 1930 Professor A. C. Sprague brought out his edition of Poems and a Defence of Ryme. which offered the student a representative and digestible portion of Daniel’s work; and in 1949 Dr. Laurence Michel published Philotas with his own close study of the play. This edition of Muaophllus represents an effort to perform for the poem a service similar to that which Dr. Michel rendered Philotas.

Although Professor Sprague

included Musophllus among his Poems, he was necessarily i

ii not able to devote to it his full attention.

It is a work

which, in many respects, epitomizes the staunchest tenets of one of the most consciously philosophic poets of the English Renaissance.

To Daniel ideas were all-important*

"Authoritie of powerfull censure," he observed, may Preiudicate the forme wherein we mould This matter of our spirits, but if we pay The eare with substance, we haue what wee wold For that is all which must our credit hold. I have attempted, therefore, to bring the "substance” of Musophilus into focus with that of his other works, as well as with the critical milieu from which it sprang, and to show something of the earnest care with which he sought to fashion this characteristic "matter of his spirite." One cannot undertake a work of this kind, of course, without accumulating many debts of gratitude, all of which it is a pleasure to acknowledge.

I am especially happy to

extend my thanks to Professor A. C. Judson, who not only suggested to me the rewards of such an undertaking but, as director of the thesis, was unfailingly helpful and en­ couraging.

Professor Rudolf Gottfried has also, as the

annotations will testify, been extremely generous in placing at my disposal an expertness which I cannot pretend to possess. To Professors L. J. Mills and Kenneth Cameron I am indebted for their careful and thoughtful reading of the thesis.

I am grateful to Professor Philip Daghlian, who

assisted me with the collation of texts; to Professor Fred Householder, who supplied me with clues to the origin of certain classical tags; to the Graduate School for its generosity in granting financial assistance; and to all of my friends and colleagues who, with dissertations safely behind them, unstintingly shared with me the sage fruits of their experience.

And, finally, I must acknowledge a

sizable debt to my wife, who went somewhat beyond the negative virtue of non-interference to spend many hot summer nights in the onerous chore of collation*

SAMUEL DANIEL Perhaps the one thing upon which most present-day students of Samuel Daniel are agreed —

and it has become

a consistent prefatory note —

is that he is less well

known than he deserves to be.

To Professor Sprague he

’lias something of a case against posterity,”'*' and a more recent editor has pointed out that he is remembered today —

if at all —

only as a sonneteer of calibre inferior to

that of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney,

2

That it should

be the love poetry that the average reader thinks of in connection with Daniel tempts one to be bromidic about the irony of fate; certainly it was not the sonnets that he considered the keystone of what he called ”the building of my life.”^

But the poet himself probably would not have

been surprised, conscious as he was of ”the slippery foun­ dation of opinion, and the worlds inconstancy.

. .

^Preface to Poems and A Defence of Ryme. This edition will hereafter be referred to as ”Sprague.” ^Laurence Michel, ed. Philotas, p, 1. 3”To the Reader,” Sprague, p. 3* ^Defence of Ryme, Sprague, p. 130.

1

2 Although Quiller-Couch, in 1896, placed the blame for Daniel’s lack of popularity on the ’’wretched insuffi­ ciency of his e d i t i o n s , o n e suspects that there is more than a grain of truth in the appraisal of Mr. Sellers, who finds in the Elizabethan ”a poet whose virtues are sadly in the way of his appreciation in these degenerate days. He has not enough of the old Adam to be exciting.” Indeed, there is more than a note of staidness in Daniel’s work, a kind of diffident reserve thoroughly in keeping with the personality suggested by his early biographers. "Gravely sober in all ordinary affairs,” Coleridge tells 7 Lamb, ”and not easily excited by any . . . .” Nor was he excited, we must admit, by any illusory prospect of a fame widespread.

He wrote ”for the few that onely lend their

eare,” and felt little interest in winning the esteem of the injudicious crowd.

Certainly the virtues which it

has become almost axiomatic to attribute to him are those which would appeal only to that few.

Saintsbury’s estimate

is typical: No writer of the period has sueh a command of pure English, unadulterated by xenomania and unweakened by purism, as Daniel. . . . his chaste and correct style lacks the fiery ^Adventures in Criticism, pp. 50-51. ^Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Daniel,” Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings and Papers, II, 29. ?Notes and Queries, (August 7, 1852), pp. 117-118. % u s o p h i l u s . 11. 555-556.

quaintness, the irregular and audacious attraction of his contemporaries * • • • Quiet . . . is the overmastering charac­ teristic of Daniel. ... He had something of the schoolmaster in his nature as well as in his history. Nothing is more agreeable to him than to moralise . . . but in a mellifluous g and at the same time weighty fashion . . . . The opinion of his contemporaries generally singles out much the same qualities for praise and — censure.

usually mild -
In British Bibliographer, I, 533a* ■^Thomas Gray, Athenaeum (1854). p. 942. Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, 11. 420-426. ^Skialetheia, Satire VI. 20rtEpistle to Henery Reynolds Esquire," Works, ©d* Hebei, III, 229.

5 he listed the poet along with Sidney, Spenser, Drayton, and Shakespeare as one of the "most pregnant wits of these our times*"

21

Coleridge, indeed, admiring him as "one of the

golden writers of our golden Elizabethan age," found a certain timelessness in the unturbulent "middle style" of an artist whose diction bears no mark of time, no distinction of age, which has been, and as long as our language shall last, will be so far the language of the to-day and for ever, as that it is more intelligible to us, than the transitory fashions of our own particular age* A gratifying observation it would have been to one whose only care was but to see 23 These lodgings of m*affections neatly drest. What biographical information exists about Daniel — it is replete with launae —

stems largely from Fuller and

Wood, whose data later writers such as Langbaine, Theophilus Cibber, Edward Phillips, and Winstanley serve up again with only the most perfunctory warming over.2^

He was born, says

Fuller, "not far from Taunton in this County," Somersetshire, the son of a "Master of Musick," whose "harmonious Mind made 21 Remains Concerning Britain, p. 344* 22Biographia Literaria, II, 119-120* 23"To the Reader," Sprague, p* 3* 2^Adding strange errors sometimes* Langbaine gives 1362-1619 as the dates of birth and death — and says he was "near eighty years old*"

6 an impression on his Son’s Genius, who proved an exquisite Poet."^

Wood adds, without substantiation, that his

family was wealthy.

26

The date of birth seems to have been

drawn by inference from Wood’s statement —

since shown to

be erroneous -- that Daniel entered Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1579, when he was seventeen years old.

27

It is 2S now known that the date of his matriculation was 1531, and that

his age wasnineteen.

was less

addicted to ’’picking and hewing at logic" than to

"easier and smoother studies." three years at Oxford;

29

But his "geny," it seems,

The young man withdrew after

but not, apparently, before he had

met John

Florio.Mr. Sellers has

quatrain

prefixed to the latter*sGiardino di recreatione

(1532) is Daniel’s.

30

pointed out that a Latin

The verses show the two men to have

25 History of the Worthies of England, II, 233. ^ Athenae Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, II, 268. ^ I b i d ., loc. clt. The error in the date is followed (with the exception of Langbaine) by all the biographers, including Grosart, E. K. Chambers, and Sir Sidney Lee (DNB). Harry Sellers and A. C. Sprague were the first to call attention to it. Eccles (Studies in Philology. XXXIV, 149) logically surmises that Wood’s mistake is the result of a printer’s transposition of two Roman numerals: thus, CI2DLXXXI became CI3DLXXIX. ^Register of the University of Oxford, ed. Andrew Clark, II, ii, 102. 29wood, Athenae Oxonienses. II, 268. 3°"Samuel Daniel: Additions to the Text," Modern Language Review, XI, 31*

7 been friendly at an early age; they do not, of course, add any conclusive evidence to the statement -- first found in Wood^ —

that Florio*s first wife was the poet’s sister.

The statement is inferential and subject to a good deal of question*

32

Equally vague is the identity of Daniel’s wife*

Puller says her name was Justina and that the couple had no children*

33

In 1565 appeared The Worthy Tract of Paulus Iovius a the first published work with which Daniel had anything to do*

It was a treatise on ’’imprese” (devices) which the

young man — himself —

’’late Student in Oxenforde,” he describes

had translated from the Italian*

Redgrave be­

lieves this translation was one of the first samples of emblem literature in England, although it was a type already popular on the continent.34 Daniel’s movements during the next half-dozen years are clouded in some uncertainty*

It now seems probable that

33*Athenae Oxonienses, II, 270. 2^In addressing prefatory verses to Florio’s New World of Words and the 1613 edition of his translation of Montaigne, Daniel calls him "my deare friend and brother” (see Grosart, Complete Works of Samuel Daniel, I, 283 and 265)* But both men were gentlemen of Queen Anne’s privy chamber. B* Corney (Notes and Queries, July 1, 1865) contends they were simply brothers in office; Frances A* Yates (John Florio, p. 54) thinks Florio married Daniel’s sister some­ time before 1565* ^Tonson, one may observe, addressed Florio as his "loving Father” on a quarto of Vblpone (see Inscriptions, no* 10), an indication, perhaps, that such terms should not be taken too literally.

W o r t h i e s . II, 288. 3^See Transactions of the Bibliographical Society. XI

39-58.

8 in 1586 he was in France, serving —

rather briefly —

in

the entourage of Sir Edward Stafford, the English ambassador in Paris,

Two letters addressed from that city to Sir

Francis Walsingham, then Secretary of State, are signed MSamuell Daniell” and "Samuel Daniell," in that order. Once thought to be in the hand of another Daniel, they now appear to have been written by the poet, who may have been substituting as chaplain to Stafford during the absence of Hakluyt,35

Sometime later, certainly —

and before 1592 —

Daniel was in Italy; in the first authorized edition of Delia, sonnet XLIV reveals that he had been there, perhaps with Sir Edward Dymock,-^ for whose translation of II Pastor Fido he wrote a commendatory sonnet recalling how Guarini hath oft imbas’d Vnto vs both the vertues of the North,

35w, H. Grattan Flood, Review of English Studies, 1926, pp, 98-99, asserts on the authority of W, W, Greg that the letters are not in the poet’s hand. For a fuller treatment of the problem — * and a different conclusion — see Mark Eccles, "Samuel Daniel In France and Italy," Studies in Philology, XXXIV (1937), 148-167, Eccles finds strong similarities between the handwriting of the letters and that of Daniel found in the Oxford subscription book. Furthermore, the letters are sprinkled with Latin tags, and the only Samuel Daniel to matriculate at either university was the poet. Significantly, too, although Eccles does not mention it, is the fact that the tone and phraseology, especially of the first letter, is remarkably characteristic of Daniel’s later work: e.g., his descrip­ tion of Paris as "the Theater of Europe, where tanquam ex alto speculo, may be discried the conduct and managinge of the turbulent affayres of this admirable time," The lofty seat was a favorite image of the poet in later years, and the glass seems to anticipate it. 36or0sart (Works, I, xvii) speaks of an "unvarying tradition" that he went with a Herbert. But see Eccles, o p * cit•, p. 167*

9 Saying, our costes were with no measures grac’d, Nor barbarous tongues could any verse bring forth, At some time during this period, it appears, he began to enjoy the favor of the Pembroke family at Wilton.

In

1603 he had already been "incourag’d or fram’d ” to the ”formall ordering” of his literary work by Mary, Countess of Pembroke.

38

Wilton, he says, had been his best school.

Recent research, however, has revealed that Daniel may well have been attached in some capacity or other to

the house­

hold of Dymock, in the city of Lincoln, as late

as March,

1591/2.

He has even been connected —

catspaw —

as a kind of innocent

with a melodramatic family feud involving his

supposed patron.^9 Wherever he was in 1591, he saw for the first time in that year his own creative work appear in print, as Thomas Newman brought out his surreptitious edition of Astrophel and Stella, throwing in twenty-eight sonnets of Daniel —

among others —

for good measure.

Having been

’’betraide by the indiscretion of a greedie Printer” and having had some of his ’’secrets bewraide to the world,” Daniel increased the number of sonnets to fifty, added The ^G-rosart, Works, I, 280. 3^See Defence of Ryme,Sprague, p. 129. ^^Eccles, op . clt., p. 167. C f * Leslie Hotson, ’’Marigold of the Poets,” Essays By Divers Hands, XVII, 47" 68. Hotson, as well as Eccles, mentions a libel suit brought by the Earl of Lincoln against his nephew, Dymock. The cause, Hotson says, was a letter written by the latter and supposed to be destroyed by Daniel, who instead hid it in the wall of a house the Earl later bought.

10 Complaint of Rosamond, and published the whole in 1592, with a dedication to Mary, Countess of Pembroke, and sister of the man who had "indured the like misfortune” at the hands of N e w m a n . ^

A second edition in the same year in­

cluded four more sonnets in the sequence to Delia, and by 1601 he had brought the number to fifty-seven.^*** Who was Delia?

The question is not a burning one to

the modern reader; fortunately so, it would seem, for no answer seems likely to be forthcoming. points out, Daniel leaves very few

As Professor Sprague

clues.^

The student

encouraged by Sidney’s helpful blazonings in Astrophel and Stella is doomed to disappointment here.

Majority opinion,

perhaps, has leaned toward Mary, Countess of Pembroke. one thing, there is the sonnet addressed to M. P.^3

For

gut

there is also the possibility that M. P. referred to a man named Pine, who is mentioned in the introductory letter to Paulus Iovius.

Daniel seems to have punned on the word,

using it three times in the sonnet itself.

And there is

also the disconcerting fact that Delia’s golden hair of 1592 becomes ’’sable” in two sonnets of the 1601 edition.^ ^°See dedication of Delia, Sprague, p. 9. ^ F o r detailed bibliography see Sellers, op. cit. ejlt., p. x v . ^ N u m b e r XXIX in Grosart, I: "Like as the spotless© Ermelin distrest.” See also Sprague, p. 181. ^ C f . Sprague, pp. xvi and 185.

11 Nevertheless, there is something in the general tone of the sequence to suggest that the sonnets celebrate a patroness rather than a mistress*

They manage to remain —

number of critics, at least —

to a

respectfully impersonal.

Professor Erskine notes a "low temperature of the lyric passion," resulting from the necessarily formal relationship between a writer and his noble protectress;^ his verse is "so correct, so restrained, so perfect a tribute of poet to patroness,"

U6

Another critic speaks of "le ton un peu

obsequieux. To Grosart such opinions were anathema.

Confessing

that he can not guess the identity of Delia, he nevertheless recognizes "the genuine 'cry' of a m a n ’s heart in suspensive LCt

anguish,"

To him "it is simply astounding how any man

could read ’Delia’ without recognizing the lavatide of emotion that beat in his now ’disdained’ and now ’favoured* L9 heart.Less can.

sensitive, perhaps, most present-day readers

The investigations of modern scholarship have tended

to dispel much of th© autobiographical mists hovering over ^ The Elizabethan Lyric, p. 135. ^ L . C. John, The Elizabethan Sonnet Sequence, p. 1?6. ^ J a n e t Scott, Les Sonnets Elisabethains, p. 116, One wonders if the possibility of a poet-patroness relationship does not influence the critic’s judgment here. ^ Works, I, xvii. 49yyorks, IV, xliii.

546755

12 Elizabethan sonnet sequences, and no one would be distressed today at Sidney L e e ’s dictum that "Delia is a mere shadow of a shadow —

a mere embodiment of what Petrarch wrote of

Laura, and Ronsard wrote of Marie, and the other ladies of his poetic fancy."

50

It may be that the pendulum, having

started its return journey, now swings too far; once acquainted with the "imitative habits"

51

of Daniel’s and

others’ sonneteering Muses, critics find it easy to decide that "the typical collection of Elizabethan sonnets was a mosaic of plagiarisms, a medley of imitative studies." It is not necessary to conclude — concluded —

52

as one modern critic has

that, originally at least, the sonnets were

addressed to no particular woman and that Delia only meant "moon."

53

But as Courthope points out, the sonnet was often

"the vehicle of courtly c o m p l i m e n t " c e r t a i n l y one now has difficulty in thinking of Daniel in the role an American ^Preface to Elizabethan Sonnets, p. Ix. For other studies of Daniel’s borrowings from Italian and French sources, see Scott, o p , cit.; L. E. Kastner, in Modern Language Review. Ill, 268-277; C. Ruutz-Rees, in Modern Language Notes. XXIY, 134-137; S. Lee, French Renaissance in England and Life of Shakespeare; L. E. Pearson, Eliza­ bethan Love Conventions. 51Ibid., loc. cit. ^ L e e , Life of Shakespeare, p. 100. ^Scott, op. cit.. p. 117. "La chastete et la froideur proverbjales de cette deesse conviennent admirablement ja toute maitresse petrarquiste." 5^History of English Poetry. Ill, 12. Siegel, Studies in Philology. XLII, 169.

Cf. Paul N.

13 poet of the last century saw him in, as one of the "maddest lovers this world ever saw . • * such a pleader as makes me wonder that Delia could have held out against him long enough for him to have written all this series of sonnets addressed to her.”

55

It is not necessary, fortunately, to

suppose a ”lava-tide of emotion,” any more than it is necessary to dismiss the series as a potpourri of scraps looted from Tasso, Petrarch, and du Bellay.

If Daniel was

inclined to "make use of others wit,” in the words of a contemporary,

56

greater genius.

he was in turn no small influence upon a 57

The sane word on the subject of imitation

has been spoken by Saintsbury:

”Do not let anybody talk

about imitation or translation; you cannot imitate or trans­ late form and phrase from one language into another, or if you can you are the magician* Like the sonnets with which it appeared, Rosamond has succeeded in winning some measure of anthological immortality for its author.

Professor Sprague has pointed out the

kinship existing between the Complaint and the Mirror for

^ S i d n e y Lanier, "Shakespeare and His Forerunners,” pp. 125-128. 56 See Returne From Parnassus, pt. II, II.ii. Of. also Harington's jovial quip in Letters and Epigrams. no. 30. ^Shakespeare. See, e.g., Erskine, o p » cit., p. 137; J. Q,. Adams, Life of Shakespeare, p. 170; Pearson, o p . cit., p p . 156- 7 . 58 English Prosody. II, 147.

14 Magistrates, as well as the resemblance in stanzaic form and subject matter to the lugubrious "Shore's Wife,"

59

whose legend, mourns unhappy Rosamond, did such compassion finde, That she is pass'd, and I am left behinde. It would be unjust, however, to dismiss Daniel's poem as nothing more than a belated specimen de casibus of royal mistresses.

It exhibits an unobtrusive dexterity in its

rime royal stanzas which is hardly conspicuous in Churchyard's jlI tale, and it seems to have won almost as much esteem from Daniel's contemporaries as Delia did.

62

Certainly it gave

the poet an excellent opportunity to indulge his propensity for moralizing, and the harassed wraith of Rosamond is perhaps too voluble in anatomizing her sin to appeal to the taste of many readers today.

Daniel's preference of re­

flection to passion is already in evidence; perhaps the strongest feeling appears in the closing stanzas, which anticipate the Stonehenge passage of Musophilus in their reliance upon the eternizing quality of poetry. 59 ^Sprague, pp. xvii-xviii.

60L1. 27-28. 61

After the success of Rosamond Churchyard brought out his "Shore” again.

62

Cf* Marston, Satire IV, or Pierce Penilesse, ed. McKerrow, I, 192, for example. Rosamond is thought to have influenced Shakespeare's Lucrece (1594), which may also have had a reciprocal effect on the 1595 edition of Daniel’s poem. Jonson was less impressed (see Every Man Out, Ill.iii. 24-27).

15 In 1594 Cleopatra appeared, followed the next year by The First Fowre Books of the civile warres betweene the two houses of Lancaster and Yorke»

The former is an alter­

nately rhymed play after the Senecan pattern, deficient in action and abounding in lyric choruses and long, declamatory speeches. of Antony.

The course of the tragedy begins after the death Biographically it is interesting in that it is

generally agreed to be one of the results of the association of that group known as the Wilton circle, revolving around the Countess of Pembroke and including such men as Samuel Brandon, Sir William Alexander, and Fulke Greville

Makes Maiestie appear© with her full face, Seining with all her besanes, with all her raies, Vnscanted of her carts, v q shadowed In any darkened poynt, which still bev/rayes The wane of Powre, when powr1s vnfurnished, And hath not all those intire complements Wherewith the State should for her state be sped*

85 0

Aild thcu3 .i1 tho fortune of scme age con.sents Vnto a thousand errours grossoly 'wrought, T Poetaster in which the author pours his scorn on those who "swallow up the garbage of the time" and decides to try his fortunes in tragedy, Where, if I proue the pleasure'but of one, So he judicious be, he shall be A theatre vnto me. . . •

241 Cf. also Hamlet, III.ii.25-31, where the prince instructs the players not to "make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must. . . o’erweigh a whole theatre of others." 582 —

others fits. Used here, perhaps, in a musical sense, meaning a

strain or stave of music (IT.E.D .). Cf. "vulgar ayre" and "servile song" in 1* 580.

But perhaps the word simply means

"moods." 585-5 —

Hath that all-knowing powre that holdes within The goodly prospectiue of all this framed

The "all-knowing powre," according to a marginal gloss in the early editions, is virtue.

"Prospective" seems

here to he used in the sense of mental view, outlook, or prospect.

In the sixteenth century the word sometimes had

the force of perspective (N.E.D.). Cf. Seneca, Epistle LX2CIX.8-10, on sapientia: Inter cetera hoc habet boni sapientia: nemo ab altero potest vinci. nisi dun ascenditur. cum ad sumrnum perveneris, pari~a sunt, non est incremento locus, statur. Nuraquid sol magnitudini suae adicit? . . . Extollere se, cuae iustam magnitudinem implevere, non possunt. Ouioumoue fuerint sapientes, pares erunt et aequales. . . virtutem non flaroma, non^ ruina ihferius adducet. Haec una maiestas deprimi nescit. To Daniel virtue is the aim and product of true sapientia; indeed it is virtually identical with it.

599 —

meere devotion. Devotion is apparently being used here in the now

obsolete sense of charity, or alms (M.S.P.).

The "begger"

ambition sweats and toils for a dole which is never sufficient. 606 —

cleerenes Purity, innocence, openness (N.E.D.).

609-10 —

Her selfe a recompence sufficient Vnto her selfe. . . . Epistle LXVI.2 Seneca objects to Virgil*s remark

that virtue is more pleasing when found in an attractive body: physical appearance is totally irrelevent.

"Non enim

ullo honestamento eget: ipsa magnum sui decus est et corpus suum consecrat." Cf. also Daniel’s treatment of virtue with Epistle LXVI.6, in which the Roman presents virtue as an ab­ solute (see note on 1. 585), a summum bonum. and whatever it touches, in similitudinem sui adducit — image of the same."

"reflects a certain

Only the mind dedicated to it will

acquire a true sense of values: animus intuens vera, peritus fugiendorum ac petendorum, non ex opinione, sed ex natura pretia rebus inponens , toti se inserens mundo et in omnes eius actus contemplationem suam mittens, cogitationibus actionibusque intentus, ex aequo magnus ac^vehenens, asperis blandisque pariter invictus, neutri se fortunae summittens, supra omnia quae_ contingunt acciduntque eminens , pulcherrimus, o_r_dinati_qsimus cum decore turn nulla vis frangat, quem^nec adtollant fortuita nec deprimant; talis animus virtus__est.

243 Daniel's epistle to the Countess of Bedford again states this Senecan concept, with some enlargement,

"All the good

we haue," he assures his noble patroness, "rests in the mind," By whose proportions onely we redeeme Our thoughts from out confusion, and do finde The measure of our selues, and of our powres, . . . all happinesse remainss confind sYithin the Kingdome of this breast of ours. Without whose bounds, all that we looke on, lies In others Iurisdictions, others powres. (Sprague, p. 117) 612-613 —

. . . they may sit and see The earth below them. . . .

Cf. the same epistle.

Lady Lucy's "faire course of

knowledge," Daniel tells her, is the key "to let you out of weakenesse," and admit Your powers into the freedome of that blisse That sets you there where you may ouersee This rowling world, and view it as it is, And apprehend how th*outsides do agree With th'inward being of the things, we deeme And hold in our ill-cast accounts, to be Of highest value, . . . The elevated seat of serene contemplation is a favorite image of the poet.

The epistle to the Countess of Cumber­

land, perhaps his most fervid expression oi this regard for equanimity, also employs its. He that of such a height hath built his minde, And rear'd the dwelling of his thoughts so strong As neither Feare nor Hope can shake the frame Of his resolued powres, nor al tne w m d e Of Vanitie or Malice, pierce to wron-6 His setled peace, or to disturbe the same, What a faire seate hath he from whence nee may The boundlesse wastes, and weilds O j. man suruay.

244

And with how free an eye doth he looke downe, Vpon these lower Regions of turmoyle, ^ e s e stormes of passions raainely heate On flesh and blood, where honor, power, renowne Are onely gay afflictions, golden toyle, Where Greatnesse stands vpon as feeble feete As Frailtie^doth, and only great doth seeme To little mindes, who do it so esteeme. (Sprague, p. Ill) Advancement of Learning, bk. I, 68 and 72. 617-18 —

And undeceiued with the paralax Of a mistaking eie of passion. . .

I.e., justly measuring the pretensions of human vanity and ambition, without the distorted perspective induced by passion, the foe of reason.

Paralax: "apparent displacement,

or difference in the apparent position of an object, caused by actual change (or difference) of position of the point of observation" (N.S.D.).

The figurative use of this astronom­

ical term suggests the technique of the metaphysical poets. This is a further encomium on the elevated

development, of course, ofDaniel’s detachment of a stoic virtue. It

is the great prize of knowledge, investing the mind with order and serenity in sharp contrast to the "rowling world" below it.

He reminds Anne Clifford of it —

sel to a thirteen-year-old, it seems to us —

austere coun­ and compares

the mind to one of the planets whicn can be judged But by that order which her course doth shew: And which such splendor to her actions giues, And thereby men her eminencie finde, And thereby only do attaine to^know ^ The Region, and the Qrbe wherein she liues. For low in th’aire of grosse vncertaintie, Confusion onely rowles, Order sits hie. (Sprague, p. 120)

This passion-less scrutiny, to Daniel, is the only recourse for one who sees the face of Right t*appear© as nanyfold As are the passions of vncertaine man, Who puts it in all coulours, all attires To serue his ends, and make his course hold:. . . ("To the Countess of Cumberland.** Sprague, PP. 111-112). 629 —

Isis Asse. Cf. sonnet CVII of Fulke Greville’s Caelica (Bullough,

151): Isis, in whom the Poets feigning wit, Figures the Goddesse of Authority, And makes her on an Asse in triumph sit, As if Powers throne were mans humility; Inspire this Asse, as well becomming it, Even like a Type of wind-blowne vanity: With pride to beare Powers gilding scorching heat For no hire, but opinion to be great. So as this Beast, forgetting what he beares, Bridled and burdend by the hand of might, While he beholds the swarmes of hope and feares, Which wait vpon ambition infinite, Proud of the glorious furniture hee weares, Takes all to Isis offer*d, but his right; Till weariness, the spurre, or want of food, Makes gilded curbs of all beasts vnderstood. Here Greville, probably writing before 1600, is apparently castigating the vanity of subordinate officers and courtiers who persuade themselves that the reverence lavished upon their superiors actually derives from their own authority. Daniel, however, employs the figure in a more general sense. It is the common frailty of man to mistake the apparent for the real: the flamboyance of the '’mask*! outsides-* is too

convincing, and the worldling easily persuades himself that his "golden hack" is ample evidence of intrinsic merit. The reference to Isis and her beast seems very probably to have been derived from emblem literature of the period. The Emblemata of Alciatus (1548) inol nd3-I5b. Lanier, Sidney, Shakespeare and Pic Fcner nan nrn, Nev* vork, 1908.

Langbaine, Gerard, Lives and Oku xotu a. o_Q the Fngl 1ah DranatAch Peats, Oxford, IhQG . ne e. Sir Sidney. Elizabethan Spnnety, in. in

• ed, Edward Garner, 34 vela., lent :n, ■.1 . Vo! . T

Lee, Sir kidney, The French Remain as-, 1910

.

in Engl art, nxfcn

Lee, Sir Sidney, A Life of Hi 111 am Stanceyear a, Hew Yurk, 1898. Lee, Sir Sidney, Rama a1 nnaIa1 188 5“1900.

Vc1. XiV,

Legcuis, Smile H. and T-x .l Litera large, Her v ar~: Leisig, Ernest F., 5(L u

1n Pict ion.avv of j'Tat i