dictated not by ease or accident, but by a just sense of metrical effect. Interspersed with the sonnets are several songs, and in these our poet is happier than in the more confined measures. The last of these songs, which is in the form adopted by Shakespeare for the serenade to Silvia (Two Gent. of Ver., iv. 2), contains some very sweet staves. The two first lines go to the lady; the three following to the lover : "Who is it that this dark night Underneath my window plaineth? It is one, who from thy sight Every other vulgar light. Why, alas! and are you he? Be not yet those fancies changed? But Time will these thoughts remove : Time doth work what no man knoweth. Time doth as the subject prove, With time still affection groweth In the faithful turtle-dove. What if ye new beauties see Will not they stir new affection? I will think they pictures be Image-like of saint-perfection, Poorly counterfeiting thee." Two such songs as this and the one to Silvia make the stave seem the only true form for a lover's lyric: the lines run into music of their own accord, and scatter sweet perfumes with their light motion. There is nothing more ravishing in the language. II. SAMUEL DANIEL (1562-1619). Daniel, born near Taunton in Somersetshire, was the son of a music-master, but somehow obtained a university education at Oxford. He published a translation of Paulus Jovius's 'Discourse of Rare Inventions' in 1585 at the age of twenty-three, and soon afterwards became tutor to Lady Anne Clifford. A man of taste and refined feeling, very unlike some of the sturdy contemporary plants who lived by acting and play-writing, Daniel grew up under the shelter of noble patronage, conciliating favour by the amiability of his disposition as well as by the gracefulness of his literary compliments. He enjoyed the patronage of the Earl of Southampton and of the Pembroke family. Through the influence of his noble friends, he had obtained in 1593 the Mastership of the Revels, for which poor John Lyly had waited so long and begged so earnestly; and after the accession of James, he was made Gentleman - Extraordinary, and subsequently one of the Grooms of the Privy Chamber to the Queen Consort. His chief poetical works were-Sonnets to "Delia," 1592; "Delia " augmented, along with the "Complaint of Rosamond" and the "Tragedy of Cleopatra," 1594; metrical history of the "Civil Wars," 1604; "Tragedy of Philotas," 1611; "Hymen's Triumph, a pastoral tragi-comedy," not published till 1623. He wrote several other pieces of less importance. His plays were produced for the entertainment of the Court; and it may have been this connection that dictated his choice of the Wars of the Roses as a subject. He also wrote in prose a History of England. Had Daniel lived in the present day, his destiny probably would have been to write scholarly and elegant articles in the magazines, ripe fruits of leisurely study, cultivated taste, and easy command of polite English. His was not one of the stormy irregular natures that laid the foundation and raised the structure of the English drama: the elements of his being were softly blended, and wrought together mildly and harmoniously. In the prologue to "Hymen's Triumph," he declares that he has no rude antique sport to offer "But tender passions, motions soft and grave He wrote for Cynthia, and therefore his play— "Must be gentle like to her Whose sweet affections mildly move and stir." He might have said the same about all his poetry. He was no master of strong passions: he never felt them, and he could not paint them. Between his Cleopatra and Shakespeare's there is a wide gulf. But he is most exquisite and delicate in pencilling "tender passions, motions soft and grave." Without being strikingly original, Daniel has a way and a vein of his own. He fills his mind with ideas and forms from extraneous sources, and with quietly operating plasticity reshapes them in accordance with the bent of his own modes of thought and feeling. He had not the Shakespearian lightning quickness in adaptation and extension: the process in him was more peaceable and easy. The diction of his poems is choice; the versification easy and flowing. He often puts things with felicitous terseness and vigour, and his words almost invariably come together happily and harmoniously. The publication of Daniel's sonnets in 1592 is an epoch in the history of the English Sonnet. This was the first body of sonnets written in what is sometimes called by pre-eminence the English form-three independent quatrains closed in by a couplet. Daniel also set an example to Shakespeare in treating the sonnet as a stanza, connecting several of them together as consecutive parts of a larger expression. Apart from their form, there is not very much interest in the sonnets to Delia. They have all Daniel's smoothness and felicity of phrase, and are pervaded by exceedingly sweet and soft sentiment. Though they rouse no strong feelings, they may be dwelt upon by a sympathetic reader with lively enjoyment. One of them, with somewhat greater depth of feeling than most of the others, the sonnet beginning"Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night," is ranked among the best sonnets in the language. But their most general interest is found in their relation to Shakespeare's sonnets, several of which seem to have been built up from ideas suggested by the study of those to Delia. In the following sonnets, for example, readers familiar with Shakespeare's will not fail to remark a certain similarity of idea, although the two series of sonnets differ as widely as the genius of the two poets. " SONNET 37. 'But love whilst that thou mayst be loved again, Now whilst thy May hath filled thy lap with flowers; Now use the summer smiles, ere winter lowers : When thou wilt close up that which now thou show'st, Which then shall most inveil and shadow most. Men do not weigh the stalk for that it was, SONNET 39. "When winter snows upon thy sable hairs, And frost of age hath nipt thy beauties near; 1 The Sonnets to Delia on their first issue were preceded by a prose dedi. cation to the Countess of Pembroke, "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother:" the poet desiring "to be graced by the countenance of your protection; whom the fortune of our time hath made the happy and judicial patroness of the Muses (a glory hereditary to your house)." To the second issue was prefixed a dedicatory sonnet to the same lady, entitling her as the "wonder of these, glory of other times;" affirming that his sonnets were "her own, begotten by her hand;" and that though the travail was his, the glory must be hers. These facts, and some of the expressions, are interesting to those who believe that the friend of Shakespeare's sonnets was this lady's son. When dark shall seem thy day that never clears, Here see the gifts that God and Nature lent thee; Which happily posterity may cherish; These may remain, when thou and I shall perish. SONNET 41. "Be not displeased that these my papers should My Muse should sound thy praise with mournful warble; How many live, the glory of whose name Shall rest in ice, when thine is graved in marble! Thou mayst in after-ages live esteemed Unburied in these lines, reserved in pureness; These shall entomb those eyes, that have redeemed Me from the vulgar, thee from all obscureness. Although my careful accents never moved thee, Yet count it no disgrace that I have loved thee." SONNET 52. "Let others sing of knights and paladins, In aged accents and untimely words; Paint shadows in imaginary lines Which well the reach of their high wits records But I must sing of thee, and those fair eyes Authentic shall my verse in time to come When yet th' unborn shall say, 'Lo where she lies Whose beauty made him speak, that else was dumb.' These are the arks, the trophies I erect, That fortify thy name against old age; And these thy sacred virtues must protect, Against the dark and Time's consuming rage. |