with Cecil, then Lord Cranborne, and with his patron, Mountjoy) was that he "thought the representing so true a History, in the ancient forme of a Tragedy,1 could not but have had an unreproveable passage with the time, and the better sort of men; seeing with what idle fictions and grosse follies the Stage at this day abused mens recreations." Once again, in this evident reference to the poetry of Spenser, we see the same habit of mind:

Let others sing of Knights and Palladines,

In aged accents and untimely words:

Paint shadowes in imaginary lines,

Which well the reach of their high wits records.

("Delia," Sonnet 55.)

and in the following from the Civile Wars, put into the mouth of Henry V., imagined as complaining to the writer :

Why do you seeke for famed Palladines
(Out of the smoke of idle vanitie)
Who may give glory to the true designes,
Of Bouchier, Talbot, Nevile, Willoughby?

Why should not you strive to fill up your lines,
With wonders of your owne, with veritie?
T'inflame their ofspring with the love of good,
And glorious true examples of their Blood.

What everlasting matter here is found,
Whence new immortal Iliads might proceed!
That those, whose happie graces do abound
In blessed accents, here may have to feed
Good thoughts; on no imaginarie ground
Of hungry shadowes, which no profite breed.
(v. 4 and 5.)

The same allusion is evidently intended in the verses addressed to Queen Elizabeth dedicating to her six books of the Civile Wars in 1601:

Nor shall I hereby vainely entertaine

Thy Land with idle shadowes to no end.

These principles would find a sympathetic response with many of his countrymen, and this is shown by the number of editions of the Civile Wars, Civile Wars, to which

1 After the model of Seneca.

"

Daniel alludes with satisfaction in his address to the Countess of Pembroke above referred to. On the other hand, they are utterly at variance with the art of the Complaint of Rosamond" and the "Letter from Octavia," which are superb specimens of dramatic relation and monologue in the manner of Shakespeare's Lucrece. The latter especially is, to my mind, both in conception and execution, quite outside the range of Daniel's thought and capacity. The former may possibly have been based on an attempt of his, and worked up into the shape in which it was published. I do not wish to lay stress on verbal similarities, or even similarities of thought, but it is interesting to note that a striking metaphor in Romeo and Juliet, which appeared in the previous year, occurs also in the "Complaint of Rosamond," the description in the one case being the death of Juliet, in the other of Rosamond.

Of Juliet:

beauty's ensign yet

Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there.

Of Rosamond:

(v. 3.)

But now the poyson, spread through all my vaines,
Gan dispossesse my living sences quite :

And nought-respecting death (the last of paines)
Plac'd his pale colours (th' ensigne of his might)
Upon his new-got spoyle before his right.

Also Rosamond is made to say at the end of her relation, addressed to the poet :

When mirthlesse Thames shall have no Swanne to sing,

All musicke silent, and the Muses dombe.

And yet even then it must be knowne to some,

That once they flourisht, though not cherisht so,
And Thames had Swannes as well as ever Po.

Whereas, in one of the last of the "Delia" sonnets, bound up in the same cover, Daniel, in the somewhat peevish tone he adopted in speaking of the writers and critics of the metropolis, who were evidently inclined to laugh at him, writes as follows:

No, no, my Verse respects not Thames nor Theaters,
Nor seekes it to be knowne unto the Great,

But Avon rich in fame, though poore in waters,
Shall have my Song, where Delia hath her seat :
Avon shall be my Thames, and she my Song.

The

These, however, are comparatively small points. "Letter from Octavia," and the "Argument" which precedes it, are more striking, and they present, to my mind, overwhelming evidence that they are by the same hand as that which produced the Shakespearian play. The Argument" for the dull play Antonius, from the French of Garnier, published as the Countess of Pembroke's, but I think also betraying the hand of Daniel, is in the same brilliant style. The poem contains, among other things, a contention on the "feminist" side, set forth with a power which should satisfy the most vehement partisan, militant or otherwise, and it is reproduced, in briefer and less delicate form (to suit the character of Emilia), in Othello, the poet supplying the answer in the personality (without argument) of Desdemona.

No. 4 ("A Defence of Ryme") is, similarly, though for other reasons, altogether beyond Daniel's resources, but it may possibly be based on a draft by him.'

No. 5 ("To the Angell Spirit of S' Phillip Sidney "), though included among Daniel's works in the edition

1 The following passage may be quoted as characteristic of the writer's confident manner (wholly lacking in Daniel), and as an example of exceptional eloquence. The writer is defending the position assailed by Thomas Campion, musician, who affected to show that rhyme was a relic of barbarism:

"The most judiciall and worthy spirites of this Land are not so delicate, or will owe so much to their eare, as to rest upon the outside of wordes, and be entertained with sound: seeing that both Number, Measure and Ryme, is but as the ground or seate, whereupon is raised the worke that commends it, and which may easilie at the first be found out by any shallow conceipt. . . . And power and strength that can plant it selfe any where, having built within this compasse, and reard it of so high a respect, wee now embrace it as the fittest dwelling for our invention, and have thereon bestowed all the substance of our understanding to furnish it as it is: And therefore heere I stand foorth, onelie to make good the place wee have taken up, and to defend the sacred monuments erected therein, which containe the honour of the dead, the fame of the living, the glory of peace, and the best power of our speach, and wherein so many honorable spirits have sacrificed to Memorie their dearest passions, shewing by what divine influence they have beene mooved, and under what stars they lived."

of them published by his brother after his death, is an anonymous poem, written evidently in the name of Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke, in reference to their joint work of paraphrasing the Psalms. It is clearly not an expression of Daniel's feelings, because he can have had little, if any, acquaintance with Sir Philip Sidney, being at Oxford in 1580, the year when Sidney retired from Court to Wilton, and I consider it to have been beyond Daniel's powers to write such a piece, of great feeling and beauty, as a work of art representing the feelings of another. I give the first and last (4th) stanzas:

To the pure Spirit, to thee alone addrest

Is this joynt worke, by double intrist thine;
Thine by his owne, and what is done of mine
Inspir'd by thee, thy secret powre imprest.
My Muse with thine, if selfe dar'd to combine
As mortall staffe with that which is divine:
Let thy faire beames give luster to the rest.

Receive these Hims, these obsequies receive,
(If any marke of thy secret spirit thou beare) ·
Made only thine, and no name els must weare.
I can no more deare soule, I take my leave,

My sorrow strives to mount the highest sphere.

I will conclude these somewhat summary remarks on Daniel's writings by giving a specimen of his work at its best, as I conceive it, selected from his "Funerall Poeme upon the Death of the late noble Earle of Devonshire" (Mountjoy), which occurred in 1606. The lines are interesting for several reasons. They are exceptionally good of their kind, because Daniel, who lacked vitality and evidently suffered from depression of spirits,' is moved by a sense of personal emotion.

1 The fine lines which follow are an example of this (among many which might be given), being the opening lines of the last book of the Civile Wars published in 1609. "She" in these lines is the Countess of Pembroke:

On yet, sad Verse: though those bright starres, from whence

Thou hadst thy light, are set for evermore;

And that these times do not like grace dispense

To our indevours, as those did before:

Also they express, in a beautiful way, through the portrait of Mountjoy, Daniel's ideal of life "quiet" and order. He shrank from the turmoil of existence, and was always seeking for a golden age in any other but his own. He had much of the "Quaker" in his disposition; he had a higher sense of morality in public as well as private life than was prevalent among writers of that age, and, however dull he may often be, the purity of his mind and obvious goodness of his intentions command respect. He has been compared to Wordsworth, who studied him, and probably drew from Daniel's portrait of Mountjoy some ideas for the "Happy Warrior." Lastly, in eulogising Mountjoy's achievements, Daniel gives us a striking view of what was in the minds of the leaders of England in the long struggle for the reduction of Ireland. In the romance which attaches to that part of the struggle against Spain and the Catholic power which was determined at sea, the more prosaic, but far more arduous, efforts made by the English of those days by land in Ireland are apt to be overlooked, and the leaders in those wars have received less than their due from posterity, probably on both sides of the Atlantic. The one branch of the contest was mainly carried on by private enterprise, with many attractions in the way of gain and glory; the other was conducted by the Government, and involved a wasting conscription and a heavy drain of treasure over a long series of years. Also the conditions of Irish warfare were of the hardest, offering few opportunities for distinction, and many, on both sides, for loss of life by starvation, exposure and disease. All this seems to have been borne without serious complaint, and with steady loyalty to the Queen and her Council; but it is easy to understand how high Mountjoy stood in the Yet on; since She, whose beames do reincense This sacred fire, seemes as reserv'd in store To raise this Worke, and here to have my last ; Who had the first of all my labours past.

On (with her blessed favour) and relate, etc.