Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles | Page 2

his heart in sugared sonnetting."
If Jonson, Daniel's rival as maker of masques for the Court, proclaimed him a good honest man but no poet, Spenser generously said he surpassed "all that afore him came;" and scarcely one of the more prominent of his contemporaries failed to address compliments to him. When Daniel was gentleman extraordinary and groom of the privy chamber to Anne, Queen-consort to James I., the Queen is said to have been a "favourer and encourager of his muse;" and his high social position made it easy for less favoured aspirants to praise him. But the perspective of time brings a more balanced judgment. While Lowell finds in the fact that Daniel was held in high esteem by his contemporaries a proof that noble diction was appreciated then as now, and while he admits that Daniel refined our tongue, yet he decided that Daniel had the thinking and languaging parts of a poet's outfit but lacked the higher creative gift. We shall find Daniel at his best, not when in prosaic soberness he sings
"... the civil wars, tumultuous broils,?And bloody factions of a mighty land."
not when he is framing stilted tragedies with chorus and declamation in the grand Senecan manner, not in his complimentary addresses to lords, ladies and royalty, nor in the classic masques and philosophical dialogue, but in the less ambitious poems of _Delia_ and _Rosamond_, especially in such a sonnet as "Care-charmer Sleep," where we come more near to hearing a human heart beat than in any of the others. It is not a mighty heart, but it is one that is gentle, tender and pure.
A glance at the life of Daniel gives opportunity for an easy conjecture as to the personality of the lady honoured under the name of Delia. At seventeen Daniel was at Oxford, and finished a three years' residence at Magdalen College in 1582. After a visit to Italy, he became established at Wilton as tutor to the sons of Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. To those early days at Wilton the poet refers, when in 1603 he dedicates his _Defense of Rhyme_ to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, his former pupil. In the introduction to this fine essay Daniel declares that in regard to his poetic studies he was "first encouraged and framed thereunto by your most worthy and honourable mother, and received the first notion for the formal ordering of those compositions at Wilton which I must ever acknowledge as my best school, and thereof always am to hold a feeling and grateful memory." At this time the home of the Herberts at Wilton was a literary centre. The Countess was herself an industrious author, and the subject of innumerable dedicatory addresses. She seems to have been as beautiful as she was gracious and gifted. In the Penshurst picture we see her in extreme youth. The long oval and delicate chiselling of the Sidney face are expressed in their finest perfection, and justify the resemblance, found by Spenser, to "her brother dear." The soft hair is of the same golden-brown as his, the colour her eldest son inherited, and which Shakespeare is said to have described in his figure of the marjoram-buds. In the picture by Gheeraedts at the National Portrait Gallery, painted in 1614, she has lost little of her youthful beauty, but has added the special graces of maturity. The hair is still a rich brown. A thoughtful soul sits brooding behind those attentive eyes--a soul that seems to wish to ask the universal unanswerable questions, one that has grappled with doubt and struggled with environing circumstance, but has not yet consented to be baffled. The face is modern and complex. This accomplished lady received at Wilton the most distinguished people of her time. Her guests included Spenser, Raleigh, probably Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones, Sir John Harrington, Dr. Donne, and many more; and the Countess's _Pastoral Dialogue in Praise of Astraea_ was probably written in honour of a visit from the Queen herself. It would perhaps be strange if the young poet did not surround the personality of this fascinating patroness with a romantic halo and feel that his poetic fame was linked with hers. The Delia of the sonnets has all the excellencies that a sonnet-honoured lady should have, including locks of gold. But the fact that the poet has slyly changed the word "amber" to "snary" in sonnet xiv., and "golden" to "sable" in sonnet xxxviii., looks as if he desired to shield her personality from too blunt a guess. However, many hints are given; she lives in the "joyful North," in "fair Albion;" she is
"The eternal wonder of our happy Isle."
And the river by which he sounds her name is the Avon--
"But Avon, poor in fame and poor in waters,?Shall have my song,