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

286 Pages·014.159 MB·English

by  Himelick, James R

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
ProQuest Number: 10295244
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Pag©
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION:
I. Samuel Daniel . . . . 1
II. The State of Poetry . 42
Ill* Musophxlus. . . . . . 3B
IV. Sources and Analogues 0 * u * * * * * * 67
V. Author Revision • * » 6 « * 39
s VI. Critical Estimate . ........... 103
VII. Bibliographical Data, 131
nD
VIII. Notes on the Methods. . . . ............ 133
TEXT * 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
2
that of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney, 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 editions,one 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.
%usophilus. 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 — usually mild -<
censure. Without doubt, the phrase applied by William
Brown of Tavistock crystallizes the critical judgment con­
cerning Daniel from his own day to the present, and "well-
10
languagM" has become a kind of graduate school tag.
Other writers found other ways of describing the elegance
and propriety of his diction. He was "Sweete hony dropping
11 12
Daniell," a master of "sweet-chast Verse," "verse
13
happie." To Drayton he was "the sweet Museus of these
times" and he hoped Daniel would
Pardon my rugged and unfiled rymes,
Whose scarce invention is too meane Aanndd bhfaiSsfeli,-
14
When Delias glorious Muse dooth come in place.
9
History of Elizabethan Literature. pp. 135-136.
*^In Britannia*s Pastorals, Book II, Song 2. See
Poems of William Browne, ed. Gordon Goodwin (Muses Library),
I, 239.
^1Heturne From Parnassus, ed. W. D. Macray, p. 85.
12Richard Barnfield, in An English Garner, V, 265.
^Anon., Poiimanteia, In British Bibliographer, I, 285
14Endimion and Phoebe, ed. J. W. Hebei, p. 50.
He was commended for his use of the "file." Sir John
Davies, praying for the especial virtues of other writers —
Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Spenser — does not forget that
15
tool of "DELIA'S servant," and Robert Anton speaks of
Morrall Daniell with his pleasing phrase,
Filing the rookie methode of these dales.
On the debit side, they noted his restraint, the fact
that — as Gray was to put it much later — he never went
17
beyond "a certain pitch." Spenser chided his "trembling
Muse" which had as yet tried nothing but "loves soft laies
18
and looser thoughts delight," and Guilpin suspected that
19
he "might mount if he list." Drayton's comment to Henry
Reynolds summarizes what the Elizabethans evidently con­
sidered Daniel's chief weakness:
His rimes were smooth, his meeters well
did close, 20
But yet his maner better fitted prose.
Regardless, however, of his meditative serenity, of his
reluctance to soar, there is no reason to doubt that most
of Daniel's contemporaries accepted Camden's estimate when
15
Orchestra, stanza 128.
1^>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.