eyes of his countrymen when he was found the means of bringing these wars to a successful close. Daniel's lines are as follow:

Now that the hand of death hath layd thee there,

Where neither greatnesse, pompe, nor grace, we see,
Nor any differences of earth; and where

No vaile is drawne betwixt thy selfe and thee:
Now Devonshire that thou art but a name,
And all the rest of thee besides is gone,
When men conceive thee not, but by the fame
Of what thy vertue, and thy worth have done :
Now shall my verse which thou in life didst grace,
(And which was no disgrace for thee to do)
Not leave thee in the grave . . .

And therefore I sincerely will report

First how thy parts were faire convaid within,

How that brave minde was built, and in what sort
All thy contexture of thy heart hath beene,
Which was so nobly fram'd, so well compos'd
As vertue never had a fairer seate,

Nor could be better lodg'd nor more repos'd,

Then in that goodly frame; where all things sweete,
And all things quiet, held a peacefull rest;
Where passion did no sudden tumults raise
That might disturbe her, nor was ever brest
Contain'd so much, and made so little noyse;
That by thy silent modestie is found

The emptiest vessels make the greatest sound.

Although in peace thou seem'dst to be all peace,
Yet being in warre, thou wert all warre, and there
As in thy spheere thy spirits did never cease

To move with indefatigable care.

And nothing seem'd more to arride thy heart

Nor more enlarge thee into jollity,

Then when thou sawest thy selfe in armour girt,
Or any act of armes like to be nye.

[Of his Irish command]

For without thy great valour we had lost
The dearest purchase ever England made :
And made with such profuse exceeding cost
Of bloud and charge, to keepe and to invade :
As commutation paid a deerer price
For such a peece of earth, and yet well paid
And well adventur'd for, with great advice,

And happily to our dominions laid;

Without which out-let, England thou hadst bin
From all the rest of th'earth shut out, and pent
Unto thyselfe, and forst to keepe within,
Inviron'd round with others government;
Where now by this, thy large imperiall Crowne
Stands boundlesse in the West, and hath a way
For noble times, left to make all thine owne
That lyes beyond it, and force all t'obay.
And this important peece, like t' have beene rent
From off thy state, did then so tickle stand,
As that no joynture of the government

But shooke, no ligament, no band

Of order and obedience, but were then

Loose and in tottering, when the charge

Thereof was laid on Montioy, and that other men
Checkt by example sought to put it off.

And he out of his native modesty

(As being no undertaker) labours too
To have avoided that which his ability
And Englands Genius would have him do,
Alleadging how it was a charge unfit
For him to undergo, seeing such a one
As had more power and meanes t'accomplish it
Then he could have, had there so little done.1
Whose ill successe (considering his great worth,
Was such as, could that mischiefe be withstood,
It had beene wrought) did in it selfe bring forth
Discouragement that he should do lesse good.

The state replide, it was not lookt he should
Restore it wholy to it selfe againe,

But only now if possible he could

In any fashion but the same retaine,

So that it did not fall a sunder quite,

Being thus dishivered in a desperate plight.
With courage on he goes

The poem alludes (in reference to "detraction"), in general terms, to Mountjoy's relations with Lady Rich (the "Stella" supposed of the Sidney sonnets), and urges, in his defence, that

his vertues and his worthinesse, Being seene so farre above his weaknesse, Must ever shine.

1 The allusion is to Essex.

who never more was knowne

To use immodest act, or speech obscene,
Or any levity that might have showne

The tone but of a thought that was uncleane,

and concludes with a relation of his cheerfulness and Christian fortitude in his last sickness.

It may be said that the "Delia" sonnets provide an answer to my contention that Daniel was deficient in the power of invention. I do not think so; on the contrary, they seem to me to bear it out. The emotion of love finds its expression in certain imagery all the world over, and many men who never become poets may write passably well under its influence. It is not surprising, therefore, that the "Delia" sonnets should be more imaginative than Daniel's other works, and as the work of a man whose ambition was to succeed as a writer

they are naturally carefully wrought. But they are marked by poverty of ideas; in fact there is practically only one idea, which is worn threadbare long before the close. There is no form of poetry, except perhaps blank verse, which is so intolerant of poverty of thought as the sonnet. These sonnets can, in my opinion, be only pronounced interesting as an experiment. In them Daniel seems to me to have been trying his hand at the new art which came from Italy and France. But his mind was too purely English for it, and he is only really himself in the simple directness of his native thought and speech. A clue to the connection between Daniel and Bacon is perhaps visible in the "M. P." sonnet quoted above. Grosart says that it appeared only in one edition of the "Delia " "Delia" sonnets, the 2nd of 1592. It has been supposed that the initials are intended for Mary, Countess of Pembroke, but, as Grosart says, the form is very familiar for a dependant to make use of, and he draws attention to the occurrence of the same initials, in allusion to some one who is a man, in the letter of "N. W." addressed to Daniel which precedes Paulus Jovius (1585). The passage is as follows:

A frend of mine, whom you know, M. P. climing for an Egles

nest, but defeated by the mallalent of fortune, limned in his studie a Pine tree striken with lightning, carrying this mot, Il mio sperar, which is borrowed also from Petrarch. Allor che fulminato e morto giaacque il mio sperar che tropp' alto mintana. (My hopes.) Yet in despight of fortune he devised also a Pinnace or small Barke, tossed with tempestious stormes, and in the saile was written expectanda dies, hoping as I think for one Sunne shine day to recompence so many gloomy and winter monethes.

The expression "a frend of mine, whom you know," appears to me to be a form of the Latin est qui, and, read with the context, it seems evidently intended as a description of the writer himself, and it is a description which applies exactly to the case of Francis Bacon, as he thought of himself and his prospects at the age of twenty-four. Compare with this the reference to The clyming of an Eagles neast by "G. T.,” p. 215 above.

There is in the same letter an allusion to "conceled philosophers" ("neither must wee depend upon the verdite of some conceled Philosophers "), which Grosart also notices in connection with the well-known remark about "concealed poets" in one of Bacon's letters.1 Grosart is careful to repudiate any taint of "heresy" on that subject, but he says "it seemed worth making a note of" (v. 305).

To return to Spenser's Colin Clout, conjectures as to the identity of the other poets referred to in the poem will be found in Todd. I have nothing to add to what is said there except to say that I think "Corydon " probably stands for Donne. The last syllable suggests the name, and the description tallies with the facts:

And there is Corydon though meanly waged,
Yet hablest wit of most I know this day.

As a poet Donne's range is not extensive, but he was probably the strongest intellect of his time, and is described

1 "So desiring you to be good to concealed poets."-Letter to "Mr. Davys [Sir John Davies, poet] then going to the King," 28th March 1603. Spedding, Life, iii. 65.

2 Cf. the pun on the name of "Somerset" in the Prothalamion (st. 4).

by Dryden as "the greatest wit, though not the greatest poet, of our nation." I am not aware that anything is known of his movements at the time when this poem was published, but he is said to have taken service in the expedition of Essex against Cadiz in 1596, so it is quite possible that he was previously employed (after quitting Lincoln's Inn, where he read law) in some capacity in the Earl's establishment. On his return to England he became Secretary to Lord Keeper Egerton, whose niece he subsequently married. His name appears in Aubrey's notes on Bacon among his "admirers and acquaintances."

Among the ladies of the Court occur, under various names, those to whom the poems are dedicated : the Queen ("Cynthia "); Mary, Countess of Pembroke ("Urania "); Anne, Countess of Warwick ("Theana "); Margaret, Countess of Cumberland (" Marian "); 2 Helena, Marquess of Northampton (" Mansilia "); the three sisters, the Ladies Hunsdon, Dorset and Derby, daughters of Sir John Spencer (" Phyllis," "Charyllis" and "Amaryllis "). "Stella" is, of course, supposed to be Penelope, Lady Rich, sister of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, an interpretation which is incompatible with Spenser's "Astrophel " poem of the same year, to be dealt with presently.

In connection with the question of the place and date of the dedication, "From my house of Kilcolman, the 27 of December, 1591," four points may be noted:

I. The death of Ferdinando, 5th Earl of Derby, who is evidently referred to under "Amyntas,"3 did not occur until April 1594.

2. Spenser was hardly likely to hear of the publication of Daniel's sonnets in Ireland.

3. The statement that

There learned arts do florish in great honor,
And Poets wits are had in peerlesse price,

is inconsistent with the "complaints" on this subject in

1 Called "Marie" in the dedication to the Fowre Hymnes, but "Anne” is the recognised name, and so appears in the Beauchamp mortuary chapel at Warwick. But "Marie" may be intentional; see p. 504 below.

2 Todd.

3 Cf. p. 65 above.