FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51  
52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   >>   >|  
sh" timidity (if I may use the epithet), a certain distrust of his own genius. Such a timidity and such a distrust often accompany very exquisite faculties: indeed, they may be said to imply a certain exquisiteness of feeling. But they explain why, of the two contemporaries, the robust Ben Jonson is to-day a living figure in most men's conception of those times, while Samuel Daniel is rather a fleeting ghost. And his self-distrust was even then recognized as well as his exquisiteness. He is indeed "well-languaged Daniel," "sweet honey-dropping Daniel," "Rosamund's trumpeter, sweet as the nightingale," revered and admired by all his compeers. But the note of apprehension was also sounded, not only by an unknown contributor to that rare collection of epigrams, _Skialetheia, or the Shadow of Truth_. "Daniel (as some hold) might mount, _if he list_; But others say he is a Lucanist" --but by no meaner a judge than Spenser himself, who wrote in his "Colin Clout's Come Home Again": "And there is a new shepherd late upsprung The which doth all afore him far surpass: Appearing well in that well-tuned song Which late he sung unto a scornful lass. _Yet doth his trembling Muse but lowly fly, As daring not too rashly mount on height_; And doth her tender plumes as yet but try In love's soft lays, and looser thoughts delight. Then rouse thy feathers quickly, DANIEL, And to what course thou please thyself advance; But most, meseems, thy accent will excel In tragic plaints and passionate mischance." Moreover, there is a significant passage in the famous "Return from Parnassus," first acted at Cambridge during the Christmas of 1601: "Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage War with the proudest big Italian That melts his heart in sugar'd sonneting, _Only let him more sparingly make use Of others' wit and use his own the more._" The 'mauvais pas' of Parnassus. Now it has been often pointed out that considerable writers fall into two classes--(1) those who begin, having something to say, and are from the first rather occupied with their matter than with the manner of expressing it; and (2) those who begin with the love of expression and intent to be artists in words, _and come through expression to profound thought_. It is fashionable just now, for some reason or another, to account Class 1 as the more respectable; a judgment
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51  
52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Daniel

 

distrust

 

Parnassus

 

dropping

 
timidity
 

exquisiteness

 

expression

 

proudest

 

Christmas

 

Cambridge


plaints

 

DANIEL

 

quickly

 
feathers
 
looser
 
thoughts
 

delight

 

thyself

 

Moreover

 

mischance


significant

 

passage

 

famous

 
passionate
 

tragic

 

meseems

 
advance
 
accent
 

Return

 
artists

intent
 

expressing

 
occupied
 

matter

 
manner
 

profound

 

thought

 
account
 

respectable

 

judgment


reason

 
fashionable
 

sparingly

 

sonneting

 
Italian
 

mauvais

 

writers

 

considerable

 
classes
 

pointed