of Delia, suggested to Daniel by Tibullus, has been perpetuated in the
song of the lover as the name of a mistress. These pieces are dedicated
to Sir Philip Sydney's sister, the general patroness, Mary countess of
Pembroke. But Daniel had been her preceptor.[7] It is not said in
Daniel's Life, that he travelled. His forty-eighth sonnet is said to
have been "made at the authors being in Italie."[8] Delia does not
appear to have been transcendently cruel, nor were his sufferings
attended with any very violent paroxysms of despair. His style and his
expressions have a coldness proportioned to his passion. Yet as he does
not weep seas of tears, nor utter sighs of fire, he has the merit of
avoiding the affected allusions and hyperbolical exaggerations of his
brethren. I cannot in the mean time, with all these concessions in his
favour, give him the praise of elegant sentiment, true tenderness, and
natural pathos. He has, however, a vigour of diction, and a volubility
of verse, which cover many defects, and are not often equalled by his
contemporaries. I suspect his sonnets were popular. They are commended,
by the author of the _Return from Parnassus_, in a high strain of
panegyric.

Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage
War with the proudest big _Italian_
That melts his heart in sugar'd sonnetting.[9]

But I do not think they are either very sweet, or much tinctured with
the Italian manner. The following is one of the best; which I the rather
chuse to recite, as it exemplifies his mode of compliment, and contains
the writer's opinion of Spenser's use of obsolete words.

Let others sing of knights & Paladines,
In aged accents, and untimely words,
Paint shadowes in imaginarie lines,
Which well the reach of their high wit records;

But I must sing of thee, and those faire eyes
Autentique shall my verse in time to come,
When yet th' vnborne shall say "Loe, where she lyes,
Whose beauty made Him speak that els was dombe."

These are the arkes, the trophies I erect,
That fortifie thy name against old age,
And these thy sacred vertues must protect
Against the Darke, & Times consuming rage.
Though th' errour of my youth they shall discouer,
Suffise, they shew I liu'd, and was thy louer.[10]

But, to say nothing more, whatever wisdom there may be in allowing that
love was the errour of his youth, there was no great gallantry in
telling thi