"But Avon, poor in fame and poor in waters,
Shall have my song, where Delia hath her seat."
The Wiltshire Avon is the proud brook that flows southward by Wilton,
"where Delia hath her seat." If it may seem in any degree unfitting that
Daniel should address language so glowing as is found in the _Delia_
sonnets to a lady who is established as the head of a household with
husband and sons about her, attention may be called to the fact that the
sonnets, though they are characterised by warmth of feeling and
extravagance of expression, do not contain one tainted line. Posterity
must justify what Daniel in proud humility said of himself:
"I . . . . . . .
. . . never had my harmless pen at all
Distained with any loose immodesty,
But still have done the fairest offices
To virtue and the time."
The respectful dignity of Daniel's prose dedication of _Delia_ to Mary
Sidney cannot be surpassed; and the introductory sonnet that displaces
it in the next edition, while confessing the ardent devotion of the
writer, is yet couched in the most reverent terms. Daniel and other
sonneteers had the great example of Petrarch in honouring a lady with
admiration and love expressed in verses whose warmth might perhaps not
have been so excusable, could the poet have been taken at his word. The
new sonnets inserted in the editions of 1601 and 1623 show the
faithfulness of the poet's homage. A loyal friendship, whether formed
upon gratitude only or upon some warmer feeling, inspired the _Delia_
although the poet expresses his devotion in the conventional modes. But
that Daniel outgrew to some extent the taste for these fanciful devices
is shown by the changes he made in successive editions. Four sonnets
from the 1591 edition were never reprinted, another was reprinted once
and afterwards omitted. In our text the order of the 1623 edition is
followed, the edition that was supervised by the poet's brother; but
these omitted sonnets will be found at the end under the head of
_Rejected Sonnets_. It is certain that they are Daniel's and that he
rejected them, and it therefore seems no more than fair to the poet, if
they are reprinted at all, to insert them under this head.
While, then, these rejected sonnets may have been in two cases omitted
by the poet because of their too great frankness of expression, in other
cases, notably in the phoenix, the wax-image, the tablet-and-siren, the
vanquished fort, and the ermelin sonnets, they seem to have lost their
charm, not so much for any personal reason as for the artistic defect in
the far-fetched nature of the device.
Daniel lived till 1619, experiencing the usual ups and downs in the
career of a "Court-dear poet." In later years, the famous Lady Anne
Clifford, wife of Mary Sidney's younger son, caused a monument to be
erected in his honour, in the inscription upon which she recorded her
pride in the fact that he had once been her tutor.