Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- A note on abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I The art of memory
- PART II Rhetoric and poetics
- Introduction to Part II
- II.1 Anon., Table of Cebes (1531)
- II.2 Thomas Wilson, The Art of Rhetoric (1553)
- II.3 George Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy (1589)
- II.4 Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence (1593)
- II.5 Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy (1595)
- II.6 Francis Meres, Palladis tamia (1598)
- II.7 Samuel Daniel, Musophilus (1599)
- II.8 Miles Sandys, Prudence (1634)
- II.9 Ben Jonson, Timber, or, Discoveries (1641)
- II.10 Alexander Ross, Mystagogus poeticus (1648)
- PART III Education and science
- PART IV History and philosophy
- PART V Religion and devotion
- PART VI Literature
- Index
- References
II.7 - Samuel Daniel, Musophilus (1599)
from PART II - Rhetoric and poetics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- A note on abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I The art of memory
- PART II Rhetoric and poetics
- Introduction to Part II
- II.1 Anon., Table of Cebes (1531)
- II.2 Thomas Wilson, The Art of Rhetoric (1553)
- II.3 George Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy (1589)
- II.4 Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence (1593)
- II.5 Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy (1595)
- II.6 Francis Meres, Palladis tamia (1598)
- II.7 Samuel Daniel, Musophilus (1599)
- II.8 Miles Sandys, Prudence (1634)
- II.9 Ben Jonson, Timber, or, Discoveries (1641)
- II.10 Alexander Ross, Mystagogus poeticus (1648)
- PART III Education and science
- PART IV History and philosophy
- PART V Religion and devotion
- PART VI Literature
- Index
- References
Summary
About the author
Samuel Daniel (1562/3–1619) was a courtly poet and historian who penned narrative poems, sonnets, verse epistles, essays, plays, and masques. Daniel is best known today for his Defence of Rhyme, a treatise that promotes England's customary use of rhyme and accentual syllabic verse.
About the text
Musophilus takes the form of a dialogue between Philocosmus (love of the world) and Musophilus (lover of the muses). They voice the positions of the public life and the scholarly life. Although the two interlocutors deliver three speeches each, the eponymous character carries five-sixths of the dialogue. His lengthy and more sophisticated argumentation, as well as the poem's versification, communicates clearly Daniel's own side in the debate. The dialogue champions the vitality of civil learning for the nation state, no doubt responding to Thomas Lodge's fourth eclogue in A Fig for Momus (1595) and conversations with Fulke Greville, Daniel's friend who later wrote A Treatie of Humane Learning and to whom Daniel dedicates his dialogue.
The arts of memory
In the excerpt, which occurs near the poem's beginning, Musophilus takes issue with Philocosmus's uncritical faith in perpetuating one's name through an heir. Here two major kinds of memory arts – of being remembered after death – square off: the material legacy of primogeniture, inheritance, and estate building versus the intellectual legacy of learning and poetry. The clash in perspectives replicates the early modern tension between the values of the aristocratic class and those of the clerkly.
Textual notes
Musophilus was first printed in a collection of Daniel's writings, The Poeticall Essayes of Sam. Danyel (London, 1599), B2v–B4r.
Musophilus
How many proud aspiring palaces
Have we known made the prey of wrath and pride,
Level'd with th'earth, left to forgetfulness,
Whilst titlers their pretended rights decide,
Or civil tumults, or an orderless
Order pretending change of some strong side?
Then where is that proud title of thy name,
Written in ice of melting vanity?
Where is thine heir left to possess the same?
Perhaps not so well as in beggary.
Something may rise to be beyond the shame
Of vile and unregarded poverty.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Memory Arts in Renaissance EnglandA Critical Anthology, pp. 127 - 131Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016