Wood says that Daniel left
Oxford without a degree because "his geny" was "more prone to easier and
smoother studies than in pecking and hewing at logic," and we may
believe that Italian was one of these smoother studies. His translation
of Paolo Giovi's work on Emblems, which was published in 1585, was
doubtless one fruit of this study, a work that since it took him into
the very realm of the _concetti_, was to be a potent influence upon his
mental growth. The main theme, the cruelty of the Fair, is the same as
that of Petrarch. Daniel follows this master in making the vale echo
with his sighs, in appealing to her hand and cruel bosom for mercy, in
recounting the number of years he has worshipped her and honored her
with sonnets on which he is depending for immortal fame, in upbraiding
her for her devotion to the mirror rather than to him, and for ensnaring
him with the golden net of her hair and transpiercing him with the
darts from her crystalline eyes. In some of Petrarch's nobler flights
Daniel does not follow; the higher teachings of love are not revealed to
him, the step from human to divine he does not take; yet in the main,
the features of the earlier poet re-appear in Daniel's verse, as they do
in most of his fellow-sonneteers, including Shakespeare.
It is also not best to give too much weight to the opinion that
Shakespeare has been over-influenced by Daniel in the adoption of the
quatrain and couplet structure.
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