Note 562 — EPIGRAMS BY J[ohn] D[avies].
Reading edition
Dyce shows that Samuel Daniel is meant by Dacus (who has already been ridiculed in Ep. xxx.). In Daniel's Complaint of Rosamond (1592) are the lines:—
"Ah, beauty, syren, faire enchanting good, Sweet silent rhetorique of perswading eyes, Dumb eloquence, whose power doth move the blood More than the words or wisedome of the wise," &c.
Perhaps there is an allusion to this epigram in Marston's fourth satire:—
"What, shall not Rosamond or Gaveston Ope their sweet lips without detraction? But must our modern critticks envious eye Seeme thus to quote some grosse deformity, Where art not error shineth in their stile, But error and no art doth thee beguile?"