DANIEL, SAMUEL (1562-1619), English poet and his torian, was born near Taunton in 1562, and died at Beckington, near Devizes, on Oct. 14, 1619. His brother, John Daniel, was a musician and the author of Songs for the Lute, Viol and Voice (1606). In 1579 Samuel was admitted a commoner of Magdalen hall, Oxford, where he remained for about three years. He was first encouraged and, he says, taught in verse, by Sir Philip Sid ney's sister, Mary, countess of Pembroke, whose household he had entered as tutor to her son, William Herbert. His first known volume of verse is dated 1592; it contains the cycle of sonnets to Delia and the romance called The Complaint of Rosamond. Twenty-seven of the sonnets had already been printed at the end of Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella without the author's consent. Several editions of Delia appeared in 1592, and they were very frequently reprinted during Daniel's lifetime. The First Four Books of the Civil Wars, an historical poem in ottava rima, appeared in 1595. Poetical Essays, apparently first printed in 1599, contained, besides the "Civil Wars," "Musophilus," and "A letter from Octavia to Marcus Antonius," poems in Daniel's finest and most mature manner. About this time he became tutor to Anne Clifford, daughter of the countess of Cumberland. On the death of Spenser, in the same year, Daniel received the title of poet-laureate, which he seems, however, to have shortly resigned in favour of Ben Jonson. About this time, and at the recommen dation of his brother-in-law. Giovanni Florio. he was taken into favour at court, and wrote a Panegyric Congratulatorie offered to the King at Burleigh Harrington in Rutlandshire, in ottava rima. In 1603 this poem was published, and in many cases copies contained in addition his Poetical Epistles to his patrons and a prose essay called A Defence of Rime (originally printed in 1602 ) in answer to Thomas Campion's Observations on the Art of Eng lish Poesie, in which it was contended that rhyme was unsuited to the genius of the English language. Daniel's essay and Campion's were published together, Bodley Head Quartos, No. 14 (New York, 1925). In 1603 Daniel was appointed master of the queen's revels. In this capacity he brought out a series of masques and pastoral tragicomedies, of which were printed A Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, in 1604; The Queen's Arcadia, an adaptation of Guarini's Pastor Fido, in 1606 ; Tethys Festival or the Queene's Wake, written on the occasion of Prince Henry's becoming a knight of the bath, in 161o; and Hymen's Triumph, in honour of Lord Roxburgh's marriage in 1615. Meanwhile had appeared, in 1605, Certain Small Poems, with the tragedy of Philotas, which brought its author into difficulties, as Philotas, with whom he expressed some sympathy, was taken to represent Essex. In 1607, under the title of Certaine small Workes heretofore divulged by Samuel Daniel, the poet issued a revised version of all his works except Delia and the Civil Wars. In 1609 the Civil Wars had been completed in eight books. In 1612 Daniel pub lished a prose History of England, from the earliest times down to the end of the reign of Edward III.
Daniel was made a gentleman-extraordinary and groom of the chamber to Queen Anne, and was now acknowledged as one of the first writers of the time. Later in life he threw up his titular posts at court and retired to a farm called "The Ridge," which he rented at Beckington, near Devizes, in Wiltshire, where he died.
Of Daniel's works, the sonnets are now, perhaps, most read. They depart from the Italian sonnet form in closing with a couplet, as is the case with most of the sonnets of Surrey and Wyat, but they have a grace and tenderness all their own. Of a higher order is The Complaint of Rosamond, a soliloquy in which the ghost of the murdered woman appears and bewails her fate in stanzas of exquisite pathos. Among the Epistles to Distin guished Persons will be found some of Daniel's best work. The epistle to Lucy, countess of Bedford, is remarkable among those as being composed in genuine terza rima, till then not used in English. Hymen's Triumph is perhaps the best of all his dramatic writing. An extract from this masque is given in Lamb's Dramatic Poets, and it was highly praised by Coleridge. In elegiac verse he always excelled, but most of all in his touching address To the Angel Spirit of the Most Excellent Sir Philip Sidney. Musophilus is one of the most characteristic writings of Daniel. It is a dialogue between a courtier and a man of letters, and is a general defence of learning, and in particular of poetic learning as an instrument in the education of the perfect courtier or man of action. It is addressed to Fulke Greville, and written in a sort of terza rima, or, more properly, ottava rima with the couplet omitted. Daniel is wanting in fire and passion, but he is pre-eminent in scholarly grace and tender, mournful reverie.