DANIEL, SAMUEL, was born in Someraetshiro in 1562, and educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, which however he left without a degree, "Lis gent' being," according to Anthony b Wood, "more prone to easier and smoother subjects thau in pecking and hewing at lozic." Ile became tutor to Lady Anne Clifford, subsequently Countess of Pembroke, and was afterwards groom of the privy chamber to Anne, queen of James I. He is said to have been poet laureat on Spenser death; but it is more likely that he was only one of many employed about the court in writing masques and birth-day odes, and in this capacity he seems to have stirred the wrath of Ben Jenson, who probably held him in the light of a rival. Towards the end of his life he retired into Somersetshire, %%here he died in 1619.
His poems consist of an Heroic, iu six books, on the wars of York and Lancaster ; it contains many stanzas in his best style, uniting much grace of language with aweetneas of thought. Daniel partly conformed to the fashion then prevailing, which consisted in a mode of expression termed euphuism, so well known by the specimen given in ' Kenilworth ; ' but a perusal of his works will show that, of the numerous Latinised words which the revival of learning introduced into our tongue, his good taste prompted him to choose, with very few exceptions, those which are at present in use ; that is, he only admitted those which were really necessary to complete the language. The poem next in length is 'Musophilus? a dialozue between 31usophilus and Philecosmus. It is, we think, his masterpiece both in thought and execution ; the somewhat irregular terza.rima iu which it is written seems well adapted for a union of sweetness and continuity of thought. The other poems contained iu the edition of
1602 are, A Letter from Octavia to Nark Antony, which shows to a striking extent that faculty peculiar to a true poet, which has been called "dramatic power," but which would perhaps be better under stood by the words "power of identification," by which the poet speaks naturally in any character ; ' The Tragedy of Cleopatra, in alternate rhymes, with chorusses on the antique model ; and Complaint of Rosamond,' who speaks from the infernal regions, but is little eueumbtred by classical imagery after the first few sentences. The Complaint' is written in a seven-line stanza, of which the first and third, the second, fourth, and fifth, and the two last, rhyme; and contains much beautiful description as well as tender thought, introducing sensuous imagery without the least approach to indelicacy or impurity; indeed the whole character of his poems quite justifies the somewhat quaint assertion of old Fuller that "he carried in his Christian and surname two holy prophets, his monitors, so to qualify Lis raptures that he abhorred all profaneness." Besides these poems, are fifty-seven sonnets to Delta, several masques, odes, and epistles. his prose works are, A History of England, in two parts, extending to the reign of Edward III.; and ' An Apology for Rhyme,' which last shows a close acquaintance with the rules and niceties of his art, and contains several remarks on rhythm, iuterestiog in illustration of the change in pronunciation which had taken place since Chaucer. On the whole, whether as a poet or a prose writer, Daniel has been most undeservedly neglected.