"That wreath which, in Eliza's golden days,
My master dear, divinist Spenser, wore;
That which rewarded Drayton's learned lays,
Which thoughtful Ben and gentle Daniel wore...."
But history traces the Laureateship, as an office, no further back than Jonson, and we need not follow Southey into the mists. It is certain, however, that Daniel was a favorite at Elizabeth's Court, and in some way partook of her bounty. In 1600 he was appointed tutor to the Lady Anne Clifford, a little girl of about eleven, daughter of Margaret, Countess of Cumberland; and his services were gratefully remembered by mother and daughter during his life and after. But Daniel seems to have tired of living in great houses as private tutor to the young. The next year, when presenting his works to Sir Thomas Egerton, he writes:—"Such hath been my misery that whilst I should have written the actions of men, I have been constrained to bide with children, and, contrary to mine own spirit, put out of that sense which nature had made my part."
Self-distrust.
Now there is but one answer to this—that a man of really strong spirit does not suffer himself to be "put out of that sense which nature had made my part." Daniel's words indicate the weakness that in the end made futile all his powers: they indicate a certain "donnish" timidity (if I may use the epithet), a certain distrust of his own genius. Such a timidity and such a distrust often accompany very exquisite faculties: indeed, they may be said to imply a certain exquisiteness of feeling. But they explain why, of the two contemporaries, the robust Ben Jonson is to-day a living figure in most men's conception of those times, while Samuel Daniel is rather a fleeting ghost. And his self-distrust was even then recognized as well as his exquisiteness. He is indeed "well-languaged Daniel," "sweet honey-dropping Daniel," "Rosamund's trumpeter, sweet as the nightingale," revered and admired by all his compeers. But the note of apprehension was also sounded, not only by an unknown contributor to that rare collection of epigrams, Skialetheia, or the Shadow of Truth.
"Daniel (as some hold) might mount, if he list;
But others say he is a Lucanist"
—but by no meaner a judge than Spenser himself, who wrote in his "Colin Clout's Come Home Again":
"And there is a new shepherd late upsprung
The which doth all afore him far surpass:
Appearing well in that well-tunéd song
Which late he sung unto a scornful lass.
Yet doth his trembling Muse but lowly fly,
As daring not too rashly mount on height;
And doth her tender plumes as yet but try
In love's soft lays, and looser thoughts delight.
Then rouse thy feathers quickly, Daniel,
And to what course thou please thyself advance;
But most, meseems, thy accent will excel
In tragic plaints and passionate mischance."
Moreover, there is a significant passage in the famous "Return from Parnassus," first acted at Cambridge during the Christmas of 1601: