Tower of London, but released towards the close of 1604.[610:A] Constable possessed unrivalled reputation with his contemporaries as a writer of sonnets; Jonson terms his muse "ambrosiack[610:B];" in The Return from Parnassus, 1606, we are told that
"Sweet Constable doth take the wondring ear
And lays it up in willing prisonment;"[610:C]
and Bolton calls him "a great master in English tongue," and adds, "nor had any gentleman of our nation a more pure, quick, or higher delivery of conceit; witness among all other, that Sonnet of his before his Majesty's Lepanto."[610:D] In consequence of these encomia more modern authors have prolonged the note of praise; Wood describes him as "a noted English poet[610:E];" Hawkins, as the "first, or principal sonnetteer of his time[610:F]," and Warton, as "a noted sonnet-writer."[610:G]
To justify the reputation thus acquired, we have two collections of his sonnets still existing; one published in 1594, under the title of "Diana, or the excellent conceitful sonnets of H. C. augmented with divers quatorzains of honorable and learned personages, devided into viij Decads;" and the other a manuscript in the possession of Mr. Todd, consisting of sonnets divided into three parts, each part containing three several arguments, and every argument seven sonnets.[610:H]
From the specimens which we have seen of his Diana, and from the sonnet extracted by Mr. Todd from the manuscript collection, there can be little hesitation in declaring, that the reputation which
Constable once enjoyed, was built upon no stable foundation, and that mediocrity is all which the utmost indulgence of the present age can allow him.
8. Daniel, Samuel, a poet and historian of no small repute, was born near Taunton, in Somersetshire, in 1562. Having received a classical education at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and being afterwards enabled to pursue his studies under the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke's family, he became the most correct poet of his age. He commenced author as early as 1585, by a translation of Paulus Jovius's Discourse of rare Inventions; but his first published poems appear to have been his Delia, a collection of Sonnets, with the complaint of Rosamond, 1592. He continued to write until nearly the close of his life, for the Second Part of his History of England was published in 1618, and he died on the 14th of October 1619.
Of the poetry of Daniel, omitting for the present all notice of his dramatic works, the most important are his Sonnets to Delia, the History of the Civil War, the Complaint of Rosamond and the Letter from Octavia to Marcus Antonius; the remainder consisting of occasional pieces, and principally of Epistles to his friends and patrons.
The Sonnets are not generally constructed on the legitimate or Petrarcan model; but they present us with some beautiful versification and much pleasing imagery. The "Civil Wars between the two houses of Lancaster and York," the first four books of which were published in 1595, and the eighth and last in 1609, form the magnum opus of Daniel, and to which he looked for fame with posterity. That he has been disappointed, must be attributed to his having too rigidly adhered to the truth of history; for aspiring rather at the correctness of the annalist than the fancy of the poet, he rarely attempts the elevation of his subject by any flight of imagination, or digressional ornaments. Sound morality, prudential wisdom, and occasional touches of the pathetic, delivered in a style of then unequalled chastity and perspicuity, will be recognised throughout his work; but neither warmth, passion, nor sublimity, nor the most distant trace