[Footnote 2: Winstanley, Lives of the Poets, p. 109.]
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SAMUEL DANIEL
Was the son of a music master, and born near Taunton in Somersetshire, in the year 1562. In 1579 he was admitted a commoner in Magdalen Hall in Oxford, where he remained about three years, and by the assistance of an excellent tutor, made a very great proficiency in academical learning; but his genius inclining him more to studies of a gayer and softer kind, he quitted the University, and applied himself to history and poetry. His own merit, added to the recommendation of his brother in law, (John Florio, so well known for his Italian Dictionary) procured him the patronage of Queen Anne, the consort of King James I. who was pleased to confer on him the honour of being one of the Grooms of the Privy-Chamber, which enabled him to rent a house near London, where privately he composed many of his dramatic pieces. He was tutor to Lady Ann Clifford, and on the death of the great Spenser, he was appointed Poet Laureat to Queen Elizabeth. Towards the end of his life he retired to a farm which he had at Beckington near Philips Norton in Somersetshire, where after some time spent in the service of the Muses, and in religious contemplation, he died in the year 1619. He left no issue by his wife Justina, to whom he was married several years. Wood says, that in the wall over his grave there is this inscription;
Here lies expecting the second coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the dead body of Samuel Daniel esquire, that excellent poet and historian, who was tutor to Lady Ann Clifford in her youth, she that was daughter and heir to George Clifford earl of Cumberland; who in gratitude to him erected this monument to his memory a long time after, when she was Countess Dowager of Pembroke, Dorset and Montgomery. He died in October, Anno 1619.
Mr. Daniel's poetical works, consisting of dramatic and other pieces, are as follow;
1. The Complaint of Rosamond.
2. A Letter from Octavia to Marcus Antonius, 8vo. 1611.
These two pieces resemble each other, both in subject and stile, being written in the Ovidian manner, with great tenderness and variety of passion. The measure is Stanzas of seven lines. Let the following specimen shew the harmony and delicacy of his numbers, where he makes Rosamond speak of beauty in as expressive a manner as description can reach.
Ah! beauty Syren, fair inchanting good,
Sweet silent rhetoric of persuading eyes;
Dumb eloquence whose power doth move the blood,
More than the words or wisdom of the wife;
Still harmony whose diapason lies, Within a brow; the key
which passions move,
To ravish sense, and play a world in love.