The 'Cherry and the Slae' was familiar to Burns, who often, our readers will observe, copied its form of verse.
SAMUEL DANIEL.
This ingenious person was born in 1562, near Taunton, in Somersetshire. His father was a music-master. He was patronised by the noble family of Pembroke, who probably also maintained him at college. He went to Magdalene Hall, Oxford, in 1579; and after studying there, chiefly history and poetry, for seven years, he left without a degree. When twenty-three years of age, he translated Paulus Jovius' 'Discourse of Rare Inventions.' He became tutor to Lady Anne Clifford, the elegant and accomplished daughter of the Earl of Cumberland. She, at his death, raised a monument to his memory, and recorded on it, with pride, that she had been his pupil. After Spenser died, Daniel became a 'voluntary laureat' to the Court, producing masques and pageants, but was soon supplanted by 'rare Ben Jonson.' In 1603 he was appointed Master of the Queen's Revels and Inspector of the Plays to be enacted by juvenile performers. He was also promoted to be Gentleman Extraordinary and Groom of the Chambers to the Queen. He was a varied and voluminous writer, composing plays, miscellaneous poems, and prose compositions, including a 'Defence of Rhyme' and a 'History of England,'—an honest, but somewhat dry and dull production. While composing his works he resided in Old Street, St Luke's, which was then thought a suburban residence; but he was often in town, and mingled on intimate terms with Selden and Shakspeare. When approaching sixty, he took a farm at Beckington, in Somersetshire—his native shire—and died there in 1619.
Daniel's Plays and History are now, as wholes, forgotten, although the former contained some vigorous passages, such as Richard II.'s soliloquy on the morning of his murder in Pomfret Castle. His smaller pieces and his Sonnets shew no ordinary poetic powers.
RICHARD II., THE MORNING BEFORE HIS MURDER IN POMFRET CASTLE.
Whether the soul receives intelligence,
By her near genius, of the body's end,
And so imparts a sadness to the sense,
Foregoing ruin, whereto it doth tend;
Or whether nature else hath conference
With profound sleep, and so doth warning send,
By prophetising dreams, what hurt is near,
And gives the heavv careful heart to fear:—
However, so it is, the now sad king,
Toss'd here and there his quiet to confound,
Feels a strange weight of sorrows gathering
Upon his trembling heart, and sees no ground;
Feels sudden terror bring cold shivering;
Lists not to eat, still muses, sleeps unsound;
His senses droop, his steady eyes unquick,
And much he ails, and yet he is not sick.
The morning of that day which was his last,
After a weary rest, rising to pain,
Out at a little grate his eyes he cast
Upon those bordering hills and open plain,
Where others' liberty makes him complain
The more his own, and grieves his soul the more,
Conferring captive crowns with freedom poor.
'O happy man,' saith he, 'that lo I see,
Grazing his cattle in those pleasant fields,
If he but knew his good. How blessed he
That feels not what affliction greatness yields!
Other than what he is he would not be,
Nor change his state with him that sceptre wields.
Thine, thine is that true life: that is to live,
To rest secure, and not rise up to grieve.
'Thou sitt'st at home safe by thy quiet fire,
And hear'st of others' harms, but fearest none:
And there thou tell'st of kings, and who aspire,
Who fall, who rise, who triumph, who do moan.
Perhaps thou talk'st of me, and dost inquire
Of my restraint, why here I live alone,
And pitiest this my miserable fall;
For pity must have part—envy not all.