Samuel Daniel

Samuel Daniel (1562-1619). Engraving by Thomas Cockson (1569-1641), from The Civile Wares, 1609. . Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Samuel Daniel (1562 - 14 October 1619) was an English poet and historian.

Life

Overview

Daniel, son of a music master, was born near Taunton, and educatd at Oxford, but did not graduate. He attached himself to the Court as a kind of voluntary laureate, and in the reign of James I was appointed "Inspector of the children of the Queen's revels," and a groom of the Queen's chamber. He is said to have enjoyed the friendship of Shakespeare and Marlowe, but was "at jealousies" with Ben Jonson. In his later years he retired to a farm which he owned in Somerset, where he died. Daniel bears the title of the "well-languaged," his style is clear and flowing, with a remarkably modern note, but is lacking in energy and fire, and is thus apt to become tedious. His works include sonnets, epistles, masques, and dramas. The most important is The History of the Civil Wars between York and Lancaster in 8 books, published in 1604. His Epistles are generally considered his best work, and his sonnets have had some modern admirers. Among his poems may be mentioned the Complaynt of Rosamund, Tethys Festival (1610), and Hymen's Triumph (1615), a masque, Musophilus, a defence of learning, and Defence of Rhyme (1602).

Youth and education

Daniel, the son of a music-master, was born near Taunton, in Somersetshire, in 1562. Another son, John Daniel, was a musician, who held some offices at court, and was the author of Songs for the Lute, Viol and Voice (1606). Their sister Rosa was Edmund Spenser's model for Rosalind in The Shepherd's Calendar; she eventually married John Florio.

In 1579 Samuel was admitted a commoner of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he remained for about 3 years, and then gave himself up to the unrestrained study of poetry and philosophy.

Career

He was initially encouraged and (if we may believe him), taught in verse, by the famous Countess of Pembroke, whose honor he was never weary of proclaiming. He had entered her household as tutor to her son, William Herbert. His 1st known work, a translation of Paulus Jovius, to which some original matter is appended, was printed in 1585.

The name of Samuel Daniel is given as the servant of Lord Stafford, ambassador in France, in 1586, and probably refers to the poet.

His earliest known volume of verse is dated 1592; it contains the cycle of sonnets to Delia and the romance called "The Complaint of Rosamond." 27 of the sonnets had already been printed at the end of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella without the author’s consent. Several editions of Delia appeared in 1592, and they were very frequently reprinted during Daniel’s lifetime. We learn by internal evidence that Delia lived on the banks of Shakespeare’s river, the Avon, and that the sonnets to her were inspired by her memory when the poet was in Italy. To a 1594 edition of Delia and Rosamond was added the tragedy of Cleopatra, a severe study in the manner of the ancients, in alternately rhyming heroic verse, diversified by stiff choral interludes.

Books I-IV of the Civil Wars, an historical poem in ottava rima, appeared in 1595. The bibliography of Daniel’s works is attended with great difficulty, but as far as is known it was not until 1599 that there was published a volume entitled Poetical Essays, which contained, besides the “Civil Wars,” “Musophilus,” and “A letter from Octavia to Marcus Antonius,” poems in Daniel’s finest and most mature manner.

About this time he became tutor to Anne Clifford, daughter of the countess of Cumberland. On the death of Spenser, in the same year, Daniel received the somewhat vague office of poet-laureate, which he seems, however, to have shortly resigned in favor of Ben Jonson. Whether it was on this occasion is not known, but about this time, and at the recommendation of his brother-in-law, Giovanni Florio, he was taken into favor at court, and wrote a "Panegyric Congratulatorie" offered to the King at Burleigh Harrington in Rutlandshire, in ottava rima.

In 1603 the "Psnegyric" was published, and in many cases copies also contained his "Poetical Epistles" to his patrons and an elegant prose essay called "A Defence of Rime" (originally printed in 1602) in answer to Thomas Campion’s "Observations on the Art of English Poesie," in which it was contended that rhyme was unsuited to the genius of the English language.

In 1603, Daniel was appointed master of the queen’s revels. In this capacity he brought out a series of masques and pastoral tragi-comedies,— of which were printed A Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, in 1604; The Queen’s Arcadia, an adaptation of Guarini’s Pastor Fido, in 1606; Tethys Festival; or, The Queenes wake, written on the occasion of Prince Henry’s becoming a Knight of the Bath, in 1610; and Hymen’s Triumph, in honor of Lord Roxburgh's marriage in 1615.

Meanwhile had appeared, in 1605, Certain Small Poems, with The tragedy of Philotas; the latter was a study, in the same style as Cleopatra, written some 5 years earlier. This drama brought its author into difficulties, as Philotas, with whom he expressed some sympathy, was taken to represent Essex.

In 1607, under the title of Certaine small Workes heretofore divulged by Samuel Daniel, the poet issued a revised version of all his works except Delia and the Civil Wars. In 1609 the Civil Wars were completed in 8 books. In 1612 Daniel published a prose History of England, from the earliest times down to the end of the reign of Edward III. This work afterwards continued, and published in 1617, was very popular with Drayton's contemporaries. The section dealing with William the Conqueror was published in 1692 as being the work of Sir Walter Raleigh, apparently without sufficient grounds.

Daniel was made a gentleman-extraordinary and groom of the chamber to Queen Anne, sinecure offices which offered no hindrance to an active literary career. He was now acknowledged as one of the top writers of the time. Shakespeare, Selden and Chapman are named among the few intimates who were permitted to intrude upon the seclusion of a garden-house in Old Street, St Luke's, where, Fuller tells us, Daniel would “lie hid for some months together, the more retiredly to enjoy the company of the Muses, and then would appear in public to converse with his friends.”

Late in life Daniel threw up his titular posts at court and retired to a farm called The Ridge, which he rented at Beckington, near Devizes in Wiltshire. He died there on 14 October 1619.

Writing

The poetical writings of Daniel are very numerous, but in spite of the eulogies of all the best critics, "they were long neglected. This is the more singular since, during the 18th century, when so little Elizabethan literature was read, Daniel retained his poetical prestige. In later times Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and others expended some of their most genial criticisms on this poet.

Of his multifarious works the sonnets are now, perhaps, most read. They depart from the Italian sonnet form in closing with a couplet, as is the case with most of the Sonnets of Surrey and Wyat, but they have a grace and tenderness all their own. Of a higher order is "The Complaint of Rosamond," a soliloquy in which the ghost of the murdered woman appears and bewails her fate in stanzas of exquisite pathos.

Among the Epistles to Distinguished Persons will be found some of Daniel's noblest stanzas and most polished verse. The epistle to Lucy, countess of Bedford, is remarkable among those as being composed in genuine terza rima, till then not used in English.

Daniel was particularly fond of a 4-lined stanza of solemn alternately rhyming iambics, a form of verse distinctly misplaced in his dramas. These, inspired it would seem by like attempts of the countess of Pembroke's, are hard and frigid; his pastorals are far more pleasing; and Hymen's Triumph is perhaps the best of all his dramatic writing. An extract from this masque is given in Lamb's Dramatic Poets, and it was highly praised by Coleridge.

In elegiac verse Daniel always excelled, but most of all in his touching address "To the Angel Spirit of the Most Excellent Sir Philip Sidney."

We must not neglect to quote Musophilus among the most characteristic writings of Daniel. It is a dialogue between a courtier and a man of letters, and is a general defence of learning, and in particular of poetic learning as an instrument in the education of the perfect courtier or man of action. It is addressed to Fulke Greville, and written, with much sententious melody, in a sort of terza rima, or, more properly, ottava rima with the couplet omitted.

Daniel was a great reformer in verse, and the introduce of several valuable novelties. It may be broadly said of his style that it is full, easy and stately, without being very animated or splendid. It attains a high average of general excellence, and is content with level flights. As a gnomic writer Daniel approaches Chapman, but is far more musical and coherent. He is wanting in fire and passion, but he is preeminent in scholarly grace and tender, mournful reverie.

Critical introduction

by George Saintsbury

There are few poets, not of the top class, to whose merits a stronger consensus of weighty opinion can be produced than that which attests the value of Samuel Daniel’s work. His contemporaries, while expressing some doubts as to his choice of subjects, speak of him as "well-languaged," "sharp-conceited," and as a master of pure English. The critics of the 18th century were surprised to find in him so little that they could deem obsolete or in bad taste. The more catholic censorship of Hazlitt, Lamb, and Coleridge was delighted with his extraordinary felicity of expression, and the simple grace of his imagery and phrase.

There can be no doubt however that his choice of historical subjects for his poetry was unfortunate for his fame. The sentence of Joubert is not likely to be reversed: "Il faut que son sujet offre au génie du poëte une espèce de lieu fantastique qu’il puisse étendre et resserrer à volonté. Un lieu trop réel, une population trop historique emprisonnent l’esprit et en gênent les mouvements." {"The subject must offer the genius of the poet a fantastic place that can be expanded and tightened at will. Too real a place, too historical a population imprison the mind and hinder movement.") This holds true of all the Elizabethan historians; and it holds truer perhaps of Daniel than of Drayton. For the genius of the former had a tender and delicate quality about it which was least of all applicable to such work, and seems to have lacked altogether the faculty of narrative. Daniel’s only qualification for the task was his power of dignified moral reflection, in which he has hardly a superior. This however, though an admirable adjunct to the other qualities required for the task, could by no means compensate for their absence; and the result is that the History of the Civil Wars is with difficulty readable. The Complaint of Rosamond is better.

It is however in the long poems only that the "manner better suiting prose," of which Daniel has been accused, appears. His minor work is in the main admirable, and displays incessantly the purity and felicity of language already noticed. His "Sonnet to Sleep" became a kind of model to younger writers, and imitations of it are to be found in the sonneteers of the time, sometimes with the opening epithet literally borrowed. The whole indeed of the Sonnets to Delia are excellent, and throughout Daniel’s work single expressions and short passages of exquisite grace abound. The opening line, for instance, of the Address to Lady Anne Clifford,

‘Upon the tender youth of those fair eyes,’

is perfect in its kind. So is the distich which begins a Sonnet:—

‘The star of my mishap imposed this pain,

To spend the April of my years in grief;’

and the invocation of Apollo:—

‘O clear-eyed rector of the holy hill.’

It is in such things as these that the greater part of Daniel’s charm consists, and they are scattered abundantly about his works. The rest of that charm lies in his combination of moral elevation with a certain picturesque peacefulness of spirit not often to be found in the perturbed race of bards. The "Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland "is unmatched before Wordsworth in the expression of this.

His 2 tragedies and his Defence of Rhyme are too important in connection with English poetry to be left unnoticed. Cleopatra and Philotas are noteworthy among the rare attempts to follow the example of Jodelle and Garnier in English. They contain much harmonious verse, and the choruses are often admirable of their kind. The Defence of Rhyme, directed against the mania which for a time infected Spenser and Sidney, which Webbe endeavoured to render methodic, and of which traces are to be found in Milton, is thoroughly sound in principle and conclusion, though that conclusion is supported by arguments which are as often bad as good.

Recognition

3 of his poems ("Love is a Sickness," "Ulysses and the Siren," and "Beauty, Time, and Love") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

Publications

Poetry

• Delia: Containing certayne sonnets; with The Complaint of Rosamond. London: I.C. for Simon Waterson, 1592;
  • also published in Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles: Delia - Diana (with Henry Constable; edited by Martha Foote Crowe). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1896; Chicago: McClurg, 1896.
• A Panegyrike Congratulatory: Deliuered to the Kings most excellent maiesty at Burleigh Harrington in Rutlandshire. London: Valentine Simmes for Edward Blount, 1603.
• Certaine Small Workes Heretofore Divulged. London: Iohn Windet for Simon Waterson, 1607.
• A Selection from the Poetry of Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton (edited by H.C. Beeching). London: Dent, 1899.

Plays

• The Tragedy of Philotas. London: Melch. Bradwood for Edw. Blount, 1607.
• The Tragedy of Cleopatra. Glasgow: Robert & Andrew Foulis, 1751.

Non-fiction

• The Ciuile Wars betweene the Howses of Lancaster and Yorke. London: Humphrey Lownes for Simon Watersonne, 1609.
• The First Part of The History of England. London: Humphrey Lownes, John Beale, & William Jaggard for the Company of Stationers, 1613.
  • The Collection of the History of England. London: Nicholas Okes for Simon Waterson, 1626; London: Tho. Cotes, for Simon Waterson, 1634.

Collected editions

• The Works of Samuel Daniel, newly augmented. London: Valentine Simmes and W. White for Simon Waterson, 1602.
• Complete Works in Verse and Prose (edited by Alexander Balloch Grosart). (5 volumes), London & Aylesbury, UK: privately published, printed by Hazell, Watson and Viney, 1885-1896; New York: Russell & Russell, 1963.
• Poems, and A Defence of Ryme (edited by Arthur Colby Sprague). Cambrige, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1930, 1950; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950.
• Selected Poetry and A Defence of Rhyme (edited by Geoffrey Hiller and Peter Groves). Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998 .

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

Preceded by Edmund Spenser

English Poet Laureate 1599-1619

Succeeded by Ben Jonson

Ulysses and the Siren by Samuel Daniel

• List of British poets
• Timeline of British poetry

References

•  Gosse, Edmund (1911). "Daniel, Samuel". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 808-809.  Wikisource, Web, Dec. 31, 2017.

External links

Poems

• Daniel in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900: "Love is a Sickness," "Ulysses and the Siren," "Beauty, Time, and Love"
• Daniel in The English Poets: An anthology: "Sonnet LI (To Delia)," Extracts from The History of the Civil War: The death of Talbot, "To the Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland," Extract from "Hymen's Triumph"
• Daniel, Samuel (1562-1619) (9 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) info & 11 poems at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• Samuel Daniel at PoemHunter (70 poems)
• Samuel Daniel at Poetry Nook (271 poems)

Audio / video

• Samuel Daniel poems at YouTube

Books

• Works by Samuel Daniel at Project Gutenberg
• Samuel Daniel at Amazon.com

About

• Samuel Daniel in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Samuel Daniel at NNDB
• Daniel, Samuel in the Dictionary of National Biography
• Samuel Daniel by William Minto, at Sonnet Central
• Samuel Daniel in the Cambridge History of English and American Literature
• Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) at Luminarium

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.. Original article is at Daniel, Samuel