Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/36

 one of the Gentlemen of hir Maiesties Royall Priuy Chamber.’ A similar inscription appears at the head of verses prefixed by Daniel to the 1613 edition of Florio's ‘Montaigne.’ As Mr. Bolton Corney pointed out, the fact that Daniel twice spoke of Florio as his ‘brother’ is the sole evidence in favour of the suggested relationship of brother-in-law. There can be no doubt that ‘brother’ was largely used for friend or companion at that date, and it is more than accounted for in this case by the fact that Daniel and Florio were fellow-officers in the queen's household. We are therefore justified in rejecting the relationship. Besides the verses in Florio's books, Daniel contributed complimentary poems to William Jones's ‘Nennio,’ 1595; to Peter Colse's ‘Penelopes Complaint,’ 1596 (Latin verse); to the translation of Guarini's ‘Pastor Fido’ of 1602; to Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas, 1605; and to Clement Edmondes's ‘Obseruations upon Cæsar's Commentarie,’ 1609.

Daniel was highly praised by his contemporaries. Meres in 1598 writes (Palladis Tamia, 1598): ‘Daniel hath divinely sonnetted the matchless beauty of Delia;’ … ‘everyone passionateth when he readeth the afflicted death of Daniel's distressed Rosamond;’ and Meres compares his ‘Civil Wars’ with Lucan's ‘Pharsalia.’ Lodge describes him ‘as choice in word and invention;’ Carew as the English Lucan. Drummond of Hawthornden speaks of him ‘for sweetness of ryming second to none.’ Charles FitzGeffrey, in his ‘Affaniæ,’ 1601; Sir John Harington, in his ‘Epigrams;’ Bastard, in his ‘Chrestoleros,’ 1598; and Barnfield, Freeman, and Hayman all praise him as ‘well-languaged,’ ‘sharp conceited,’ and a master of pure English. But that Daniel's complaint of detractors was justified is shown by Marston's remark in his ‘Satires’ as early as 1598, that ‘Rosamond’ cannot open ‘her lips without detraction.’ The author of the ‘Returne from Parnassus,’ 1601, while admitting that honey-dropping Daniel doth wage War with the proudest big Italian That melts his heart in sugar'd sonnetting, warns him against plagiarism—a warning which is not unwarranted. Drayton, in his ‘Epistle of Poets and Poesie,’ says that some wise men call Daniel ‘too much Historian in verse,’ and adds on his own account the opinion that ‘his manner better fitted prose.’ Edmund Bolton, in his ‘Hypercritica,’ wrote similarly that his English was ‘flat,’ though ‘very pure and copious … and fitter perhaps for prose than measure.’ Jonson was more explicit, and told Drummond that Samuel Daniel was ‘a good honest man, had no children, but no poet, and that he wrote Civil Wars and yet had not one battle in all his book.’ Jonson also mentioned that ‘Daniel was at jealousies with him;’ and he wrote to the Countess of Rutland that the poet ‘envied him, although he bore no ill-will on his part.’ In modern times Hazlitt, Lamb, and Coleridge have all written enthusiastically of Daniel. ‘Read Daniel—the admirable Daniel,’ said Coleridge, ‘in his “Civil Wars” and “Triumphs of Hymen.” The style and language are just such as any very pure and manly writer of the present day—Wordsworth, for example—would use: it seems quite modern in comparison with the style of Shakspeare’ (Table Talk). Elsewhere Coleridge admits that Daniel is prosaic, and that his style often occupies ‘the neutral ground of prose and verse,’ and incorporates characteristics ‘common to both’ (Biog. Lit. ii. 82). Some of Daniel's sonnets, all of which are formed by three elegiac verses of alternate rhyme concluding with a couplet, are notable for sweetness of rhythm and purity of language, but much is borrowed from French and Italian effort. Daniel's corrections are usually for the better, and show him to have been an exceptionally slow and conscientious writer. His epic on the civil wars is a failure as a poem. It is merely historical narrative, very rarely relieved by imaginative episode. Some alterations made in the 1609 edition were obviously suggested by a perusal of Shakespeare's ‘Richard II.’ His two tragedies are interesting as effective English representatives of the Seneca model of drama. Mr. George Saintsbury compares them with Garnier's and Jodrelle's plays, and calls attention to the sustained solemnity of the language. Daniel's masques were undertaken in too serious a spirit to be quite successful, but poetic passages occur in all of them.

Thomas Cockson [q. v.] engraved Daniel's portrait for the 1609 edition of Daniel's ‘Civile Wares,’ and this was reproduced in the collected edition of 1623.

An autograph letter from Daniel to Sir Robert Cecil, dated about 31 Dec. 1605, is at Hatfield, and another to Mr. Kirton, the Earl of Hertford's steward, dated in 1608, is at Longleat (Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. 163, 202). A manuscript of the ‘Letter to Montague,’ in Daniel's own handwriting, is in the Public Record Office, and a manuscript copy of the ‘Panegyricke Congratulatorie’ is in the British Museum (Royal MS. A. 18, 72). The Sloane MS. 3943 contains an early transcript of forty-six of Daniel's sonnets.

Daniel's mode of publishing and republishing his writings gives the bibliographer