Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. I. Early Poetry: Chaucer to Donne
Samuel Daniel (15621619)Critical Introduction by George Saintsbury
[Samuel Daniel was born near Taunton in 1562. He died at Beckington in the county of his birth in 1619. His chief works were—The Complaint of Rosamond, 1594; Cleopatra, 1594; Epistles to Various Great Personages, 1601; The Civil Wars, 1604; Philotas, 1611; Hymen’s Triumph, 1623; A Defence of Rhyme, 1611.]
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,
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 two tragedies and his Defence of Rhyme, though neither of them falling strictly within our limits, 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.