{\b Samuel Daniel}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: c. 1562

{\b Date of Death}.: October 1619 (exact dates uncertain) 

{\b Works}.

English poet. His best poem is 'Musilophilus: Containing a General Defence of 
Learning' (1599). Delia (1592) is a collection of sonnets which also includes 
the poem 'Complaint of Rosamund', and The Civil Wars (1609), is his most 
ambitious poem, an epic of the Wars of the Roses. His many plays and masques 
include Cleopatra (1594), Philotas (1604) and The Queen's Arcadia (1605). He 
also wrote A Defence of Rhyme (1603) in reply to Thomas Campion's Observations 
in the Art of English Poesie, and a Collection of the History of England, his 
last work.

{\b Featured Works}.

'Care-Charmer Sleep, Son of the Sable Night', 'Song, from "Tethys' Festival"', 
"Love is a Sickness Full of Woes", "Fair is My Love and Cruel as She's Fair", 
'"Beauty, Sweet Love, is Like the Morning Dew"', '"Let Others Sing of Knights 
and Paladins"', 'Ulysses and the Siren'.

{\b General Comment}.

The son of a music teacher, Samuel Daniel was educated at Magdalen Hall, 
Oxford. In 1585 he worked for the English ambassador in Paris before going to 
Italy, where he met the poet Battista Guarini. On his return he was employed 
as tutor to William Herbert, the future Earl of Pembroke, and then to Lady 
Anne Clifford at Skipton Castle in Yorkshire. In 1603 he wrote a Panegyric 
Congratulatory on James I's accession and the following year he gained a place 
at court.

Daniel's first book, Delia, was praised by Edmund Spenser in his Colin Clouts 
Come Home Again. He went on to become a successful court poet, writing 
occasional verses and dramatic entertainments. In 1604 Queen Anne commissioned 
a masque from him, The Vision of the 12 Goddesses, and took part in the 
performance. Later that year he was in trouble for his tragedy Philotas, which 
was thought to represent the Earl of Essex's 1600 rebellion in a sympathetic 
light. Daniel prefaced the printed version of the play with an 'Apology' and 
was restored to favour. Towards the end of his life, he retired to his farm in 
Somerset.

Ben Jonson considered Daniel 'a good honest Man ... but no poet', but he was 
widely admired by his contemporaries including Spenser and William Drummond of 
Hawthornden. Interest in his work was revived in the Romantic period, when he 
was praised by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb and Hazlitt.