chamber to the consort of James I.; that he died at an advanced age; was a most exquisite poet and an unrivalled historian. This information, which the editor has dignified with the title of "Memoirs," is nearly all that is known of the author. He appears, from his Apology for Rhyme, addressed to William, Earl of Pembroke, to have been educated under the patronage of that family. Speaking of his application to the study of poetry, he says:

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Having been first encouraged and framed thereunto by your most worthy and honourable mother, and received the first notion for the formal ordering of those compositions at Wilton, which I must ever acknowledge to have been my best school, and thereof always am to hold a feeling and grateful memory. Afterward, drawn farther on by the well-liking and approbation of my worthy lord, the fosterer of me and my muse, I adventured to bestow all my whole powers therein, perceiving it agreed so well, both with the complection of the times, and my own constitution, as I found not wherein I might better employ me."

He was entered a commoner of Magdalene Hall, Oxford, which he quitted at the end of three years, without taking a degree. His poetical works consist of fifty-seven sonnets: The Complaint of Rosamond, The Letter of Octavia to Mark Antony; Hymen's Triumph, and The Queen's Arcadia, two pastoral tragi-comedies; Cleopatra and Philotas, two tragedies; The History of the Civil War; Musophilus, or a General Defence of Learning; and some epistles and miscellaneous poems. The sonnets were his first compositions, and were well received, but the reputation he gained by them he lost by his historical poem falling from public favor to neglect, in his lifetime. With a longing after fame, Daniel saw that reputation gradually sinking into indifference and decay, and himself passing from the power of delighting, and the receipt of homage, to the censure of the critic, and the forgetfulness of the public. Finding his dearest hopes thus dying away, well might he exclaim, in the bitterness of his sorrow:

"But years have done this wrong,

To make me write too much and live too long."

His favorite and most elaborate work is, The History of the Civil Wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster; the unfinished state of which he frequently laments. He spent many years in the composition of this poem, on which his hopes of fame chiefly depended; but which only affords another proof of the incapacity of authors to judge of their own productions. The subject itself was ill chosen, and this

defect is, by no means, counterbalanced by the excellence of the execution. The author has, in fact, confined himself to the dry narrative of history, into which he has occasionally, though seldom, attempted to infuse a portion of the spirit of poetry; but he has failed in awakening any feeling of pathos or sympathy. It has been generally said, indeed, by those who have touched on Daniel, that pathetic passages are dispersed through his poem of The Civil War. We have looked for them in vain, and if we were to form our judgement of his poetical powers from this work alone, we should be disposed to concur in the much reprehended opinion of Ben Jonson, that he was not a poet. Eulogy, it seems, as well as censure, is frequently bestowed on the faith of common rumour; they descend unquestioned from one generation to another, until some prying critic chooses to read and judge for himself. Nothing, in fact, can be more tiresomely monotonous, more dry and antipoetical, than this rhyming chronicle. The merit of simple diction and harmonious cadence cannot be denied ; the presence of good sense and unexceptionable fidelity, and the absence of any thing positively offensive against good taste, must be allowed it. Beyond this praise we cannot go, for it is embellished neither with beauty of description, nor the rapid narrative of passion. It is a fraud upon the reader to hold it out as a poem, and it is a round-about way to get at the facts of history.

His dramas are equally jejune and unimpassioned. Daniel's genius certainly was not calculated for dramatic composition: indeed we learn, from the Dedication to Cleopatra, that if he had followed his own inclination, he would have been contented to sing of Delia; but he was induced, by Mary, Countess of Pembroke, to cultivate an acquaintance with the tragic muse; To sing of state, and tragic notes to frame." Because he had succeeded in writing agreeable sonnets, it was taken for granted that he must be capable of higher things. Without the solicitation or encouragement of friends, he would, probably, never have attempted so high a flight; for as he says of himself, "irresolution and a self-distrust were the most apparent faults of his nature." He was, indeed, as modest in his estimation of himself, as he was amiable in his disposition and blameless in his writings. Tragedy, however, he tried, and failed. Adhering, in a great measure, to the form of the Greek tragedy, but destitute of its poetry, his plays have not the spirit-stirring dialogue, the interest, or the reality of the modern drama. He was, apparently, afraid of trusting himself too far with dialogue, lest he should mismanage it; and he has, therefore, thrown almost the whole of his tragedies into the shape of narrative, and that too sufficiently long and

tiresome. They consist in the representation of a single event, and are written in alternate rhymes, a mode of composition which he afterwards thought was not so well calculated for dramatic works as blank verse.

"I must confess," he says, in his Apology," my adversary hath wrought this much in me, that I think a tragedy would, indeed, best comport with blank verse, and dispense with rhyme, saving in the chorus, or where a sentence shall require a couplet."

As to his pastoral dramas; The Queen's Arcadia, which was presented to her majesty, by the University of Oxford, in 1605, is a satire on the vices and follies of the times, shadowed under that name; a design singularly ill-calculated for dramatic representation, and it is, in fact, a very puerile performance. Hymen's Triumph is more dramatic, both in construction and character; but almost the only scene susceptible of genuine passion (and which is related by a spectator) is totally spoiled. There is a quiet charm about the Complaint of Rosamond, without its being distinguished by any very poetical imagery or poetic touches; but Cleopatra's Letter is intolerably dull-if it had been sent to a man kept from home by weaker ties than Mark Antony, it would never have brought him back. In praise of his minor pieces little can be said, except of those which will be quoted in the course of this article. So that, after all, Daniel's fame must depend upon what first introduced him to the world as a poet-his sonnets. These productions, unfortunately, all turn on the passion of love; and many of them of love in its coldest aspect and most metaphysical character. We say unfortunately; for Daniel, though generally timid and unaspiring, is sometimes spirited into nobleness and elevated into enthusiasm. These, it is true, occur only at long intervals, and appear rather the consequence of a lucky disposition of mind—a brief inspiration, than of general power. But his sonnets were the first, and in point of diction and rhythm, are the most finished of his works; and being written in the first working of his mind and May of his blood, have more of the essence of poetry than his later productions; and if they had been on different subjects, would have been much more likely to have realized the author's aspirations after fame than his present productions.

We shall commence our extracts with a few of the sonnets distinguished by their simplicity and elegance.

VI.

"Fair is my love, and cruel as she's fair;

Her brow-shades frowns, altho' her eyes are sunny;

Her smiles are lightning, tho' her pride, despair;
And her disdains are gall, her favours honey.
A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of honour;
Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love!
The wonder of all eyes that look upon her:
Sacred on earth; design'd a saint above!
Chastity and Beauty, which were deadly foes,
Live reconciled friends within her brow:
And had she pity to conjoin with those,

Then who had heard the plaints I utter now;
For had she not been fair, and thus unkind,
My muse had slept, and none had known my mind.

XII.

My spotless love hovers with purest wings,

About the temple of the proudest frame;

Where blaze those lights fairest of earthly things, Which clear our clouded world with brightest flame. M'ambitious thoughts confined in her face,

Affect no honour, but what she can give :
My hopes do rest in limits of her grace,
I weigh no comfort, unless she relieve.
For she that can my heart imparadise,
Holds in her fairest hand what dearest is;
My fortune's wheels the circle of her
eyes,
Whose rolling scarce deigns once a turn of bliss.
All
my life's sweet consists in her alone;

So much I love the most unloving one.

XXIV.

These sorrow'ng sighs, the smoak of mine annoy ; These tears which heat of sacred flame distils;

Are those due tributes, that my faith doth pay Unto the tyrant, whose unkindness kills. I sacrifice my youth and blooming years At her proud feet, and she respects not it: My flow'r untimely's wither'd with my tears, And winter woes, for spring of youth unfit. She thinks a look may recompense my care, And so with looks prolongs my long-look'd ease: As short that bliss, so is the comfort rare; Yet must that bliss my hungry thoughts appease. Thus she returns my hopes so fruitless ever; Once let her love indeed, or else look never.

XXXV.

I once may see when years shall wreck my wrong,
When golden hairs shall change to silver wire;
And those bright rays that kindle all this fire,
Shall fail in force, their working not so strong:
Then beauty, (now the burthen of my song,)

Whose glorious blaze the world doth so admire,
Must yield up all to tyrant Time's desire ;

Then fade those flow'rs that deck'd her pride so long; When if she grieve to gaze her in her glass,

Which then presents her winter-wither'd hue; Go you, my verse; go tell her what she was: For what she was, she best shall find in you. Your fi'ry heat lets not her glory pass,

But (phoenix-like) shall make her live anew.

XXXVI.

Look, Delia, how w' esteem the half-blown rose,
The image of thy blush, and summer's honour!
Whilst yet her tender bud doth undisclose
That full of beauty, time bestows upon her.

No sooner spreads her glory in the air,

But straight her wide-blown pomp comes to decline;
She then is scorn'd, that late adorn'd the fair:
So fade the roses of those cheeks of thine!

No April can revive thy wither'd flow'rs,
Whose springing grace adorns thy glory now:
Swift speedy Time, feather'd with flying hours,
Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
Then do not thou such treasure waste in vain ;
But love now, whilst thou may'st be lov'd again.

XXXVII.

Beauty, sweet love, is like the morning dew,
Whose short refresh upon the tender green,
Chears for a time, but till the sun doth shew;
And straight 'tis gone, as it had never been.
Soon doth it fade that makes the fairest flourish;
Short is the glory of the blushing rose:

The hue which thou so carefully dost nourish,
Yet which at length thou must be forc'd to lose.
When thou, surcharg'd with burthen of thy years,
Shalt bend thy wrinkles homeward to the earth;
And that in beauty's lease expir'd, appears
The date of age, the calends of our death.