“Waked his lofty lay
    To grace Eliza’s golden sway;
  And called to life old Uther’s elfin-tale,
  And roved through many a necromantic vale,
    Portraying chiefs who knew to tame
    The goblin’s ire, the dragon’s flame,
    To pierce the dark, enchanted hall
    Where Virtue sat in lonely thrall. 
    From fabling Fancy’s inmost store
    A rich, romantic robe he bore,
  A veil with visionary trappings hung,
  And o’er his Virgin Queen the fairy-texture flung."[9]

Samuel Daniel was not only a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, but more decidedly so of her successor in the queendom, Anne of Denmark.  In the household of the latter he held the position of Groom of the Chamber, a sinecure of handsome endowment, so handsome, indeed, as to warrant an occasional draft upon his talents for the entertainment of her Majesty’s immediate circle, which held itself as far as possible aloof from the court, and was disposed to be self-reliant for its amusements.  Daniel had entered upon the vocation of courtier with flattering auspices.  His precocity while at Oxford has found him a place in the “Bibliotheca Eruditorum Praecocium.”  Anthony Wood bears witness to his thorough accomplishments in all kinds, especially in history and poetry, specimens of which, the antiquary tells us, were still, in his time, treasured among the archives of Magdalen.  He deported himself so amiably in society, and so inoffensively among his fellow-bards, and versified his way so tranquilly into the good graces of his royal mistresses, distending the thread, and diluting the sense, and sparing the ornaments, of his passionless poetry,—­if poetry, which, by the definition of its highest authority, is “simple, sensuous, passionate,” can ever be unimpassioned,—­that he was the oracle of feminine taste while he lived, and at his death bequeathed a fame yet dear to the school of Southey and Wordsworth.  Daniel was no otherwise Laureate than his position in the queen’s household may authorize that title.  If ever so entitled by contemporaries, it was quite in a Pickwickian and complimentary sense.  His retreat from the busy vanity of court life, an event which happened several years before his decease in 1619, was hastened by the consciousness of a waning reputation, and of the propriety of seeking better shelter than that of his laurels.  His eloquent “Defense of Rhyme” still asserts for him a place in the hearts of all lovers of stately English prose.

Old Michael Drayton, whose portrait has descended to us, surmounted with an exuberant twig of bays, is vulgarly classed with the legitimate Laureates.  Southey, pardonably anxious to magnify an office belittled by some of its occupants, does not scruple to rank Spenser, Daniel, and Drayton among the Laurelled:—­

  “That wreath, which, in Eliza’s golden days,
    My master dear, divinest Spenser, wore,
  That which rewarded Drayton’s learned lays,
    Which thoughtful Ben and gentle Daniel bore,” etc.