Now there is but one answer to this—­that a man of really strong spirit does not suffer himself to be “put out of that sense which nature had made my part.”  Daniel’s words indicate the weakness that in the end made futile all his powers:  they indicate a certain “donnish” timidity (if I may use the epithet), a certain distrust of his own genius.  Such a timidity and such a distrust often accompany very exquisite faculties:  indeed, they may be said to imply a certain exquisiteness of feeling.  But they explain why, of the two contemporaries, the robust Ben Jonson is to-day a living figure in most men’s conception of those times, while Samuel Daniel is rather a fleeting ghost.  And his self-distrust was even then recognized as well as his exquisiteness.  He is indeed “well-languaged Daniel,” “sweet honey-dropping Daniel,” “Rosamund’s trumpeter, sweet as the nightingale,” revered and admired by all his compeers.  But the note of apprehension was also sounded, not only by an unknown contributor to that rare collection of epigrams, Skialetheia, or the Shadow of Truth.

     “Daniel (as some hold) might mount, if he list;
      But others say he is a Lucanist”

—­but by no meaner a judge than Spenser himself, who wrote in his “Colin Clout’s Come Home Again”: 

“And there is a new shepherd late upsprung The which doth all afore him far surpass:  Appearing well in that well-tuned song Which late he sung unto a scornful lass. Yet doth his trembling Muse but lowly fly, As daring not too rashly mount on height; And doth her tender plumes as yet but try In love’s soft lays, and looser thoughts delight.  Then rouse thy feathers quickly, DANIEL, And to what course thou please thyself advance; But most, meseems, thy accent will excel In tragic plaints and passionate mischance.”

Moreover, there is a significant passage in the famous “Return from Parnassus,” first acted at Cambridge during the Christmas of 1601: 

“Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage War with the proudest big Italian That melts his heart in sugar’d sonneting, Only let him more sparingly make use Of others’ wit and use his own the more.”

The ‘mauvais pas’ of Parnassus.

Now it has been often pointed out that considerable writers fall into two classes—­(1) those who begin, having something to say, and are from the first rather occupied with their matter than with the manner of expressing it; and (2) those who begin with the love of expression and intent to be artists in words, and come through expression to profound thought.  It is fashionable just now, for some reason or another, to account Class 1 as the more respectable; a judgment to which, considering that Shakespeare and Milton belonged undeniably to Class 2, I refuse to assent.  The question, however, is not to be argued here.  I have only to point out in this place that the early work of all poets