for
sundry practical uses they are, perhaps, vastly better; nor are the
really earnest and ardent eulogia of the bard of Mulla the same in
kind with the harmonious twaddle of Tate, or the classical quiddities
of Pye. He was of another sphere, the highest heaven of song, who

"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