Daniel, Samuel (1562-1619)

English poet. His works include the sonnet sequence Delia (1592) and several masques for the court (1604-14), such as The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604), The Queen's Arcadia (1605), and Hymen's Triumph (1614).

Daniel was probably born near Taunton, Somerset. He left Oxford without a degree, and then served as tutor in several noble families. In 1592, besides Delia, he published The Complaint of Rosamond. A weighty poem in eight books, The History of the Civil Wars between York and Lancaster, appeared in 1595. Tradition asserts that Daniel succeeded Edmund Spenser as poet laureate in 1599, the year in which he published Musophilus, or A General Defence of Learning. His Defence of Rhyme (about 1602) championed the native English use of rhyme, and was an answer to Thomas Campion's Art of English Poesie, which advocated classical metre.

His plays include Cleopatra (1594) and Philotas (1605), tragedies in the manner of the Roman Seneca, but his chief work for the stage consisted of masques and pastorals designed for court functions. He entered the royal service and was inspector of the Children of the Queen's Revels 1615-18, finally retiring to a farm in Somerset.