the study of poetry and history. He was afterwards selected by the Countess of Cumberland to superintend the education of her daughter, the Lady Anne Clifford. This high-spirited and accomplished lady profited by his advice, and was not unmindful of his memory; and many years afterwards, when he had long been dead, but she had become the great Countess of Pembroke, Dorset and Montgomery, she superintended the erection of a monument over his remains; and a likeness of the poet accompanied a full-length portrait of herself, which hung in one of her castles in Westmoreland. Daniel was fortunate in his patrons. Lord Mountjoy, afterwards Earl of Devonshire, Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton, the friend of Essex, honoured him with their friendship, and enriched him by their munificent regard. He was fortunate likewise in his friends, among whom may be enumerated Sir Fulke Greville, Sir John Harrington, Sir Henry Spelman, Sir Robert Cotton, Cowell, Camden, Spenser, Jonson, Drayton and Browne. Great names!—but that was the heroic age of England.
The works of our author were varied but not voluminous. He wrote Masques, Tragedies, Poems and Sonnets, and a History of England, extending to the reign of Edward III. His poetical efforts are deficient in force either of imagination or passion. Their flow is temperate and equable. His aim was to please; and he seldom aspired to influence or inflame his readers. "He wrote the 'Civil Wars,' and yet had not one battle in his book," was the depreciatory observation of Ben Jonson; and from this poem, which may be regarded as his most ambitious effort, we have selected the following favourable specimen of his manner. It is taken from the third book, and depicts the captive Richard soliloquizing, on the morning of his murder in Pomfret Castle.
