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Self-distrust.

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-tunéd 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 in Class 2 is largely imitative. Virgil was imitative, Keats was imitative–to name but a couple of sufficiently striking examples. And Daniel, who belongs to this class, was also imitative. But for a poet of this class to reach the heights of song, there must come a time when out of imitation he forms a genuine style of his own, and loses no mental fertility in the transformation. This, if I may use the metaphor, is the mauvais pas in the ascent of Parnassus: and here Daniel broke down. He did indeed acquire a style of his own; but the effort exhausted him. He was no longer prolific; his ardor had gone: and his innate self-distrustfulness made him quick to recognize his sterility.

Soon after the accession of James I., Daniel, at the recommendation of his brother-in-law, John Florio, possibly furthered by the interest of the Earl of Pembroke, was given a post as gentleman extraordinary and groom of the privy chamber to Anne of Denmark; and a few months after was appointed to take the oversight of the plays and shows that were performed by the children of the Queen’s revels, or children of the Chapel, as they were called under Elizabeth. He had thus a snug position at Court, and might have been happy, had it been another Court. But in nothing was the accession of James more apparent than in the almost instantaneous blasting of the taste, manners, and serious grace that had marked the Court of Elizabeth. The Court of James was a Court of bad taste, bad manners, and no grace whatever: and Daniel–“the remnant of another time,” as he calls himself–looked wistfully back upon the days of Elizabeth.