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 years
before his decease in 1619, was hastened by the consciousness of a
waning reputation, and of the propriety of seeking better shelter than
that of his laurels. His eloquent "Defense of Rhyme" still asserts for
him a place in the hearts of all lovers of stately English prose.

Old Michael Drayton, whose portrait has descended to us, surmounted
with an exuberant twig of bays, is vulgarly classed with the
legitimate Laureates. Southey, pardonably anxious to magnify an office
belittled by some of its occupants, does not scruple to rank Spenser,
Daniel, and Drayton among the Laurelled:--


"That wreath, which, in Eliza's golden days,
My master dear, divinest Spenser, wore,
That which rewarded Drayton's learned lays,
Which thoughtful Ben and gentle Daniel bore," etc.