D aniel, S amuel

Abstract

Little is known about the ancestry or early life of Samuel Daniel (1562/63–1619). University records at Oxford indicate that he matriculated at Magdalen College in 1581, which would suggest that he was born around 1562; his native county is listed as Somerset. He left Oxford without taking a degree and, describing himself as a ‘late student in Oxenforde’, he first appears in print as the translator of The worthy tract of Paulus Jovius (1585), a translation of the Italian author's Dialogo dell'imprese militari et amorose (1555). Daniel's choice of this treatise on impresa – a species of emblem designed to ‘manifest the special purpose of Gentlemen in warlike combats or chamber tornaments’ – gestures towards two traits that frame the whole of his life's work: first, his habit of importing, vernacularizing, and even nationalizing Continental and especially Italian poetic forms (the great Italianist John Florio was a lifelong friend and mentor); and secondly, his choice of the martial and the amorous, often separately but sometimes together, as the principal subjects of his poetry. These were the basic coordinates, as he saw it, for the arc of his poetic career: his personal motto, adapted from the Roman elegist Propertius, was ‘Aetas prima canat veneres, postrema tumultus’ (‘Let youth sing of loves, later years of conflicts’).