60 CONNECTION OF BATH WITH THE 



inquiries not been without those who could minister 

 to the amusement of the strangers who resorted 

 hither. It has ever had its musicians, from Lich- 

 field the lutanist to Queen EHzabeth, whose monu- 

 ment is in the Abbey, [30] to the modern Eauzzini. 

 Among its artists appear the distinguished names of 

 HoAEE and Gainsborough. [31] It had its theatre 

 from early times, in which have been trained some 

 of the most eminent in the histrionic art, including 

 Siddons herself. If this make not a part of the lite- 

 rature of the country, it will at least be allowed to be 

 nearly allied to it. [32] 



For the theatre at Bath, late in the reign of EHza- 

 beth, or early in that of James I., Samuel Daniel 

 wrote his tragedy of Philotas, which gained so unfor- 

 tunate a notoriety. Daniel we may claim as one of 

 our own poets, for he was borrr in this neighbourhood, 

 spent great part of his life in rural retirement in this 

 part of the kingdom, and he lies buried in the church 

 of Beckington, where his bust may be seen, a part of 

 the monument erected to his memory by that Countess 

 of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery, who raised 

 the monuments to Drayton and Spenser: — Daniel, 

 whom a great critic of the present day calls " one of 

 the golden writers of our golden Elizabethian age," 

 and who further says of him that " his diction and 

 his sentiments bear no marks of age, that no fre- 



