George Daniel was born in London on the 16th of September 1789. After receiving an education at Mr. Thomas Hogg's boarding-school at Paddington Green, he became a clerk to a stockbroker in Tokenhouse Yard,[93] and afterwards followed the profession of an accountant; but he employed all his leisure time in literary pursuits, and in the collection of books, works of art and curiosities. He commenced writing at a very early age, and was the author of a novel The Adventures of Dick Distich, and a considerable number of poetical and dramatic pieces. He also contributed many articles to Ackerman's Poetical Magazine, Bentley's Miscellany, and other magazines, and was the editor of Cumberland's British Theatre, and Cumberland's Minor Theatre. His first printed production, Stanzas on Lord Nelsons Victory and Death, written in conjunction with a young friend, appeared in 1805, but he tells us that he wrote some verses when he was but eight years of age on the death of his father. In 1811 he published a poem called The Times, or the Prophecy, and in 1812 a poetical squib founded on the reputed horse-whipping of the Prince of Wales by Lord Yarmouth, entitled R-y-l Stripes; or, a Kick from Yar—th to Wa—s, for the suppression of which a large sum was paid by the Prince Regent. In the same year appeared The Adventures of Dick Distich in three volumes, which was written by the author before he was eighteen, and a volume of Miscellaneous Poems; and in 1814 The Modern Dunciad, in which he sings the praises of 'old books, old wines, old customs, and old friends.' He continued to write during the whole of his life, and his last work, Love's Last Labour not Lost, was published in 1863. Daniel was fond of convivial society, and numbered Charles Lamb and Robert Bloomfield among his acquaintances, and he was also intimate with many of the principal actors of the day. He died at his son's house, The Grove, Stoke Newington, on the 30th of March 1864. The cause of his death was apoplexy.

Daniel formed a very choice and valuable library in his residence, 18 Canonbury Square, Islington, which was chiefly remarkable for rare editions of old English writers, and very fine collections of Elizabethan black-letter ballads and Shakespeariana. The Elizabethan ballads would alone be sufficient to render any library famous. They were one hundred and forty-nine in number, and he is said to have purchased them for fifty pounds from Mr. William Stevenson Fitch, Postmaster at Ipswich, who is believed to have obtained them from the housekeeper at Helmingham Hall, Suffolk, the residence of the Tollemache family. Of these ballads seventy-nine were sold to Mr. Heber by Mr. Daniel for seventy pounds, and the remaining seventy were bought at the sale of his library for seven hundred and fifty pounds by Mr. Huth, who had them printed for presentation to the members of the Philobiblon Society. The Shakespearian collection comprised splendid copies of the first four folios and eighteen of the quarto plays, together with the 1594 and 1655 editions of Lucrece, the 1594 and 1596 editions of Venus and Adonis, and the first editions of the Sonnets and Poems. The library also contained a large number of early Jest-Books, Drolleries, Garlands and Penny-Histories; and among the rare editions of English writers were works by John Skelton, Edmund Spenser, Anthony Chute, Robert Chester, Anthony Munday, Ben Jonson, Patrick Hannay, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, John Milton, and many others. Several very beautiful manuscripts were also to be found in it.

Daniel's library was sold by auction by Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge on the 20th of July 1864, and the nine following days. There were eighteen hundred and seventeen lots, which realised thirteen thousand nine hundred and eighty-four pounds, eleven shillings; the water-colour drawings, engravings, portraits, coins, etc., of which there were four hundred and sixty-one lots, were sold at the same time, and produced one thousand eight hundred and eighty pounds, eleven shillings more.

The sale excited great interest, and many of the books went for large sums; but the prices obtained for others were small compared with those the volumes would fetch at the present time: a fine copy of the first edition of Walton's Compleat Angler realised no more than twenty-seven pounds, ten shillings. All the Shakespeares sold well. The first folio, probably the finest example extant, was bought by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts for six hundred and eighty-two guineas, till recently the highest price ever obtained for a copy;[94] and the second, third and fourth folios fetched respectively one hundred and forty-eight pounds, forty-six pounds, and twenty-one pounds, ten shillings. The third folio was a good copy, but had the title in facsimile, which accounts for the small sum it realised. Of the quarto plays, the first edition of King Richard the Third—a very fine copy—sold for three hundred and fifty-one pounds, fifteen shillings; the first editions of the Merry Wives of Windsor and Love's Labour Lost for three hundred and forty-six pounds, ten shillings each, and the first edition of King Richard the Second for three hundred and forty-one pounds, five shillings. The 1594 and 1596 editions of Venus and Adonis realised two hundred and forty pounds and three hundred and fifteen pounds; a copy of the Sonnets two hundred and twenty-five pounds, fifteen shillings; and the first edition of Lucrece one hundred and fifty-seven pounds, ten shillings. The copy of Love's Labour Lost, and the 1596 edition of Venus and Adonis, of which the Bodleian Library possesses the only other copy, were secured for the British Museum.

The following are a few of the other more notable books in the library, together with the prices they fetched at the sale:—Unique copy of The Boke of Hawkynge and Huntynge and Fysshynge, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, without date, one hundred and eight pounds; Rychard Cuer de Lyon, also printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 1528, ninety-two pounds; Complaynt of a Dolorous Lover, printed by Robert Wyer about 1550, unique, sixty-seven pounds, four shillings; The Tragicall Historie of Romeus and Juliet (London, 1562), seventy-seven pounds, fourteen shillings; Merry Jeste of a shrewde and curste Wyfe (London, about 1575), unique, sixty-four pounds; Munday's Banquet of Daintie Conceits (London, 1588), unique, two hundred and twenty-five pounds; Chute's Beawtie Dishonoured, written under the title of Shores Wife (London, 1593), unique, ninety-six pounds; Maroccus Extaticus, or Bankes Bay Horse (London, 1595), eighty-one pounds; Chester's Loves Martyr, or Rosalins Complaynt (London, 1601)—this work contains a poem (Threnos) by Shakespeare at p. 172—one hundred and thirty-eight pounds; Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinarie, or the Walkes in Powles (London, 1604), unique, eighty-one pounds; Sejanus, his Fall, by Ben Jonson, first edition (London, 1605), printed on large paper, a presentation copy from the author with the following autograph inscription—

'To my perfect friend Mr. Francis Crane
I erect this Altar of Friendship,
and leave it as an eternall witnesse of my Love.
Ben Jonson'—

unique, one hundred and six pounds; Hannay's Philomela, the Nightingale, etc. (London, 1622), ninety-six pounds.

A carved casket made out of the mulberry tree in Shakespeare's Garden, and presented to Garrick with the freedom of the borough of Stratford-on-Avon, was purchased at Charles Mathews's sale in 1835 by Daniel for forty-seven guineas, and presented by him to the British Museum.