What these laureates have suffered at the hands of the critics of the present time is not to be compared to the abuse which was lavished upon them by their contemporaries. The literary history of England is full of the records of the burlesques, the lampoons, the coarse wit and satire, which have been directed against any poet who has struggled into notice, and won distinction above his fellows. The poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were especially exposed to these satirical assaults. The prevailing opinion is not always the true or the just one, though, of course, it has a measure of truth and of justice as its foundation. The prevailing opinion in regard to these poets of England who were crowned with the laurel is more often based upon the satires and lampoons of which they were the occasion, than upon the nature of their own poetical work. People read Dryden and Pope instead of Shadwell and Cibber; but the Colley Cibber of the "Dunciad," and the Thomas Shadwell of "Mac Flecknoe" are not the true Cibber and the true Shadwell. The laureates have been more assailed by satire than other poets, and this not because they were necessarily poor poets, but because their very position excited envy. Though men like Gray and Scott refused the appointment of the Laureateship, the position was often eagerly sought. Especially about the time of Davenant, poets vied with one another for preference; some were even bold enough to call themselves laureates when they had no cause whatever to assume the title. After the death of Eusden, when the unfortunate Richard Savage failed to receive the appointment for which he sued with so much servility, he called himself the volunteer laureate, and in that capacity wrote a number of odes for the queen, services which she liberally rewarded. . II. When the origin and true significance of the Laureateship are fully understood, there seems less disposition on the part of the student of literature to disparage the achievement of those men upon whom the honour was bestowed. Being appointed a poet laureate did not always in the past, nor would it at the present time, imply that such a poet was greater than his fellows. To suppose this is to misapprehend the nature of the office. It must always be remembered that the Laureateship was a court appointment, an office in the gift of the Government. Hence the laureate was a court poet, and one who of necessity must be in sympathy with the monarch and all monarchical measures. That this misapprehension of the Laureateship is very common is proved by the numerous newspaper remarks upon the subject. A recent writer, in expressing the usual cant about these laureates being such sorry poets, says, "Think of Southey being laureate while Byron was alive!" We might retort, " Think of Byron, the poet of revolution, writing a Vision of Judgment,' in which an infamous king was canonised; or of Byron being in a position where odes like Southey's on the negotiations with Bonaparte, or the visits of the king to Ireland and Scotland, were expected!” Shelley and Byron were undoubtedly greater poets than Southey; but to have seen them made court poets would have been one of the strangest things that could ever occur in the history of English poetry! III. It is true that from the era of Ben Jonson to that of Southey, few of these poets laureate sought to penetrate far into the meaning of human life; they were neither impressed by its mystery, nor did they sound the depths of its joy and its pain. They did not "utter wisdom from the central deep," nor possess that which Bodenstedt describes as the philosophy which, "Auf stolzen Schwinge Sucht wie ein Adler zum Lichte zu dringen, Their work, therefore, lacks power and loftiness as well as depth, and it is without moral strength and dignity. The cause of this is not far to seek. When Elizabeth was well established upon the throne of England, and in the full enjoyment of her power, a new spirit became evident in literature, which caused her reign to be considered the most glorious in English history. This outburst of the national mind was ardent and eager, original and creative. This eagle-like spirit of genius reached the height of its flight in the years between 1603 and 1626, in the reign of Elizabeth's successor. In the reign of Charles I., however, a marked change began to manifest itself the glory had begun to wane. Ben Jonson, the first poet to be honoured by the office of the Laureateship as it now is understood, did his best work amid the influences which made the Elizabethan age so great. It was because of his eminent services to literature that in 1616—some authorities say 1619—James I. granted to Ben Jon son letters patent making him poet laureate. Charles I. had been king five years when he reconsidered this appointment of his father. He issued new letters patent to Ben Jonson, which for the first time made the Laureateship a permanent institution. But after this the glory of the "Elizabethan Age" not only began to wane, but the Laureateship came to be considered not only a reward for literary services, but a gift dependent largely upon court patronage. From the death of Jonson in 1637 to the death of Henry James Pye in 1813, when Southey succeeded him, one hundred and seventy-six years passed. In that period the Stuarts lost the throne of England. During the Commonwealth the laureate, Sir Willam Davenant, was deposed. When the Restoration came English poetry received a blow from which it took over a hundred years to recover, The creative age of Shakespeare was past and gone. The influence of French taste and of French codes of morality, of foreign standards of art, was felt everywhere. Literature became artificial and concerned itself with externals, and there was a moral blight upon the drama. The Augustan age of Anne, which gave us Pope and Swift and all that brilliant circle, though it was rich in prose, produced no great inspired natural poet. Inspiration, naturalness, and a high poetic ideal seem to have vanished until Cowper and Burns appeared. It is therefore not surprising that during these hundred and seventy-six years, when there were ten poets laureate, there should be among the number no supremely great poet. Among the ten, Dryden stands first, and next to him, Warton. But Dryden, with all his facile skill, his command of the resources of language, and his brilliant wit, produced no poem which was the outcome of an exalted mood. His work lacked dignity and moral strength, and was wholly without those finer influences which tend to inspire and elevate humanity. Warton, noble poet as he was, stood halfway between the school that was going out and the school that was coming in. Cowper and Burns appeared only a few years before Warton died, and Wordsworth published nothing till after Warton's death. Warton scarcely felt the force of the tide which was bearing English poetry on to new regions of thought. He was great compared to the men who immediately preceded him, but he belonged to an artificial school, and his art felt the influence of its limitations. For twenty-three years Henry James Pye wore the wreath of laurel. During that time English poetry was being brought back to nature by the inspired work of Wordsworth and his great contemporaries, but the new revelation which had come to them, the new spirit which was animating English poetry, touched the laureate so lightly that he might just as well have been living in the age of Anne as in that of George III. And so, from the death of Jonson to the accession of Southey, none of these laureates could be called poets of the highest order. They were not only the creatures of their age, but their position as court poets called for no grand heroic effort in verse. The monarchs, whom it was their duty to extol and flatter, had few qualities to inspire genuine enthusiasm. Charles I., whose soul, Ben Jonson said, lived in an alley; Charles II., false and corrupt at heart; James II., who tried so hard to subvert the liberties of the nation; William III., who cared nothing for English poetry or poets; Anne, under the rule of her favourites, with little regard for the brilliant writers who made her reign illustrious. Then came the Georges. Is it any wonder that when the poor laureates were obliged to celebrate the birthdays of these ignoble sovereigns by odes and lyrics, that the divine afflatus failed? In other fields of literature these laureates sometimes did valuable work, especially in the domain of the drama, but as far as their strictly official poems, which their position made compulsory, are concerned, they cannot be said to deserve high praise. IV. In many accounts of the Laureateship, there is not sufficient distinction maintained between those poets whose claim to the title was shadowy and intangible, and those who had authentic right to the honour. Some authorities. in speaking of Chaucer, or Skelton, or Spenser as laureates, often neglect to explain just how they came to be so called. All history is founded on tradition; mists and clouds veil the far past, and it is only by inference and reasoning from analogy that definite knowledge is gained. Much confusion prevails, and probably will ever prevail, in regard to the origins of various customs and institutions. Many of them have "Broadened slowly down From precedent to precedent." The idea of the Laureateship appears to have assumed form gradually; but this much is certain, that, as it now exists, it began with Ben Jonson. It was not until 1630 that it became a definite and permanent institution. It was then that Charles I. ratified the appointment which had been conferred upon Jonson by James I. The annual pension which had been given before was increased to one hundred pounds, and a butt of wine from the king's cellars. When this great poet and dramatist was thus formally recognised as an officer of the royal household, he undoubtedly occupied the first place in the world of letters. Before Ben Jonson's time, however, there were court poets who sang the praises of their sovereigns, who celebrated in heroic verse the victories which exalted the nation, and who were rewarded for their services with pensions and emoluments. It had been from very early times the custom in Italy, Germany, and even Spain, to crown certain poets who were considered pre-eminent. The custom probably originated in the mythologic period. If some writers wish to call Apollo the first laureate they may do so; though he might possibly wish to be in better company than among the laureates of the Augustan age of England. Better to place him among those of the Augustan age of Rome, for Vergil and Horace were both crowned with the laurel wreath. It had been the custom among the ancient Greeks to crown their poets with a wreath symbolical of both appreciation and reward. The Romans imitated the Greeks of course in this as in so many other things. The universities of the Middle Ages must in their turn have derived their custom of laureation from the well-known crowning of Petrarch by the Roman senate. Many universities on the Continent blended with the poetic distinction a reference to theology quite characteristic of the age. Thus in the early times there were many poets laureate. They were not, however, necessarily court poets. Warton asserts that the universities conferred the honour as a degree upon those graduates who excelled in rhetoric and Latin versification. A wreath of laurel was placed upon their heads, and, if they were, at the same time, licensed to be teachers of boys, they were publicly presented with a rod and ferrule. Warton describes several interesting instances of these degrees in versification being conferred at Oxford. One student received the laurel on condition that he compose a Latin comedy and one hundred Latin verses in praise of the university. We see in this perhaps the beginning of the custom of linking to the honour of laureation certain conditions which made it somewhat like a mercantile transaction. Caxton, in a work printed in 1490, mentions “Mayster John Skelton, late created poete laureate in the university of Oxenford." Skelton had been crowned with the laurel probably in 1489, and four years after he was permitted to wear the same badge also at Cambridge. This is the cause of Skelton's signing himself" Poeta Skelton Laureatus.” There seems to be considerable uncertainty in regard to the origin of the term poet laureate as applied to a member of the royal household of England. |