FULL five hundred years have passed since Geoffrey Chaucer assumed the title of Poet Laureate, and he, the great forerunner of our poet kings to be, can still attract fond readers to admire his knowledge of our common nature, his genial humour, and his kindly heart. From Chaucer to Tennyson, in almost uninterrupted succession, a long line of poets may be traced upon whom the laurels have been conferred the selection of the poet king has not always been a wise.one, and yet the list contains many names we would not gladly miss. Chaucer and Spenser, Ben Jonson, Dryden and Rowe, Warton, Southey, and Wordsworth, these were all men of mark in their day, whilst he who owns the laurels now eclipses all who came before him.

It is therefore somewhat remarkable that so little should hitherto have been written about the office of Poet Laureate, possessing as it does several features which are generally considered interesting. Its antiquity,

its close connection with Royalty and the great events of our history, the literary celebrity of many of its holders, and the curious privileges once held along with the title, salary, and butt of sack.

The odes it was once the custom to compose for the King's birthday, and New Year's day, were sung to music composed by the Court musician, in the great council chamber of St. James's Palace, before the King, Queen, and Court. These are no longer exacted, but they were regularly supplied by the Laureates from the time of Thomas Shadwell down to the year 1813, when on the death of Henry James Pye it was resolved to leave the odes at the poet's option.

It is perhaps to be regretted that no collection of the Laureate official odes and poems has ever been published. Their poetical merits are certainly not generally of a high class, but the historical facts they allude to might be of interest to the antiquary, and the philological student could in them trace back our language through many of its curious variations. Or, if we might take the complete works of our Laureates, both in prose and verse, since Chaucer's time, without reference to any other writers, we should have a tolerably comprehensive and complete history of the English language, poetry, drama, morals, politics, and religion, extending over more than five centuries.

A few of the official odes have been inserted, occasionally as examples of style, but more frequently as

illustrative of the poets' connection with the office, for it need scarcely be said that the aim here has been to deal more particularly with the history of the Laureates as Laureates, rather than as Poets; Colley Cibber's merits as a Poet might have been dismissed in one line, and that not a flattering one, if poetical criticism alone had been intended; but his wearing the bays, and the literary squabbles arising from his promotion, could not be so summarily passed over in any work purporting to treat of the Poets Laureate.

It is an admitted fact that, with a few exceptions, the Laureates have been surpassed as poets by their contemporaries, and we therefore miss from the list many men who would have honoured the office by their names. Shakespeare, Milton, Pope and Byron, as Laureates, would have far more than compensated for the loss of Ben Jonson, Davenant, Cibber and Southey, although these were by no means the dullest of the race.

Nahum Tate was by birth an Irishman; with that exception all the Laureates have been English.

The earlier holders of the office derived their chief fame from their dramatic works, many of them indeed, especially Ben Jonson, Davenant and C. Cibber, being directly interested in theatrical enterprises. The Drama then afforded a much quicker and more certain path to wealth and fame than the sale of poetry, readers of which were then far less numerous than the patrons of the Stage. These circumstances explain to a certain extent

the discrepancy existing between the value attached to the writings of some of the Laureates by contemporary critics, compared with the more discriminating decisions of posterity.

Thomas Shadwell, famous in his day as the author of many extremely popular comedies, was appointed to the post, to replace "glorious John Dryden," and the appointment was favourably received; now that it is more the fashion to read poetry, Dryden is greatly admired, whilst the merits of Shadwell as a dramatist are forgotten, only his wretched verses being occasionally referred to, as an excuse to pile ridicule and contempt on their unlucky author.

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Ben Jonson being the first Laureate appointed by Royal Letters Patent, with his name the more detailed sketches in this volume commence, yet the record would have been incomplete had it contained no reference to his predecessors, the Volunteer Laureates as they have been generally styled. These men were all eminent in their day, and most of them are still honoured by the lovers of our early literature. When, indeed, the works of Chaucer, Gower, and Spenser shall have sunk into oblivion, it may be safely conjectured that the English language itself will be a thing of the past.

Samuel Daniel (1562—1619), the last of these Volunteer Laureates, deserves to be better remembered than he is. He was the son of a music master, and having a taste for both music and poetry, he acquired consider

able renown in his time, was a favourite at Court, held several appointments under Elizabeth and James, and was the respected friend of the greatest literary men of the day. With Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Michael Drayton, he had more or less intimate relations, for he was concerned in the production of masques and plays, in which they also were interested. Daniel at length felt himself eclipsed by rising stars, and retired from the literary world, bidding it farewell in some lines affixed to his tragedy of Philotas, which are not destitute of pathos and manly dignity:—

"And I, although among the latter train,

And least of those that sung unto this land,
Have borne my part, though in an humble strain,
And pleased the gentler that did understand;
And never had my harmless pen at all

Distained with any loose immodesty,
Nor ever noted to be touched with gall,
To aggravate the worst man's infamy;
But still have done the fairest offices

To virtue and the time.”

Nor did he claim for his muse greater merit than it deserved; few amongst his successors have sinned less against modesty and good taste, than this poor old writer of the rough outspoken Elizabethan period.

Poetical inspiration is fitful and intermittent; he is the true genius who seizes the volatile spirit ere it evaporates; commencing that only which he feels he has the power to complete, whilst the inspiration lasts. Many passages of the greatest beauty are lost to the world,