odes which still adorn or disgrace the birthdays of our British Kings." In this composition, the poet attempts to trace the lineage of the House of Brunswick, and in doing so, Othbert is said to have dwelt in the Italian plain, and in his migration to have crossed the Julian Hills; the real state of the case being that he lived among the mountains of Tuscany, and afterwards passed over the Rhætian Alps. Historical inaccuracies in a laureate ode are no very grievous transgressions; but this and other mistakes which he enumerates, call forth from the severe and accurate historian this characteristic censure. "The poet may deviate from the truth of history, but every deviation ought to be compensated by the superior beauties of fancy and fiction."
The preferment to the office of Laureate is an epoch in Whitehead's life. From that moment he was fiercely assailed. On his appointment he received some congratulations, and among them from his friend Cambridge, who prophesies that he will be assailed, because of his elevation:
"Tis so, though we're surpris'd to hear it,
The Laurel is bestowed on merit.
How hush'd is every envious voice,
Confounded by so just a choice,
Though by prescriptive right prepar'd
To libel the selected bard."
We find that in a poem, called "Johnson's Laurel on the Contests of the Poets, London, 1785," the year of Whitehead's death, he is dismissed in one contemptuous and contemptible couplet—Mason, Hayley, Pratt, are described:
"Next Whitehead came, his worth a pinch of snuff,
But for a Laureate he was good enough."
His reputation did not suffer from some of the first attacks made on it, and he produced, in 1762, "The School for Lovers," a comedy, in five acts, which was
