636 POETRY POEY by continental and also by English universi- ties. The French had royal poets, but no lau- reates. The title existed in Spain, but little is known of those who bore it. The early his- tory of the laureateship in England is tradi- tional. The common story is that Edward III. in 136V, emulating the crowning of Petrarch at Rome, granted the office to Chaucer, with a yearly pension of 100 marks and a tierce of Malvoisie wine. The legend probably arose out of an annuity of 20 marks granted by that monarch to his "valet Geoffrey Chaucer," with the controllership of the wool and petty wine revenues for the port of London, the duties of which he was required to perform in person. Henry Scogan is mentioned by Ben Jonson as the laureate of Henry IV. John Kay was court poet under Edward IV., and Andrew Bernard held the same office under Henry VII. and Henry VIII. John Skelton received from Oxford, and subsequently from Cambridge, the title of poet laureate; and Spenser is spoken of as the laureate of Queen Elizabeth, on the ground of his having re- ceived a pension of 10 a year when he pre- sented her the first books of the "Faerie Queen. 1 ' Up to this time the laureateship had not been established, nor can any certain trace of wine or wages be found. But the intro- duction into England from Italy of masques during the reign of Elizabeth rendered neces- sary the employment of poets, and in 1619 James I. secured the services of Ben Jonson by granting him by patent an annuity for life of 100 marks. Although not mentioned in the document as the laureate, he was doubt- less deemed such. In 1630 the laureateship was made a patent office in the gift of the lord chamberlain, the salary was increased from 100 marks to 100, and a tierce of Canary wine was added, which was commuted in the time of Southey for 27" a year. From that time there has been a regular succession of laureates. The following is a list : Ben Jonson 1630-1 637 William Davenant 163T-1668 John Dryden 16TO-16S3 Thomas Shadwell. 1689-1692 NahumTate 1693-1714 Nicholas Rowe. . . . 1714-1718 Lawrence Eusden . 1719-1 730 Colley Gibber .... 1730-1757 Wm. Whitehead. 1758-1785 Thomas Warton. 1785-1790 Henry James Pye 1790-1813 Eobert Southey . . 1813-1843 Wm. Wordsworth. 1843-1850 Alfred Tennyson. . 1850 As might be inferred from many of the names in this list, political considerations often con- trolled the appointment, and at length a strong feeling was raised in favor of its aboli- tion. After the final derangement of George III. in 1810, the performance of the annual odes was suspended, and subsequently discon- tinued. On the death of Pye the office was offered to Walter Scott, who declined it and Southey was appointed with the virtual con- cession, which has since become the rule, that he should only write when and what he chose. Wordsworth wrote nothing in return for the distinction, and Tennyson has written little. POETRY (Gr. TTOIEIV, to make), imaginative composition in metrical or highly fanciful lan- guage. In this work the history of poetry is treated in connection with the literature of the several nations of the world, and with the biography of individual poets. POEY. I. Felipe, a Cuban naturalist, of French descent, born in Havana in 1802. He studied law in Madrid, where he was implicated in a political conspiracy, and fled to Paris. There he published in 1828 La centurie des lepidop- teres, and helped to found the French ento- mological society. He returned to Havana after the revolution of 1830, was commissioned in 1837 to organize a museum of natural his- tory and became one of its directors, and was soon afterward appointed professor of natu- ral history in the university of Havana. In 1840 he published a school geography of the island of Cuba, and in 1842 a more compre- hensive work on the same subject and a Geografia universal. In 1864 he published Memorias sobre la Mstoria natural de la isla de Cuba (2 vols. 4to, Havana) ; the text is in Spanish, French, and Latin. In 1865 he com- menced a monthly periodical entitled Reper- torio fisico-natural de la isla de Cuba, in which he has described upward of 230 new species of fishes, as well as the ciguatera or jaundice caused by eating certain Cuban fishes. He has also published some remarkable poems. He is a member of the Smithsonian institution and a corresponding member of the French academy of sciences. II. Andres, a Cuban meteorologist, son of the preceding, born in Havana in 1827. About 1846 he edited a literary journal enti- tled El Colibm, but engaged in meteorologi- cal studies, and was for several years director of the physico-meteorological observatory of Havana, the chief object of which was the improvement of agriculture in Cuba. His principal works are : Des caracteres des eclairs en ~boule (Paris, 1855); Des tempetes electriques (1855); Tremblements de terre a Cuba de 1551 d 1855 (1855) ; Catalogue des tremblements de terre dans les Indes Occidentales (Versailles, 1858) ; Observations sur la comete Donati and Repartition geographique des meteores (Paris, 1858) ; Relation Jiistorique et theorie des images photo-electriques de la foudre observees depuis Van 360 de notre ere jusqu'en 1860 (I860) ; Travaux sur la meteorologie, la physique du globe en general, et sur la climatologie de Vtte de Cuba et des Antilles (1861) ; and Table chro- nologique de quatre cents cyclones qui ont sevi dans les Indes Occidentales et dans V Ocean Atlantique nord depuis 1493 jusqu'en 1855 (1862). Most of his works have been trans- lated into Spanish after having been published in French. In the " Report of the Smithsonian Institution" for 1870, he published a memoir proposing a new classification of clouds, which included only two primary types in place of the three of Howard. (See CLOUDS, vol. iv., p. 712.) He is a corresponding member of the French academy of sciences. Lately he has become an ardent partisan of Comte's positive philosophy, and in 1875 commenced
