like questions are of so material concern to the matter we have in hand, that we may fairly stand amazed that they have thus far escaped the exploration of archaeologists. It is not for us to busy ourselves with other men's affairs. Time and patience shall develope profounder mysteries than these. Let us only succeed in delineating in brief monograph the outlines of a natural history of the British Laurel,--Laurea nobilis, sempervirens, florida,--and in posting here and there, as we go, a few landmarks that shall facilitate the surveys of investigators yet unborn, and this our modest enterprise shall be happily fulfilled.
One portion of it presents no serious difficulty. There is an uninterrupted canon of the Laureates running as far back as the reign of James I. Anterior, however, to that epoch, the catalogue fades away in undistinguishable darkness. Names are there of undoubted splendor, a splendor, indeed, far more glowing than that of any subsequent monarch of the bays; but the legal title to the garland falls so far short of satisfactory demonstration, as to oblige us to dismiss the first seven Laureates with a dash of that ruthless criticism with which Niebuhr, the regicide, dispatched the seven kings of Rome. To mark clearly the bounds between the mythical and the indubitable, a glance at the following brief of the Laureate fasti will greatly assist us, speeding us forward at once to the substance of our story.
I. The MYTHICAL PERIOD, extending from the supposititious coronation
of Laureate CHAUCER, in temp. Edv. III., 1367, to that of
Laureate JONSON, in temp. Caroli I. To this period belong,
GEOFFREY CHAUCER, 1367-1400 JOHN SCOGAN, 1400-1413 JOHN KAY, 1465- ANDREW BERNARD, 1486- JOHN SKELTON, 1509-1529 EDMUND SPENSER, 1590-1599 SAMUEL DANIEL,
MICHAEL DRAYTON,
BEN JONSON,1600-1630
II. The DRAMATIC, extending from the latter event to the demise of Laureate SHADWELL, in temp. Gulielmi III., 1692. Here we have
BEN JONSON, 1630-1637 WILL DAVENANT, 1637-1668 JOHN DRYDEN, 1670-1689 THOMAS SHADWELL, 1689-1692
III. The LYRIC, from the reign of Laureate TATE, 1693, to the demise of Laureate PYE, 1813:--
NAHUM TATE, 1693-1714 NICHOLAS ROWE, 1714-1718 LAURENCE EUSDEN, 1719-1730 COLLEY CIBBER, 1730-1757 WILLIAM WHITEHEAD, 1758-1785 THOMAS WARTON, 1785-1790 HENRY JAMES PYE, 1790-1813
IV. The VOLUNTARY, from the accession of Laureate SOUTHEY, 1813, to
the present day:--
ROBERT SOUTHEY, 1813-1843 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1843-1850 ALFRED TENNYSON, 1850-
Have no faith in those followers of vain traditions who assert the existence of the Laureate office as early as the thirteenth century, attached to the court of Henry III. Poets there were before Chaucer,--vixere fortes ante Agamemnona,--but search Rymer from cord to clasp and you shall find no documentary evidence of any one of them wearing the leaf or receiving the stipend distinctive of the place. Morbid credulity can go no farther back than to the "Father of English Poetry":--
"That renounced Poet,
Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,
On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled":<a href="#1.1">[1]</a>
"Him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold;
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife":<a href="#1.2">[2]</a>
"That noble Chaucer, in those former times,
Who first enriched our English with his rhymes,
