The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE " LONDON REVIEW" ON OUR LAUREATES.
—ln looking doVin the list of Poets Laureate, from
Chaucer to Tennyson, one is at a loss to conceive
on what principle of selection they were raised to
their office. It is true that some of the earlier
amongst them were not known by that precise epi-
thet, but they all held a post as king's versifiers,
and received marks of the royal favour. One, like
Chaucer at Woodstock, was lodged in a goodly
mansion assigned him by the Court, with a com-
fortable little pension of 20 marks, equalling £240
a year of our money. Another received, with his
salary, an annual of ruby wine fresh from the
royal cellars; and a third, though he never wore a
crown of bay leaves, was chosen, like Skelton,
from among the poeti laur'atti of the " Unyversite of
Oxenforde, ' and called in plain English " laureat
poete." Such was the phrase applied by Edward
IV- to Jrjnn Kaye, and by Chaucer to his great
contr:mporary Petrarch, whose crowning in the
Capitol at Rome was the talk of all Europe. Princes,
nobles, and senators, in the pomp and splendour of
mediaaval costume, had marched before him ;
patrician youths arrayed in green and scarlet flung
garlands of fragrant flowers on his path ; the chief
magistrate, one of the Colonna family, seated on a
throne with the laurel crown in his hand, listened
to the poet's discourse on Virgil, and then placed on
his brows the unfading diadem, of which the name
reminded the wearer of that Laura who had been
his inspiration and his theme. To-present to the
senator a sonnet in praise of Rome, to move in gor-
geous procession to the Vatican, and pay homage to
its august occupant, and to suspend the laurel
wreath before the shrine of St. Peter, wasthe natural
conclusion of this novel and striking pageant. Two
hundred and fifty years later, it would have been
repeated in honour of Tasso ; but just as he
had learned from Clement VIII. that this
high distinction was in store for him, he
departed hence to receive at other hands a
better and brighter crown. Rome, in those ages,
knew which of her sons was worthy of the laurel ;
and this is precisely what England does not seem
to have known till of late. During four centuries
it appears to have been purely accidental whether
the nation's poet should be a bright genius or a venal
scribbler. Chaucer, the soldier, the ambassador,
the romancer, the father of English poetry, was
succeeded by Scogan, Kaye, and Barnard, whose
names are now almost forgotten. John Skelton,
the " royal orator," was better known for his learn-
ing than his fancy, and, though a priest, he satirized
Wolsey and other over-fed churchmen of his time.
Edmund Spenser (informally indeed, but in a way
that seems to have been recognised) took his place,
richer with his " verses dipped in dew of Castalie"
—his " Shepherd's Calendar" and " Faery Queene"
—than with his 3,000 acres out of the forfeited
estate of the Earl of Desmond. Lord Chatham's
sister used often to say of " Faery Queene" that it
was the only thing her illustrious brother knew
accurately. If the lofty and cultivated Daniel had
not been made Laureate when Shakespeare was in
the zenith of his fame, he would have have formed
no unworthy link between Spenser and " rare Ben
Jonson." Jonson's career as Laureate began in the
year Shakespeare died ; and it must be granted that
" Catiline's Conspiracy" mid " Drink to me only
with thine Eyes" would alone suffice to vindicate
their author's claim to the post he held. But what
shall we say of his successor ? Did not Sir William
Davenant write tragedies that make one laugh and
make one cry ? Did he not pen his frivolous masks
while Milton composed " Comus" or dictated that
immortal epic which, with much difficulty, as Elijah
Fenton says, he succeeded in having licensed for
the press, and could sell the copy for no more than
£l5? Sir William Davenant fought bravely
in the royal cause, and returned from exile at
the Restoration to reap his reward, while Milton
died before he had received the whole of the paltry
price stipulated for " Paradise Lost." " Glorious
John" came next. But Dryden is not such a favo-
rite with us as with Haler° in the " Pirate." We
have no sympathy with one who celebrated the
praises of Cromwell, Charles 11., and James 11., by
turns, with equal fervour. Of his genius there can
be no doubt, and of his obscenity none either. It
was far less disgraceful to him to be beaten by the
hired ruffians of Lord Rochester, when returning
from his coffee-house in Covent-garden, than to be
dismissed from his office of Poet Laureate by
William of Orange. He would, no doubt, have
written birthday odes in his honour as readily as
for either of his predecessors, and would certainly
have produced much better ones than any Laureate
who succeeded him during a hundred and twenty
years. But his venality deserved retribution, and
found it. His £3OO a year took wings and fled, and
Shadwell, the butt of his satire, the hero of " Mac
Flecknoe," and the Og of " Absalom and Achito-
phel," wore the wreath of laurel that had been torn
from his brows. Shadwell, Dryden's enemy, was
soon succeeded by Nahum Tate, Dryden's friend.
But friend and foe were alike unworthy to stand in
his place. Tate had written parts of " Absalom
and Achitophel," which were evidently inferior to
the rest, though revised by the master-hand ; and
he has been well called one of those jackals that
hunt with the lions of literature. The poet's crown
next fell to Nicholas .Rowe. His tragedies are
tolerable, if any can be called so which' are mere
imitations of a classic and unnatural style. As to
Eusden, another Laureate in the time of George 1.,
and in the time, be it remarked, of Alexander
Pope, his name is now scarcely known.
He bequeathed his laurels to Colly Cibber, whose
chief qualifications for the task of poet consisted in his
writing prose comedies, managing a theatre well,
and publishing an amusing account of his own life,
with all its bustle and frivolity, stage anecdotes, and
graphic sketches of actors and actresses.
"Know, Eusden thirsts no more for sack or praise;
Ho sleeps among the dull of ancient days.
Thou, Gibber! thou his laurel shall support ;
Folly, my son, has still a friend at Court."
Kings, it was said, used to have both a fool and a
poet, but Cibber conveniently united the two offices
in one. The honour of the laureatship was fast
declining, and William Whitehead was not likely to
retrieve it. Pity that he had not a place in the
" Dunciad," where, by the side of Shadwell, he
might have " nodded the poppy on his brows !"
Thomas Warton just broke the fall of the laureates,
and enriched our literature with a valuable " His-
tory of English Poetry ;" but the line reached its
lowest degradation in Henry J. Pye. He was
laureate while, in the language of Byron, the last
hopes of deserted poetry slept with pious Cowper,
and not then only, but during the last ten years of
Cowper's sad but poetic life at Olney. Till 1813,
he disgraced our century ; and the meanest rhymer
in a poet's corner could ask with justice—

" Why should /faint when all with patience hear,
And Laureate Pye sings more than twice a year ?"

Sometimes he was called " Spartan Pye," on ac-
count of his translation of the Odes of the Spartan
Tyrtteus. They were intended principally to inspire
the militia with valour in the event of an invasion,
but ,had no more effect on military minds than the
sermon which a clergyman translated from St.
Chrysostom, and was surprised to find that the
congregation were not struck by its eloquence.
The experiment, however, was fairly tried. A
board of general officers agreed that the Odes should
be read aloud at Watley Common and at Barham
Downs by the adjutants at the head of five diffe-
rent regiments, each in its camp. Great results
were expected, but, before the reading was half
over, the front ranks and all the men within
verse-shot dropped their arms, and were found fast
asleep. Thus Spartan Pye lulled England to repose,
and, not content with translating Tyrtus, he also
rendered into his mother tongue a German tale,
which was a sort of " Bluebeard," full of diablerie
Tudesque, and induced Lady Diana Beauclerc to
illustrate the silly words of a silly subject with her
elegant pencil. " The pie began to open ; the birds
begen to sing," has been reversed in the case of this
maudlin minstrel. When Henry J. Pye had closed
his lips for ever, a better race of Laureates suc-
ceeded. Southey sang well, Wordsworth better,
Tennyson best of all. They have disdained to offer
to royalty periodical and fulsome birthday odds.
They have addressed the reigning prince when and
how they pleased, and not the Sovereign only, but
any member of the royal family who seemed to call
for a welcome, an epithalamium, or an epitaph.
One imperishable " book of song" was dedicated in
the sweetest verse to Victoria—the revered, the be-
loved—sixteen years ago, when the throstle called
wild March, and " the sunlit almond blossom" was
shaking all about her palace walls at Osborne. The
" idylls of the King" (in a subsequent edition to the
first) were inscribed to " the silent father of our
kings to be," and the " Welcome to Alexandra"
met the daughter of a long line of Danish princes
ere she touched our shores. England has now but
two great poets, and the Laureate is one of them.
His fame is ever increasing, for he combines the
precision of the correct school of Queen Anne with
• the fire and freedom of the Elizabethan poets.

We shall have no more Eusdens and Cibbers • the
Laureates henceforth will be chosen because nature'si
own hand has moulded them for the office ; and
when Tennyson shall resign his green and stainless
wreath, it will, we may be pretty sure, be worn by
one more resembling Chaucer and Spenser than
either Whitehead or Pye.

THE " ANGLO-AMERICAN TIMES."—The Ameri-
can papers bring us full reports of a speech
lately delivered before the Legislature of the State
of Georgia, by the late Viee-President of the
"Southern Confederacy." Although Mr. Stephens
was a leader in the Rebellion, there is little in his
speech which can be objectionable to Union men,
and very much that is admirable. If we should
criticise it, our chief objection would be rather on
account of what it omits than of what it contains ;
but we propose to refer now only to what it presents.
In surveying the field now, as the war ha.s left it,
there are two things in the way of a full restoration
of the Union in theory and in spirit ; and if these
two obstacles shall be removed, minor difficulties
will disappear. The first is the acceptance of the
Southern people of the result of the war, as finally
and for ever deciding the doctrine of State rights
against the theory that led to secession and rebel-
lion. The States are united, not during the plea-
sure of each, but for all time. This the war has
settled. Let the Southern people so consider it,
act upon this decision ; teach the principle to their
children, and thus learn the late secessionists to
regard the Union as the Northern people re-
gard it—permanent in its character and bene-
ficial in its relation to the several States and all the
people thereof. Thus the restoration of the Union
may be secured in fact, yielding as the immediate
result the establishment of harmonious relations,
which are essential as the safeguard of liberty and
to the material progress of the country. This we
understand to be the view taken of the situation by
Mr. Stephens, and his advice to the Southern
people is in accordance therewith. The Southern
people, since the close of the war, have
not shown a disposition to act in the spirit ad-
vised by the late Vice-President of the so-called
Southern Confederacy. They yielded to the war
power, it is true, so far as regards armed rebellion,
but they do not
deny that this was a necessity
which they do not cease to regret ; and raw of
their leaders at the South, with the organs of their
sympathisers at the North, argue that the principle
of secession has not been settled, and that they will
seek to accomplish by legislation what they tried
but failed to gain by the bayonet and bullet. It is
perfectly natural that the loyal people of the North
who sacrificed so much in putting down the rebel-
lion against the Government, should now hesitate
to restore to civil power men who were leaders in
or supporters of the rebellion, while they ask for a
restoration of their rights with a threat in their
mouth, and a bullying swagger in their gait. Let
the Southern people adopt Mr. Stephens' policy
in good faith, and show their good intentions by
their works, and they will find the Northern peo-
ple more than ready to meet them. We do not
speak at random when we say that there has been
no time since the war closed that the people of the
North have not been more charitably disposed toward
the Southern people than the latter have been toward
the former ; nor has there been any time that the North
has not been anxious to have the Union restored
upon a basis that would give to the South all
the rights that are sought or desired at the North,
only asking that the Southern people shall guaran-
tee the same obedience to the National Government
that is required of those who fought to sustain
it. In the second place, the disposition of the
Southern people toward the freedmen is a formid-
able obstacle in the way of a full restoration of the
Union. Slavery, as Mr. Stephens says, is abolished.
This act is irrevocable. Thus four millions of
people, held duribg all their lives in slavery, com-
pelled to grow up in ignorance, protected and sus-
tained by their owners as chattel property is pre-
tected and sustained, are thrown upon the country
a numerous but weak class,
aidlble to be persecuted
and destroyed if left to fall prey to the fury and
passion of those who hate them, because being once
slaves they are now free. This cannot be permitted.
The Government of the United States stands
pledged to protect the freedmen. If it should vio-
late this pledge it would deserve to die. It would,
certainly forfeit the confidence and respect 01
all humane people at home and abroad. It
is essential that the South conform to the require-
ments of the Government in regard to the freed-
men. How this may be done we cannot better
indicate than by quotingthe advice of Mr. STEPHENS.
He says :
" This duty of giving the new system a fair and just trial
will require of you, as legislators of the land, great changes
in our former laws in regard to this class of population:
Wise and humane provisions should be made for them. It
is not for me to go into detail. 'Suffice to say, on this 00-
erasion, that ample and full protection should be secured t°
them, so that they may stand equal before the law, in the
possession and enjoyment of all rights of persons, liberty,
and property. Many considerations claim this at you;
hands. Among these may be stated their fidelity in times
past. They cultivated your fields, ministered to your per"
sonal wants and comforts, nursed and reared your children-
and even in the hours of danger and peril they were, in thef
main, true to you and yours. To them we owe a debt o
gratitude, as well as acts of kindness. This should also
be done because they are poor, untutored, uninformed j
many of them helpless, liable to be imposed upon, and hee
it. Legislation should ever look to the protection of the
weak against the strong.
"But, above all, this protection should be secured, beai
cause it is right and just that it should be, upon geol.
principles. All governments, in their organic structiFe±
as well as in their administration, should have this lea
cbe
object in view ' • the good of the governed. Protection
and security to all, under its jurisdiction, should be
chief end of every government. It is a melancholy tru,,..-;
that while this should be the chief end of all governreencio
most of them are used only as instruments of power,
the agrandisement of the few at the expense of, and by t.„,":
oppression, of the many. Such are not our ideas of goo'
ment, never have been, and never should be.
ci,
"All obstacles, if there be any, should be rem°ye nf
which can possibly hinder or retard the improvements..ja
the blacks to the extent of their capacity. All proper.:s,
should be given to their own efforts. Channels of eaut'ita
tion should be opened up to them. Schools and the °en.
means of moral and intellectual training should bt,3,of
couraged among them. This is the dictate, not oi?9_,,
what is right and proper, and just in itself, but it le
_"'is
the promptings of the highest considerations of inte"uo,
It.is difficult to conceive a greater evil or curse than co
befall our country, stricken and distressed as it new
gs
than for so large a portion of its populatio.il
this class will quite probably constitute amongus,,,°°
after to be reared in ignorance, depravity, and vice.
as
We have grouped the above extracts here,
containing the essence of the advice of the speak
in regard to the treatment of freedmen. rrherna
in this a combination of statesmanship, humanity,
Christianity, supported by self-interest; and if
Southern people will adopt this advice, coining ",:rc,
to the standard laid down, it will result
the mutual advantage of whites and blacks, ac_it:
other rights, which may now be denied to the 'att,
will follow, as surely as success crowns the labour
of intelligent, faithful, and industrious people ever)::ci
where. Beyond any question, the adoption am,s..
faithful execution of Mr. Stephens' policy would re
move the second main obstacle in the way of restore"
tion, to which we refer, but until such a policLi';
adopted the way will not be clear. If, therefore, t„7,1
is delay in the work of reconstruction, or in the Da_ d
winding up of the consequences of the rebellion, fot
the Southern people suffer thereby, let thel3l4o
complain of the Northern people. Mr. Stlhas
i
has spoken from a Southern stand-point. ri„.eorth
pointed out as proper and just what the
TregheuilroeysalaspeoesspleenotifatlhienNtohrethwworilik
notof direfiste.orr;tltoti;
rially with Mr. STEPHENS. Will the people o'
South accept his policy ?

Nine months ago Pithole City, Pennsylvania,
consisted of two houses. Now it supports a newspaper
having a circulation of 3,000 copies, receives 50,000 lettero
monthly, and sustains 12

Births.
ATHOLE On the 25th inst., the Duchess of Athole, of fl
daughter.
EDEN—On the 24th inst., at Colgrave-place,
Hon. Mrs. Henley Eden, of a daughter. rirsle-
HOLMES—On the 26th inst„ at 15, Norfolk-terrace?
park, the wife of H.
W. Holmes, Esq., of a son. ~/L
WILLIAMSON—On the 25th inst., at the Law Sociey's -1 a
London, the wife of Edward W. Williamson, Esq"
daughter. Notts, the

Marriages. , Den,
CALDECOTT—WATSON-011 the 22d inst., at SO
Danger
Perth Frank Caldecott, Esq., Royal ArtillerY, Y°Wir-
son of C. M. CaldeceLt, E of Holbrook Grange; 4., 0.
wickshire, to Georgina youngest daughter of the 13'
Watson, Esq., of K ill'
~ e or. rot°
SALT—CnossLEY—On the 15th last ,at the Sciu3re,„- of
Congregational Church, Halifax, • Titus Salt, P-"" li-
Baildon Lodge, near Leeds, to Catherine, eldest daug
ter of J. Crossley, Esq., of Broomfield.

Deaths.
DIXON—On the 23d inst., Mr. G. W. Dixon, of 46A, ge°l'.
gate-street, and 20, Ely-place, Holborn, aged 46. gov.
EDWARDES—On the 23d inst. at at 22, Dover-street, the to
R. Edwarcles, H.B.M. Minister and Plenipotentiali
be
the Argentine Republic.
MADGE—On the 23d inst., at Norwich, Traverse SOU Of
Rev. T. Madge, of 20, Ilighbury-terrace, aged 42.
op
RIPLEY—On the 24th inst., at Heathbank, WallaseY,
Ripley, Esq., aged 74. stOtle'
STONE—On the 23d inst., at Fayersham, Richd. G.
Esq., aged 67.
TOWNSUEND—On the 21st inst., at 105, Marina,
Leonard's-on-Sea, the Lady Charles Townshend. 0
WELDER—On the 24th inst., at Lewisham, Capt. Cll3rie
Weller, late of the Trinity House, London, aged ,

London : Printed and Published by WILLIAM A.N 010
of No. 112, Strand, Painter, at TO2. Sus 01-lic,.
Strand, in the Preeinet of the SavoY .111 the `l°---
ues day, March 27, 1868.

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