ABSTRACT
If it be necessary, for the glory of the British Court, to have a Poet Laureat, we presume it is equally so, that he should be a man of genius, and that the emoluments of the office should be worthy of the munificence of the Sovereign. We recollect no living bard, who has more ability to confer honour on the bays, or less occasion to seek honour from princes, than Mr. Southey. But, we think some objections lie against the place itself, considered in its present degraded state, as being beneath the dignity of the court to offer to a man of transcendent intellect,—not to say whether it be not beneath the dignity of such a man to accept it. From the manner in which its duties have hitherto been performed, the office can confer on him who holds it but a small portion of credit, inferior even to its scanty emolument. To furnish laudatory odes, at certain seasons, appears to be a servile duty; yet surely the annals of this country, in an age so fruitful of great events as the present, might, twice a-year, supply themes, on which the noblest talents might be happily employed in the small compass of an ode. A hundred pounds and a butt of sack, were, we confess, monstrous overpayment for such annual strains of stupefying praise as Cibber, Whitehead, and Pye, were wont to pour into the ear of royalty, being after the rate of twenty shillings a line for pigmy lyrics. Brevity, indeed, was their principal merit; a merit of no ordinary size in dull poetry, which, like a humming-top, spins the longest when it sleeps; for, when the quality of poetry is indifferent, the quantity cannot be too small. Mr. Southey’s booksellers might not perhaps venture to purchase the copyright of his best verses at the royal price; yet, considered as being the bounty of a great monarch, which ought to reflect lustre on himself, and for such services as might be rendered by a poet of high order, the remuneration is mean. In the reign of James I, a hundred pounds a year were adequate to the support of one of his Majesty’s servants in ease and affluence, according to the style of those days; and a butt of sack, even in the present day, is quite as much wine, as any poet, accustomed to purer and more delightfully exhilarating 199draughts from Helicon, could well drink, yet probably far too little for ‘rare Ben Jonson,’ to whom this inspiring perquisite was first awarded. To continue the same stipend, from generation to generation, while the modes and expences of living are progressively changing and increasing, is to sink the office lower and lower in poverty, and consequently into disrepute, the inevitable attendant on splendid poverty. On a recent occasion, the Court has done only half a good deed,—it has conferred the laurel on a man unquestionably worthy to wear it; but to have done the whole, and to have done it well, it ought to have made the emolument equivalent to a hundred pounds in the days of Old Ben; and also, to have given the poet a carte blanche, to be filled up in respect both to time and subject, according to his own judgement. That no degrading conditions have been imposed on Mr. Southey, we have the evidence of his first Ode now before us, in which there is not a line of flattery to the great personage who at present exercises the sovereign authority, and to whom an expression of gratitude for the appointment, could neither have been unseasonable nor reprehensible. The poem is wholly national; and Mr. Southey has conferred, both on his Royal Patron and on himself, the highest honour, by coming out as the Poet Laureat of the British Isles rather than of Carlton House.
