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Chorley. I think Leigh Hunt should have the Laureateship. He has condescended to wish for it, and has 'worn his singing clothes' longer than most of his contemporaries, deserving the price of long as well as noble service. Whoever has it will be, of course, exempted from Court lays; and the distinction of the title and pension should remain for Spenser's sake, if not for Wordsworth's.
Next morning a letter arrived offering him the Laureateship. One of the first poems Tennyson wrote as laureate was his Ode on the Death of Wellington. Few people liked it at the time, but now it has taken its place among our fine poems, and many of its lines are familiar household words. Of Tennyson's many beautiful short poems there is no room here to tell.
He does not seem to have been much fascinated with the first gentleman of Europe, whom at no distant date he assailed in the terrible "Avatar," and left the laureateship to Mr. Southey.
New editions of his books were at once in demand; while few readers had ever heard of Mr Browning, already his friend, and already author of Men and Women. The Laureateship brought the poet acquainted with the Queen, who was to be his debtor in later days for encouragement and consolation.
"A woful cry To Sir Robert Pye," before some small instalment of long arrearages could be procured. We now arrive at the true era of the Laureateship. Charles, in 1630, became ambitious to signalize his reign by some fitting tribute to literature. A petition from Ben Jonson pointed out the way.
It is not quite pleasant to think that the well-merited but comparatively accidental distinction of the Laureateship perhaps did more even for Tennyson in this respect than the intrinsic value of his work.
The Athenaeum, in the course of a laudatory review, observed that 'Lady Morgan had lived through the love, admiration, and malignity of three generations of men, and was, in short, a literary Ninon, who seemed as brisk and captivating in the year 1859 as when George was Prince, and the author of "Kate Kearney" divided the laureateship of society and song with Tom Moore.
He had been appointed poet laureate in 1670, but the Revolution of 1688, which drove James from the throne, caused Dryden to lose the laureateship. He would neither take the oath of fealty to the new government nor change his religion. In spite of adversity and the loss of an income almost sufficient to support him, he remained a Catholic for the rest of his life and reared his sons in that faith.
Many explanations of the phenomenon of a true poet securing the popular suffrages have been offered, one of them being his acceptance of the Laureateship. But Wordsworth, a great poet, also accepted it; and he never was and never will be popular.
The year 1850 was perhaps the most eventful in his life, for in it took place his marriage which, as he said, "brought the peace of God into his life," his succession to the Laureateship on the death of Wordsworth, and the publication of his greatest poem, In Memoriam. In 1852 appeared his noble Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington; and two years later The Charge of the Light Brigade.
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