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The immediate success of Pasquin attests, as we have said, the readiness of London audiences in 1736 to applaud an honest and humorous presentation of wicked Ministers, corrupt clergy, lawyers, and doctors, inane Laureates, and degrading public entertainments.
It was in the Apollo room, too, that the official court-day odes of the Poets Laureate were rehearsed, which explains the point of the following lines: "When Laureates make odes, do you ask of what sort? Do you ask if they're good or are evil? You may judge From the Devil they come to the Court, And go from the court to the Devil." But the Apollo room is not without its idyllic memory.
No poet has ever written more truly and finely about royalty, as witness the dedication to the Idylls of the King, which enshrines the memory of the Prince-Consort; or the beautiful dedication to the Queen, dated March 1851, which closes thus: 'It is perhaps natural, says a contemporary writer, 'for the laureates to be loyal, but there is no doubt that the sincere tributes which he paid to the Queen and to her consort contributed materially to the steadying of the foundation of the British throne.
Men have been diminished in more spacious times than these by becoming laureates; they cannot but be degraded by becoming nationalists in these abandoned hours. Genius, in the last generation, met a destructive force in the material world, almost as deadly and vindictive as that encountered by Copernicus.
Even Tallemant, writing of the decline of these reunions, says, "Mlle. De Scudery is more considered than ever." At sixty-four she received the first Prix D'Eloquence from the Academie Francaise, for an essay on Glory. This prize was founded by Balzac, and the subject was specified. Thus the long procession of laureates was led by a woman.
But although it has always numbered in its ranks many illustrious and devoted professors among whom it recognised, a little late, the founder of the young French school, César Franck and though the majority of artists who have made a name in French music have received its teaching, and the list of laureates of Rome who have come from its composition classes includes all the heads of the artistic movement to-day in all its diversity, and ranges from M. Massenet to M. Bruneau, and from M. Charpentier to M. Debussy in spite of all this, it is no secret that, since 1870, the official action with regard to the movement amounts to almost nothing; though we must at least do it justice, and say that it has not hindered it.
We had our several laureates; but believe me-and despise if you will although we had heard tell of Sir John Davies, I doubt if one in six of us had read a line of him. 'Ay, indeed, he caught me up, 'I have scarce read a line of any other. Having discovered him I had no need.
We are indebted to him for the glowing picture of a knight-errant of the sixteenth century, moving with the port of a swash-buckler across the field of vision, wherever cities were to be taken and heads cracked in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and, in the language of one of his laureates "To see bright honor sparkled all in gore."
But, alas, rhetoric soon triumphed over imagination, and in the absence of metrical restraint the ode grew declamatory, bombastic, and lowest stage of all, "official," the last refuge of laureates who felt obliged to produce something sonorous in honor of a royal birthday or wedding. This official ode persisted long after the pseudo-Pindaric flag was lowered and Cowley had become neglected.
No monarchs will honor you now, but rather despise! for the kings and queens of this age prefer financiers to Laureates! Now, wherever you wander, let me hear of your well- being and progress in contentment; when you write, address to our Dariel retreat, for though on my return from Mexico I shall probably visit Lemnos, my letters will always be forwarded. Adieu!" "Adieu!" and their eyes met.
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