Of course such matchless self-complacency defied assault.

Southey’s congratulatory odes appeared as often as public occasion seemed to demand them.  There were in rapid succession the “Ode to the Regent,” the “Carmen Triumphale,” the “Pilgrimage to Waterloo,” the “Vision of Judgment,” the “Carmen Nuptiale,” the “Ode on the Death of the Princess Charlotte.”  The “Quarterly” exalted them, one and all; the “Edinburgh” poured upon them volleys of keen but ineffectual ridicule.  At last the Laureate desisted.  The odes no longer appeared; and during the long and dark closing years of his life, the only production of the Laureate pen was the yearly signature to a receipt for one hundred pounds sterling, official salary.

Robert Southey died in March, 1843.  Sir Robert Peel, who had obliged Wordsworth the year before, by transferring the post in the excise, which he had so long held, to the poet’s son, and substituting a pension for its salary, testified further his respect for the Bard of Rydal by tendering him the laurel.  It was not to be refused.  Had the office been hampered with any demands upon the occupant for popular lyric, in celebration of notable events, Wordsworth was certainly the last man to place in it.  His frigid nature was incapable of that prompt enthusiasm, without which, poetry, especially poetry responsive to some strong emotion momentarily agitating the popular heart, is lifeless and worthless.  Fortunately, there were no such exactions.  The office had risen from its once low estate to be a dignified sinecure.  As such, Wordsworth filled it; and, dying, left it without one poetical evidence of having worn the wreath.

To him, in May, 1850, succeeded, who, as the most acceptable poet of the day, could alone rightly succeed, Alfred Tennyson, the actual Poet-Laureate.  Not without opposition.  There were those who endeavored to extinguish the office, and hang up the laurel forever,—­and to that end brought pregnant argument to bear upon government.  “The Times” was more than usually decided in favor of the policy of extinguishment.  Give the salary, it was urged, as a pension to some deserving writer of verse, whose necessities are exacting; but abolish a title degraded by association with names and uses so unworthy, as to confer shame, not honor, on the wearer.  The laurel is presumed to be granted to the ablest living English poet.  What vocation have the Tite Barnacles, red-tapists, vote-mongers, of Downing Street to discriminate and determine this supreme poetical excellence, in regard to which the nicest critics, or the most refined and appreciative reading public may reasonably differ among themselves as widely as the stars?  On the other hand, it was argued, that the laurel had, from its last two wearers, recovered its lost dignity.  They had lent it honor, which it could not fail to confer upon any survivor, however great his name.  If, then, the old odium had disappeared, why not retain the place