“The dry-tongued laurel’s pattering talk."[21]

Howbeit, late may he have call for another war-song!

With the name of Tennyson we reach the term of our Laureate calendar.  Long ages and much perilously dry research must he traverse who shall enlarge these outlines to the worthier proportions of history.  Yet will the labor not be wholly barren.  It will bring him in contact with all the famous of letters and poetry; he will fight over again numberless quarrels of authors; he will soar in boundless Pindaric flights, or sink, sooth to say, in unfathomed deeps of bathos.  With one moral he will be profoundly impressed:  Of all the more splendid results of genius which adorn our language and literature,—­for the literature of the English language is ours,—­not one owes its existence to the laurel; not one can be directly or indirectly traced to royal encouragement, or the stimulus of salary or stipend.  The laurel, though ever green, and throwing out blossoms now and then of notable promise, has borne no fruit.  We might strike from the language all that is ascribable solely to the honor and emolument of this office, without inflicting a serious loss upon letters.  The masques of Jonson would be regretted; a few lines of Tennyson would be missed.  For the rest, we might readily console ourselves.  It may certainly be urged, that the laurel was designed rather as a reward than as a provocative of merit; but the allegation has become true only within the last half-century.  Antecedently to Southey, it was the consideration for which return in poetry was demanded,—­in the first instance, a return in dramatic poetry, and then in the formal lyric.  It was put forth as the stimulus to works good in their several kinds, and it may be justly complained of for never having provoked any good works.  To represent it as a reward commensurate with the merits of Wordsworth and Tennyson, or even of Southey, is to rate three first-class names in modern poetry on a level with the names of those third-rate “poetillos” who, during the eighteenth century, obtained the same reward for two intolerable effusions yearly.  Upon the whole, therefore, we incline to the opinion that the laurel can no longer confer honor or profit upon literature.  Sack is palatable, and a hundred pounds are eminently useful; but the arbitrary judgments of queens and courtiers upon poetical issues are neither useful nor palatable.  The world may, in fact, contrive to content itself, should King Alfred prove the last of the Laureates.

[Footnote 1:  Schol.  Vet. ad Nem.  Od. 5.]

[Footnote 2:  Commentators agree, we believe, that there was an error as to the sum.  But we tell the story as we find it.]

[Footnote 3:  DRYDEN, Epistle to Wm. Congreve, 1693.]

[Footnote 4:  The Threnodia Augustalis, 1685, where the eulogy is equitably distributed between the dead Charles and the living James.]