THE LAUREATESHIP. Nk TE do not believe that the " current
of opinion " now said to be running against the continuance of the Laureateship has any depth, and feel certain that, even if it had, the abolition of the office would be a grave mistake. The mass of the people, unfortunately, care nothing about the matter, and the cultivated would instinctively regret an institution which added something to the picturesque- ness and variety, if not to the dignity, of the national life. They are not, when they speak sincerely, so anxious for the extinction of everything that helps to decorate our rather humdrum mode of corporate existence. The argu- ments for the abolition are singularly feeble, and some of them, we fancy, not quite sincere,—that is, they are prompted by distaste for Monarchical institutions rather than dislike of the Laureateship itself. They resolve them- selves generally into a statement that the office is an " anachronism," that it was intended to add lustre to the Court, and that to employ a poet iu any such function is to put Apollo into livery, and degrade the Muses into Maids of Honour. All that is very artificial. Every national office not ecclesiastical was originally a Court office, and a poet is no more degraded by a Sovereign's recognition than a great historian like Macaulay is degraded by a peerage, or a great physicist like Newton by a post intended to enable him to pursue his researches undisturbed by care. No attendance is now required of the Laureate, and no servi- tude, nor is he expected to exercise his art against his will, either for the laudation of the Sovereign, or the exaltation of the ceremonials she may from time to time be called on to perform. He is left free to do what to him seems fitting, or what the impulse within him, which is usually to set the national voice to music, may compel him to do. In what way was Tennyson degraded or fettered by his " official " position, even though he did sing of the " bride of the heir of the Kings of the Sea ; " or even, as in the ode on the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh, tried, out of a poet's courtesy, to express a welcome which, in himself, as in the people, was, perhaps, a little factitious ? He remained as independent as before, honouring the Throne by his instinctive favour for it, rather than honoured by its very unsubstantial favour for himself. It can hardly be an evil, even if we considered the Laureateship a Court office, that the Court, while it exists, should honour Literature as well as statesmanship or policy ; and what else does the Court do in filling up an office which signifies that the Queen and her advisers con- sider a special man first among the poets of his age ? If such selection really degrades its object—and many of the remarks now current mean that and nothing else—then, indeed, it is time for the Monarchy to pass away. The Laureateship, we contend, is now a national office, and that once conceded, the reasons against abolition are very strong.
There is no other way, or at least no other way sanc- tioned by ancient usage, in which the nation can recognise greatness in Literature, can crown one who stands outside political strife, and apart from the executive service, and declare that it honours him as highly as statesmen or sol- diers, and expects from him service to thought which may b, as greatly useful as service in the Cabinet or the field. This is the one thing we as a nation do to recognise the claim, the dignity, the utility, if you will, of poets among the workers of the world. We do not acknowledge vic- tories of pure mind, except in this laurel crown ; and to deprive ourselves voluntarily of the power of acknowledging them, is to lower the very tone of the State organisation, to materialise it even more than has been already done. The effect of this materialisation is perceived in some departments of life, and thoughtful men are never tired of demanding that the State should do more for Art, and Science, and Literature than it does ; but why, then, abolish, as against the highest of the Arts, the purest, loftiest, and least rewarded form of Literature, the one honour which, through an historical accident, it is in harmony with pre- cedent and custom for the representatives of the nation to bestow ? It is surely one of the happinesses of this country that, when it has satisfied itself of the existence of a true poet in its midst, it can bestow on him a rank which is absolutely separate, having neither analogy nor relation with any other ; which is visible and yet impalpable, and arranged with such curious accidental felicity, that it rises in dignity with the merit of its possessor. Wordsworth. and Tennyson lifted the Laureateship, until something of their rank in the world of thought clings to the title, an& it is once more an object of which no ambition, however lofty, or however removed from that of ordinary men. would be ashamed. It seems to us futile to destroy, in the interests of poetry as we are told, that of which Words- worth and Tennyson solely as poets were proud. But, then, we have no successor for Tennyson ; and even. if the laurel crown degrades no man, it may be degraded' by an unworthy wearer, or even by a wearer who, though not unworthy, offers too great a contrast to his immediate predecessor ? That is a good argument, if it be wholly true, for suspending the appointment for a time. Nor are we disinclined to concede that, if it were possible,_ the best way of ensuring to the office its highest dignity would be to fill it only when recognition was per- fect, when a demand rose up from the nation that,. the poet being evidently there, the wreath which• acknowledges his presence should be formally bestowed. That would be for the poet an honour indeed, election- by a kind of spiritual acclaim, for the office a new source of dignity, and for the people an intellectual excite- ment of the highest value. But, then, is it possible in a country like this, and a generation like ours ? Would not the office, once left unfilled, die of desuetude, so that, when the poet appeared, the tradition of the laurel would have been lost, and he would be too ashamed to ask, the people too shy to demand, its revival for his sake ? We fear that would be the result of suspension, more especially as each revival, involving as it would some appropriation of a small accumulated fund, might demand a Parliamentary vote. If we could hope, indeed, with any certainty, for a poet so great that the cultured felt restless until his greatness had been acknowledged by the State ; or if we could hope that the multitude would ever so care for the highest poetry that their roar of recognition and welcome would bear down every obstacle, and compel the grant of the crown, then we should pronounce intermittent election the positively ideal method. But the world being what it is, we fear that it would not be safe to depart from the routine, or to say that we can dispense with a regular acknowledgment thatwe have among us a worthy poet. Nor would it be quite true either. We should be sorry to see Mr. Swinburne chosen, because we expect from him little further except melodious sound, and because we think his election would' give new vogue to the sickly eroticisms with which, in his earlier career, he outraged canons that it is essential to maintain ; but no man who understands poetry at all can• doubt that he has produced work of the highest class, and that in " Atalanta in Calydon " he reached a level which placed him on an equality with all but the very greatest names in Literature. We could not say quite that of Mr._ William Morris ; but only a poet of great calibre could have produced " The Earthly Paradise," or, in many others of his works, have been so clearly the representative man of a whole class of thoughts, the thoughts which seem to penetrate, though, oddly enough, they in no way rule, the life of the end of this great century. Mr. Morris, we doubt not, would, from a foolish pride of consistency, reject the office ; but we will not admit, for one moment, that it should not be offered him on account of any opinion, political or religious. Coleridge was Republican once; and who in our day would dream of refusing the laurel-crown to Shelley or Matthew Arnold ? And, perhaps, we are all asking too much. Every generation cannot have a Tennyson, but there never was a generation so full of poets possessed of the true gift alike in thought and in melody, as our own. There are at least twenty men alive who in the last century would have been considered great poets, and who a few years before that would have been loaded with honours, and sinecures, and public adulation. They differ in rank, of course ; but if at one end we find Mr. Lewis Morris, who, popular as he is, seems to us frequently to sink to the rank of a melodious Tupper, there are at the other end several who fall but little short of proving their right to be classed among the immortals. We are not quite sure whether Mr. William Watson has fallen short of it,—whether any critic who reads the magnifi- cent ode to Tennyson he published yesterday in the Illustrated London News, would deny him that indefinable distinction which marks out the poet who has the divine gift, from the poet who has only faculty; but he has done too little work, and has not reached the full recognition which would make a Minister, in selecting him, seem not overbold. He must wait ; though we do not hesitate to say that, of all the hundred strophes in his honour, Tennyson, if he hears them, is content with only this ; or that these few lines, no better than the remainder of the song, indicate to all who understand the possibility that a new master has arrived :- " For lo ! creation's self is one great choir,
And what is nature's order but the rhyme Whereto the worlds keep time, And all things move with all things from their prime ? Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre ? In far retreats of elemental mind Obscurely comes and goes The imperative breath of song, that as the wind Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows.
Demand of lilies wherefore they are white, Extort her crimson secret from the rose, But ask not of the Muse that she disclose The meaning of the riddle of her might : Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite, Save the enigma of herself, she knows. The master could not tell, with all his lore, Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped : Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I, he said ;— AIL, rather as the imperial nightingale, That held in trance the ancient Attic shore, And charms the ages with the notes that o'er All woodland chants immortally prevail ! And now, from our vain plaudits greatly fled, He with diviner silence dwells instead, And on no earthly sea with transient roar, Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail, But far beyond our vision and our hail Is heard for ever and is seen no more."
Still, there are too many to choose from,—all too truly poets, whatever their rank in the fraternity, to allow Mr. Gladstone, in pure despair, to lock up the laurel in the Treasury, and proclaim that in the last decade of a most poetic century no one is worthy to receive the prize.
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