Poet Laureate

“ The idea of poet laureate is not of English birth, but comes with other literary sentiments from Grecian days, the custom being to enliven the great musical contests by publicly crowning the successful poet. ”

“ At a time when profound learning existed side by side with an almost hopeless barbarism; any fiction that surrounded the individual with dignity, or challenged respect for his occupation, was more valid to withstand wrong, than the fitful vigilance of a prince, or the frail enactments of ill-executed laws. Hence originated the pomp and the splendour of the mediaeval laureations to which we shall have occasion presently to advert.
In England the title of poet-laureate was then never conferred, as is now the case, by royal appointment ”

“ The growth of the custom into dignity and permanence was through the universities. Each of the large classic institutions had the established degree of poet laureate bestowed upon those who graduated with honors from the courses in grammar, rhetoric and versification. It was a requisite for all graduates who presented themselves for this honorable degree, to write a hundred creditable Latin verses on the glory of the university—though sometimes another subject was assigned. ”

“ LAUREATE, adj. Crowned with leaves of the laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral. ”

“ Historical inaccuracies in a laureate ode are no very grievous transgressions; but this and other mistakes which he enumerates, call forth from the severe and accurate historian this characteristic censure. "The poet may deviate from the truth of history, but every deviation ought to be compensated by the superior beauties of fancy and fiction."
The preferment to the office of Laureate is an epoch in Whitehead's life. ”

“ We have ordered the said Pretender, Pseudo-Poet, or Phantom, utterly to vanish and evaporate out of this work: And to declare the said Throne of Poetry from henceforth to be abdicated and vacant, unless duly and lawfully supplied by the Laureate himself. And it is hereby enacted, that no other person do presume to fill the same. ”

“ Can anything be more presumptuous, than that an unknown writer—who surely has been to neither of our universities, or most certainly he would never have proposed to perpetrate such a gratuitous piece of effrontery—that a man who has not received a regular education should attempt that which would give pause to all the foremost of our English poets, from Chaucer to the Poet Laureate, poets, Mr. ”

“ Throughout this vast and pathetic array of Singers now silent, few have been honoured with the name Poet, and have not possessed a skill in words, a sympathy with beauty, a tenderness of feeling, or seriousness in reflection, which render their works, although never perhaps attaining that loftier and finer excellence here required,—better worth reading than much of what fills the scanty hours that most men spare for self-improvement, or for pleasure in any of its more elevated and permanent forms.—And if this be true of even mediocre poetry, for how much more are we indebted to the best! ”

“ For that power, which enables the Artist to conceive his subject with dignity, may be said to belong to general education; and is as much the Genius of a Poet, or the professor of any other liberal Art, or even a good critic in any of those arts, as of a Painter. ”

“ All was done that education could do for a genius which, among other qualities, “especially lacked fire and imagination,” and an ear for verse—sad defects these in a child of the Muses. Your training in all the mechanics and metaphysics of criticism might have made you exclaim, like Rasselas, “Enough! Thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be a Poet.” ”

“ And now we shall lay down our pen, and bid farewell for a season both to poet and to poetaster. If any of our young friends who are now setting up as ballad-writers upon their own account, have a spark of genius within them—and we do think that, with proper training, something might be made of the lads—let them study the distinctions which we have drawn above, and cultivate energy and simplicity as the cardinal virtues of composition. ”

“ We pay lip service to beauty. We study poetry, but we deal chiefly with poets—with their being born and their dying, with the shell of them, whereas the poet is only valuable for what beauty he brings us. ”

“ But meanwhile a young voice has suddenly been uplifted from a provincial town in England, crying, "Hear me—I also am a poet; I aspire, too, to prove myself worthy of being a teacher I aim at no middle flight, but commit myself at once to high, difficult, and daring song, and that, too, of varied kinds." ”

“ For every topic, whether it regards art, genius, or learning, if it has any relation to the subject we write upon, immediately presents itself and occurs to the all-observing eye of strict inquiry and critical observation; and at the same time, it is a necessary consequence, that the periods and expressions, all of them the choice of their kind, should undergo the polish of the pen; hence arises perfection as to the propriety and disposition of expressions, and style in writing, not in the cadence and manner that suits the poet, but the orator. ”

“ It used to be a favourite maxim with me, that the genius of a poet should be sacred to the glory of his country. How far this rule can be reduced to practice by an American bard, how far he can prudently observe it, and what success has crowned the efforts of those who, in their compositions, have shown that they have not been unmindful of it, is perhaps not worth the inquiry. ”

“ He is worthy, thus, of the name so often misapplied, of Poet—
i. e.
Maker. You see an original genius both in the beauties and the faults of the work. Its language, so simply strong and daring in its homeliness, its free and energetic motion, its fresh fearless touch, its fidelity to nature and to life, the quick succession and sharp brief poignancy of its pictures, its absence of elaboration, and carelessness about minute lights and shades—all combine to prove that the author has an eye, an imagination, and a purpose quite peculiar to himself. ”

“ The master was forgotten; but the poet remembered him, and named him, and wrote down his thoughts concerning the subject:
"How foolish it would be of the violin and the bow to boast of their achievements. And yet we men often commit this folly-the poet, the artist, the laborer in the domain of science, the general-we all do it. We are only the instruments which the Almighty uses: to Him alone be the honor! We have nothing of which we should be proud." ”

“ I suppose the lectures a Poetry Professor should give ought to be either the result of deep and wide scholarship in the matter, or else pieces of beautiful and ingenious rhetoric, such, for example, as our Slade Professor could give; and in both these things I should fail and do no credit either to the University or myself. It seems to me that the practice of any art rather narrows the artist in regard to the theory of it ”

“ When it is borne in mind that by far the greater portion of these lays were written for music, no small praise must be awarded to the poet, not only for the suitability of his themes to his purpose, but for the picturesqueness and fancy with which he has invested them under difficult conditions. ”

“ NOT on the lute, nor harp of many strings⁠
⁠Shall all men praise the Master of all song.
⁠Our life is brief, one saith, and art is long;
And skilled must be the laureates of kings.
Silent, O lips that utter foolish things! ”

“ Ernest. But may it not be that the poet is the best judge of poetry, and the painter of painting? Each art must appeal primarily to the artist who works in it. His judgment will surely be the most valuable? ”

“ And besides, if every man got a monument or an epitaph who felt quite sure he deserved it, would marble hold out, or Latin?
The fame of a great poet is made up of the sum of all the appreciations of many succeeding generations, each of which he touches at some one point. ”

“ There will always be those—and I may count myself among the number—who will turn with increasing love to the more restrained beauty of his earlier work, and who will seek rather in his water-colours than in his paintings in oil for the finer expression of those more individual qualities which marked the practice of his prime. But personal preference need count for little in the acknowledgment which all alike must freely render, that his genius has conferred a lasting glory upon the English school. ”

“ A Master, that disregards Recitative, probably does not understand the Words, and then, how can he ever instruct a Scholar in Expression, which is the Soul of vocal Performance, and without which it is impossible to sing well? Poor Gentlemen Masters who direct and instruct Beginners, without reflecting on the utter Destruction you bring on the Science, in undermining the principal Foundations of it! ”

“ After a long Exercise, and the Attainment of a true Intonation, of a Messa di Voce, of Shakes, of Divisions, and Recitative well expressed, if the Scholar perceives that his Master cannot teach him all the Perfection of Execution required in the more refined Art of singing the Airs, or if he cannot always be by his Side, then will he begin to be sensible of the Need he has of that Study, in which the best Singer in the World is still a Learner, and must be his own Master. ”

“ The conviction has grown upon me that no poet whom his nation, or the intellectual aristocracy of his people, recognize as a poet, should remain unenjoyed by us, whatever his language. Admiration is an art which we must learn. ”

“ I wonder what poetry or even painting will do, if they shall rise to such a state in this country that we shall find our masters of literature holding audience with this degree of interest like Fort, or as did all the great masters of literature in Paris, hold forth in the name of art, a divine Tuesday set apart for the admirable worship of poetry, or of things esthetic. ”

“ Remember that the man who can compose a book that shall live, or enlarge the bounds of human knowledge, or make a discovery in science, or produce a valuable invention, is as great as the successful statesman or warrior.
Though I refrain from dwelling upon poetry, its importance is not forgotten by us. However successful our training may be in other subjects, it is beyond our power to train you to be poets. But we never cease to set before you the best examples of English poetry: and, fortunately, the British nation is as great in poetry as it is in sterner subjects. ”

“ The Satires of Hall exhibit a very minute and curious picture of the literature and manners, the follies and vices of his times, and numerous quotations in the course of our work will amply prove the wit, the sagacity, and the elegance of his Muse. Poetry was the occupation merely of his youth, the vigour and decline of his days being employed in the composition of professional works, calculated, by their piety, eloquence, and originality, to promote, in the most powerful manner, the best interests of morality and religion. ”

“ But in acknowledging that these writers have received from the public a full measure of credit for such genius, ingenuity, or perseverance as each may have displayed, I feel that there is still wanting to them a just appreciation of the excellence of their calling, and a general understanding of the high nature of the work which they perform.
By the common consent of all mankind who have read, poetry takes the highest place in literature. ”

“ Saturated with contemporary literature, yet alive to the influences of a wider life, the student who is also an artist turns to a great movement, and with the touch of genius fixes the true impression of its soul in poetry, on canvas, or in prose. ”

“ So I just wrote it down, and she criticised it, and copied it out for me, and it got the medal! The Master says it’s brutal and rugged and everything that a poem ought not to be, but that there’s vision in it—whatever he may mean by that. ”

“ Being of refined and elegant tastes, and singularly generous disposition, she associated herself with young aspirants for fame in poetry, painting, and sculpture, and to the utmost of her power endeavoured to procure for them public notice and patronage. ”

“ There is one form of art-study, and that, perhaps, the highest, which is open to all, even to the humblest student, and the most elementary school, and that is, the study of poetry. It is a prime element in any conception of a liberal education, which shall take as its chief instrument of language-training the mother-tongue, that the real study of English poetry will take the place of the pretended study of classical poetry. ”

“ So many are the Qualifications, as well natural as acquir'd, that are essentially requisite to the making of a good Poet, that 'tis in vain for any Man to aim at a great Reputation on account of his Poetical Performances, by barely following the Rules of others, and reducing their Speculations into Practice. ”

“ The Professor had scarcely begun to write verse before [Pg 93] he found himself victor in a prize poetry contest which had enlisted the talent of all the best poets of America. He often tells his students of the intoxication of that evening when he encircled the dim vaulted corridors of the college library, while his excited brain beat out the golden couplets of the now celebrated “Ganymede.” The success of this undergraduate stripling fell like a thunderbolt upon the literary world. Already consecrated to the scholar’s career, he found fallen upon him the miracle of the creative artist. ”

“ It should be one of the considerations that weigh in choosing the material for his literary training even throughout his college experience, in order that his ear for musical speech may grow ever more subtle, more responsive to the delicate and noble cadences of poetry and of beautiful prose. Beautiful and musical speech is the crowning quality of literature, and the final note of distinction in style, and no amount of originality in image or figure, no degree of delicate fitness in word or phrase, no perfection of skill in logical coherence and arrangement, should persuade us to forgo it. ”