Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/254

240 Willoughby de Broke. At Rowe's death, December 1718, Eusden was appointed his successor. The Duke of Newcastle was Lord Chamberlain at the time. The "versifier" had won the favour of that nobleman, by a poem addressed to him on his marriage with Lady Henrietta Godolphin. He had, however, other claims to the office of "the birthday fibber," for, besides propitiating the Lord Chamberlain by his far-fetched flatteries of him and his bride, he had published a poetical epistle to Mr. Addison, on the accession of the King to the throne. It is a tedious panegyric on George II. That monarch, he tells us, was, as a child, marvellously precocious; as a man, glorious from his heroic exploits. The banks of the Rhine are said to echo his praises. He had given names to mountains by his warlike deeds. The eulogy terminates with this sublime couplet:

He had also, in 1717, followed this up with three poems of a similar character. The first, "Sacred to the Memory of the Late King," is an apotheosis of George I. The second, another laudation of George II., and as full of fulsome fustian as the former one. Take, for example, the four following lines:

The third is to the Queen, and teems with servile adulation and tiresome triplets.

His appointment has very justly filled with indignation contemporaneous and succeeding writers. It is asserted by some, that no better man would accept office. More correctly is it stated by others that he owed his