Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/29

Rh art of versifying ought to be held in greater honour than the capacity to rule.

"A prince," resumes the excited Abbé, "who could think and express himself after this fashion, was he under any necessity to have recourse to the laurel, to assure immortality to a poet he judged worthy of it? And, on the other hand, the signal favours the generality of our kings, especially since Francis I., have heaped upon those who cultivated the Muses; the highest dignities in church and state, which often become their recompense, inspires them with an indifference to a crown, which was granted to poets in other countries, only because the donors had usually nothing better to give them." Oh, incomparable land, in which a sonnet or a satire is repaid with archbishoprics and dukedoms! Well may the Abbé exclaim: "It is not surprising, we have had many poets amongst us, who have exulted in the title of Poet to the King; whilst we have had no one who has taken that of Poet-Laureate!"

Chaucer obtained from King Edward III. the grant of a pitcher of wine, charged on the port of London, to be received daily during his life. This was commuted by Richard II. into an annual payment of twenty marks; but it does not appear from the letters patent, that the allowance was in acknowledgment of the poetical merit of the recipient. On his return from abroad, where he had probably made the acquaintance of Petrarch, he styled himself, Poet-Laureate; but the title was probably nothing more than a poetical assumption; as Skelton, writing of Gower, Chaucer and Lydgate, winds up his description with the line: