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 Tennyson has infused new life and meaning into an office which had fallen into sad disrepute through the feeble inanities of Cibber, Whitehead, and Pye, and the turncoat servility of Southey. To Wordsworth, who had worn the laurel as an octogenarian for the short term of seven years, it had merely been, save on one occasion only, an honourable sinecure, though his name had in some degree helped to rescue the office from contempt. But Tennyson has not made the post a sinecure in his case. While eschewing Birthday Odes, and the like, he has, as we shall see, on various national occasions, produced a series of noble patriotic poems, in his capacity of Laureate, which have given a new significance to the office; while the spectacle of a Court leading a beautiful and pure family life, and setting a bright example to all the families of the nation, has given him opportunity for exercising it without suspicion of adulation or insincerity.

In March, 1851, appeared the seventh edition of the "Poems," with an address "To the Queen," from which in subsequent editions, the stanza relating to the Crystal Palace was removed: