THE LIQUOR-LOVING LAUREATES

from Dr Doran's Table Traits, with Something on Them (1854)

It is incontrovertible that, with the exception of two or three, all our laureates have loved a more pleasant distillation than that from bay-leaves. In the early days, the "versificatores regis," were rewarded, as all the minstrels in Teutonic ballads are, with a little money and a full bowl. The nightingales in kings' cages piped all the better for their cake being soaked in wine. From the time of the first patented laureate, Ben Jonson, the rule has borne much the same character, and permanent thirstiness seems generally to have been seated under the laurel. Thus, Ben himself was given to joviality, jolly company, deep drinking, and late hours. His affection for a particular sort of wine acquired for him the nick-name of the Canary-bird; and indeed succeeding laureates who, down to Pye, enjoyed the tierce of Canary, partly owe it to Ben. Charles I. added the wine to an increase of pay asked for by the bard; and the spontaneous generosity of one king became a rule for those that followed. The next laureate, Davenant, a vintner's son, was far more dissolute in his drinking, for which he did not compensate by being more excellent in his poetry. The third of the patented laureates, Dryden, if he loved convivial nights, loved to spend them as Jonson did, in "noble society." Speaking of the Roman poets of the Augustan age, he says :- "They imitated the best way of living, which was, to pursue an innocent and inoffensive pleasure; that which one of the ancients called 'eruditam voluptatem.' We have, like them, our genial nights, where our discourse is neither too serious nor too light, but always pleasant, and for the most part instructive ; the raillery neither too sharp upon the present, nor too censorious on the absent; and the cups only such as will raise the conversation of the night, without disturbing the business of the morrow." The genial nights, however, wore not always so delightfully Elysian and Eesthetic. When Rochester suspected Dryden of being the author of the "Essay on Satire," which was really written by Lord Mulgrave, and which was offensive to Rochester, the latter took a very unpoetical revenge. As Dryden was returning from his erudite voluptes at Wills', and was passing through Rose-street, Covent Garden, to his house in Gerrard-street, he was waylaid and severely beaten, by ruffians who were believed to be in the pay of Rochester. The conversation of that night certainly must have disturbed the business of the morrow! And next we come to hasty Shadwell, who may be summarily dismissed with the remark that he was addicted to sensual indulgence, and to any company that promised good wine, and plenty of it. Poor Nahum Tate, too, is described as 'a free and fuddling com- panion;' but the miserable man had gone through more fiery trials than genial nights. Of Rowe, the contrary may be said. He was the great diner-out of his day ; always vivacious, dashing, gay, good-humoured, and habitually generous, whether drunk or sober. He was but a poor poet, but he was succeeded by one who wrote worse and drank wore--Eusden, of whom Gray writes to Mason that he "was a person of great hopes in his youth, though at last he turned out a drunken parson." Cibber loved the bottle quite as intensely as Eusden did, and he was a gambler to boot; but there were some good points about Colley, although Pope has so bemauled him. Posterity has used Cibber as his eccentric daughter did when he went to her fish-stall to remonstrate with her against bringing disgrace upon his family by her adoption of such a course: the affectionate Charlotte caught up a stinking sole, and smacked her sire's face with it; but Colley wiped his cheek, went home, and got drunk to prove that he was a gentleman. With heavy Whitehead we first fall in with indisputable respectability. He sipped his port, a pensioner at Lord Jemey's table, and wrote classical tragedies, for which Iheartily forgive him, because they are deservedly forgotten. His successor, slovenly Warton, exulted over his college wine with the gobble of a turkey-cock; and then came Pye, with his pleasant conviviality and his warlike strains, which "roared like a sucking dove," and put to sleep the militia, which it was hoped they would have aroused. Pye was of the time of "Pindar, Pye, and Parvus Pybus ; " and it was during his tenure of office that the tierce of Cinary was discontinued, .and the 271. [pounds] substituted. With Southey, a dignity was given to the laureateship, which it had, perhaps, never before enjoyed; and the poetic mantle fell on worthy shoulders when it covered those of the gentle Wordsworth. Not that Wordsworth never was drunk. The bard of Rydal Mount was once in his life "full of the god; " but he was drunk with strong enthusiasm too, and the occasion excused, if it did not sanctify the deed. The story is well told by De Quincey, and it runs thus :- "For the first time in his life, Wordsworth became inebriated at Cambridge. It is but fair to add, that the first time was also the last time. But perhaps the strangest part of the story is the occasion of this drunkenness, which was the celebration of the first visit to the very rooms a tChrist College once occupied by Milton,-intoxication by way of homage to the most temperate of men, and homage ofrored by one who has turned out himself to the full as temperate. Every man, in the mean time, who is not a churl, must grant a privilege and charter of enthusiasm to such an occasion; and an older man than Wordswopth, at that era not fully nineteen, and a man even without a poet's blood in his veins, might have to forget his sobriety in such circumstances. Beside which, after all, I have heard from Wordsworth's own lips that he was not too far gone to attend chapel decorously during the very acme of his elevation !

De Quincey has told how pleasant, and cheerful, and conversational was the tea-time at Wordsworth's table; and there, no doubt, the poet was far more, so to speak, in his element than when in the neighbourhood of wine, whose aid was not needed by him to elevate his conversation. But Wordsworth, gentle as he was, had nothing in him of the squire of dames, whom he generally treated with as much indifference asthe present laureate, Tennison, was once said to feel for those very poetical little mortals, children. And here I end the record of a few table traits of the patented laureates, adding no more of the fourteenth and last, that is, the present vice-Apollo to the Queen, than that he has said of his own tastes and locality to enjoy them in, in Will Waterproofs Lyrical Monologue, made at the Cock,-