POET LAUREATE 



4719 



POETRY 



praise of Poe's work. Poe defined poetry not 

 as truth or as passion, but as music, and in this 

 music of words some of his own poems are un- 

 rivaled. The Raven, The Bells, Annabel Lee 

 and Vlalume show his power at its height. By 

 reason, therefore, of this handful of short poems 

 he ranks among the truest poets America has 

 produced. Though Poe's greatest fame 

 on his poems, he is best known in Europe 

 for his tales, Ligeia, William Wilson, The Gold 

 The Purloined Letter, The Fall of the 

 <e of Usher, and others, which lose little 

 in translation and are unaffected by time or 

 I -I. ice. His realms of fancy are completely re- 

 moved from the real world of humanity, and 

 are consequently as real in one land or century 

 as in another. Horror, ingenuity and action he 

 handled with consummate skill, but had no 

 power of character drawing. In his rather lim- 

 it, d sphere, however, his unique genius makes 

 him a lasting world figure, and in his own coun- 

 try candid judgment is recognizing his right to 

 a place among great writers, while admitting 

 that his lack of a true, passionate inspiration 

 prevents his ranking as one of the very great- 

 est. A.MC c. 



Consult Woodberry's Edgar Allan Poe; Leigh's 

 Edgar Allan Poe, the Man, the Master, and the 

 Martyr. 



POET LAUREATE, law' re ate, a title con- 

 d by the Crown upon an English poet. 

 Among the ancient Greeks it was customary to 

 n with a wreath a poet who was successful 

 in a contest, and from the laurel of which the 

 wreath was composed has come the word laun- 

 Originally the poet laureate had as a spe- 

 cific duty the writing of odes on important na- 

 tional occasions, but in late years this has by 

 no means been rigidly required. Tennyson, 

 however, wrote a number of his best-known 

 poems for state occasions. The laureate is by 

 tradition a member of the royal household ; the 

 sum received by him has varied at different 

 -*. some of the earlier appointees having re- 

 el aa much as 300 ($1,500) a year, while 

 compensation to Tennyson was but 100 

 (1500). Ben Jonson was the first poet for- 

 ly appointed laureate by the Crown, but 

 tin poets before his time really performed 

 -s and were shown the honors which 

 r belonged to the office. The complete list, 

 I three "honorary" laureates, follows: 



NAME BORN APPOINTED DIED 



Geoffrey Chaucer 1340? 1368 1400 



i Oowor 1325? 1400 1408 

 v Scrogan, P. L. to 



1361? ? 1407 



NAME 



John Kay. P. L. to Ed- 

 ward IV 



Andrew Bernard, P. L. to 

 Henry VII and Henry 

 VIII 



John Skelton 



Richard Edwards 



Edmund Spenser 



Samuel Daniel 



Ben Jonson 



Sir William Davenant 



John Dryden 



Thomas Shadwell 



Nahum Tate 



Nicholas Rowe 



Rev. Lawrence Eusden 



Colley Gibber 



William Whltehead 



Thomas Warton 



Henry James Pye 



Robert Southey 



William Wordsworth 



Alfred. Lord Tennyson 



Alfred Austin 



Robert Bridges 



BORN APPOINTED PIED 



1460? 



1523? 



1553 



1562 



1573 



1605 



1631 



1640 



1652 



1673 



1688 



1671 



1715 



1728 



1745 



1774 



1770 



1809 



1835 



1844 



1486 

 1513 

 1561 

 1590 

 1599 

 1619 

 1638 

 1670 

 1688 

 1692 

 1715 

 1718 

 1730 

 1757 

 1785 

 1790 

 1813 

 1843 

 1850 

 1896 

 1913 



1523 

 1529 

 1566 

 1599 

 1619 

 1637 

 1668 

 1700 

 1692 

 1715 

 Ills 

 1730 

 1757 

 1785 

 1790 

 1813 

 1843 

 1850 

 1892 

 1913 



Consult Gray's The Poet Laureates of Eng- 

 land: Their History and Their Odes; West's The 

 Laureates of England. 



POETRY, po'etri, one of the two great 

 classes into which all literature is divided, the 

 other being prose. A definition of poetry which 

 is universally acceptable has perhaps never 

 been written, and much controversy has raged 

 over the subject. Some critics hold that if the 

 thought contained is imaginative and makes an 

 appeal to the emotions, and if the language is 

 artistic and musical, the form is of little impor- 

 tance; while others declare the metrical form 

 to be one of the first requisites. In general, 

 however, the term poetry is seldom applied to 

 any composition which is not metrical. That 

 does not mean that all poetry must have the 

 rhythmic swing to which modern ears are so well 

 accustomed, for the Hebrew Psalms are cer- 

 tainly poetry; but they had in- the original 

 a rhythm very perceptible to the people for 

 whom they were written. 



Though prose is the simpler form of compo- 

 sition and it might be thought that prose lit- 

 erature would be the first to grow up, the op- 

 posite was the case. Almost every nation, in 

 its very early stages, had poetry of some sort 

 songs which might be chanted to mdc m 

 and which were almost invariably part of the 

 worship of some god. And gradually the fig- 

 urative language, the rhythmic form without the 

 music, came to be used for other than religious 

 purposes. The deeds of the gods, as well as 

 r praises, are set forth, and then, by a natu- 

 ral transition, the deeds of great national he- 



