Bacchus, who is known from Aristophanes not to have excelled in criticism, protested that his laureate was greater than Homer; and, though Homer could not go quite so far as this, he graciously conceded that if he had himself been an Egyptian of the fifth century, with a faint glimmering of the poetical art, and encumbered with more learning than he knew how to use, he might have written almost as badly as his modern representative.

Who so thynketh my wrytynge dull and blont And wolde conceyve the colours purperate Of Rethoryke, go he to tria sunt And to Galfryde the poete laureate To Janneus a clerke of grete estate

One of the best pieces of Shakespeare criticism ever written is contained in four words of the present Poet Laureate's Ode for the Tercentenary of Shakespeare, 'London's laughter is thine'.

Milton's early poems abound in such poetic expressions as "the frolic wind," "the slumbring morn," "linkèd sweetness," "looks commercing with the skies," "dewy-feathered sleep," "the studious cloister's pale," "a dim religious light," the "silver lining" of the cloud, "west winds with musky wing," "the laureate hearse where Lycid lies."

He had been appointed poet laureate in 1670, but the Revolution of 1688, which drove James from the throne, caused Dryden to lose the laureateship.

In 1785, he edited Milton's minor poems, with very copious illustrations; and in the year following, was elected to the Camden Professorship of History, and was appointed to succeed Whitehead, as Poet Laureate.

In the discharge of his function as Laureate, he still continued, as he had long ago professed himself to be, Too free in servile courtly phrase to fawn; and had the wish been gratified,expressed by himself before his appointment, or by Gibbon after it,that the annual tribute might be dispensed with, we should have lost some of his best lyric effusions.

poet, poet laureate; laureate; bard, lyrist^, scald, skald^, troubadour, trouvere [Fr.]; minstrel; minnesinger, meistersinger

poet, poet laureate; laureate; bard, lyrist^, scald, skald^, troubadour, trouvere [Fr.]; minstrel; minnesinger, meistersinger

William Wordsworth (1770-1850), poet-laureate (1843-1850), is by many regarded as the third poet in English literature, after Shakspere and Milton, whose places are unassailable.

Mr. Whitehead, afterwards poet laureate, undertook to convey the manuscript to his lordship: the consequence was an invitation from lord Chesterfield to the author.

In all those questions, where the spirit of contradiction does not interfere, on which he is not sore from old bruises, or sick from the extravagance of youthful intoxication, as from a last night's debauch, our "laureate" is still bold, free, candid, open to conviction, a reformist without knowing it.

His prose writings, however, display more consistency of principle than the laureate's: his verses more taste.

*** We are now able to state that the wedding of Princess PATRICIA and Commander RAMSAY passed off without a hymeneal ode from the POET LAUREATE.

Probably few people remember a Nottinghamshire poet of an earlier day who fulfilled with much conscientiousness the duties of local laureate.

The respect he began, after a lifetime of neglect, to receive in the years immediately before his death, was paid not to the conservative laureate of 1848, but to the revolutionary in art and politics of fifty years before.

They belong to the immortal Fellowship of the Open Air, an association which dates from Esauan exclusive company, I can tell you, which black-balled brother Jacob, and made Franois Villon its laureate.

It was on him that her eyes were fixed while the accomplished Theobald was giving her a lively account of a concert at the Eyre Arms; and it was the fascination of his presence which made her answer at random to her cousin's questions about the last volume of the Laureate's, which she had been lately reading.

3, n. 1; Non-juror, The, ii. 321; poet-laureate, i. 401, n. 1; Provoked Husband, ii. 48; iv.

The Ogden Nash pocket book; America's light-hearted laureate.

Laureate of the Maquis campfire.

John Skelton, laureate.

The blossomes of the Prime; The flower that July forth doth bring, In Aprill here is seene, The Primrose, that puts on the Spring, In July decks each Greene, a world, in short, in which the nymphs may strew the laureate hearse, not only with all the flowers and fruits of earth, but with the Amaranth of paradise and the stars of heaven if the fancy takes them.

There are portions of the work, it is true, in which the more vulgar strains of the conventional pastoral make themselves heard, as in the satires of the fourth and tenth Nymphals; but for the most part we are allowed to wander undisturbed among the woods and pastures of an earthly paradise, and revel in the fairy laureate's most imaginative work.

Daniell, Samuel, b. 1562, probably near Taunton; poet and prose writer (there appears to be no authority for the belief that he succeeded Spenser as poet-laureate); d. 1619.