graduate, who was afterwards styled Poeta Laureatus. These scholastic laureations seem to have given rise to the appellation in question. John Skelton, afterwards poet-laureate to Henry VIII., was created university poet-laureate at Oxford in 1489 or 1490, and at Cambridge in 1493. In March 1512, Edward Watson, a student in grammar, obtained a concession to be graduated and laureated in that science, on condition that he composed one hundred Latin verses in praise of the university, or a Latin comedy. He obtained the concession on the 18th of the same month.

Another grammarian, Richard Smith, was distinguished with the same badge in 1513, after having stipulated that, at the next public act, he would affix the same number of hexameters on the great gates of St. Mary's Church, that they might be seen by the whole university. This was at that period the most convenient mode of publication.

One Maurice Byrchynshaw, a scholar in rhetoric, supplicated, in the same year, to be admitted to read lectures-that is, to take a degree in that faculty; and his petition was granted, with the provision that he should write one hundred verses on the glory of the university, and not suffer Ovid's Art of Love and the Elegies of Pamphilus to be studied by his auditory. In the same year, also, John Bulman, another rhetorician, having complied with the terms imposed, of explaining the first book of Tully's Offices, and likewise the first of his Epistles, without any pecuniary emolument, was graduated in rhetoric, and a crown of laurel was publicly placed on his head by the chancellor of the university.

With regard to the poet-laureate of the kings of England-an officer of the court remaining under that title to this day-he is undoubtedly the same that is entitled the King's Versifier, and to whom one hundred shillings were paid as an annual stipend in the year 1251; but when or how that title commenced, and whether this officer was ever solemnly crowned with laurel at his first investiture, we may not pretend to determine, after the researches of the learned Selden on this subject have proved unsuccessful. It seems most probable that the barbarous and inglorious name of Versifier gradually gave way to an appellation of more elegance and dignity; or rather, that at length those only were in general invited to this appointment who had received academical sanction, and had merited a crown of laurel in the universities for their abilities in Latin composition, particularly Latin versification. Thus the king's laureate was nothing more than a graduated rhetorician employed in the service of the king. That he originally wrote in Latin, Mr. Warton infers from the ancient title 'Versificator,' and may be, moreover, collected from the two Latin poems

which Gulielmus and Baston (who appear to have respectively acted in the capacity of royal poets to Richard I. and Edward II.) officially composed on Richard's crusade and Edward's siege of Stirling Castle.

Andrew Bernard, successively poet-laureate to Henry VII. and Henry VIII., affords a still stronger proof that this officer was a Latin scholar. He was an Augustine monk, and not only the king's poetlaureate, as it is supposed, but his historiographer, and preceptor in grammar to Prince Arthur. He obtained many ecclesiastical preferments in England. All the pieces now to be found which he wrote in the character of poet-laureate are in Latin. He has left some Latin hymns; and many of his Latin prose pieces, which he wrote in the quality of historiographer to both monarchs, are remaining. An instrument relating to his laureateship, dated 1486, has no specification of any thing to be done officially by Bernard. The king merely grants to Andrew Bernard, Poeta-Laureato (which we may construe Laureated Poet, or a Poet-Laureate), a salary of ten marks till he can obtain some equivalent appointment. Gower and Chaucer are by some writers said to have been poets laureate; but this was certainly not the fact. Skelton (himself a laureate), in his Croune of Laurrell, sees Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate approach. He describes their whole apparel as glittering with the richest precious stones, and then immediately adds, "They wanted nothing but the laurell.”

Mr. Warton is of opinion that it was not customary for the royal laureate to write in English till the reformation of religion had begun to diminish the veneration for the Latin language; or rather till the love of novelty and a better sense of things had banished the narrow pedantries of monastic erudition, and taught us to cultivate our native tongue.

The birthday of William III., in 1694, appears to have been officially celebrated by Tate, whom Rowe succeeded in the laureateship; and from the year 1718 a regular series may almost be traced of birthday and new-year odes. Warton, who, in his History of Poetry, laments "taste and genius as idly wasted on the most splendid subjects, when imposed by constraint and perpetually repeated," gave an historical dignity and a splendour of poetical diction to those he composed, which would hardly, as Mr. Park truly observes, leave a reader to conceive that the subjects were "imposed by constraint." His predecessor Whitehead strongly felt the irksome force of this constraint.

Mr. Southey condescended to dignify the office of poet-laureate on the death of" Poet Pye" in 1813. It has since been certainly not less honoured in the person of Mr. Wordsworth; and the laurel now

circles (1854) the brow of one of the finest poets of any age or country, Alfred Tennyson.

WALTER KENNEDY.
(Circa 1480.)

Walter Kennedy seems to be represented by Dunbar and Lindsay as one of the chiefs of the Scottish poets. From his Flyting (a scolding satire) on Dunbar himself, he appears to have been a native of the district formerly known by the name of Carrick. During his altercation with Dunbar, he takes occasion to remind his antagonist of his own 66 land, store, and stakkis," so that we may assume him to have been a man of substance; and from the same poem we learn that he was the king's trew and special clerk," whatever special clerkship that may indicate. His works have all perished except his Flyting and his Invective against Mouththankless, preserved by Ramsay, and his Praise of Aige, printed by Lord Hailes, who considers that it gives a favourable idea of Kennedy as a versifier.

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QUINTYN SCHAW.
(Circa 1480.)

Quintyn Schaw is mentioned by Dunbar and Lindsay as a Scottish poet of eminence. Kennedy styles him "his cousine Quintene and his commissar." He was probably a native of the same district. Of his works only one specimen remains, Advice to a Courtier. Quintyn's style seems to have been easy and familiar; but having begun his poem with an idea of the resemblance between the life of a courtier and that of a mariner, he has introduced so many sea-phrases and maritime allusions as to render his language almost unintelligible.

JOHN BALE.

(1495-1563.)

John Bale was born in 1495, at Cove, a small village in Suffolk, about five miles from Dunwich. His parents being in poor circumstances, and encumbered with a large family, he was entered at twelve years of age in the monastery of Carmelites at Norwich, and thence removed to Jesus College at Cambridge. He was bred up in

the Romish religion, but became afterwards a Protestant. His conversion greatly exposed him to the persecution of the Romish clergy, and he must have felt their resentment had he not been protected by Lord Cromwell. But upon the death of this nobleman Bale was obliged to fly to Holland, where he remained six years, during which time he wrote several pieces in the English language. He was recalled into England by Edward IV., and presented to the living of Bishops-Stoke, in the county of Southampton. On the 15th of August, 1532, he was nominated to the see of Ossory by King Edward VI. Upon his arrival in Ireland he used his utmost endeavours to reform the manners of his diocese, to correct the vicious practices of the priests, to abolish the mass, and to establish the use of the new Book of Common Prayer set forth in England; but all his schemes of this kind having proved abortive by the death of King Edward and the accession of Queen Mary, he became greatly exposed to the outrages of the papists in Ireland: once in particular we are told that five of his domestics were murdered whilst they were making hay in a meadow near his house; and having received intimations that the priests were plotting his death, he retired from his see to Dublin. He afterwards made his escape in a small vessel from that port, but was taken by the captain of a Dutch man-of-war, who stripped him of all his money and effects; and when he arrived in Holland, he was obliged to pay thirty pounds before he could procure his liberty. From Holland he retired to Basil in Switzerland, where he continued during the reign of Queen Mary.

On the accession of Queen Elizabeth he returned from exile, but did not choose to go again to Ireland, being satisfied with a prebend of Canterbury, in which city he died, Nov. 1563, being then in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and was buried in the cathedral of that place.

This prelate left us, besides The Lives of the most eminent Writers of Great Britain, from Japhet to 1557, and infinite prose works (in Latin) of all kinds, many productions in verse, as The Life of John the Baptist, 1530; John Baptist Preaching; Christ's Temptation; interludes; Christ at twelve years old; God's Promises, 1538; and many other scriptural interludes.

NICHOLAS UDALL.

(Born circa 1506.)

Nicholas Udall, born in Hampshire, about 1506, after matriculating, in 1520, at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and proceeding M.A.

and probationary fellow, 3d September 1527, became master of Eton school, where he was celebrated alike for his learning and his extreme severity. Thomas Tusser, one of his boys, complains that, at one chastisement, he received fifty-three stripes from the doctor's rod. He appears, in his clerical character, to have accommodated himself to the constant changes of religion that marked his age, with a facility equal to that of the noted Vicar of Bray. His writings are, a sort of dramatic pageant to celebrate the entrance of Anne Boleyn into London after her marriage; a preface to the translation of Erasmus's Paraphrase of St. John by Queen Mary, in which, of course, he much extols her distinguished proficiency in literature; and a number of English Interludes, written probably for his scholars it having been, according to the consuetudinary of Eton school, the practice that, "about the feast of St. Andrew, the thirtieth day of November, the master shall choose, according to his own discretion, such Latin stage-plays as are most excellent and convenient, which the boys are to act in the following Christmas holidays, before a public audience, and with all the elegance of scenery and ornaments usual at the performance of a play. Yet he may sometimes order English plays; such, at least, as are smart and witty." It was probably to furnish his amateur players with something "smart and witty" for the ensuing Christmas performance, that, conjecturally about 1531, he composed Ralph Roister Doister, a play which, since its recent discovery, supersedes Gammer Gurton's Needle in the position of the first regular English comedy. This very curious and very entertaining play, first printed anonymously in 1566, came to light in 1818, when a limited number of copies were published by the Rev. Mr. Briggs. It has since been ably edited for the Shakspeare Society by Mr. Durrant Cooper.

THOMAS STERNHOLD.
(Died 1549.)

Thomas Sternhold, a poet ever to be remembered, by all parishclerks especially, for his version of King David's Psalms, was born in Hampshire, as Mr. Wood thinks; but he is not sure. He is less sure whether he was educated, as some supposed, at Wykeham's school near Winchester; but very sure that, after spending some time at Oxford, he left the university without a degree. He then repaired to the court of Henry VIII., was made groom of the robes to him, and had a hundred marks bequeathed to him by the will of that king. He continued in the same office under Edward VI., and