VI.
OF THE
POET LAUREATE.
November 19, 1729.
The time of the election of a Poet Laureate being now at hand, it may be proper to give some account of the rites and ceremonies anciently used at that Solemnity, and only discontinued through the neglect and degeneracy of later times. These we have extracted from an historian of undoubted credit, a reverend bishop, the learned Paulus Jovius; and are the same that were practised under the pontificate of Leo X, the great restorer of learning.
As we now see an age and a court, that for the encouragement of poetry rivals, if not exceeds, that of this famous Pope, we cannot but wish a restoration of all its honours to poesy; the rather, since there are so many parallel circumstances in the person who was then honoured with the laurel, and in him, who (in all probability) is now to wear it.
I shall translate my author exactly as I find it in the 82d chapter of his Elogia Vir. Doct. He begins with the character of the poet himself, who was the original and father of all Laureates, and called Camillo. He was a plain country-man of Apulia, whether a shepherd or thresher, is not material. "This man (says Jovius) excited "by the fame of the great encouragement given to poets at court, and the high honour in which they were held, came to the city, bringing with him a strange kind of lyre in his hand, and at least some twenty thousand of verses. All the wits and critics of the court flock'd about him, delighted to see a clown, with a ruddy, hale complexion, and in his own long hair, so top full of poetry; and at the first sight of him all agreed he was born to be Poet Laureate[1]. He had a most hearty welcome in an island of the river Tiber (an agreeable place, not unlike our Richmond) where he was first made to eat and drink plentifully, and to repeat his verses
- ↑ Apulus præpingui vultu alacer, & prolixe comatus, omnino dignus festa laurea videretur.
