The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 10, August, 1858. Various

p>The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 10, August, 1858 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics

      DAPHNAIDES:

      OR THE ENGLISH LAUREL, FROM CHAUCER TO TENNYSON

      They in thir time did many a noble dede,

      And for their worthines full oft have bore

      The crown of laurer leavés on the hede,

      As ye may in your oldé bookés rede:

      And how that he that was a conquerour

      Had by laurer alway his most honour.

DAN CHAUCER: The Flowre and the Leaf.

      It is to be lamented that antiquarian zeal is so often diverted from subjects of real to those of merely fanciful interest. The mercurial young gentlemen who addict themselves to that exciting department of letters are open to censure as being too fitful, too prone to flit, bee-like, from flower to flower, now lighting momentarily upon an indecipherable tombstone, now perching upon a rusty morion, here dipping into crumbling palimpsests, there turning up a tattered reputation from heaps of musty biography, or discovering that the brightest names have had sad blots and blemishes scoured off by the attrition of Time's ceaseless current. We can expect little from investigators so volatile and capricious; else should we expect the topic we approach in this paper to have been long ago flooded with light as of Maedler's sun, its dust dissipated, and sundry curves and angles which still baffle scrutiny and provoke curiosity exposed even to Gallio-llke wayfarers. It is, in fact, a neglected topic. Its derivatives are obscure, its facts doubtful. Questions spring from it, sucker-like, numberless, which none may answer. Why, for instance, in apportioning his gifts among his posterity, did Phoebus assign the laurel to his step-progeny, the sons of song, and pour the rest of the vegetable world into the pharmacopoeia of the favored Æsculapius? Why was even this wretched legacy divided in aftertimes with the children of Mars? Was its efficacy as a non-conductor of lightning as reliable as was held by Tiberius, of guileless memory, Emperor of Rome? Were its leaves really found green as ever in the tomb of St. Humbert, a century and a half after the interment of that holy confessor? In what reign was the first bay-leaf, rewarding the first poet of English song, authoritatively conferred? These and other like questions are of so material concern to the matter we have in hand, that we may fairly stand amazed that they have thus far escaped the exploration of archaeologists. It is not for us to busy ourselves with other men's affairs. Time and patience shall develope profounder mysteries than these. Let us only succeed in delineating in brief monograph the outlines of a natural history of the British Laurel,–Laurea nobilis, sempervirens, florida,–and in posting here and there, as we go, a few landmarks that shall facilitate the surveys of investigators yet unborn, and this our modest enterprise shall be happily fulfilled.

      One portion of it presents no serious difficulty. There is an uninterrupted canon of the Laureates running as far back as the reign of James I. Anterior, however, to that epoch, the catalogue fades away in undistinguishable darkness. Names are there of undoubted splendor, a splendor, indeed, far more glowing than that of any subsequent monarch of the bays; but the legal title to the garland falls so far short of satisfactory demonstration, as to oblige us to dismiss the first seven Laureates with a dash of that ruthless criticism with which Niebuhr, the regicide, dispatched the seven kings of Rome. To mark clearly the bounds between the mythical and the indubitable, a glance at the following brief of the Laureate fasti will greatly assist us, speeding us forward at once to the substance of our story.

      I. The MYTHICAL PERIOD, extending from the supposititious coronation of Laureate CHAUCER, in temp. Edv. III., 1367, to that of Laureate JONSON, in temp. Caroli I. To this period belong,

      II. The DRAMATIC, extending from the latter event to the demise of Laureate SHADWELL, in temp. Gulielmi III., 1692. Here we have

      III. The LYRIC, from the reign of Laureate TATE, 1693, to the demise of Laureate PYE, 1813:–

      IV. The VOLUNTARY, from the accession of Laureate SOUTHEY, 1813, to the present day:–

      Have no faith in those followers of vain traditions who assert the existence of the Laureate office as early as the thirteenth century, attached to the court of Henry III. Poets there were before Chaucer,–vixere fortes ante Agamemnona,–but search Rymer from cord to clasp and you shall find no documentary evidence of any one of them wearing the leaf or receiving the stipend distinctive of the place. Morbid credulity can go no farther back than to the "Father of English Poetry":–

                  "That renounced Poet,

      Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,

      On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled":1

               "Him that left half-told

      The story of Cambuscan bold;

      Of Camball, and of Algarsife,

      And who had Canace to wife":2

      "That noble Chaucer, in those former times,

      Who first enriched our English with his rhymes,

      And was the first of ours that ever broke

      Into the Muse's treasures, and first spoke

      In mighty numbers."3

      Tradition here first assumes that semblance of probability which rendered it current for three centuries. Edward the Third–resplendent name in the constitutional history of England–is supposed to have been so deeply impressed with Chaucer's poetical merits, as to have sought occasion for appropriate recognition. Opportunely came that high festival at the capital of the world, whereat

      "Franccis Petrark, the laureat poete,

      … whos rethorike swete

      Enlumined all Itaille of poetrie,"4

      received the laurel crown at the hands of the Senate of Rome, with a magnificence of ceremonial surpassed only by the triumphs of imperial victors a thousand years before. Emulous of the gorgeous example, the English monarch forthwith showered corresponding honors upon Dan Chaucer, adding the substantial perquisites of a hundred marks and a tierce of Malvoisie, a year. To this agreeable story, Laureate Warton, than whom no man was more intimately conversant with the truth there is in literary history, appears in one of his official odes to yield assent:–

      "Victorious Edward gave the vernal bough

      Of Britain's bay to bloom on Chaucer's brow:

      Fired with the gift, he changed to sounds sublime

      His Norman minstrelsy's discordant chime."5

      The legend, however, does not bear inquiry. King Edward, in 1367, certainly granted an annuity of twenty marks to "his varlet, Geoffrey Chaucer." Seven years later there was a further grant of a pitcher of wine daily, together with the controllership of the wool and petty wine revenues for the port of London. The latter appointment, to which the pitcher of wine was doubtless incident, was attended with a requirement that the new functionary should execute all the duties of his post in person,–a requirement involving as constant and laborious occupation as that of Charles Lamb, chained to his perch in the India House. These concessions, varied slightly by subsequent patents from Richard II. and Henry IV., form the entire foundation to the tale of Chaucer's Laureateship.6 There is no reference in grant or patent to his poetical excellence or fame, no mention whatever of the laurel, no verse among the countless lines of his poetry

1

SPENSER: Faery Queen. See also the Two Cantos of Mutability, Cant. VII.:–

"That old Dan Geffrey, in whose gentle sprightThe pure well-head of poesie did dwell."

2

MILTON: Il Penseroso.

3

WORDSWORTH: Poems of Later Years.

4

CHAUCER: Clerke's Tale, Prologue.

5

WARTON: Ode on his Majesty's Birthday, 1787

6

Tyrwhitt's Chaucer: Historical Notes on his Life.