f his title and appointment. Now, in this, we
conceive, with all due humility, that there is a little mistake of fact,
and a little error of judgment. The laurel which the King gives, we are
credibly informed, has nothing at all in common with that which is
bestowed by the Muses; and the Prince Regent's warrant is absolutely of
no authority in the court of Apollo. If this be the case, however, it
follows, that a poet laureate has no sort of precedency among poets,--
whatever may be his place among pages and clerks of the kitchen;--and
that he has no more pretensions as an author, than if his appointment
had been to the mastership of the stag-hounds. When he takes state upon
him with the public, therefore, in consequence of his office, he really
is guilty of as ludicrous a blunder as the worthy American _Consul_, in
one of the Hanse towns, who painted the Roman _fasces_ on the pannel of
his buggy, and insisted upon calling his foot-boy and clerk his
_lictors_. Except when he is in his official duty, therefore, the King's
house-poet would do well to keep the nature of his office out of sight;
and, when he is compelled to appear in it in public, should try to get
through with the business as quickly and quietly as possible. The brawny
drayman who enacts the Champion of England in the Lord Mayor's show, is
in some danger of being sneered at by the spectators, even when he paces
along with the timidity and sobriety that becomes his condition; but if
he were to take it into his head to make serious boast of his prowess,
and to call upon the city bards to celebrate his heroic acts, the very
apprentices could not restrain their laughter,--and "the humorous man"
would have but small chance of finishing his part in peace.

Mr. Southey could not be ignorant of all this; and yet it appears that
he could not have known it all. He must have been conscious, we think,
of the ridicule attached to his office, and might have known that there
were only two ways of counteracting it,--either by sinking the office
altogether in his public appearances, or by writing such very good
verses in the discharge of it, as might defy ridicule, and render
neglect impossible. Instead of this, however, he has allowed himself to
write rather worse than any Laureate before him, and has betaken himself
to the luckless and vulgar expedient of endeavouring to face out the
thing by an air of prodigious confidence and assumption:--and has had
the usual fortune of