sterity, 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
AEsculapius? 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,

GEOFFREY CHAUCER, 1367-1400
JOHN SCOGAN, 1400-1413
JOHN KAY, 1465-
ANDREW BERNARD, 1486-
JOHN SKELTON, 1509-1529
EDMUND SPENSE