Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
Walter Scott to Robert Southey, 4 September 1813
“Abbotsford, 4th September, 1813.
“On my return here I found, to my no small
surprise, a letter tendering me the laurel vacant by the ![]()
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death of the poetical Pye. I have declined the appointment, as being incompetent to
the task of annual commemoration; but chiefly as being provided for in my
professional department, and unwilling to incur the censure of engrossing the
emolument attached to one of the few appointments which seems proper to be
filled by a man of literature who has no other views in life. Will you forgive
me, my dear friend, if I own I had you in my recollection. I have given
Croker the hint, and otherwise
endeavoured to throw the office into your option. I am uncertain if you will
like it, for the laurel has certainly been tarnished by some of its wearers,
and, as at present managed, its duties are inconvenient, and somewhat liable to
ridicule. But the latter matter might be amended, as I think the Regent’s good sense would lead him to lay
aside these regular commemorations; and as to the former point, it has been
worn by Dryden of old, and by Warton in modern days. If you quote my own
refusal against me, I reply—first, I have been luckier than you in holding two
offices not usually conjoined; secondly, I did not refuse it from any foolish
prejudice against the situation, otherwise how durst I mention it to you, my
elder brother in the muse? but from a sort of internal hope that they would
give it to you, upon whom it would be so much more worthily conferred. For I am
not such an ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have
had, probably but for a time, the tide of popularity in my favour. I have not
time to add ten thousand other reasons, but I only wished to tell you how the
matter was, and to beg you to think before you reject the offer which I flatter
myself will be made to you. If I had not been, like Dogberry, a fellow with two
gowns already, I should have jumped at it like a cock at a gooseberry. Ever
yours most truly,
John Wilson Croker (1780-1857)
Secretary of the Admiralty (1810) and writer for the
Quarterly
Review; he edited an elaborate edition of Boswell's
Life of
Johnson (1831).
John Dryden (1631-1700)
English poet laureate, dramatist, and critic; author of
Of Dramatick
Poesie (1667),
Absalom and Achitophel (1681),
Alexander's Feast; or the Power of Musique (1697),
The Works of Virgil translated into English Verse (1697), and
Fables (1700).
Henry James Pye (1745-1813)
Succeeded William Whitehead as Poet Laureate in 1790; Pye first attracted attention with
Elegies on Different Occasions (1768); author of
The Progress of Refinement: a Poem (1783).
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
Thomas Warton (1728-1790)
English scholar and poet; author of
The Pleasures of Melancholy
(1747),
Observations on the Fairy Queen of Spenser (1754),
The History of English Poetry, 3 vols (1774-78). He succeeded
William Whitehead as poet laureate in 1785.
