next house in the row,--
Though the houses are all alike, you know!"

DAPHNAIDES:

OR THE ENGLISH LAUREL, FROM CHAUCER TO TENNYSON.

[Concluded.]

Dorset was still Lord Chamberlain when the death of Shadwell placed
the laurel again at his disposal. Had he listened to Dryden, William
Congreve would have received it. Of all the throng of young gentlemen
who gathered about the chair of the old poet at Wills's, Congreve was
his prime favorite. That his advice was not heeded was long a matter
of pensive regret:--

"Oh that your brows my laurel had sustained!
Well had I been deposed, if you had reigned!
The father had descended for the son;
For only you are lineal to the throne.
Thus, when the state one Edward did depose,
A greater Edward in his room arose."[1]

The choice fell upon Nahum Tate:--

"But now not I, but poetry is cursed;
For Tom the Second reigns like Tom the First."

What particular quality recommended Tate we are not wholly able to
explain. Dryden alleges "charity" as the single impulse of the
appointment,--not the merit or aptitude of the candidate. But
throughout life Dorset continued to countenance Nahum, serving as
standing dedicatee of his works, and the prompter of several of them.
We have remarked the want of judgment which Lord Dorset exhibited in
his anxious patronage of the scholars and scribblers of his time,--a
trait which stood the Blackmores, Bradys, and Tates in good stead.

But there was still another reason why Tate was preferred to Congreve.
Dorset was too practised a courtier not to study the tastes of his
master to good purpose. A liking for the stage, or a lively sense of
poetic excellence, was not among the preferences of King William. The
Laureate was sub-purveyor of amusement for the court; but there was no
longer a court to amuse, and the King himself never once in his reign
entered a theatre. The piety of Queen Mary rendered her a rare
attendant at the play-house. Plays were therefore no longer wanted. A
playwright could not amuse. Congreve was a dramatist who had never
exhibited even passable talent for other forms of poetical
composition. But Tate's limited gifts, displayed to Dorset's
satisfaction in various encomiastic verses addressed to himself, were
fully equal to the exigencies of the office under the new order of
things; he was by profession a eulogist, not a dramatist. He was a
Tory; and the King was out of humor with the Whigs. He w