as
pretentiously moral and exemplary of life and pen, and so suited the
Queen. The duties of the office were conformed, as far as practicable,
to the royal tastes. Their scene was transferred from the play-house
to the church. On the anniversaries of the birthdays of the two
sovereigns, and upon New Year's day, the Laureate was expected to have
ready congratulatory odes befitting the occasion, set to music by the
royal organist, and sung after service in the Chapel Royal of St.
James. Similar duties were required when great victories were to be
celebrated, or national calamities to be deplored. In short, from
writing dramas to amuse a merry monarch and his courtiers, an office
not without dignity, the Laureate sunk into a hired writer of
adulatory odes; a change in which originated that prevalent contempt
for the laurel which descended from the era of Tate to that of
Southey.

And yet the odes were in no sense more thoroughly Pindaric than in the
circumstance of their flatteries being bought and paid for at a stated
market value. The triumphal lyrics of Pindar himself were very far
from being those spontaneous and enthusiastic tributes to the prowess
of his heroes, which the vulgar receive them for. Hear the painful
truth, as revealed by the Scholiast.[2] Pytheas of AEgina had
conquered in rough-and-tumble fight all antagonists in the Pancratium.
Casting about for the best means of perpetuating his fame, he found
the alternative to lie between a statuette to be erected in the temple
of the hero-god, or one of the odes of the learned Theban. Choosing
the latter, he proceeded to the poet's shop, cheapened the article,
and would have secured it without hesitation, had not the extortionate
bard demanded the sum of three drachmas,[3] nearly equal to half a
dollar, for the poem, and refused to bate a fraction. The disappointed
bargainer left, and was for some days decided in favor of the brazen
image, which could be had at half the price. But reflecting that what
Pindar would give for his money was a draft upon universal fame and
immortality, while the statue might presently be lost, or melted down,
or its identity destroyed, his final determination was in favor of the
ode,--a conclusion which time has justified. Nor was the Bard of the
Victors ashamed of his mercenary Muse. In the Second Isthmian Ode, we
find an elaborate justification of his practice of praising for
pay,--a practice, he admits, unknown to primitive poets,