which only served to render insufferably tedious the services of
the two occasions in the year when imperative custom demanded his
attendance at the Chapel. Consultation was had with John Wilson
Croker, Secretary of the Admiralty. Croker's sharp common-sense at
once suggested the abolition of the Laureate duties, but the retention
of the office as a sinecure. Walter Scott, to whom the place was
offered, as the most popular of living poets, seconded the counsel of
Croker, but declined the appointment, as beneath the dignity of the
intended founder of a long line of border knights. He recommended
Southey. He had already recommended Southey to the "Quarterly," and
through the "Quarterly" to Croker, then and still its most brilliant
contributor; and this second instance of disinterested kindness was
equally efficacious. Southey was appointed. The tierce of Canary
ceased to be a perquisite of the office, the Laureate disclaiming it;
and instead of annual odes upon set occasions, such effusions as the
poet might choose to offer at the suggestion of passing events were to
be accepted as the sum of official duty. These were to be said or
read, not sung,--a change that completed the radical revolution of the
office.

However important the salary of a hundred pounds may have been to
Southey, it is very sure that the laurel seemed to infuse all its
noxious and poisonous juices into his literary character. His vanity,
like Whitehead's, led him to regard his chaplet as the reward of
unrivalled merit. His study-chair was glorified, and became a throne.
His supremacy in poetry was as indubitable as the king's supremacy in
matters ecclesiastical. He felt himself constrained to eliminate
utterly from his conscience whatever traces of early republicanism,
pantisocracy, and heresy still disfigured it; and to conform
unreservedly to the exactest requirements of high Toryism in politics
and high Churchism in religion. He was in the pay and formed a part of
the government; could he do else than toil mightily in his department
for the service of a master who had so sagaciously anticipated the
verdict of posterity, as to declare him, who was the least popular,
the greatest of living poets? He found it a duty to assume a rigid
censorship over as many of his Majesty's lieges as were addicted to
verse,--to enact the functions of minister of literary police,--to
reprehend the levity of Moore, the impiety of Byron, the democracy of
Leigh Hunt, th