LAUREATE

(Lat. laureatus.) Literally crowned with laurels; applied at present to a well-known officer in the royal household. At the Cert am in a, or gymnastic and other contests celebrated under the Roman emperors, especially at the Quinquatria, or Feast of Minerva, poets also contended, and the prize was a crown of oak or olive leaves. But it was from some traditionary belief respecting the coronation of Virgil and Horace with laurel in the Capitol (of which, however, no record is extant) that the dignity of poet laureate was invented in the 14th century, and conferred on Petrarch at Rome by the senator or supreme magistrate of the city. It was intended to confer the same honour on Ta o, who, however, died on the night before the proposed celebration. In 1725 and 1776 it was granted to two celebrated improvisatori, the Signor Rufetti and the Signora Morelli, better known by the name of Corilla {see Improvisatori). In most European countries the sovereign has a umed the privilege of nominating a court poet with various titles. In France and Spain these have never been termed poets laureate; but the imperial poet, or Poeta Cesareo, in Germany, was invested with the laurel. This crown, however, was customarily given at the universities in the middle ages to such persons as took degrees in grammar and rhetoric, of which poetry formed a branch; whence, according to some authors, the term Bac cal a ure at us (quod vide) has been derived. In England traces of a stipendiary poet royal are found as early as Henry III., and of a poet laureate by that name under Edward IV. Skelton, under Hen. VII. and VIII., was created poet laureate by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and appears to have held the same dignity at court; but the academical and court honour were distinct until the extinction of the university custom; of which Henry VIII. 's reign exhibits the last instance. Royal poets laureate are supposed not to have begun to write in English until after the Reformation. The office was made patent by Charles I., and the salary fixed. at 100/. annually, and a tierce of Spanish Canary wine. Under Queen Anne it was placed in the control of the lord chamberlain. In the reign of George III. the annual tierce of wine was commuted for an increase of salary, and at the close of the same reign the custom of requiring annual odes from the lord chamberlain was discontinued. [s. 654]