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 Cuinquatria, or Feast of ltinei < i con tended, and the prize was a crown of oak or olive leaves. But it wtis from some traditionary belief respecting the coronation of Virsil 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 con (erred 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 177G it was granted to two celebrated improvisatori, the Signor Rufetti and the Signora Morelli, better known by the name of Corilla (sec Improvisator!). 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; hut tiie imperial poet, or Poeta Cesareo, in Germany, was invested with the 'lurel. This crown, however, was customarily given at tne universities in the middle ages to such persons as took degrees in gram mar and rhetoric, of which poetry formed a branch; whence, according to some authors, the term Baccalaurcatus (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 havi [s. 659]