LAUREATE, POET, an officer in the lord chamberlain's department of the royal household. The appellation "laureate" seems to have been derived through the Italian, from the Latin taunts," a bay," in allusion to the ancient practice of crowning poets. Petrarch received the crown at Rome in 1341, and Tasso in 1594. The earliest mention of a poet-laureate in England, under that express title, is in the reign of Edward IV., when John Kay received the appointment. Warton, however, in his History of English Poetry,' shows that the poet laureate is undoubtedly the same officer who in the reign of Henry III. is styled Versificator regis, the " king's versifier," and to whom a hundred shillings were paid as his annual stipend. Skelton (writing in the reign of Henry VII.), in three or four of his poems, styles himself " poet laureate ;" but the laureateship of which he speaks was a degree granted by the university (in his case of Oxford) for proficiency in ' grammar,' in which versification was included. With the degree was given a laurel wreath. Skelton was one of the last who received this degree. But though "fly hole consent of ther Senate He was made poete lawreatc," and in consequence, wore as laureate a suit of white and green, on which the word Calliope was embroidered, he also held the office of laureate to the king,' Henry VIII., whose tutor he had been. Ben
Jenson is said to have been the poet-laureate to King James I. In the reign of Charles I., 1630, the first patent of this office appears to have been granted, which fixed the salary or pension attached to it at I00/. a year, with an additional grant of a tierce of Canary wine from the king's stores ; before this there seems to have been no fixed salary, the sum paid being rather in the shape of a gratuity. The succession of poets-laureate since the time of Charles II. has been— John Dryden, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Laurence Eusden, Colley Cibber, William Whitehead, Thomas Warton, Henry James Pye, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth (with a salary of 300/. a-year), and, since 1850, Alfred Tennyson. A commutation was agreed to of 271. for the allowance of wine, by Southey, while he held the office.