[Jayne Osborn]

I thought you might find it useful to see the chronological list of Poets Laureate for this comp: how public-spirited is that, then?

John Dryden (1631-1700)
Thomas Shadwell (1642-1692)
Nahum Tate (1652-1715)
Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718)
Laurence Eusden (1688-1730)
Colley Cibber (1671-1757)
William Whitehead (1715-1785)
Thomas Wharton (1728-1790)
Henry James Pye (1745-1813)
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
Alfred Austin (1835-1913)
Robert Bridges (1844-1930)
John Masefield (1878-1967)
Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-1972)
Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984)
Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
Andrew Motion (1952- )
Carol Ann Duffy (1955- )

Jayne

From Lucy Vickery:

No. 2749: Jubilee lines
You are invited to submit a poem, written by a poet laureate from the past, to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 21 May (the shorter deadline is because of a Jubilee double issue).

[Susan d.S.]

Fun to see how many are not much read these days.

[basil ransome-davies]

But christ, do you wonder? I believe Colley Cibber & Alfred Austin tie for the role of Most Crap Laureate.

[Orwn Acra]

On the plus side, they've managed four great laureates in four hundred years (two of them back-to-back).

[Susan d.S.]

And a bunch of them (Cibber, Shadwell, Southey) spurred great parodies.
And may again.

[Christopher ONeill]

Originally Posted by basil ransome-davies

But christ, do you wonder? I believe Colley Cibber & Alfred Austin tie for the role of Most Crap Laureate.

I can only assume that you have never read any Laurence Eusden.

John Dryden remains the only Laureate ever to have been dismissed from the post - now that would be a distinction worth emulating.

[David Anthony]

Interesting how many of them were really good.
Also their longevity, considering how short-live poets are, as a whole.

[Jayne Osborn]

Christopher,

Now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever read any Laurence Eusden, at least, not that I recall - or Nahum Tate. The names don't instantly spring to (my) mind.

I posted the list there to help with the comp, but it strikes me that the poets laureate would be a good topic for a thread about which ones were good and which ones were crap. It's probably been done already; is there anything that hasn't?

Back to the competition... it'll be interesting to see which laureate proves to be the most popular choice. Betcha it's Betjeman.

Jayne

[Ann Drysdale]

But you must have SUNG Nahum Tate - "As pants the hart...", "While shepherds watched..." or, how about this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOAD6cvQc7Y

Though I confess I prefer Janet Baker's version...

[Christopher ONeill]

Jayne:

Nahum Tate is one of my absolute favourites: I use his story in workshops all the time.

If you look closely at the history of Pope's Dunciad, Nahum Tate slowly becomes less prominent in the text as the poem is progressively revised. There are just a few hints in Pope's letters (nothing definite of course) that Pope may have realised that Tate was just a very awful poet, and might perhaps have decided to go easy on him.

Too bad to even be in the Dunciad? How sad must that make you feel?

And nearly everything Tate wrote was absolutely execrable (how else do you become a darling of the establishment?). Tate had sixty odd years to write poems which were even worse than Thomas Shadwell's.

Only, buried in among all the rest of Nahum Tate's dreck, you find As Pants the Hart, Silent Night, and the libretto of Dido and Aeneas.

Sixty years of being the worst poet in Europe, and the only consolation is writing the most beautiful Christmas Carol in English, and the first truly great English opera.

I'd settle for that.

I think most of us would.

......

(I also have a soft spot for Shadwell - though not as a poet).