POET LAUKEATESHIP.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1805, 18 July 1913, Page 7

POET LAUKEATESHIP.

CONFERRED ON DR, BRIDGES. By Telegraph—Press Association—OoDyrteht London, July 16. Dr. Robert Bridges has been appointed Poet Laureate. [Dr. Bridges. M.A., M.8., D. Litt., Oxford, LL.D., St. Andrews, was born in October, 1841, and educated at Eton and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. After leaving Oxford he travolled, then studied medicine at St. Bartholomew's, London, becoming casualty physician there, and later assistant-physician at the Children's Hospital, Great Ormond Street, and physician at the G.N. Hospital. His publications include several plays and poems, "Essay on- Milton's Prosody," "Critical Essay on Keats," shorter poems, "The Growth of Love," "Prometheus the Firegiver," "Eros and • Psyche," and eight plays.] ' The Laureateship carries with it a Civil List pension of £200 a year, although it was not until 1899 that the lato Sir Alfred Austin's name appeared on the list. Formerly, in addition to the pension, a perquisite of a sack of Canary wine' went with . the office. About a hundred years ago the wine was commuted for X 27, which becamo absorbed in the pension. This circumstance explains tho following verse, written at the time of the movement to abolish the office:— We took tho Laureate's wine of old; Now let us take the money back. 'Why Bhould he ply his craft for gold? We'll give the Laureate the sack. The office sprang from the days when minstrels and "versifiers" were part, of the Tetinue of the King. Chaucer certainly received a royal pension and a_ gift of wine, and the vicinity of his burial place in Westminster Abbey in 140G becamo known as the "Poets' Corner." Ben Jonfon was appointed poet to the Royal Household ,iu IGI7.