NEW POET LAUREATE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 968, 10 May 1930, Page 9

NEW POET LAUREATE

TOHN MASEFIELD TO FILL VACANT CHAIR WRITER OF PROSE AND VERSE United P.A.—By Telegraph—Copyright Reed. 11.5 a.m. LONDON, Friday. Mr. John Masefield, the novelist and poet, has been appointed Poet Laureate in succession to Dr. Robert Bridges, whose death was reported recently. The appointment of Mr. John Masefield to this position settles the question which has been asked with increasing frequency in recent weeks: Who was to be England’s fifteenth Poet Laureate? Robert Bridges was not in his grave before English papers were engaged in discussion concerning his successor. The “Daily Express” advocated abolition of the post, but it was regarded as unlikely that a man of Mr. MacDonald’s literary inclinations would consent to that. Abolition of the office was urged strongly after the death of Tennyson, for it was felt that there was no man worthy to follow him. There was Swinburne, but he was scarcely respectable in 1892. There was William Morris, but he was definitely radical, and then came the lavender lyrists of the nineties. Gladstone would not appoint a laureate, and four years passed before the office was filled. Lord Salisbury, when he became Prime Minister, felt that the services of the Tory journalist, Alfred Austin, should be recognised in some way, and they were—with the laureateship.

Austin has written cold porridge poetry, now happily forgotten, so the Government paid pretty but excessive tribute to his talent. He may not have been the worst of the laureates, but he was very nearly so. However, he knew what was expected of him, and in 1898 “Songs of England” appeared. One of the songs bore the title.. “Why England is Conservative.” This Government was not confronted with quite the same trouble as that which confronted the men who had to appoint a successor to Tennyson. Bridges was as great a poet as Tennyson, but he did not have the same hold on the public. Originally the laureate was expected to be wild-eyed and lyrical on the eve of every royal birthday, and prepared at all times to celebrate in verse the little incidents that lightened the royal life. Wordsworth, however, took office on condition that he would not have to write to order, and in the appointment of Bridges a similar stipulation was implied. Many possible candidates for the laureateship were brought forward by the English critics, among them, Sir William Watson, Alfred Noyes, John Drink water, Rudyard Kipling, and Laurence Binyon. It was suggested that lack of dignity would be held against [Masefield who was, of course, the first of the poets to introduce the sanguinary adjective into English verse, and it occurs four times in two lines of “The Everlasting Mercy.” When his whole contribution to contemporary poetry is examined it is found that he has written a number of excellent short pieces, and he is unrivalled in his swift moving narrative poems, such as “The Everlasting Mercy,” “The Widow in the Bye Street,” “Dauber,” “Right Royal,” “Reynard the Fox,” and, of course, the ever-popular “Sea Fever.” Some other publications with which Masefield readers are “Odtaa,” “The Midnight Folk,” “Philip the King,” “The Faithiui, jne Chest,” “Good Friday.” and many other volumes of prose and verse. His poems and sonnets were widely read and his plays were- also well received. Masefield was elected a member of the Academic Committee in 1913. In 1903 he married Constance, daughter of Nicholas de la Cherois-Crommelin.