LAURENCE EUSDEN (1688-1730). A POET-LAUREATE PETERITE.
The name of Laurence Eusden is unknown to-day to any but the most curious students of English Letters. Indeed, his fame, such as it was, scarcely survived his death, and he was quickly swept into the oblivion which Pope and other contemporary poets predicted for him. It would seem, too, that he is in some danger of being overlooked even by Peterites, who have better reason than the rest of the world to preserve his memory. For Eusden is unique in this, that he is the only poet laureate produced by St. Peter's. Perhaps, then, a few observations on this obscure versifier may be justified on the grounds that, though a poor thing, he is, at any rate, our own. Eusden was born in 1688 at Spofforth, in Yorkshire, where his father, the Rev. Laurence Eusden, was rector. From St. Peter's he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1705, and in the following year was elected a Scholar. His career at Trinity was not undistinguished and eventually, in 1712, he became a Fellow. In those days, of course, fellowship by no means necessarily implied scholarship, but Eusden seems to have made his mark by his facility in writing Latin verses, and his first publication was a Latin version of a poem by Lord Halifax on the Battle of the Boyne. With that appreciation of the benefits of publicity and patronage which was probably his greatest asset he drew attention to his own effusion by writing an English poem in praise of Lord Halifax which was published in Steele's " Poetical Miscellany " in 1714. His master stroke, however, was made in 1718, when he wrote an ode celebrating the wedding of the Duke of Newcastle and Lady Henrietta Godolphin. Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, then only twenty-five years old, had recently combined the vast estates of the Newcastles and Pelhams and was one of the richest landowners in England. His efforts to ensure the acceptance of George I on the death of Anne had already won him the favour of the Court, and his marriage to the grand-daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough further increased his influence. In 1718 Newcastle was well on the way to the powerful pre-eminence in the Whig oligarchy which 55
