Laurence Eusden

Laurence Eusden (1688-1730). Chalk drawing by Jonathan Richardson, 1720. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Rev. Laurence Eusden (baptized 6 September 1688 - 27 September 1730) was an English poet who served as Poet Laureate.

Life

Overview

Eusden, son of Rev. Laurence Eusden, rector of Spofforth, Yorkshire, was baptized on 6 September 1688. He was educated at St Peter’s school, York, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a minor fellow of his college in 1711, and in the next year was admitted to a full fellowship. He was made poet laureate in 1718 by the lord chancellor, the duke of Newcastle, as a reward for a flattering poem on his marriage. He was rector of Coningsby, Lincolnshire, where he died on 27 September 1730. His name is less remembered by his translations and gratulatory poems than by the numerous satirical allusions of Pope, e.g.

Know, Eusden thirsts no more for sack or praise;
    He sleeps among the dull of ancient days.”
               - Dunciad, bk. i. 11. 293-294.

Youth and education

Eusden, whose family is said to have occupied a good position in Ireland, was son of Rev. Laurence Eusden, rector of Spofforth, Yorkshire, and was baptised there 6 September 1688.

He went to St. Peter's School, York, and was admitted as apensioner at Trinity College, Cambridge, 24 March 1705. He earned a B.A. in 1708 and an M.A. in 1712. On 2 April 1706 he became a scholar of his college, was admitted as a minor fellow on 2 October 1711, and advanced to a full fellowship on 2 July 1712. He became 3rd sublector on 2 Oct. 1712, and a year later was admitted as 2nd sublector.

His earliest production in print was a translation into Latin of Lord Halifax's poem on the battle of the Boyne, to which he drew attention by a poem to the noble author in Steele's Poetical Miscellanies (1714), and these effusions procured him Halifax's patronage.

Eusden celebrated the marriage of the duke of Newcastle to Lady Henrietta Godolphin (1717) in a poem of unblushing flattery, which the duke repaid with the post of Poet Laureate (24 December 1718), then vacant by the death of Rowe, and in his gift as lord chamberlain. (Joseph Addison recommended Eusden for the post.) Eusden is the youngest person to serve as Poet Laureate.

The appointment provoked considerable ridicule. Thomas Cooke (1703–1756), in his Battle of the Poets (1725), speaks of Eusden as "by fortune rais'd, by very few been read, by fewer prais'd"; and Sheffield, duke of Buckingham, in his Session of the Poets, says that Apollo's troubles were ended when

In rush'd Eusden and cry'd, Who shall have it
But I the true laureate, to whom the king gave it?
Apollo begg'd pardon and granted his claim,
But vowed that till then he ne'er heard of his name.

In 1718, Eusden addressed a poem to Her Royal Highness on the birth of a Prince. He soon after produced an "Ode for the New Year." In 1722 three pieces followed: to the Lord Chancellor on his being created Earl of Macclesfield; to Lord Parker on his return from his travels; and to that nobleman on his matrimonial alliance with Mrs. Mary Lane. What the character of these lucubrations is, some idea may be formed from the nature of their subjects. The warmth of admiration and fervour of flattery is always above fever-heat: the merit below zero.

Between 1722 and 1725 Eusden took orders in the English church, and was appointed chaplain to Richard, lord Willoughby de Broke. Through the favor of Mr. Cotesworth he was instituted to the rectory of Coningsby in Lincolnshire.

Gray, in a letter to Mason dated 19 December 1757 (Works, ed. 1884, ii. 345), says that "Eusden was a person of great hopes in his youth, though at last he turned out a drunken parson," a judgment which is confirmed by the lines of Alexander Pope. In the Dunciad i. 293, we are told that "Eusden thirsts no more for sack or praise;" line 425 of book ii. of the same poem originally ran, ‘How Laurus lay inspir'd beside a sink;’ and Eusden is generally considered the "parson much bemus'd in beer" of the epistle to Arbuthnot, verse 15.

Eusden died at Coningsby on 27 September 1730. He left behind him in manuscript a translation of part of Tasso's works and a life of the poet. His library is said to have been sold in 1763.

Writing

Southey's censure (Later English Poets, i. 280) is a just criticism of Eusden's poems, "a strain of fulsome flattery in mediocre poetry," but his poetical translations are sometimes eulogised for possessing "some command of language and smoothness of versification."

The best specimens of Eusden's muse will be found in Nichols's collection of poems (iv. 128–163, 226–249), and among them some of his translations. Had he employed himself in giving versions of a few of the masterpieces of antiquity, he would have merited a better fame than can be acquired by feeble flatteries of kings and nobles. In translation, he displays some command of language and smoothness of versification. He assisted in a version of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which Dryden, Congreve, Addison, Tate, and others were his coadjutors. The whole of a book is by his hand, and so is the story of "Venus and Adonis" in the 10th. Early in life, he had gained the esteem and patronage of Lord Halifax by translating into Latin his poem "On the Battle of the Boyne." He also gave a Latin version of Lord Roscommon's "Essay on Translated Verse." He contributed to The Guardian 2 translations from Claudian. In The Spectator he wrote a "Letter on Idols."

His works were: 1. ‘The Royal Family; a Letter to Addison on the King's Accession,’ 1714. 2. ‘Original Poems and Translations by Mr. Hill, Mr. Eusden, &c.,’ 1714. 3. ‘Translations from Claudian and Statius,’ poem to Lord Halifax on reading the critique in the ‘Spectator’ on Milton, &c., in Steele's ‘Poetical Miscellanies,’ 1714. 4. ‘Verses at the Last Publick Commencement at Cambridge,’ 1714, 2 editions; more animated than most of Eusden's compositions, but not infrequently indecent. 5. ‘Poems by the Earl of Roscommon, Duke of Buckingham, and Richard Duke,’ 1717. Roscommon's essay on translated verse in this edition is printed with a Latin version by Eusden. 6. ‘Poem on Marriage of the Duke of Newcastle to Lady Henrietta Godolphin,’ 1717. 7. ‘Poem to Her Royal Highness on the Birth of the Prince,’ 1718. 8. ‘Ode for the New Year,’ 1720; the first of a series of such productions satirised by Pope. 9. Three poems addressed to Lord-chancellor Macclesfield and his son, Lord Parker, 1722. 10. ‘The Origin of the Knights of the Bath,’ 1725. 11. 3 poems to the king and queen, 1727.

Steele mentions Eusden in No. 555 of the Spectator as among his assistants in that journal, and he is usually credited with a curious letter in the number for 7 June 1711 on ‘Idols,’ with some ‘amusing illustrations of customs.’ He is supposed to have contributed to its successor, The Guardian, a letter in No. 124, which is entitled ‘More Roarings of the Lion,’ and he was certainly the author of the poetical translations from Claudian in Nos. 127 and 164. In the translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, which appeared in 1717 under the name of Dr. Garth and others, and was reissued in Whittington's British Poets, vols. xciv. and xcv., he rendered portions of books iv. and x. Eusden was among the fortunate few who were permitted to prefix commendatory verses to Addison's Cato. Pope sneers at him again in the Dunciad, book i. line 104, as eking out ‘Blackmore's endless line,’ and he was the ‘L.E.’ of Pope and Swift's treatise of the bathos.

Recognition

Eusden was appointed Poet Laureate 24 December 1718, serving until his death in 1730.

Publications

Poetry

• Verses at the Last Publick Commencement at Cambridge. London: Jacob Tonson et al, 1714.
• A Letter to Mr. Addison: On the King's accession to the throne. London: Jacob Tonson, 1714.
• The Bishop of Ely's Thanksgiving-sermon: Preach'd on the seventh of June, 1716: Done into verse. London: printed for T. Corbet, 1716.
• A Poem on the Marriage of His Grace the Duke of Newcastle to the Right Honourable the Lady Henrietta Godolphin. London: Jacob Tonson, 1717.
• A Poem to Her Royal Highness, On the birth of the Prince. London: printed for Jacob Tonson, 1718.
• An Ode for the New Year: As it was sung before His Majesty. London: Jacob Tonson, 1720.
• An Ode for the Birthday: As it was sung before His Majesty. London: Jacob Tonson, 1720.
• An Ode for the Birthday, MDCCXXI: As it was sung before His Majesty. London: Jacob Tonson, 1721.
• An Ode for the Birthday, MDCCXXIII: In English and Latin. Cambridge, UK: printed at the University Press for Jacob Tonson et al, 1723.
• The Origin of the Knights of the Bath. London: Jacob Tonson, 1725.
• An Epistle to the Noble, and Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole. London: J. Roberts, 1726.
• Three Poems. London: printed for J. Roberts, 1727.
• A Poem Humbly Inscribed to His Royal Highness Prince Frederic: On his safe arrival in Great Britain; and On his being created Prince of Wales. London: J. Roberts, 1729.

Collected editions

• Selected writings of the Laureate Dunces: Nahum Tate (laureate 1692-1715), Laurence Eusden (1718-1730), and Colley Cibber (1730-1757) (edited by Peter Heaney). Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1999.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of British poets

Preceded by Nicholas Rowe

British Poet Laureate 1718-1730

Succeeded by Colley Cibber

References

•  Courtney, William Prideaux (1889) "Eusden, Laurence" in Stephen, Leslie Dictionary of National Biography 18 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 48-49  . Wikisource, Web, Apr. 8, 2020.

External links

Poems

• Laurence Eusden at PoemHunter ("The Origin of the Knights of the Bath")
• "A Poem Humbly Inscrib'd to the Queen"

Books

• Laurence Eusden at Amazon.com

About

• Laurence Eusden in the Encyclopædia Britannica.
• Laurence Eusden and Colly Cibber at Office of the Poet Laureate, University of Otago
• Reverend Laurence Eusden, Lives of the Poets
• Rev. Laurence Eusden (1688-1730) at English Poetry 1579-1830

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Eusden, Laurence