here and there, as we go, a few landmarks that shall facilitate the
surveys of investigators yet unborn, and this our modest enterprise
shall be happily fulfilled.

One portion of it presents no serious difficulty. There is an
uninterrupted canon of the Laureates running as far back as the reign
of James I. Anterior, however, to that epoch, the catalogue fades away
in undistinguishable darkness. Names are there of undoubted splendor,
a splendor, indeed, far more glowing than that of any subsequent
monarch of the bays; but the legal title to the garland falls so far
short of satisfactory demonstration, as to oblige us to dismiss the
first seven Laureates with a dash of that ruthless criticism with
which Niebuhr, the regicide, dispatched the seven kings of Rome. To
mark clearly the bounds between the mythical and the indubitable, a
glance at the following brief of the Laureate _fasti_ will
greatly assist us, speeding us forward at once to the substance of our
story.


I. The MYTHICAL PERIOD, extending from the supposititious coronation
of Laureate CHAUCER, _in temp. Edv. III., 1367_, to that of
Laureate JONSON, _in temp. Caroli I._ To this period belong,


GEOFFREY CHAUCER, 1367-1400
JOHN SCOGAN, 1400-1413
JOHN KAY, 1465-
ANDREW BERNARD, 1486-
JOHN SKELTON, 1509-1529
EDMUND SPENSER, 1590-1599