In 1811, we find a hiatus (we scarcely think we can add maxime deflendus) in the "Annual Register," and the pages usually assigned to the two annual songs of the Laureate, are devoted to a long Cambridge Installation Ode,[1] by Professor Smyth, the lecturer on history. The Official Muse was silent also in 1812. Pye's not writing the requisite lays, arose from the fact that he had at this time retired from public life, and was suffering from severe attacks of gout. His zeal for his office he however had never failed to show, for in addition to his regular poetic offerings, he composed poems on public questions, and of a kind that would be pleasing to the Court and Government. His poem, "Naucratia, or Naval Dominion," published in 1798, he dedicated to his Sacred Majesty. In this lucubration he alludes to his ancestor, the famous patriot:
"Arm'd in her cause on Chalgrove's fatal plain,
Where sorrowing Freedom mourns her Hampden slain,
Say, shall the moralizing bard presume,
From his proud hearse to tear one warlike plume,
Because a Cæsar or a Cromwell wore
An impious wreath, wet with their country's gore?"
We quote these lines because of their subject, but they are by no means a fair specimen of the poem, in which there are some rather spirited passages. In speaking of Columbus in Part II., he rises quite to the Prize Poem altitude:
"Columbus' eye, in transport of amaze,
The spacious region of delight surveys,
Charming with real scenes the raptur'd view,
Fairer than all his warmest wishes drew;
Isles in fair spring's eternal livery dight,
The vast Savannah's space, the mountain's height;
Forests of growth gigantic, that display'd
O'er spacious continents impervious shade;
- ↑ This reminds us that at the installation of Lord North, at Oxford, in 1772, the degree of D.C.L, was conferred on Pye among others. He had assuredly as much right to it as some gentlemen lately so honoured.
