There was a short conversation in the House of Commons
on Tuesday concerning the delay of two years in filling up the office of Poet-Laureate, which led however only to two jokes of Sir William Harcourt's, and no announcement con- cerning the laureateship. In answer to Mr. Paul who asked in artificially jocose scorn, whether the present Lord Tennyson should not be appointed to the office to show the respect of the Government for the hereditary principle, Sir William Har- court replied in the negative, on the ground that according to the wisdom of the ancients pasta naseltur non fit, which we suppose he wanted Mr. Paul to translate—as a sort of macaronis Latin—that a poet-laureate by birth only is not fit,—but which Mr. Paul might, if he had been sharp, have accepted as acquiescing in his own suggestion that a poet-laureate should be born one and not made of Prime Ministers. When Mr. Shaw pressed for an answer as to the reason of the Prime Minister's delay, the Chancellor of the Exchequer only replied that his interrogator should remember what happened to the shepherd Paris and his partner as the consequence of his giving the apple to the goddess of beauty, and the long train of misfortunes which arose from the spretae injuries formae. Evidently Sir William Harcourt thinks that if Lord Rosebery gave the apple truly on the ground of poetic beauty, " gallant little Wales " might declare war on him with disastrous results. In other words, the delay is excess of caution.
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