TREACLE IN TRADITION.

Northern Advocate, 23 August 1924, Page 9 (Supplement)

TREACLE IN TRADITION.

FLATTENING BOUQUET FOB MR COOLIDGE. When Mr Coolidgc stepped into the White House, all that America knew of him was that he was a New Englander, fifty-one years old, and had broken the Boston police strike. Today, nearly a year later, he is still a good deal of an enigma. He has not shown any very conspicuous gifts, except that of reticence. But among the people who are nothing if not talkers the man of few words is always a power. Mr Coolidge has profited by the scandals and dissensions that have shaken his party —by contrast he stands out as a fixed rallying point, both of political purity and of party cohesion. The Republicans had 110 choice, but to nominate him, though whether he has the knack of effective electioneering has vet to be seen.

From all his friends have told me about the President, says a correspondent of a London paper, I should judge he is the last man to relish the sort of speech in which Mr. Burton recently proposed his nomination. He is much too sensible and too modest to enjoy having - all the heroes of Greece and Rome rolled at his feet in a. flattering bouquet. But that is an ordeal that every Presidential candidate hfls to go through. He must submit being "slathered with taffy" by "his proposer and seconder in the nomination convention. It is one of the traditions of siich gatherings that every man whose name is put forward should be recommended to the delegates in terms that would have made Washingten swear and Lincoln squirm.

THE POET LAUREATE. ORIGIN OF THE OFFICE. It may safely be said that little is known by most people concerning thn origin of the office of Poet Laureate, of the names of the earliest, holders of it. What is known for certain is that about 14.>0 A.D. the distinction of being styled "Poeta Laureatus" was bestowed by the collective English Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham on a graduate in Rhetoric and Versification, and that at the ceremony of bestowal the student, was crowned with a laurel wreath. During the reign of Edward IV. that monarch made the successful graduate a member of the Royal Household, appointing John Key to the office. We have not been favoured with any of Mr Key's work so cannot judge as to its quality, but tire remuneration was not so bad for those sixteenth century days, being £100 a year and a tierce of canary. The list of holders of the title seems incomplete between 3500 and 1070, but since that year we have the following poets as laureates: —John Dryden, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Laurence Eusden, Colley Cibber, William Whitehead, Thomas Warton, Henry James Pye, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Austin, Robert Bridges. One or two of these were simply favourites of the reigning monarch, but among , them are poets of whom the nation may well fell proud. There was until the time of Southey an obligation for the Court poet to produce a poem on some occasion of State, but he and Wordsworth protested against it, and it is now optional. * » • • COINS WORTH COLLECTING. Medals and coins represent much more than the weight of gold or silver in them, as they become older and rarer. A few weeks ago a gold medal awarded for the Battle of Culloden on April 16, 1745, was sold in a London saleroom for £155. At Christie's saleroom £400 was paid for a gold medal 1 awarded by George 11. to Captain Collis for courageous service in blockading the port of St. Tropez, in which were five Spanish galleys. At a sale of Greek coins one example realised £640), at leastfti thousand times its face value. Another yieled £430, and a rare teradrachm, an ancient silver coin, which had previously brought £55, was sold for £328. ,