Henry James Pye, Poet Laureate, born on February 20 1745, is 68 years old, today. He has 174 days to live until August 11 1813. As Poet Laureate, Pye was the first to receive a fixed salary of £27 instead of a butt of Canary wine. “I have now great hope, in the event of Mr. Pye’s decease,” Lord Byron in 1812 wrote satirically to Lord Holland, “of ‘warbling truth at court,’ like Mr. Mallet of indifferent memory. — Consider, 100 marks a year! besides the wine and the disgrace; but then remorse would make me drown myself in my own butt before the year’s end, or the finishing of my first dithyrambic. — So that, after all, I shall not meditate our laureate’s death by pen or poison”.
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