Born, in London, 20 Feb. 1745. Early education at home. Matric., Magdalen Coll., Oxford, 12 July 1762; created M.A. 3 July 1766. Married (i) Mary Hook, 1766. Created D.C.L., Oxford, 9 July 1773. M.P. for Berkshire, 1784–90. Appointed Poet Laureate, 1790. Police Magistrate for Westminster, 1792. Play “The Siege of Meaux” produced at Covent Garden, 19 May 1794; “Adelaide,” Drury Lane, 25 Jan. 1800. “A Prior Claim” (written with S. J. Arnold), Drury Lane, 29 Oct. 1805. Wife died, 1796. Married (ii) Martha Corbett, Nov. 1801. Died at Pinner, 11 Aug. 1813. Works: “The Rosciad of Covent Garden” (anon.; attrib. to Pye), 1762; “Beauty” (anon.), 1766; “Elegies (anon.), 1768; “The Triumph of Fashion” (anon.), 1771; “Farringdon Hill” (anon.), 1774; “The Progress of Refinement,” 1783; “Shooting” (anon.), 1784; “Aeriphorion,” 1784; “Poems” (collected), 1787; “Amusement,” 1790; “The Siege of Meaux,” 1794; “The Democrat” (anon.), 1795; “War Elegies of Tyrtæus imitated,” 1795; “Sketches on Various Subjects” (anon.), 1796; “Naucratia,” 1798; “The Inquisitor” (with J. P. Andrews), 1798; “The Aristocrat” (anon.), 1799; “Carmen Seculare,” 1800; “Adelaide,” 1800; “Alfred,” 1801; “Verses on Several Subjects,” 1802; “A Prior Claim” (with S. J. Arnold), 1805; “Comments on the Commentators of Shakespeare,” 1807; “Summary of the Duties of a Justice of the Peace out of Sessions,” 1808. He translated: “Six Olympic Odes of Pindar,” 1775; Aristotle’s “Poetics,” 1788; Bürger’s “Lenore,” 1796; Homer’s “Hymns and Epigrams,” 1810; and edited: Francis’s translation of the Odes of Horace, 1812.

Personal

  “Mr. Pye”—a celebrity whom even the encyclopædias scorn, and of whom we know nothing save that he was Poet-Laureate (!) before Southey took and vindicated the office. He was “a master of correct versification,” Lord Beaconsfield says.

  Byron said of him that he was eminently respectable in everything but his poetry. This, indeed, appears to have been the case, but certainly affords no reasonable explanation of his appointment to the office of Laureate…. As Pye was a pleasant, convivial man, it was somewhat peculiar that the Laureate’s annual perquisite of a tierce of canary from the Royal cellar, should, during his tenure of the office, have been commuted for an annual payment of £27.

  He doubtless owed his good fortune to the support he had given the prime minister, Pitt, while he sat in the House of Commons. No selection could have more effectually deprived the post of reputable literary associations, and a satire, “Epistle to the Poet Laureate,” 1790, gave voice to the scorn with which, in literary circles, the announcement of his appointment was received…. Every year on the king’s birthday he produced an ode breathing the most irreproachable patriotic sentiment, expressed in language of ludicrous tameness. His earliest effort was so crowded with allusions to vocal groves and feathered choir that George Steevens, on reading it, broke out into the lines:

General

  I have been rhyming as doggedly and as dully as if my name had been Henry James Pye.

  We must admit that, as a poet, his Muse’s chief attributes are Mediocrity and Morality…. An industrious student, a well-informed, cultivated, graceful writer; but a poet he assuredly was not. Weighed in the balance of contemporaneous criticisms, he was found wanting; and Time has sanctioned the severe decree.

  He was always made fun of as a poet, and, unfortunately for him, there was another poet in the House at the same time called Charles Small Pybus; hence the jest, “Pye et Parvus Pybus,” which was in everyone’s mouth. He was a voluminous author and diligent translator, but I do not recollect ever seeing a single book of his in a shop, or on a stall, or in a catalogue. Great Pye is dead—as dead as Parvus Pybus, M.P.

  Pye was devoted to the stage, and he tried his hand at writing some plays, but they are wholly forgotten. For a complete list of these we have to go to a foreign dictionary: English encyclopædias ignore this industrious, conscientious worker. Pye’s most ambitious work was an epic poem on King Alfred, but even he himself did not speak highly of his effort, and he had no hope that it would live. Indeed, Pye was as modest as Eusden had been egotistical. The contrast between them in this respect is well illustrated in their portraits…. Many of Pye’s minor poems show graceful fancy and have considerable melody of versification and sparkle of style; but there is no originality of thought in them, no eloquent fervour, no imaginative strength. They are rhetorical efforts merely. His laureate odes are ardent and enthusiastic, even if they do not soar very high. He shows in them an earnest patriotism; and earnestness of itself is a form of strength and power. But Pye, with all his brilliancy of mind and his perseverance and industry, had not the making of a true poet, and his work has passed into oblivion.