Henry James Pye was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

. Pye was Poet Laureate

Poet Laureate

A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...

 from 1790 until his death. He was the first poet laureate to receive a fixed salary of £27 instead of the historic tierce

Tiercé

Tiercé is a commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France....

 of Canary wine (though it was still a fairly nominal payment; then as now the Poet Laureate had to look to extra sales generated by the prestige of the office to make significant money from the Laureateship).

Life

Pye was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, the son of Henry Pye of Faringdon

Faringdon

Faringdon is a market town in the Vale of White Horse, Oxfordshire, England. It is on the edge of the Thames Valley, between the River Thames and the Ridgeway...

 House in Berkshire

Berkshire

Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...

, and his wife, Mary James. He was the nephew of Admiral Thomas Pye

Thomas Pye

Sir Thomas Pye was an officer of the Royal Navy who served during the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War, and the American War of Independence...

. He was educated at Magdalen College

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

, Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

. His father died in 1766, leaving him a legacy of debt amounting to £50,000, and the burning of the family home further increased his difficulties.

In 1784 he was elected Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 for Berkshire. He was obliged to sell the paternal estate, and, retiring from Parliament

Parliament of Great Britain

The Parliament of Great Britain was formed in 1707 following the ratification of the Acts of Union by both the Parliament of England and Parliament of Scotland...

 in 1790, became a police magistrate for Westminster

Westminster

Westminster is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, southwest of the City of London and southwest of Charing Cross...

. Although he had no command of language and was destitute of poetic feeling, his ambition was to obtain recognition as a poet, and he published many volumes of verse.

Of all he wrote his prose Summary of the Duties of a Justice of the Peace out of Sessions (1808) is most worthy of record. He was made poet laureate in 1790, perhaps as a reward for his faithful support of William Pitt the Younger

William Pitt the Younger

William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...

 in the House of Commons

British House of Commons

The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...

. The appointment was looked on as ridiculous, and his birthday ode

Ode

Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...

s were a continual source of contempt. The 20th century British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 historian Lord Blake

Robert Blake, Baron Blake

Robert Norman William Blake, Baron Blake was an English historian. He is best known for his 1966 biography of Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, and for The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill, which grew out of his 1968 Ford lectures...

 called Pye "the worst Poet Laureate in English history with the possible exception of Alfred Austin

Alfred Austin

Alfred Austin was an English poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896 upon the death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.-Life:...

."
As a prose writer, Pye was far from contemptible. He had a fancy for commentaries and summaries. His "Commentary on Shakespeare’s commentators", and that appended to his translation of the Poetics, contain some noteworthy matter. A man, who, born in 1745, could write “Sir Charles Grandison is a much more unnatural character than Caliban

Caliban (character)

Caliban is one of the primary antagonists in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.- Character :Caliban is forced into servitude on an island ruled by Prospero. While he is referred to as a calvaluna or mooncalf, a freckled monster, he is the only human inhabitant of the island that is otherwise...

,” may have been a poetaster but was certainly not a fool.

Indeed, Pye's successor, Robert Southey, wrote in 1814: "I have been rhyming as doggedly and dully as if my name had been Henry James Pye." Unfortunately, Pye's legacy is remembered as one of the unfortunate few who have been classified as a "poetaster." He died at Pinner, Middlesex on 11 August 1813.

Pye married twice. He had two daughters by his first wife. He married secondly in 1801 Martha Corbett, by whom he had a son Henry John Pye, who in 1833 inherited the Clifton Hall

Clifton Campville

Clifton Campville is a village and civil parish in Staffordshire, England. It lies on the River Mease, about east of the City of Lichfield, west of Measham and north of Tamworth. In 2001 the parish had a population of 764....

, Staffordshire estate of a distant cousin and who was High Sheriff of Staffordshire

High Sheriff of Staffordshire

This is a list of the High Sheriffs of Staffordshire.The High Sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown. Formerly the High Sheriff was the principal law enforcement officer in the county but over the centuries most of the responsibilities associated with the post have been transferred...

 in 1840.

Works

• Prose

-Summary of the Duties of a Justice of the Peace out of Sessions (1808)

- The Democrat (1795)

- The Aristocrat (1799)

• Poetry

-Poems on Various Subjects (1787), first substantial collection of Pye's verse

-Alfred (1801)

• Translations

-Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

's Poetics (1792)