From Temple Bar. WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. THE poetry of the day is pre-eminently Tennysonian. Although we have, or have had, several original writers outside of the Tennysonian circle; although Mr. Robert Browning, Mr. Matthew Arnold, and the lamented Arthur Clough, owe little or nothing to the Laureate,-yet ordinary readers of poetry have no admiration to spare for any productions in which Mr. Tennyson's subtlety and delicacy and exquisite grace of language are not imitated. We do not deem the veteran Walter Savage Landor as belonging to this generation. He is the Nestor of poets, and has fought with Ereuthalion. In his ninth decade he produces verse which, for terse severity and suggestive simplicity, can only be likened to the hendecasyllabics of Catullus. But Mr. Tennyson is Winthrop Mackworth Praed was born in the Achilles of the war; and when he with- London in 1802. He came of a good Devdraws to his tents, the authors of Edwin of onshire family, with estates in the neighborDeira and Tannhaüscr come forth, fighting hood of Teignmouth. His father was a as much as possible in Achilles' style. The sergeant-at-law, and was also connected with Laureate conquered his fame by that aston- Praed's bank. Winthrop Praed went to ishing prize poem on Timbuctoo, which Eton, where he showed himself a capital thunderstruck Professor Smyth and took classic; and while there he started the EtonCambridge by storm; a prize poem in blank ian, in conjunction with a brilliant group verse, characterized by that magical mirage his schoolfellows, most of whom have since of words which no other writer can raise, and made a mark in life. From Eton he went superscribed with a motto professedly taken to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won from Chapman's Iliad, but which never unprecedented renown as a writer both of could be found therein. Cambridge recog- Greek and English verse. Cambridge denized the young demigod at once, and England was not slow to follow. Never, perhaps, even in Shakspeare's or Byron's days, has an English poet been so readily acknowledged as first by all his contemporaries.

|ture, have done their best to save Praed's works from oblivion; and although Redfield's edition is necessarily inaccurate and imperfect, it does the compiler great credit. Some years ago it was, we believe, announced that Praed's poems would be published under the editorship of his old friends and schoolfellows, the Rev. Derwent Coleridge and the Rev. John Moultrie. Why the book had not appeared remains a mystery. Tory though he was, and approvingly mentioned more than once by the great Tory editor in his Noctes Ambrosiana, we believe Blackwood's Magazine has never done anything to make the public acquainted with Praed's poetry. It remains for Temple Bar, in the interest not of politics but of literature, to give some account of an admirable writer who has been unjustly neglected.

of

lights in Greek; delights in translations from The Midsummer Night's Dream, and Comus, and Lycidas, into Greek verse; than which can there be fitter training for a scholarly poet? Mr. Tennyson has given evident proof of its influence upon him. The pure air of Ionian valleys, the strange mystery of Ionian woodlands, seem to have impregnated his noble imagination. Yet he learnt the trick at Gothic Cambridge, by the reedy Cam.

We have often thought that if Winthrop Mackworth Praed had lived to his prime, there would have been two schools of poetry in our time instead of one. Praed's genius differed as much from Tennyson's, as Wordsworth's from Byron's. But who was Praed? a majority of our readers may ask. And Praed was chancellor's medallist for Enghere we come to the scarcely explicable fact lish verse in two successive years, 1823 and -that there exists no English edition of the 1824. The subjects were Australia and works of a man whose career at Eton and Athens. In the latter poem especially there Cambridge was remarkably brilliant, whose are some strong lines; but prize poems, unconnections were aristocratic and wealthy, less they have some eccentricity, like the fawho was deemed likely to stand as Macau- mous Timbuctoo, are not much to our taste. lay's commensurate antagonist in Parlia- It is a curious instance of the uncertainty ment, who wrote some of the choicest politi- which exists in regard to Praed's writings, cal pasquinades of his time. Our American that Lord Robert Montagu, in the notes to brethren, swift to appreciate English litera- his recent pamphlet on the American ques

tion, quotes six lines as from the poem on versity of Cambridge. But his health all Athens, which are not to be found in the or- this time had been gradually failing. In

dinary copies :

"How easy still it proves in factious times
With public zeal to cancel public crimes!
How safe is treason, and how easy ill,
When none can sin against the people's will;
When crowds can wink, and no offence 'be
known,

For in another's guilt each sees his own!"

As a Trinity College man, one would expect Lord Robert to be able to obtain access to an accurate copy of Praed's poem.

1838 he was compelled to withdraw from public life; and he died of consumption in July of the following year. He had married, four years earlier, Helen, daughter of G. Bogle, Esq., who, we believe, still sur

vives.

For this very meagre sketch of Praed's life, we are in a great measure indebted to the American edition of his works; but it suffices to show how vivid and versatile a

Praed was famous at the Uuion, his chief
opponent being Macaulay. Doubtless the
debates were brilliant when these two young
orators, so different in style, yet each so full
of vigor and power, entered the arena. And
the rivals were also comrades. In Knight's
Quarterly Magazine, commenced before they
left the University, both Macaulay and Praed
showed promise of literary power. The great
Whig essayist contributed one or two fine
ballads, and an imaginary dialogue between
Milton and Cowley. Praed was more pro-
lific. In certain supposititious conversations,
a form of magazine-writing in those days
fashionable, he personified himself as Vivian
Joyeuse; and Professor Wilson did him the
high honor of introducing him in the Noctes
under that name, and of giving Mr. Knight's
magazine a serene and Olympian nod of
proval. Several times did the professor, a
man who thoroughly appreciated youthful
genius, say a word or two in Praed's favor;
and in the 22d Noctes he says: "Macaulay to any literary habits or standing."
and Praed have written very good prize
poems. Those two young gentlemen ought
to make a figure in the world." His predic-
tion has been amply fulfilled in Macaulay's
case; and, notwithstanding his premature
death, Macaulay's friend and rival made for
himself a high position in English literature.
If he has been sacrificed, we can attribute it
only to the neglect of his friends.

genius he possessed, how easy would have
He was rapidly
been his path to renown.
rising both in his profession and in Parlia-
ment, and he had absolutely no rival as a
writer of political pasquinades. He conde-
scended to make his poetry contribute to
social amusement; any lady could induce
him to throw off a charade or a legend, and
he seemed to write verse with greater ease
than most men write prose. Willis, the
American writer, whose unscrupulous publi-

cation of all that he saw and heard at the

ap

Praed was called to the bar in 1829, and entered Parliament as member for St. Germans, a quaint Cornish borough, disfranchized by the Reform Bill in the following year. He soon proved himself a good debater; his facile wit and fluent speech were admirably suited to the arena of Parliament. His position was full of promise. In 1834 he was secretary to the Board of Control; in 1835 we find him appointed recorder of Barnstaple and deputy high steward of the Uni

houses to which he was invited caused much indignation in England twenty-five years ago, describes Praed as an absolute improvisatore. He also speaks strongly of Praed's extreme reserve; whence we suspect that the fastidious and clear-sighted Englishman understood Willis' character, and gave the inquisitive journalist as few opportunities as possible of asking questions. "It was hard,” says the American, "to make him confess

Praed's versatility and facility were perfectly marvellous. Best known among his poems is The Red Fisherman; a legend not unlike Tom Ingoldsby's, but with less recklessness of rhyme, and perhaps somewhat more poetry. The picture of the spectral angler himself is very graphic:— "All alone by the side of the pool A tall man sat on a three-legged stool, Kicking his heels on the dewy sod, Red were the rags his shoulders wore, And putting in order his reel and rod. And a high red cap on his head he bore; His arms and his legs were long and bare; And two or three locks of long red hair Were tossing about his scraggy neck, Like a tattered flag o'er a splitting wreck. It might be time, or it might be trouble, Had bent that stout back nearly double,Sunk in their deep and hollow sockets That blazing couple of Congreve rockets,And shrunk and shrivelled that tawny skin Till it hardly covered the bones within.

Praed produced several other legendary poems of the same order; the best of them we take to be The Troubadour. His peculiar vein of antithetical surprises is capitally shown in the following description of Rich-tical fragment is immortal. With clear ard the Lion-Heart :

These drawing-room legends of Praed's this peculiarity in his poems, if it were were far from being his best producworth while. It is just the sort of thing for tions. We are inclined to consider three

poems, entitled Every-Day Characters, su- stanzas of The Miller's Daughter, describing perior to anything else which he wrote. the wealthy miller with his double chin and They are in a measure of which he was very slow wise smile. Questionless, both in fond-a stanza of eight octosyllabic lines rhythm and spirit, the Laureate is indebted with alternate double rhymes. The third to Praed in the last-mentioned poem and in of these exquisitely finished poems, "The The Day-Dream. And when we read in Belle of the Ball," is remarkable as having Maud the description of the village church, been unconsciously imitated. Two at least in which the hero watched his darling until of the poetical contributors to this magazine he have come very close to it; and we are as"heard no longer sured by both that they had not previously seen the poem. Its subject is a youthful love, which comes to nothing. The final stanzas of the great original and its two echoes are worth comparison, as a curiosity. Take, first, The Dean's Daughter :— "Heigho! the daughter of the Dean!

Beneath those elm-trees apostolic, While autumn sunlight danced between, We two had many a merry frolic. Sweet Sybil Willmott! long ago

To your young heart was Love a visitor; And often have I wished to know

How you could marry a solicitor."

Some people will conceive that it is better to marry a solicitor than a poet. Take, next, My Tutor's Cousin:

"So Time has passed. And here I am, A Senior Fellow of St. Peter's;

A pastor, with a flock to cram

With logic and the Latin metres.
And Mary! She-you like this port?

Some of my own peculiar dozen:
Not Common-Room. "Twas got of Short-
The husband of my tutor's cousin!"

Finally, let us quote Praed :

"We parted-months and years rolled by; We met again four summers after: Our parting was all sob and sigh

Our meeting was all mirth and laughter;

For in my heart's most secret cell

There had been many other lodgers;

And she was not the ball-room belle,

But only Mrs. Something-Rogers."

We think our readers will admit that the coincidence is curious, and also that Praed is far superior to his followers in ease and grace. Truth to say, he wrote that metre with just the mastery which Byron had over the octave rhyme, and Alfred de Musset over his favorite six-line stanza. The other two poems of this group-" The Vicar" and "Quince "-rise to a higher level. They are cabinet portraits of real men. It is difficult to believe that Mr. Tennyson was not thinking of them when he wrote the two first

The snowy-banded, dilettante,
Delicate-handed priest intone,"

we remember Praed in "The Vicar: "
"Sit in the Vicar's scat; you'll hear

The doctrine of a gentle Johnian,
Whose hand is white, whose tone is clear,
Whose style is very Ciceronian.

"Where is the old man laid? Look down, And construe on the slab before you, Hic jacet Gulielmus Brown,

Vri nulla non donandus lauro."

Praed, like Macaulay, had a fancy for ballad-writing. Ivry and The Armada have deservedly become classics. Praed's Marston Moor, written at the same period, is equally worthy of remembrance. The hero of this ballad, a sturdy cavalier, is surrounded by his enemies, who exclaim, "Down with Belial!" There is characteristic humor in the words which Cromwell is supposed to utter as he watches the royalist fighting his way through his assailants :

"I would,' quoth grim old Oliver, that

Belial's trusty sword

This day were doing battle for the Saints and for the Lord!'"

There is an exquisite little lyric of Tom Hood's beginning

"I remember, I remember

The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn."

A song of Praed's, very popular years ago,
is constructed on the same principle. It
would be curious to ascertain which poet
plagiarized from the other.

"I remember, I remember

How my childhood fleeted by-
The mirth of its December,

And the warmth of its July.
On my brow, love, on my brow, love,
There are no signs of care;
But my pleasures are not now, love.

What childhood's pleasures were."

There are two more stanzas; the last of The disadvantages under which Praed's