THE POEMS
OF
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED.
[SELECTED.]
_WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTICE_
BY FREDERICK COOPER.
[Illustration]
LONDON:
Walter Scott, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row,
AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.
1886.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY NOTICE 7
LEGENDS AND TALES--
The Red Fisherman 31
The Legend of The Drachenfels 39
The Legend of The Teufel-haus 47
The Legend of The Haunted Tree 56
The Bridal of Belmont 68
Chivalry at a Discount 83
The Conjurer 86
Cousins 87
Bagatelles 89
There’s Nothing New Beneath the Sun 92
Peace be Thine 93
The Confession of Don Carlos 94
Marriage 97
The Bachelor 99
How to Rhyme for Love 108
Surly Hall 111
My First Folly 130
Songs from The Troubadour 131
The Separation 138
An Invitation 141
A Discourse delivered by a College Tutor 142
Good Night 145
Hobbledehoys 147
A Classical Walk 149
Stanzas 150
Because 151
Song to a Serenader in February 153
The Childe’s Destiny 154
The Modern Nectar 156
An Epitaph on the late King of the Sandwich
Islands 158
The Chaunt of the Brazen Head 162
My Own Funeral (from Beranger) 165
L’Inconnue 167
Song--from Lidean’s Love 168
Josephine 169
Song for the Fourteenth of February 171
Palinodia 174
Time’s Song 176
Stanzas 177
Good Night to the Season 178
Song--Yes or No 181
Utopia 183
Marriage Chimes 186
Remember Me 189
The Fancy Ball 190
A Letter of Advice 194
EVERY-DAY CHARACTERS--
I. The Vicar 198
II. Quince 201
III. The Belle of The Ball-room 205
IV. My Partner 208
V. Portrait of a Lady 212
April Fools 215
School and Schoolfellows 219
Arrivals at a Watering-Place 222
Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Nine 225
Letters from Teignmouth--I. Our Ball 228
Do. do. II. Private Theatricals 231
Song--“Tell Him I Love Him Yet” 234
Confessions 235
Song--Lord Roland 238
Childhood and His Visitors 239
Love at a Rout 241
Beauty and Her Visitors 243
The Forsaken 245
Second Love 246
Hope and Love 248
Stanzas 250
Cassandra 251
Sir Nicholas at Marston Moor 254
The Covenanter’s Lament for Bothwell Bridge 257
Written under a Picture of King’s College Chapel 259
Anticipation 260
Mars Disarmed by Love 261
Waterloo 263
The New Order of Things 266
Song--Where is Miss Myrtle? 268
The Confession 269
Stanzas written in Lady Myrtle’s “Boccaccio” 270
How Poetry is best paid for 273
Old Wine 278
The Talented Man 280
Plus de Politique 282
Tales out of School 283
To the Speaker Asleep 285
Hymn to the Virgin 286
The Newly-Wedded 288
Sketch of a Young Lady--five months old 289
To Helen 291
To Helen 291
To Helen 292
God Save the Queen 293
CHARADES--
I. Good Night 293
II. Rainbow 294
III. Knighthood 295
IV. Death Watch 296
V. Bowstring 297
VI. Moonlight 299
VII. Peacock 299
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Introductory Notice.
Of all literary reputations, that of the Society Poet is probably
enjoyed upon the most hazardous and uncertain of tenures. To be
successful at all, he must win the instant recognition of his immediate
contemporaries; he must be in touch with the thought of his own
generation; he must reflect its sentiments, chime with its humour, and
satirise its manners; and in proportion to the popularity of his
productions with the public of his own day, will probably be the neglect
with which they are treated by the public of a generation later. This
neglect on the part of posterity is to some extent comprehensible, even
reasonable, for the poem of manners is often nothing more than purely
ephemeral in character, and indebted to accident for even its
contemporary success, the measure of which is not to be relied upon as
a fair criterion of its intrinsic excellence. Still posterity is apt to
be careless and indiscriminating in its neglectfulness. True wit, true
humour, true grace and refinement are qualities that should command
something more than a fleeting popularity; but even where the public is
content, on the strength of the critical verdict of a past generation,
to admit that, beyond his fellows, So-and-So was graceful, humorous, and
witty, it is often content to let the matter rest there, and not trouble
itself with inquiring into the evidence upon which such verdict was
founded. Our own century can count not a few poets of barren reputation,
much admired, on the strength of old tradition, but very little read.
George Canning’s wit was, and is, proverbial. Most people have heard of
the “Anti-Jacobin Review,” and have some slight knowledge of the “Needy
Knife-grinder;” beyond that it would puzzle most people to supply any
specific information as to anything that he wrote that justifies his
reputation. Captain Charles Morris, of the First Life Guards and The
Beefsteak Club, wrote enough verse (and very delightful verse it is) to
fill a bulky volume, in addition to much more that for sufficient
reasons was not re-published in volume form. Part of one line of one
poem, “The sweet shady side of Pall Mall,” alone survives, apparently
for the especial benefit of leader-writers in the daily papers.
Winthrop Mackworth Praed, most precocious and most prolific of the poets
of society, began his literary career as a schoolboy, and for twenty
years flooded the periodical literature of his day with songs and
satires, ballads and legends innumerable, all of which are forgotten. It
is not quite fair, perhaps, to say all, for some half-dozen pieces at
most survive, and have done duty with monotonous regularity, as
representative specimens of his verse, in every volume of poetical
selections of the _Vers de Société_ order that has seen the light for
the last quarter of a century. Thus, Praed’s “Good Night to the Season”
has become a well-known poem; it is witty, full of brilliant antithesis
and word-play, a fairly typical example of Praed’s style; still it palls
by too frequent repetition, and Praed did much work that is quite equal
to it, and some that is even better, and better worth quoting. That
Praed’s contemporaries thought too highly of him is not, I think, open
to question; that he has, since his death, been unreasonably neglected
is, at least, equally true. Of his earlier work much is very weak.
Youthful poems, if noticeable for the precocity of their writers, are
not usually remarkable for their strength or originality. In his more
mature days he perpetrated a good deal of verse that is not much above
the standard of the “Keepsake” and “Book of Beauty,” in the pages of
which polite publications one is quite content to let it rest
undisturbed; but beyond all this he wrote a great deal that deserves to
live, and that, so far, has hardly had a fair chance of life given to
it. In the first instance, Praed was himself responsible for the
smothering of his offspring. He seems to have been very indifferent
about the ultimate fate of his productions, or about the permanence of
his own literary reputation. Everything that he wrote was contributed to
periodicals; he never published a book of his own, nor apparently
contemplated the collection of any of his poems into a volume, with the
exception of some of his political squibs, which, in the last year of
his life, he had printed for private circulation among friends. When he
died, there was a scheme set on foot for collecting and publishing his
poems, and the editorial work was entrusted to his early friend, the
Rev. Derwent Coleridge. Four-and-twenty years after, Mrs. Praed being
then dead also, the editor completed his labours, and the book was at
length given to the world. Mr. Coleridge did his work only _too_ well.
Every fragment of childish verse, all the boyish contributions to the
_Etonian_, every school exercise, every bit of inane, cut-and-dried
sentimentality that could be hunted up and identified in the pages of
_Friendship’s Offerings_, and the like, were rigorously printed, and
poor Praed’s handfuls of corn were ruthlessly smothered under his
bushels of chaff. One merit was claimed for the book--that of being
complete. That merit, unfortunately, did not belong to it, as, for some
unexplained reason, the political poems, which are numerous and witty,
were altogether excluded. This book, in two volumes, was published in
1864. In 1866 Sir George Young, Praed’s nephew, edited a small volume of
selections, which was compiled with taste and judgment, as far as it
went; but the book was as meagre and insufficient as its predecessor had
been bulky and redundant. Both these books have long been out of print
and unattainable, and in offering what claims to be a fairly
representative selection of the best work of the poet, of whom the most
finished literary artist of our day, Mr. Frederick Locker, remarks, that
“in his peculiar vein he has never been equalled, and, it may safely be
affirmed, can never be excelled,” it is believed that the present volume
of “The Canterbury Poets” will supply a sensibly-felt want in modern
English poetic literature.
Winthrop Mackworth Praed was the third and youngest son of William
Mackworth Praed, serjeant-at-law, who was the first chairman of the
Audit Board, a post which he filled for many years. He was born on the
26th July 1802, at 35 John Street, Bedford Row, his father’s London
residence, although Bitton House, at Teignmouth, the country seat of the
family, was always regarded as his paternal home. The original surname
of the family was Mackworth, the additional name of Praed having been
assumed some generations earlier. Praed’s mother was a Miss Winthrop, a
member of a family descended from the same stock as the American
Winthrops. He had the misfortune to lose her while he was yet very
young, but her place was, so far as a mother’s place can be filled,
worthily taken by an elder sister, to whom he was all his life sincerely
attached, and who seems to have been the inspiring genius of his
earliest poetical efforts. Young Praed was always, it appears, a
constitutionally delicate lad, with a strong taste for studious
pursuits, and small inclination, comparatively, for the rougher
pleasures of a schoolboy,--although he was not altogether without mark
in the cricket-field and on the river. The fancy for verse-writing
developed itself in him at a very early age, and Mr. Derwent Coleridge
has preserved from oblivion several of his precocious efforts. There is
nothing particularly remarkable in these early verses, beyond those of
other juvenile poets, so far at least as the thought is concerned: the
best of them is, perhaps, a letter addressed to his elder sister Susan,
“The Forget-me-not,” in which Praed’s fine sense of form is
conspicuously evidenced. This was, no doubt, to a great extent
instinctive, but his singularly finished style owed a great deal to his
father’s severe criticism, Serjeant Praed being a man of sound literary
taste, and a great stickler for form.
In 1814 young Winthrop went to Eton, where his poetical proclivities
were yet further encouraged by his tutor, Dr. Hawtrey. Two Eton
periodicals, _The College Magazine_ and _Horæ Otiosæ_, were conducted by
some of the boys in the year 1819, and circulated in MS. It does not
appear that Praed contributed to either of these, but when they were
dropped in 1820, he brought out a MS. journal of his own, the _Apis
Matina_, of which six numbers were published in the months of April,
May, June, and July. About half the contents of these papers were
written by Praed himself, the other contributors being the Honourable
Francis Curzon and Walter Trower, afterwards Bishop of Gibraltar. About
this time Charles Knight printed at Windsor a selection of the poetry of
the _College Magazine_, and Praed and some other ambitious spirits set
on foot a project for a regularly published _College Magazine_. Knight
agreed to undertake the printing, subject to certain guarantees, which
were obtained, and in October 1820 appeared the first number of the
_Etonian_, perhaps the most remarkable schoolboy magazine ever produced.
Praed and Walter Blunt were joint editors, the bulk of the contents of
the _Magazine_ being supplied by the former. His literary fecundity at
this time was, considering his age, remarkable. The contributions to the
Magazine were supposed to be supplied by the members of an association
called “The King of Clubs.” They were known by _noms de plume_, Praed’s
being that of Peregrine Courtenay, the President of the Club. There was
a prose introduction to each number, describing the proceedings of the
Club, the whole of which was in every case written by Praed. During the
ten months’ existence of the _Magazine_ he also contributed to it the
following poems, all of some length:--“The Eve of Battle,” “Changing
Quarters,” “The County Ball,” “Gog,” “Surly Hall,” “Reminiscences of my
Youth,” “To Julia,” “To Julio,” “To Florence,” “The Bachelor,” “How to
Rhyme for Love,” etc., as well as several smaller poems. The staff of
the _Etonian_ otherwise comprised a good array of names. Among them were
the Honourable William Ashley, Edmond Beales, William Chrichton,
Honourable Francis Curzon, R. Durnford, William Henry Ord, Thomas Powys
Outram, Walter Trower--all boys then at Eton. One Oxonian--Henry
Neech--contributed, and five Cantabs--Henry Nelson Coleridge, John
Moultrie, John Louis Petit, William Sydney Walker, and another. Among
the anonymous contributors were R. Streatfield and J. A. Kinglake.
The _Etonian_ appeared regularly every month until July 1821, when it
was discontinued in consequence of the editor and principal contributor
going up to Cambridge. In Charles Knight’s “Passages of a Working Life”
there occur, about this date, many references to his first connection
with Praed and his friends in the conduct of the _Etonian_. He
says:--“The character of Peregrine Courtenay, given in an ‘Account of
the proceedings which led to the publication of the _Etonian_,’
furnishes no satisfactory idea of the youthful Winthrop Mackworth Praed,
when he is described as one ‘possessed of sound good sense rather than
of brilliancy of genius.’ His ‘general acquirements and universal
information’ are fitly recorded, as well as his acquaintance with ‘the
world at large.’ But the kindness that lurks under sarcasm; the wisdom
that wears the mask of fun; the half melancholy that is veiled by
levity--these qualities very soon struck me as far out of the ordinary
indications of precocious talent. It is not easy to separate my
recollections of the Praed of Eton from those of the Praed of Cambridge.
The Etonian of 1820 was natural and unaffected in his talk, neither shy
nor presuming; proud, without a tinge of vanity; somewhat reserved, but
ever courteous; giving few indications of the susceptibility of the
poet, but ample evidence of the laughing satirist; a pale and slight
youth, who had looked upon the aspects of society with the keen
perception of a clever manhood; one who had, moreover, seen in human
life something more than follies to be ridiculed by the gay jest, or
scouted by the sarcastic sneer. His writings then, especially his poems,
occasionally exhibited that remarkable union of pathos with wit and
humour which attested the originality of his genius, as it was
subsequently displayed in maturer efforts.”
During Praed’s second year at Cambridge he wrote to Charles Knight (who
was then contemplating establishing himself in London), to the effect
that he should take up no periodical work until Knight started a
publication of his own. In consequence of this communication Knight
visited Cambridge in December 1822, where he spent a pleasant week with
Praed and his friends, making the acquaintance of Macaulay, Maiden, and
Derwent Coleridge, and there and then settled the general plan of
Knight’s _Quarterly Magazine_, the first number of which was shortly
afterwards brought out.
Praed wrote “Castle Vernon,” the introductory portion of the new
_Magazine_, of which, for some numbers, he may be considered to have
been the guiding spirit, although the responsible editorship was vested
in Knight himself. The principal contributors were Winthrop Mackworth
Praed, who used two _noms de plume_ (Peregrine Courtenay, and Vyvyan
Joyeuse), Thomas Babington Macaulay (Tristram Merton), John Moultrie
(Gerard Montgomery), Derwent Coleridge (Davenant Cecil), William Sidney
Walker (Edward Hazelfoot), Henry Maiden (Hamilton Murray), and Henry
Nelson Coleridge (Joseph Haller). Praed’s prose style is bright and
lively. The “Castle Vernon” papers show it at about its best, but their
interest generally is very local and ephemeral. There are some clever
little caricatures of some of the principal contributors sketched in
here and there, one of which, as an early portrait of Macaulay, it may
be worth while to reproduce:--
“‘Tristram Merton, come into court!’ There came up a short, manly
figure, marvellously upright, with a bad neckcloth, and one hand in his
waist-coat pocket. Of regular beauty he had little to boast; but in
faces where there is an expression of great power, or great good-humour,
or of both, you do not regret its absence.
“‘They were glorious days,’ he said, with a bend and a look of
chivalrous gallantry to the circle around him, ‘they were glorious days
for old Athens when all she held of witty and of wise, of brave and of
beautiful, was collected in the drawing room of Aspasia. In those, the
brightest and noblest times of Greece, there was no feeling so strong as
the devotion of youth, no talisman of such virtue as the smile of
beauty. Aspasia was the arbitress of peace and war, the queen of arts
and arms, the Pallas of the spear and the pen; we have looked back to
those golden hours with transport and with longing. Here our classical
dreams shall in some sort wear a dress of reality. He who has not the
piety of a Socrates may at least fall down before as lovely a divinity;
he who has not the power of a Pericles may at least kneel before as
beautiful an Aspasia.’
“His tone had just so much of earnest, that what he said was felt as a
compliment, and just so much banter that it was felt to be nothing more.
As he concluded he dropped on one knee and paused.
“‘Tristram,’ said the Attorney-General, ‘we really are sorry to cramp a
culprit in his line of defence; but the time of the court must not be
taken up. If you can speak ten words to the purpose’------
“‘Prythee, Frederic,’ retorted the other, ‘leave me to manage my own
course. I have an arduous journey to run; and, in such a circle, like
the poor prince in the _Arabian Tales_, I must be frozen into stone
before I can finish my task without turning to the right or the left.’
“‘For the love you bear us, a truce to your similes: they shall be
felony without benefit of clergy; and silence for an hour shall be the
penalty.’
“‘A penalty for similes! horrible! Paul of Russia prohibited round hats,
Chihu of China denounced white teeth, but this is atrocious!’
“‘I beseech you, Tristram, if you can for a moment forget your
omniscience, let us----’
“‘I will endeavour. It is related of Zoroaster that----’”
* * * * *
Knight’s _Quarterly_ was started with much spirit, and promised to
become a great success. Much was hoped for from the co-operation of
Macaulay, but after the appearance of the first number he was compelled
to withdraw his name from the list of contributors, although with much
regret, in deference to the wishes of his family, whose religious
scruples, it is to be presumed, were alarmed at the frivolous character
of the publication. The difficulty was subsequently surmounted, and
Macaulay resumed his connection with the _Magazine_ with the third
number. His contributions to it were noteworthy, and included his fine
poems of “Ivry” and “Moncontour,” and the “Songs of the Civil War.” In
the interval, Praed worked hard to fill the void caused by Macaulay’s
defection, and his contributions in prose and verse make up about
one-third of the contents of the second number of the _Magazine_. In
this number was published the first canto of his unfinished poem, “The
Troubadour.” With De Quincey and Barry St. Leger added to the staff of
the _Magazine_, its prospects appeared bright enough, but dissensions
arose among the contributors, which finally led to its being
discontinued. It is impossible to say now what were the exact grounds of
quarrel. It appears evident, however, that Knight was properly tenacious
of his position as responsible editor, and declined to admit the
irresponsible interference of his undergraduate staff. Praed seems to
have become jealous, and impatient of editorial supervision, and seceded
from the _Magazine_, carrying most of his friends with him. Knight’s
_Quarterly_ ceased to appear, therefore, after the publication of the
sixth number. An attempt was subsequently made to carry it on with
another staff, but the character of the publication was materially
altered, and in its new form it failed to command popularity. Charles
Knight had published a rather bitter notice in No. 6 of the _Magazine_,
to which Praed replied in a letter addressed to the _Cambridge
Chronicle_. Knight wrote a rejoinder, and there the matter ended. Two
months later, however, Praed called upon Knight of his own accord, and
friendly intercourse was resumed between them, so that in the Spring of
1826 we find Praed again co-operating with Knight and Barry St. Leger in
the conduct of a new periodical. This was _The Brazen Head_, a cheap
weekly publication, that was designed to deal with current events in a
humorous manner. The Friar Bacon legend was utilised as a framework, and
the Friar and the Head, under Praed’s direction, discoursed wittily
together, week by week, upon the topics of the day. “We had,” said
Knight, “four weeks of this pleasantry: and, what was not an advantage,
we had nearly all the amusement to ourselves, for the number of our
purchasers was not legion.” So _The Brazen Head_ went the way of its
predecessor. Brief though its existence was, it contained some of
Winthrop Praed’s most charming and characteristic verse. The opening
poem of the first number, “The Chant of the Brazen Head,” is in
particular unsurpassable among his compositions.
Praed’s literary occupations were not permitted to interfere with his
University work to any serious extent, although they absorbed most of
his interest. The Rev. Derwent Coleridge says, with reference to his
University career, ‘There can be no doubt that he might have attained
higher distinction as a scholar by a course of systematic study, for he
showed in after life both the power of thorough investigation and a
sense of its value; but the bent of his genius, and perhaps the state of
his bodily health, inclined him to a more discursive occupation. As it
was, though he failed as a competitor for the University scholarship,
the long and shining list of his academic honours bore full testimony,
not merely to his extraordinary talent, but to the high character of his
scholastic attainments.
“In 1822 he gained Sir William Browne’s medal for the Greek Ode, and for
the Epigrams; in 1823 the same medal a second time for the Greek Ode,
with the first prize for English and Latin declamation in his college.
In 1824, Sir William Browne’s medal a second time for Epigrams. In 1823
and 1824 he also gained the Chancellor’s medal for English
verse--‘Australasia’ being the subject the former year, and ‘Athens’ in
the latter. In the classical tripos his name appeared twice in the list,
a high position, yet scarcely adding to the reputation which he already
enjoyed. In 1827 he was successful in the examination for a Trinity
Fellowship, and in 1830 he completed his University triumphs by gaining
the Seatonian prize.”
On leaving Cambridge, Praed practised for a while at the bar, apparently
with no great success. Politics at this time engaged his attention more
particularly, and in 1830 he was returned to Parliament for the first
time, as member for the soon-to-be-extinguished borough of St. Germains.
Praed had been a rival of Macaulay’s for the leadership of the Union,
and much was expected of him as a speaker. Of course he disappointed
expectations, but his contributions to the debate on the Reform Bill of
1830, although not brilliant, were not ineffective. He was the mover of
two amendments: one that freeholds in boroughs should confer borough and
not county votes; and the other, in support of which his most successful
speech was delivered, was a scheme of minority representation, that
appears to have been identical with that which has been, until recently,
in force in three-cornered constituencies.
St. Germains having been disfranchised, Praed in 1832 unsuccessfully
contested St. Ives, in Cornwall, where he had some family influence.
Being excluded from Parliament, he turned his attention to political
journalism, and became a leader-writer on the _Morning Post_, to which
paper also he contributed numerous anonymous political squibs. Praed
began his career as a Liberal, but about this time he became a convert
to Conservative opinions. Of this change of front he himself writes to
a friend: “My old college opinions have been considerably modified by
subsequent acquaintance with the world and observation of things _as
they are_. I am not going to stem a torrent, but I should like to
confine its fury within some bounds.... So my part in political matters
will probably expose me to all sorts of abuse for ratting, and so forth.
I abandon the party, if ever I belonged to it, in which my friends and
my interests are both to be found, and I adopt one where I can hope to
earn nothing but a barren reputation, and the consciousness of meaning
well.”
His connection with the _Morning Post_ led to a personal acquaintance
with the leaders of the Tory party; and overtures having been made to
him in 1835 to join Sir Robert Peel’s Administration, he accepted the
post of Secretary to the Board of Control, and re-entered Parliament as
member for Great Yarmouth. In the same year he married Helen, daughter
of George Bogle, Esq.
Sir Robert Peel’s Government came to a sudden and untimely end in about
three months, and with it ended Praed’s brief career as a minister.
In 1837 he retired from Great Yarmouth, and was returned for Aylesbury,
which borough he continued to represent until his death, which occurred
in 1839. His health, never robust, is said to have been permanently
affected by his exertions at the Great Yarmouth election of 1834, and to
this has been attributed the development of the fatal lung disease to
which he fell a victim. The winter of 1838-39 he spent at St. Leonard’s
with his wife and two infant daughters, returning to London for the
meeting of Parliament in February 1839, when his general health appeared
to have improved. His energy was untiring: he was constant in his
attendance during the seven nights’ debate on the Corn Laws, and in May,
when the House adjourned, consequent upon a change of Government, he
paid a flying visit to Cambridge in his official capacity of Deputy High
Steward of the University. The weather was very severe, and on his
returning to London his health was visibly breaking up. He continued to
attend in his place in the House of Commons, however, until the middle
of June, when he paired for the remainder of the Session with Lord
Arundel. On the 15th of July he was dead.
During the last ten or twelve years of his life Praed was a constant
contributor of verse to the periodicals of his day, although he was
never associated with any purely literary undertaking in the same
intimate manner as he was in the case of Knight’s _Quarterly Magazine_.
Charles Knight engaged his and John Moultrie’s co-operation in
_Friendship’s Offering_ for 1827, which he, Knight, edited for Smith &
Elder. Praed contributed the “Red Fisherman,” the only one of his
legendary ballads that has achieved any lasting popularity. Praed’s
original title for this poem was “The Devil’s Decoy,” which “some
blockhead in the confidence of the publishers” thought fit, on his own
responsibility, to alter to “The Red Fisherman.” Praed was very angry,
and was disposed to regard Charles Knight as responsible, and it was
with difficulty that another rupture between the old friends was
averted. “The Red Fisherman” has been frequently quoted, and it has been
the fashion to regard it as Praed’s happiest effort in ballad writing,
although in what respect it can be deemed superior to “The Bridal of
Belmont,” “The Haunted Tree,” “The Teufelhaus,”--which is even more
weirdly powerful--it is impossible to say. “The Troubadour,” Praed’s
longest poem, contains much that is very charming. The first two cantos
of it were published in Knight’s _Quarterly_. Praed’s secession from the
_Magazine_ interrupted the continuation. Only a portion of the third
canto was ever written. The poem is very indeterminate in character, and
might have been carried on indefinitely, as each canto brings the hero
into a new field of adventure, and supplies a tale or episode complete
in itself. The poem, even as far as it was published, is too lengthy
for insertion _in extenso_, but selected lyrics from it will be found in
this volume.
Praed’s claim to distinction, however, rests entirely upon his Poetry of
Life and Manners. As a writer of what, for want of a better name, we
call _Vers de Société_, he was in his time unapproachable, and has
hardly, at any time, been surpassed. Verse-writing of this class in
Praed’s early days had sunk to a very low ebb. Neither Canning’s wit nor
Moore’s gay fancy inspired the vapid scribblers who filled albums and
keepsakes with “Lines to Ladies’ Portraits,”
“Soft songs to Julia’s cockatoo,
Fierce odes to Famine and to Slaughter.”
Praed taught his contemporaries to be natural. He had a remarkable
fluency of expression. He was humorous, witty, and good-natured; he was
a man of the world, and knew his world well, gauged its weaknesses with
accuracy, and judged them with the leniency of a good-humoured worldly
philosopher, contriving, meanwhile, not to forfeit his own character for
honesty and healthiness of mind. There is nothing very deep about
Praed’s poetry, yet is it not entirely superficial. He had keen insight
and plenty of discrimination, but for great passion or sustained power
he had no capabilities. Lightly and gracefully he skated over the thin
surface ice of sentiment, not ignorant of, yet with little desire to
fathom, the unknown depths of passion and suffering that lay beneath.
“The genius of gentleman” claimed for Horace by the late Lord Lytton,
belonged to Praed in no common degree. No man equally witty and
brilliant was ever more perfectly well-bred in his writings: without
prudery, affectation, or cant, he was never slangy, suggestive, or
irreverent: he even achieved the difficult art of writing political
satires that lost none of their point from the fact of their being free
from coarseness or personality. He was a typical society poet,
compounded of wit, scholar, and gentleman. His world was not a very
serious or a very earnest world, and he wrote of it pretty much as he
found it, with some slight touches of half-sad, half-cynical, but never
unkindly moralising; yet with all its faults it was a pleasant world to
those whom it treated well, and a man laden with society’s favours, as
was Praed, was not likely to develop into a Democritus. Few poets have
been better treated by the world than he was: the paths of literature
and politics were never thorny ones to him; his talents brought him
reputation before he had ever struggled to attain it. Helping hands were
freely held out to him from the hour of his first schoolboy success; he
was popular in society, fortunate in friendship, and, above all things,
happy in his family and domestic affections. Mr. Locker remarks of the
qualities of his poetry, that “his fancy is less wild than Moore’s,
while his sympathies are narrower than Thackeray’s.” Both statements
(qualified by the further expression of opinion that has already been
quoted) may be accepted without much demur. With regard to the latter
remark, there are indeed few writers of the century of whom it might
not, with equal justice, have been made. Admitting that his sympathies
were neither very deep nor very wide, they are at least essentially and
uniformly healthy and pure. Whatever might have been Praed’s matter, his
manner, although not versatile, is always good. His fluency of
expression is remarkable, and must have even been a source of weakness,
since a man who wrote so much, so constantly, and with so little effort,
must almost inevitably have perpetrated a good deal of inferior work in
his time. What Praed published formed only a portion of what he wrote,
for he was always ready to scribble verse on slight temptation; and that
“inquisitive man with the note book,” Nathaniel Parker Willis, who met
Praed at a country house, has left it on record that he was ever open to
furnish contributions to the inevitable album that every fair one
cherished in those days. Praed’s style, as has been said, is not
versatile: he never hazarded possible harshness by metrical
experiments, and the measures that he particularly affected have become
intimately associated with the general characteristics of his style; his
rhyme and rhythm are both perfect, and apparently instinctive, as if
writing in metre were as effortless an exercise to him as writing in
prose.
To conclude in the words of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, “Not unknown,
nor without mark in the arena of political conflict, the name of Praed
is still remembered as at least that of a forward pupil in the school of
statesmanship; and though his literary honours, won in earliest manhood,
and sustained by the casual productions of a leisure hour, were worn
carelessly, while he was preparing for more serious duties, yet now that
years have gone by, and we have to audit the past with no expectation of
any future account, we find that he has left behind him a permanent
expression of wit and grace, refined and tender feeling, of inventive
fancy and acute observation, unique in character, and his own by an
undisputed title.”
FREDERICK COOPER.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Poems by W. M. Praed.
_LEGENDS AND TALES._
THE RED FISHERMAN; OR, THE DEVIL’S DECOY.
(1827.)
“Oh flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified.”--_Romeo and Juliet._
The Abbot arose, and closed his book,
And donned his sandal shoon,
And wandered forth, alone, to look
Upon the summer moon:
A starlight sky was o’er his head,
A quiet breeze around;
And the flowers a thrilling fragrance shed,
And the waves a soothing sound:
It was not an hour, nor a scene, for aught
But love and calm delight;
Yet the holy man had a cloud of thought
On his wrinkled brow that night.
He gazed on the river that gurgled by,
But he thought not of the reeds;
He clasped his gilded rosary,
But he did not tell the beads;
If he looked to the heaven, ’twas not to invoke
The Spirit that dwelleth there;
If he opened his lips, the words they spoke
Had never the tone of prayer.
A pious priest might the Abbot seem,
He had swayed the crozier well;
But what was the theme of the Abbot’s dream,
The Abbot were loth to tell.
Companionless, for a mile or more,
He traced the windings of the shore.
Oh, beauteous is that river still,
As it winds by many a sloping hill,
And many a dim o’erarching grove,
And many a flat and sunny cove,
And terraced lawns, whose bright arcades
The honeysuckle sweetly shades,
And rocks, whose very crags seem bowers,
So gay they are with grass and flowers!
But the Abbot was thinking of scenery
About as much, in sooth,
As a lover thinks of constancy,
Or an advocate of truth.
He did not mark how the skies in wrath
Grew dark above his head;
He did not mark how the mossy path
Grew damp beneath his tread;
And nearer he came, and still more near,
To a pool, in whose recess
The water had slept for many a year,
Unchanged and motionless;
From the river stream it spread away
The space of half a rood;
The surface had the hue of clay
And the scent of human blood;
The trees and the herbs that round it grew
Were venomous and foul,
And the birds that through the bushes flew
Were the vulture and the owl;
The water was as dark and rank
As ever a company pumped,
And the perch, that was netted and laid on the bank,
Grew rotten while it jumped;
And bold was the man who thither came
At midnight, man or boy,
For the place was cursed with an evil name,
And that name was “The Devil’s Decoy!”
The Abbot was weary as abbot could be,
And he sat down to rest on the stump of a tree:
When suddenly rose a dismal tone--
Was it a song, or was it a moan?
“O ho! O ho!
Above--below--
Lightly and brightly they glide and go!
The hungry and keen on the top are leaping,
The lazy and fat in the depths are sleeping;
Fishing is fine when the pool is muddy,
Broiling is rich when the coals are ruddy.”
In a monstrous fright, by the murky light,
He looked to the left and he looked to the right,
And what was the vision close before him,
That flung such a sudden stupor o’er him?
’Twas a sight to make the hair uprise,
And the life blood colder run:
The startled priest struck both his thighs,
And the abbey clock struck one!
All alone, by the side of the pool,
A tall man sat on a three-legged stool,
Kicking his heels on the dewy sod,
And putting in order his reel and rod;
Red were the rags his shoulders wore,
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.
The line the Abbot saw him throw
Had been fashioned and formed long ages ago,
And the hands that worked his foreign vest
Long ages ago had gone to their rest:
You would have sworn, as you looked on them,
He had fished in the flood with Ham and Shem!
There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
Minnow or gentle, worm or fly--
It seemed not such to the Abbot’s eye;
Gaily it glittered with jewel and gem,
And its shape was the shape of a diadem.
It was fastened a gleaming hook about
By a chain within and a chain without;
The fisherman gave it a kick and a spin,
And the water fizzed as it tumbled in!
From the bowels of the earth
Strange and varied sounds had birth;
Now the battle’s bursting peal,
Neigh of steed, and clang of steel;
Now an old man’s hollow groan
Echoed from the dungeon stone;
Now the weak and wailing cry
Of a stripling’s agony!
Cold by this was the midnight air;
But the Abbot’s blood ran colder,
When he saw a gasping knight lie there,
With a gash beneath his clotted hair,
And a hump upon his shoulder.
And the loyal churchman strove in vain
To mutter a Pater Noster;
For he who writhed in mortal pain
Was camped that night on Bosworth plain--
The cruel Duke of Glo’ster!
There was turning of keys and creaking of locks,
As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
It was a haunch of princely size,
Filling with fragrance earth and skies.
The corpulent Abbot knew full well
The swelling form, and the steaming smell;
Never a monk that wore a hood
Could better have guessed the very wood
Where the noble hart had stood at bay,
Weary and wounded, at close of day.
Sounded then the noisy glee
Of a revelling company--
Sprightly story, wicked jest,
Rated servant, greeted guest,
Flow of wine and flight of cork,
Stroke of knife, and thrust of fork:
But, where’er the board was spread,
Grace, I ween, was never said!
Pulling and tugging the Fisherman sat;
And the Priest was ready to vomit,
When he hauled out a gentleman, fine and fat,
With a belly as big as a brimming vat,
And a nose as red as a comet.
“A capital stew,” the Fisherman said,
“With cinnamon and sherry!”
And the Abbot turned away his head,
For his brother was lying before him dead--
The Mayor of St. Edmund’s Bury!
There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
It was a bundle of beautiful things--
A peacock’s tail, and a butterfly’s wings,
A scarlet slipper, an auburn curl,
A mantle of silk, and a bracelet of pearl,
And a packet of letters, from whose sweet fold
Such a stream of delicate odours rolled,
That the Abbot fell on his face, and fainted,
And deemed his spirit was half-way sainted.
Sounds seemed dropping from the skies,
Stifled whispers, smothered sighs,
And the breath of vernal gales,
And the voice of nightingales:
But the nightingales were mute,
Envious, when an unseen lute
Shaped the music of its chords
Into passion’s thrilling words:
“Smile, Lady, smile! I will not set
Upon my brow the coronet,
Till thou wilt gather roses white
To wear around its gems of light.
Smile, Lady, smile!--I will not see
Rivers and Hastings bend the knee,
Till those bewitching lips of thine
Will bid me rise in bliss from mine.
Smile, Lady, smile!--for who would win
A loveless throne through guilt and sin?
Or who would reign o’er vale and hill,
If woman’s heart were rebel still?”
One jerk, and there a lady lay,
A lady wondrous fair;
But the rose of her lip had faded away,
And her cheek was as white and as cold as clay,
And torn was her raven hair.
“Ah, ha!” said the Fisher, in merry guise,
“Her gallant was hooked before;”
And the Abbot heaved some piteous sighs,
For oft he had blessed those deep blue eyes,
The eyes of Mistress Shore!
There was turning of keys and creaking of locks,
As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
Many the cunning sportsman tried,
Many he flung with a frown aside;
A minstrel’s harp, and a miser’s chest,
A hermit’s cowl, and a baron’s crest,
Jewels of lustre, robes of price,
Tomes of heresy, loaded dice,
And golden cups of the brightest wine
That ever was pressed from the Burgundy vine.
There was a perfume of sulphur and nitre,
As he came at last to a bishop’s mitre!
From top to toe the Abbot shook,
As the Fisherman armed his golden hook,
And awfully were his features wrought
By some dark dream or wakened thought.
Look how the fearful felon gazes
On the scaffold his country’s vengeance raises,
When the lips are cracked and the jaws are dry
With the thirst which only in death shall die:
Mark the manner’s frenzied frown
As the swirling wherry settles down,
When peril has numbed the sense and will,
Though the hand and the foot may struggle still:
Wilder far was the Abbot’s glance,
Deeper far was the Abbot’s trance:
Fixed as a monument, still as air,
He bent no knee, and he breathed no prayer;
But he signed--he knew not why or how--
The sign of the Cross on his clammy brow.
There was turning of keys and creaking of locks,
As he stalked away with his iron box.
“O ho! O ho!
The cock doth crow;
It is time for the Fisher to rise and go.
Fair luck to the Abbot, fair luck to the shrine!
He hath gnawed in twain my choicest line; south,
Let him swim to the north, let him swim to the
The Abbot will carry my hook in his mouth!”
The Abbot had preached for many years
With as clear articulation
As ever was heard in the House of Peers
Against Emancipation;
His words had made battalions quake,
Had roused the zeal of martyrs,
Had kept the Court an hour awake,
And the King himself three-quarters:
But ever since that hour, ’tis said,
He stammered and he stuttered,
As if an axe went through his head
With every word he uttered.
He stuttered o’er blessing, he stuttered o’er ban,
He stuttered, drunk or dry;
And none but he and the Fisherman
Could tell the reason why!
THE LEGEND OF THE DRACHENFELS.
“Lead me away! I am weak and young,
Captive the fierce and proud among;
But I will pray a humble prayer,
That the feeble to strike may be strong to bear.
“Lead me away! oh, dear to mine eyes
Are the flowery fields and the sunny skies;
But I cannot turn from the Cross divine,
To bend my knee at an idol’s shrine.”
They clothe her in such rich array
As a bride prepares for her bridal day;
Around her forehead, that shines so bright,
They wreathe a wreath of roses white,
And set on her neck a golden chain,
Spoil of her sire in combat slain,
Over her head her doom is said;
And with folded arms and measured tread,
In long procession, dark and slow,
Up the terrible hill they go,
Hymning their hymn, and crying their cry,
To him, their Demon Deity--
Mary, Mother, sain and save!
The maiden kneels at the Dragon’s cave!
Alas! ’tis frightful to behold
That thing of Nature’s softest mould,
In whose slight shape and delicate hue
Life’s loveliness beams, fresh and new,
Bound on the bleak hill’s topmost height,
To die, and by such death, to-night!
But yester-eve, when the red sun
His race of grateful toil had run,
And over earth the moon’s soft rays
Lit up the hour of prayer and praise,
She bowed within the pleasant shade
By her own fragrant jasmine made;
And while her clear and thrilling tone
Asked blessing from her Maker’s throne,
Heard the notes echoed to her ear
From lips that were to her most dear.
Her sire, her kindred, round her knelt;
And the young priestess knew and felt
That deeper love than that of men
Was in their natural temple then.
That love--is now its radiance chill?
Oh! fear not! it is o’er her still!
The crowd departed; and alone
She kneeled upon the rugged stone.
Alas! it was a dismal pause,
When the wild rabble’s fierce applause
Died slowly on the answering air;
And in the still and mute profound,
She started even at the sound
Of the half-thought, half-spoken prayer
Her heart and lip had scarcely power
To feel or frame in that dark hour,
Fearful, yet blameless! for her birth,
Fair victim, was of common earth,
And she was nurst, in happier hours,
By Nature’s common suns and showers;
And when one moment whirls away
Whate’er we know or trust to-day,
And opens that eternal book,
On which we long, and dread, to look--
In that quick change of sphere and scope,
That rushing of the spirit’s wings
From all we have to all we hope,
From mortal to immortal things--
Though madly on the giddy brink
Despair may smile, and Guilt dissemble,
White Innocence a while will shrink,
And Piety be proud to tremble!
But quickly from her brow and cheek
The flush of human terror faded,
And she aroused, the maiden meek,
Her fainting spirit, self-upbraided,
And felt her secret soul renewed
In that her solemn solitude.
Unwonted strength to her was given
To bear the rod and drink the cup;
Her pulse beat calmer, and to Heaven
Her voice in firmer tone went up:
And as upon her gentle heart
The dew of holy peace descended,
She saw her last sunlight depart
With awe and hope so meekly blended
Into a deep and tranquil sense
Of unpresuming confidence,
That if the blinded tribes, whose breath
Had doomed her to such dole and death,
Could but have caught one bright, brief glance
Of that ungrieving countenance,
And marked the light of glory shed
Already o’er her sinless head,
The tears with which her eyes were full--
Tears not of anguish--and the smile
Of new-born rapture, which the while
As with a lustrous veil arrayed
Her brow, her cheek, her lip, and made
Her beauty more than beautiful--
Oh, would they not have longed to share
Her torture--yea! her transport, there?
“Father, my sins are very great;
Thou readest them, whate’er they be;
But penitence is all too late;
And unprepared I come to Thee,
Uncleansed, unblessed, unshriven!
“Yet Thou, in whose all-searching sight
No human thing is undefiled--
Thou, who art merciful in might,
Father, Thou wilt forgive Thy child--
Father, Thou hast forgiven!
“Thy will, not hers, be done to-day!
If in this hour, and on this spot,
Her soul indeed must pass away
Among fierce men who know Thee not--
Thine is the breath Thou gavest!
“Or, if Thou wilt put forth Thine hand
And shield her from the jaws of flame,
That she may live to teach the land
Whose people hath not heard Thy name--
Thine be the life Thou savest!”
So spoke the blessed maid, and now
Crossing her hands upon her breast,
With quiet eye and placid brow
Awaited the destroying pest;
Not like a thing of sense and life
Soul-harrassed in such bitter strife,
But tranquil, as a shape of stone
Upraised in ages long bygone
To mark where, closed her toilsome race,
Some sainted sister sleeps in grace.
Such Bertha seemed: about her grew
Sweet wild-flowers, sweet of scent and hue;
And she had fixed with pious care
Her crucifix before her there,
That her last look and thought might be
Of Christ and of the Holy Tree.