Winthrop Mackworth Praed

“ And apt—which is silly—to quarrel,
And fond—which is sad—of champagne.
I listened, and doubted, dear Alice,
For I saw, when my Lady began,
It was only the Dowager’s malice;—
She does hate a talented man!
He’s hideous, I own it. But fame, love,
Is all that these eyes can adore;
He’s lame,—but Lord Byron was lame, love,
And dumpy,—but so is Tom Moore.
Then his voice,—such a voice! my sweet creature,
It’s like your Aunt Lucy’s toucan:
But oh! what’s a tone or a feature,
When once one’s a talented man? ”

“ And the world, as it rolled through Twenty-eight,
Must roll through Twenty-nine.
Some king will come, in Heaven’s good time,
To the tomb his father came to;
Some thief will wade through blood and crime
To a crown he has no claim to;
Some suffering land will rend in twain
The manacles that bound her,
And gather the links of the broken chain
To fasten them proudly round her:
The grand and great will love and hate,
And combat, and combine;
And much where we were in Twenty-eight
We shall be in Twenty-nine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They fly, the braggarts of the court, the bullies of the Rhine:
Stout Langley’s cheer is heard no more, and Astley’s helm is down,
And Rupert sheathes his rapier with a curse and with a frown;
And cold Newcastle mutters, as he follows in the flight,
“The German boar had better far have supped in York to-night.”
The knight is all alone, his steel cap cleft in twain,
His good buff jerkin crimsoned o’er with many a gory stain;
But still he waves the standard, and cries amid the rout—
“For Church and King, fair gentlemen, spur on and fight it out!” ”

“ The world’s cold chains have bound me;
And darker shades are on my brow,
And sadder scenes around me;{221}
In Parliament I fill my seat,
With many other noodles;
And lay my head in Jermyn Street
And sip my hock at Boodle’s.
But often when the cares of life
Have sent my temples aching,
When visions haunt me of a wife,
When duns await my waking,
When Lady Jane is in a pet,
Or Hoby in a hurry,
When Captain Hazard wins a bet,
Or Beaulieu spoils a curry,—
For hours and hours I think and talk
Of each remembered hobby;
I long to lounge in Poet’s walk,
To shiver in the Lobby ”

“ When some mad poet stops to muse
About the moonlight and the dews,
The Fairies and the Fauns,
He’s apt to think, he’s apt to swear,
That Cupid reigns not anywhere
Except in groves and lawns,
That none have vulnerable livers
But bards who haunt the banks of rivers,
That none are fair enough for witches
But maids who roam through dells and ditches,
That dreams are twice as sweet as dances,
That cities never breed romances,
That Beauty always keeps a cottage,
And Innocence grows pure on pottage.
Yes! those dear dreams are all divine ”

“ It is beyond a poet’s skill
To form the slightest notion whether
We e’er shall walk through one quadrille,
Or look upon one moon together.
You’re very pretty!—all the world
Is talking of your bright brow’s splendour.
And of your locks, so softly curled,
And of your hands, so white and slender;
Some think you’re blooming in Bengal;
Some say you’re blowing in the City;
Some know you’re nobody at all:
I only feel—you’re very pretty.
But bless my heart! it’s very wrong ”

“ The screeching of owls, and the baying of hounds,
The hollow toll of the turret bell,
The call of the watchful sentinel,
And a groan at last, like a peal of thunder,
As the huge old portals rolled asunder,
And gravely from the castle hall
Paced forth the white-robed seneschal.
He stayed not to ask of what degree
So fair and famished a knight might be ”

“ I think the world has lost its wits,
And you have lost your labour.
I think the studies of the wise,
The hero’s noisy quarrel,
The majesty of woman’s eyes,
The poet’s cherished laurel,
And all that makes us lean or fat,
And all that charms or troubles,—
This bubble is more bright than that,
But still they all are bubbles.{163}
I think the thing you call Renown,
The unsubstantial vapour
For which the soldier burns a town,
The sonnetteer a taper,
Is like the mist which, as he flies,
The horseman leaves behind him ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Though I hadn’t a sou at my bankers!
If you’ll tell me the reason a maiden must sigh
When she looks at a star or a planet;
If you’ll tell me the reason she flings her book by,
When you know she has hardly began it;
If her cheek has grown pale, and if dim is her eye,
And her breathing both fevered and faint is,
Then think it exceedingly likely that I
Can tell what that maiden’s complaint is!
COUSINS.
“L’Hymen, dit-on, craint les petits Cousins.”—Scribe. ”

“ A CLASSICAL WALK.
“You have often promised to teach me Greek and Latin. Now, that we are in this classic land, do keep your promise.”—Conversation on the beach at Salerno.
Oh, yes! beside that moonlit creek,
Where sleep the silent waters,
I’ll teach thee all I know of Greek,
Young queen of beauty’s daughters!
And each sweet eve, by that lone shore,
Where no rude step can fright us,
We’ll cull sweet flowers of classic lore,
With the young stars to light us! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But let them not babble of Greek to the rabble,
Nor teach the mechanics their letters;
The labouring classes were born to be asses,
And not to be aping their betters.
’Tis a terrible crisis for Cam and for Isis,
Fat butchers are learning dissection;
And looking-glass makers become Sabbath breakers,
To study the laws of reflection;
Sin Φ and sin Θ, no sin can be sweeter,
Are taught to the poor of both sexes,
And weavers and spinners jump up from their dinners
To flirt with their y’s and their x’s. ”

“ In his more mature days he perpetrated a good deal of verse that is not much above the standard{10} 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ F 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. ”

“ Thus run the giddy hours away,
The morning’s light is beaming,
And we must go to dream by day
All we to-night are dreaming,—
To smile and sigh, to love and change:
Oh, in our hearts’ recesses,
We dress in fancies quite as strange
As these our fancy dresses!
A LETTER OF ADVICE.
(From Miss Medora Trevilian, at Padua, to Miss Araminta Vavasour, in London.) ”

“ 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. ”

“ Come in Thine own good time!
We will abide; we have not turned from Thee,
Though in a world of grief our portion be,
Of bitter grief and crime.
Be Thou our guard and guide!
Forth from the spoiler’s synagogue we go,
That we may worship where the torrents flow
And where the whirlwinds ride.
From lonely rocks and caves
We will pour forth our sacrifice of prayer.—
On, brethren, to the mountains! seek we there
Safe temples, quiet graves!
{259}
WRITTEN UNDER A PICTURE OF KING’S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE.
Most beautiful! ”

“ 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{16} 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 ”

“ Grattan will growl, or Baldwin bray;—
Sleep, Mr. Speaker; sleep, sleep while you may!
Sleep, Mr. Speaker; dream of the time
When loyalty was not quite a crime;
When Grant was a pupil in Canning’s school;
When Palmerston fancied Wood a fool;
Lord, how principles pass away!
Sleep, Mr. Speaker; sleep, sleep, while you may!
Sleep, Mr. Speaker; sweet to men
Is the sleep that cometh but now and then;
Sweet to the sorrowful, sweet to the ill,
Sweet to the children that work in a mill;
You have more need of sleep than they;—
Sleep, Mr. Speaker; sleep, sleep while you may! ”

“ Where the locks slept, as through the dance,
Dreamlike, I saw thee flit,
Are far too warm, and far too fair
To mix with aught of earthly care;
But the vision shall come when my day is done,
A frail and a fair and a fleeting one! ”

“ This will be entrusted to writers who will each, in freshly treated, suggestive Introductions, give just that account of the book and its author which will enable the significance of both in life and literature, and their relation to modern thought, to be readily grasped. And where, for the successful rescue of old-time books for modern reading, revision and selection are necessary, the editing will be done with careful zeal and with reverence always for the true spirit of the book. ”