by high authorities, but his theme is generally "Society" with a
capital S. "Praed," says Locker in "My Confidences," "is the very best
of his school: indeed, he has a unique position; for in his narrower vein
of whimsical wit, vernacular banter, and antithetical rhetoric, which may
correctly be called _vers de societe_ in its most perfected form, and its
exactest sense, he has never been equalled." These phrases hit off Praed
very well--if one does not exactly see what "Society" has to do with
antithetical rhetoric.

These two poets, so often classed together, are not really very much
alike. Both are certainly "in lighter vein"; but they differ apparently
in temperament, and certainly in method. No one would deny to Praed the
gift of humour. But the period in which he wrote was one which admired
primarily wit; and while it would be too much to say that his heart is
not in his theme--that he stands detached from it--still, his sympathies
are indubitably subordinated to the effort, the successful effort, to
bring off a neat point, to make a pun in the right place, to be striking,
antithetical, epigrammatic. His verses have the finish, in their way, of
Pope's couplet and Ovid's pentameter. His best known and most praised
work appeals, primarily, to the taste and the ear: always, perhaps, to
the head rather than to the heart. There is something of "hard
brilliance" in Praed: he writes for effect, he is epideictic. Of course,
this is one object of writers of "society verses":

"Sole secret to jingle and scan,"

as an unduly severe critic says somewhere. One need hardly say that this
is not Praed's sole secret: but technique is certainly his strong point.

"Where are my friends? I am alone:
No playmate shares my beaker:
Some lie beneath the churchyard stone
And some--before the Speaker:
And some compose a tragedy,
And some compose a rondo:
And some draw sword for Liberty,
And some draw pleas for John Doe.

Tom Mill was used to blacken eyes
Without the fear of sessions:
Charles Medlar loathed false quantities
As much as false professions:
Now Mill keeps order in the land,
A magistrate pedantic:
And Medlar's feet repose unscanned
Beneath the wide Atlantic."

This is the art which does not conceal itself. One may not be able to do
the trick; but it is possible to see how the trick is done.

"No one," says Locker, when speaking o