o another channel, which was still not his
own channel, but in which he feathered his oars under two different
flags with no small skill and dexterity. Sir George Young has a very
high idea of his uncle's political verse, and places him "first among
English writers, before Prior, before Canning, before the authors of the
'Rolliad,' and far before Moore or any of the still anonymous
contributors to the later London press." I cannot subscribe to this.
Neither as Whig nor as Tory, neither as satirist of George the Fourth
nor as satirist of the Reform Bill, does Praed seem to me to have been
within a hundred miles of that elder schoolfellow of his who wrote

All creeping creatures, venomous and low,
Still blasphemous or blackguard, praise Lepaux.

He has nothing for sustained wit and ease equal to the best pieces of
the "Fudge Family" and the "Two-penny Postbag"; and (for I do not know
why one should not praise a man because he happens to be alive and one's
friend) I do not think he has the touch of the true political satirist
as Mr. Traill has it in "Professor Baloonatics Craniocracs," or in that
admirable satire on democracy which is addressed to the "Philosopher
Crazed, from the Island of Crazes."

Indeed, by mentioning Prior, Sir George seems to put himself rather out
of court. Praed _is_ very nearly if not quite Prior's equal, but the
sphere of neither was politics. Prior's political pieces are thin and
poor beside his social verse, and with rare exceptions I could not put
anything political of Praed's higher than the shoe-string of "Araminta."
Neither of these two charming poets seems to have felt seriously enough
for political satire. Matthew, we know, played the traitor; and though
Mackworth ratted to my own side, I fear it must be confessed that he did
rat. I can only discover in his political verse two fixed principles,
both of which no doubt did him credit, but which hardly, even when taken
together, amount to a sufficient political creed. The one was fidelity
to Canning and his memory: the other was impatience of the cant of the
reformers. He could make admirable fun of Joseph Hume, and of still
smaller fry like Waithman; he could attack Lord Grey's nepotism and
doctrinairism fiercely enough. Once or twice, or, to be fair, more than
once or twice, he struck out a happy, indeed a brilliant flash. He was
admirable at what Sir George Young calls, justly enough, "political
patter songs" such as,

You