e first "Poems and Ballads." The shortening of
the last line which the later poet has introduced is a touch of genius,
but not perhaps greater than Praed's own recognition of the
extraordinarily vivid and ringing qualities of the stanza. I profoundly
believe that metrical quality is, other things being tolerably equal,
the great secret of the enduring attraction of verse: and nowhere, not
in the greatest lyrics, is that quality more unmistakable than in the
"Letter of Advice." I really do not know how many times I have read it;
but I never can read it to this day without being forced to read it out
loud like a schoolboy and mark with accompaniment of hand-beat such
lines as

Remember the thrilling romances
We read on the bank in the glen:
Remember the suitors our fancies
Would picture for both of us then.
They wore the red cross on their shoulder,
They had vanquished and pardoned their foe--
Sweet friend, are you wiser or colder?
My own Araminta, say "No!"

. . . . .

He must walk--like a god of old story
Come down from the home of his rest;
He must smile--like the sun in his glory,
On the buds he loves ever the best;
And oh! from its ivory portal
Like music his soft speech must flow!
If he speak, smile, or walk like a mortal,
My own Araminta, say "No!"

There are, metrically speaking, few finer couplets in English than the
first of that second stanza. Looked at from another point of view, the
mixture of the comic and the serious in the piece is remarkable enough;
but not so remarkable, I think, as its extraordinary metrical
accomplishment. There is not a note or a syllable wrong in the whole
thing, but every sound and every cadence comes exactly where it ought to
come, so as to be, in a delightful phrase of Southey's, "necessary and
voluptuous and right."

It is no wonder that when Praed had discovered such a medium he should
have worked it freely. But he never impressed on it such a combination
of majesty and grace as in this letter of Medora Trevilian. As far as
the metre goes I think the eight-lined stanzas of this piece better
suited to it than the twelve-lined ones of "Good Night to the Season"
and the first "Letter from Teignmouth," but both are very delightful.
Perhaps the first is the best known of all Praed's poems, and certainly
some things in it, such as

The ice of her ladyship