and accomplishment. In
this serious work of Hood's--_Lycus the Centaur_, _The Plea of the
Midsummer Fairies_, _The Elm Tree_, _The Haunted House_--there is
observable--to a degree never surpassed by any of the poets of this
group except Beddoes, and more sustained and human, though less weird
and sweet, than his--a strain of the true, the real, the ineffable tone
of poetry proper. At this Praed never arrives: there are at most in him
touches which may seem to a very charitable judgment to show that in
other circumstances sorrow, passion, or the like might have roused him
to display the hidden fire. On the other hand, neither Hood's breeding,
nor, I think, his nature, allowed him to display the exquisite airiness,
the delicate artificial bloom and perfection, of Praed's best _vers de
societe_--the _Season_, the _Letter of Advice_, and the rest. This last
bloom has never been quite equalled--even Prior's touch is coarse to it,
even that of the late Mr. Locker is laboured and deliberate. So too as
there is nothing in Praed of the popular indignation--generous and fine
but a little theatrical--which endears Hood to the general in _The
Bridge of Sighs_ and _The Song of the Shirt_, so there is nothing in
Hood of the sound political sense, underlying apparent banter, of
Praed's _Speaker Asleep_ and other things.

But where the two poets come together, on a ground which they have
almost to themselves, is in a certain kind of humorous poetry ranging
from the terrific-grotesque, as in Hood's _Miss Kilmansegg_ and Praed's
_Red Fisherman_, to the simple, humorously tender study of characters,
as in a hundred things of Hood's and in not a few of Praed's with _The
Vicar_ at their head. The resemblance here is less in special points
than in a certain general view of life, conditioned in each case by the
poet's breeding, temperament, and circumstance, but alike in essence and
quality: in a certain variety of the essentially English fashion of
taking life with a mixture of jest and earnest, of humour and sentiment.
Hood, partly influenced by the need of caring for the public, partly by
his pupilship to Lamb, perhaps went to further extremes both in mere fun
and in mere sentiment than Praed did, but the central substance is the
same in both.

Yet one gift which Hood has and Praed has not remains to be noticed--the
gift of exquisite song writing. Compared with the admired inanities of
Barry Cornwall, his praised contemporary, Hood's "Fai