Stout Skippon hath a wound; the centre hath given ground: Hark! hark!—What means the trampling of horsemen on our rear? Whose banner do I see, boys? 'Tis he, thank God, 'tis he, boys. Bear up another minute: brave Oliver is here. Their heads all stooping low, their points all in a row, Fast, fast, the gallants ride, in some safe nook to hide That bore to look on torture, and dare not look on war! Ho! comrades, scour the plain; and, ere ye strip the slain, The tokens of the wanton, the plunder of the poor. Fools! your doublets shone with gold, and your hearts were gay and bold, When you kissed your lily hands to your lemans to-day; And to-morrow shall the fox, from her chambers in the rocks, Lead forth her tawny cubs to howl above the prey. Where be your tongues that late mocked at heaven and hell and fate, And the fingers that once were so busy with your blades, Your perfumed satin clothes, your catches and your oaths, Your stage-plays and your sonnets, your diamonds and your spades? Down, down, for ever down with the mitre and the crown, With the Belial of the Court, and the Mammon of the Pope There is woe in Oxford Halls: there is wail in Durham's Stalls. The Jesuit smites his bosom : the Bishop rends his cope. And She of the seven hills shall mourn her children's ills, EPITAPH ON A JACOBITE. To my true king I offered free from stain Oh thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone, WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. [WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED was born in London on the 26th of July, 1802. He was educated at Eton, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He died on the 15th of July, 1839. His verses, contributed chiefly to periodicals such as the Etonian and Knight's Quarterly Magazine, were not collected in this country until 1864, when they were published in two volumes, with a memoir by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge.] 'In a collection of short pieces,' says Mr. Matthew Arnold in his preface to Wordsworth's selected poems, 'the impression made by one piece requires to be continued and sustained by the piece following.' The verses of Praed are in some sort an illustration of the justice of this remark. Had he himself prepared his book for the press he would doubtless have cancelled a good many poems which his representatives, naturally enough, hesitated to omit. But even the over-affluent character of his legacy to posterity has not much impaired his popularity, or influenced the critical estimate of his work. As a writer of 'societyverse' in its exacter sense, Praed is justly acknowledged to be supreme. We say 'exacter sense,' because it has of late become the fashion to apply this vague term in the vaguest possible way, so as indeed to include almost all verse but the highest and the lowest. This is manifestly a mistake. 'Society-verse,' as Praed understood it, and as we understand it in Praed, treats almost exclusively of the votum, timor, ira, voluptas (and especially the voluptas) of that charmed circle of uncertain limits known conventionally as 'good society,'-those latter-day Athenians, who, in town and country, spend their time in telling or hearing some new thing, and whose graver and deeper impulses are subordinated to a code of artificial manners. Of these Praed is the laureate-elect; and the narrow world in which they move is the 'main haunt and region of his song.' Now and again, it may be, he appears to quit it; but never in reality; and even when he seems to do so, like Landor's shell remote from the sea, he still 'remembers its august abodes.' Praed's chief characteristics are his sparkling wit, the clearstyle, and the flexibility and unflagging He is a master of epigram and antithesis, ness and finish of his vivacity of his rhythm. :specially of the kind exemplified by the following couplets : 'And some grow nch by telling lies, His defects are that he lacks sincerity and variety of theme,— that his brilliancy at times becomes mere glitter, and his manner mechanical. His biographer assures us that his nature had a deeper and graver side than would be suspected from his habitual tone of sportive irony: it is incontestable, however, that the indications of this in his works are faint compared with those which we find in Thackeray and Hood. My own Araminta is an admirable example of his lightest style; the Vicar of his more pensive character-pieces; whilst in My little Cousins, which our space does not permit us to quote, there is a rarer vein of playful tenderness. In many of his charades he almost manages to raise those metrical pastimes to the dignity of poetry. AUSTIN DOBSON. 1 Praed may perhaps have taken the hint of this device from the Holy Fair, 'There's some are fou o' love divine; VOL. IV A LETTER OF ADVICE. FROM MISS MEDORA TREVILIAN, AT PADUA, TO MISS ARAMINTA VAVASOUR, IN LONDON. You tell me you're promised a lover, My own Araminta, next week ; Why cannot my fancy discover The hue of his coat and his cheek? Alas! if he look like another, A vicar, a banker, a beau, Be deaf to your father and mother, Miss Lane, at her Temple of Fashion, Taught us both how to sing and to speak, I wear it wherever I go; I gave you a chain,-is it broken? O think of our favourite cottage, And think of our dear Lalla Rookh! How we shared with the milkmaids their pottage, How fondly our loving lips faltered, 'What further can grandeur bestow?' My heart is the same ;-is yours altered? My own Araminta, say 'No!' Remember the thrilling romances We read on the bank in the glen; 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!' |