and they and their readers fall on weeping. One does not look to Eliza Cook for cheerfulness, or to Mrs. Hemans for flippancy; theirs is the harp of the angel Israfel-a harp of one string, and that a mournful one.

What the later Romans said of Plautus, the later English say of Hood; they object to his inveterate punning. Modern critics will quote, with approval, such a quatrain as the following from Mr. Stephens' Lapsus Calami,

When mankind shall be delivered from the crash of magazines, And the inkstand shall be shivered into countless smithereens, And there stands a muzzled stripling, mute, beside a muzzled bore, Where the Rudyards cease from Kipling, and the Haggards ride no

more.

Then they will condemn Hood, probably instancing so mild a venture in the art of punning as,

So Lucy ran up, and in ten seconds more,

Had questioned the stranger, and answered the door.

The latter, they say, consists of nothing but plays on words; the former is delicious English humour.

But really the objection to Hood is somewhat unfair. He was the pioneer; moreover the advance on Hood which has been made by his modern rivals is not such as to invite one to join the present school of critics in their detestation of the old and their deification of the new.

Besides, Hood had a wonderful influence upon his successors. To accuse him of punning, and to forget some of his " gracefully-turned nonsense," is to wilfully overlook some of his best work. Take, for instance, the "Story of the Broken Dish."

We gather flowers of every hue,

And fish in boats for fishes,
Build summer-houses painted blue,-
But life's as frail as dishes.

Walking about their groves of trees,
Blue bridges and blue rivers,

How little thought them two Chinese,

They'd both be smash'd to shivers.

The influence of such verse upon the succeeding writers is apparent. The art is indisputably higher than that whose boast is its plays upon words, and the writers who follow Hood grow out of his strained witticisms and fantastic puns. The spirit turns, too, rather towards society or social verse; and of light poets of this class W. M. Praed stands pre-eminent. As I said of Plautus, and as must be said of most of these lighter poets, he was a man of action, immersed in the turmoil of daily business. It is curious that to discover the lighter touches in verse, we turn in vain to the professional poets,-if I may apply such an adjective to a poet. That is why I shall shortly claim for these men that their productions show a more intimate knowledge of the world, and of the men of the world, than do those of the serious poets. As William Cullen Bryant said to a poetic aspirant who submitted a poem on the skylark, but who had never seen or heard that warbler, "Let us beware of literary insincerity."

Praed is an example of absolute sincerity. He took as his study-models the heroes of Belgravia and Mayfair. It is quite true, as the modern critics say, that he is too little sentimental, and here he is justly and unfavourably compared to Edward Fitzgerald. Yet Praed had, in common with most light verse writers, an earnest philosophy to teach, a philosophy none the less true because it came from a society poet, none the less pungent and piercing because from a satirist who, in his heart of hearts, loved

the subjects of his apparent scorn. stanzas,

Witness the following

I think the thing you call Renown,-
The unsubstantial vapour

For which the soldier burns a town,

The sonnetteer a taper,

Is like the mist which, as he flies,
The horseman leaves behind him;
He cannot mark its wreaths arise
Or if he does, they blind him.

I think that Love is like a play,
Where tears and smiles are blended,
Or like a faithless April day,

Whose shine with shower is ended;
Like Colnbrook pavement, rather rough,
Like trade, exposed to losses,

And like a Highland plaid-all stuff,
And very full of crosses.

It is easy to sneer at such philosophy, indeed, it is always easy to sneer-almost as easy as it is to be sneered at; but in spite of the lack of feeling throughout Praed's verse, a characteristic which is peculiarly prominent to us seeing that our later humourists have used pathos to so good effect in their work, yet there is a tenderness in his little character sketches which is almost inimitable. Take Quince, that most charming of Praed's "Every-day Character" sketches whom, with his wonderful power of antithetical allusion, he describes in such phrases as

He won the sympathies of all

By making puns, and making presents,
Though all the parish were at strife

He kept his counsel, and his carriage,

And laughed, and loved a quiet life,

And shrank from chancery suits-and marriage.

Warm was his double ale-and feelings;

His partners at the whist club said

That he was faultless in his dealings.

Or in the alleged pathetic ending,—

I found him, at threescore and ten,

A single man, but bent quite double;

Personally, I feel that the older manner of humorous antithesis, by plays upon words, is not nearly so artistic as the plays upon meaning and spirit which shine through Praed's work. Take, as an example of the former, Shirley Brooks' famous "Theological Horology." Speaking of Geneva, he says:

They can't produce a decent watch,

For Calvinists despise good works.

One cannot compare it, clever though it be, with such a stanza as this from the "Belle of the Ball-room":—

She sketched; the vale, the wood, the beach

Grew lovelier from her pencil's shading.

She botanized; I envied each

Young blossom in her boudoir fading;
She warbled Handel; it was grand;

She made the Catalini jealous;

She touched the organ; I could stand

For hours and hours to blow the bellows.

Now Edward Fitzgerald cared less for the epigram than for the spirit, for the symbol than for the sympathy. His verse has less elegance, but more heart, consequently he comes as the first faint streaks of the dawn of real light verse across the cold grey hills of rhyme. His women are of a nobler type than Praed's, for he is no misogynist, and though his descriptions be light and pleasing, they are never cynical.

"Because," he says, "I think you'd rather twirl,
A waltz with me to guide you,

Than talk small nonsense, with an earl
And coronet beside you!

Because I think you'd scarce refuse

To sew one on a button;

Because I know you'd sometimes choose

To dine on simple mutton!"

It is easy to say that Fitzgerald was an imitator of Praed, it is easy to say that he was indebted to Praed for the final touches to his work. Certainly neither imitation nor indebtedness introduced such a deep thoughtful spirit into his verse as that evinced in the closing stanza of the Good-night" lyric,

66

There are tones that will haunt us, though lonely

Our path be o'er mountain and sea,

There are looks that will part from us only

When Memory ceases to be.

There are hopes that our burthen can lighten
Though toilsome and steep be the way,
And dreams that like moonlight can brighten,
With a light that is fairer than day.

Whether parody comes under the heading of pure humorous verse is a question that is open to discussion. At the best, parody is only of secondary merit—it is the planting of a few bright flowers upon land that has been fertilised by earnest hard-working hands. I would distinguish parody from what Mr. Elliot in his brilliant book calls "jumble," such as

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
That to be hated needs but to be seen,
Invites my lays; be present, sylvan maids,
And graceful deer reposing in the shades.

This does not appeal to the reader with the same force as
Shirley Brooks' skit on Tennyson's poem, beginning—

Home they brought her lap-dog dead,

Just run over by a fly;

James to Buttons, winking, said,

"Won't there be a row, O my!"

Q