Part 2

Knight’s _Quarterly_ was started with much spirit, and promised to become a great success. Much was hoped for from the co-operation of Macaulay, but after the appearance of the first number he was compelled to withdraw his name from the list of contributors, although with much regret, in deference to the wishes of his family, whose religious scruples, it is to be presumed, were alarmed at the frivolous character of the publication. The difficulty was subsequently surmounted, and Macaulay resumed his connection with the _Magazine_ with the third number. His contributions to it were noteworthy, and included his fine poems of “Ivry” and “Moncontour,” and the “Songs of the Civil War.” In the interval, Praed worked hard to fill the void caused by Macaulay’s defection, and his contributions in prose and verse make up about one-third of the contents of the second number of the _Magazine_. In this number was published the first canto of his unfinished poem, “The Troubadour.” With De Quincey and Barry St. Leger added to the staff of the _Magazine_, its prospects appeared bright enough, but dissensions arose among the contributors, which finally led to its being discontinued. It is impossible to say now what were the exact grounds of quarrel. It appears evident, however, that Knight was properly tenacious of his position as responsible editor, and declined to admit the irresponsible interference of his undergraduate staff. Praed seems to have become jealous, and impatient of editorial supervision, and seceded from the _Magazine_, carrying most of his friends with him. Knight’s _Quarterly_ ceased to appear, therefore, after the publication of the sixth number. An attempt was subsequently made to carry it on with another staff, but the character of the publication was materially altered, and in its new form it failed to command popularity. Charles Knight had published a rather bitter notice in No. 6 of the _Magazine_, to which Praed replied in a letter addressed to the _Cambridge Chronicle_. Knight wrote a rejoinder, and there the matter ended. Two months later, however, Praed called upon Knight of his own accord, and friendly intercourse was resumed between them, so that in the Spring of 1826 we find Praed again co-operating with Knight and Barry St. Leger in the conduct of a new periodical. This was _The Brazen Head_, a cheap weekly publication, that was designed to deal with current events in a humorous manner. The Friar Bacon legend was utilised as a framework, and the Friar and the Head, under Praed’s direction, discoursed wittily together, week by week, upon the topics of the day. “We had,” said Knight, “four weeks of this pleasantry: and, what was not an advantage, we had nearly all the amusement to ourselves, for the number of our purchasers was not legion.” So _The Brazen Head_ went the way of its predecessor. Brief though its existence was, it contained some of Winthrop Praed’s most charming and characteristic verse. The opening poem of the first number, “The Chant of the Brazen Head,” is in particular unsurpassable among his compositions.

Praed’s literary occupations were not permitted to interfere with his University work to any serious extent, although they absorbed most of his interest. The Rev. Derwent Coleridge says, with reference to his University career, ‘There can be no doubt that he might have attained higher distinction as a scholar by a course of systematic study, for he showed in after life both the power of thorough investigation and a sense of its value; but the bent of his genius, and perhaps the state of his bodily health, inclined him to a more discursive occupation. As it was, though he failed as a competitor for the University scholarship, the long and shining list of his academic honours bore full testimony, not merely to his extraordinary talent, but to the high character of his scholastic attainments.

“In 1822 he gained Sir William Browne’s medal for the Greek Ode, and for the Epigrams; in 1823 the same medal a second time for the Greek Ode, with the first prize for English and Latin declamation in his college. In 1824, Sir William Browne’s medal a second time for Epigrams. In 1823 and 1824 he also gained the Chancellor’s medal for English verse--‘Australasia’ being the subject the former year, and ‘Athens’ in the latter. In the classical tripos his name appeared twice in the list, a high position, yet scarcely adding to the reputation which he already enjoyed. In 1827 he was successful in the examination for a Trinity Fellowship, and in 1830 he completed his University triumphs by gaining the Seatonian prize.”

On leaving Cambridge, Praed practised for a while at the bar, apparently with no great success. Politics at this time engaged his attention more particularly, and in 1830 he was returned to Parliament for the first time, as member for the soon-to-be-extinguished borough of St. Germains. Praed had been a rival of Macaulay’s for the leadership of the Union, and much was expected of him as a speaker. Of course he disappointed expectations, but his contributions to the debate on the Reform Bill of 1830, although not brilliant, were not ineffective. He was the mover of two amendments: one that freeholds in boroughs should confer borough and not county votes; and the other, in support of which his most successful speech was delivered, was a scheme of minority representation, that appears to have been identical with that which has been, until recently, in force in three-cornered constituencies.

St. Germains having been disfranchised, Praed in 1832 unsuccessfully contested St. Ives, in Cornwall, where he had some family influence. Being excluded from Parliament, he turned his attention to political journalism, and became a leader-writer on the _Morning Post_, to which paper also he contributed numerous anonymous political squibs. Praed began his career as a Liberal, but about this time he became a convert to Conservative opinions. Of this change of front he himself writes to a friend: “My old college opinions have been considerably modified by subsequent acquaintance with the world and observation of things _as they are_. I am not going to stem a torrent, but I should like to confine its fury within some bounds.... So my part in political matters will probably expose me to all sorts of abuse for ratting, and so forth. I abandon the party, if ever I belonged to it, in which my friends and my interests are both to be found, and I adopt one where I can hope to earn nothing but a barren reputation, and the consciousness of meaning well.”

His connection with the _Morning Post_ led to a personal acquaintance with the leaders of the Tory party; and overtures having been made to him in 1835 to join Sir Robert Peel’s Administration, he accepted the post of Secretary to the Board of Control, and re-entered Parliament as member for Great Yarmouth. In the same year he married Helen, daughter of George Bogle, Esq.

Sir Robert Peel’s Government came to a sudden and untimely end in about three months, and with it ended Praed’s brief career as a minister.

In 1837 he retired from Great Yarmouth, and was returned for Aylesbury, which borough he continued to represent until his death, which occurred in 1839. His health, never robust, is said to have been permanently affected by his exertions at the Great Yarmouth election of 1834, and to this has been attributed the development of the fatal lung disease to which he fell a victim. The winter of 1838-39 he spent at St. Leonard’s with his wife and two infant daughters, returning to London for the meeting of Parliament in February 1839, when his general health appeared to have improved. His energy was untiring: he was constant in his attendance during the seven nights’ debate on the Corn Laws, and in May, when the House adjourned, consequent upon a change of Government, he paid a flying visit to Cambridge in his official capacity of Deputy High Steward of the University. The weather was very severe, and on his returning to London his health was visibly breaking up. He continued to attend in his place in the House of Commons, however, until the middle of June, when he paired for the remainder of the Session with Lord Arundel. On the 15th of July he was dead.

During the last ten or twelve years of his life Praed was a constant contributor of verse to the periodicals of his day, although he was never associated with any purely literary undertaking in the same intimate manner as he was in the case of Knight’s _Quarterly Magazine_. Charles Knight engaged his and John Moultrie’s co-operation in _Friendship’s Offering_ for 1827, which he, Knight, edited for Smith & Elder. Praed contributed the “Red Fisherman,” the only one of his legendary ballads that has achieved any lasting popularity. Praed’s original title for this poem was “The Devil’s Decoy,” which “some blockhead in the confidence of the publishers” thought fit, on his own responsibility, to alter to “The Red Fisherman.” Praed was very angry, and was disposed to regard Charles Knight as responsible, and it was with difficulty that another rupture between the old friends was averted. “The Red Fisherman” has been frequently quoted, and it has been the fashion to regard it as Praed’s happiest effort in ballad writing, although in what respect it can be deemed superior to “The Bridal of Belmont,” “The Haunted Tree,” “The Teufelhaus,”--which is even more weirdly powerful--it is impossible to say. “The Troubadour,” Praed’s longest poem, contains much that is very charming. The first two cantos of it were published in Knight’s _Quarterly_. Praed’s secession from the _Magazine_ interrupted the continuation. Only a portion of the third canto was ever written. The poem is very indeterminate in character, and might have been carried on indefinitely, as each canto brings the hero into a new field of adventure, and supplies a tale or episode complete in itself. The poem, even as far as it was published, is too lengthy for insertion _in extenso_, but selected lyrics from it will be found in this volume.

Praed’s claim to distinction, however, rests entirely upon his Poetry of Life and Manners. As a writer of what, for want of a better name, we call _Vers de Société_, he was in his time unapproachable, and has hardly, at any time, been surpassed. Verse-writing of this class in Praed’s early days had sunk to a very low ebb. Neither Canning’s wit nor Moore’s gay fancy inspired the vapid scribblers who filled albums and keepsakes with “Lines to Ladies’ Portraits,”

“Soft songs to Julia’s cockatoo, Fierce odes to Famine and to Slaughter.”

Praed taught his contemporaries to be natural. He had a remarkable fluency of expression. He was humorous, witty, and good-natured; he was a man of the world, and knew his world well, gauged its weaknesses with accuracy, and judged them with the leniency of a good-humoured worldly philosopher, contriving, meanwhile, not to forfeit his own character for honesty and healthiness of mind. There is nothing very deep about Praed’s poetry, yet is it not entirely superficial. He had keen insight and plenty of discrimination, but for great passion or sustained power he had no capabilities. Lightly and gracefully he skated over the thin surface ice of sentiment, not ignorant of, yet with little desire to fathom, the unknown depths of passion and suffering that lay beneath. “The genius of gentleman” claimed for Horace by the late Lord Lytton, belonged to Praed in no common degree. No man equally witty and brilliant was ever more perfectly well-bred in his writings: without prudery, affectation, or cant, he was never slangy, suggestive, or irreverent: he even achieved the difficult art of writing political satires that lost none of their point from the fact of their being free from coarseness or personality. He was a typical society poet, compounded of wit, scholar, and gentleman. His world was not a very serious or a very earnest world, and he wrote of it pretty much as he found it, with some slight touches of half-sad, half-cynical, but never unkindly moralising; yet with all its faults it was a pleasant world to those whom it treated well, and a man laden with society’s favours, as was Praed, was not likely to develop into a Democritus. Few poets have been better treated by the world than he was: the paths of literature and politics were never thorny ones to him; his talents brought him reputation before he had ever struggled to attain it. Helping hands were freely held out to him from the hour of his first schoolboy success; he was popular in society, fortunate in friendship, and, above all things, happy in his family and domestic affections. Mr. Locker remarks of the qualities of his poetry, that “his fancy is less wild than Moore’s, while his sympathies are narrower than Thackeray’s.” Both statements (qualified by the further expression of opinion that has already been quoted) may be accepted without much demur. With regard to the latter remark, there are indeed few writers of the century of whom it might not, with equal justice, have been made. Admitting that his sympathies were neither very deep nor very wide, they are at least essentially and uniformly healthy and pure. Whatever might have been Praed’s matter, his manner, although not versatile, is always good. His fluency of expression is remarkable, and must have even been a source of weakness, since a man who wrote so much, so constantly, and with so little effort, must almost inevitably have perpetrated a good deal of inferior work in his time. What Praed published formed only a portion of what he wrote, for he was always ready to scribble verse on slight temptation; and that “inquisitive man with the note book,” Nathaniel Parker Willis, who met Praed at a country house, has left it on record that he was ever open to furnish contributions to the inevitable album that every fair one cherished in those days. Praed’s style, as has been said, is not versatile: he never hazarded possible harshness by metrical experiments, and the measures that he particularly affected have become intimately associated with the general characteristics of his style; his rhyme and rhythm are both perfect, and apparently instinctive, as if writing in metre were as effortless an exercise to him as writing in prose.

To conclude in the words of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, “Not unknown, nor without mark in the arena of political conflict, the name of Praed is still remembered as at least that of a forward pupil in the school of statesmanship; and though his literary honours, won in earliest manhood, and sustained by the casual productions of a leisure hour, were worn carelessly, while he was preparing for more serious duties, yet now that years have gone by, and we have to audit the past with no expectation of any future account, we find that he has left behind him a permanent expression of wit and grace, refined and tender feeling, of inventive fancy and acute observation, unique in character, and his own by an undisputed title.”

FREDERICK COOPER.

Poems by W. M. Praed.

_LEGENDS AND TALES._

THE RED FISHERMAN; OR, THE DEVIL’S DECOY.

(1827.)

“Oh flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified.”--_Romeo and Juliet._

The Abbot arose, and closed his book, And donned his sandal shoon, And wandered forth, alone, to look Upon the summer moon: A starlight sky was o’er his head, A quiet breeze around; And the flowers a thrilling fragrance shed, And the waves a soothing sound: It was not an hour, nor a scene, for aught But love and calm delight; Yet the holy man had a cloud of thought On his wrinkled brow that night. He gazed on the river that gurgled by, But he thought not of the reeds; He clasped his gilded rosary, But he did not tell the beads; If he looked to the heaven, ’twas not to invoke The Spirit that dwelleth there; If he opened his lips, the words they spoke Had never the tone of prayer. A pious priest might the Abbot seem, He had swayed the crozier well; But what was the theme of the Abbot’s dream, The Abbot were loth to tell.

Companionless, for a mile or more, He traced the windings of the shore. Oh, beauteous is that river still, As it winds by many a sloping hill, And many a dim o’erarching grove, And many a flat and sunny cove, And terraced lawns, whose bright arcades The honeysuckle sweetly shades, And rocks, whose very crags seem bowers, So gay they are with grass and flowers! But the Abbot was thinking of scenery About as much, in sooth, As a lover thinks of constancy, Or an advocate of truth. He did not mark how the skies in wrath Grew dark above his head; He did not mark how the mossy path Grew damp beneath his tread; And nearer he came, and still more near, To a pool, in whose recess The water had slept for many a year, Unchanged and motionless; From the river stream it spread away The space of half a rood; The surface had the hue of clay And the scent of human blood; The trees and the herbs that round it grew Were venomous and foul, And the birds that through the bushes flew Were the vulture and the owl; The water was as dark and rank As ever a company pumped, And the perch, that was netted and laid on the bank, Grew rotten while it jumped; And bold was the man who thither came At midnight, man or boy, For the place was cursed with an evil name, And that name was “The Devil’s Decoy!”

The Abbot was weary as abbot could be, And he sat down to rest on the stump of a tree: When suddenly rose a dismal tone-- Was it a song, or was it a moan? “O ho! O ho! Above--below-- Lightly and brightly they glide and go! The hungry and keen on the top are leaping, The lazy and fat in the depths are sleeping; Fishing is fine when the pool is muddy, Broiling is rich when the coals are ruddy.” In a monstrous fright, by the murky light, He looked to the left and he looked to the right, And what was the vision close before him, That flung such a sudden stupor o’er him? ’Twas a sight to make the hair uprise, And the life blood colder run: The startled priest struck both his thighs, And the abbey clock struck one! All alone, by the side of the pool, A tall man sat on a three-legged stool, Kicking his heels on the dewy sod, And putting in order his reel and rod; Red were the rags his shoulders wore, And a high red cap on his head he bore; His arms and his legs were long and bare; And two or three locks of long red hair Were tossing about his scraggy neck, Like a tattered flag o’er a splitting wreck. It might be time, or it might be trouble, Had bent that stout back nearly double, Sunk in their deep and hollow sockets That blazing couple of Congreve rockets, And shrunk and shrivelled that tawny skin, Till it hardly covered the bones within. The line the Abbot saw him throw Had been fashioned and formed long ages ago, And the hands that worked his foreign vest Long ages ago had gone to their rest: You would have sworn, as you looked on them, He had fished in the flood with Ham and Shem!

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks, As he took forth a bait from his iron box. Minnow or gentle, worm or fly-- It seemed not such to the Abbot’s eye; Gaily it glittered with jewel and gem, And its shape was the shape of a diadem. It was fastened a gleaming hook about By a chain within and a chain without; The fisherman gave it a kick and a spin, And the water fizzed as it tumbled in! From the bowels of the earth Strange and varied sounds had birth; Now the battle’s bursting peal, Neigh of steed, and clang of steel; Now an old man’s hollow groan Echoed from the dungeon stone; Now the weak and wailing cry Of a stripling’s agony! Cold by this was the midnight air; But the Abbot’s blood ran colder, When he saw a gasping knight lie there, With a gash beneath his clotted hair, And a hump upon his shoulder. And the loyal churchman strove in vain To mutter a Pater Noster; For he who writhed in mortal pain Was camped that night on Bosworth plain-- The cruel Duke of Glo’ster!

There was turning of keys and creaking of locks, As he took forth a bait from his iron box. It was a haunch of princely size, Filling with fragrance earth and skies. The corpulent Abbot knew full well The swelling form, and the steaming smell; Never a monk that wore a hood Could better have guessed the very wood Where the noble hart had stood at bay, Weary and wounded, at close of day.

Sounded then the noisy glee Of a revelling company-- Sprightly story, wicked jest, Rated servant, greeted guest, Flow of wine and flight of cork, Stroke of knife, and thrust of fork: But, where’er the board was spread, Grace, I ween, was never said! Pulling and tugging the Fisherman sat; And the Priest was ready to vomit, When he hauled out a gentleman, fine and fat, With a belly as big as a brimming vat, And a nose as red as a comet. “A capital stew,” the Fisherman said, “With cinnamon and sherry!” And the Abbot turned away his head, For his brother was lying before him dead-- The Mayor of St. Edmund’s Bury!

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks, As he took forth a bait from his iron box. It was a bundle of beautiful things-- A peacock’s tail, and a butterfly’s wings, A scarlet slipper, an auburn curl, A mantle of silk, and a bracelet of pearl, And a packet of letters, from whose sweet fold Such a stream of delicate odours rolled, That the Abbot fell on his face, and fainted, And deemed his spirit was half-way sainted.

Sounds seemed dropping from the skies, Stifled whispers, smothered sighs, And the breath of vernal gales, And the voice of nightingales: But the nightingales were mute, Envious, when an unseen lute Shaped the music of its chords Into passion’s thrilling words: “Smile, Lady, smile! I will not set Upon my brow the coronet, Till thou wilt gather roses white To wear around its gems of light. Smile, Lady, smile!--I will not see Rivers and Hastings bend the knee, Till those bewitching lips of thine Will bid me rise in bliss from mine. Smile, Lady, smile!--for who would win A loveless throne through guilt and sin? Or who would reign o’er vale and hill, If woman’s heart were rebel still?”

One jerk, and there a lady lay, A lady wondrous fair; But the rose of her lip had faded away, And her cheek was as white and as cold as clay, And torn was her raven hair. “Ah, ha!” said the Fisher, in merry guise, “Her gallant was hooked before;” And the Abbot heaved some piteous sighs, For oft he had blessed those deep blue eyes, The eyes of Mistress Shore!