The poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed. [selected]

by Winthrop Mackworth Praed

Introductory Notice.

F all literary reputations, that of the Society Poet is probably enjoyed upon the most hazardous and uncertain of tenures. To be successful at all, he must win the instant recognition of his immediate contemporaries; he must be in touch with the thought of his own generation; he must reflect its sentiments, chime with its humour, and satirise its manners; and in proportion to the popularity of his productions with the public of his own day, will probably be the neglect with which they are treated by the public of a generation later. This neglect on the part of posterity is to some extent comprehensible, even reasonable, for the poem of manners is often nothing more than purely ephemeral in character, and indebted to accident for even its contemporary success, the measure of which is not to be relied upon as a fair criterion of its intrinsic excellence. Still posterity is apt to be careless and indiscriminating in its neglectfulness. True wit, true humour, true grace and refinement are qualities that should command something more than a fleeting popularity; but even where the public is content, on the strength of the critical verdict of a past generation, to admit that, beyond his fellows, So-and-So was graceful, humorous, and witty, it is often content to let the matter rest there, and not trouble itself with inquiring into the evidence upon which such verdict was founded. Our own century can count not a few poets of barren reputation, much admired, on the strength of old tradition, but very little read. George Canning’s wit was, and is, proverbial. Most people have heard of the “Anti-Jacobin Review,” and have some slight knowledge of the “Needy Knife-grinder;” beyond that it would puzzle most people to supply any specific information as to anything that he wrote that justifies his reputation. Captain Charles Morris, of the First Life Guards and The Beefsteak Club, wrote enough verse (and very delightful verse it is) to fill a bulky volume, in addition to much more that for sufficient reasons was not re-published in volume form. Part of one line of one poem, “The sweet shady side of Pall Mall,” alone survives, apparently for the especial benefit of leader-writers in the daily papers. Winthrop Mackworth Praed, most precocious and most prolific of the poets of society, began his literary career as a schoolboy, and for twenty years flooded the periodical literature of his day with songs and satires, ballads and legends innumerable, all of which are forgotten. It is not quite fair, perhaps, to say all, for some half-dozen pieces at most survive, and have done duty with monotonous regularity, as representative specimens of his verse, in every volume of poetical selections of the Vers de Société order that has seen the light for the last quarter of a century. Thus, Praed’s “Good Night to the Season” has become a well-known poem; it is witty, full of brilliant antithesis and word-play, a fairly typical example of Praed’s style; still it palls by too frequent repetition, and Praed did much work that is quite equal to it, and some that is even better, and better worth quoting. That Praed’s contemporaries thought too highly of him is not, I think, open to question; that he has, since his death, been unreasonably neglected is, at least, equally true. Of his earlier work much is very weak. Youthful poems, if noticeable for the precocity of their writers, are not usually remarkable for their strength or originality. In his more mature days he perpetrated a good deal of verse that is not much above the standard of the “Keepsake” and “Book of Beauty,” in the pages of which polite publications one is quite content to let it rest undisturbed; but beyond all this he wrote a great deal that deserves to live, and that, so far, has hardly had a fair chance of life given to it. In the first instance, Praed was himself responsible for the smothering of his offspring. He seems to have been very indifferent about the ultimate fate of his productions, or about the permanence of his own literary reputation. Everything that he wrote was contributed to periodicals; he never published a book of his own, nor apparently contemplated the collection of any of his poems into a volume, with the exception of some of his political squibs, which, in the last year of his life, he had printed for private circulation among friends. When he died, there was a scheme set on foot for collecting and publishing his poems, and the editorial work was entrusted to his early friend, the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. Four-and-twenty years after, Mrs. Praed being then dead also, the editor completed his labours, and the book was at length given to the world. Mr. Coleridge did his work only too well. Every fragment of childish verse, all the boyish contributions to the Etonian, every school exercise, every bit of inane, cut-and-dried sentimentality that could be hunted up and identified in the pages of Friendship’s Offerings, and the like, were rigorously printed, and poor Praed’s handfuls of corn were ruthlessly smothered under his bushels of chaff. One merit was claimed for the book—that of being complete. That merit, unfortunately, did not belong to it, as, for some unexplained reason, the political poems, which are numerous and witty, were altogether excluded. This book, in two volumes, was published in 1864. In 1866 Sir George Young, Praed’s nephew, edited a small volume of selections, which was compiled with taste and judgment, as far as it went; but the book was as meagre and insufficient as its predecessor had been bulky and redundant. Both these books have long been out of print and unattainable, and in offering what claims to be a fairly representative selection of the best work of the poet, of whom the most finished literary artist of our day, Mr. Frederick Locker, remarks, that “in his peculiar vein he has never been equalled, and, it may safely be affirmed, can never be excelled,” it is believed that the present volume of “The Canterbury Poets” will supply a sensibly-felt want in modern English poetic literature.

Winthrop Mackworth Praed was the third and youngest son of William Mackworth Praed, serjeant-at-law, who was the first chairman of the Audit Board, a post which he filled for many years. He was born on the 26th July 1802, at 35 John Street, Bedford Row, his father’s London residence, although Bitton House, at Teignmouth, the country seat of the family, was always regarded as his paternal home. The original surname of the family was Mackworth, the additional name of Praed having been assumed some generations earlier. Praed’s mother was a Miss Winthrop, a member of a family descended from the same stock as the American Winthrops. He had the misfortune to lose her while he was yet very young, but her place was, so far as a mother’s place can be filled, worthily taken by an elder sister, to whom he was all his life sincerely attached, and who seems to have been the inspiring genius of his earliest poetical efforts. Young Praed was always, it appears, a constitutionally delicate lad, with a strong taste for studious pursuits, and small inclination, comparatively, for the rougher pleasures of a schoolboy,—although he was not altogether without mark in the cricket-field and on the river. The fancy for verse-writing developed itself in him at a very early age, and Mr. Derwent Coleridge has preserved from oblivion several of his precocious efforts. There is nothing particularly remarkable in these early verses, beyond those of other juvenile poets, so far at least as the thought is concerned: the best of them is, perhaps, a letter addressed to his elder sister Susan, “The Forget-me-not,” in which Praed’s fine sense of form is conspicuously evidenced. This was, no doubt, to a great extent instinctive, but his singularly finished style owed a great deal to his father’s severe criticism, Serjeant Praed being a man of sound literary taste, and a great stickler for form.

In 1814 young Winthrop went to Eton, where his poetical proclivities were yet further encouraged by his tutor, Dr. Hawtrey. Two Eton periodicals, The College Magazine and Horæ Otiosæ, were conducted by some of the boys in the year 1819, and circulated in MS. It does not appear that Praed contributed to either of these, but when they were dropped in 1820, he brought out a MS. journal of his own, the Apis Matina, of which six numbers were published in the months of April, May, June, and July. About half the contents of these papers were written by Praed himself, the other contributors being the Honourable Francis Curzon and Walter Trower, afterwards Bishop of Gibraltar. About this time Charles Knight printed at Windsor a selection of the poetry of the College Magazine, and Praed and some other ambitious spirits set on foot a project for a regularly published College Magazine. Knight agreed to undertake the printing, subject to certain guarantees, which were obtained, and in October 1820 appeared the first number of the Etonian, perhaps the most remarkable schoolboy magazine ever produced. Praed and Walter Blunt were joint editors, the bulk of the contents of the Magazine being supplied by the former. His literary fecundity at this time was, considering his age, remarkable. The contributions to the Magazine were supposed to be supplied by the members of an association called “The King of Clubs.” They were known by noms de plume, Praed’s being that of Peregrine Courtenay, the President of the Club. There was a prose introduction to each number, describing the proceedings of the Club, the whole of which was in every case written by Praed. During the ten months’ existence of the Magazine he also contributed to it the following poems, all of some length:—“The Eve of Battle,” “Changing Quarters,” “The County Ball,” “Gog,” “Surly Hall,” “Reminiscences of my Youth,” “To Julia,” “To Julio,” “To Florence,” “The Bachelor,” “How to Rhyme for Love,” etc., as well as several smaller poems. The staff of the Etonian otherwise comprised a good array of names. Among them were the Honourable William Ashley, Edmond Beales, William Chrichton, Honourable Francis Curzon, R. Durnford, William Henry Ord, Thomas Powys Outram, Walter Trower—all boys then at Eton. One Oxonian—Henry Neech—contributed, and five Cantabs—Henry Nelson Coleridge, John Moultrie, John Louis Petit, William Sydney Walker, and another. Among the anonymous contributors were R. Streatfield and J. A. Kinglake.

The Etonian appeared regularly every month until July 1821, when it was discontinued in consequence of the editor and principal contributor going up to Cambridge. In Charles Knight’s “Passages of a Working Life” there occur, about this date, many references to his first connection with Praed and his friends in the conduct of the Etonian. He says:—“The character of Peregrine Courtenay, given in an ‘Account of the proceedings which led to the publication of the Etonian,’ furnishes no satisfactory idea of the youthful Winthrop Mackworth Praed, when he is described as one ‘possessed of sound good sense rather than of brilliancy of genius.’ His ‘general acquirements and universal information’ are fitly recorded, as well as his acquaintance with ‘the world at large.’ But the kindness that lurks under sarcasm; the wisdom that wears the mask of fun; the half melancholy that is veiled by levity—these qualities very soon struck me as far out of the ordinary indications of precocious talent. It is not easy to separate my recollections of the Praed of Eton from those of the Praed of Cambridge. The Etonian of 1820 was natural and unaffected in his talk, neither shy nor presuming; proud, without a tinge of vanity; somewhat reserved, but ever courteous; giving few indications of the susceptibility of the poet, but ample evidence of the laughing satirist; a pale and slight youth, who had looked upon the aspects of society with the keen perception of a clever manhood; one who had, moreover, seen in human life something more than follies to be ridiculed by the gay jest, or scouted by the sarcastic sneer. His writings then, especially his poems, occasionally exhibited that remarkable union of pathos with wit and humour which attested the originality of his genius, as it was subsequently displayed in maturer efforts.”

During Praed’s second year at Cambridge he wrote to Charles Knight (who was then contemplating establishing himself in London), to the effect that he should take up no periodical work until Knight started a publication of his own. In consequence of this communication Knight visited Cambridge in December 1822, where he spent a pleasant week with Praed and his friends, making the acquaintance of Macaulay, Maiden, and Derwent Coleridge, and there and then settled the general plan of Knight’s Quarterly Magazine, the first number of which was shortly afterwards brought out.