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 "Fair Ines," his "Time of Roses," his exquisite "Last Stanzas," and not a few other things, are as gold to gilt copper. Praed has nothing to show against these; but he, like Hood, was no inconsiderable prose writer, while the latter, thanks to his apprenticeship to the burin, had an extraordinary faculty of illustrating his own work with cuts, contrary to all the canons, but inimitably grotesque. * * * * * It is probable that even in this long survey of the great poetical production of the first third of this century some gaps may be detected by specialists. But it seemed to me impossible to give more than the barest mention here to the "single speech" accident of Charles Wolfe, the author of the "Burial of Sir John Moore," which everybody knows, and of absolutely nothing else that is worth a single person's knowing; to the gigantic and impossible labours of Edwin Atherstone; to the industrious translation of Rose and Sotheby; to the decent worth of Caroline Bowles, and the Hood-and-water of Laman Blanchard. And there are others perhaps who cannot be even mentioned; for there must be an end. FOOTNOTES: [3] _Lyrical Ballads_, 1798, and with additions 1800; _Poems_, 1807 (in these four volumes even adorers have allowed all his greatest work to be included); _The Excursion_, 1814; _The White Doe of Rylston_, 1815; _Sonnets on the River Duddon_, and others, 1819-20. In 1836 he brought out a collected edition of his poems in six volumes. _The Prelude_ was posthumous.