They must not, however, all be grouped together under one embracing appellation. If there is poetry and verse, there is also verse and verse. Poetry may be said to be a fixed quality; but that is not so with the inferior article. There are many different sorts of verse. There is that which is strongly sentimental, there is that which is broadly comic, and there is that which is something between the two--neither over-sentimental nor over-comic, but altogether light in tone, and marked in the main by wit and humour. Now, to this last class of verse has been given, in general, the name of _vers de societe_ or _vers d'occasion_--verse of society or for the moment. Mr. Frederick Locker, nearly twenty years ago, thus labelled his volume of 'Lyra Elegantiarum'--still, even at this distance of time, the best available collection of our lighter verse. But the label is not sufficiently distinguishing; it is too haphazard and too narrow. The term _vers de societe_ will not include all that is commonly ranged under it. For what, in reality, is _vers de societe_? It is what it professes to be--it is the verse of society, the verse which deals with the various phenomena of the fashionable world. The writers of genuine _vers de societe_ have themselves been men and women of society, who had caught its tone and could reproduce it in their rhythmic exercises. Mr. Locker's 'St. James's Street,' Mr. Dobson's 'Rotten Row,' Prior's lines 'To a Child of Quality,' and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's 'Ode to Miss Harriet Bunbury'--these are the true _vers de societe_, the true 'poetry' of the ball-room and the _salon_.