The man of closest affinity to Hood was Winthrop Mackworth Praed, who began by contributing at school to _The Etonian_, and continued at Cambridge to write for Knight's _Quarterly Magazine_. He entered Parliament, and if he had lived he would probably have risen to eminence there. Praed belongs to the class of writers of _vers de société_ of which Prior is the earlier and Locker-Lampson the later master; and it is not too much to say that he surpasses both. It is a species of verse well adapted to such a period as that in which Praed lived. Great earnestness is not required, and is even fatal to it. The qualities essential to success are culture, good-breeding, wit and lightness of touch. Praed had them all. The cleverness and wit and delicacy which nature had given him were all increased by the influence of his school and university, where he acquired all the grace of scholarship without any of the ponderosity of learning. But Praed had one more gift, without which his verses must have taken a lower place--the gift of a refined poetic fancy. It is this that gives his wit its special charm, and it is this too that saves his verse from being that merely of a very clever and refined jester. The well-known character of _The Vicar_ is one of the best examples of this combination of feeling with lightness. Herein we detect the difference between Praed's wit and the wit of Hood. The latter commonly separated jest from earnest, and gave himself wholly over to one or the other. He is far the more pronounced punster. The pleasant surprises of Praed's verse usually arise from some delicate turn of thought rather than from a twisting of words. Hood's fun is sometimes almost boisterous, Praed's is never so. As regards the lighter verse, the advantage on comparison is all on the side of the younger man. But there is no other aspect to Praed. Notwithstanding the undertone of seriousness, notwithstanding too the strange power of that masterpiece of the grotesque, _The Red Fisherman_, it remains doubtful whether he had the capacity to be more than what he is, the prince of elegant and refined writers of light verse. Hood is indubitably a poet. [Sidenote: Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (1809-1885).] It is likewise as a writer of _vers de société_ that Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton, is best known, and is happiest. But though he shines as a writer of what may be called, without disparagement, poetical trifles, there is also a serious strain by no means contemptible in his verse. _Strangers Yet_ is a fine specimen of pathos. In _Poems, Legendary and Historical_, however, Houghton is less successful, and the best of them do not bear comparison with Aytoun's _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_, which belong to the same class. Houghton's critical work in prose is on the whole more valuable than his verse, for there his culture told, and the lack of high imagination is less felt. [Sidenote: Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845).]