antithetical rhetoric. These two poets, so often classed together, are not really very much alike. Both are certainly “in lighter vein”; but they differ apparently in temperament, and certainly in method. No one would deny to Praed the gift of humour. But the period in which he wrote was one which admired primarily wit; and while it would be too much to say that his heart is not in his theme—that he stands detached from it—still, his sympathies are indubitably subordinated to the effort, the successful effort, to bring off a neat point, to make a pun in the right place, to be striking, antithetical, epigrammatic. His verses have the finish, in their way, of Pope’s couplet and Ovid’s pentameter. His best known and most praised work appeals, primarily, to the taste and the ear: always, perhaps, to the head rather than to the heart. There is something of “hard brilliance” in Praed: he writes for effect, he is epideictic. Of course, this is one object of writers of “society verses”: “Sole secret to jingle and scan,” as an unduly severe critic says somewhere. One need hardly say that this is not Praed’s sole secret: but technique is certainly his strong point. “Where are my friends? I am alone: No playmate shares my beaker: Some lie beneath the churchyard stone And some—before the Speaker: And some compose a tragedy, And some compose a rondo: And some draw sword for Liberty, And some draw pleas for John Doe. Tom Mill was used to blacken eyes Without the fear of sessions: Charles Medlar loathed false quantities As much as false professions: Now Mill keeps order in the land, A magistrate pedantic: And Medlar’s feet repose unscanned Beneath the wide Atlantic.” This is the art which does not conceal itself. One may not be able to do the trick; but it is possible to see how the trick is done.