CONTENTS. Page Epistle to Miss Blount on her Leaving the Town after the Coronation. (Alexander Pope) On a Young Lady's Going to Town in the Spring. The Bride in the Country. (Lady Mary Wortley Soliloquy of a Beauty in the Country. (George, Lord St. George's, Hanover Square. (Frederick Locker). 22 Zoological Memories. (J. Ashby Sterry) To a Child of Quality. (Matthew Prior) An Ode to Miss Harriet Hanbury. (Sir Charles 34 A Letter of Advice. (Winthrop Mackworth "Fair Amoret is Gone Astray." (William Congreve) 40 Phyllida, That Loved to Dream." (John Gay) On a Woman of Fashion. (Thomas Tickell). The Jilt. (James Smith) Dixit, et in Mensam. (Charles Shirley Brooks) Madame la Marquise. (Robert, Lord Lytton) · Beauty Clare. (Hamilton Aïdé) A Musical Box. (W. W. Story) Epistle from Lord Boringdon to Lord Granville. (Right Hon. George Canning) A Legend of the Divorce Court. (Mortimer Collins) 60 A Comedy. (J. Ashby Sterry). At Home. (Thomas. Haynes Bayly) No Longer Jealous. (Walter Savage Landor). "This is my Eldest Daughter." (Thomas Haynes The Archery Meeting. (Thomas Haynes Bayly) The Female Phaeton. (Matthew Prior). Rejected Addresses." (H. Cholmondeley Pennell). 78 The Talented Man. (Winthrop Mackworth Praed). 80 The Dashing Young Fellow. (William Macquorn The Handsomest Man in the Room. Anticipation. (Winthrop Mackworth Praed) "The Men are all Clubbing Together." (Thomas Love at a Rout. (Winthrop Mackworth Praed) Elegy on the Abrogation of the Birth-Night Ball. The Belle of the Ball-Room. (Winthrop Mackworth My Partner. (Winthrop Mackworth Praed) Our Ball. (Winthrop Mackworth Praed) The Fancy Ball. (Winthrop Mackworth Praed) Good Night. (Edward Fitzgerald) The University Boat Race. (Mortimer Collins) The Impartial. (J. Ashby Sterry) My Shilling Photograph. (H. B. Freeman) In the Royal Academy. (Austin Dobson) Portrait of a Lady. (Winthrop Mackworth Praed). To my Grandmother. (Frederick Locker) China versus Chippendale. (J. Jemmett-Browne) Elegy on a Lap-Dog. (John Gay). A Blenheim's Valentine. (William John Courthope). To Lady Carteret. (Jonathan Swift) worth Praed) My Old Coat. Baker, Jun.) "There Stands a City." (Charles Stuart Calverley). Invited and Declining. (Edmund Yates) At a Country-House. (C. C. Rhys) Arrivals at a Watering-Place. (Winthrop Mack- Winter in Brighton. (Mortimer Collins) Outward Bound. (Austin Dobson) Twenty and Thirty. (Edmund Yates) "Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné.” Spectator ab Extra. (Arthur Hugh Clough). 66 康 INTRODUCTION. HERE has hitherto, I think, been some confusion as to the exact meaning and limitation to be given to "Society verse." That dubious term has been assigned indiscriminately to everything in the way of verse that is not either broadly humorous or highly imaginative in character. It has been obvious. to everybody that between such poems as Shelley's Skylark" on the one hand, and Wolcot's "Odes" on the other, there is a great gulf fixed; and to all verse which occupies the tremendous interval the description of vers de société has been applied. It seems to me that the definition is by far too rough and ready, and by no means sufficiently accurate. There is surely a very manifest difference between such poems as Praed's "Our Ball" and Locker's " Hurlingham" on the one side, and Brough's "Neighbour Nelly" and Peacock's "Rich and Poor " on the other. Yet all four pieces are popularly included under the one description of "Society verse;" the word "Society," I suppose, being used to indicate the freedom of such pieces alike from the coarseness of unmitigated fun and the elevation of undiluted fancy. Much would be gained, I believe, if we revised |