Praed, WINTHROP MACKWORTH (1802-39), was born 26th July 1802, at 35 John Street, Bedford Row, London. His name Winthrop came from American connections; Mackworth had been the surname of his father, who was a serjeant-at-law. After some training at a private school he went to Eton. Here he was more famous for literature than athletics, and was one of the most brilliant contributors to the well known Etonian. From Eton he passed in 1821 to Trinity College, Cambridge, distinguishing himself rapidly in Greek and Latin verse, and cultivating the lighter letters with increased success in Charles Knight's Quarterly Magazine, where he had for co-mates De Quincey, Macaulay, Moultrie, H. N. Coleridge, and others. In 1825, having won many college honours, he became tutor to the son of the Marquis of Aylesbury, intending to qualify for the bar, to which four years later he was called. In November 1830 he entered parliament for St Germain. He subsequently became member for Great Yarmouth, and later for Aylesbury, which he represented at his death on 15th July 1839. From 1834 to 1835 he was secretary to the Board of Control.
But for his short life Praed might possibly have been successful as an orator and politician. As it is, he derives his existing reputation from the finished and facile verses which he wrote almost from his childhood. He is the Coryphæus of the little band of rhymers whom criticism, according to its taste and fancy, either dignifies or stigmatises as writers of vers de société—a term in its stricter sense applied to those pieces which treat only of the sayings and doings of the fashionable world. The majority of Praed's efforts belong exclusively to this class; and in this line his note is so individual, his rhythm so brilliant, and his wit so bright, that it has hitherto been found more easy to imitate than to excel him. A typical example of this side of his talent is the poem called A Letter of Advice. But he is also admirable in a kind of metrical genre-painting—e.g. The Vicar, which, in the opinion of many, reaches a higher poetical elevation; while in The Red Fisherman, Sir Nicholas, and one or two other pieces, he not unskillfully emulates the manner of Macaulay and Hood. His characteristics as a verse-writer are point, elegance, and vivacity; it is his defect that these excellent gifts are but seldom relieved by any graver note. His collected verses, popular in America long before they were gathered together in England, appeared in 1864 in two volumes, with a memoir by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge; in 1887 followed his prose essays; and in 1888 his nephew, Sir George Young, edited his political poems. The best modern study of Praed is to be found in Saintsbury's Essays in English Literature (1890).