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He is of all composers of society verse and prose the lightest and the swiftest, and we may say to those who sneer at so unique a talent what Madame de S�vign� said of them in her day: "Tant pis pour ceux qui ne l'entendent pas!"

However we may admire The Haunch of Venison and other stray pieces, Goldsmith was really not a writer of what is now called "Society verse."

Vers de Société Vers de société, “society verse,” is a development of the last century; almost, one might say, of the last twenty-five years.

To write “society verse” is to be the laureate of the cultured, leisured, pleasure-loving upper classes; but some poets satisfy the above requirements—Locker himself included—yet certainly do not write exclusively of or for “Society.”

Why “smoothly written verse, where a boudoir decorum is or ought always to be preserved: where sentiment never surges into passion, and where humour never overflows into boisterous merriment” should be conventionally called “society verse,” or “occasional verse,” is not very clear.