Chapter XX: Part III: Mediæval Ages (14)

Each eyed his fellow, one and all kept silence. I cried “Pish!
I’ll make me spokesman for the rest, express the common wish.
Why, Father, is the net removed?” “Son, it hath caught the fish.”

Frederick Locker-Lampson, though following in the footsteps of Praed, was a more famous writer of the rhymes known as Vers de Société.

There is no English equivalent for the French term, and attempts to coin one are usually failures. Society verse, Familiar Verse, Occasional verse,--each lacks somewhat of the real implication.

Locker-Lampson, himself a discerning and severe critic, instructs us that the rhymes should be short, graceful, refined and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by chastened sentiment, and often playful.

But, really, playfulness and light, bright humor are more a distinctive quality of Vers de Société than that dictum stipulates.

Wit is the keynote, fun the undercurrent of the best of the material so often collected under this name; and Locker-Lampson made the first and perhaps the best collection, under the title of _Lyra Elegantiarum_.

Typical of all that goes to make up the best form of Vers de Société is his poem,

_MY MISTRESS’S BOOTS_

They nearly strike me dumb,
And I tremble when they come
Pit-a-pat;
This palpitation means
These boots are Geraldine’s--
Think of that!

Oh, where did hunter win
So delectable a skin
For her feet?
You lucky little kid,
You perished, so you did,
For my sweet!

The faëry stitching gleams
On the sides, and in the seams,
And it shows
The Pixies were the wags
Who tipt those funny tags
And these toes.

What soles to charm an elf!
Had Crusoe, sick of self,
Chanced to view
_One_ printed near the tide,
Oh, how hard he would have tried
For the two!

For Gerry’s debonair
And innocent, and fair
As a rose;
She’s an angel in a frock,
With a fascinating cock
To her nose.

The simpletons who squeeze
Their extremities to please
Mandarins,
Would positively flinch
From venturing to pinch
Geraldine’s.

Cinderella’s _lefts and rights_,
To Geraldine’s were frights;
And I trow,
The damsel, deftly shod,
Has dutifully trod
Until now.

Come, Gerry, since it suits
Such a pretty Puss (in Boots)
These to don;
Set this dainty hand awhile
On my shoulder, dear, and I’ll
Put them on.

_ON A SENSE OF HUMOUR_

He cannot be complete in aught
Who is not humorously prone;
A man without a merry thought
Can hardly have a funny-bone.

_SOME LADIES_

Some ladies now make pretty songs,
And some make pretty nurses;
Some men are great at righting wrongs
And some at writing verses.

_A TERRIBLE INFANT_

I recollect a nurse call’d Ann,
Who carried me about the grass,
And one fine day a fine young man
Came up, and kiss’d the pretty lass.
She did not make the least objection!
Thinks I, “_Aha!
When I can talk I’ll tell Mamma_”
--And that’s my earliest recollection.

Charles Stuart Calverley is called the Prince of Parodists, but his genius deserves far higher praise than that.

His serious work is of a high order but it is for his humorous verse that he is most loved and praised.

His parodies while showing the best and finest burlesque qualities, are also poems in themselves, and are of an exquisite wit and a spontaneous humor rarely excelled.

One of the best is the ballad in which Rossetti’s manner is parodied in very spirit.

_BALLAD_