Chapter XXXIV: An Old Photograph-Book (9)

"Sir,--The House cannot but sympathize with you in the eloquent and indignant denunciation you have uttered against the painful invasion of the decorum of the House which we have just witnessed. There can be no doubt in any mind, even in the minds of those with whom the hon. member now at the bar usually acts, that of all methods of argument which could be employed in this House, he has selected the least politic. Sir, may I be permitted, with great deference, to say a word upon a remark that fell from the Chair, and which might be misunderstood? Solitary and anomalous instances of this kind could never be legitimately used as arguments against general systems of representation or the course of a recent policy. I do not, at this moment, venture to pronounce an opinion upon the degree of criminality that attaches to the hon. member now unhappily in the custody of the Officer of the House. It is possible--I do not say it is probable, I do not now say whether I shall be prepared to commit myself to that hypothesis or not--but it is not impossible that the hon. member or some of his friends may be able to urge some extenuating circumstances--(Oh! oh!)--I mean circumstances that, when duly weighed, may have a tendency in a greater or less degree to modify the judgment of the House upon the extraordinary event that has occurred. Sir, it becomes a great people and a great assembly like this to be patient, dignified, and generous. The honourable member, whom we regret to see in his present position, no doubt represents a phase of Irish opinion unfamiliar to this House. (Cheers and laughter.) ... The House is naturally in a rather excited state after an event so unusual, and I venture to urge that it should not hastily proceed to action. We must be careful of the feelings of the Irish people. (Oh! oh!) If we are to govern Ireland according to Irish ideas, we must make allowance for personal, local, and transitory ebullitions of Irish feeling, having no general or universal consequence or bearing.... The course, therefore, which I propose to take is this--to move that the hon. member shall remain in the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms, that a Committee be appointed to take evidence, and that their report be discussed this day month."

To this replies the Leader of the Opposition:--

"The right hon. gentleman is to be congratulated on the results of his Irish policy. (Cheers and laughter.) ... Sir, this, I presume, is one of the right hon. gentleman's contented and pacified people! I deeply sympathize with the right hon. gentleman. His policy produces strange and portentous results. A policy of concession, of confiscation, of truckling to ecclesiastical arrogance, to popular passions and ignorant prejudices, of lenity to Fenian revolutionists, has at length brought us to this, that the outrages of Galway and Tipperary, no longer restricted to those charming counties, no longer restrained to even Her Majesty's judges, are to reach the interior of this House and the august person of its Speaker. (Cheers.) Sir, I wash my hands of all responsibility for this absurd and anomalous state of things. Whenever it has fallen to the Tory party to conduct the affairs of Ireland, they have consistently pursued a policy of mingled firmness and conciliation with the most distinguished success. All the great measures of reform in Ireland may be said to have had their root in the action of the Tory party, though, as usual, the praise has been appropriated by the right hon. gentleman and his allies. We have preferred, instead of truckling to prejudice or passion, to appeal, and we still appeal, to the sublime instincts of an ancient people!"

I hope that an unknown author, whose skill in reproducing an archaic style I heartily admire, will forgive me for quoting the following narrative of certain doings decreed by the General Post Office on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Penny Post. Like all that is truly good in literature, it will be seen that this narrative was not for its own time alone, but for the future, and has its relevancy to events of the present day:[30]

"1. Now it came to pass in the month June of the Post-office Jubilee, that Raikes, the Postmaster-General, said to himself, Lo! an opening whereby I may find grace in the sight of the Queen!

"2. And Raikes appointed an Executive Committee; and Baines, the Inspector-General of Mails, made he Chairman.

"3. He called also Cardin, the Receiver and Accountant-General; Preece, Lord of Lightning; Thompson, the Secretarial Officer; and Tombs; the Controller.

"4. Then did these four send to the Heads of Departments, the Postmasters and Sub-Postmasters, the Letter-Receivers, the Clerks-in-Charge, the Postal Officers, the Telegraphists, She Sorters, the Postmen; yea from the lowest even unto the highest sent they out.

"5. And the word of Baines and of them that were with him went forth that the Jubilee should be kept by a conversazione at the South Kensington Museum on Wednesday the second day of the month July in the year 1890.

"6. And Victoria the Queen became a patron of the Jubilee Celebration; and her heart was stirred within her; for she said, For three whole years have I not had a Jubilee.

"7. And the word of Baines and of them that were with him went forth again to the Heads of Departments; the Postmasters and Sub-Postmasters, the Letter-Receivers, the Clerks-in-Charge, the Postal Officers and Telegraphists, the Sorters and the Postmen.

"8. Saying unto them, Lo! the Queen is become Patron of the Rowland Hill Memorial and Benevolent Fund, and of the conversazione in the museum; and we the Executive Committee bid you, from the lowest even to the highest, to join with us at the tenth hour of the conversazione in a great shouting to praise the name of the Queen our patron.

"9. Each man in his Post Office at the tenth hour shall shout upon her name; and a record thereof shall be sent to us that we may cause its memory to endure for ever.

"10. Then a great fear came upon the Postmasters, the Sub-Postmasters, and the Letter-Receivers, which were bidden to make the record.

"11. For they said, If those over whom we are set in authority shout not at the tenth hour, and we send an evil report, we shall surely perish.

"12. And they besought their men to shout, aloud at the tenth hour, lest a worse thing should befall.

"13. And they that were of the tribes of Nob and of Snob rejoiced with an exceeding great joy, and did shout with their whole might; so that their voices became as the voices of them that sell tidings in the street at nightfall.

"14. But the Telegraphists and the Sorters and the Postmen, and them that were of the tribes of Rag and of Tag, hardened their hearts, and were silent at the tenth hour; for they said among themselves, 'Shall the poor man shout in his poverty, and the hungry celebrate his lack of bread?'

"15. Now Preece, Lord of Lightning, had wrought with a cord of metal that they who were at the conversazione might hear the shouting from the Post Offices.

"16. And the tenth hour came; and lo! there was no great shout; and the tribes of Nob and Snob were as the voice of men calling in the wilderness.

"17. Then was the wrath of Baines kindled against the tribes of Rag and Tag for that they had not shouted according to his word; and he commanded that their chief men and counsellors should be cast out of the Queen's Post Office.

"18. And Raikes, the Postmaster-General; told the Queen all the travail of Baines, the Inspector-General, and of them that were with him, and how they had wrought all for the greater glory of the Queen's name.

"19. And the Queen hearkened to the word of Raikes, and lifted up Baines to be a Centurion of the Bath; also she placed honours upon Cardin, the Receiver-General and Accountant-General; upon Preece, Lord of Lightning; upon Thompson, the Secretarial Officer; and upon Tombs, the Controller, so that they dazzled the eyes of the tribe of Snob, and were favourably entreated of the sons of Nob.

"20. And they lived long in the land; and all men said pleasant things unto them.

"21. But they of Tag and of Rag that had been cast out were utterly forgotten; so that they were fain to cry aloud, saying, 'How long, O ye honest and upright in heart, shall Snobs and Nobs be rulers over us, seeing that they are but men like unto us, though they imagine us in their hearts to be otherwise?'

"22. And the answer is not yet."

FOOTNOTES:

[30] June 1897.

XXVII.

PARODIES IN VERSE.

Here I embark on the shoreless sea of metrical parody, and I begin my cruise by reaffirming that in this department _Rejected Addresses_, though distinctly good for their time, have been left far behind by modern achievements. The sense of style seems to have grown acuter, and the art of reproducing it has been brought to absolute perfection. The theory of development is instructively illustrated in the history of metrical parody.

Of the same date as _Rejected Addresses_, and of about equal merit, is the _Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_, which our grandfathers, if they combined literary taste with Conservative opinions, were never tired of repeating. The extraordinary brilliancy of the group of men who contributed to it guaranteed the general character of the book. Its merely satiric verse is a little beside my present mark; but as a parody the ballad of _Duke Smithson of Northumberland_, founded on _Chevy Chase_, ranks high, and the inscription for the cell in Newgate where Mrs. Brownrigg, who murdered her apprentices, was imprisoned, is even better. Southey, in his Radical youth, had written some lines on the cell in Chepstow Castle where Henry Marten the Regicide was confined:--

"For thirty years secluded from mankind
Here Marten lingered ...
Dost thou ask his crime?
He had rebell'd against the King, and sate
In judgment on him."

Here is Canning's parody:--

"For one long term, or e'er her trial came,
Here Brownrigg lingered ...
Dost thou ask her crime?
She whipped two female 'prentices to death,
And hid them in a coal-hole."

The time of _Rejected Addresses_ and the _Anti-Jacobin_ was also the heyday of parliamentary quotation, and old parliamentary hands used to cite a happy instance of instantaneous parody by Daniel O'Connell, who, having noticed that the speaker to whom he was replying had his speech written out in his hat, immediately likened him to Goldsmith's village schoolmaster, saying,--

"And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew
That one small _hat_ could carry all he knew."

Another instance of the same kind was O'Connell's extemporized description of three ultra-Protestant members, Colonel Verner, Colonel Vandeleur, and Colonel Sibthorp, the third of whom was conspicuous in a closely shaven age for his profusion of facial hair.

"Three Colonels, in three different counties born,
Armagh and Clare and Lincoln did adorn.
The first in direst bigotry surpassed:
The next in impudence: in both the last.
The force of Nature could no further go--
To beard the third, she shaved the former two."

A similarly happy turn to an old quotation was given by Baron Parke, afterwards Lord Wensleydale. His old friend and comrade at the Bar, Sir David Dundas, had just been appointed Solicitor-General, and, in reply to Baron Parke's invitation to dinner, he wrote that he could not accept it, as he had been already invited by seven peers for the same evening. He promptly received the following couplets:--

"Seven thriving cities fight for Homer dead
Through which the living Homer begged his bread."

"Seven noble Lords ask Davie to break bread
Who wouldn't care a d--were Davie dead."

The _Ingoldsby Legends_--long since, I believe, deposed from their position in public favour--were published in 1840. Their principal merits are a vein of humour, rollicking and often coarse, but genuine and infectious; great command over unusual metres; and an unequalled ingenuity in making double and treble rhymes: for example--

"The poor little Page, too, himself got no quarter, but
Was served the same way, And was found the next day,
With his heels in the air, and his head in the water-butt."

There is a general flavour of parody about most of the ballads. It does not as a rule amount to more than a rather clumsy mockery of mediaevalism, but the verses prefixed to the _Lay of St. Gengulphus_ are really rather like a fragment of a black-letter ballad. The book contains only one absolute parody, borrowed from Samuel Lover's _Lyrics of Ireland_, and then the result is truly offensive, for the poem chosen for the experiment is one of the most beautiful in the language--the _Burial of Sir John Moore_, which is transmuted into a stupid story of vulgar debauch. Of much the same date as the _Ingoldsby Legends_ was the _Old Curiosity Shop_, and no one who has a really scholarly acquaintance with Dickens will forget the delightful scraps of Tom Moore's amatory ditties with which, slightly adapted to current circumstances, Dick Swiveller used to console himself when Destiny seemed too strong for him. And it will be remembered that Mr. Slum composed some very telling parodies of the same popular author as advertisements for Mrs. Jarley's Waxworks; but I forbear to quote here what is so easily accessible.

By way of tracing the development of the Art of Parody, I am taking my samples in chronological order. In 1845 the Newdigate Prize for an English poem at Oxford was won by J.W. Burgon, afterwards Dean of Chichester. The subject was Petra. The successful poem was, on the whole, not much better and not much worse than the general run of such compositions; but it contained one couplet which Dean Stanley regarded as an absolute gem--a volume of description condensed into two lines:--

"Match me such marvel, save in Eastern clime--
A rose-red city, half as old as time."

The couplet was universally praised and quoted, and, as a natural consequence, parodied. There resided then (and long after) at Trinity College, Oxford, an extraordinarily old don called Short.[31] When I was an undergraduate he was still tottering about, and we looked at him with interest because he had been Newman's tutor. To his case the parodist of the period, in a moment of inspiration, adapted Burgon's beautiful couplet, saying or singing:--

"Match me such marvel, save in college port,
That rose-red liquor, half as old as Short."

The Rev. E.T. Turner, till recently Registrar of the University, has been known to say: "I was present when that egg was laid." It is satisfactory to know that the undergraduate who laid it--William Basil Tickell Jones--attained deserved eminence in after-life, and died Bishop of St. David's.

When Burgon was writing his prize-poem about Petra, Lord John Manners (afterwards seventh Duke of Rutland), in his capacity as Poet Laureate of Young England, was writing chivalrous ditties about castles and banners, and merry peasants, and Holy Church. This kind of mediaeval romanticism, though glorified by Lord Beaconsfield in _Coningsby_, seemed purely laughable to Thackeray, and he made rather bitter fun of it in _Lines upon my Sister's Portrait, by the Lord Southdown._

"Dash down, dash down yon mandolin, beloved sister mine!
Those blushing lips may never sing the glories of our line:
Our ancient castles echo to the clumsy feet of churls.
The spinning-jenny houses in the mansion of our Earls.
Sing not, sing not, my Angelina! in days so base and vile,
'Twere sinful to be happy, 'twere sacrilege to smile.
I'll hie me to my lonely hall, and by its cheerless hob
I'll muse on other days, and wish--and wish I were--A SNOB."

But, though the spirit of this mournful song is the spirit of _England's Trust_, the verbal imitation is not close enough to deserve the title of Parody.

The _Ballads of Bon Gaultier_, published anonymously in 1855, had a success which would only have been possible at a time when really artistic parodies were unknown. Bon Gaultier's verses are not as a rule much more than rough-and-ready imitations; and, like so much of the humour of their day, and of Scotch humour in particular, they generally depend for their point upon drinking and drunkenness. Some of the different forms of the Puff Poetical are amusing, especially the advertisement of Doudney Brothers' Waistcoats, and the Puff Direct in which Parr's Life-pills are glorified after the manner of a German ballad. _The Laureate_ is a fair hit at some of Tennyson's earlier mannerisms:--

"Who would not be
The Laureate bold,
With his butt of sherry
To keep him merry,
And nothing to do but pocket his gold?"

But _The Lay of the Lovelorn_ is a clumsy and rather vulgar skit on _Locksley Hall_--a poem on which two such writers as Sir Theodore Martin and Professor Aytoun would have done well not to lay their sacrilegious hands.

We have now passed through the middle stage of the development which I am trying to trace; we are leaving clumsiness and vulgarity behind us, and are approaching the age of perfection. Sir George Trevelyan's parodies are transitional. He was born in 1838, three times won the prize poem at Harrow, and brought out his Cambridge squibs in and soon after the year 1858. _Horace at the University of Athens_, originally written for acting at the famous "A.D.C.," still holds its own as one of the wittiest of extravaganzas. It contains a really pretty imitation of the 10th Eclogue, and it is studded with adaptations, of which the only possible fault is that, for the general reader, they are too topical. Here is a sample:--

"_Donec gratus eram tibi_."

_Hor_. While still you loved your Horace best
Of all my peers who round you pressed
(Though not in expurgated versions),
More proud I lived than King of Persians.

_Lyd_. And while as yet no other dame
Had kindled in your breast a flame,
(Though Niebuhr her existence doubt),
I cut historic Ilia out.

_Hor_. Dark Chloe now my homage owns,
Skilled on the banjo and the bones;
For whom I would not fear to die,
If death would pass my charmer by.

_Lyd_. I now am lodging at the _rus-
In-urbe_ of young Decius Mus.
Twice over would I gladly die
To see him hit in either eye.

_Hor_. But should the old love come again,
And Lydia her sway retain,
If to my heart once more I take her,
And bid black Chloe wed the baker?

_Lyd_. Though you be treacherous as audit
When at the fire you've lately thawed it,
For Decius Mus no more I'd care
Than for their plate the Dons of Clare.

Really this is a much better rendering of the famous ode than nine-tenths of its more pompous competitors; and the allusions to the perfidious qualities of Trinity Audit Ale and the mercenary conduct of the Fellows of Clare need no explanation for Cambridge readers, and little for others. But it may be fairly objected that this is not, in strictness, a parody. That is true, and indeed as a parodist Sir George Trevelyan belongs to the metrical miocene. His Horace, when serving as a volunteer in the Republican Army, bursts into a pretty snatch of song which has a flavour of Moore:--

"The minstrel boy from the wars is gone,
All out of breath you'll find him;
He has run some five miles, off and on,
And his shield has flung behind him."

And the Bedmaker's Song in one of the Cambridge scenes is sweetly reminiscent of a delightful and forgotten bard:--

"I make the butler fly, all in an hour;
I put aside the preserves and cold meats,
Telling my master the cream has turned sour,
Hiding the pickles, purloining the sweets."

"I never languish for husband or dower;
I never sigh to see 'gyps' at my feet;
I make the butter fly, all in an hour,
Taking it home for my Saturday treat."

This, unless I greatly err, is a very good parody of Thomas Haynes Bayly, author of some of the most popular songs of a sentimental cast which were chanted in our youth and before it. But this is ground on which I must not trench, for Mr. Andrew Lang has made it his own. The most delightful essay in one of his books of Reprints deals with this amazing bard, and contains some parodies so perfect that Mr. Haynes Bayly would have rejoicingly claimed them as his own.

Charles Stuart Calverley is by common consent the king of metrical parodists. All who went before merely adumbrated him and led up to him; all who have come since are descended from him and reflect him. Of course he was infinitely more than a mere imitator of rhymes and rhythms. He was a true poet; he was one of the most graceful scholars that Cambridge ever produced; and all his exuberant fun was based on a broad and strong foundation of Greek, Latin, and English literature. _Verses and Translations, by C.S.C._, which appeared in 1862, was a young man's book, although its author had already established his reputation as a humorist by the inimitable Examination Paper on _Pickwick_; and, being a young man's book, it was a book of unequal merit. The translations I leave on one side, as lying outside my present purview, only remarking as I pass that if there is a finer rendering than that of Ajax--645-692--I do not know where it is to be found. My business is with the parodies. It was not till ten years later that in _Fly Leaves_ Calverley asserted his supremacy in the art, but even in _Verses and Translations_ he gave good promise of what was to be.

Of all poems in the world, I suppose _Horatius_ has been most frequently and most justly parodied. Every Public School magazine contains at least one parody of it every year. In my Oxford days there was current an admirable version of it (attributed to the Rev. W.W. Merry, now Rector of Lincoln College), which began,--

"Adolphus Smalls, of Boniface,
By all the powers he swore
That, though he had been ploughed three times,
He would be ploughed no more,"

and traced with curious fidelity the successive steps in the process of preparation till the dreadful day of examination arrived:--

"They said he made strange quantities,
Which none might make but he;
And that strange things were in his Prose
Canine to a degree:
But they called his _Viva Voce_ fair,
They said his 'Books' would do;
And native cheek, where facts were weak,
Brought him triumphant through.
And in each Oxford college
In the dim November days,
When undergraduates fresh from hall
Are gathering round the blaze;
When the 'crusted port' is opened,
And the Moderator's lit,
And the weed glows in the Freshman's mouth,
And makes him turn to spit;
With laughing and with chaffing
The story they renew,
How Smalls of Boniface went in,
And actually got through."

So much for the Oxford rendering of Macaulay's famous lay. "C.S.C." thus adapted it to Cambridge, and to a different aspect of undergraduate life:--

"On pinnacled St. Mary's
Lingers the setting sun;
Into the street the blackguards
Are skulking one by one;
Butcher and Boots and Bargeman
Lay pipe and pewter down,
And with wild shout come tumbling out
To join the Town and Gown.

* * * * *

"'Twere long to tell how Boxer
Was countered on the cheek,
And knocked into the middle
Of the ensuing week;
How Barnacles the Freshman
Was asked his name and college,
And how he did the fatal facts
Reluctantly acknowledge."

Quite different, but better because more difficult, is this essay in _Proverbial Philosophy_:--

"I heard the wild notes of the lark floating far over the blue sky,
And my foolish heart went after him, and, lo! I blessed him as he
rose.
Foolish; for far better is the trained boudoir bullfinch,
Which pipeth the semblance of a tune and mechanically draweth up
water.
For verily, O my daughter, the world is a masquerade,
And God made thee one thing that thou mightest make thyself
another.
A maiden's heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling
upwards,
And it needed that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of
Propriety.
He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure,
Let him drink deeply of its sweetness nor grumble if it tasteth of
the cork."

_Enoch Arden_ was published in 1864, and was not enthusiastically received by true lovers of Tennyson, though people who had never read him before thought it wonderfully fine. A kinsman of mine always contended that the story ended wrongly, and that the really human, and therefore dramatic, conclusion would have been as follows:--

"For Philip's dwelling fronted on the street,
And Enoch, coming, saw the house a blaze
Of light, and Annie drinking from a mug--
A funny mug, all blue with strange device
Of birds and waters and a little man.
And Philip held a bottle; and a smell
Of strong tobacco, with a fainter smell--
But still a smell, and quite distinct--of gin
Was there. He raised the latch, and stealing by
The cupboard, where a row of teacups stood,
Hard by the genial hearth, he paused behind
The luckless pair, then drawing back his foot--
His manly foot, all clad in sailors' hose--
He swung it forth with such a grievous kick
That Philip in a moment was propelled
Against his wife, though not his wife; and she
Fell forwards, smashing saucers, cups, and jug
Fell in a heap. All shapeless on the floor
Philip and Annie and the crockery lay.
Then Enoch's voice accompanied his foot,
For both were raised, with horrid oath and kick,
Till constables came in with Miriam Lane
And bare them all to prison, railing loud.
Then Philip was discharged and ran away,
And Enoch paid a fine for the assault;
And Annie went to Philip, telling him
That she would see old Enoch further first
Before she would acknowledge him to be
Himself, if Philip only would return.
But Philip said that he would rather not.
Then Annie plucked such handfuls of his hair
Out of his head that he was nearly bald.
But Enoch laughed, and said, 'Well done, my girl.'
And so the two shook hands and made it up."

In 1869 Lewis Carroll published a little book of rhymes called _Phantasmagoria_. It related chiefly to Oxford. Partly because it was anonymous, partly because it was mainly topical, the book had no success. But it contained two or three parodies which deserve to rank with the best in the language. One is an imitation of a ballad in black-letter called

"YE CARPETTE KNYGHTE.

"I have a horse--a ryghte goode horse--
Ne doe I envye those
Who scoure ye playne yn headye course
Tyll soddayne on theyre nose
They lyghte wyth unexpected force--
Yt ys a Horse of Clothes."

Then, again, there is excellent metaphysical fooling in _The Three Voices_. But far the best parody in the book--and the most richly deserved by the absurdity of its original--is _Hiawatha's Photographing_. It has the double merit of absolute similarity in cadence and lifelike realism. Unluckily the limits of space forbid complete citation:--

"From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing.
But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid.
This he perched upon a tripod,
And the family in order
Sate before him for their portraits.

* * * * *

Each in turn, as he was taken,
Volunteered his own suggestions,
His ingenious suggestions.
First the Governor, the Father:
He suggested velvet curtains,
And the corner of a table,
Of a rosewood dining-table.
He would hold a scroll of something,
Hold it firmly in his left hand;
He would keep his right hand buried
(Like Napoleon) in his waistcoat;
He would contemplate the distance
With a look of pensive meaning,
As of ducks that die in tempests.
Grand, heroic was the notion,
Yet the picture failed entirely,
Failed, because he moved a little;
Moved, because he couldn't help it."

Who does not know that Father in the flesh? and who has not seen him--velvet curtains, dining-table, scroll, and all--on the most conspicuous wall of the Royal Academy? The Father being disposed of,

"Next his better half took courage,
She would have her picture taken."

But her restlessness and questionings proved fatal to the result.

"Next the son, the Stunning-Cantab:
He suggested curves of beauty,
Curves pervading all his figure,
Which the eye might follow onward
Till they centered in the breastpin,
Centered in the golden breastpin.
He had learnt it all from Ruskin,
Author of the _Stones of Venice_."

But, in spite of such culture, the portrait was a failure, and the elder sister fared no better. Then the younger brother followed, and his portrait was so awful that--

"In comparison the others
Seemed to one's bewildered fancy
To have partially succeeded."

Undaunted by these repeated failures, Hiawatha, by a great final effort, "tumbled all the tribe together" in the manner of a family group, and--

"Did at last obtain a picture
Where the faces all succeeded--
Each came out a perfect likeness
Then they joined and all abused it,
Unrestrainedly abused it,
As the worst and ugliest picture
They could possibly have dreamed of;
'Giving one such strange expressions--
Sullen, stupid, pert expressions.
Really any one would take us
(Any one that didn't know us)
For the most unpleasant people.'
Hiawatha seemed to think so,
Seemed to think it not unlikely."

How true to life is this final touch of indignation at the unflattering truth! But time and space forbid me further to pursue the photographic song of Hiawatha.

_Phantasmagoria_ filled an aching void during the ten years which elapsed between the appearance of _Verses and Translations_ and that of _Fly Leaves_. The latter book is small, only 124 pages in all, including the _Pickwick_ Examination Paper, but what marvels of mirth and poetry and satire it contains! How secure its place in the affections of all who love the gentle art of parody! My rule is not to quote extensively from books which are widely known; but I must give myself the pleasure of repeating just six lines which even appreciative critics generally overlook. They relate to the conversation of the travelling tinker.

"Thus on he prattled like a babbling brook.
Then I: 'The sun hath slipt behind the hill,
And my Aunt Vivian dines at half-past six,'
So in all love we parted; I to the Hall,
He to the village. It was noised next noon
That chickens had been missed at Syllabub Farm."

Will any one stake his literary reputation on the assertion that these lines are not really Tennyson's?

FOOTNOTES:

[31] Rev. Thomas Short, 1789-1879.

XXVIII.

PARODIES IN VERSE--_continued_.

When I embarked upon the subject of metrical parody I said that it was a shoreless sea. For my own part, I enjoy sailing over these rippling waters, and cannot be induced to hurry. Let us put in for a moment at Belfast. There in 1874 the British Association held its annual meeting; and Professor Tyndall delivered an inaugural address in which he revived and glorified the Atomic Theory of the Universe. His glowing peroration ran as follows: "Here I must quit a theme too great for me to handle, but which will be handled by the loftiest minds ages after you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past." Shortly afterwards _Blackwood's Magazine_, always famous for its humorous and satiric verse, published a rhymed abstract of Tyndall's address, of which I quote (from memory) the concluding lines:--

"Let us greatly honour the Atom, so lively, so wise, and so small;
The Atomists, too, let us honour--Epicurus, Lucretius, and all.
Let us damn with faint praise Bishop Butler, in whom many atoms
combined
To form that remarkable structure which it pleased him to call his
mind.
Next praise we the noble body to which, for the time, we belong
(Ere yet the swift course of the Atom hath hurried us breathless
along)--
The BRITISH ASSOCIATION--like Leviathan worshipped by Hobbes,
The incarnation of wisdom built up of our witless nobs;
Which will carry on endless discussion till I, and probably you,
Have _melted in infinite azure_--and, in short, till all is
blue."

Surely this translation of the Professor's misplaced dithyrambics into the homeliest of colloquialisms is both good parody and just criticism.

In 1876 there appeared a clever little book (attributed to Sir Frederick Pollock) which was styled _Leading Cases done into English, by an Apprentice of Lincoln's Inn_. It appealed only to a limited public, for it is actually a collection of sixteen important law-cases set forth, with explanatory notes, in excellent verse imitated from poets great and small. Chaucer, Browning, Tennyson, Swinburne, Clough, Rossetti, and James Rhoades supply the models, and I have been credibly informed that the law is as good as the versification. Mr. Swinburne was in those days the favourite butt of young parodists, and the gem of the book is the dedication to "J.S." or "John Stiles," a mythical person, nearly related to John Doe and Richard Roe, with whom all budding jurists had in old days to make acquaintance. The disappearance of the venerated initials from modern law-books inspired the following:--

"When waters are rent with commotion
Of storms, or with sunlight made whole,
The river still pours to the ocean
The stream of its effluent soul;
You, too, from all lips of all living,
Of worship disthroned and discrowned,
Shall know by these gifts of my giving
That faith is yet found;

"By the sight of my song-flight of cases
That bears, on wings woven of rhyme,
Names set for a sign in high places
By sentence of men of old time;
From all counties they meet and they mingle,
Dead suitors whom Westminster saw;
They are many, but your name is singles
Pure flower of pure law.

* * * * *

"So I pour you this drink of my verses,
Of learning made lovely with lays,
Song bitter and sweet that reheares
The deeds of your eminent days;
Yea, in these evil days from their reading
Some profit a student shall draw,
Though some points are of obsolete pleading,
And some are not law.

"Though the Courts, that were manifold, dwindle
To divers Divisions of One,
And no fire from your face may rekindle
The light of old learning undone,
We have suitors and briefs for our payment,
While, so long as a Court shall hold pleas,
We talk moonshine with wigs for our raiment,
Not sinking the fees."

Some five-and-twenty years ago there appeared the first number of a magazine called _The Dark Blue_. It was published in London, but was understood to represent in some occult way the thought and life of Young Oxford, and its contributors were mainly Oxford men. The first number contained an amazing ditty called "The Sun of my Songs." It was dark, and mystic, and transcendental, and unintelligible. It dealt extensively in strange words and cryptic phrases. One verse I must transcribe:--

"Yet all your song
Is--'Ding dong,
Summer is dead,
Spring is dead--
O my heart, and O my head
Go a-singing a silly song
All wrong,
For all is dead.
Ding dong,
And I am dead!
Dong!'"

I quote thus fully because Cambridge, never backward in poking fun at her more romantic sister, shortly afterwards produced an excellent little magazine named sarcastically _The Light Green_, and devoted to the ridicule of its cerulean rival. The poem from which I have just quoted was thus burlesqued, if, indeed, burlesque of such a composition were possible:--

"Ding dong, ding dong,
There goes the gong;
Dick, come along,
It is time for dinner
Wash your face,
Take your place.
Where's your grace,
You little sinner?

"Baby cry,
Wipe his eye.
Baby good,
Give him food.
Baby sleepy,
Go to bed.
Baby naughty,
Smack his head!"

_The Light Green_, which had only an ephemeral life, was, I have always heard, entirely, or almost entirely, the work of one undergraduate, who died young--Arthur Clement Hilton, of, St. John's.[32] He certainly had the knack of catching and reproducing style. In the "May Exam.," a really good imitation of the "May Queen," the departing undergraduate thus addresses his "gyp":--

"When the men come up again, Filcher, and the Term is at its height,
You'll never see me more in these long gay rooms at night;
When the "old dry wines" are circling, and the claret-cup flows cool,
And the loo is fast and furious, with a fiver in the pool."

In 1872 "Lewis Carroll" brought out _Through the Looking-glass_, and every one who has ever read that pretty work of poetic fancy will remember the ballad of the Walrus and the Carpenter. It was parodied in _The Light Green_ under the title of "The Vulture and the Husbandman." This poem described the agonies of a _viva-voce_ examination, and it derived its title from two facts of evil omen--that the Vulture plucks its victim, and that the Husbandman makes his living by ploughing:--

"Two undergraduates came up,
And slowly took a seat,
They knit their brows, and bit their thumbs,
As if they found them sweet;
And this was odd, because, you know,
Thumbs are not good to eat.

"'The time has come,' the Vulture said,
'To talk of many things--
Of Accidence and Adjectives,
And names of Jewish Kings;
How many notes a Sackbut has,
And whether Shawms have strings.'

"'Please sir,' the Undergraduates said,
Turning a little blue,
'We did not know that was the sort
Of thing we had to do.'
'We thank you much,' the Vulture said;
'Send up another two.'"

The base expedients to which an examination reduces its victims are hit off with much dexterity in "The Heathen Pass-ee," a parody of an American poem which is too familiar to justify quotation:--

"Tom Crib was his name,
And I shall not deny,
In regard to the same,
What that name might imply;
But his face it was trustful and childlike,
And he had the most innocent eye.

* * * * *

"On the cuffs of his shirt
He had managed to get
What we hoped had been dirt,
But which proved, I regret,
To be notes on the Rise of the Drama
A question invariably set.

"In the crown of his cap
Were the Furies and Fates,
And a delicate map
Of the Dorian States;
And we found in his palms, which were hollow,
What are frequent in palms--that is, dates."

Deservedly dear to the heart of English youth are the Nonsense Rhymes of Edward Lear. It will be recollected that the form of the verse as originally constructed reproduced the final word of the first line at the end of the fifth, thus:--

"There was an old person of Basing
Whose presence of mind was amazing;
He purchased a steed
Which he rode at full speed,
And escaped from the people of Basing."

But in the process of development it became usual to find a new word for the end of the fifth line, thus at once securing a threefold rhyme and introducing the element of unexpectedness, instead of inevitableness, into the conclusion. Thus _The Light Green_ sang of the Colleges in which it circulated--

"There was an old Fellow of Trinity,
A Doctor well versed in divinity;
But he took to free-thinking,
And then to deep drinking,
And so had to leave the vicinity."

And--

"There was a young genius of Queen's
Who was fond of explosive machines;
He blew open a door,
But he'll do so no more--
For it chanced that that door was the Dean's."

And--

"There was a young gourmand of John's
Who'd a notion of dining off swans;
To the "Backs" he took big nets
To capture the cygnets,
But was told they were kept for the Dons."

So far _The Light Green_.

Not at all dissimilar in feeling to these ebullitions of youthful fancy were the parodies of nursery rhymes which the lamented Corney Grain invented for one of his most popular entertainments, and used to accompany on the piano in his own inimitable style. I well remember the opening verse of one, in which an incident in the social career of a Liberal millionaire was understood to be immortalized:--

"Old Mr. Parvenu gave a great ball,
And of all his smart guests he knew no one at all;
Old Mr. Parvenu went up to bed,
And his guests said good-night to the butler instead."

Twenty years ago we were in the crisis of the great Jingo fever, and Lord Beaconsfield's antics in the East were frightening all sober citizens out of their senses. It was at that period that the music-halls rang with the "Great MacDermott's" Tyrtaean strain--

"We don't want to fight; but, by Jingo, if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too;"

and the word "Jingo" took its place in the language as the recognized symbol of a warlike policy. At Easter 1878 it was announced that the Government were bringing black troops from India to Malta, to aid our English forces in whatever enterprises lay before them. The refrain of the music-hall was instantly adapted with great effect, even the grave _Spectator_ giving currency to the parody--

"We don't want to fight; but, by Jingo, if we do,
We won't go to the front ourselves, but we'll send the mild Hindoo."

Two years passed. Lord Beaconsfield was deposed. The tide of popular feeling turned in favour of Liberalism, and "Jingo" became a term of reproach. Mr. Tennyson, as he then was, endeavoured to revive the patriotic spirit of his countrymen by publishing _Hands all Round_--a poem which had the supreme honour of being quoted in the House of Commons by Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett. Forthwith an irreverent parodist--some say Mr. Andrew Lang--appeared with the following counterblast:--

DRINKS ALL ROUND.

(Being an attempt to arrange Mr. Tennyson's noble words for truly patriotic, Protectionist, and Anti-aboriginal circles.)

"A health to Jingo first, and then
A health to shell, a health to shot!
The man who hates not other men
I deem no perfect patriot."
To all who hold all England mad
We drink; to all who'd tax her food!
We pledge the man who hates the Rad,
We drink to Bartle Frere and Froude!

Drinks all round!
Here's to Jingo, king and crowned!
To the great cause of Jingo drink, my boys,
And the great name of Jingo, round and round.

To all the companies that long
To rob, as folk robbed years ago;
To all that wield the double thong,
From Queensland round to Borneo!
To all that, under Indian skies,
Call Aryan man a "blasted nigger;"
To all rapacious enterprise;
To rigour everywhere, and vigour!

Drinks all round!
Here's to Jingo, king and crowned!
To the great name of Jingo drink, my boys,
And every filibuster, round and round!

To all our Statesmen, while they see
An outlet new for British trade,
Where British fabrics still may be
With British size all overweighed;
Wherever gin and guns are sold
We've scooped the artless nigger in;
Where men give ivory and gold,
We give them measles, tracts, and gin.

Drinks all round!
Here's to Jingo, king and crowned!
To the great name of Jingo drink, my boys.
And to Adulteration round and round.

The Jingo fever having abated, another malady appeared in the body politic. Trouble broke out in Ireland, and in January 1881 Parliament was summoned to pass Mr. Forster's Coercion Act. My diary for that date supplies me with the following excellent imitation of a veteran Poet of Freedom rushing with ardent sympathy into the Irish struggle.

A L'IRLANDE.

PAR VICTOR HUGO.

O Irlande, grand pays du shillelagh et du bog,
Où les patriots vont toujours ce qu'on appelle le whole hog.
Aujourd'hui je prends la plume, moi qui suis vieux,
Pour dire au grand patriot Parnell, "How d'ye do?"
Erin, aux armes! le whisky vous donne la force
De se battre l'un pour l'autre comme les fameux Frères Corses.
Votre Land League et vos Home Rulers sont des libérateurs.
Payez la valuation de Griffith et n'ayez pas peur.

De la tenure la fixité c'est l'astre de vos rêves,
Que Rory des Collines vit et que les landgrabbers crèvent
Moi, je suis vieux, mais dans l'ombre je vois clair,
Bientôt serez-vous maîtres de vos bonnes pommes de terre.
C'est le brave Biggar, le T.P. O'Connor et les autres
Qui sont vos sauveurs, comme Gambetta était le nôtre;
Suivez-les, et la victoire sera toujours à vous,
Si à Milbank ce cher Forster ne vous envoie pas. Hooroo!

By the time that these lines were written the late Mr. J.K. Stephen--affectionately known by his friends as "Jem Stephen"--was beginning to be recognized as an extraordinarily good writer of humorous verse. His performances in this line were not collected till ten years later (_Lapsus Calami_, 1891), and his brilliant career was cut short, by the results of an accident, in 1892. I reproduce the following sonnet, not only because I think it an excellent criticism aptly expressed, but because I desire to pay my tribute of admiration to one of whom all men spoke golden words:--

"Two voices are there: one is of the deep--
It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep;
And one is of an old, half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony,
And indicates that two and one are three,
That glass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep;
And, Wordsworth, both are thine."

I hope that there are few among my readers who have not in their time known and loved the dear old ditty which tells us how

"There was a youth, and a well-beloved youth,
And he was a squire's son,
And he loved the Bailiff's daughter dear
Who dwelt at Islington."

Well, to all who have followed that touching story of love and grief I commend the following version of it. French, after all, is the true language of sentiment:--

"Il y avait un garçon,
Fort amiable et fort bon,
Qui était le fils du Lord Mayor;
Et il aimait la fille
D'un sergent de ville
Qui demeurait à Leycesster Sqvare.

"Mais elle était un peu prude,
Et n'avait pas l'habitude
De coqueter, comme les autres demoiselles;
Jusqu'à ce que le Lord Mayor
(Homme brutal, comme tous les pères)
L'éloigna de sa tourterelle.

"Après quelques ans d'absence,
Au rencontre elle s'élance;
Elle se fait une toilette de très bon goût--
Des pantoufles sur les pieds,
Des lunettes sur le nez,
Et un collier sur le cou--c'était tout.

"Mais bientôt elle s'assit
Dans la rue Piccadilli,
Car il faisait extrêmement chaud;
Et là elle vit s'avancer
L'unique objet de ses pensées,
Sur le plus magnifique de chevaux!

"Je suis pauvre et sans ressource!
Prête, prête-moi ta bourse,
Ou ta montre, pour me montrer confiance.'
'Jeune femme, je ne vous connais,
Ainsi il faut me donner
Une adresse et quelques références'

"'Mon adresse--c'est Leycesster Sqvare,
Et pour référence j'espère
Que la statue de Shakespeare vous suffira,'
'Ah! connais-tu ma mie,
La fille du sergent?' 'Si;
Mais elle est morte comme un rat!'

"'Si défunte est ma belle,
Prenez, s'il vous plaît, ma selle,
Et ma bride, et mon cheval incomparable;
Car il ne faut rien dire,
Mais vite, vite m'ensevelir
Dans un désert sec et désagréable.'

"'Ah! mon brave, arrête-toi.
Je suis ton unique choix;
La fille du sergent sans peur!
Pour mon trousseau, c'est modeste,
Vous le voyez! Pour le reste,
Je t'épouse dans une demi-heure!'

"Mais le jeune homme épouvanté
Sur son cheval vite remontait,
La liberté lui était trop chère!
Et la pauvre fille dégoûtée
N'avait qu'à reprendre sa route, et
Son adresse est encore Leycesster Sqvare."

The chiefs of the Permanent Civil Service are not usually, as Swift said, "blasted with poetic fire," but this delightful ditty is from the pen of Mr. Henry Graham, the Clerk of the Parliaments.

Of the metrical parodists of the present hour two are extremely good. Mr. Owen Seaman is, beyond and before all his rivals, "up to date," and pokes his lyrical fun at such songsters as Mr. Alfred Austin, Mr. William Watson, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and Mr. Richard Le Gallienne. But "Q." is content to try his hand on poets of more ancient standing; and he is not only of the school but of the lineage of "C.S.C." I have said before that I forbear, as a rule, to quote from books as easily accessible as _Green Bays;_ but is there a branch of the famous "Omar Khayyám Club" in Manchester? If there be, to it I offer this delicious morsel, only apologizing to the uninitiated reader for the pregnant allusiveness, which none but a sworn Khayyámite can perfectly apprehend:--

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

Wake! for the closed Pavilion doors have kept
Their silence while the white-eyed Kaffir slept,
And wailed the Nightingale with "Jug, jug, jug!"
Whereat, for empty cup, the White Rose wept.

Enter with me where yonder door hangs out
Its Red Triangle to a world of drought,
Inviting to the Palace of the Djinn,
Where death, Aladdin, waits as Chuckeroût.

Methought, last night, that one in suit of woe
Stood by the Tavern-door and whispered, "Lo!
The Pledge departed, what avails the Cup?
Then take the Pledge and let the Wine-cup go."

But I: "For every thirsty soul that drains
This Anodyne of Thought its rim contains--
Freewill the _can_, Necessity the _must;_
Pour off the _must_, and see, the _can_ remains.

"Then, pot or glass, why label it '_With care?'_
Or why your Sheepskin with my Gourd compare?
Lo! here the Bar and I the only Judge:--
O Dog that bit me, I exact an hair!"

No versifier of the present day lends himself so readily to parody as Mr. Kipling. His "Story of Ung" is an excellent satire on certain methods of contemporary literature:--

"Once on a glittering icefield, ages and ages ago,
Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow.
Fashioned the form of a tribesman; gaily he whistled and sung,
Working the snow with his fingers, '_Read ye the story of Ung!_'

* * * * *

And the father of Ung gave answer, that was old and wise in the craft,
Maker of pictures aforetime, he leaned on his lance and laughed:
'If they could see as thou seest they would do as thou hast done,
And each man would make him a picture, and--what would become
of my son?'"

So far Mr. Kipling. A parodist writing in _Truth_ applies the same "criticism of life" to commercial production:--

THE STORY OF BUNG.

Once, ere the glittering icefields paid us a tribute of gold,
Bung, the son of a brewer, heir to a fortune untold--
Vast was his knowledge of brewing--gaily began his career.
Whispered the voice of ambition, "Perhaps they will make thee a peer."

People who sampled his liquor wunk an incredulous wink,
Smelt it, then drank it, and grunted, "Verily _this_ is a drink!"
Even the Clubman admitted, wetting the tip of his tongue,
"Lo! it is excellent beer! Glory and honour to Bung!"

Straightway the doubters assembled, a prying, unsatisfied horde:
"It is _said_ the materials used are approved by the Revenue Board;
It is claimed that no adjuncts are used, the advertisements say it is
pure;
True, the beer is good--and it may be--but can the consumer be sure?"

Wroth was that brewer of liquor, knowing the doubters were right,
User of chemical adjuncts, and methods that bear not the light;
Little he recked of disclosures, much of the profits he cleared,
So in the ear of his father whispered the thing that he feared.

And the father of Bung gave answer, that was old and wise in the craft,
"If they cast suspicion upon thee, it is nought but a random shaft;
If others could know what thou knowest, they would do what thou hast done,
And men would drink of their brewing, and--what would become of my son?

"So long as thy beer is best, so long shall thy brewing win
The praise no money can buy, and the money that praise brings in.
And if the majority's pleased, the majority does not mind
The _how_, and the _what_, and the _whence_. Rejoice that the public
is blind."

And Bung took his father's counsel, and fell to his brewing of beer,
And he gave the Government cheques, and the Government made him a peer,
And the doubters ceased from their doubting, loudly his praises they sung,
Cursing their previous blindness. _Heed ye the story of Bung!_

But no effort of intentional parody can, I think, surpass this serious adaptation of the "March of the Men of Harlech" to the ecclesiastical crisis of 1898-9:--

A PROTESTANT BATTLE-SONG;

OR,

PASTORAL ADDRESS TO CHRISTIAN BRETHREN.