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.