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.
Sons of Freedom, rouse the Nation!
Or Britain's glorious Reformation
Soon will reach dire consummation!
God defend the right!
Shall false traitor-bishops lead us,
Chained to Rome, and madly speed us,
From the Word of God which freed us,
Unto Papal night?
False example setting,
Treachery begetting,
Temple, Halifax, Maclagan,
Now with Rome coquetting.
Mighty House of Convocation
Thou art not the British Nation!
Every warrior to your station;
Freedom calls for fight!
Cuba, Spain, and Madagascar,
Where the Jesuits are master,
Shout our shame in their disaster,--
What shall Britain say?
Rome, thy smile is cold as Zero.
Drop the mask, thou crafty Nero!
Britons! rouse ye! Play the Hero!
Right shall win the day!
False example setting,
Treachery begetting,
Temple, Halifax, Maclagan,
Now with Rome coquetting.
Trust in God! His truth protecting,
Prayer and duty ne'er neglecting,
Fearless, victory expecting,
Prepare you for the fray!
FOOTNOTES:
[32] Born 1851; ordained 1874; died 1877.
XXIX.
VERBAL INFELICITIES.
"_Se non è vero_," said a very great Lord Mayor, "_è ben traviata_." His
lordship's linguistic slip served him right. Latin is fair play, though
some of us are in the condition of the auctioneer in _The Mill on the
Floss_, who had brought away with him from the Great Mudport Free School
"a sense of understanding Latin generally, though his comprehension of
any particular Latin was not ready." But to quote from any other
language is to commit an outrage on your guests. The late Sir Robert
Fowler was, I believe, the only Lord Mayor who ever ventured to quote
Greek, but I have heard him do it, and have seen the turtle-fed company
smile with alien lips in the painful attempt to look as if they
understood it, and in abject terror lest their neighbour should ask them
to translate. Mr. James Payn used to tell a pleasing tale of a learned
clergyman who quoted Greek at dinner. The lady who was sitting by Mr.
Payn inquired in a whisper what one of these quotations meant. He gave
her to understand, with a well-assumed blush, that it was scarcely fit
for a lady's ear. "Good heavens!" she exclaimed; "you don't mean to
say----" "Please don't ask any more," said Payn pleadingly; "I really
could not tell you." Which was true to the ear, if not to the sense.
Municipal eloquence has been time out of mind a storehouse of delight.
It was, according to tradition, a provincial mayor who, blessed with a
numerous progeny, publicly expressed the pious hope that his sons might
grow up to be better citizens than their father, and his daughters more
virtuous women than their mother. There was a worthy alderman at Oxford
in my time who was entertained at a public dinner on his retirement from
civic office. In replying to the toast of his health, he said it had
always been his anxious endeavour to administer justice without swerving
to "partiality on the one hand or impartiality on the other." Surely he
must have been near akin to the moralist who always tried to tread "the
narrow path which lay between right and wrong;" or, perchance, to the
newly-elected mayor who, in returning thanks for his elevation, said
that during his year of office he should lay aside all his political
prepossessions and be, "like Caesar's wife, all things to all men." A
well-known dignitary, rebuking his housemaid for using his bath during
his absence from the Deanery, said, "I am grieved to think that you
should do behind my back what you wouldn't do before my face;" and it
was related of my old friend Dean Burgon that once, in a sermon on the
transcendent merits of the Anglican school of theology, he exclaimed,
with a fervour which was all his own, "May I live the life of a Taylor,
and die the death of a Bull!" The late Lord Coleridge, eulogizing
Oxford, said in his most dulcet tone, "I speak not of this college or of
that, but of the University as a whole; and, gentlemen, what a _whole_
Oxford is!"
The admirable Mr. Brooke, when he purposed to contest the Borough of
Middlemarch, found Will Ladislaw extremely useful, because he
"remembered what the right quotations are--_Omne tulit punctum_, and
that sort of thing." And certainly an apt quotation is one of the most
effective decorations of a public speech; but the dangers of
inappositeness are correspondingly formidable. I have always heard that
the most infelicitous quotation on record was made by the fourth Lord
Fitzwilliam at a county meeting held at York to raise a fund for the
repair of the Minster after the fire which so nearly destroyed it in
1829. Previous speakers had, naturally, appealed to the pious
munificence of Churchmen. Lord Fitzwilliam, as the leading Whig of the
county, thought that it would be an excellent move to enlist the
sympathies of the rich Nonconformists, and that he was the man to do it.
So he perorated somewhat after the following fashion:--"And, if the
liberality of Yorkshire Churchmen proves insufficient to restore the
chief glory of our native county, then, with all confidence, I turn to
our excellent Dissenting brethren, and I exclaim, with the Latin poet,
'Flectere si nequeo superos Acheronta movebo.'"