Part 27

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. 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,"