Part 29

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

FOOTNOTES:

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.

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"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. 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.

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