Part 32

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:

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.'"

Mr. Anstey Guthrie has some pleasant instances of texts misapplied. He was staying once in a Scotch country-house where, over his bed, hung an illuminated scroll with the inscription, "Occupy till I come," which, as Mr. Guthrie justly observes, is an unusually extended invitation, even for Scottish notions of hospitality. According to the same authority, the leading citizen of a seaside town erected some iron benches on the sea front, and, with the view of at once commemorating his own munificence and giving a profitable turn to the thoughts of the sitters, inscribed on the backs--

THESE SEATS WERE PRESENTED TO THIS TOWN OF SHINGLETON BY JOSEPH BUGGINS, ESQ., J.P. FOR THE BOROUGH. "THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT."

Nothing is more deeply rooted in the mind of the average man than that certain well-known aphorisms of piety are to be found in the Bible--possibly in that lost book the Second Epistle to the Ephesians, which Dickens must have had in his mind when he wrote in Dombey and Son of the First Epistle to that Church. "In the midst of life we are in death" is a favourite quotation from this imaginary Scripture. "His end was peace" holds its place on many a tomb in virtue of a similar belief. "He tempers the wind to the shorn lamb" is, I believe, commonly attributed to Solomon; and a charming song which was popular in my youth declared that, though the loss of friends was sad, it would have been much sadder,

"Had we ne'er heard that Scripture word, 'Not lost, but gone before.'"