Chapter 20

_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.

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.

* * * * *

"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;"