Collections and Recollections Part 17

"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 blus.h.i.+ng 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 Sn.o.b."

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 t.i.tle 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 b.u.t.t 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 compet.i.tors; 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 b.u.t.ter fly, all in an hour, Taking it home for my Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.serted 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 quant.i.ties, 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 G.o.d 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, smas.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sault; 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 s.p.a.ce 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.