From A Pennyworth of Parodies, [by Rev. David Macrae, Glasgow: Morison Brothers, c. 1897], pp. 3-48.
A PENNYWORTH OF PARODIES. *
THE PARODY is big brother to the Pun. Puns make free with words; parodies make free with serious poems or characteristic styles. The pun takes a word with two senses, and produces a comical effect by unexpectedly substituting the one sense for the other. The parody takes some well-known poem, and while preserving the external form, uses it to clothe some totally different kind of composition, creating amusement (as well the pun) by the very grotesqueness of the new combination, — like the effect of putting a big man’s hat upon a little boy’s head, or dressing a monkey in clerical robes, or putting a clown into the helmet and plate-armour of some ancient knight.
Take, for instance, the instructions of the New Child adapting “The May Queen” and her notions to this age of cremation: —
“Cremate me, mother darling; cremate me, mother dear;
Also my twenty-dollar braid, likewise my new back hair.
Let not the worms feed on this cheek; ah! save me from
that fate —
Incinerate, mother darling; incinerate or cremate!”
Or take this parody on a well-known verse of Longfellow’s: —
There is no kitchen-maid however able,
But breaks the crockery ware;
There is no butter placed upon the table,
But has its lock of hair.
Barham, in his “Ingoldsby Legends,” gives a clever parody on Wolfe’s Lines on the Burial of Sir John Moore, commencing: —
Not a sou he had got, not a guinea or note,
And he looked most confoundedly flurried,
As he bolted away without paying his shot,
And his landlady after him hurried.
Many of the best parodies depend for appreciation on intimate acquaintance with the authors who are mimicked. I remember giving a friend, who was an enthusiastic admirer of Keats, a reading of “The Diversions of the Echo Club.” He found nothing in it to interest him till he came on a parody of one of Keats’s poems. Then he woke up, thought that particular parody inimitable, and afterwards read it aloud with great gusto to a company who (with one or two exceptions) preserved, like Mrs Todgers, a genteel grimness suitable to any shade of opinion, and had evidently — being unfamiliar with Keats — seen nothing in it either to laugh at or admire.
It is to the Greek language that we owe the word “parody”; it is to the Greeks that we seem 5 to have owed the parody itself. Hipponax of Ephesus has been called “the Father of Parody,” though, according to Aristotle, the first parodist was Hegemon of Thasos, who flourished during the Peloponnesian War.
These early parodists perceived that the sublimer a composition is, the more easy does it become to introduce grotesqueness by transferring its form to something of an amusing or trivial character; and the more effective the parody (if clever in itself) becomes.
Hence, amongst the early Greek parodists, the favourite subject of comic imitation was Homer. Hipponax, for instance, in describing the gormandising feats of a glutton, does so in the form of language employed by Homer to describe the feats of Achilles in fighting: —
Sing, O celestial goddess
Eurymedon, foremost of gluttons,
Whose stomach devours like Charybdis! —
Eater unmatched among mortals.
It is the same with parody to-day in our own language. The greatest poets, and the best known and most serious poems, are those that have been parodied most frequently.
Two hundred years ago, John Phillips wrote his famous parody of Milton, entitled “The Splendid Shilling,” commencing with the lines: —
6 Sing, heavenly muse,
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,
A shilling, breeches, and chimeras dire.
Happy the man, who void of care and strife,
In silken or in leathern purse retains
A splendid shilling! He nor hears with pain
New oysters cry’d, nor sighs for cheerful ale.
The lengthened composition, of which these are but the opening lines, was declared by Steele to be the finest burlesque poem, extant at that date, in our language.
Coming down, nearer our own time, we find in the “Carols of Cockayne,” by H. S. Leigh, an amusing parody on Wordsworth’s poem, “Only Seven.”
I marvel’d why a simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
Should utter groans so very wild,
And look as pale as death.
Adopting a parental tone,
I asked her why she cried,
The damsel answered with a groan,
“I’ve got a pain inside!”
I thought it would have sent me mad,
Last night about eleven.”
Said I, “What is it makes you bad?
How many apples have you had?”
She answered, “Only seven!”
“And are you sure you took no more,
My little maid?” quoth I.
“Oh please, sir, mother gave me four,
But they were in a pie!”
7
“If that’s the case,” I stammer’d out,
“Of course you’ve had eleven.”
The maiden, answer’d with a pout,
“I ain’t had more nor seven!”
I wondered largely what she meant,
And said, “I’m bad at riddles,
But I know where little girls are sent
For telling tarradiddles.
Now, if you don’t reform,” said I,
“You’ll never go to heaven!”
But all in vain; each time I try
The little idiot makes reply,
“I ain’t had more nor seven!”
To borrow Wordsworth’s name is wrong,
Or slightly misapplied,
And so I’d better call by song,
Lines after Ache-inside.
Thomas Hood’s immortal “Song of the Shirt” has offered peculiar temptations to parodists, especially in connection with the weary work of cramming, with its endless iterations and reiterations, for class, school, or college “exams.”
At an Educational Congress in Dundee, some time since, Mr Duncan of Inchture adduced statistics to show that serious mischief was being done to many pupils by the system of “cram,” and the subordination of all consideration of health, and recreation, and harmonious development in the single-eyed pursuit of the Government “grant.” The speech was emphasised by a clever 8 parody on the “Song of the Shirt,” which appeared the week after in the People’s Journal, and of which the following verses are a specimen: —
With shoulders beginning to stoop,
With little face sunken and sallow,
A small boy sat at a School Board desk,
Trying his task to swallow.
Cram! Cram! Cram!
Till the head is beginning to ache,
And Cram! Cram! Cram!
When the child its play should take.
It’s oh, for the grand old days
When a boy could stop the school,
And hunt for nests in the summer woods,
Or bathe in the streamlet cool.
After referring to the poor little fellow’s toil over “Grammar, and words with roots, words with roots and grammar, till his poor little brain got quite confused, and his tongue begins to stammer,” the parodist continues: —
Grant! Grant! Grant!
Get the highest grant you can,
The school that earns the highest grant,
Is the school that leads the van.
Flog and punish, and punish and flog
Till the discipline grant is gained:
To earn the grant you must use the means,
No matter how childhood ’s pained.
And teachers all must harden the heart
And ruthlessly use the tawse,
That School Board men may boast of their grant,
And claim the people’s applause.
9
Oh, ye who pay the rates,
Parents of girls and boys,
It is not money you grudge to pay,
It is your children’s joys.
Gold! Gold! Gold!
Compared with your children’s health,
How vile the dross, when their sunny smiles
Are all a poor man’s wealth!
Drive sordid greed from out your hearts,
And your mandate firmly plant,
That the children’s good be the highest aim,
Instead of the cry for “Grant.”
Here is another parody on the same poem, representing the same weary system as it presents itself, at a more advanced stage of life, to the Law Student grinding up for his examination: —
With eyelids heavy and red,
Intent on the labour of cram,
An Intrant sat with dishevelled hair,
Preparing for his exam.
Read! Read! Read!
Morning, noon, and night,
And still at his books
With dead-beat looks,
He sat till early light!
Read! Read! Read!
While the cabs go rattling past,
And Read! Read! Read!
Till the gay world’s home at last:
It’s oh! to be at the ball,
With its dance, flirtation, and cham.,
The cool walk home — the quiet cigar; —
Confound this horrid Exam.!
10
Read! Read! Read!
Till the rain begins to swim;
And Read! Read! Read!
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Stair, and Erskine, and Home,
Home, and Erskine, and Stair,
Till over the volumes I sleepily nod,
And headlong descend from my chair!
Grind! Grind! Grind!
My brain I never rest!
And for what? — perhaps a Petition or two,
With a Jury-trial at best!
The bar is waxing large —
The causes are waxing few,
Naught but a briefless life stand out
To my despairing view!
Read! Read! Read!
From weary chime to chime,
Read! Read! Read!
As prisoners work for crime!
Bell, and Menzies, and Ross,
Ross, and Menzies, and Bell,
Till the head grows hot,
And the feet grow cold,
And the veins of the temples swell.
“Read! Read! Read!
In the dull December light,
And Read! Read! Read!
When the weather is warm and bright.
I daren’t go down to golf,
Cricket I must forswear,
Basket and rod must be laid on the shelf —
There isn’t a day to spare.
11
“Oh but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet,
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet.
Though for cowslip, and primrose, and grass,
I did not care a straw,
Before in an evil hour I resolved
To begin the study of law.
“Oh but for one short hour!
A respite however short!
A little leisure to walk or ride,
If I haven’t the time for sport.
A two hours’ ride would freshen one up,
And yet I must toil on here,
Till my temples throb, and my sight grows dim,
And my head feels full and queer!”
With shoulders weary and bent,
Unflaggingly striving to cram,
An Intrant sat with an aching head,
Preparing for his Exam.
Read! Read! Read!
From eve till early light.
And still of the hours he took no heed,
He rested neither to sleep nor feed,
But sat there day and night!
The next parody is a Maiden’s Version of Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life”: —
“Tell me not in idle jungle, ‘marriage is an empty dream’; for the girl is dead that’s single, and things are not what they seem. Life is real, life is earnest, single blessedness a fib; ‘Man thou art; to man returnest,’ has been spoken of the rib. 12 Not enjoyment and not sorrow, is our destined end or way, but to act, that each to-morrow finds us nearer marriage day. Life is long, and youth is fleeting, and our hearts, though light and gay, still like pleasant drums are beating wedding marches all the way. In the world’s field of battle, in the bivouac of life, be not like dumb driven cattle, be a heroine, be a wife! Trust no future, howe’er pleasant; let the dead past bury its dead; act, act in the living present, heart within and hope ahead. Lives of married folks remind us, we can live our lives as well, and, departing, leave behind us, such examples as shall ‘tell’; — such examples that another, wasting time in idle sport, a forlorn unmarried brother, seeing, shall take heart and court. Let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart on triumph set; still contriving, still pursuing, and each one a husband get.”
The following parody, entitled “The Promissory Note,” which appeared in an American magazine, was attributed to Bayard Taylor. It mimics cleverly some of the peculiarities of Edgar Allen Poe: —
In the lonesome latter years
(Fatal years!)
To the dropping of my tears,
Danced the mad and mystic spheres,
In a rounded, ruling rune,
’Neath the moon —
To the dripping and the dropping of my tears.
Ah! my soul is swathed in gloom
(Ulalume!)
13
In a dim Titanic tomb;
For my gaunt and gloomy soul
Ponders o’er the pencil scroll,
O’er the parchment (not a rhyme)
Out of place, out of time.
I am shredded, shorn, unshifty,
(O the fifty!)
And the days have passed, the three,
Over me.
And the debit and the credit are as one to him
and me!
’Twas the random runes I wrote
At the bottom of the Note,
In the middle of the night,
In the mellow, moonless night,
When the stars were out of sight,
When my pulses, like a knell,
Danced with dim and dying fays
O’er the ruins of my days,
O’er the dimeless, timeless days.
When the fifty, drawn at thirty,
Seeming thrifty, yet the dirty
Lucre of the market was the most that I could raise!
Fiends controlled it
(Let him hold it!)
Devils held for me the inkstand and the pen:
Now the days of grace are o’er
(Ah Lenore!)
I am but as other men,
What is time, time, time,
To my rare and runic rhyme
By the sands along the shore,
Where the tempest whispers “Pay him!” and I answer,
“Nevermore!”
Sometimes a parody hits off happily the odd features that suggest themselves in connection with changes of custom. Gray’s elegy, for instance, is thus cremated to suit the time.
Here rests his ashes on the shelf beneath,
A youth to coffins and to shrouds unknown.
Fair sextons frowned not on his humble death,
Incineration marked him for his own.
No longer seek his cinders to disclose,
Nor draw his fine residuum from this pot,
Where they, alike impalpable, repose,
Trusting his spirit never felt ’twas hot.
A newer fashion than cremation is lady-cycling; and Punch, amongst his many clever parodies, has given his view of the innovation, without apology either to the late Laureate or to the lady-cyclists themselves: —
Bike! bike! bike!
O’er the hard street stones, O she!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me!
O well for the newspaper-boy,
That he scoots on his cycle away:
O well for the butcher-lad
That he pedals — perhaps it may pay.
But when stately girls get on
All a-crouch, and with prospect of spill,
It is O for the touch of a wee soft hand,
And the sound of a voice that could thrill,
15
Bike! bike! bike!
With thy foot on the pedal, O she!
But the girlish grace that the wheel struck dead,
Will never come back to thee!
Sometimes we find a parody taking the form of imitation, with only a touch here and there to reveal its burlesque character. Of this sort is the “Gannet’s” parody on Whittier’s “Maud Muller”: —
Where the Moosatokmaguntic
Pours its water in the Skuntic,
Met along the forest-side
Hiram Hover, Hulda Hyde.
She a maiden, fair and dapper,
He a red-haired stalwart trapper
Hunting beaver, mink, and skunk,
In the woodlands of Squeedunk.
She, Pentucket’s pensive daughter,
Walked beside the Skuntic water,
Gathering, in her apron wet,
Snake-root, mint, and bouncing-bet.
Hiram begins courting, but Hulda wants something sweeter than a man with the “beasty smell” of hunting-clothes. When, however, he finds her afterwards wearing a beautiful cape made from the fur of the animals he hunts, he advances this as a plea —
Me you snub for trapping varmints,
Yet you take the skins for garments:
Since you wear the skunk and mink,
There’s no harm in me, I think.
She smiles, and they make it up together.
16Sometimes the parody is designed, like a boomerang, to come back and hit off the weakness of the poem which it mimics. I remember, in 1866, the following verses by Tennyson appearing in Good Words, which, at that time, divided with Once a Week the honour of the Laureate’s new effusions: —
1865 — 1866.
I stood on a tower in the wet,
And New Year and Old Year met,
And winds were roaring and blowing:
And I said, “Oh years, that meet in tears,
Have ye ought that is worth the knowing?
Science enough and exploring,
Wanderers coming and going,
Matter enough for deploring,
But ought that is worth the knowing?”
Seas at my feet were flowing,
Waves on the shingle pouring,
Old year roaring and blowing,
New Year blowing and roaring.
Good Words, following the lead of Once a Week, had awakened public expectation, and made sure of a largely extended sale for itself, by a great preliminary blowing of trumpets, in advertisements and otherwise, over the forthcoming new poem from the Laureate, which was to appear in its next issue. The disappointment which followed its appearance was fairly expressed by the Morning Star in the following parody: —
171867 — 1868.
I sat on a ’bus in the wet,
Good Words I had happened to get,
With Tennyson’s last bestowing:
And I said, “Oh bard, who work so hard,
Hast thou ought that is worth the knowing?
Verses enough and so boring,
Twaddle quite overflowing,
Rubbish enough for deploring,
But ought that is worth the knowing?”
Placards on walls were glowing,
Puffs in the papers pouring,
Good Words roaring and blowing,
Once a Week blowing and roaring.
The more conspicuous an author is, either from his ability or his exalted position, the more temptation does he present to the parodist, and the more do most people enjoy seeing him cleverly burlesqued. It was in vain that even Nero tried to prevent his verses from being parodied by Persius. He could only grind his teeth when he saw the people’s delight at the ridiculous figure he was made in these parodies to cut.
Many of the best parodies are mimicries of a poet’s style, rather than burlesque reproductions of individual poems. Laughable specimens may be found in Mr Trail’s “Recaptured Rhymes.” The author reveals himself politically as a thorough-going old Tory, but his “mimicries” are many of them admirable. He gives ludicrous but striking 18 imitations of Browning and others, showing a fine perception of the characteristic features of their poetry. “The God and the Damozel,” after Swinburne, is specially good.
In the following verses, entitled “The Pirate’s Doom,” we have a parody on the ultra-sensational style, and the trick of stopping abruptly at an exciting point, to make people eager to get he next part when it comes out: —
“The prisoner fetch!” shrieked the captain bold,
A pirate captain full fierce was he,
With a big moustache, beard three days old,
For he never would shave when he went to sea.
“Drag forth the crew of that merchant bark,
Throats must be gashed ere the moon grows pale;”
The pirate ship in the midnight dark
Fitfully rocked in the rising gale.
“ ’S blood!” yelled the captain, “ ’s blood and s’d death!
Daggers and guns! am I not obeyed?”
Grinding his fangs as he paused for breath,
He savagely round with a handspike laid.
But on never a soul did his wild blows fall,
For the night was dark and he couldn’t see;
Besides, on that deck there was no one at all,
Why was this thus? Why should such things be?
A horrible laugh o’er the tempest pealed —
O’er the wet waves seething, dark and vexed —
A hideous howl, as the pirate reeled
Clutched by —
(Continued in our next.)”
Some years since, there was published a volume of the witty rhymes of Cambridge undergraduates. The series, in this book, extends over three centuries. Not much in it, however, is specially notable, till we come down to the recent squibs of Calverley, and George (now Sir George) Trevelyan. To a still more recent date (1872) belong the brilliant and witty verses of Clements Hilton, whose parodies on Bret Harte and Swinburne are particularly felicitous. His “Octopus” is probably one of the best parodies on Swinburne that could be quoted: —
Strange beauty, eight-limbed and eight-handed,
Whence camest to dazzle our eyes?
With thy bosom bespangled and banded
With the hues of the seas and the skies;
Is thy home European or Asian?
Oh mystical monster marine,
Part molluscous and partly crustacean,
Betwixt and between.
Oh breast, that ’twere rapture to writhe on:
Oh arms, ’twere delicious to feel
Clinging close with the crush of the Python
When she maketh her murderous meal.
In thy eightfold embraces enfolden,
Let our empty existence escape;
Give us death that is glorious and golden,
Crushed out of all shape.
The vagaries of metaphor which abound in love effusions, are happily mimicked in the following rhapsody of “The Chemist to his Love”: —
20I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me.
Our mutual flame, is like th’ Affinity
That doth exist between two simple bodies:
I am potassium to thine oxygen.
’Tis little that the holy marriage vow
Shall shortly make us one, — that unity
Is after all but metaphysical.
O would that I, my Mary, were an acid —
A loving acid; thou an alkali
Endowed with human sense, that brought together
We both must coalesce into one salt,
One homogeneous crystal.
Could’st thou Potassa be, I Aqua Fortis,
Our happy union should that compound form
Nitrate of potash, otherwise saltpetre!
Sweet, thy name is Briggs,
And mine is Johnson. Wherefore should not we
Agree to form a Johnsonate of Briggs?
We will! The day, the happy day is nigh,
When Johnson shall with beauteous Briggs combine.
Not less happily do the following lines parody the highly abstract metaphysical style that shows a fondness for expressions such as “the Potentialities of the Ideal,” “the Inevitableness of the Has Been”: —
“Is it the Dothness of the Do
Or the Dothness of the Did?”
Propounded a Hub tutor to
A little Yankee kid.
The Bosting urchin’s answer free
At oncely took the bun;
“The pwopah tawm to use would be
“The Dothness of the Done.”
Though a parody, in the usual acceptation of the word, suggests a burlesque of some metrical production, the term is sometimes applied to prose burlesques, and well may be, for some of the rarest specimens of this form of wit are found in prose. One of the “Orphic Utterances” submitted to American Alcott was — “And why too, we may tremblingly ask, is the Nose placed in the front of the countenance, stretching towards the Infinite, but that it may attain, as it were, a fore-smell of the ‘Illimitable’?”
A farmer in some out-of-the-way place who had seen frequent references to “baby-farming” in the papers, and could not make out what it meant, but thought it must be something ghastly, sent a note of serious inquiry, to which the editor, in his “Answers to Correspondents,” gravely replied — “ ‘Baby-farming’ is a new method of agriculture, in which the young of our species are used for fertilising exhausted land. The babies are collected each day, and put into large vats containing equal parts of hydrobicarbonate of oxygenated sulphide and oxygenated sulphide of hydrobicarbonate, where they are left to soak over night. In the morning they are carefully macerated in a mortar, and poured into shallow copper pans where they remain until all the liquid portions have been evaporated by the sun. The residuum is then scraped out and thrown away, after which 22 the exhausted land is fertilised with the usual manures.”
One of the best prose parodies that exists is to be found in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Mosses from an Old Manse,” where Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” is translated in ludicrous fashion into modern life, and the style of making things as easy as possible which characterises a good deal of modern Christianity. The Pilgrim crosses the Slough of Despond on a railway, for which a somewhat precarious foundation has been constructed by emptying into the Slough thousands of cart-loads of German metaphysics. The dangers that formerly beset the gate of the Interpreter’s House have been removed, Beelzebub being engaged as stoker on the new railway. So the story is carried through, very amusingly, but with its lesson there for those who want it.
Few compositions of this kind, either in verse or prose, are cleverer than that on Carlyle and his “Divine Significance of Fact,” by P. P. Alexander, — “Pat Alexander,” as he was familiarly and lovingly called by those who knew him: —
Further specimens of Sauerteig we should like to give at length, but, alas! must not. This unparalleled chapter, for instance, entitled “Flea Hunt: Divine Significance of Fact,” — could it prove otherwise than most interesting? How a high Grimwold once at dead midnight, hero snoring, became conscious dimly of sensations most itchy-uneasy on the 23 haunch of him, flea or other vivacious insect of democratic tendencies having invaded that region, and proceeded to extract his life-fluids. How a high Grimwold woke up, scratched the afflicted part, and sulkily readdressed himself to his slumbers. How it would not in the least do; flea still most vivacious-annoying, diligently extracting the life-fluids; haunch still most itchy-uneasy, till at length an infuriated Grimwold fairly dashes out of bed, imprecating heaven-high, and for space of two hours, hunts fierce-assiduous, desperate to catch his flea; “hugest, tumultuous, inextinguishable Flea Hunt,” says Sauerteig, “that ever perhaps transacted itself in this God’s earth; yet finds to his much rage and great grief that the flea, once for all, will not be caught — uncertain to this hour whether after all it were a flea or worse.” If Sauerteig is to be believed in the matter, there is in all this didactic meaning of the deeper sort. “Huge Flea Hunt,” says Sauerteig, “which on the deep ground that it veritably did so transact itself on this earth, is precious, and for ever a possession to me. Infinite is the significance of fact. Consider it, O reader! this thing actually was; was, and very literally is now, and cannot ever cease to be: a portion of the God’s fact that liveth and endureth for ever: a Grimwold scratching his haunch there, in that extinct old century of time.”
Thackeray’s “Miscellanies” contain some very clever and satirical prose parodies upon certain of his brother novelists.
Bret Harte also, in his “Sensation Novels,” parodies Bulwer Lytton, Dickens, Michelet, Victor Hugo, Miss Braddon, and Wilkie Collins, hitting off in a most amusing way the characteristic style of these novelists. As already indicated, Bret Harte 24 has himself, in turn, been cleverly parodied by Hilton of Cambridge, just as Corneille, who had parodied Chapelain in his “Cid,” was himself parodied by Racine. The French, indeed, excel in this form of wit.
When a friend was asked if he had seen any good parody on Walt Whitman, he said no, but that he would undertake to produce any number within an hour, if he had an auctioneer’s catalogue beside him. A page from that, with a couple of lines to start with, and a couple more by way of finish, — and the parody would be complete. But in Whitman it is these “lines” that so often turn loose stones into a temple of strength and beauty.
Well known and pathetic and tragic poems are special favourites with the parodists. Amongst the Germans, Schiller’s famous poem of “The Bell” has been parodied times without number. Amongst ourselves, few poems familiar to the people have escaped. Some one, who is evidently no lover of ice and snow, and has had his dislike accentuated by bitter experiences of the treacherous slides made by message boys on the pavement, thus parodies W. A. Sigourney’s well-known lines entitled “Beautiful Snow”: —
Oh the Snow, the horrible Snow!
That clogs up your instep wherever you go,
That pierces your shoe-leather, freezes each toe,
And brings with your chilblains a world of woe.
25
That covers the slide with three inches or so,
Then faithlessly slips at your footstep, and lo!
The coat that you bought but a short time ago,
On your furthest-off cousin you would not bestow.
And oh, the Ice, the treacherous Ice!
That tumbles the loftiest down in a trice,
That makes it depend on the throw of a dice,
Whether left leg, or right arm, or neck you must splice.
I own that a skating-pond looks rather nice,
With its bevy of girls furr’d de l’Imperatrice,
All engaged cutting capers with many a device; —
But give me the zone where they never see ice.
An American, who had taken more kindly in youth to his father’s way of dealing with him than to his mother’s, and who evidently thought that the father should get a share of the eulogy usually reserved for the other parent, penned a parody entitled “My Father,” as a set-off to the well-known poem entitled “My Mother.” Two verses will sufice: —
Who pennies ne’er refused to “plank”
Nor dropped them in that mimic Bank
Where I could only hear them clank?
My Father!
Who, when I wished to buy a toy,
Ne’er thought ’twould give me much more joy
To send tracts to some heathen boy!
My Father!
The same poem was parodied by the author of “Dundee Ditties,” after some revelations had 26 been made in the Town Council with reference to the gifts and graces of the Dundee Police: —
Who knows more than he cares to tell
Of East-end thief or West-end swell?
Who knows our baillies’ failings well?
The Bobbie!
Who when he drinks, the more is dry?
Who gulps his “donal” on the sly?
Who eats a deal of West-end pie?
The Bobbie!
Who, when the streets become too narrow
For tangled legs, procures a barrow
And wheels you off, straight as an arrow?
The Bobbie!
Who leads you gently to the bar,
And tells “his honour” who you are.
And paints you ten times blacker far?
The Bobbie!
In Britain few parodies have surpassed, either in ability or popularity, the “Rejected Addresses” of the brothers James and Horace Smith. Many will remember their burlesque reproduction of Scott’s “Battle of Flodden,” ending —
“ ’od rot ’em!”
Were the last words of Higginbotham.
Even hymns have not escaped the parodists. It is too late now to ascertain how Dr Isaac Watts would have liked this imitation of his “Little Busy Bee”: —
27How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
More practical in its aim was the following parody on two well-known verses, employed by the mimic to magnify the value of newspaper advertisements: —
Only an “ad.” in the paper,
Pertinent, terse, and well set;
Only a crowd of buyers
Anxious the bargains to get.
Only a prosperous business,
Prosperous, good times or bad;
Only an opulent merchant
Enriched by the power of the “ad.”
I remember hearing the following verses sung with ludicrous solemnity by a wag who now wags his head in a Presbyterian pulpit, and whom, therefore, for the sake of his reputation amongst the pious folk of his flock, I had better not name. It was sung to the slow and solemn tune of “Coleshill”: —
There was an old Seceder cat,
Sat watching for its prey,
And it lap out upon a mouse
Upon the Sawbath day.
28
And thereupon that cat was brought
Before the Sess-i-on,
And it exhorted was to make
A full confess-i-on.
I forgot how the trial, and conviction, and condemnation of the offender were described, but thus was the closing verse —
That cat it died a dreadful death, —
A death of agony, —
For that it killed the Lord’s own mouse,
Upon the Sawbath day.
Favourite songs, as well as favourite poems, present temptation to the parodist. Students’ gatherings, whether in College or Divinity Hall, are prolific nurseries of such parodies, and some of them are very good.
Here is one, entitled “A Manse! a Manse! for a’ that,” that was sung at a parting supper of Free Church divinity students who had completed their course, and were leaving the Hall to enter on the “probationers’ list” as candidates for churches.
Is there an honest student here,
Who hangs his head, an’ a’ that?
Yer future lot ye needna fear,
Ye’ll get a Kirk, for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Be orthodox, an’ a’ that;
An’ you’ll possess the guinea stamp,
The manse, the gown, an’ a’ that!
29
What tho’ on hamely fare ye dine,
Wear black surtout, an’ a’ that;
A bonnie Kirk shall yet be thine,
A manse, a manse, for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that!
Established Kirk, an’ a’ that;
A “Free” divine, tho’ ne’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men, for a’ that!
A king can mak’ Established men,
Dub them D. D., an’ a’ that!
But a “Free” Divine’s aboon his ken,
Guid faith, he maunna fa’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that!
Their dignities, an’ a’ that,
The pith o’ sense, the pride o’ worth,
Are in oor ranks, for a’ that!
Then let us pray that come it may —
As come it will, for a’ that —
When kirk, an’ fee, an’ fair ladye
Shall quick appear, an’ a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Tho’ sundered noo, an’ a’ that;
We, man tae man, the warld ower,
Shall brithers be for a’ that!
I remember, long ago, at a supper of St Andrews’ students, hearing sung a most amusing parody on “The Flowers of the Forest,” called forth by the startling change made in the appearance of one of the company (Mr Andrew Chapman), who 30 had completely shaved off a rather imposing pair of whiskers. Here are two or three of the verses: —
I’ve seen the smilin’ o’ Chapman when ’iling
His whiskers and moustache that glistened fu’ braw,
But noo he looks dowie — a ’s bare but his powie —
His forest o’ whiskers is a’ wede awa’.
Ilk ane that passes, to kirk or to classes,
Braw lads an’ lasses, the great an’ the sma’,
Sigh when they meet him, an’ here’s hoo they greet him,
“Andra, your whiskers are a’ wede awa’.
If things are no’ mended ene April is ended,
When he goes hame to his Pa and his Ma,
Seein’ their laddie, baith mammie and daddie
Will cry, “Andra’s whiskers are a’ wede awa’.”
Unhappy, unhairy, he’ll rin to his Mary,
Thus will she welcome him into her ha’,
“Andra, my dearie, you look unco querie,
Noo, when your whiskers are a’ wede awa’.”
The following parody on a well-known song refers to the earlier period of life, when, to Tommy, with his keen appetite for sweets, even the charm of the little girls cannot compete with the delights of candy, cakes, jelly, and jam: —
You may talk about your groves
Where you wander with your loves;
You may talk about your moonlit waves that fall and flow;
Something fairer far than these
I can show you if you please,
’Tis the charming little cupboard where the jam pots grow —
31
Where the jam pots grow,
Where the jam pots grow,
Where the jolly, jolly, jolly, jolly jam pots grow!
’Tis the dearest spot to me,
On the land or on the sea,
Is the darling little cupboard where the jam pots grow.
There the golden peaches shine
In their syrup clear and fine,
And the raspberries are blushing with a dusky glow,
And the cherry and the plum
Seem to beckon me to come
To the charming little cupboard where the jam pots grow.
Never tell me of your bowers,
Full of spiders, flies, and flowers;
Never tell me of yoru meadows where the breezes blow!
But sing me if you will,
Of the house beneath the hill,
And the darling little cupboard where the jam pots grow —
Where the jam pots grow,
Where the jam pots grow,
Where the jolly, jolly, jolly, jolly jam pots grow!
’Tis the dearest spot to me,
On the land or on the sea,
Is the darling little cupboard where the jam pots grow.
“The Lost Chord” has been often parodied. The chord, in one instance, is the “cord” of a fugitive monkey: —
It may be my truant monkey
Will come with that cord again,
It may be he only skedaddles
When he hears the organ-men!
A good parody on the same song appeared some time since in a golfing magazine: —
Playing one day on the golf links,
I was fumbling and ill at ease,
But I had no heart for driving,
But idled around the tees.
I hardly knew I was playing,
Or if I was dreaming then,
But I struck one ball in a moment
With a whack like the cluck of a hen.
It rose in the air like an eagle,
O’er bunker and cop it flew,
And straight and steady I watched it,
Till it lay in the green, I knew.
And my heart was filled with gladness,
For I felt that I now could play,
And I pictured myself as the winner
Of a champion cup some day.
So I walked to the green in triumph,
I was sure, with a little care,
One stroke of the putter would hole it —
But alas! no ball was there.
And I sought, but I sought it vainly,
That one lost ball of mine,
Till the wintry day was waning,
And the moon began to shine.
And I gave my caddie sixpence,
And he searched from green to green,
But the ball I drove so grandly,
Has never, since then, been seen.
33
Oft I’ve topped a ball or missed it,
I have scooped the sods at my feet,
But that one great stroke with a driver,
I could never again repeat.
It may be that some bright angel,
Will show where my ball has lain,
But it may be that only in heaven,
I shall drive like that again.
Our National Anthem has enough of the cock-a-doodle-doo about it to provoke cynical parody, and the following American version, which appeared in Whyte’s “National Hymns,” is perhaps deserved — at least by the English: —
God save me, great John Bull,
Long keep my pockets full!
God save John Bull!
Ever victorious,
Haughty, vain-glorious,
Snobbish, censorious,
God save John Bull!
O Lords (our gods) arise!
Tax all our enemies,
Make tariffs fall!
Confound French politics,
Frustrate all Russian tricks,
Get Yankees in a “fix,”
Confound them all!
The choicest gifts in store,
On me, me only pour —
Me, great John Bull!
34
Maintain oppressive laws,
Frown down the poor man’s cause!
So sing with heart and voice,
I, great John Bull!
A very funny parody on the National Anthem was called forth by a grand united demonstration of Temperance Societies in Exeter Hall, the proceedings of which concluded (according to the newspaper reports) with the National Anthem.
Some old toper suggested the following as a suitable version for such an occasion: —
All hail, our British Pump!
Praise we our peaceful Pump!
Long live the Pump!
Nobody glorious,
None made uproarious,
But meritorious,
All through the Pump!
Tea, coffee, lemonade,
Sherbet and gingerade,
Cause no man’s fall.
Who to cold water sticks,
Who will no tumblers mix,
His are our politics,
Teetotal all!
Let future teapots pour,
Their blessings taxed no more.
Free, moist, and lump.
May drinking fountains thrive,
May millions now alive
Long love the Pump!
Though the favourite materials with the parodist are well-known serious compositions — the more 35 solemn and majestic the better — yet many parodies have found material in quite the opposite quarter — in comic songs, and even nursery rhymes — often with striking effect.
It was Byron who wrote: —
Who killed poor Keats,
I, said the Quarterly,
So savagely and tartarly,
I killed poor Keats.
Those who have read Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Wonderland” will not forget —
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat,
How I wonder what you’re at,
Up above the world so high,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
The attempt, in 1885, to introduce the hour-dial for clocks and watches, running the hours on from one to twenty-four, gave birth to several parodies, of which the following, on an old nursery rhyme, was one of the shortest and happiest: —
Likkity, dikkity, dok,
The mouse ran up the clock,
The clock struck thirteen,
When down the mouse ran,
And was never more seen,
So shaken its nerves by the shock.
The best parody of this class that I have seen, is one on “The House that Jack Built.” The exquisite humour of it lies in the translation of the simple and homely words of the original into 36 majestic lines, with a wealth and variety of sesquipedalian phrases that might well excite the envy of even the most practised penny-a-liner. It is entitled —
The Domicile erected by John.
Behold the mansion reared by dædal Jack!
See the malt stored in many a plethoric sack,
In the proud cirque of Ivan’s bivouac.
Mark how the rat’s felonious fangs invade
The golden stores in John’s pavilion laid.
Anon with velvet foot and Tarquin strides,
Subtle Grimalkin to his quarry glides;
Grimalkin grim, that slew the fierce rodent,
Whose tooth insidious Johann’s sackcloth rent!
Lo! now the deep-mouthed canine foe’s assault,
That vexed the avenger of the stolen malt,
Stored in the hollow precincts of that hall
That rose complete at Jack’s creative call.
Here stalks the impetuous cow with crumpled horn,
Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn,
Who bayed the feline slaughtered beast that slew
The rat predaceous, whose keen fangs ran through
The textile fibres that involved the grain,
That lay in Han’s inviolate domain.
Here walks the forlorn damsel crowned with rue,
Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs who drew,
Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn
Tossed to the clouds, in fierce vindictive scorn,
The baying hound, whose braggart bark and stir
Arched the lithe spine, and reared the indignant fur
Of puss, that with verminicidal claw
Struck the weird rat, in whose insatiate maw
Lay reeking malt that erst in Juan’s courts we saw.
37
Robed in senescent garb, that seems in sooth
Too long a prey to Chronos’ iron tooth,
Behold the man whose amorous lips incline,
Full with young Eros’ osculative sign,
To the lorn maiden whose lact-albic hands
Drew albu-lactic milk from lacteal glands,
Of that immortal bovine by whose horn
Distort to realms ethereal was borne
The beast catulean, vexer of that sly
Ulysse quadrupedal, who made die
The old mordacious rat, that dared devour
Antecedaneous ale in John’s domestic bower.
Lo! here with hirsute honours doffed succinct
Of saponaceous locks, the priest who linked
In Hymen’s golden bands the man unthrift,
Whose means exiguous stared from many a rift,
Even as he kissed the virgin all forlorn,
Who milked the cow with implicated horn,
Who in fierce wrath the canine torturer skied,
That dared to vex the insidious muricide,
Who let auroral effluence through the pelt
Of that sly rat that robbed the palace Jack had built.
The loud cantankerous Shanghai comes at last,
Whose shouts aroused the shorn ecclesiast,
Who sealed the vows of Hymen’s sacrament,
To him who, robed in garments indigent,
Exosculates the damsel lachrymose,
The emulgator of the horned brute morose,
That tossed the dog that worried the cat that kilt
The rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack
built.
Politics furnish material and provocation for countless parodies, but some of the best of these 38 are so identified with fugitive and soon forgotten circumstances, that they by and bye lose their freshness and even their intelligibility. One or two, however, may be risked.
Vanity Fair, in a “Psalm of (Political) Life,” satirised, in parody form, an attitude into which a system of party government is sometimes apt to tempt any ministry that happens to be in peril: —
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Are the stakes for which we play,
But that we may sit to-morrow
On the bench we hold to-day.
Life is long, but Place is fleeting,
And our ranks, though stout and brave,
Can’t, like muffled drum, stand beating —
Really, ’tis too close a shave.
If the future, like the present,
Witness all our measures dead;
Well, our course is clear, — look pleasant,
Drop them all and dash ahead.
Lives of statesmen should remind us
(And the lesson is sublime),
That whate’er we leave behind us,
We must make the most of time.
Make the most, and let another
Manage, when he takes the rein,
To efface, and patch, and smother,
What we’ve done; and — start again!
The following parody on “Wandering Willie” recalls the days when Gladstone started on his 39 Midlothian campaign. The writer’s sympathies were on the other side, and he did not foresee what an astounding effect that campaign was to have in the country, or that Gladstone was to wrest Midlothian itself from the iron grasp of Buccleuch. But the parody, of which the following are the first verses, was greatly relished at the time: —
Oh, where and oh where, has our Wand’ring Willine gone?
He’s gone to fight in Scotland for Radicals forlorn,
And its oh! Greenwich town is left alone to mourn.
Oh, where and oh where, has our Wand’ring Willie been?
He’s been down into Scotland to sweep the Tories clean,
And its oh, what on earth does our Wand’ring Willie mean?
Oh, why and oh why, did our Wand’ring Willie roam,
So far from Greenwich Hospital, so far from Oxford’s dome?
For he knows in his heart he had better stopped at home.
In the exciting days of the Parnell Commission, Kingsley’s song of “The Three Fishers” was cleverly parodied by Truth, when the Pigott forgeries were exposed, and Mr Walter of the Times had to pay to Parnell damages to the tune of £ 5000: —
Three Judges went fishing away on the Strand,
And they sat many months in London town,
Yet though they fished with so free a hand,
The Unionists hopes every day went down.
For Truth must tell, and Walter must weep,
As he’d much to pay and many to keep,
Whilst the head of the Bar is droning.
40
Three plotters sat up in Printing-House Square,
And they read the “Report” when the sun was down.
And they totalled the cost of the whole affair,
And they owned that Pigott had done them brown.
For the Times must pay, and Walter must weep,
For he felt that he ought, in dejection deep,
At the “House’s” bar to be moaning.
Three Ministers met in the Premier’s room,
And their hopes to zero went swiftly down,
As they owned that “Report” had settled the doom
Of their party, alike in shire and in town.
For Truth must tell, and Walter must weep;
And how can a Ministry office keep,
When the nation “Shame!” is groaning.
A capital specimen of this kind of parody once appeared in the Glasgow Herald, “with many apologies to the shade of Tom Moore.” Few of its references would now convey any meaning to the reader, but its first verses will give a good idea of its pungency: —
There was a little man,
And he had a little soul,
And he said, “Little soul, let us try, try, try,
If it isn’t in our reach,
To get up a little speech,
Just between little you and little I, I, I.”
Then said his little soul,
Peeping from her little hole,
“I protest, little man, you are stout, stout, stout;
But if is ain’t uncivil,
Pray tell me, what the devil,
Shall our pretty little speech be about, ’bout, ’bout?”
In the days of the last war in the Soudan, when a new trouble was threatening from Russia, a parody on Lowell’s “John P. Robinson” appeared, which, if a change or two were made, including the substitution of Salisbury’s name for Gladstone’s, might suit as well to-day (1869) as it did then. It commenced: —
General Wolseley’s a very ’cute man,
And a leader heroic, there’s no doubt of that;
But the waging of war in the distant Soudan,
Is distinctly disliked by the country — that’s flat.
But W. E.,
Gladstone he,
Says we must go out there, and smash the Mahdee.
Then follow various reasons for discontinuing hostilities, winding up with the verse: —
Besides, here’s our right worthy friend, Ursa Major,
Very keenly preparing to lead us a dance;
When our hands are so full, then this fiery old stager
Thinks, not without reason, that now is his chance.
So, W. E. G.,
Just leave that Mahdee
To his Otium cum Osman Digna-tatee!
In the hotter days of the land agitation in Skye, in the year 1882, when Sheriff Ivory found it no easy matter to get his warrants executed, and when a force of police had to be despatched to Braes, the centre of the disaffected district, the “bobbies” met with rather a warm reception from the crofter women. On their return to Glasgow, 42 the chaffing (not to speak of the odium) they had to encounter was probably harder for them to bear than the maledictions and the stones of the Braes Amazons. This parody on Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” was one specimen of it: —
Half a league, half a league!
Four abreast — onward,
All in the valley of Braes
Marched the half-hundred.
“Forward, Police Brigade!
In front of me,” Ivory said;
Into the valley of Braes
Charg’d the half-hundred.
Forward, Police Brigade!
Charge each auld wife and maid!
E’en though the Bobbies knew,
Some one had blundered!
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do or die;
Into the valley of Braes,
Charg’d the half-hundred.
Missiles to right of them,
Brickbats to left of them,
Women in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d.
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they charg’d, they tell,
Down on the Island Host!
Into the mouth of —— well!
Charg’d the half-hundred.
43
Flourish’d their batons bare,
Not in the empty air —
Clubbing the lasses there,
Charging the calleachs, while
All Scotland wonder’d !
Plung’d in the mist and smoke
Right through the line they troke —
Calleach and maiden
Reel’d from the baton stroke,
Shatter’d and sunder’d!
Then they march’d back — intact —
All the half-hundred.
Missiles to right of them,
Brickbats to left of them,
Auld wives behind them,
Volley’d and flounder’d.
Storm’d at with stone and shell,
Whilst only Ivory fell —
They that had fought so well,
Broke through the Island Host,
Back from the mouth of —— well!
All that was left of them —
All the half-hundred.
When can their glory fade?
Oh, the wild charge they made!
All Scotland wonder’d!
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Skye Brigade!
Donald’s half-hundred!
In the days of Mr Jesse Collings and the allotments question, Mr Chamberlain — the Mr Chamberlain of that time — dazzled the agricultural 44 labourer with the hope of possessing a bit of land, popularly described as “three acres and a cow.” The following parody on “The Better Land” was written by some one who had not much faith in the realisation of this hope or in the wisdom of its political prophets. Giles, loquitur : —
I hear thee speak of a bit o’ land,
And a cow for every labouring hand;
Tell me, dear mother, where is that shore —
Where shall I find it and work no more?
Is it at home, this unoccupied ground,
Where the acres three and a cow are found?
Is it where pheasants and partridges breed,
Or in fields where the farmer is sowing his seed?
Is it upon the moors, so wild and grand,
I shall find this bit of arable land?
”Not there, not there, my Giles!”
Is it far away on the Rio Grande?
In Zululand or Basutoland?
Is it far away on forbidden shores,
Where unicorns fight and the lion roars?
Or will it in far Soudan be found,
Where British bones manure the ground?
Or on the banks of ancient Nile?
Perhaps ’tis away on some coral isle,
With dusky groves and silver strand?
Is it there, dear mother, that bit o’ land?
”Not there, not there, my Giles!
“Eye hath not seen that fair land, my child,
Ear hath but heard an echo wild —
The nightmare of an excited brain,
That dreamers have, like Chamberlain.
45
Far away, beyond the ken
Of sober, practical, business men;
Far away beyond the sight
Of men whose heads are screwed on right;
Where ‘castles in the air’ do stand,
Behold the cow and the bit of land!
’Tis there, ’tis there, my Giles!”
Sometimes we get parodies of a serious type, where a poem is not only imitated in form, but where its solemnity of character is retained, though both are fitted to a different subject. One of the best of these that I have seen, belonging to the political class, is a parody on “Excelsior,” written to celebrate Mr Gladstone’s Irish policy of conciliation, and his first famous speech in the House thereupon. It was from the pen of the Rev. Joseph Dawson: —
The hearts of men were failing fast,
As to his place the old man passed,
And raised, ’mid Tory snow and ice,
A banner with the bold device,
“Concilio!”
His brow was grave; his eye beneath
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that well-known tongue,
“Concilio!”
“Try not the task!” the Moderates said;
“Dark lowers obstruction overhead,
The severing gulf is deep and wide!
And loud that clarion voice replied,
“Concilio!”
46
“Oh stay!” his Homer said, “and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!”
A tear stood in his aged eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
“Concilio!”
“Beware yon Parnell’s withered branch,
Beware the agrarian avalanche!”
This was his colleague’s last good-night!
A voice replied far up the height,
“Concilio!”
As on the session dragged, and still
Contention did St Stephen’s fill,
Above the clamour raging there,
A calm voice smote on the weary air,
“Concilio!”
Amazed, the country gathered round,
As triumphs new his efforts crowned,
Till proud and high his banner waved
O’er Erin, wooed, and won, and saved,
“Concilio!”
The closing verse remains prophetic —
Besides his grave two nations stand
Linked heart to heart, and hand in hand;
And from the sky, serene and far —
A voice falls like a falling star,
“Concilio!”
Passing from the political to the ecclesiastical arena, Scottish readers who can look back to the ’sixties, and recall the ecclesiastical conflicts of that time, will remember the fierce (and for a long time successful) fight fought by Dr Begg of Edinburgh and other haters of all innovation in public worship, against the introduction of the Church 47 Organ, and of everything that they thought savoured of Prelacy or Popery. This parody on “Scots wha ha’e” appeared after one of the great debates on the subject in the Free Assembly, in which Dr Bruce was the champion for, and Dr Begg the champion against, the introduction of the Organ. It was entitled
BEGG’S ADDRESS.
Scots, wha ha’e wi’ Chalmers bled;
Scots, wham Candlish often led;
Welcome to your ritual bed,
Or to victory!
Now’s the day, and now’s the hour,
See the Assembly’s battle lower,
See approach rash Bruce’s power,
Hymns and mummery!
Wha will be a traitor’s knave?
Wha can wish an organ’s stave?
Wha sae weak as be its slave?
Let him fear and flee!
Wha for Scotland’s Church and law
Begg’s broad sword will strongly draw?
Freeman stand or freeman fa’,
Let him vote wi’ me!
By Disruption’s woes and pains,
By your sons freed then from chains,
We will hold our dear-won gains,
And they shall be free!
Lay the proud Professors low,
Critics fall in every foe,
Orthodoxy gives the blow,
Let us fight, not flee!
48
By the triumph of the past
We will brook no organ’s blast,
But the present form hold fast,
In its purity.
Parody is not always innocent. Like other forms of burlesque, it may seek to bring ridicule on what is good. It may be an arrow gaily feathered but poisoned at the point. In Greek literature the good-natured raillery of the early parodists gave place at a later time to malignant burlesque and biting sarcasm, calculated not only to bring ridicule on good men and progressive movements, but to excite hatred. It is a question if the condemnation and death of Socrates may not be traced originally to the feelings created by the pernicious parodies of Aristophanes. But parody proper is playful, and if sometimes it gives a prick to pomposity, brings out the ridiculous aspect of things, or (by its own distinctive method) adds piquancy to what is amusing, it serves a legitimate, happy, and wholesome purpose. As a rule, where a parody means no harm it inflicts none, and, to poets who have themselves been parodied, it should be some consolation to reflect that as counterfeit coins testify to the worth of genuine coins, so parodies are unconscious tributes to an author’s popularity.
Elf.Ed. Notes
* There also happens to be two “blunders” of the typographical variety in this text, which have been corrected. Also, there are what appears to be typographical mistakes to us today, but are not. The absence of a period after “Mr” instead of “Mr.”, and “Dr” instead of “Dr.”, was normal and accepted usage in those days. This is very common in Italian texts still, according to Bill Thayer, who surely knows. It also occurs in older French texts. The other accepted pseudo-blunder found here is the typographical format of leaving a space before some contractions, e.g. ’ll and the use of an apostrophe, e. g., “M‘Dougall”, instead of a superscript, or small “c” for Scottish names beginning with “Mc.”