VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY i*iy^:v;iJ-' 5S5if»v*, ( AMFORNl, J y //// SAiMA liAUBAllA ' ^ ^ PREFACE. To mingle the instructive and the amusing, in fit and fair proportion, is no easy task, but this is what the author of the present Httle volume has aimed at. Goethe, not without a certain uncon- scious self-revelation, said sneeringly of parody: " I have never concealed what an implacable enemy I am to all parody and travesty ; but it is only on this account that I am so, because this base brood pulls down the noble, the beautiful, the great, in order to make an end of them." Notwithstanding the sneer of so great a master, the author believes that, when viewed in a proper spirit, parody may be both instructive and amusing. When some part of the portion here given on that subject appeared in the BritisJi Quarterly Review, it was received with peculiar favour ; the Spectator remarking : " There is some admirable criticism in ' Parody and Parodists.' We have never seen the real nature of parody better defined." The author trusts that none of his kindly critics may have any reason now to change their opinion of the essays of which they before spoke so favourably. H. A. Page. London, August 28, 1881. CONTENTS. Vers de Soci6t£ and Parody .... i Wit and Humour and Poetry - - - - 127 Epitaphs 134 Science and Poetry 164 The Ant as a Moralist 167 Scientific Cruelty -..-.. 176 Robert Burns as a Celt 191 Madame de Stael 203 Shakespeare and the Bible ... - 214 A Suggestion about Buddhism . - - - 220 George Herbert's Love of Nature - - 225 PRINTED BY BOWERS BROTHERS, ), BI.ACKFRIAKS ROAD, LONDON, S.E. VERS DE SOCIAtA AND PARODY. Artificial forms of society inevitably develop artificial forms of literature. As the comparative anatomist reconstructs a whole animal from a tooth or a toe-bone, so the philosophical speculator or the skilful critic may guess at the most complex conditions of life from a song or even a versicle. This service has been rendered by Mr. James Davies in his studies of Tibullus, Catullus, and Propertius ; and Horace and Juvenal have yielded worlds to scholars like Conington and Sellar. The same problems, we may well believe, will remain for future workers in reference to our time. They will, perhaps, guess more efficiently at our manners and our modes of thought, at the pastimes of our lighter hours, and our airiest talk " across the walnuts and the wine," by reference to the verses of Praed and Locker, Mortimer Collins, Calverley^ 2 VERS DE SOCIAtA AND PARODY. Tom Hood, Austin Dobson, and their confreres, than by study of sterner literature. It is only preparing the way, by a very slight stage, if we endeavour at present to make clear to ourselves the action and functions of two forms of artificial literature — that of Parody and Society- Verse, — on which it is quite certain that some characteristics of our day have specially impressed themselves, as is testified by the great demand for such pro- ductions. And if it should seem to any reader that wc venture on themes too light and frivolous, then we have simply to reply that if, as we have already suggested, the reader will but project his soul far enough forward, and look at matters present as if they were distant, he may, if he pleases, be philosophic enough in his meditations. I. — Parody and Society-Verse Contrasted. Society-verses and Parody are the products of similar conditions — the craving for relief from the graver and more irksome concerns of life, by which they are nevertheless necessarily tinged. They are VERS DE SOCIAtA AND PARODY. 3 alike safety-valves from preoccupations that might else be fatal, and indicate some failure of the re- sources open to those who lead simpler lives. They run to some extent alongside each other, but they :lean very different ways in their ultimate drift. Most of their points of affinity are found through form, very few through substance. To be successful, both the parodist and the writer of Vers de Socictc must have faculties for metre carefully exercised, a dainty facility in catching the flow of favourite xhythms, and considerable familiarity with what in these respects has been already accomplished. Both, too, must be careful not to rise above a certain level of familiar forms, else to both alike one element of .attractiveness, through association, will inevitably be lost. The writer of Vers de Soci^te may thus be said to stand ever on the verge of the field of Parody ; but one of his chief merits may be said to lie in neatly tripping along the very boundary-line and never tumbling over. For Parody lies confessedly on a lower level of art. The parodist pure and simple is not a maker at all. To steal an image from the field of science, we may say that he is a kind of parasite, that exists only by reason of what strength remains to the orranism to which he has attached 4 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. himself. The writer of Vers de Societc concerns himself with real affections, whims, affectations, caprices, lightly-scornful contradictions, little inno- cent pretences and hypocrisies, whose saucy non- chalance and dainty grace are their justification. He deals with love as a sort of secondary sentiment, that can easily surrender itself to propriety ; he exposes the point where manner and courtesy scathe the higher passion and cause it to retire with an accompanying ripple of subdued laughter. A de- licious scorn, a playfulness that is occasionally tender, only in order to give the more effect to graceful airy satire — that is his characteristic. But his strength lies in this, that he seeks to picture a world that has its counterpart in reality. His deli- cate scorn may veil deep feeling. He must be a master of innocent disguises. He will tell no secret if he can help it, and yet he often confesses to us, when concealing the stirrings of the heart, by the surprises of a happy banter. He will hide a tear as he points a jest ; or by the expedient of a clever conceit he will divert us from the suggestion of the grave and painful problems clearly realized. His very raillery not seldom reveals a glimpse of the serious side of things by the passion it is fain to hide. The writer of Vers de Socie'te is ironical, but VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 5 he should never be cruelly so. His first ambition ought to be to please and to divert ; and if he can- not do this without any real injury to the bloom of the better feelings, then he has failed in a prime requisite of his art. The following Rondeau, which appeared in one of our hebdomadal Humorists, pretty fairly expresses this principle, though it did not have strictly in view Society-verses, when it was ■written : — Fair reader of our comic page, 'Mid pun, and joke, and sarcasm crushing, There's nothing in it will engage To set your pure, sweet face a-flushing. There's kindly word for honest men. There's keen contempt for paltry duffers. Who take to throwing mud ; but then Their skin it is — not ours — that suffers. For laugh and chaff and decent jest, For wisdom mad, and folly sage. Here you may safely be addressed Fair reader of our comic page. The world of the writer of Society- Verse is thus no counterfeit one, however conventional it may seem. It has its own laws, and these guide and 6 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. govern his ideal. He must be well bred ; his humour must not entangle itself in alien imagery. It is pre-eminently a self-contained world, and his muse must close her eyes to what is in itself simple and universal. No great thought, no mighty image, that seems magnet-wise to select and draw to itself all that is kindred from the widest contrasts- of circumstance, must he indulge in. That would be to spoil the tone that ought to obtain — the tone of urban polish and perfect self-restraint. He must, in view of this, fetter his muse, though it be with silk : if she move not the more nimbly with such fetters, he has mistaken his vocation. He must be dainty, full of verbal resource, fanciful, and true so far as he goes ; but never so deeply in earnest as not easily to glide into an opposing mood, nor careful to do aught more than cause to lift the eyelid, shrug the shoulder, raise a well-bred smile. To laugh outright were too much. The parodist, again, is concerned merely to raise as loud a laugh as he can, by bringing a trivial idea and a great one (or one that his original aimed at making great) into sudden and unexpected col- lision, clothed as near as may be in the same dress. He is a harlequin, who dances for a moment in the tragedian's costume. He would be of no con- VERS DE SOCIETY AND PARODY. 7 sequence in himself, had he not somehow got access to that costume. But he has got access to it, and he manoeuvres so oddly that we cannot help for the moment admiring his dexterity, though now and then, even as we laugh, we cannot escape a passing twinge of regret that we shall hereafter recall his wry faces, and funny nods and becks and grins^ when next we see the master himself on the stage. One pleasure is apt to cancel or to lessen another. If we enjoy the parody a little is taken from the poem. A new association has inwoven itself with its metre, its movement, its rhythm and something is lost. The parodist has thus two things to be on his guard against. He needs, in view of immediate impression, to emphasize a mannerism, a catch- word, a favourite turn or a trick of metre — this lies in the conception of his sphere of work — and yet to do no real despite to the general spirit which chiefly it must be that lifts his original into the position which justifies his being parodied. Under his satirical or off-taking temper should be apparent a wider tolerance, an admiring affection, a certain enthusiasm held in reserve. Without this. Parody must ever tend to become mean, personal, and truculent 8 VEJ^S BE SOCIETE AND PARODY. This point was admirably illustrated by the brothers Horace and James Smith, in relation to their own parodies of Wordsworth. As their purpose in reference to this poet had by several critics been seriously misconceived, they distinctly stated in the preface to their second edition that no man could hold a higher opinion of Wordsworth's great poetic gifts, or entertain a deeper reverence for his teachings and character. They had therefore, they urged, abstained from parodying his loftier efforts on principle, devoting themselves entirely to carrying innocently into exaggeration the affected simplicity and bald conceits of the most affected and conceited of his ballads as they regarded them. If they erred in any individual case, the principle was clear. The other thing we have referred to is that the parodist ought to have regard to the language in which he works — that it may suffer no serious pre- judice through his exercises. This is an important point which cannot be too distinctly emphasized. Anybody of decent education can write what will roughly sound as an imitation of a favourite poem : the true parodist should deepen our respect for his author even as he raises the laugh at him, as it is well known that we cannot laugh kindlily and heartily VERS DE SOC/ETA AND PARODY. 9 at u hat we do not love. And if it may in one sense be said, as it has been said, that the parodist is not bound to have in view any real world whatever — here is a standard up to which he ought to work. Even the parodist is not a wild poet, that works Without a conscience or an aim ; but is subject to a clear law, moral and distinct. Yet we allow that his immediate end is merely amusing verbal contrast. If he gives us more than this it is beyond the bargain. He then approves himself something of a poet too. If he allows a free creative humour to steal in, he simply risks thus the reducing of the force that may be gained by emphasis of merely external peculiar'tlis^which is primarily his business as parodist. And herein lies, as we conceive, the critical test of true Parody. It has been very well said : — "The first function of the parodist is to exaggerate obvious peculiarities — to flash a light upon them ; to make out of them what he calls ' points,' by twisting them to new and surprising results of his own. Therefore in Parody you can only produce the mere fringe of the mere garment of art. That mode which is born of mood you cannot touch. This is what makes Parody an lo VERS DE SOCI^TE AND PARODY. unsatisfactory line of work to a true poet — to him whose artistic instinct and yearning after perfection are stronger than common, and who knows that, unless his mimicry is deeper than Parody allows, it is superficial and puerile after all." This goes a good way towards the truth, but not altogether. Parody, if we view it in the light of usefulness, may be regarded as a defence against mannerism and oddity on the part of those who have privilege, and might abuse it by too extreme indulgence in outward peculiarities. In this respect, as we shall see, it may be a corrective and an aid in the midst of artificial conditions such as alone could sustain it. It thus comes about that, though the delicacy and graceful reserve and self-restraint which the writer of Vers de Societe endeavours to attain as respects form might tempt him to exercises in Parody, he will generally, for a deeper reason, eschew it ; and this because the very necessity of emphasizing and rendering ridiculous what is most characteristic in other men's writing would tend to encourage a false emphasis. In no instance, perhaps, is this better illustrated than in one or two specimens to be found in the "Boudoir Ballads" of Mr. Ashby-Sterry — a point which will be made generally appreciable by a few stanzas from his VERS JDE SOCIAtA AND PARODY. ir poems, in which the echo of another note at once steals away from the unity of effect, while he is precipitated into verbal vulgarity, in spite of his clever alliterations and exceptional rhythms. Here are the stanzas : — O the vision of girlish distresses, The pitiful pouting of pets ! As they chat over " knock-about " dresses, And talk over thick ulsterettes. Ah ! the chorus of maidens ecstatic, Who long for the Chamouni pines ; For a glimpse of the blue Adriatic, Or sight of the rich Apennines. O the picture of packing and pleasure, The flutter that reigns in the nest ; And the mixture of labour and leisure — The days full of bustle and rest. As the queen of the flitting unravels New plans for the pluming of wings ; Or perchance slumbers o'er "Tiny Travels," Or sweetly " The Vagabond " sings. Will you dream 'neath a snowy umbrella, With Tauchnitz, each hot afternoon ? Will you go to the Isola Bella, Or row by the light of the moon ? Will you lounge 'neath the pink oleander, Comparing this year with the last ? Will e'er less (!) in the garden meander, And think with regret of the past ! 12 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. But it hardly needs to be said that Mr. Ashby- Sterry is not at his best there ; but in quite other and simpler efforts, such as this : — NUMBER ONE. Tortrait of a Young Lady, " No. i" in a CoUccfion of Ofie thousand five hundred and eighty-three workSy at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy. My favourite, you must know, In the Piccadilly show, Is the portrait of a lass Bravely done. 'Mid the fifteen eighty-three Works of art that you may see, There is nothing can surpass "Number One." Very far above the line Is this favourite of mine ; You may see her smiling there O'er the crowds. If you bring a good lorgnette, You may see my dainty pet, Like the Jungfrau, pink and fair, 'Mid the clouds. My enchanting little star, How I wonder what you are. With your rosy laughing lips Full of fun. Have you many satellites, Do you shine so bright o' nights That there's nothing can eclipse "Number One." VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 13 I sincerely envy him Who the fortune had to Umn Your bewitching hazel eyes With his brush ; ^Vho could study every grace In your winsome little face, And the subtle charm that lies In your blush. If I knew but your papa Could I only " ask mamma," It is clear indeed to me As the sun That thro' all this weary life, 'Mid its pleasure, pain, and strife. All my care and love should be " Number One." II. — Vers de Societe. Mr. Tom Hood, in his admirable little essay on Vers de Societe, well points out that the term Society-Verse scarcely expresses what is meant by the French term, — and that it is unfortunate \vc have no better. He opposes Society in this con- nection, not to the million, but to solitude. He M VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. goes on to add : — " It belongs to social, every-day life, and is written by, and written for, * men of the world.' It is rather the elegant and polished treat- ment of some topic of interest than the lofty and removed contemplation of some extensive theme." This definition may be accepted as fair, though not absolutely exhaustive ; for surely in good Society- Verse there should be much for others beside what are strictly to be denominated " men of the world." Mr. Locker, and Mr. Austin Dobson, and Mr. Calverley might well object to this prima facie narrowing of their audience from which matrons and maidens are alike cruelly excluded, though doubtless they form a large part of the audience so ■deeply desired by Society-poets ! Mr. Tom Hood's arbitrary limitation in his definition is the more ■extraordinary and unaccountable in that he, at a later part, claims an element of humanity " and permanence of interest" for all true Society-Verse — only it must be half-disguised — veiled in "wreathed smiles andbecks and nods." Like Thackeray, who did some fine things in this way, the Society- Verse writer "laughs over some things because he does not want you to notice that he is crying ! " A -great point lies here. The pathetic and serious element is essential to the writer of Society- Verse ; VEJiS DE SOCIETA AND PARODY. 15 his speciality lies not in any definable elements distinguishing him from the poet pure and simple ; but in his mode of expression, which may, so far, be an accident. True humour and cynicism are inconsistent with each other. Your true cynic is a sceptic also. He is distrustful by nature, suspicious, he scorns Man not because he has fallen below himself, but be- cause he can rise no higher : Byron, for example, in his most sardonic moods, puts himself outside the circle, no matter how clever and ingenious he is. Humour of the truest quality always rests on a foundation of belief in something better than it sees, and its laugh is a sad one at the awkward contrast between man as he is, and man as he might be. In a word, the humorist has an ideal by which all is brought to test. The true writer of Society- Verse is saved from cynicism by the necessity to remain a humorist. Wit alone will not suffice him. He must, in some degree, excite the sensibilities and unconsciously raise the ideal by the mere administration of pleasurable impulse : the suggestion of new relations and affinities in hfe. He does not commit himself to definite standards, still he seeks to widen the sympathies. As Parody stands ever on the border of the 1 6 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. Vers de Societe field, and loses its true identity if it over-passes the boundary ; so Vers de Societe itself ever tends to lose its true characteristics under a kind of necessary law of ascent. By this is meant that the artificial atmosphere of Society- Verse proper can only be held in relation to the poet, for musical and artistic ends, by his ever and anon drawing an inspiration from a field above it. Else it would become merely conventional and artificial, and as such it would be repudiated by the world it professedly paints, which also needs elevation, escape from its own pre -occupations in a thinly -veiled ideal image of them. Thus he must rise, and must lift up the reader, even while he seems merely to skim along a very determinate plane. All the best writers of Vers de SociHe have been also, in their measure, true poets, which means that they often wrote what is more than Vers de Societe when they professed to write no more than that. There is thus a line to be drawn critically and theoretically between a certain order of poetry proper and Vers de Soci^td, but it is very hard to draw it in practice. One who knows the subject well has written : " The primary meaning of the term Vers de Societd is, I take it, that the verses referred to VERS DE SOCIETE AND FARODY. 17 treat * of the doings of persons who move in the artificial atmosphere which is known as ' Society ; ' for example, the verses of Praed — or what people mean by the verses of Praed — 'My own Araminta,' and ' The Belle of the Ball,' but I do not even know that ' The Vicar ' and ' Quince ' strictly come under the class. According to this standard, very little of the work of Mr. Austin Dobson, a section only of that of Mr. Locker and Mr. Calverley, comes under the definition. The rest is minor poetry, more often tinged with humour, but not necessarily Vej's de Societe. 'Verses of Humanity ' would be better: but directly we get this, we use a term applicable to much so-called modern poetry." But wherever you have a true poet at work, e\'en in the artificial atmosphere of Society- Verse, he will embue it with touches which properly lift it above the merely artificial plane. For example, is Mr. Austin Dobson's " Incognita " Vers de Societe, or minor poetry of a high order? We hold it is both, just as we hold that Thackeray's best efforts are both ; and that whenever you begin to draw a hard line, you must break the poems in halves. * Yes ; but they treat of them in a specific way, that is fancifully or imaginatively, not merely with elegance or wit, though elegance and wit may be brought to the service. B 1 8 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. A hard-and-fast line cannot really be drawn with any hope of finality, or even efficiency. Society-Verse, in our sense of it, includes certain products of all polished times, which become fully or imaginatively realisable only through experience, more or less direct, of similar conditions. Anacreon in Greek very frequently, Theocritus sometimes, is in the mood. Petrarch once or twice in his sonnets approaches to it, and oftener in his earlier odes, notwithstanding the affected depth of his passion for Laura, which should have so steadied his flight as to prevent all playful curvings and circlings and billings and cooings of the Society- Verse kind. Yet he now and then gains fine effect and relief from' slipping into a truly playful vein. What, for instance, shall we say to the 5th and the loth Sonnets, not to go any further ? Here are free renderings of them for the reader's benefit, should he not read Italian : — When moved by sighs I call thee by the name That in my heart is written fair of Love, LAUd-like it sounds, of sweetest accents wove, As my fond tongue begins the word to frame. Your REgal state that next asserts its claim Doubles my courage the emprise to prove ; But "Tarry," cries the last, "for powers above All that ye boast alone could reach this fame." VERS DE SOCIAtE AND PARODY. 19 Thus all who call you by that word again Are taught at once to LAUd and to REvere, For praise and reverence are your rightful state. Unless, perchance, Apollo should disdain The mortal tongue that, strange to fitting fear, Around his greeny boughs should lightly prate. Glorious Colonna, like a column strong, Our hopes thou bearest of the Latin name, Thou still dost calmly hold thy virtuous fame, Even while the Pope condemns thee as for wrong. Here is no palace, theatre, galleries long. But fir and beech and pine put forth their claim To stir the soul with true poetic flame Amid green grass and hills and sweet birds' song. Raised from the earth to heaven our spirits soar, As soft the Nightingale in woodland shade Pours all night long his melancholy strain. "With loving thoughts the heart grows more and more ; Oh, why is scene so fair imperfect made Because my lord must absent still remain ! Horace — the product of a highly artificial period of Roman life — is, for most part, in the vein ; and 20 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. Mr. Austin Dobson assimilates and reproduces this element of vague regret, yet of radiant self- possession and poignant self-reproof, so admirably because he is in so much Horatian. Let the reader look at his renderings of Horace from the Quartet in his last volume which, moreover have the merit of exhibiting Horatian feeling shaking hands with the new poetic forms — in this case the Rondel and Triolet, of which we shall have to say a few words immediately : — VITAS HINNULEO. (Rondel.) You shun me, Chloe, wild and shy, As some stray fawn that seeks its mother, Through trackless woods. If spring-winds sigh, It vainly strives its fears to smother ; — Its trembling knees assail each other, When lizards stir the bramble dry ; — You shun me, Chloe, wild and shy As some stray fawn that seeks its mother. And yet no Libyan lion I, — No ravening thing to rend another ; Lay by your tears, your tremors by, — A husband's better than a brother ; Nor shun me, Chloe, wild and shy As some stray fawn that seeks its mother. VERS BE SOCIETE AND PARODY. PERSICOS ODI. (Triokfs.) Davus, I detest Orient display ; Wreaths on linden drest, Davus, I detest. Let the late rose rest Where it fades away : Davus, I detest Orient display. Nought but myrtle twine Therefore, Boy, for me Sitting 'neath the vine, — Nought but myrtle twine ; Fitting to the wine. Not unfitting thee ; Nougnt but myrtle twine Therefore, Boy, for me. Is this not exactly the tone of Herrick, of Suckling, of Lovelace, of Waller, and Skelton, and the rest of our own Engh'sh Society-Verse makers, who produced the thing before it had received the name? Nay, is it not the very tone of much in Shakespere, who included, as by law of affinity, every specific tone that poet could touch ? Is it not 2 2 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. the tone of Congreve, and of Swift, when he is not- sardonic to the extent of dissipating, by bitter breath, the fanciful forms he has created for him- self? Prior, and Gay, and Dorset, and Pope — when he can be naively playful, which is not so very often, as one would think — are in the vein ; so is Goldsmith, and, on one or two occasions, even Cowper, who is then always truly naif and gently playful. Then there is Praed, and, in a sense, Ingoldsby, and Leigh Hunt, and Landor, and Hood, the elder : and among Scottish writers, Aytoun, Outram, and some others less known ; for we shall rank Lord Neaves amongst living writers of this class, because he has distinctly formed a Scottish School of what we must call Society- writers, who describe a full circle from the broadest fun to finest satire and all with the utmost playfulness and good humoured innocence of intent. ^ But we must not go back on old examples ; that would prove endless. We must content ourselves with presenting a few of the most select specimens from writers of our own day, well-contrasted and really illustrative. Nothing could be finer as a general specimen of the Vers de Sociite spirit than this — one of the happiest specimens from the happy pen of Mr. Henry S. Leigh : — VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 25 THE TWO AGES. Folks were happy as days were long In the old Arcadian times ; When life seemed only a dance and song In the sweetest of all sweet climes. Our world grows bigger, and, stage by stage, As the pitiless years have rolled, We've quite forgotten the Golden Age, And come to the Age of Gold. Time went by in a sheepish way Upon Thessaly's plains of yore. In the nineteenth century lambs at play, Mean mutton, and nothing more. Our swains at present are far too sage To live as one lived of old : So they couple the crook of the Golden Age With a hook in the Age of Gold. From Corydon's reed the mountains round Heard news of his latest flame ; And Tityrus made the woods resound With echoes of Daphne's name. They kindly left us a lasting gauge Of their musical art, we're told ; And the Pandean pipe of the Golden Age Brings mirth to the Age of Gold. Dwellers in huts and in marble halls — From shepherdess up to queen — Cared little for bonnets, and less for shawls,. And nothing for crinoline. But now simplicity's not the rage, And it's funny to think how cold The dress they wore in the Golden Age Would seem in the A^e of Gold. 24 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. Electric telegraphs, printing, gas, Tobacco, balloons, and steam, Are little events that have come to pass Since the daj's of the old rh^ime. And, spite of Lempriere's dazzling page, I'd give — though it might seem bold — A hundred years of the Golden Age For a year of the Age of Gold.' Mr. Frederick Locker has the true air of the writer of Society-Verse. He is never too much in earnest, and yet he is never trivial. His humour is of a soft and enticing kind. It shines rather than sparkles. He understands thoroughly what is con- sistent with his aims, and seldom aims too high. With all the external marks of the " man of the world," he touches the domestic sentiment faith- fully, and to fine issue : he is at home in the walks of the heart, and though he can smile with an averted face, it is because he would rather not say all that he feels and finds his pleasures in. He is sincere as well as gay ; he is serious as well as naively satirical ; there is a kindly glow and a firm beat of the pulse felt beneath the courtly polish and polite banter ; the veins can be seen under the lily-white hand. His fancy is obedient to his mood, and moves equably even when he is con- VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 25 ■sciously indulging in surprises. Mr. Locker and Mr. Austin Dobson arc, now-a-days, frequently named together, and spoken of as though to similar characteristics they owed their measure of success. Mr. Locker lacks a little of Mr. Dobson's subtle feeling for rhythm — he does not attain to the final felicity of some of Mr. Dobson's separate stanzas, though he is less tempted by extensive knowledge into recondite references, odd allusions, and classical bye-play. Mr. Locker's pride is to go as straight to the mark, with unhesitating English frankness, as a Society- Verse writer could go. Mr. Dobson has much more ?iX'(\s\Xc finesse. So far as two writers of the same class of verse, taken broadly, could be distinguished, these two are distinguished by this : Mr. Locker is frank as an old English gentleman ; Mr. Dobson is reserved and dexterous, and often seeks to evade direct statement or questioning. He is conscious of his power to tantalize and to teach as well as to amuse. He inclines not seldom therefore to parable, to fable, to relieve himself by work which is in essence moral. He has a dash of Hogarth in him, as well as of Horace. He has, too, the modern feeling for nature more strongly developed than Mr. Locker, as seen in such poems as " The Seasons ; " and in widening the sphere of his 26 VERS DE SOCIAtA AND PARODY. possible activity, it may tend sometimes to take from him his directness. He is at once finer and richer than Mr. Locker ; but Mr. Locker is more concentrated, and sure of his ground. Mr. Dobson loves to experiment, to try new fields, and is apt to ignore the value of the successes he has achieved^ and to compromise himself by writing for the mere ingenuity of the thing — " trifling " a little bit, though always like a scholar and a gentleman, — and he has, in the minds of some very good critics^ lost a good deal by it. He is more versatile, but less self-sustained, than Mr. Locker ; more a man of ideas ; more of a student and a scholar than a man of the world — sometimes, indeed, there is a shaded and reserved purity in his verses — as in one notable stanza of " Incognita " — which is almost unexpected, and is not likely to be valued at its true worth by mere readers of Society- Verse. Mr. Locker succeeds by his mixture of good English sense, subdued humour, and complete knowledge of cultivated life ; Mr. Dobson succeeds by his nimble fancy, dainty grace of expression, quaint inventiveness, and wide scholarship, sensibility, and general dexterity of intellect which controls it all, and detracts from the sense of spontaneity too largely. He uses his wide learning well, to impart VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 27 a weight to his verse which otherwise would be often too trivial. Besides, he has a turn for the courtly farcical or more dignified grotesque, and this, in combination with a power to throw his fancies into dramatic form, raises the expectation that he might become a playwright, and succeed in a kind of piece which good society in France particularly admires, and which we may presume that there will be more and more demand for here as knowledge of French literature and French life increases amongst us. Of this we have no promise or suggestion in what Mr. Locker has given to us. One other point we must notice in Mr. Dobson — it is his remarkable faculty of restoration. He will choose a certain era, and with a few characteristic touches, exhibiting most careful and loving study, even of out-of-the-way books and details, he will present it, pregnant and clear, in a stanza or two. Both his volumes show many instances of this, proving that he is as much an antiquarian as a poet can afford to be. His " Gentleman of the old School " and his "Gentlev>^oman of the old School " perhaps show him at his best in this line. Some- times, as in " The Tale of Polypheme," and the " Ballad of Beau Brocade," he condescends to the 2S VERS BE SOCIETE AND EARODY. veriest trifling in this line also — such trifling as might be left to weaker hands, while he took up work with more humanity and promise of perma- nence ; for he can write " Verses of Humanity " as well as Verses of Society, and it is doubtful whether his success in the first does not a little spoil him for full success in the last, though his success in the last may only aid him in the attainment of true grace in the first. Such pieces as " The Young Musician " bear witness for him here. But we must justify our deliverance so far by specimens. The first is from Mr. Locker, and is titled : " To my Mistress's Boots," an admirable specimen of fun hiding earnest : — TO MY mistress's BOOTS. They nearly strike me dumb, And I tremble when they come Pit-a-pat. This palpitation means, That these boots are Geraldine's, Think of that. Oh, where did hunter win So delicate a skin For her feet ? You lucky little kid, You perished, so you did, For my sweet. VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. The fairy stitching gleams On the toes and in the seams, And reveals That Pixies were the wags Who tipped these funny tags And these heels. What soles ! so little worn ! Had Crusoe — soul forlorn — Chanced to viev/ 0)ie printed near the tide, How hard he would ha^■e tried For the two. For Gerry's debonair, And innocent and fair As a rose. She's an angel in a frock, With a fascinating cock To her nose. Those simpletons who squeeze Their extremities to please Mandarins, Would positively flinch From venturing to pinch Geraldine's. Cinderella's lefts and rights To Geraldine's were frights, And, in truth, The damsel, deftly shod. Has dutifully trod From her youtL 30 VERS DE SO CI Ate and parody. The mansion — ay, and more, The cottage of the poor, Where there's grief Or sickness, are her choice, And the music of her voice Brings relief. Come, Gerry, since it suits Such a pretty puss-in-boots These to don, Set your little hand awhile On my shoulder, dear, and I'll Put them on. By way of complement we may here set down " The Jester's Plea " — a piece in a stricter vein of moralising — nevertheless full of the essential quality of such verse : — THE jester's plea. These verses were published in 1862, in a volume of Poems (by several hands), entitled '■'■An Offering to Lancashire ^^ The World ! Was jester ever ii A viler than the present ? Yet if it ugly be — as sin, It almost is — as pleasant ! It is a merry world (pro tem.), And some are gay, and therefore It pleases them — but some condemn The fun they do not care for. VERS BE SOCIETE AyD EARODY. 31 It is an ugly world. Offend Good people — how they wrangle ! The manners that they never mend ! The characters they mangle ! They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod, And go to church on Sunday — And many are afraid of God — • And more of Mrs. Grundy. The time for Pen and Sword was when " My ladye fayre," for pity Could tend her wounded knight, and then Grow tender at his ditty ! Some ladies now make pretty songs, — And some make pretty nurses : — Some men are good for righting wrongs, — And some for writing verses. I wish We better understood The tax that poets levy ! — I know the Muse is very good — I think she's rather heavy : She now compounds for winning ways By morals of the sternest — Methinks the lays of now-a-days Are painfully in earnest. When Wisdom halts, I humbly try To make the most of Folly : If Pallas be unwilling, I Prefer to flirt with Polly, — To quit the goddess for the maid Seems low in lofty musers — But Pallas is a haughty jade — And beggars can't be choosers. 32 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY I do not wish to see the slaves Of party, stirring passion, Or psahiis c^uite superseding staves, Or piety " the fashion." I bless tlie Hearts where pity glows, Who, here together banded, Are holding out a hand to those That wait so empty-handed ! A righteous Work ! — My masters, may A Jester by confession, Scarce noticed join, half sad, half gay, The close of your procession ? The motley here seems out of place With graver robes to mingle. But if one tear bedews his face, Forgive the bells their jingle. Mr. Austin Dobson can touch a yet lighter strain, and impart to it a tone of truest elevation and dainty fragrancy of finish. This is a specimen, though we were for a moment or two divided be- tween it and tlie piece called " Incognita." — DORA versus rose. " The case is proceeding.''^ From the tragic-est novels at Mudie's — At least, on a practical plan — To the tales of mere Hodges and Judys, One love is enough for a man. VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 33 But no case that I ever yet met is Like mine : I am equally fond Of Rose, who a charming brunette is, And Dora, a blonde. Each rivals the other in powers — Each waltzes, each warbles, each paints — Miss Rose, chiefly tumble-down towers ; Miss Do., perpendicular saints. In short, to distinguish is folly ; 'Twixt the pair I am come to the pass Of Macheath, between Lucy and Polly — Or Buridan's ass. If it happens that Rose I have singled For a soft celebration in rhyme, Then the ringlets of Dora get mingled Somehow with the tune and the time ; Or I painfully pen me a sonnet To an eyebrow intended for Do.'s And behold I am writing upon it The legend, "To Rose." Or I try to draw Dora (my blotter Is all overscrawled with her head), If I fancy at last that I've got her, It turns to her rival instead ; Or I find myself placidly adding To the rapturous tresses of Rose Miss Dora's bud-mouth, and her madding, Ineffable nose. 34 VERS DE SOCI^TE AND PARODY. Was there ever so sad a dilemma ? For Rose I would perish (pro tem.); For Dora I'd willingly stem a — (Whatever might offer to stem) ; But to make the invidious election, — To declare that on either one's side I've a scruple, — a grain, more affection, I cannot decide. And as either so hopelessly nice is, My sole and my final resource Is to wait some indefinite crisis, — Some feat of molecular force, To solve me this riddle conducive By no means to peace or repose, Since the issue can scarce be inclusive Of Dora mid Rose. (Afterthought.) But, perhaps, if a third (say a Norah), Not quite so delightful as Rose — Not wholly so charming as Dora, — Should appear, is it wrong to suppose, — As the claims of the others are equal, — And flight — in the main — is the best, — That I might . . . But no matter, — the sequel Is easily guessed. Mr. Mortimer Collins has written one or two admirable pieces which, however, — though of first- rate quality in points, — do not maintain the same VERS DE SOCIElA AND PARODY. 35 unity and exquisite balance as those of Mr. Locker or Mr. Austin Dobson. This is, perhaps, the best : — AD CHLOEN, M.A. (Fresh from her Cambridge Examination.) Lady, very fair are you, And your eyes are very blue, And your nose ; And your brow is like the snow ; And the various things you know Goodness knows. And the rose-flush on your cheek, And your algebra and Greek Perfect are ; And that loving lustrous eye Recognises in the sky Every star. You have pouting, piquant hps. You can doubtless an eclipse Calculate ; But for your ccerulean hue, I had certainly from you Met my fate. If by an arrangement dual I were Adams mixed with Whewell^ The same day I, as wooer, perhaps may come To so sweet an Artium Magistra. 36 VERS DE SOCIAtA AND PARODY. Mr. Calverley, too, we should have quoted from ; but forbear, as we shall have so much to say of him under the head of Parody. Besides Mr. Henry S. Leigh, we must name Mr. Gosse, Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse, Mr. Henley, Mr. Fennel, and Mr. Savile Clarke, — all of whom have produced gems in this cameo-carving of verse. ni. — Exotic Poetic Forms. We cannot pass from the subject of Vers de Societe without a word or two about the new forms which have recently come into vogue. These are admirably fitted for certain purposes, and in expert hands occasionally yield a satisfying effect Re- straint, however, is the first feeling on reading most of them ; so that we need not expect much from the movement. Mr. Dobson has written some exquisite Triolets, as v/ell as Ballades, after the true form, and he has given in an appendix to Mr. Davenport Adams's recent Volume, a very admirable paper descriptive of all these forms ; and this, if sup- plemented by his article in the " Mirror of Litera- VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 37 ture " on the Ballade, will convey as full an idea as English readers can desire in respect to them. Their relation to Vers de Society is not quite so accidental as it might appear : for Mr. Austin Dobson has himself pointed out that for most part they might be made effective in epigram, but only, we think, in epigram that has elements to ally it closely with Society- Verse. We give below one or two specimens of these forms of verse, the more important here as preparations for what shall be said of them under the head of Parody, The first shall be a Ballade — the rule of which is that it shall be written on three rhymes and no more — arranged as a slight attention to this specimen will at once show to the careful reader : — THE BALLAD OF PROSE AND RHYME. Double Refrain. When the ways are heavy with mire and rut, In November fogs, in December snows, When the North Wind howls, and the doors are shut,- rhere is place and enough for the pains of prose ; But whenever a scent from the whitethorn blows, And the jasmine-stars to the lattice climb. And a rosalind-face to the casement shows, Then hey ! — for the ripple of laughing rhyme ! 38 VERS DE SOCJETE AND PARODY. When the brain gets as dry as an empty nut, When the reason stands on its squarest toes, When the mind (hke a beard) has a " formal cut," — There is place and enough for the pains of prose ; But whenever the May-blood stirs and glows, And the young year draws to the " golden prime," And Sir Romeo sticks in his ear a rose, — Then hey ! — for the ripple of laughing rhyme ! In a theme where the thoughts have a pendant-strut, In a changing quarrel of " Ayes " and " Noes," In a starched procession of " If" and "But," — There is place and enough for the pains of prose ; But whenever a soft glance softer grows, And the light hours dance to the trysting-time. And the secret is told " that no one knows," — Then hey ! — for the ripple of laughing rhyme ! Ejivou In the work-a-day world, — for its needs and woes. There is place and enough for the pains of prose ; But whenever the May bells clash and chime ; Then hey ! — for the ripple of laughing rhyme ! And these three Triolets : — A Kiss. Rose kissed me to-day. Will she kiss me to-morrow ? Let it be as it may. Rose kissed me to-day. VERS DE SOCIAtE AND PARODY. But the pleasure gives way To a savour of sorrow : — Rose kissed me to-day, — JVtll she kiss me to-morrow ? Circe. In the school of coquettes Madam Rose is a scholar; — • O, they fish with all nets In the school of coquettes ! When her brooch she forgets 'Tis to show her new collar : In the school of coquettes Madam Rose is a scholar ! A Tear. There's a tear in her eye, — Such a clear little jewel ! WTiat can make her cry ? There's a tear in her eye. " Puck has killed a big fly, — And its terribly cruel ; " There's a tear in her eye — Such a clear little jewel ! 39 A clever writer in Fun has admirably shown how some of these forms may be used for Society- Verse. He has given a whole series of them, including the 40 VERS BE SOCIETE AND PARODY. Rondeau. Here we have a Rondel and a set of Triolets : — love's captive. Rondel. I HIDE her in my heart, my May, And keep my darling captive there 1 But not because she'd fly away To seek for liberty elsewhere. For love is ever free as air ! And as with me her love will stay, I hide her in my heart, my May, And keep my darling captive there. Our love is love that lives for aye, Enchained in fetter strong and fair, So evermore, by night and day. That we our prisoned home may share,. I hide her in my heart, my May, And keep my darling captive there. A PAIR OF GLOVES. Triolets. My love of loves — my May, In rippling shadows lying, Was sleeping mid the hay — My love of loves — my May ! The ardent sun was trying To kiss her dreams away ! My love of loves — my May, In rippling shadows lying ! VEIiS DE SOCIETA AND PARODY. 41 I knelt and kissed her lips, Sweeter than any flower The bee for honey sips ! I knelt and kissed her lips, — And as her dark eyes' power Awoke from sleep's eclipse, I knelt and kissed her lips Sweeter than any flower ! The pair of gloves I won, My darling pays in kisses ! Long may the sweet debt run — The pair of gloves I won ! Till death our love dismisses This feud will ne'er be done — The pair of gloves I won, My darling pays in kisses 1 IV. — The Scottish School. The Scottish School — of which Professor Aytoun, Mr. Outram, and others of the Blackwood band^ were the proper founders — was originally based on merely humorous character-sketching, as seen in " The Annuity." It has passed — perhaps in 42 VERS BE SOCIAtA AND PARODY. peculiar consonance with the national character — into two main lines. Convivial humour of the broader kind, always with a more or less pronounced purpose of specific satire of foibles and extrava- gances ; and a free criticism of the national ortho- doxy, with a view of broadening and liberalising it. In this latter phase, it has been, so to say, taken possession of by the Broad-Church party ; and some of the happiest efforts of Dr. Norman Macleod in verse would belong to this class — especially the " Waggin o' oor dog's tail." It is felt in the " Curling Song " also ; and, indeed, it might be said that Norman Macleod never fell into the lighter mood without carrying a shade of this earnest purpose with him. But he was not artis- tically delicate, and his points were not always taken with full feeling. He lacked wholly the art Horatian, and must, for this reason, rank only as third or fourth rate in spite of his fine spirits, his readiness, his spontaneity, and earnest purpose. It has been well-said that the Scotch are peculiar in that they can afford to scrutinize their own oddities, and, on occasion, to look at themselves precisely like a third person. This is seen in much of the verse we are now dealing with. A few specimens of the more typical classes are all that we can afford to VERS DE SOCIETY AND PARODY. 43 give. The first shall be from Lord Neaves on " The Origin of Species : " — THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. A new Song. Have you heard of this question the Doctors among, Whether all living things from a Monad have sprung ? This has lately been said, and now shall be sung, Which nobody can deny. Not one or two ages sufficed for the feat. It required a few millions the change to complete ; But now the thing's done, and it looks rather neat, Which nobody can deny. The original Monad, our great, great-grandsire, To little or nothing at first did aspire ; But at last to have offspring it took a desire, Which nobody can deny. This Monad becoming a father or mother, By budding or bursting, produced such another ; And shortly there followed a sister or brother, Which nobody can deny. But Monad no longer designates them, well — They're a cluster of molecules now, or a cell ; But which of the two, Doctors only can tell, Which nobody can deny. These beings increasing grew buoyant with life, And each to itself was both husband and wife ; And at first, strange to say, the two lived without strife, Which nobody can deny. 44 VERS DE SOCIAtE AND PARODY. But such crowding together soon troublesome greu\ And they thought a division of labour would do ; So their sexual system was parted in two, Which nobody can deny, Thus Plato supposes that severed by fate, Human halves run about, each in search of its mate,. Never pleased till they gain their original state. Which nobody can deny. Excrescences fast were now trying to shoot ; Some put out a finger, some put out a foot : Some set up a mouth, and some sent out a root, Which nobody can deny. Some, wishing to walk, manufactured a limb ; Some rigged out a fin, with a purpose to swim ; Some opened an eye, some remained dark and dim, Which nobody can deny. Some creatures grew bulky, while others were small. As nature sent food for the few or for all ; And the weakest, we know, ever go to the wall, Which nobody can deny. A Deer with a neck that was longer by half Than the rest of its family (try not to laugh). By stretching and stretching became a Giraffe, Which nobody can deny. A very tall Pig, with a very long nose. Sends forth a proboscis quite down to his toes ; And he then by the name of an Elephant goes, Which nobody will deny. VERS BE SO CI Ate and parody. 45 The four-footed beast that we now call a Whale, Held its hind legs so close that it grew to a tail, "Which it uses for threshing the sea like a flail. Which nobody can deny. Pouters, tumblers, and fantails are from the same source ; The racer and hack may be traced to one Horse : So men were developed from Monkeys of course, Which nobody can deny. An ape with a pliable thumb and big brain, When the gift of the gab he had managed to gain, As a Lord of creation established his reign. Which nobody can deny. But I'm sadly afraid, if we do not take care, A relapse to low hfe may our prospects impair ; So of beastly propensities let us beware, Which nobody can deny. Their lofty position our children may lose. And reduced to all fours, must then narrow their views ; Which would wholly unfit them for filling our shoes. Which nobody can deny. Their vertebrae next might be taken away. When they'd sink to an oyster or insect some day, Or the pitiful part of a polypus play. Which nobody can deny. Thus losing Humanity's nature and name, And descending through varying stages of shame, They'd return from the jNIonad, from which we all came, ^\^lich nobody can deny. 46 VERS DE SOCIAtJ^ AND PARODY. < In a slightly different vein we may cite the following : — LET US ALL BE UNHAPPY ON SUNDAY. A Lyric for Sunday Night. We Zealots, made up of stiff clay, The sour looking children of sorrow. While not over jolly to-day, Resolved to" be wretched to-morrow. We can't for certainty tell What mirth may molest us on Monday ; But, at least to begin the week well. Let us all be unhappy on Sunday. That day the calm season of rest, Shall come to us freshing and frigid ; A gloom all our thoughts shall invest. Such as Calvin would call over-rigid. With sermons from morning till night. We'll strive to be decent and dreary : To preachers a praise and delight. Who ne'er think sermons can weary. All tradesmen cry up their own wares ; In this way they agree well together : The Mason by stone and lime swears ; The Tanner is always for leather. The Smith still for iron would go ; The Schoolmaster stands up for teaching; And the Parson would have you to know, There's nothing on earth hke his preaching. VERS DE SOClixA AND PARODY. 47 The face of kind nature is fair ; But our system obscures its effulgence : How sweet is a breath of fresh air ! But our rules don't allow the indulgence. These gardens, their walks and green bowers, Might be free to the poor man for one day ; But no, the glad plants and gay flowers Mustn't bloom or smell sweetly on Sunday. What though a good precept we strain Till hateful and hurtful we make it ! What though, in this pulling the rein, We may draw it so tight as to break it ! Abroad we forbid folks to roam, Because they get social or frisky ; But of course they can sit still at home And get dismally drunk on whisky. Then, though we can't certainly tell How mirth may molest us on Monday : At least, to begin the week well Let us all be unhappy on Sunday. We have preferred to give these to the yet better known " Origin of Languages," or the song, " I'm very fond of Water," as being less likely to be familiar to our readers. Professor Blackie, who not seldom ruins his poems of this class for any purpose but chorus- singing, through his rough and ready, off-hand style, has written at least two good things, of which 48 VERS DE SOCI&tA AND PARODY, we shall present copies to the reader, assured that he will laugh lightly over them. Though Professor Blackie hates metaphysics, the first is metaphysical and is named : — CONCERNING I AND NON-I. Since father Noah first tapped the vine, And warmed his jolly old nose. All men to drinking do much incline, But why no drinker yet knows ; We drink and we never think how ! And yet in our drinking, The root of deep thinking Lies very profound, As I will expound To all who will drink with me now I The poets, God knows, a jovial race, Have ever been lauding of wine ; Of Bacchus they sing, and his rosy face, And the draught of the beaker divine ; Yet all their fine phrases are vain ; They pour out the essence Of brain-effervescence. With rhyme and rant And jingling cant, But nothing at all they explain. But I, who quaff the thoughtful well Of Plato and old Aristotle, And Kant, and Fichte, and Hegel can tell The wisdom that lies in the bottle; I drink, and in drinking I know. VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 49 With a glance keen and nimble I pierce through the symbol, And seize the soul Of truth in the bowl, Behind the sensuous show ! Now brim your glass, and plant it well Beneath your nose on the table, And you will find what philosophers tell Of I and non-I is no fable. Now listen to wisdom, my son ! Myself am the subject, This wine is the object, These things are two, But I'll prove to you That subject and object are one. I take this glass in my hand, and stand Upon my legs, if I can. And look and smile benign and bland, And feel that I am a man. Now stretch all the strength of your brains ! I drink — and the object Is lost in the subject. Making one entity. In the identity Of me and the wine in my veins ! And now if Hamilton, Fraser, or Mill, This point can better explain, You may learn from them, with method and skill, To plumb the abyss of your brain ; But this simple faith, I avow, D so VERS DE SOCli.T& AND PARODY. The root of true thinking Lies just in deep drinking, As I have shown By a way of my own, To this jolly good company now. The next is on a very suitable theme for a pro- fessor who at once is a book-worm and is not : — SOME BOOK-WORMS WILL SIT AND WILL STUDY. Some book-worms will sit and will study Along with their dear selves alone, Till their brain like a mill-pond grows muddy, And their heart is as cold as a stone. But listen to what 1 now say, boys. Who know the fine art to unbend ; And all labour without any play, boys. Makes Jack a dull boy in the end. There's Moodie, no doubt he's a fellow Of heart, and of head has no lack, But his cheek, Uke a lemon, is yellow. And he bends like a camel his back. I tell him the worst of all evils Is cram ; and to live on this plan Is to nourish a host of blue devils. To plague him when he is a man. Sure Solomon knew what was fitting ^ To keep a man juicy and fresh, And he says there is nothing hke sitting O'er books to bring grief to the flesh. VERS BE SO CI At A AND PARODY. 51 From quarto to folio creeping, Some record of folly to gain, He says that your red eyes are keeping Dull watch o'er the ni^ht oil in vain. I guess you have heard many sermons Not wiser at all than my rhymes, But perhaps you don't know what determines Their sense to be nonsense sometimes. Though bright the great truth may be beaming. Through dimness it struggles in vain, Of vapours from stomach upsteaming Unhealthy, that poison the brain. Beside her old wheel when 'tis birring, A spinster may sit and may croon ; But a meddlesome youth should be stirring Like Hermes, with wings to his shoon ; With a club, or a bat, or a mallet, Making sport with the ball on the green, Or roaming about with a wallet Where steamboats and tourists are seen. Then rise from the lean visaged study,' That drains all the sap from your brains ; Give your face to the breeze and grow- ruddy With blood that exults in the veins. Trust me, — for I know what I say, boys, — And use the fine art to unbend, All work, with no season of play, boys, Makes Jack a dull boy in the end ! 52 VERS DE SOCIAtE AND PARODY. At no great distance behind these come some of the efforts of Sheriff Nicolson, of which this is per- haps as effective as any : — THE BRITISH ASS. (Roared in a Den of Scientific Lions at Edinburgh, 1th August, 1871.^ Air "The British Grenadiers." Some men go in for Science, And some go in for Shams, Some roar like hungry Lions, And others bleat like lambs ; But there's a Beast, that at this Feast Deserves a double glass, So let us bray, that long we may Admire the British Ass ! Chorus — With an Ass-Ass-ociation, Etc., Etc. On England's fragrant clover This beast delights to browse, But sometimes he's a rover To Scotland's broomy knowes ; For there the plant supplies his want, That doth all herbs surpass. The Thistle rude — the sweetest food- That feeds the British Ass ! VERS DE SOCIETA AND PARODY. 53 We've read in ancient story, How a great Chaldean swell Came down from all his glory, With horned beasts to dwell ; If you would know how it happened so, That a King should feed on grass, In " Section D, Department B," Inquire of the British Ass ! To Grecian sages, charming. Rang the music of the spheres, But voices more alarming Salute our longer ears ; By Science bold we now are told How Life did come to pass — From world to world the seeds were hurled. Whence sprung the British Ass ! In our waltzing through creation We meet those fiery stones That bring, for propagation, The germs of flesh and bones ; And is it not a thrilling thought That some huge misguided mass Will, one fine day, come and sweep away Our dear old British Ass ! The child who knows his father Has aye been reckoned wise, But some of us would rather Be spared that sweet surprise ! If it be true, that when we view A comely lad or lass, We find the trace of the Monkey's face In the iraze of the British Ass ! 54 VERS DE SOCIAtA AND PARODY. The Ancients, childish creatures ! Thought we derived from heaven The godlike form and features To mankind only given ; But now we see our pedigree Made plain as in a glass, And when we grin we betray our kin* To the sires of the British Ass ! V. — Parody. We now proceed to speak of Parody, and, first,. of the point where Parody touches Vers de Societe. Wherever Parody reaches its highest point, it is on the very margin of the sister-field. And the reason is that where it rises highest it must be most humane, and carry, hidden under its extravagance and grotesquerie, some touch of pathos, true insight, and sympathetic humour. It fulfils its fullest pur- pose, and justifies itself, in ceasing to bear its original features. Thackeray in some of his inimit- able parodies succeeded in observing a balance * " lie who rejects with scorn the belief that the shape of his own canines, and their occasional great development in other men, are due to our early progenitors having been provided with these formidable weapons, will probably reveal by sneering the line of his descent." — DarwvCs "Descent of Man" /., 127. VERS BE SOCI&TA AND PARODY. 55 where many others have failed, managed to convey weighty meanings through so effervescent a medium without any sense of divorce or by spoih'ng the pleasantry ; but this was because of his remarkable combination of delicacy and creative humour — his unique union of life-knowledge, quaint original fancy, and power of imitation, piercing to pro- founder characteristics ; so that he can hardly be said to be a mere parodist even when he seems to be most determinedly working as a parodist, and thus in a walk of art crowded with com- petitors he stands absolutely alone. The following is quite in the Thackeray vein in this style of work. The reader will perhaps notice the fine morality that lies perdu in the high-spirited inde- pendent tone of the last verse, the whole of a high life-philosophy is to be read in it : — WILLY REILLY. Air of Boy Jones's Log. Cakum to me* ye sailors bold Wot plows upon the sea, To you I mean for to unfold My mournful histo-ree. •The nsutical mode of writing "Oh, come tome." — Trintn'i 56 VERS BE SOCIAtE AXD PARODY. So pay attention to my song, And quick-tl-ly shall appear How innocently all along I was in-weigle-ed here. One night, returnin' 'ome to bed I walked through Pim-li-co, And twigging of the Palass, sed, " I'm Jones and Itt-i-go." But afore I could git out, my boys, Police-man 20 A, He caught me by the corderoys, And lugged me right away. My cuss upon Lord Melbun and On Johnny Russell so. That forced me from my native land, Across the waves to go-o-oh ! But all their spiteful arts is vain My spirit to down keep ; I hopes I'll soon git back again To take another peep. The bulk of the exercises of the Brothers Smith, again, are samples of pure parody. But it is not our purpose to draw particular illustrations from the past. That would be an endless experiment. Specimens of present-day writers will better serve our purpose. Mr. Frederick Locker, equipped as VERS JDE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 57 one might fancy in many respects for parody, has seldom essayed it. He gives us, however, a few specimens. The following, which carries over into delightful extravagance the ultra-simplicity and sentiment of the Poet Laureate's "Lord of Burleigh," is one of the best efforts in pure parody ; but we must add that in this field, though Mr. Locker admirably illustrated our demand for well-bred inoffensiveness, he has never risen intellectually above the old-fashioned standard — the standard of the " Rejected Addresses." We cannot, however, conceive Mr. Tennyson himself reading this save \vith well-pleased, hearty laughter, because Mr. Locker insinuates no feeling other than admiration for the poem he parodies : — UNFORTUNATE MISS BAILEY. An Experiment. When he whispers, " O Miss Bailey, Thou art brightest of the throng" — She makes murmur, softly-gaily — " Alfred, I have loved thee long." Then he drops upon his knees, a Proof his heart is warm as wax ; She's — I don't know who, but he's a Captain bold from Halifax. 58 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY, Though so loving, such another Artless bride was never seen ; Coachee thinks that she's his mother — Till they get to Gretna Green. There they stand, by him attended, Hear the sable smith rehearse That which links them, when 'tis ended, Tight for better — or for worse. Now her heart rejoices — ugly Troubles need disturb her less — Now the Happy Pair are snugly Seated in the night express. So they go with fond emotion, So they journey through the night ; London is their land of Goshen — See, its suburbs are in sight ! Hark, the sound of life is swelling, Pacing up, and racing down ; Soon they reach her simple dwelling — • Burley Street, by Somers Town. What is there to so astound them ? ^ She cries " Oh ! " for he cries " Plah ! " ^ When five brats emerge, confound them ! Shouting out " Mamma ! " — " Papa ! " While at this he wonders blindly, Nor their meaning can divine, Proud she turns them round, and kindly, " All of these are mine and thine ! " VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 59. Here he pines and grows dyspeptic, Losing heart he loses pith — Hints that Bishop Tail's a sceptic, Swears that Moses was a myth. Sees no evidence in Paley, Takes to drinking ratifia : Shies the muffins at Miss Bailey While she's pouring out the tea. One day, knocking up his quarters. Poor Miss Bailey found him dead, Hanging in his knotted garters, Which she knitted ere they wed. Tom Hood was the more fitted for parody in that he was deficient in some of the qualities which made his versatile father so unique — alike spon- taneous and finished in serious poetry and in the veriest whipt-cream of verse. He has written one of the cleverest parodies of recent years on one of Mr. Swinburne's best known efforts. The parody will perhaps be the better appreciated if wc first give a few stanzas of the original. It will be observed that the metre is a difficult one, and new in English, 6o VERS DE SOCIltTE AND PARODY. A MATCH. If love were what the rose is, And I were Uke the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather, Blown fields or flowerful closes, Green pleasure or gray grief; If love were what the rose is. And I were like the leaf. If I were what the words are. And love were like the tune, With double sound and single Delight our lips would mingle, With kisses glad as birds are That get sweet rain at noon ; If I were what the words are. And love were like the tune. If you were April's lady, And I were lord in May, We'd throw with leaves for hours And draw for days with flowers. Till day like night were shady, And night were bright like day ; If you were April's lady, And I were lord in May. If you were queen of pleasure, And I were king of pain. We'd hunt down love together. Pluck out his flying-feather. VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 6i And teach his feet a measure, And find his mouth a rein ; If you were queen of pleasure, And I were king of pain. The reader will notice that in no point does Tom Hood fail to follow his original — the very title is a happy parody. A CATCH. By a Miviic of Modern Melody. If you were queen of bloaters And I were king of soles, The sea we'd wag our fins in, Nor heed the crooked pins in The water dropt by boaters To catch our heedless joles ; If you were queen of bloaters, And I were king of soles. If you were Lady Mile-End, And I were Duke of Bow, We'd marry and we'd quarrel, And then, to point the moral, Should Lord Penzance his file lend, Our chains to overthrow ; If you were Lady Mile-End, And I were Duke of Bow. 62 VERS DE SOCIAtE AND PARODY. If you were chill November, And I were sunny June, I'd not with love pursue you ; For I should be to woo you (You're foggy, pray remember), A most egregious spoon ; If you were chill November, And I were sunny June. If you were cook to Venus, And I were J 19, When missus was out dining, Our suppertites combining, We'd oft contrive between us To keep the platter clean ; If you were cook to Venus, And I were J 19. If you were but a jingle, And I were but a rhyme ; We'd keep this up for ever Nor think it very clever, A grain of sense to mingle At times with simple chime ; If you were but a jingle, And I were but a rhyme. Mr. Swinburne, as we shall see, has been a favourite subject with later parodists — " Dolores," *' A Ballad of Dreamland," " Faustine," and others, have been parodied over and over again ; but we VERS DE SOCliTE AND PARODY. (^i must not part with Tom Hood without saying that his parodies of Moore and Byron are quite as in- genious and sustained as the above ; while Mr. Browning is not unsuccessfully followed in these verses : — POETS AND SONNETS. By R.*b*rt. Br*wn*ng. Where'er there's a thistle to feed a linnet — ■ And linnets are plenty, thistles rife — Or an acorn-cup to catch dewdrops in it, There's ample promise of future life. Now mark how we begin it. For linnets will follow, if linnets are minded. As blows the white-feather parachute ; And ships will reel by the tempest blinded — Ay, ships, and shiploads of men to boot 1 How deep whole fleets you'll find hid. And we blow the thistledown hither and thither, Forgetful of linnets, and men and God. The dew ! — for it's want an oak will wither — By the dull hoof into the dust is trod. And then who strikes the cithar ? But thistles were only for donkeys intended, And that donkeys are common enough is clear. And that drop ! What a vessel it might have befriended ? Does it add any flavour to Glugabib's beer ? Well, there's my musing ended. 64 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. Readers of recent fiction — more especially ad- mirers of Miss Ingclow, of whom there are many in every part of the world — may be interested in know- ing the history of those little bits of funny verse with which she enlivened one of her later novels, " Fated to be Free," particularly several chapters in the latter part of it. They are really " revenges " of a delicate kind. We know that poets from of old have been apt to bandy other wordy messages than compliments, and the quarrel between Mr. Tennyson and the late Lord Lytton is a good modern instance. So when Mr. Calverley, who has obtained considerable repute as a cunning master of metre, both by his original poetic work and by translations, includes direct parodies of Miss Ingelow's most popular pieces, exposing all her worst faults, it is only natural that she should try to retaliate in kind. In his little volume of " Fly Leaves," Mr, Calverley at one place, under the title, " Lovers, and a Reflection," wioce ; — In moss-prankt dell, which the sunbeams flatter (And heaven it knoweth what that may mean ; Meaning, however, is no great matter). Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween ; VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 65 Thro' God's own heather we wonned together, I and my WiUie (O love my love) : I need hardly remark it was glorious weather, And flitterbats wavered alow, above : Boats were curtseying, rising, bowing (Boats in that climate are so polite), And sands were a ribbon of green endowing, And O the sun-dazzle on bark and bight ! Thro' the rare red heather we danced together (O love my Willie !), and smelt for flowers : I must mention again it was glorious weather. Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours : — By rises that flushed with their purple favours. Thro' becks that brattled o'er grassy sheen, We walked and waded, we two young shavers. Thanking our stars we were both so green. We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie, In fortunate parallels ! Butterflies, Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly Or marjoram, kept making peacocks' eyes : — Song-birds darted about, some inky As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds ; Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky — They reck of no eerie To-come, those birds ! But they skim over bents which the millstream washes,. Or hang in the lift 'neath a white cloud's hem ; They need no parasols, no goloshes ; And good Mrs. Trimmer she feedeth them. 66 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. Then we thrid God's cowslips (as erst His heather) That endowed the wan grass with their golden blooms ; And snapt — (it was perfectly charming weather) — Our fingers at fate and her goddess-glooms. And Willie 'gan sing (oh, his notes were fluty ; Wafts fluttered them out to the white-winged sea) — Something made u]) of rhymes that have done much duty, Rhymes (better to put it) of "ancientry." O if billows and pillows and hours and flowers, And all the brave rhymes of an elder day, Could be furled together this genial weather. And carted or carried on wafts away. Nor ever again trotted out — ay me ! How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be. To literary experts, with these facts in view, it was not hard to find an underlying satiric reference in such scraps as these from " Fated to be Free : " — That maiden's nose, that puppy's eyes. Which I this happy day saw, They've touched the manliest chords that rise I' the breast of Clifford Crayshaw. VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 67 All day she worked, no lover lent His aid ; and yet with glee At dusk she sought her home, content, That beauteous Bumble Bee. A cell it was, nor more nor less, But oh ! all's one to me, A\'hether you write it with an S, Dear girl, or with a C. Then doth Tuck-man smile, " Them there (Ho and Hi and futile Hum) Jellies three-and-sixpence air, Use of spoons an equal sum." Trees are rich. Sweet task, 'tis o'er, " Tuck-man, you're a brick," they cry. Wildly then, shake hands, all four (Hum and Ho, the end is Hi). But whatever may be said of the serious verse of the two writers, it is clear that Miss Ingelow cannot cope with Mr. Calverley (Crayshay, C y, for the sake of rhyme in two cases made Crayshaw) in parody. Her efforts are too easily taken for mere nonsense verse, and lack the exactitude and deli- cacy of reference and imitation which alone could have justified them in this light. 68 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. We must make room for this other very happy expose of Miss Ingelow's peculiarities from Mr, Bayard Taylor's pen : — THE SHRIMP-GATHERERS. Scarlet spaces of sand and ocean, Gulls that circle and winds that blow Baskets and boats and men in motion, Sailing and scattering to and fro. Girls are waiting, their wimples adorning With crimson sprinkles the broad gray flood ; And down the beach the blush of the morning, Shines reflected from moisture and mud. Broad from the yard the sails hang limpy. Lightly the steersman whistles a lay ; Pull with a will, for the nets are shrimpy, Pull with a whistle, our hearts are gay ! Tuppence a quart, there are more than fifty, Coffee is certain, and beer galore. Coats are corduroy, and minds are thrifty. Won't we ofo it on sea and shore ? See, behind, how the hills are freckled With low white huts, where the lasses 'bide ! See, before, how the sea is speckled With sloops and schooners that wait the tide ? VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 69 Yarmouth fishers may rail and roister, Tyne-side boys may shout " Give way ! " Let them dredge for the lobster and oyster, Pink and sweet are our shrimps to-day ! Shrimps and the delicate periwinkle, Such are the sea-fruits lasses love : Ho ! to your nets till the blue stars twinkle, And the shutterless cottages gleam above ! Mr. Calvcrley is perhaps the most dexterous of later parodists. No point seems to escape him : no poet is beyond his scope. He is as facile in metres as he is learned, and this enables him to deal with topics from which^ anyone unless a well- grounded scholar would be excluded. His taste is admirable ; and, like Mr. Locker, he hits off the " masters " without insinuating any particular irreverence for them — a great point in parody, which too often vulgarizes by association. How ingeniously Mrs. Browning is reflected in the piece entitled " In the Gloaming," of which these are a few stanzas : — In the Gloaming to be roaming, where the crested waves are foaming, And the shy mermaiden combing locks that ripple to her feet ; 70 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. When the Gloaming is I never made the ghost of an endeavour To discover — but whatever were the hour, it would be sweet. " To their feet," I say, for Leech's sketch indisputably teaches That the mermaids of our beaches do not end in ugly tails ; Nor have homes among the corals ; but are shod with neat balmorals, An arrangement no one quarrels with, as many might with scales. Sweet to roam beneath a shady cliff, of course with some young lady, Lalage, Nesera, Haidee, or Elaine, or Mary Ann : Love, you dear delusive dream you ! Very sweet your victims deem you, When heard only by the seamew, they talk all the stuff one can. Sweet to haste, a licensed lover, to Miss Pinkerton, the glover, Having managed to discover what is dear Nesera's size : P'raps to touch that wrist so slender, as your tiny gift you tender. And to read you're no offender in those laughing hazel eyes. VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 71 Then the days of courtship over, with your wife to start for Dover Or Dieppe — and Hve in clover, evermore, whate'er befalls : For I've read in many a novel, that unless they've souls that grovel, Folks pj'efer in fact a hovel to your dreary marble halls. To sit, happy married lovers; Phillis trifling with a plover's Egg, while Corydon uncovers with a grace the Sally Lunn, Or dissects the lucky pheasant — that, I think, were passing pleasant. As I sit alone at present, dreaming darkly of a dun. Miss Rossetti, Mr. Coventry Patmore, Mr. Brown- ing, Mr. Tennyson, are all rendered inimitably. We can only afford space to give examples of his Browningesc blank verse and Tennysonian lyric : — Now law steps in, bigwigged, voluminous-jawed ; Investigates and reinvestigates. Was the transaction illegal ? Law shakes head. Prepend, sir, all the bearings of the case. At first the coin was mine, the chattel his, But now (by virtue of the said exchange And barter), vice versa, all the coin Per juris operationetn, vests 72 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. IVthe boy and his assigns till ding o' doom (In sceaila sceculo-o-o-orum ; I think I hear the Abate mouth out that), To have and hold the same to him and them. , . . Confer some idiot on conveyancing. Whereas the pebble and every part thereof, And all that appertaineth thereunto Quodcunque pertinet ad eani rem (I fancy, sir, my Latin's rather pat), Or shall, will, may, might, could, would, or should ( Subaiidi ccetera — clap we to the close — For what's the good of law in a case of the kind), Is mine to all intents and purposes. This settled, I resume the thread o' the tale. Now for a touch of the vendor's quality. He says a gen'leman bought a pebble of him (This pebble, i' sooth, sir, which I hold i' my hand), And paid for't, like a gen'leman, on the nail. " Did I o'ercharge him a ha'penny? Devil a bit. Fiddlepin's end ! Get out, you blazing ass ! Gabble o' the goose. Don't bugaboo baby me ! So double or quits ? Yah ! tittup ! what's the odds ?"- There's the transaction viewed i' the vendor's light. Is it possible, let us ask in passing, that this inimitable play on Mr. Browning's famous dramatic summary of a law-case suggested his " Leading Cases " to the " Apprentice of Lincoln's Inn ? " VERS DE S0CIE7E AND PARODY. 73 But we must not forget Mr. Tennyson's lyric. Here it is in Mr. Calverley's form : — WANDERERS. I LOITER down by thorp and town, For any job I'm willing ; Take here and there a dusty brown, And here and there a shilling. I deal in every ware in turn, I've rings for buddin' Sally, That sparkle like those eyes of her'n ; I've liquor for the valet. I steal from th' parson's strawberry plots, I hide by th' squire's covers ; I teach the sweet young housemaids what's The art of trapping lovers. The things I've done 'neath moon and stars Have got me into messes ; I've seen the sky thro' prison bars, I've torn up prison dresses : I've sat, I've sighed, I've gloomed, I've glanced With envy at the swallows That thro' the window slid and danced (Quite happy) round the gallows. But out again I come, and show My face, nor care a stiver ; For trades are brisk and trades are slow, But mine goes on for ever. 74 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 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, They to the village. It was noised next noon That chickens had been missed at Syllabub Farm. Perhaps the most successful of all the parodies of Mr. Tennyson is that of Mr. Bayard Taylor, called " Sir Eggnogg " — meant, as the reader will see, to satirize some of the affectations in the " Idylls of a King." Let the reader notice how nicely Mr. Tennyson's devotion to the separate and secondary facts of Natural History is satirized: — SIR EGGNOGC;. Forth from the purple battlements he fared. Sir Eggnogg of the Rampant Lily, named From that embrasure of his argent shield, Given by a thousand leagues of heraldry On snuffy parchments drawn,- — so forth he fared. By bosky boles and autumn leaves he fared Where grew the juniper with berries black. The sphery mansions of the future gin. But naught of this decoyed his mind, so bent On fair Miasma, Saxon-blooded girl, Who laughed his loving lullabies to scorn. And would have snatched his hero-sword to deck Her haughty brow, or warm her hands withal. So scornful she : and thence Sir Eggnogg cursed VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 75. Between his teeth, and chewed his iron boots In spleen of love. But ere the moon was high In the robustious heaven, the postern-tower Clang to the harsh, discordant, slivering scream Of the tire-woman, at the window bent To dress her crisped hair. She saw, ah woe ! The fair Miasma, overbalanced, hurled O'er the flamboyant parapet, which ridged The muffled coping of the castle's peak, Prone on the ivory pavement of the court. Which caught and cleft her fairest skull, and sent Her rosy brains to fleck the Orient floor. This saw Sir Eggnogg, in his stirrups poised, Saw he and cursed, with many a deep-mouthed oath, And, finding nothing more could reunite The splintered form of fair Miasma, rode On his careering palfrey to the wars. And there found death, another death than hers. That peculiarly effective metre in which Mr. Swinburne wrote " Dolores " and his famous Dedi- cation of the " Poems and Ballads " volume, is pre- eminently one to invite parody, but also to defeat it. It looks very easy to imitate it at first sight, but that ending line of each stanza, so dexterously cut short, will defy all hands save the most skilful. Of the many parodies of this favourite Swinburnian metre which we have seen, there is only one which really carries the show of spirit successfully on. This is the " Dedication to J. S." — the famous 76 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. " John Stiles " of the old law-books — in that little slip of a volume, " Leading Cases." That those even who may not be familiar with Mr. Swinburne's " Poems and Ballads " may appreciate the parody, we give here the three stanzas from the Dedication to that volume which are most closely parodied, and the reader will observe how aptly the some- what pompous feminine-rhymes and the allitera- tions have been followed : — The sea gives her shells to the shingle, The earth gives her streams to the sea ; They are many, but my gift is single, My verses, the first-fruits of me. Let the wind take the green and the grey leaf. Cast forth without fruit upon air ; Take rose-leaf and vine-leaf and bay-leaf Blown loose from the hair. Though the world of your hands be more gracious And lovelier in lordship of things. Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious Warm heaven of her imminent wings ; Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting, For the love of old loves and lost times, And receive in your palace of painting* This revel of rhymes. * The book was dedicated to Mr. Burne Jones, the disthiguished painter. VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 77 Though the many Ughts dwindle to one Hght, There is help if the heaven has one ; Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight, And the earth dispossessed of the sun, They have moonlight and sleep for repayment When refreshed as a bride, and set free, With stars and sea-winds in her raiment, Night sinks on the sea. Now, the " Dedication to J. S." can hardly fail to be read with interest. 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 single, The flower of pure law. 78 VERS BE SOCIETE AND PARODY. When bounty of grantors was gracious To enfeoff you in fee and in tail, The bounds of your land were made spacious With lordship from Sale unto Dale ; Trusts had you, and services loyal, Lips sovereign for ending of strife, And the names of the world's names most royal For light of your life. Ah desire that was urgent to Romeward, And feet that were swifter than fate's, And the noise of the speed of them homeward For mutation and fall of estates I Ah the days when your riding to Dover Was prayed for and precious as gold, The journeys, the deeds that are over, The praise of them told. But the days of your reign are departed. And our fathers that fed on your looks Have begotten a folk feeble-hearted, That seek not your name in their books ; And against you is risen a new foeman, To storm with strange engines your home, We wax pale at the name of him Roman, His coming from Rome. Yet I pour you this drink of my verses, Of learning made lovely with lays, Song bitter and sweet that rehearses The deeds of your eminent days ; VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 79 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. Though wc cannot regard the " Apprentice of Lincoln's Inn " as having been quite successful in finding funny points in his " cases " sufficient to sustain for them a claim to rank on the higher ground of independent humour, as it is too clear that he aimed at doing, yet it must be admitted that he has almost succeeded in this " Dedication." Nothing could well be more effective than the point that is made on the "■ Romeward tendency." " If J. S. shall go to Rome in three days is the standing example of an impossible condition " in these old law books. In all the other instances, however, the desire to compass a double purpose, that is, to convey " substantial legal fun " under cover of Parody, has, in our idea, failed, and failed 8o VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. nowhere more conspicuously than in that imitation of ]\Ir. Browning, which we cannot help thinking was suggested by Mr. Calverley's much happier effort in the same line — that piece, again, suggesting the idea of the whole book. These are a few of the " Apprentice's " Browningese lines — he improves a point on Mr. Calvcrlcy in adopting that odd, irregular, rhyming couplet which Mr. Browning used with such effect in one of his later volumes:^ Facts o' case first. At Milborne Port Was fair-day, October the twenty and eight, And folk in the market like fowls in a crate ; Shepherd, one of your town-fool sort, (From Solomon's time they call it sport, Right to help holiday, just make fun louder), Lights me a squib up of paper and powder, (Find if you can the law-Latin for 't) And chucks it, to give their trading a rouse. Full i' the midst o' the market-house. It happ'd to fall on a stall where Yates Sold gingerbread and gilded cates (Small damage if they should burn or fly all) ; To save himself and said gingerbread loss One Willis doth toss the thing across To stall of one Ryall, who straight an espial Of danger to his wares, of selfsame worth, Casts it in market-house, farther forth. And by two mesne tossings thus it got To burst in the face of plaintiff Scott ; And now 'gainst Shepherd, for loss of eye, The question is, whether tj'espass shall lie. VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 8i Here, precisely as in one of the other " Leading Cases," where an effort is made by John Vaux, on a ground of trespass, to recover " eight pennies," for wine and bread consumed on the premises by six carpenters, who could not or would not pay the same, we find that the body of legal fun is too heavy for the mere parody, which rests on points that are too delicate. In the case of the "six carpenters," the point of the parody rests merely on the fantastical and inept rh}'me of "low "and " ab initiol' which forms the last couplet of each stanza. Sed per toiam curiam 'twas well resolved (Note, reader, this difference) That in mere not doing no trespass is, And John Vaux went empty thence. The birds on the bough sing loud and sing low, No trespass was here ab initio — is surely very poor fun in either point of view. The " Apprentice " has spoiled his purpose of Parody by limiting the field of motif. To make a book of " leading cases," unless with an allowance of broader fun than his form of Parody admitted, was almost to court monotony. The following is in every respect a good parody of another favourite metre of Mr. Swinburne, and .S2 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. certainly brings it to the level of a fine ante-climax, as anyone will see by reading his poem : — APRIL SHOWERS. Oh, x\pril showers Are good for flowers, And fill the bowers With perfumes rare ; But twinge erratic, And pang rheumatic And not ecstatic Do they prepare ! And though the leanness And arid meanness Of lawns with greenness They hide and clothe ; They, past disputing. Set corns a-shooting, Which makes your booting A thing to loathe ! And of the Future Although they suit your Bright dreams, compute you're The Past's sad prey ; The while you yell a Vain ritornello For that umbrella That's stolen away ! VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 83 Nor has Mr. Bayard Ta}-lor overlooked Mr. Swinburne ; here is his " Lay of Macaroni," the originals of which some of Mr. Swinburne's friends deem to be perfect. We shall not speak on either side, but leave it to the stranger. THE LAY OF MACARONI. As a wave that steals when the winds are stormy. From creek to cove of the curving shore, Buffeted, blown, and broken before me, Scattered and spread to its sunlit core ; As a dove that dips in the dark of maples To sip the sweetness of shelter and shade, I kneel in thy nimbus, O moon of Naples, I bathe in thine beauty, by thee embayed. What is it ails me that I should sing of her ? The queen of the flashes and flames that were ! Yea, I have felt the shuddering sting of her, The flower-sweet throat and the hands of her ! I have swayed and sung to the sound of her psalters, I have danced her dances of dizzy delight, I have hallowed mine hair to the horns of her altars, Between the nightingale's song and the night. What is it, Queen, that now I should do for thee ? What is it now I should ask at thine hands ? Blow of the trumpets thine children once blew for thee, Break from thine feet and thine bosom the bands. Nay, as sweet as the songs of Leone Leone, And gay as her garments of gem-sprinkled gold. She gives me mellifluous, wild macaroni, The choice of her children when cheeses are old ! 84 VEES BE SOCIETE AND PARODY. .And over me hover, as if by the wings of it, Frayed in the furnace by flame that is fleet, The curious coils and the strenuous strings of it, Dropping, diminishing down, as I eat : Lo ! and the beautiful queen, as she brings of it. Lifts me the links of the limitless chain. Bidding mine mouth chant the splendidest things of it, Out of the wealth of my wonderful brain ! Behold ! I have done it : my stomach is smitten With sweets of the surfeit her hands have unrolled. Italia, mine cheeks with thine kisses are bitten : I am broken with beauty, stabbed, slaughtered, and sold! Ko man of thy millions is more macaronied, Save mighty Mazzini, than musical Me : The souls of the Ages shall stand as astonied. And faint in the flame I am fanning for thee ! Mr. Swinburne in his various experiments with exotic forms has given a specimen of the French Ballade, which would be very perfect were it not for one or two awkwardnesses in the feminine-rhymes — such as " snow's is " and " grows is," which would hardly be deemed happy rhymes in any ordinary English form ; while another point is that he gets over a difficulty by the expedient of such words as " part," " apart," " dispart," — hardly rhymes in strictness, but identical words — an expedient, as we VERS BE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 85 know, not uncommon in French poetry, and sanc- tioned even by Dante in Italian, but, in such a case, surely introducing somewhat of the very license which, as Mr. Gosse has well said in his ^' Plea for certain Exotic forms of Verse," * it is the special object of such forms to proscribe. We do not think that such identically sounded words as ^' heart " and " hart " can in strictness be defended in this form of verse any more than they would be in the sonnet. If "deferred" is a good rhyme to " bird," then " heard " may pass, but then only. A parodist, who is certainly ingenious, has made a point of emphasizing these defects in Mr. Swin- burne's Ballade. But to give point to the parody we must quote two stanzas — the first and third — from the " Ballad of Dreamland : " — I HID my heart in a nest of roses, Out of the sun's way, hidden apart ; In a softer bed than the soft white snow's is, Under the roses I hid my heart. AVhy should it sleep not ? why should it start, When never a leaf of the rose tree stirred ? What made sleep flutter his wings and part ? Only the song of a secret bird. * " Cornhill Magazine" for July, 1877. Would Mr. Gosse really justify such expedients in the English sonnet ? 86 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. The green land's name that a charm encloses, It never was writ in the traveller's chart, And sweet as the fruit on its tree that grows is, It never was sold in the merchants' mart. The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart, And sleep's are the tunes in its tree tops heard ; No hound's note wakens the wild wood hart. Only the song of a secret bird. ■ Now for the Parody — cap a pie — with the Envoi and all : — A BALLAD OF AFTER DINNER. A Month after Swinburne. I HID my head in a rug from Moses, From the clatter of moving dishes apart, And curled up my feet for forty dozes, Just for to soothe my beating heart. Why did it sleep not ? Why did it start, When never a dish remained to shock ? What made the fluttering doze depart ? Only the tick of an eight-day clock. Be still, I said, for hope presupposes A still mild mood for the sleep-slain hart ; Be still, for the wind, with its curled-up toes, is Silent and quieter yet than thou art. VERS BE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 87 Doth a wound in thee deep as a thorn's wound smart? Dost thou fretfully languish for Clicquot and hock ? What bids the lids of thy sleep dispart ; Only the tick of an eight-day clock. I wait in vain for the charm that encloses The green land of dreams in sleep's mystical chart, For the fruit of its trees and the breath of its roses, More sweet than are sold in the merchants' mart. So close to its border, why fails my heart ? What holdeth it back, tho' my dim brain rock ? Without, the noise of the nightman's cart. Within, the tick of an eight-day clock. Efivoi. Erewhile in hope I had chosen my part, To sleep for a season as sound as a block, With never a thought of a nightman's cart, Or the hateful tick of an eight-day clock. One parody of Mr. Swinburne, which is dis- tinctly ingenious and sustained, and which would have been less faulty had the subject been different and less personal, is, we have been led to believe, of American origin. It may be described as a " glorification of the hat." It comes too close on being offensive here and there, but parts of it are exquisite, and it runs through many varieties of the 88 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. metres much affected by Mr. Swinburne, even down to a comic travesty of his famous Atalanta choruses. This is one bit : — Before the beginning of years, There went to the making of man Nine tailors with their shears, A coupe and a tiger and span, Umbrellas and neckties and canes, An ulster, a coat, and all that — But the crowning glory remains. His last best gift was his hat. And the mad hatters took in hand Skins of the beaver, and felt, And straw from the isthmus land. And silk and black bear's pelt : And wrought with prophetic passion. Designed on the newest plan, They made in the height of fashion The hat for the wearing of man. Nor is this parodist unhappy in his blank verse which he skilfully runs into sharpest caricature : — I WOULD fain forget the cold Of hand and feet, of heart and mouth of me. Fire that I drink, burn in the songs I sing ! O that I were on some sweet sunlit hill To see the glad vines crowding aslant its slopes. VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 89 Straining strong arms about it in the sun ; And through the Hght and shadow of the leaves, See Bacchus' self dancing among the grapes ; And drink my fill until my blood grew warm As juice of madness in the veins of vines, Until my song grew sweet, fulfilled of fire And joy of wine, of rich, luxuriant words, Clustered as purple grapes upon my lips ! So would I follow all the day the dance Of Bacchanals, and wearied in the way, Lay me asleep in shadow of the vines. Or would that I in midst of silver seas Had felt the ship staid suddenly on her course. And seen the masts made green with vine leaves when Bacchus was crowned, and rode triumphant, borne By lithe and spotted leopards out of the sea. Dead dreams, alas, and past ! I will away, Leaving the club of clods for mine own house. Where is my hat ? I thought I had seen two ! Where is it ? Fret and irony of chance. Shall I be hatless, shall I walk uncrowned In shadow of no brim among the bards ? * -x- * * * Shall I, an uncrowned crown, discrowned of Eate, Bare to the breath of winds blown every way, And chill the burning brain it bears beneath ? Mr. Bayard Taylor has given a most ingenious and faithful rendering of Mr. Browning's blank verse, in his " Diversions of the Echo Club ; " and we must in justice subjoin it : — 90 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. Who wills, may hear Sordello's story told By Robert Browning : warm (you ask) or cold ? But just so much as seemeth to enhance — • The start being granted, onward goes the dance To its own music — the poem's inward sense ; So, by its verity .... nay, no pretence Avails your self-created bards, and thus By just the chance of half a hair to us. If understood .... but what the odds to you, Who, with no obligations to pursue Scant tracks of thought, if such, indeed there be In this one poem, — stay, my friend, and see Whether you note that creamy tint of flesh, Softer than bivalve ])ink, unpearled and fresh, Just where the small o' the back goes curving down To orbic muscles . . . . ha ! that sidelong frown Pursing the eye, and, folded, deeply cleft. r the nostril's edge, as though contempt were left Just o'er the line that bounds indifference .... But here's the test of any closer sense (You follow me ?) such as I started with ; And there be minds that seek the very pith. Crowd close, bore deep, push far, and reach the light Through league-long tunnels — Mr. Browning's style, rugged, full of elisions, and suggestive, has been often parodied ; his rhymed verse more seldom than his blank verse, however ; here is one specimen, after the poem " How the Good News was brought from Aix to Ghent : " — VERS BE SO CIE TE A ND FA RODY. 91 HOW THEV BROUGHT THE BAD NEWS FROM WESTMINSTER TO ISLINGTON. \A probable but not 7iecessarily truthful occurrefice, after E. Brow}iingP\ When Chancellor Dizzy had ceased his confab Two members of Parliament rushed for a cab : " First Hansom ! " they shouted from Westminster Hall ; " Cab ! " echoed a peeler who ran at the call. At their knees the door clanged, and they sank on the seat, While the vehicle galloped up Parliament-street. Not a word to each other : they knew in the chair M. A. President Beales would be tearing his hair ; When a block, or a wagon, compelled them to stop, To cabby they screamed through the hole in the top ; Encouraged by reins, and a whip that could crack, On galloped the broken-kneed, whistling, old hack ! 'Twas lateish at starting ; but when they drew near The outskirts, smart servants were fetching the beer, In Holborn a yellow 'bus got in their way, And close to Gray's Inn they were stopped by a dray ; But from Islington's steeple they heard the clock chime, So O'Donoghue chuckled " Bedad, we're in time." But on they went galloping, gallant IM.P.'s, Though Pentonville hill tried the horse's old knees, 'Twas silly of boys and bystanders to laugh ! 'Neath the wheels broke the brittle mac-adam like chaff. In the Liverpool-road was a dazzle of light. So, "Gallop," cried Taylor, "the Hall is in sight." 92 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. " How they'll cheer us ! " but all in a moment, the hack Fell neck and crop over, and rolled on his back, And then were the members in pitiful plight With the news which would make the League mad with delight, While the knowing old cab-driver sat on the head Of the horse that lay sprawling, apparently dead : For he flung off his coat when he jumped from his seat, And uttered some words — which we need not repeat — Unfastened the traces, and pulled at the ear. And the nose and the tail of this "horse without peer," Kicked and thrashed, cursed and swore, any noise bad or good. Till at length to the Hall the cab galloped, and stood. And the members will ever remember the sound Of the shouts, as the platform they climbed from the ground. For no voice but was shouting stentorian " Hears," As the speakers were greeted with volleys of cheers, While the President voted, that thanks from them all Should be theirs who had brought the bad news to the Hall! Mr. Bayard Taylor's parody of M. Rossetti in *'CimabueIla" is full of fine points, which emphasize in the most efficient way some of the best points in that distinguished poet : — VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 93 CIMABUELLA. Fair-tinted cheeks, clear eyelids drawn In crescent curves above the light Of eyes, whose dim, uncertain dawn Becomes not day : a forehead white, Beneath long yellow heaps of hair : She is so strange, she must be fair. Had she sharp, slant-wise wings outspread, She were an angel ; but she stands With flat dead gold behind her head, And lilies in her long thin hands. Her folded mantle, gathered in, Falls to her feet as it were tin. Her nose is keen as pointed flame ; Her crimson lips no thing express ; And never dread of saintly blame Held down her heavy eyelashes : To guess what she were thinking of, Precludeth any meaner love. An azure carpet, fringed with gold, Sprinkled with scarlet spots, I laid Before her straight, cool feet unrolled : But she nor sound, nor movement made (Albeit I heard a soft, shy smile. Printing her neck a moment's while) ; And I was shamed through all my mind For that she spake not, neither kissed, But stared right past me. Lo ! behind Me stood, in pink and amethyst, Sword-girt and velvet doubleted, A tall, gaunt youth, with frowzy head, 94 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. Wide nostrils in the air, dull eyes, Thick lips that simpered, but, ah me ! I saw, with most forlorn surprise, He was the Thirteenth Century, I but the Nineteenth : then despair Curdled beneath my curling hair. O, Love and Fate ! how could she choose My rounded outlines, broader brain. And my resuscitated Muse ? Some tears she shed, but whether pain Or joy in him unlocked their source, I could not fathom which, of course. But I from missals, quaintly bound, With cither and with clavichord. Will sing her songs of sovran sound : Belike her pity will afford Such faint return as suits a saint. So sweetly done in verse and paint. Lord Macaulay's " Roman Lays " have had their own share of attention from parodists, as was in- evitable. Here is a very funny adaptation of the metre of " The Battle of the Lake Regillus " and " The Prophecy of Capys," and of points in " Horatius," which originally appeared in " Fun : " — VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 95 A PROPHECY OF CAPERS. A lay of an Ancient Roamer. Ho ! grooms, fling forth the sawdust, Ho ! shed it on the tan, For round the show The troupe must go In glittering caravan ; In long and grand procession Parading, one and all Belonging to the Circus At the Agricultural Hall. Gay are Reform Processions, The Lord Mayor's Show is gay, But the Circus-ride All else beside Surpasses in that way, Where piglings, born in litters, Did late attention crave. And implements of husbandry The reaping hook to save ; Where (shows of mules and bosses Are likewise in its line). We've had of late A gathering great Of fatted sheep and kine. But nobler now the show is. And brighter the array — A pageant, gay and glorious, A quite unique display Of horsemanship That none may whip Is opened there this day. 96 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. Tall are the iron siphons That rise in Pentonville, And lofty is the viaduct You see at Holborn Hill, Thwaites, at the Thames Embankment, Has worked for many a year, Beneath our highways Fowler drove An Underground career. But now no water-workmen Are lound at Pentonville, No navvies poise the girders huge For s])anning Holborn Hill, Unheeded on th' Embankment Rings out the cry of " Beer ! " Unwatched the populace may urge Their Underground career ! The harvests at Refreshment bars Just now young men may reap ; Just now the banks of Lombard The unfledged clerks may keep ; And in the vats of Romford Just now the brewing's done By 'prentice hands, for all the world Has gone to Islington. Ho ! bandsmen, toot your bugle ! Ho ! grooms, there, clear the course, For Mademoiselle Will cut a swell Upon her high-trained horse. And here is Jones of Putney, AMio rides the bare-backed steed ; VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 97 And here is Brown of Camberwell, Who clears six hoops at speed ; And here is Peckham's Perkins, The foremost in the land, With tinsel fillet, smiling lip. And cracking whip, and loud Ya-hip, Who drives eighteen-in-hand. Make way for the procession — Make way there, great and small — It comes, — the troupe of Sanger, Of the Agricultural Hall ! Praed himself, with his peculiar and sometimes overlaboured trick of antithesis, has been several times parodied, and once or twice with real success. This is the happiest instance we remember : — TO A JILT. Some way after Praed. When rural boroughs are not bought. Or lovely maidens sold ; When self is reckoned less than nought. Or honour more than gold ; When money does not make the man, Or gooseberries champagne ; When Poet Close's verses scan, — I may be yours again ! 98 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. When Tussaud's wax-works learn to think, Or Tories to be wise ; When local rates begin to sink ; Or Spanish scrip to rise ; When German princes live at home, Or swells in I)rury-lane ; When Dr. Gumming goes to Rome, — I may be yours again ! When knaves and ranters cease to preach. Or evening prints to lie ; When tyros do not try to teach, Or silly girls to dye ; When Osborne quite forgets to jest. Or Ireland to complain ; When taxes are no more assess'd — I may be yours again ! When law and justice both unite, Or Swan and Edgar part ; When London gas gives better light, Or Ayrton takes to art ; When Leicester-square begins to smile, Or " Bradshaw " to be plain ; When smart reviewers don't revile, — I may be yours again ! When Lord Penzance shall sit no more, Or gaols no longer stand j When want is banished from our shore, Or love is in the land ; When earth is rid of every woe. Or fools are blest with brain — Why then, my faithless charmer, know I may be yours again ! VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 99 One of the points so admirably parodied and run into extravagance here is the trick of antithesis. It is odd to find that one of the greatest masters of this trick, particularly in his satiric verse, was Burns, one good instance being the couplet in the ^' Holy Fair : "— Some are fu' o' love divine, And some are fu' o' brandy. Mr. Austin Dobson also has made very good use of this trick in some of his lighter verse. Barry Cornwall, with his simple and yet half- mincing air, has formed a fine subject for parodists, and quite recently we have met with two really good specimens. This is one : — Sing ! — Who sings Of him who weareth the fine gold rings, Ah, who is the party fine ? The Jew I divine, Who works the Brummagem line. In "h's"he Is a dealer free, And very unpleasant company. loo VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. The second is on his universally known poem,- " The Sea," — and is very happy : — THE TEA. By Car?'y BormcaH. The tea ! The tea ! The beef, beef-tea ! The brew from gravy-beef for me ! Without a doubt, as I'll be bound, The best for an invalid 'tis found ; It's better than gruel ; with sago vies ; Or with the cradled babe's supplies. I like beef-tea ! I like beef-tea, I'm satisfied, and aye shall be, With the brew I love, with the brew I know. And take it wheresoe'er I go. If the price should rise, or meat be cheap, No matter ? I'll to beef-tea keep. I love — oh, how I love to guide The strong beef-tea to its place inside. When round and round you stir the spoon Or whistle thereon to cool it soon. Because one knoweth — or ought to know, That things get cool whereon you blow. I never have drunk the dull souchong. But I for my loved beef-tea did long, And inly yearned for that bountiful zest, Like a bird : as a child on that I messed — And a mother it was and is to me, For I was weaned on the beef — beef-tea ! VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. loi It is not difficult to fix the original of the following — the first of a series which appeared in " London," " designed to popularise in drawing- rooms and schools the style of the latest school of poetr}- : " — I. MADONNA MIA. I WOULD I were a cigarette Between my Lady's lithe sad lips, Where Death, like Love, divinely set, With exquisite sighs and sips Feeds and is fed and is not fain, And Memory married with regret. And Pleasure amorous of red Pain, In moon-wise musing wax and wane ; That with the bitter sweetness of her breath I might some while remember and forget (For Life is Love, and Love is Death ! ) It was my hap, ah well-a-way ! To burn my little hour away. I would I were a gold jewel To fleck my Lady's soft lean throat. Where Love, like Death, lies throned to swell A strange and tremulous note Of yearning vague, void and vain, Delight on flame Desire to quell, And Pleasure fearful of red Pain, And dreams fallen to sere and stain ; That in the barren blossom of her breath I might be glad we were not one but twain (For Love is Life, and Life is Deatli !), And that without me, well-a-way ! She could not choose but pass away. I02 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. II. S ATI ATA, LASSATA. I HID my heart between her hands, The fair and fragrant hands of her. For yea ! ( I said) she understands That maid to man should minister. For Time (I sa?tg) is ours to-day, And she may not gainsay him. Yea ! I set my heart beneath her feet, The sad and subtle feet of her. For yea ! (I said) this Love is fleet. Nay ! and than all things crueller. For Chance (I sang) has brought the May, And Hfe is sweet to savour. Yea ! She looked on me with both her eyes, The green and gracious eyes of her. And lightly laughed in woman's wise. And waxed than Love's self wearier. For Life (she sighed) is hard and gray. And Death is well worth livincr. Yea. III. MADONNA MIA. Her sad eyes, like strange seas Fulfilled with memories. Dream wistful. As they said : — Nay 1 but dead years are dead. For love is brief, but Spring Hath leave to sins. VEJiS BE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 105 Her deep brows odorous, Yet nothing timorous, Sigh to the sighing soul : — Nay ! — but in Death is dole. For Love is light, but Grief Brings not relief! IV. BALLATA. Forth, Ballade, forth, filling both arms with roses, Pale roses in a trance of bloomy doom. And bid Madonna burnish and relume The tarnished mirror and the torch that dozes. For lo ! the year a radiant rose, uncloses Her rich red heart, in fold on fold of bloom, And petal on petal rare of perfect peace. Where Love-in-Death, for wearihead, reposes, Sheeted and swathed and wrapped in odour and gloom. Yea ! like some queen, with curious spiceries And precious nards and balms and essences So overfair within her amorous tomb. That Death, white Death, in lovers' wise disposes Of her sweet stillness, like a wanton groom. And eagerly on her lips his lips imposes. In order to render more enjoyable the next speci- men we propose to cite, we must first quote a stanza from Mr. Austin Dobson's somewhat disppointing *' Ballade of the Prodicrals." It befjins : — I04 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. Princes ! — and you most valorous Nobles and barons of all degrees, Hearken awhile to the prayer of us Beggars that come from the over-seas ! Nothing we ask or of gold or fees ; Harry us not wath the hounds, we pray ! Lo ! — for the Surcote's hem we seize — Give us^ — -ah ! give us — but yesterday. And this is the parody, which admirably takes off the weak points and affected rhymes : — THE PRODIGALS. Dedicated to Mr. Chaplin, M.P. , Mr. Richard Power, M.P., and two hundred and twenty-three who followed them. " Ministers ! — you, most serious, Critics and statesmen of all degrees ! Hearken awhile to the motion of us, — Senators keen for the Epsom breeze ! Nothing we ask or of posts or fees ; Worry us not with objections, pray ! Lo, — for the speakers wig we seize — Give us — ah ! give us — the Derby Day." " Scots most prudent, penurious ! Irishmen busy as bumblebees ! Hearken awhile to the motion of us, — - Senators keen for the Epsom breeze ! For Sir Joseph's sake, and his owner's, please ! (Solomon raced like fun, they say), Lo, — for we beg on our bended knees, — Give us — ah ! give us — the Derby Day." VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 105 "" Campbell — Assheton, be generous ! " (But they voted such things were not the cheese.) " Sullivan, hear us, magnanimous ! " (But Sullivan thought with their enemies.) And shortly they gat both of help and ease, For a mad majority crowded to say : — " Debate we've drunk to the dregs and lees ; Give us — ah ! give us — the Derby Day." Envoi. Prince, most just was the motion of these, And many were seen by the dusty way, Shouting glad to the Epsom breeze, " Give us — ah ! give us — the Derby Day ! " Mr. Walt Whitman's very irregular and inflated style has never been better parodied than in the following, which also carries skilfully over into extravagance the high-flown persistent egotism, which seems so expressive of him : — CAMERADOS. Everywhere, everywhere, following me ; Taking me by the buttonhole, pulling off my boots, hustling me with the elbows ; Sitting down with me to clams and the chowder-kettle ; Plunging naked at my side into the sleek, irascible surges ; Soothing me with a strain that I neither permit nor prohibit ; io6 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. Flocking this way and that, reverent, eager, orotund, irrepressible ; Denser than sycamore leaves when the north winds are scouring Paumanok ; What can I do to restrain them ? nothing, verily, nothing. Everywhere, every^vhere, crying aloud for me ; Crying, I hear ; and I satisfy them out of my nature ; And he that comes at the end of the feast shall find something over. Whatever they want I give : though it be something else, they shall have it. Drunkard, leper, tammanyite, small-pox and cholera patient, shoddy, and cod-fish millionaire. And the beautiful young men and the beautiful young women, all the same. Crowding, hundreds of thousands, cosmical multitudes, Buss me and hang on my hips, and lean up to my shoulders, Everywhere listening to my yaulp, and glad whenever they hear it ; Everywhere saying, say it, Walt, we believe it. Everywhere, everywhere Certain writings have attained, by peculiar as- sociations and use, such a hold on the deepest love and reverence universally, that parody of them, in the true sense, is inadmissible altogether. This holds of the Holy Scriptures especially. Scarce anything could justify such a writing, for example, as the " Chaldee Manuscript " of Hogg, Lockhart, VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 107 and Wilson, which Messrs. Blackwood & Son, it may be remembered, had to cancel and withdraw from their Magazine before it had been well issued; so that a copy now-a-days is a rare curiosity. And this, they did, it may be remembered too, not because of the sins against good taste and common reverence implied in the publication of such a writing ; but onh' because of fear of an action for libel. Very astonished were we to read in Professor Ferrier's Introduction to the " Noctes Ambrosiaena " of Professor Wilson, that it would form a very suitable appendix to the work, and that "the people of the present day would be greatly amused by the pleasantry of this deliciousy^w d' esprit. Even the parodies of Hone, which were informed by a far more serious purpose, can hardly be re- garded as legitimate, any more than the irreverent lampoons of Byron and others — by which, evi- dently, these efforts of Hone were suggested. We shall see immediately, when dealing with a whole field of literature sanctified by peculiar associations, that parody of them needs a measure o{ earnestness to justify itself In the same way parody of Scrip- ture, even, may be raised above mere travesty and ridicule by a vein of earnestness akin to that which was active in their production. Luther did no io8 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. violence to the first Psalm when he thus parodied it :— "Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the way of the Sacramentarians, nor sat in the seat of the Zwinglians, nor followed the Council of the Zurichers." The same must be said of Dr. Norman Macleod's parody of the earlier verses of the first chapter of Genesis ; which is full of a fine irony : — " Perhaps," he says, " the men of science would do well, in accordance with the latest scientific results, and especially the ' meteoric theory,' to re- write the first chapter of Genesis in this way : — " I. — The earth was without form and void. " 2. — A meteor fell upon the earth. " 3.^The result was fish, flesh, and fowl. " 4. — From these proceeded the British Association. " 5.^ — -And the British Association pronounced it toler- ably good ! " But, as w^e have said, there is a whole body of literature, so sanctified by its higher and rarer influence, that parody of it can only be justified by the infusion of a moral purpose, in some sort correspondent to that (though on a lower level or minor scale) which moved the writer of the original VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 109 production. \\"c arc not certain that Mr. Tom Hood quite rose to a high enough level when he cleverly, but superficially, parodied Poe's " Anna- belle Lee," — a poem so deeply steeped in the tone and sentiment of regret over a pure and youthful love as not so readil}' to yield itself to this use as many other of Poc's poems. But thus wrote Tom Hood : — THE CANNIBAL FLEA. It was many and many a year ago. In a District styled E.G., That a monster dwelt whom I came to know By the name of Cannibal Flea ; And the brute was possessed with no other thought Than to live, — and to live on me ! I was in bed, and he was in bed, In the District named E.G., When first in his thirst, so accursed he burst Upon me, the Gannibal Flea ! With a bite, that felt as if someone had driven, A bayonet into me ! And this is the reason why long ago, In that District called E.G., I tumbled out of my bed, willing To capture the Gannibal Flea, Who all the night, until morning came. Kept boring away at me ! It wore me down to a skeleton, In the District hight, E.G. no VERS BE SOCIETE AND PARODY. From the hour that I sought my bed — eleven — Till daylight he tortured me, — Yes ! — that was the reason (as all men know, In that District named E.G.), I so often jumped out of my bed by night, Willing the killing of Cannibal Flea. But his hops they were longer by far than the hops Of creatures much larger than he, — Of parties more long-legged than he ; And neither the powder nor turpentine drops, Nor the persons engaged by me, Were so clever as ever to stop me the hop Of the terrible Cannibal Flea. For at night with a scream I am waked from my dream, By the terrible Cannibal Flea, [size ! — And at morn I ne'er rise without the bites, — of such From the terrible Cannibal Flea ; So Fm forced to decide Fll no longer reside In the District — the District — where he doth abide, The locality known as E.G. — That is postally known as E.C. ! Few modern poems would rank higher in the class of poems we are now dealing with, than the *' In Memoriam," of Mr. Tennyson. Yet sections of it have been parodied over and over again — generally, we think, without that moral elevation which alone could justify them. This is one of the VERS BE SOCIETE AND PARODY. iii best recent parodies of " In Memoriam ; " but the ideas are, we judge, too commonplace : — Jn i^cmoriam. £ s. d. "• Abiii ad pliires.'' BADEN-BADEN, MDCCCLXVIII. I HOLD it truth, with him who rings His money on a testing stone To judge its goodness by its tone, That Gold will buy all other things. It hides the ravages of years ; It gilds the matrimonial match ; It makes deformity " a catch " ; And dries the sorrowing widow's tears. Let love grasp cash, lest both be drowned ; Let Mammon keep his gilded gloss ; Ah, easier far to bear the loss Of love, than of a thousand pound ! Let not the victor say with scorn, While of his winnings he may boast, " Behold the man who played and lost, And now is weak and overworn." 112 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY, III. O, Fortune, fickle as the breeze ! O, Temptress at the shrine of Gain ! O, sweet and bitter ! — all in vain I come to thee for monied case ! " The chances surely run," she says ; " But prick the series with a pin ; Mark well ; and then go in and win ! "- Or lose ! for there are but two ways. And still the phantom, Fortune, stands And sings with siren silvery tone : Music that I may reach alone With empty purse and empty hands ! And shall I still this fickle fair With constant energies pursue ? Or do as other people do — Escape the tangles of her hair ? XXVII. I envy not in any mood The mortal void of Mammon's lust, Who never to a chance will trust, And never Fortune's favours woo'd. I envy not the plodding boor, Whose stupid ignorant content Cares not if odds on an event Are 2 to I, or lo to 4. VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 115 Nor him who counts himself as blest, And says, " I take the wiser way, Because for love alone I play, So gambling never breaks my rest." I hold it true, whate'er befall, I feel it when I lose the most, 'Tis better to have play'd and lost Than never to have play'd at all. Far more efficient and morally justified is the following after Mr. Tennyson's " Dream of Fair Women," in which we should notice also that the peculiarities of measure and diction do much to recommend it as fair game for the parodist. This is from "Punch" of October 12, 1878, and is styled : — A DREAM OF QUEER WOMEN. ( With apologies to the Poet-Laureate.) I READ, before mine eyelids dropt their shade, The last romance from Mudie's, lately writ By one who is considered — in the trade — The flower of female wit. Miss Blank, the famous writer, whose wild way Of fiction-weaving was the first to fill The startled times of good Victoria With ghosts which haunt them still. 114 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. And for awhile I tumbled on my bed, Her Art from slumber held me, as strong gales Hold driven birds from lighting, and my head, Chock-full of her strange tales, Charged both mine eyes with horror. Her black band Haunted my thoughts, and everywhere I saw Beauty and Murder walking hand-in-hand, Dogged by smart limbs of law. At last methought that I had wandered far Into some limbo, wild, inane, obscure, Where all things seemed to jostle, jumble, jar, And nought seemed straight or sure. There was no freshness in the heavy air, Nor any natural sound of speech or song, The smell of patchouli reigned everywhere. An odour stale yet strong. And from within me something seemed to say, " Be careful ! This is an unhealthy clime. Pass quickly through ; you will not wish to stay For any length of time." At last I saw a Lady within call, Stiffer than stiffest marble standing there ; A daughter of the giants, strangely tall, And sulphurously fair. Her hideousness with horror and surprise Tied up my tongue. She, turning on my face The lamp-like lustre of her goggle-eyes, Spoke hoarsely in her place : — . VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 115 ■" I'm an Art-Beauty ! Do not ask my name, I have so many ! " (Here she heaved a sigh). " The supersensuous critics sound my fame, I'm sure I can't tell why." " / marvel, too, the fact I won't conceal ; Your face appears pea-green, your locks look dyed," I answered free, and, turning, made appeal To one who stood beside. But she, with sour and spleenful looks averse, To her lank height her bony body draws. " My sex," she said, " is blighted by the curse Of harsh man-fashioned laws. " I am cut off from hope of that fair place St. Stephen's hight, where men our shackles frame, With issues that involve our deep disgrace And their eternal shame. " Yet I can speak — I do so now and then — For of the shrieking sisterhood am I, And still the bearded monsters, ruthless men, The franchise dare deny." Whereto that other with a scornful brow : — " I'd put my dagger-edge to mine own throat Could I not fool and rule fond man somehow, Without a stupid Vote ! " Her bitter words flashed through the silence drear ; Methought " can an Art-beauty be a shrew ? " Sudden I heard a voice that cried, " Come here ! I want to look at you." ii6 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY, I, turning, saw, curled in an easy chair, One sitting well wrapped up, as if from cold, Her cheeks were peachy, and her fluffy hair Was of the tawny gold. She, flashing forth a Circe-smile, began : — ■ " I murdered men for fun — it was my trade ; But oh, 'tis long since I have slain a man. Once, panther-like, I played "With many husbands, and then shed their blood. But life in this dim place is vastly slow ; I have no men to murder in my mood — That makes my only woe ! " The men, my lovers, how they bowed their necks 'Neath the neat boots wherewith my feet were shod ; I witched them, and the sturdiest of the sex Were vassals to my nod. " At last the sly detective tracked me down ; I tried to coax ///;;;, but the brute was cold. They found the last poor fool I tried to drown, And for the rest — behold " ! With that she tore her robe apart, and half The polished ivory of her shoulders grand Laid bare. Thereto she pointed with a laugh, Showing the convict's brand. Losing her laughter, I stood drowsily As doth a slavey with fatigue half-dead. When lodgers' bells are ringing low and high, Though it is time for bed. VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 117 *' Alas ! alas ! " a low voice full of care Grumbled beside me ; " turn and look on me ! I'm the enamoured girl, as fast as fair, If what I was I be. " Would I had been some dowdy dull and cold. O me ! that I should ever see the light Of those male optics burning, black, and bold, Which haunt me day and night ! " I frisked and flirted, said most risipi'c things, Mixed the salacious with the smart -profane. Knew all about the kiss that burns and stings. The clasp that fires the brain. *' Then came an ugly brute, all brawn and beard, Witched me with insolence I fancied grand, And, knowing not if most I loved or feared, I gave the wretch my hand. " He made me his mere slave. My fate was just ! " To whom the Panther, " Oh, you tamely fell ! You should have chloroformed the clown, and thrust His carcase down a well." With that smart speech, sheer horror's creeping thrill, Cold at my heart, dissolved the agony Of nightmare sleep. I woke, extremely chill, And cramped, and much awry. Morn breached the sombre ramparts of the dark, Ere I saw her of the agacant glance, With mien like some Anonyma of the Park, And morals fresh from France. ii8 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. Or her who, flouting love as very trash, And holding life's first aim the wedding-ring, Deems not mere soft affection, but hard cash The all-important thing. No Miner labours harder from the deep Dark mines of coal to hew the sooty seams, When market-rates rule high, than I from sleep To gather more such dreams. Not that the visions pleased ; they gave me pain. Yet might it profit men could I but strike Into that startling track of dreams again ; But no two dreams are like. For me, I loathe, as an unholy pest, The Women worshipped in these latter years, With loathing that can hardly be exprest, By shudders, groans, or tears. Because these Creatures of Sensation-Art, Failing in all that's natural, wholesome, sweet. Sicken the fancy and oppress the heart With weariness complete. Separate lines and couplets have sometimes been successfully parodied. Most readers will remember Pope's lines : — Here shall the spring its earliest sweets bestow, Here the first roses of the year shall blow. VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 119 Catherine Fanshawe applied them to the Regent's Park with a very sHght change, thus : — Here shall the spring its earliest coughs bestow, Here the first noses of the year shall blow. In the " Rump " an exact collection of the choicest poems and songs relating to the times of 1639, we have "A Litany for the New Year," in which the following occurs : — From Rumps, that do rule against customs and laws. From a fardle of fancies styled a good old cause, From wives that have nails and wives that have claws, Good Jove deliver us. Some of the parodies in Mr. Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland " arc happy specimens of the pure grotesque. They are not, however distinguished by subtility or exceptional refine- ment, and therefore wc are not called on to produce specimens here of what are already really so well- known. I20 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. VI. — Prose Parodies. Of Prose Parodies it is needful to say only a few words. The temptation to parody prose is less than to parody verse ; and for a good reason — the emphasis of prose, on which parody can be hung, is more distributed, less explicit. A good prose' style, in being simple and unaffected, should hardly be susceptible of parody, — at any rate, not of effective parody. It is such a style as that of Mr. Carlyle which is most likely to tempt parodists ; because he has endeavoured by the most persistent artifice to impart to prose something of the beat and recurrent rhythm of verse, while at the same time protesting actively against all jingling of rhyme and metre, &c., &c. Here again, even when looking at his writing with such a simple purpose as we have now in view, we are compelled to note the vital contradictions and falseness which pervade his writing. The best parody, of the many of Mr. Carlyle's writings we have seen, is that of Mr. Patrick Proctor Alexander, of Edinburgh, of which we must give one short specimen. It is titled " A VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 121 Discourse on Sauerteig," * and is a glorification of Sauerteig as the master in the art of the " cook- ing of historical pork-chops." Very sardonic and satirical are many of the passages ; this, perhaps, will be as effective an extract as any other : — A singular Sauerteig-Soyer, taken in the actual fact, girt with his cook-aprons and unalterable culinary wrappages, brandishing his hero-gridirons, and infinitely manipulating with his sauce piquante and imaginary middle age pork-chops, may perhaps be a figure like few, worth glancing at a little in an occasional way. Latest culinary preparations of Sauerteig, long expected, hungered for, here before us at last, in two stout sufficient volumes, published at the rate of one pound sterling per volume (somewhat severe, O Sauerteig I), may perhaps be worth glancing at in an occasional way. Culinary preparations purporting to be of a certain Cirimwold, high-shining, heroic, baronial figure, of the old King John and Richard eras ; " much deserving to be known, hitherto not much known, alas ! much w/i--known as yet, the very little that we know of him." Poor glimpses of him here and there revealed for us in Monk Chronicle of one Jocelinus de Brakelonda, revealer also of a certain Abbott Samson, of whom readers have heard. Which Grimwold, a singular Sauerteig-Soyer, will un- utterably proceed to cook for us, at the rate of one pound per volume (severe ! O Soyer and Sauerteig !) With slight prelude and jargoning of the understood sort : — hero-hood ! earnest soul ! noble life ! other the like ineffable cants and jargonings, most peremptorily not to * Mill & Carlyle. With an occasional discourse on Sauerteig by Snellfungus. By Patrick Proctor Alexander, A.M. 122 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. be here inflicted on poor innocent readers ; Sauerteig in a really rather clever, by no means quite inartistic way, will treat us as a ziihet, in the first instance, to some life image and visual presentment of his hero, Grimwold. Presentment passably well done in the approved Sauer- teig manner. " Stalwart, nigh hero figure, steel figure on occasion ; murky in some dubious, uncertain wrappages of buff, or the like jerkins, and other middle-age ware ; somewhat grim-trenchant in the looks of him ; nose massive {valde grossum et eminaitem, monk dialect of Jocelinus,) of type, as I perceive, high Norman ; eyes gleaming out, clear, menacing, from under the black bush brows, highly capable of glaring, if need be, and like enough to find need now and then : — a clear decisiveness of soul, veracity, earnest valour, looking out from the whole man, and breathing from every lineament of him ; — a highly sufficient man and ruler of men, as the outcome of him will shortly convince us." With much to the like purpose, such as some of us may have seen before. A bit of historic portraiture, not without merit in its way ; slight, not inartistic preliminary cookery of Grimwold, and whetting of the reader's appetite for him. Judge of our blank bewilderment of mind, when turning the page briskly to a new chapter, anxious to make further acquaintance with this sublime hero figure, we find ourselves discussing with Sauerteig — ivhat in the fiend's name does a gentle reader suppose ? Adam and fig-leaves we may venture to surmise in a modest way, is not what most readers would suppose. By the Eter- nities, O reader, no other ; Adam and fig-leaves, fall of man ; thence downwards by a very slow coach indeed, through Noah, certain domesticities, incidents here treated with a free humour, amusing enough, but ques- tionable in these demure times ! Noah ! infinite other dreary patriarchs ; Hebrew eras ; old Roman, old Greek eras ; still on, on, till we finally find ourselves, wandering VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 123 lost creatures (our high Grimwold, as should seem, gone from us, too probably for ever), wandering, wandering in thick inextricable jungles of Wends, Kurfursts, Mar- graves, and the like dolefuUest " ghosts of defunct bodies ; " still passionately seeking for a Grimwold, and alas ! finding none ; no thrice accursed Wend or Kurfurst of them all able to afford us the least hint of our Grimwold. Ye heavens ! it is quite too bad ; our hero, Grimwold, in whom we really had an interest, and disbursed two pounds to get news of him a little, rapt away from us so ; and served up to us here, instead of him, mere dis- interred carrion of Wends, Kurfusts, Margraves, — doleful creatures, of interest new to no soul, extinct, unavail- able ; — available to this, O Sauerteig, for making a thing called book, at somewhat a severe figure ; otherwise for ever ?/;/available, uninteresting ; sole poor interest we could have with them, to get them swiftly shovelled under ground again if we could, not without deep execration. Disinterred carrion, O Sauerteig, of mere Kurfursts and the like ; plain carrion, actively insulting the nostril, to which 710 cookery could reconcile us. Palpable carrion, O Sauerteig ! at the somewhat severe rate of one pound per volume down for it ! phenomenon which, even in a swindler century, may be calculated to excite remark. Of a Sauerteig, who advertising his hero Grimwold to us, finds it needful, after one glimpse is given of him, to retire upon " Adam and fig-leaves," and thence with extremest tedium, through endless imbrog- lios of universal human history and stupidity, to work downwards towards his Grimwold ; thus much may be said, at least, that he has hit upon a novelty in historical method. Be the praise of originality in the matter, likewise of some audacity, nowise denied to Sauerteig ! " Igdrasil, the life-tree ! " shriekest thou, O Sauerteig ? as partly we seem to hear thee shriek : "Igdrasil ! and how it all gro7i's, and through all times and branchings of it, is 124 VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. ever mysteriously (?;/^/ how the present in every fibre of it does, in most real, irrefragable way, rest upon and relate itself to all fibres of the past ; some understanding of the past, out of which it flowers and rises, necessary in order to any wise understanding of the present, «S:c., &c." Reflections, O Sauerteig, scientifically satisfactory to us from of old, yet somewhat, it should seem, of the barren species ; in their own essentially rather poor basis satis- factory ; distinctly not satisfactory to us ; rather bosh to us, balderdash as regards this present matter ; the just rage of us, desperately seeking our Grimwold (having paid our two poor pounds for him), seeking, seeking through wastes of mere Wends, Kurfursts — tearing our way through the thorny jungles — lacerating our poor souls and limbs there, not to be appeased, O Sauerteig ! by your twaddling these poor cants and Igdrasils at us. On the whole, to dismiss this sad Kurfurst business, one feels much inclined, on the head of it, supposing such feat achievable, to kick Sauerteig as to some extent a shani and imposture, and desire him to refund some proportion of the money too plainly filched from us. A little further on we come on this sentence: "A Grimwold nowise indifferent to his victuals ; with a good hero-twist of his own, a sound ' healthy animalism ' ■{ SinnlicJikcit) the basis of him, as of most other men I have known worth much in this God's world ; to whom sacred bubbly-jock is most sacred, the hero rage at loss of him proportionate."* * And to the phrase "healthy animalism" {Sinnlichkeit) this note, very full of fine satire, is appended : — " Goethe, poet so called of the Germans ; supremely great figure to me in the literary dilettante days and infanthood ; now in mature years getting to look somewhat of a small figure ; his Faust and the like once thought to be great and the greatest, now seem to he fiddle merely ; our high hero Goethe himself mere pitifulest supreme fiddler." VERS DE SOCIETE AND PARODY. 125 Of all the novelists of our day no one presents more temptations to the parodist than Mr. William Black, with his fine but high pitched scene-painting. Mr. Edmund Yates, in one Christmas number of "The World," made some not unlaughable points against him in "Leone Dare," by the McBill}'black, over which some fun may yet be had by those who have not seen it, and can alight on the number. If we had wandered into the field of American Vers lie Socictc, Dr. O. W. Holmes' happy efforts in that department would have had to be signalised, especially such poems as "The Last Leaf," and also some felicitous exercises of Mr. Stedman and Mr. Saxe. If we had aimed at exhaustive treatment of Parodies, several of Professor Aytoun's " Bon Gaul- tiet" ballads would have demanded notice, especiall}" the parody of Mr. Tennyson's " Merman " and " Mermaid ;" and likewise several of Mr. Bret Harte's broad and vigorous efforts ; whilst, in Prose Parodies, we should also have had to refer to his " Condensed Novels " as fitting pendants to the several well-known novel parodies of Thackeray. To give specimens of all the varieties of parody that are in their way worthy of citation, were impossible. Particularly do we recall a very clever parody of Mr. Browning's blank verse, with his 126 VERS BE SOCIETE AND PARODY. affectedly prosaic spelling of Greek proper names, in the Examiner, and another as good in several respects in TJie World. There are nowadays a whole class of clever satirical journals which make this a kind of feature, passing even into the re- finements of Rondels and Rondeaus, &c., so that the supply is far from likely to fail. But it needs to be said that parody, though artificial in its nature, must not be too conspicuously forced, else the standard of requirement will be lowered. We see some tendency in this direction already : parodies are printed every week whose only claim to notice is their coarseness, and whose vulgar personality is their only point. Luckily they serve their purpose and pass ; but, evanescent as this form of verse is, it has its own influence on the general taste, and it were to be wished that the •editors of satirical journals were sometimes a little more alive to this point of view. WIT AND HUMOUR AND POETRY. It is, of course, hardly possible that one can find all his favourites included in such a selection as that of Mr. Arthur H. Elliott, in " The Witty and Humorous side of the English Poets ; " and if he is introduced to new friends, that ought to suffice him for the absence of some old ones. Mr. Elliott has evidently gone over the field carefully and with attention, and has gathered and grouped his speci- mens fairly well. But he has reflected too much, and yet to little purpose. Indeed, we suppose people always reflect to little purpose when they reflect too much. It is like doing a good and proper thing in the wrong way. It was quite right that Mr. Elliott should make some general remarks on " Wit and Humour " by way of preface to his volume ; but then he should have satisfied him- self about some "-reat and essential distinctions. It 1 2 8 WIT AND HUMO UR AND FOE TR J : is somewhat disheartening to read that, " strictly speaking, Poetry has no right to be named in this connection. Poetry is an affair of the emotions, whilst Wit and Humour are products of the intellect. Poetry is the offspring of the heart, whilst wit and humour are outcomes of the mind." That de- cidedly is not encouraging. We must draw the line somewhere, but we would rather it had not been drawn exactly there, even in the most easy way, by Mr. Elliot. Humour, a product of the intellect ; and opposed to Poetry as being a thing of the heart. Clear definition is a great gain in the outset ; but then you must conform your whole work to the lines you have laid down. Mr. Elliott does not and cannot thus conform his work, and it is good and attractive in spite of his defini- tion, his reflection, his theory. Why do we laugh ? Mr. Darwin has his theory, derived from the peculiar line of study he has so indefatigably pur- sued, that the movement of the muscles thereby brought into play is a survival of something which originally had a different bearing. Mr. Elliott would probably say that it was because the intellect wanted play, and found it either through the exer- cise of Wit and Humour on its own part or on that of others. This is not satisfactory ; because WIT AND HUMOUR AND POETRY. 129 the intellect, the instant that it thus begins to plaj-, needs playfellows. Wit demands fancy, and Humour demands imagination, and is not disinclined to go forth arm-in-arm with sentiment and pathos, or to meet them on the way. If we laugh, it is scarcely so significant as an ass's bray unless the heart is touched ; and unless in the perception of the merest verbal dexterities, the heart is always more or less touched. Why, for instance, do we so relish Mr. Mortimer Collins's fine passage in "The Birds" where he so aptly ridicules the Positivists : — Life and the universe show spontaneity ; Down with ridiculous notions of Deity ! Churches and creeds are lost in the mists, Truth must be sought with the Positivists. Wise are their teachers beyond all comparison — Comte, Huxley, Tyndall, Mill, Morley, and Harrison. Who will adventure to enter the lists With such a squadron of Positivists ? Husbands and wives should be all one community, Exquisite freedom with absolute unity. Wedding-rings worse are than manacled AVTists — Such is the creed of the Positivists. There was an ape in the days that were earlier, Centuries passed and his hair became curlier ; Centuries more gave a thumb to his wrist, Then he was a man and a Positivist. 130 WIT AND HUMOUR AND POETRY. If you are pious (mild form of insanity) Bow down and worship the man of Humanity, Other rehgions are buried in mists, We're our own God, say the Positivists. Now, what gives the real force to this ? It is the sense that under this playful guise the heart speaks its serious protest, and makes the intellect for the nonce its merry-andrew. It is the contrast between the grave depth of the emotion in which the thought is rooted, and the grotesque and over- easy form in which the thought runs, that imparts the laughable element to it. Why does laughing so often lie so near to tears? Because the heart is often most near to the tenderest mood, when it will endeavour to veil it by verbal conceits and quips and cranks. We smile at the smartness of Hood's declaration that he " was a lively Hood for a liveli- hood," but he were an imperfectly-fashioned man who would admit no stirrings of any faculty in following its purport save only intellect. And, once more, what is satire ? and what is its raison d' ctre ? It is strictly the heart's passionate protest against forms of wrong or of abuse reduced to such terms of the intellect as render these inharmonious and disproportionate, on a plane alien even to that common to them. The m_ost delicate satire may WIT AND HUMOUR AND POETRY. 131 thus be conveyed in the form of parody, which may therefore, in the most direct form, appeal to other faculties than the intellect. Mr. Elliott is far better in his remarks on in- dividual poems than he is on abstract principles and distinctions. He has missed some points. Mr. Perceval Graves, the author of " Songs of Killarney," should surely not have been omitted, for, according to our thinking, there were some fine bits of Wit and Humour in that volume ; some more specimens of the " Apprentice of Lincoln's- Inn " should have been given — especially that admirable parody on Mr. Swinburne's Dedication of his " Poems and Ballads" to Mr. Burne Jones; and Tom Hood the younger, though, alas ! no longer to be ranked among living writers, should have been more fully represented. Was he not a wit and a humourist with a touch of heart and true poetry, even in his lightest exercises ? George MacDonald, too, has written a {g.\\ humorous poems, and so have Mr. Gosse and Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse. We are not quite sure that Mr. Robert Buchanan will thank Mr. Elliott for including here the un- acknowledged "Session of the Poets," clever though it undoubtedly is ; and we are quite sure that Lord Southcsk will not like to see his poems so dis- 132 WIT AND HUMOUR AND POETRY. figured by stupid misprints. What meaning has this verse : — The rule already works ; his s/ate A Quaker partly thus denotes, Besides, one seldom ever sees Believers in short shooting coats. " Slate " should, of course, be " state," " Pywornc and Dixie," in the same page, should be " Pigworm and Dixie." There are many similar unfortunate misprints throughout. It is surely hardly correct to say that Burns " was the victim of religious hypocrisy and aristocratic neglect." Aristocratic neglect ! Did Mr. Elliott bear in mind how he was heroised in Edinburgh, and how duchesses and ladies were captivated by him ? Aristocratic at- tention spoiled him, then he made himself, alas ! hardly worthy to be remembered. And it is, in a literary sense, very wrong to represent Burns's wit and humour merely by his satires on religious pretence, which is assuredly fierce. In place of one of these, quite sufficiently well-known already, Mr. Elliott should have given "Willie Wastle dwelt on Tweed," or " Little thinks my love o' my beauty." We must, in parting from a book which, in spite of its defects and errors, is fitted to yield much pleasure, in justice give one specimen which is JVfT AND HUMOUR AND POETRY. 133 not so well known as it used to be — Mr. John Poole's parody on Hamlet's famous speech to Ophelia : — Let me tell you, Miss Ophelia, your behaviour's very rude, And your whims and freaks and fancies ought in time to be subdued. So, if my advice will better you, to give it is my duty ; Imprimis — Let your honesty discourse not with your beauty. Won't you, won't you, won't you to a nunnery go ? I told you once I loved you, but 'twas easy to perceive That I didn't care a fig for you, as now you may believe. In future trust to nobody, we're arrant knaves at best, And I (as soon you'll guess) am no better than the rest. Won't you, &c. If you marry (just to comfort you) this plague take for your portion. You'll not escape from calumny, however great your caution ; But if you wed, pray wed a fool, if disengaged your heart is — I need not state my reason — but 'tis better for all parties, Won't you, &c. I've heard too of your paintings — that you use both red and white ; Heav'n gave you one face, and to make another is not right. Your pranks have made me mad, so no more wedding- bells shall jingle — The married may remain so, but the rest shall all keep single. Won't you, &c. EPITAPHS. Epitaphs arc the paradoxes of literature. No- thing could be more curious than a study of the varied feelings which prompt them — a record of the quaint, revengeful, humorous, regretful moods — of the half- waggish, half-desperate sorrow, and sometimes even the grim joy, that slips into them, and preserves itself there. Charles Lamb asserted that " satire does not look pretty upon a tomb- stone ; " but human nature luill have its own way ; and there is, probably, no tablet with which the satirist has really been freer ; making it serve him to set, as it were, the balance straight with the dead ; and again transforming the hard and un- feeling marble into a grim medium on which to deposit his scorn for the weaknesses of the race. It is doubly suggestive and significant when the writer is also the subject. Then we have often EPITAPHS. 135 exquisite touches of irony concealing themselves under affected earnest, or broad satire sealed under quaintest self-revelation. To contemplate oneself as if one " were not," cannot readily be conceived as likely to give birth to unique playfulness of mood, nor capability to toss grotesque image upon image — piling Pelion on Ossa — to magnify one's right to be observed and spoken of And yet so contradictory is the human heart, that no class of Epitaphs are fuller of interest, and even of amuse- ment, than this one. Hawthorne said of one of his characters that he revealed himself by hiding his face ; and so, certainly we may say, it is here. It is readily admitted that to joke over a grave^ more particularly to joke over your own grave in prospect — seems the most inconsequent and irrev- erent of proceedings : and yet so strangeh" is man constituted, that he can, with almost better grace than any-where else, relieve his real feelings by a species of fun. The very best Epitaphs are smile-provoking. It is as if human gravity so long kept on the strain could not survive its own expres- sion, and smiled perforce at catching a sight of its countenance. At all events, no places have been the depositories of more humour and oddity than church)'ards. There is not one of any age which 136 EPITAPHS. does not possess its group of curiosities. Perhaps self-consciousness and egotism have their own share in the humour of churchyard Hterature. We all remember how that, when Hugh Miller tried to induce folks to employ him to cut grave-stone in- scriptions by offering gratuitously to write Epitaphs for them, as he fancied he could do it better than they could do it for themselves, the very proposal frightened away all possible patrons, and he would soon have been at beggary had he not tried some- thing else. To quote Charles Lamb again may seem supererogatory ; but it is so strange to find him quarrelling with wit and oddity that the quaint irony of the situation may suffice to justif}^ the citation : " I conceive disgust," he writes, " at these impertinent and misbecoming familiarities inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones ; " but though he had earnestly set himself to improve them as Hugh Miller did, it is doubtful if he would have succeeded any better ; we may even doubt whether a quaint name or a grim one would not have moved him to humorous utterance after all. We have gathered many specimens of eccentric Epitaphs — some direct from the tombstones, others from Mr. Fairley's book, and other books, and we shall now set a selection before the reader. We EPITAPHS. 137 shall begin with a few on trades and professions — a very common type of Epitaph. Tliis one from Houghton cliurchyard, on a blacksmith, has un- doubtedly some character and clearness : — My sledge and hammer lie declin'd, My bellows too have lost their wind ; M.y fire is spent, my forge decayed, My 7Hce is on the dust all laid ; My coal is spent, my iron gone, My nails are drove, my work is done; My fire-dried corpse here lies at rest, My soul, smokelike, soars to be blest. This is from Ockham churchyard : — - Though many a sturdy oak he laid along. Felled by Death's surer hatchet, here lies Spong. Posts he oft made, yet ne'er a place could get, And lived by railing, though he had no wit. Old saios he had, although no antiquarian, And stiles corrected, yet was no grammarian. The next is on George Joblin, shoemaker, Walls- end, and was written by himself: — My cutting-board's to pieces split. My sign-stick measures no more feet, My lasts are broke all into holes. My blunt knife will cut no more soles, Isiiy fuddling-caps to thrums are wore, My apron is to tie no more, My welt goes out, my awls are broken, And merry glees are all forgotten. 138 EPITAPHS. No more I'll use black ball or rosin, My copperas and my shop-tub's frozen. No more complaint for lack of work, Nor count dead horse or kick the kirk. My punches are with age grown smooth. And all my bones grow little worth. My lapstone's broke, my colour's done. My gum glass' broke, my paste is run. My hammer-head's broke off the shaft, No more Saint Monday with the craft. My nippers, strap, my stay, and rag. And all my kit has got the bag. My ends are sown, my pegs are driven, And now I'm on the tramp to Heaven. These lines, on another shoemaker, are in a Nonconformist graveyard in Manchester, called " Schofield's : "— At the cobbler's door Death often made a stand, And always found the cobbler as a mending hand. Death came again in rough and stormy weather, And tore the cobbler's sole from off the upper leather. Cooks are often signalised in Epitaphs. This one " On a Yorkshire Cook " may be given : — Underneath this crust Lies the mouldering dust Of Eleanor Batchelor Shoven, Well versed in the arts Of pies, custards and tarts, And the lucrative trade of the oven. EPITAPHS. 139 When she lived long enough, She made her last puff, A puff by her husband much praised, And now she doth lie And make a dirt pie, In hopes that her crust may be raised. This, on a London cook, is curt and apt enough : — Peas to his Hashes. [Peace to his ashes.] Benjamin Franklin was a printer, and this Epi- taph on himself is all the more expressive when this circumstance is borne in mind : — The body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer (like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding), lies here, food for worms ; yet the work itself will not be lost, for it will (as he iDelieved) appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by the Autho.'-. Another on Franklin runs thus : — B. F., the * (star) of his profession; the 111 (type) of honesty ; the ! (admiration) of all ; and although the ^^ (hand) of death has put a , (period) to his life, each § (section) of his life is without a || (parallel). I4Q EPITAPHS. Evidently the following on Louis Gedge, Type Founder, Bury St. Edmunds, owes something to the same idea as Franklin's : — Here lie the remains of Louis Gedge, Printer. Like a worn-out character he has returned to the Founder, hoping that he will be recast into a better and more perfect mould. And so, it would seem, does this from Addiscombe churchyard, Devonshire, upon a Brickmaker : — Here lie the remains of James Pady, Brickmaker, in hope that his day will be re-moulded in a ^vorkinanlike manner, far superior to his ioxxs\^x perishable materials. Beloe, in his anecdotes, gives the . following on William Lawes, the Musical Composer, who was killed by the Roundheads : — Concord is conquered ! In his turn there lies The master of great Music's mysteries ; And in it is a riddle, like the cause, Will Lawes was slain by men whose Wills were Laws. This epitaph upon a Choir Leader is to be found in a church in Durham : — John Bromley's body here doth lie. Who praised God with hand and voice. By music's heavenly melodies ; Dull minds he made in God rejoice. His soul into the heavens is lift, To praise Him still who gave the gift. EPITAPHS. 141 Llanfilanthhwyl, North Wales, supplies the next upon the Organ Blower : — Under this stone lies Meredith Morgan, Who blew the bellows of our church organ. Tobacco he hated ; to smoke most unwilling, Yet never so pleased as when pipes he was filling. No reflection on him for rude speech could be cast, 'I'ho' he made our church organ give many a blast. No puffer was he tho' a capital blower, He could fill double C, and now lies a note lower. This on a famous boxer may be cited from a Wiltshire churchyard : — Death took him in the upper vieio. And gave him such a brace ; The grapple turned him black and blue, And made him shift his place. Parts of access he next assailed With such a k/iockdoion blow, As never yet to mortals fail'd A total overthrow. The following is inscribed on a stone in the churchyard at Lidford, Devon : — Here lies, in horizontal position, the outside case of George Routledge, Watchmaker. Whose ability in that line were an honour to his profession. Integrity was the )nainspri)ig. And prudence the regulator Of all the actions of his life. 142 EPITAPHS. Humane, generous, and liberal, His hand never stopped Till he had relieved distress. So nicely regulated were all his motions, That he never went wrong except when set a-going By people Who did not know his key ; Even then, he was easily set right again. He had the art of disposing his time so well, That his hours glided away In one continual round of pleasure and delight, Till an unlucky minute put "^i period To his existence. On November 4, 1802, aged 57, He was 7vound up, In hopes of being taken in hand By his Maker, And of being thoroughly cleaned^ repaired^ and set a-gomg In the world to come. At Harrow is found this epitaph upon one Isaac Greentrees, reposing under a leafy shade : — Beneath these green trees rising to the skies, The planter of them, Isaac Greentrees, lies ; The time shall come when these green trees shall fall, And Isaac Greentrees rise above them all. At St. Giles, in Norwich, a woman named Eliza- beth Beddingfield is thus represented as speaking from her tombstone : — EPITAPHS. 143 My name speaks what I 7i>as^ and am, and have, A Bed-in-field — a piece of earth and grave, AVhere I expect, until my soul shall bring Into the field an everlasting spring. For rayse and rayse out of the earth and slime, God did the first, and will the second time. Passing over to the Isle of Man, in the church- yard of St. Ann's, we find this epitaph upon Daniel Tiers, who is said to have attained the unusual age of 1 10 years : — - Here, friend, is Uncle Daniel's tomb. To Joseph's age he did arrive, Sloth killing thousands in their bloom, WTiile labour kept poor Dan alive. Tho' strange, 'tis true, full seventy years. Was his wife happy in her Tiers. At Broughton Gifford, in Wiltshire, is found the following. Above the epitaph is a figure holding a number of shields, from which death is drawing out one inscribed with the arms of the deceased named Long. The life of man is a true lottery. Where death draws forth lots, short and long, Yet free from fraud and partial flattery, He shuffles shields of several size among. Draws lotig, and so, draws longer his short days. The Ancient of Days, beyond all time to praise. 144 EPITAPHS. At KilHngham in Essex is found the following upon Humphry Cole : — Here lies the body of good Humphry Cole, Though black his name, yet spotless is his soul ; But yet not black, though Cole is his name 1 Thy chalk is scarce whiter than his fame. In the Church of Paul's Wharf, in London, the name of Mr. More thus evokes the skill of the graveyard rhymster : — Here lies one More and no more than he. One M^re and no more ! how can that be ? Why 07ie More and no more may well lie here alone, But here lies one More, and that's more than one. * Sometimes too there is a touch of the enigmatical on these trade-epitaphs, as in this case from the tombstone of a Smith at Fearn, in Forfarshire, who probably also had been engaged in dyeing : — Full seventy years he lived upon this earth. He lived to dye — the end of Hfe is death — Here he was smith six lustres, and three more, The third thus wanted, it had but two before. * A few of these epitaphs are derived from papers by the Rev. W. Best, in The Christian World. EPITAPHS. 145 Hammersmith churchyard contains the following upon Thomas Worlidge, Painter, 1766 — so beautiful that we must give it by way of variety : — He who had art so near to nature brought As e'en to give to shadows life and thought, Had yet, alas ! no art or power to save His own corporeal substance /^w;; the grave. Yet though his mortal part inactive lies, Still Worlidge lives — for genius never dies. The following on Henry Fox, Weaver, is to be found in the churchyard at Sleaforth : — Of tender thread, his mortal web was made. The 7£' that is, baking them ; but Dr. Sharpey said " that the baking of animals and the freezing them to death are very severe experiments, worth making once, but ought not to be repeated ; " a point on which Dr. Burdon Sanderson was at one with him. Opinion was certainly various enough even about the warm-blooded animals. Dr. Rutherford re- marked that it was " wonderful what you could do to a sheep-dog without the animal making any commotion ; " and he drew thence a very handy inference — for the physiologists ; but Dr. Klein acknowledged that he had verified the old saw which made " cats uncanny," and for fear of being scratched, and no other reason, he indulged them with a little chloroform before vivisecting, which shows that medical equity in the way of assuaging SCIENTIFIC CRUELTY. 179 pain does not at any rate proceed on the usual principle of recognising desert. We are not sure whether in the light of Dr. Rutherford's remarks about the " wise passiveness " of the dog-tribe, we do not reach a new illustration of design, when we find Dr. Swayne Taylor saying that "a dog ex- periences the effects of poison (of all animals) most like a human being ; the doses of poison for a middle-aged dog being similar to those which will act on a human being, while the symptoms of suffering are very much the same." But Dr. Swayne Taylor humanely adds, " There is some- thing very dreadful in the operation of strychnine upon a dog — it no doubt suffers agonizing pain." Dr. Rutherford asserts that little or no pain is caused to dogs paralysed by curari, while foreign substances are being injected into them to stimulate secretion of bile ; but Dr. Hoggan firmly holds that ""the pain inflicted would be much more intense than a gall-stone passing along the bile-duct of the human subject." The battle of divergent opinion, however, raged most wildly round the frog. Dr. Lister did " not believe that the sufferings of the frog were worthy of serious consideration ; " Dr. Simon again had no i8o SCIENTIFIC CRUELTY. doubt as to the frog's full sensibility to pain. Dr. Pritchard had "performed thousands of operations on animals, and had never yet been able to detect any difference in sensation between the skin of either one or the other and the human subject save this, that the cuticle was thicker in some animals than in others, and of course, the knife had to pene- trate deeper to reach the sensitive structure ; but this once reached, he thought it as sensitive in the one animal as in the other." Perhaps Dr. Pritchard believes in the identity of protoplasm and all its possibilities ; but it is odd that, though he has reached these convictions, he confesses that, whilst he would never think of applying chloroform to dogs at all, he agrees with Dr. Klein in the decisive confession — " Would use it on a cat." (!) Though it needs to be acknowledged that, during the years Dr. Klein has been working in English laboratories, he has been singularly successful, and has done great service to medical science, yet it is surely cause for deep regret either that he should have spoken with such decision, or that he could not honestly do else. He was so much inclined to modify materially what he had said in correcting the proofs that the only course left open to the Commissioners was to print his evidence from the SCIENTIFIC CRUEIIY. i8t short-hand notes, and his corrected version of it side by side. There we find him answering two most important questions, thus : — When you say that you only use them (anesthetics) for convenience sake, do you mean that you have no regard at all for the sufferings of the animals ? — No regard at all. You are prepared to establish that as a principle which you approve ? — I think that with regard to an experi- menter, a man who conducts special research, and performs an experiment, he has no time, so to speak, for thinking what the animal will feel or suffer. His only purpose is to perform the experiment, to learn as much from it as possible, and to do it as quickly as possible. As for " frogs and the lower animals," the ques- tion of their pain was not worth a moment's con- sideration ; and he thus told in his own words about that little selective point in his method and the reasons for it : — Why do you not chloroform a dog ? — I chloroform a cat because I am afraid of being scratched. Why not a dog ? — If it is a small dog, there is no fear of being bitten by the dog. After this, we confess wc hardly know what to make of Dr. Klein's caustic remark, interjected in correcting his evidence, on the superiority of public opinion abroad to that in England. " It assumes," 1 82 SCIENTIFIC CRUEITY. he writes, " that men of science, like men in general, have conscience enough not needlessly to hurt brute animals." Here science and r(?;/science are very much alike — especially Pompey ; and Dr. Klein is an undoubted discoverer in philology, as in morals and physiology. And doubtless it was with a special view to such frank confessions that Sir William Gull drew out his axiom : " Knowledge is always humane ; it is only ignorance that is cruel ; " — which the lay reader might logically enough con- strue to the sad disadvantage of the scientific side of the medical profession.* Such very different and opposing views of the susceptibility of animals to pain, naturally suggests to the mind of a simple, but it may be logical, layman, that if educated physiologists cannot come * In the light of the above clear statements, it is somewhat sur- prising to read in the latest edition of the late Dr. Andrew Wynter's "Subtle Brains and Lissom Fingers" (Hardwick & Bogue), the following sentence, "Vivisection, when it is performed, is done by the physiologist in his own study. The tortures endured by the animal whilst under the process of ' dissection ' exist only in the imagination of the speakers [at the Congress of the S.P.C.A.] Common sense should have told them that, whilst we have such a thing as chloroform, an operator would not be likely to pursue his investigations amid the frantic struggles of agonized animals." But it is clear that either Dr. Wynter did not believe in the practice of a Dr. Klein, or in his plainness even as a remote possi- bility. And he was a medical man too. SCIENTIFIC CRUELTY. 183. to a closer agreement about such easy questions, much weight is not to be laid on more pretentious points. At any rate some doubt must occur to every mind about their right to be so dogmatic on benefits of a remote kind when they are so divided on what is immediate. The whole matter is com- plicated by the fact amply attested in evidence that many are now experimenting from mere curiosity or for the sake of abstract knowledge. Mr. G. H. Lewes, with an accent of deep regret, said, " One man discovers a fact, or publishes an experiment^ and instantly all over Europe certain people set to work to repeat it. They will repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it." Sir William Ferguson said, " The impression on my mind is, that these experi- ments are done frequently in a most reckless manner and (if known to the public) would bring the repu- tation of certain scientific men far below what it should be. I have reason to imagine that sufferings incidental to such operations are protracted in a very shocking manner." And then he proceeded to speak of the deadening and demoralising effect on the students, adding strength to what he said by quoting the opinion of Syme, who " lived to express an abhorrence of such operations, at all events if they were not useful." Dr. Haughton, of Dublin, 1 84 SCIENTIFIC CRUEITY. said he would shrink with horror from accustoming large classes of young men to the sight of animals under vivisection. He believed that many of them would become cruel and hardened, and would go away and repeat these experiments recklessly. Science would gain nothing, and the world would have let loose upon it a set of young devils. Pro- fessor Rolleston stated that Haller — a very famous physiologist — " in his old age fell into a permanent anguish of conscience, reproaching himself for his vivisections," and similar cases of others were cited. Evidence clearly showed that in various large university towns hundreds of dogs and cats were procured, not always fairly, and operated upon by the students in their own rooms. The alleged sufferings of the poor animals, left often for whole nights to pine and die in dark closets, were indes- cribable. Students are not likely to escape the hardening process thus indicated by Dr. Walker as taking place in a professor. An observation which first brought to my notice the hardening effect of habit, both moral and physical, was this. I used to dine very often with a lecturer in physi- ology, and one night I found that I could not enjoy either my cigar or my dinner, because the day before we had gone through the laboratory, and I could not get rid of the imploring looks of the dogs, which hoped for some food every time that they saw a human being, the patient SCIENTIFIC CRUEITY. 185 suffering of the fowls, and of the desperate efforts made by some rabbits to allay the pangs of hunger with any- thing to engage the digestion ; and it appeared to me that my friend was indifferent. He had been a vivisector some years : I was a beginner. "When I studied at Gottingen," writes Schopen- hauer, the Pessimist, " Blumenbach (the celebrated physiologist) in his lectures used to speak very seriously of the horrors of vivisection, pointing out what a cruel and terrible thing it is ; for that reason one ought to repair to it most rarely, and only in investigations promising important and immediate results. Even in such cases the operation ought to take place with full publicity in the large lecture room, and after an invitation to all medical students, in order to derive the greatest possible benefit from this cruel sacrifice on the altar of science. Now-a- days every quack thinks himself entitled to perpe- trate in his torture-chamber the most revolting cruelty to animals, in order to decide problems, the solution of which may be read in books into which he is too lazy or too ignorant to poke his nose. . . . Nobody is entitled to employ vivi- section, unless he knows perfectly what may be found in books on the subject of his investigation." And this same unexpected authority on this side, elsewhere says : — 1 86 SCIENTIFIC CRUELTY. " Mercy applies to enemies and malefactors, not to a good and faithful animal, which is frequently the nourisher of its master. Not mercy, justice is due to the beast." But the use of anaesthetics raises a further point. Sir Charles Bell and other operators have de- clared that results were varied and conflicting. "After many fruitless efforts," says M. Legallois, "to throw light on this mysterious subject, I re- solved to abandon vivisection, not without regret at having sacrificed so many animals and lost very much time." The old Roman physician, Celsus, says — for vivisection applied to human malefactors was in vogue in his time : " Of the things sought for by these cruel practices, some are altogether beyond the reach of human knowledge, and others could be ascertained without the aid of such ne- farious means. The appearances and conditions of the parts of a living body, thus examined, must be wholly different from what they are in their natural state. If we can, and not seldom by ex- ternal observation, perceive in the entire and unin- jured body remarkable changes produced from fear, pain, hunger, weariness and a thousand other affec- tions, how much greater must be the changes induced by the dreadful wounds and cruel mangling SCIENTIFIC CRUEITY. 187 of the dissector, in external parts, whose structure is far more delicate, and which are placed in cir- cumstances altogether unnatural." Now, if there was any truth in this position, as against vivisection of the human body, how much more directly must it bear against such experiments on animals, seeing that difference in structure must reduce the chances of light being thrown on human physiology. Chlo- roform too, is only a further disturbing element as inducing modifications so special to itself that an additional element of untrustworthiness is commu- nicated to any results obtained under its influence. Mr. Hamerton in his " Chapters on Animals," seems somewhat too severe on the manner in which scientific men gratify their instinct for destruction under the plea of the necessity of securing speci- mens. We fancied we were severe till we read the following from the pen of a naturalist, who sojourned in the Malouine Islands : " The baker-bird is so tame that it w^ill almost fly upon the finger : in less tha?i Jialf-an-Jiour I killed ten with a small switch^ and almost witJiout changing my position. It scratches in the goemons (fuais) which the sea throws on the beach, and there eats worms and small shrimps, which they call sea-fleas (puces de mer). Its flight is short; when disturbed, it con- 1 88 SCIENTIFIC CRUELTY. tents itself with flying two or three paces further off. Its habits are solitary." What a thing to record ! He killed ten of the innocent trustful birds without changing his posi- tion. A blush rises to our cheek as we read, for the heartless cruelty of this so-called scientific mind ! Why, he didn't have the excuse of risk, which is the sportsman's justification ! No, not even the enlivening plea of exercise, or of dash in the pursuit. It was massacre in cold blood of the most contemptible kind, and of the ten which he secured, no higher purpose was served so far as eight were concerned, than in the case of that lady, who killed a hundred robin red-breasts that she might tack their feathers on her dress fitly to personate Winter at a fancy ball. We have always felt that the much-talked-of advantage to be gained from freedom in such matters was problematic. Even although all the knowledge that can possibly be realised by such experiments were in our hands to-day, is it quite an ascertained fact that it would be a gain to the world if it were at the cost of the hardening of the moral nature in most of those who took part in them or witnessed them — in those, too, the bulk of whom are hereafter to be " healers ? " It has been SCIENTIFIC CRUELTY. 189 urged that the good of humanity which the vivisec- tionists, so they say, alone have in view, is supreme in the matter — their argument pretty well covering the same ground as that taken by Dr. Michael Foster in his calm and able article in the volume of Macjnillaiis Magazine, for i '^'j6. The good of the whole, they say, is what justifies, and must justify, destruction of great numbers of the lower creatures, and such experiments as are necessary to the pro- gress of medical science. Apart from the question whether these experiments are fruitful or are barren, as Sir C. Bell and others had confessed that their experiments on living animals had been, it still remains doubtful, as we hold, what is absolutely the good of the whole. Suppose medical science to reach a secret which would secure the life of each individual, on the average, up to seventy years, only at the cost, or even at the risk merely, of dulling those sensibilities and sympathies which are pre-eminently the glory of humanity, some men might still doubt whether the gift would prove in the end a blessing. All arguments of this kind, in one word, rest on assumptions that imply omni- science, and the only safe corrective to such a ten- dency is to be found in the sense of present duty and right. " Do not evil that good may come," is 190 SCIENTIFIC CRUELTY. •easily translated into practical application in " Be not cruel to a beast to-day in view of the problem- atic healing of men and women months or years hereafter ; " and certainly the descriptions of the animals while under experiment give the impression that great pain must be suffered by many of them. " Do not hurt an ant, which draws a grain of corn," says the Eastern sage, " for it has life, and this sweet life is clear to it." ROBERT BURNS AS A CELT. There was one thing in Mr. Stopford Brooke's admirable and characteristic " Primer of English Literature " which very much astonished us. As we read we fancied we must have misconceived his words, and had failed for some element in intelli- gence. We thought of Douglas Jerrold's appeal to his wife in the caseof Mr. Browning's"Sordello;"but, unfortunately, our remedy towards- self-composure and self-satisfaction was not so immediate. And this, although we ha\e always read Mr. Stopford Brooke with the greatest refreshment and pleasure. His " Religion of the Poets" was at once instructive and exhilarating. Nothing finer could well be said for Wordsworth than he said there. Our difficulty arose from the manner in which Mr. Stopford Brooke has expressed himself about Robert Burns and the Celtic spirit. Mr. Matthew Arnold, who has ex- 192 ROBERT BURNS AS A CELT. hausted the Celtic spirit, has dealt with Mr. Stop- ford Brooke's Primer, and praised it, and has not said a word about the Celtic spirit and Robert Burns. Therefore we humbly venture to state our difficulty, and also to give some reasons for qualify- ing in our own mind, Mr. Stopford Brooke writes at one part of his Primer : — The first of the Celtic elements in poetry is the love of wild tiature for its own sake. There is a passionate, close, and poetical observation and description of natural scenery in Scotland from the earliest time of its poetry^ such as 7ve do not possess in English poetry till the time of Wordsivorth. The second is the love of colour. All early Scottish poetry differs from English in the extraordinary way in which colour is insisted on, and at times in the lavish exaggera- tion of it. The third is the ivittiery more rollicking humour in the Scottish poetry, which is distinctly Celtic in contrast with that hiimour 7vhich has its root in sadness and which belongs to the Teutonic races. Few things are really more different than the humour of Chaucer and the humour of Dunbar, than the humour of Cowper and the humour of Burns. These are the special Celtic elements in the Lowland poetry. Its national elements came into it from the circum- stances under which Scotland rose into a separate king- dom. The first of these is the strong, almost fierce assertion of national life. The English were as national as the Scots, and felt the emotion of patriotism as strongly. But they had no need to assert it ; they were not oppressed. But for nearly forty years the Scotch resisted for their very life the efforts of England to conquer them. And the war of freedom left its traces on their poetry from Barbour to Burns and Walter Scott ROBERT BURNS AS A CELT. 193 in the almost obtrusive way in which Scotland, and Scottish liberty, and Scottish heroes are thrust forward in their verse. Their passionate nationality appears in another form in their descriptive poetry. The natural description of Chaucer, Shakespeare, or even Milton, is not distinctively English. But in Scotland it is always the scenery of their own land that the poets describe. Even when they are imitating Chaucer, they do not imitate his conventional landscape. They put in a Scotch landscape, and in the work of such men as Gawin Douglas the love of Scotland and the love of nature mingle their influences together to make him sit down, as it were, to paint, with his eye on everything he paints, a series of Scotch landscapes. It is done without any artistic composition ; it reads like a catalogue, but it is work which stands quite alone at the time he wrote. There is nothing even resembling it in England for centuries after. There is one more special element in early Scottish poetry which arose, I think, out of its political circum- stances. All through the struggle for freedom, carried on as it was at first by small bands under separate leaders till they all came together under a leader like Bruce, a much greater amount of individuality, and a greater habit of it, was created among the Scotch than among the English. Men fought for their own hand and lived in their own way. Every little Border chieftain, almost every Border farmer was, or felt himself to be, his own master. The poets would be likely to share in this individual quality, and, in spite of the overpowering influence of Chaucer, to strike out new veins of poetic thought and new methods of poetic expression. And this is what happened. Long before forms of poetry like the short pastoral or the fable had appeared in England, the Scottish poets had started them. I'hey were less docile imitators than the English, but their 194 ROBERT BURNS AS A CELT. work in the new forms they started was not so good as after English work in the same forms. We have quoted this passage complete because, apart from the point with which we are more par- ticularly concerned, it is wise and discriminating ; but we must, for consistency, set down this other, specially noting the words put into italics : — One element, the element of the passion of love, had been on the whole absent from our poetry since the Restoration. It was restored by Robert Burns. In his love songs we hear again, only with greater truth of natural feeling, the same music which in the age of Elizabeth enchanted the world. It was as a love-poet that he began to write, and the first edition of his poems appeared in 1786. But he was not only the poet of love, but also of the new excitement about man. Himself poor, he sang the poor. Neither poverty nor low birth made a man the worse — the man was "a man for a' that." He did the same work in Scotland in 1786 which Crabbe began in England in 1783, and Cowper in 1785, and it is worth remarking how the dates run together. As in Cowper, so also in Burns, the further widening of human sympathies is shown in the new tenderness for animals. The birds, sheep, cattle, and wild creatures of the wood and field fill as large a space in the poetry of Burns as in that of Wordsworth and Coleridge. He carried on also the Celtic elemetits of Scotch poetry, but he mingled them with others specially English. The rattling fun of the " Jolly Beggars " and " Tam o'Shanter " is united to a life-like painting of human character which is peculiarly English. A certain large gentleness of feeling ojten made his 7vit if. to that true humour which is more English than Celtii, and the passionate pathos of such ROBERT BURNS AS A CELT. 195 poems as " Mary in heaven " is connected with this vein of humour, and is also more EngUsh than Scotch. The special nationahty of Scotch poetry is stronger in Burns than in any of his predecessors, but it is also mingled with a larger view of man than the merely national one. Nor did he fail to carry on the Scotch love of nature, though he shows the English influence in using natural description not for the love of nature alone, but as a background for human love. It was the strength of his passions and the weakness of his moral will which made his poetry and spoilt his life. Of the three men he had most genius, but the poetical motives he supplied us with are fewer than those supplied by Cowper. Mr. Stopford Brooke does not seem to have distinctly grasped the idea that there is in Scotland a Celtic people and a Lowland or anti-Celtic people, and that, though many of the elements which dis- tinguish the two races have kindly met and become interblended in literature, they may, nevertheless, for critical purposes be clearly distinguished. And it is scarcely possible that he could have been unhappier in his illustration. Burns may have brought into Scottish literature qualities "especially English," he certainly was not a Celt and illustrated as few of the Celtic qualities in his poetry as any great Scotchman. It is well pointed out by Alexander Smith that he had no love whatever of scenery or of " wild nature for its own sake," which Mr. Stopford Brooke himself has just marked as 196 ROBERT BURNS AS A CELT. the first chief characteristic of Celtic poetry ; and certainly he showed none of that brooding melancholy, wedding itself with glamour and mystery, which is above all peculiar to the Celtic imagination. He paints nature, but it is only for the sake of the human figures which interest and excite him. He was subject to reactions, of course — that is merely saying that he was a poet and had strong passions — but in his poetry itself there is no trace of the languor, the mystic Heimweh, the longing for the unsealment of mysteries, and the far outlook into nature for answering voices there, which we humbly take it are the secrets at once of the beauty and the unadaptibility of Celtic poetry to modern times. Now, Burns was — though it seems paradoxical to say it — dramatic rather than lyrical, that is, he described a wide range of human experience and passion, and, generally, his own specific meditations and experiences only indirectly tinge his poetry. In Tannahill, for example, you see the opposite. If there was anything specifically Celtic in Burns we should say it was the " large gentleness of feeling " which Mr. Stopford Brooke declares to be more English than Celtic. And when Mr. Stopford Brooke speaks of Celtic humour as the " wittier and more rollicking," we apprehend ROBERT BURNS AS A CELT. 197 anew and more keenly, the almost unspeakable benefit that Professor Blackie has done to us, in his efforts to found that imicJi-ncedcd Celtic chair. One who had good opportunities of observing for himself the contrasted traits of Celt and Saxon, has indirectly given his testimony on that head in a letter which is full of humour, and will well serve to illustrate our position here — illustrate it better than even M. Taine's vigorous pictures of the rough-feeding and the rough-talk and joking of the Saxons, to which the mass of readers can easily go for themselves : — Last Wednesday (this witness writes) I was at the annual Cattle Fair, held there at an undulating moor a mile out of the town. It was a fine day for once, and it was rather a good scene. The Celt is too grave a character to make a good fair., however., there wasn't the aiiiotoit of laughing, sweet-hearting, shrieking of herd lads to bewildered collies, nor yet the same amo2int of " Krames " and tents that are absolutely necessary to produce a decent south-country or Loivland (for instance, Lammas) Fair. However, there was a great deal of gallopping of wild-eyed, blue- bonnetted or unbonnetted, duddy, dishevelled Gaels, upon furious demented-looking and equally dishevelled ponies of diminutive stature, long-maned and pot-bellied. And there was a great deal of blue homespun, and Gaelic streamed in all directions. There were two showmen — one with the gigantic title of the " Olympic Arena." The other had no name, but consisted of waxwork and a piper. He had an intimation (how beautifully Geordie would 198 ROBERT BURNS AS A CELT. have read it), hung outside, in his own printing, and more by token, of his own composition. This interesting document was to this effect : — ^ The . Public . is . invitted . to . sea . Her . Most . Gracious . Magisty . Queen . Victoria . in . wax . work . as . large . as . Lif . and . other . curiosaties. ^ . N.B. — The periods and the flourishes are the show- man's. . . . The most striking feature of the whole fair, however, was the din made by a multitude of male urchins who flitted about with baskets and shrieked " Ar- au-Criahe ! " in the extremest and most piercing falsetto. It is pronounced ' Ar-au-Cree,' and on my appearance, or that of any one with a coat not blue, the mystic words were translated into English, and turned out to be Ginger-bread ! "* So that even a commonplace Highland cattle- market with " pownies," and " stirks," and sheep dogs, and dishevelled Highland herd lads, in the pages of the Scottish Probationer, bears witness against Mr. Stopford Brooke, when he speaks of the " more rollicking (!) humour in the Scottish poetry, which is distinctly Celtic in contrast with that humour which has its root in sadness, and which belongs to the Teutonic races." As if sadness was in any way a trait of Chaucer by which he could be con- trasted with Dunbar, or as if John Gilpin could be posed in that respect ^^^mi'^ Burn's "Jolly Beggars" or " Willie brewed a peck o' maut ! " * Life of a Scottish Probationer. Ry James Brown, D.D. Page 95-96. first Edition. R OBER T B URNS AS A CEL T. ic)g~ This is the passage in Alexander Smith's sketch of Burns, already referred to, so good in every way that it is worth quoting : — Burns had to sweat in the eye of Phcebus, and about all he writes there is an out-of-doors feeling. Although conversant with sunrises and sunsets, the processes of vegetation, and all the shows and forms of nature, he seldom or never describes these things for their own sakes : they are always kept in subordination to the central human interest. Burns cared little for the natural picturesque in itself — the moral picturesque touched him more nearly. An old soldier in tattered scarlet in- terested him more than an old ruin; he preferred a gnarled character to a gnarled tree. The ridges of Arran haunt Ayrshire — Burns must daily have seen them from his door at Mossgiel — and yet, to this striking object in his range of vision, there is not a single allusion in his letters and poems. No : it was the dramatic instinct, as we take it — the power of passing from one mood or mind to another, and submerging in the swiftness of the movement all personal traits, that made the great- ness of Burns. There is no over-refinement or " magic," or unearthly fascination in him ; and in all this he is the very antipodes of the Celtic poet. We shall never forget how, years ago, we came on a passage in one of Dc Quincey's less known autobiographic essays, which inferentially throws light on this matter. He was telling of his meeting, as a schoolboy from Manchester, with Mr. Roscoe, 200 ROBERT BURNS AS A CELT. and Dr. Curric, the biographer of Burns, at Liver- pool, and how he was moved by the tone of high Tory patronage which prevailed in that circle with respect to Burns' political ideas ; and he goes on to say : — On this view of the case I talked then, being ^ a schoolboy, with and against the first editor of Burns; I did not, and do not, profess to admire the letters (that is, the prose), all or any, of Burns. I felt that they were liable to the charges of Lord Jeffrey, and to others besides; that they do not even express the natural vigour of Burns' mind, but are at once vulgar, tawdry, coarse and common- place ; neither was I a person to affect any profound sympathy with the general character and temperament of Burns, which has often been described as " of the earth, earthy ;" — nuspiritual^ — ani})ial — beyond those of most men equally intellectual. But still I comprehended his situa- tion. I had for ever ringing in my ears, during that summer of 1801, those groans which ascended to heaven from his overburdened heart, — those harrowing words, *' to give him leave to toil," which record almost a reproach to the ordinances of God, — and I felt that upon him, amongst all the children of labour, the primeval curse had fallen heaviest and sunk deepest. " Unspiritiial — antjual" alas ! that was Burns' differentiating mark. Great by genius, yet sorrow- ful by an earthly nature : the spirit never rose up to its height, saying here I stand, king of a world above the senses, and my rule is here. This the Celtic poet does (see Mr. Matthew Arnold, who praised Mr. Stopford Brooke's Primer, and said not a word ROBERT BURNS AS A CELT. 201 about its heresies or novelties on the Celtic element), by the very fact that he is a Celtic poet, though his world may be a world of shadows. He is king there by a right natural and divine, however poorly he may fare for the indifferent outside paraphernalia on which he avows he does not much depend, whereas Burns while he professed to despise these was as utterly dependent upon them, full of small jealousies and hungry grudges : a great poet, one of the very greatest ; but a miserable, much-divided man — "unspiritual, — animal," and therefore nothing of a Celt. The glow of passion in Burns goes uncorrected by the meditative efflux which in the Celt colours all things, especially love, imparting to it a mild moonlike, and it may be somewhat misty, but also happily a steady and an abiding lustre. The Celt is not the child of reaction in the sense that Burns was, simply because he is the child of phantasy ; Burns was the child of reaction, because phantasy was inefficient in him, and though he thought deeply, it was with intenseness and a kind of harsh haste. He did not dwell with soft lovingness on his own thoughts, as the Celtic poet must do, finding in them a refuge from outward evils. They were as a rushing storm both outside and inside him, which 202 ROBERT BURNS AS A CELT. was, in one word, his weakness and the cause of his fall ; he could not speak as one Celtic poet does of meditation sweetly tempering phantasy, and phan- tasy moderating and giving pause to judgment. His faculties seem to act each by itself, taking no account of others. When he is sensuous, he is sensuous only ; when he is in a religious mood it would seem as if he was only religious. His satire is often unqualified by any humane touch ! This is, in so far, what Mr. Taine means when he writes : — Burns cries out in favour of instinct and enjoyment, so thoroughly, as to seem epicurean, and only epicurean. He has genuine gaiety, a glow of jocularity, ; laughter commends itself to him ; he praises it as well as the good suppers of good comrades, where wine is plentiful, pleasantry abounds, ideas pour forth, poetry sparkles, and causes a carnival of beautiful figures, and good- humoured people to move about in the human brain. MADAME DE STAEL. Anyone who has read that part of the correspon- dence of Goethe and Schiller respecting the visit of Madame de Stael to Weimar must have derived a very high impression of her tact and character, even though not a sentence of her own writings should have been read. The poetical magnates of Germany were both inclined to give her the go-by; they fancied she bore too much the character of a modern newspaper interviewer. Besides, they were then very busy on schemes in which both had a keen interest. They would rather she had not come. Goethe sulked a little, in fact, and went out of the way to be free. Schiller was reserved and distant, and only yielded out of pure gallantry to spend a little time in her society. Yet she soon made him feel at ease with her, in spite of his lack of quickness at French, and risk of misunderstand- 204 MADAME DE STAEL. ings and awkwardness ; and when Goethe, at length siivivwned by tJie Duke to the Weimar Court to meet her, did come face to face, he had to acknowledge that he enjoyed it, that she interested him, and excited his curiosity. Jean Paul let out, in his review of her " D'Allemagne " when it came later, that the same feelings had been nursed a little at all events by others. Dr. Stevens has treated well all these matters, and indeed, has very efficiently done his work. Madame de Stael was born in 1766, the daughter of M. Necker, of Geneva, whose father again had been Prussian. Her mother was the daughter of a Swiss pastor, a woman of great grace, attractiveness, and force of character, else scarcely could she, while young, have fascinated Edward Gibbon,the historian, who " sighed as a lover, and obeyed as a son," as he says, and to the end of his life remained unmarried* acknowledging that she was the only woman he had ever truly loved ; through her grandmother again, who was French, she derived some of her most commanding qualities, gaiety, wit, and colloquial readiness. It is interesting to note such things as these in such a case as that of Madame de Stael ; for, like the red strands, which we learn are twisted into the cables of the British Admiialty, absolutely MADAME DE STAEL. 205 to identify them at any point they may be cut, we see inherited natural characteristics appear and re-appear throughout her career. From her mother's side Madame de Stael thus drew that gaiety, that wit, that espieglerie, which might have seemed com- mon-place in itself had it not been associated with German subtlety, thoroughness, and the power patiently to deal with details, and yet to rise to the highest region of principles, and to touch and idealise them by imagination ; and, further, the Swiss self-devotion, patriotism, fervour, the power to renounce ease and comfort for the sake of con- victions strongly held. Bacon says, " there is no beauty which hath not some strangeness in the pro- portion ; " and the axiom recurs to us, as we think of the mingled strains which met in the character of Madame de Stael. The literary interest that circles round her name would suffice to make her take high rank amongst the famous women of all times. She wrote "Delphine." She wrote "Corinne." In them she clearly showed the power of wedding deep reflection with ideal glow, with warmth, with French esprit and charm. But this many French- women have done. Madame de Sevigne in t'ormer, and Madame Sand in more recent times, might both claim to be ranked high in this regard. But Madame 2o6 MADAME DE STAEL. de Stael's works will never be completely or even clearly read, apart from the story of her life ; the works, indeed, are the sufficing commentaries upon the life; read apart from it, they are not seen in full light, and some of the links of vital connection can- not be realised. The service that Dr. Stevens has here done to literary students is thus as great as that he has performed for the memory of Madame de Stael. Till now, there has been no adequate biography of this master-spirit in any language — a defect the greater for the reason we have noted : the presence of a strong lyrical and autobio- graphical element in all her writings. Dr. Stevens says : — I have not been able to find, in any language, anything like an adequate biography of Madame de Stael — a woman who, more than any other (not excepting Madame Roland), represents her epoch, and that the epoch of the modern history of Europe. The best of French critics, Sainte-Beuve, has accorded to her this pre-eminence. She not only lived and observed through the Terror of the Revolution ; she was active, as it was her nature to be, in such a crisis, and when Napoleon, whom at first she had welcomed, rose to the highest place, as first Consul, and later as Emperor, she seeing the duplicity and meanness of his nature, and the demoralising effect his rule must have, not only MADAME DE STAEL. 207 on France, but on the world, true to herself, she declined to bow down before him, or to prostitute her powers to his service. In preference to such prostitution, with wealth, influence, and honour as payment ; she accepted exile and dishonour, and was content for many years to drag out a weary life at a distance from the society her quick sympathies made her so eagerly crave. During this period, too, it was that she made intimate acquaintance with Russia, and parts of Germany, as well as Eng- land. It is because of these things, and the noble spirit in which she acted, that she has a claim to a high place on the roll of heroic women as well as of women of genius. It is impossible for us in the short space now at our disposal, to do aught worthy in a substantive form to reinforce our views ; but we may take up one or two points, and signalise them by means of little extracts from Dr. Stevens' book, which will suffice faintly to indicate our mean- ing here. The following passage is valuable as giving us a glimpse of her self-denying conduct in the Terror — the more valuable as the testimony occurs in company with a picture of the kind of society she drew round her when in England, and of the Meikleham meetings. Dr. Stevens writes : — Talleyrand is the wit of the circle. Madame de Chatre 2o8 MADAME DE STAEL. is described as "thirty-two years old, of an elegant figure; well read, full of esprit, very charming ; " Narbonne as " about forty, rather fat, but he would be handsome were it not for a squint in one eye. M. de Jancourt "is far from handsome, but has a very intelligent countenance, fine teeth, and is very expressive." He tells the English guests the story of Madame de Stael's heroism in rescuing him and others from the guillotine in Paris. " This lady," he says, " who was seven months gone with child, was in- defatigable in her efforts to save everyone she knew from the dreadful massacres. She walked daily (for carriages were not then allowed in the streets), to the Hotel de Ville, and was frequently shut up for five hours with the horrible wretches who composed the committee of sur- veillance by whom these murders were directed ; and, by her eloquence and the consideration demanded by her rank and talents, she obtained the deliverance of above twenty unfortunate prisoners, some of whom she knew but slightly." Madame de Stael is the cynosure of these conversazioni. If Talleyrand excels all in boti mots and epigrams, she dazzles all by the splendid variety and happy pertinence of her ideas, the richness of her style, and the generous en- thusiasm of her sentiments. At one time she thrills the company by her passionate recitation of a tragedy ; at another she entertains them, and particularly commands the applause of Talleyrand, by reading the first chapter of her work on the influence of the passions on the happiness of individuals and of nations, one of her most elaborate productions to which she now devoted occasional hours, but which was not published till the beginning of 1796. Of Napoleon's harsh, cruel, and despotic character, we have many traces in these volumes. He could respect nothing that did not bend low before his MADAME jDE STAEL. 209 demands — genius was criminal if it would not sub- mit directly to serve him. While Goethe was cringing and flattering him, Madame de Stael sub- mitted to banishment and shame ; and from her banishment from all the circles in which she found congenial society, we find her writing thus to the Emperor : — Ten years have passed sinre I have seen your Majesty ; during eight of them 1 have been exiled. As I am soon to embatk for America, I entreat your Majesty to permit me to speak to you before 1 depart. I will allow myself but a single subject in this letter. It is the explanation of the motives which induce me to leave the continent, if 1 do not obtain your permission to live in acomitry home near enough to Paris to render it convenient for my children to reside there. Persons in disgrace with your Majesty suffer from that fact throughout Europe. I can- not take a step without encountering its consequences ; some of my friends fear to compromise themselves by seeing me ; others defiantly brave that fear. The most ordinary relations of society thus become services that a proud soul cannot endure. I have passed my life for eight years between the fear of not obtaining these sacrifices and the pain of being their object. My sons are without careers ; my daughter is thirteen years old ; in a few years it will be necessary to establish her in life. It would be selfishness for me to force her to live with me in my banishment ; is it then necessary to separate me from her ? This life is not tolerable, and 1 see no remedy for it. What city on the Continent can I choose where my dis- grace will not produce insurmountable obstacles to the settlement of my children, as well as to my personal repose ? 210 MADAME DE STAEL. The prompt answer to this appeal was the de- struction of the whole edition of her book and her banishment from the entire territories of France. Well may Dr. Stevens add, with that touch of enthusiasm which is so becoming in a biography, and surely most becoming in this case : — The sublime integrity of her conscience, amidst this agitation and anguish of her woman's heart, is proved by the fact that she could have saved herself at any moment by compromising with Napoleon ; for Schlegel attested after her death that he (now in exile at Berne) '* received from a public functionary semiofficial notice to relieve her exile, on condition that she would write something in favour of Buonaparte's dynasty, but her soul revolted at the proposition." " She would not devote a line," he adds, "to the eulogy of tyranny; she resolved rather to seek refuge in England, across Russia and Sweden." But we turn gratefully from the episode of tyranny and her experience of it to more pleasant matters. Here is one very attractive picture of Madame de Stael, as we may say, in her element ; for, while her Swiss integrity and heroic temper made her dare a tyrant, her love of taste and beauty and the need of being loved, made it all the harder for her to act as she did : — When she entered a salon, her step was, according to her cousin's sketch, measured and dignified ; a slight diffidence seemed to require her to aim at self-control, especially if her introduction attracted many eyes. As if MADAME DE STAEL. 2ri this passing cloud of embarrassment had prevented her from distinguishing at first the individuals of the company, her face became illuminated in proportion as she re- cognised them. A listener would suppose that she had inscribed on her mind all their names, and very soon those charming words of which she was so generous, showed that the most distinguished acts or qualities of each were pleasant to her thoughts. Her praises proceeded from the heart, and therefore reached it. She knew how to compliment without flattering. It was a maxim with her that politeness is the orb of choosing among one's real thoughts. Her whole demeanour was marked by a disposition to oblige ; there were abundant wit and vivid repartee, but no chicanery, and especially, no severity in her expres- sions. Her cordiality reposed silence on self-love, and her superior sense imposed it on self-conceit \ but pride itself could not feel resentful towards her, for her perfect sincerity and instructive kindliness and good humour won all he;trts. A writer who knew her in her childhood and in her advanced life says that 'among her most remarkable qualities her bonhomie held perhaps the first rank.' This extraordinary conciliatory power, united to an intellectual superiority which seldom fails to provoke envious criticism, was doubtless much enhanced by a certain tenderness and sadness, which habitually affected her thoughts, and often appeared suddenly in her gayest conversation. Her sensibilities were quicker even than her thoughts. Society, conversation were a necessity of her nature ; she needed distraction, for a certain pensiveness, not to say melancholy, hung continually about her ; it was mitigated by years, but wa_ never totally dispelled. It was a powerful element of her genius, and gave rich poetic colouring to her writings. Dr. Stevens is not always wholly reliable when 2ra MADAME DE STAEL. dealing with historical characters and incidents only indirectly related to his main theme. For example, he gives some wrong impressions about Herder (and here he goes hand-in-hand with Mr. Baring-Gould) when speaking about Madame de Stael's visit to Weimar. It is very far wrong under any kind of colour to give the impression that Herder was in sympathy with the conduct which has led Mr. Baring-Gould to speak of the " moral cloaca " of Weimar. The opposition in which he stood to all that, indeed, formed the misery of his life in a portion from which he found it next to impossible to escape. Goethe in after days endeavour to dis- credit Herder by calling him querulous and ill to do with. But Herder's upbringing, poor though it had been, was pure ; and his ideas of domestic duty v.'ere constantly shocked by what he heard and saw. This accounts for much of the fretfulness which was ob- served by those who came into contact with Herder in those days; and we can easily understand that a temperament like Herder's divided against itself, and compelled to condemn tho^e who had benefited did not sometimes in these circumstances exhibit itself in a wholly attractive light. But this should be distinctly understood that it was because he would have no part or lot in creating the " moral cloaca." MADAME DE STAEL. 213 And Dr. Stevens is far too favourable, in our view to Madame Krudener, who to the end carried some- thing of the insincere taint of her earher life, justify- ing the remarks of one incisive critic who aptly said that she was an " inferior Madame Guyon," and that " a sort of tuft-hunting quietism was hers." SHAKESPEARE AND THE BIBLE. One of the most remarkable facts in relation to Shakespeare is that the exceedingly proper or over-religious critics have come almost to a meet- ing-point with \\ I purely irreligious and sceptical critics on the subject of Biblical reference. Most ingenious attempts have been made to prove that Shakespeare must have been a lawyer, that he must have been a sailor, that he must have travelled in Scotland, and so on. There may be much doubt about such points as these ; but on one yet more important point there cannot be much doubt. It does not need a very long study of our great dramatist to realise fully that he was an attentive student of Scripture, and that certain elements in it had laid close hold of his imagination. Bishop Wordsworth, in his admirable book, " Shakespeare's SHAKESPEARE AND THE BIBLE. 215 Knowledge and Use of the Bible," which we have now before us, in its third edition, has done a great service in ably and systematically arranging the most outstanding coincidences, correspondences, or similarities of word, thought, or figure ; and his book would of itself go far to remove any doubt that might be felt about Shakespeare's indebted- ness to the Bible. The Bishop well writes : — The main object of the publication having been to vindicate the name of Shakespeare from the slur cast upon him most undeservedly, as though he had been one who treated the Word of God without due respect, and even with " profaneness," the author cannot but desire that some few at least of the innumerable readers of our immortal bard in the rising generation should still be enabled to judge for themselves, not only of the injustice he has suffered from such a reproach, but of the credit he deserves for the homage paid by him to Holy Scrip- ture, in a most remarkable degree, through the manner in which he has recommended and enforced the solemn truths and lessons which it contains. Now, this is precisely the point which wc wish to reach. By the improvers of Shakespeare after the Bowdler order, wc have it impressed upon us that Shakespeare used Scripture very improperly, irreverently — that he was, in fact, something of a sneerer — and they have in too many cases been guilty of mutilating and destroying some of the most beautiful, pathetic, and suggestive passages 2i6 SHAKESPEARE AND THE BIBLE. of Shakespeare, simply because those passages had distinct Scripture references. They simply re- garded him as unentitled to make use of Scripture in the way he had done. From another point of view, certain sceptics have in effect said the same thing, and join the Bowdlerisers in the last result to depreciate Shakespeare. Voltaire, as every one knows, spoke of Shakespeare as " a drunken savage," as one who could not rise above the preju- dices of English life, and who was, in a word, a Philistine, who went to church and read the Bible, and wrote plays which were half sermons, and did not understand the law of UAf't pour V Art. That was surely a peculiar position to take : yet it was taken. Shakespeare moralised too much, he preached too much, he was romantic, he defied classical rule. Nothing could more confirm him in his rudeness, his formlessness, his barbarous lack of style, and strict disregard of all the " unities." How could the stage admit of references dis- tinctively Christian without injury to the classic ideal ? It was impossible. " Drunken savage " alone was the fit epithet for such a monster. And it is remarkable, too, that while Voltaire was thus deprecating Shakespeare in France, Lessing (who, in the minds of some critics so much resembled SHAKESPEARE AND THE BIBLE. 217 Voltaire) was striving to restore him to the place of highest authority in Germany, and laying weight on the Jntniane religious sentiment by which Shakespeare was penetrated — a point which Lessing was, of all things, qualified to appreciate and to make plain to others. And thus, through the element which appealed to humanity, and which stood for religious toleration and true liberality, Lessing transformed Shakespeare into a great artillery for breaking down the wall of conven- tionality in literature and the drama, which had been built up by the French influence under Gott- sched and others. Looked at even from this point of view, the critical influence of Voltaire is directly in conflict with that of Lessing : here they stand opposed, precisely as they were opposed in the field of reliq:ion. Lcssino- unlike Voltaire, though he hated dogma, would have despaired of a dramatic literature without humanity, without religious senti- ment, without the aroma of toleration, of even- handed justice, which is its exterior face, as " sweet charity " is its inward one. How he would have smiled at the idea that a " drunken savage " could have written " The quality of mercy is not strain- ed," or any of the truly humane passages pervaded by the spirit of a similar sentiment. Thus we 2i8 SHAKESPEARE AND THE BIBLE. see how unjust it is to class Lessing and Voltaire together, as is too often done. With respect to Voltaire's position, the Bishop writes : — Not a little remarkable is it that those only who have disputed the superior merit and excellency of our poet have also denied the value and authority of Holy Scripture. l"he disparagement of such judges — I allude especially to Voltaire and David Hume — is an additional confirmation of the otherwise unanimous panegyric with which he has been honoured. It will appear scarcely credible at the present day that the accepted Historian of England, in speaking of England's greatest poet, should have given vent to criticisms such as these : — "A striking peculiarity of sentiment Shakes- peare frequently hits ; a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for anj time uphold. It is vain we look [in him] for either purity or simplicity of diction Both he and Ben Jonson were equally deficient in taste and elegance, in harmony and correctness The English theatre has ever since taken a strong tincture of Shakespeare; and thence it has proceeded that the 7iation has underg07ie from all its neighbours the re- proach OF BARBARISM, from which its valuable produc- tions in some other parts of learning would otherwise have exempted it." The author of these remarks upon Shakespeare has himself informed us that the volume which contained them, when first published, so far from being popular, was received " with one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation," on account of its political views. Nor, if the rest of its contents had been equally errone- ous with the passage which I have quoted, would it have deserved any better reception. And how did Hume console himself under the disappointment ? He SHAKESPEARE AND THE BIBLE, 219 proceeded to write his " Natural History of Religion," in which he gave the world to understand that, as he had looked in vain in Shakespeare for purity or simplicity of dictiofi, for taste or elegafice, for harmony or correctness^ so he had been unable to derive anything but " doubt, uncertainty, and suspense of judgment " from the written Word of God ! The concluding remark of the passage quoted above, in which Shakespeare and Ben Jonson are accused of having brought upon us " as a nation the reproach of barbarism from all our neighbours," is evidently founded upon the strictures of Voltaire, who not long before had characterised our poet as " a writer of monstrous farces, called by him tragedies," had pronounced Hamlet to be the work of " a drunken savage," and had attributed "barbarism and ignorance" to the nation by which he was admired. What the same French author also thought and wrote of Divine Revela- tion and of the profession of Christianity need not be told. A SUGGESTION ABOUT BUDDHISM. In some points we are compelled to say that Mr. Talboys Wheeler, in his short history of India, has grievously disappointed us. He has spared no investigation — he writes in a clear and effective, if far from brilliant, style — he has studied and analysed as few other writers have done, or probably could do, the old Indian epics — Mahabha- rata, Ramayana, &c., &c. From these he has, so to say, compiled as complete and continuous a history of the earlier ages of India as is perhaps possible. But truth to say he is not mystical ; he does not approach a truth from the side of sensibility, but of intellect. His light is too often dry light; and he is apt, unconsciously, to set aside as inadmissi- ble what is after all the most natural interpretation His commentary on Buddha and Nirvana, how A SUGGESTION ABOUT BUDDHISM. 221 commonplace it is — not a glimmer of insight be- yond what has been dinned into our ears for years past by commonplace travellers, mission- aries, and men of many grades of scholarship, and — the reverse. The essence of Sakya Muni's teaching was that every one should strive to be good in thought, word, and deed; that by so doing he would be born to a better and happier life in the next birth. But he taught that those who were truly wise would also seek to attain a higher object namely, the deUverance of the soul from the chain of transmigrations. This, he maintained, could only be affected by leading the life of a religious mendicant; by rooting out every affection, passion, or desire ; by severing every tie that bound the soul to the universe of being. When that end was accomplished, the soul would be detached from all life and being ; it would be de- livered or emancipated from the endless chain of transmi- grations, and would finally sink into an eternal sleep or annihilation known as Nirvana. Which is a caput mortiium. It is, we think demonstrable that, in spite of vagueness of terms what Nirvana meant was not at all annihilation, but identity with the Divine. If Mr. Wheeler had said that Buddha's desires were to escape from the miseries of life, which had been intensified by the ceaseless round of Brahmanic ceremonies, through the truly moral life that demanded a mystical basis, in spite of a determination not to recognise it, he would, we think, have come nearer the truth in a 22 2 A SUGGESTION ABOUT B UDDHISM. few words than he has done in his many words ; and if he had brought out clearly how, notwith- standing the intense strain of mysticism in Buddha himself, his teaching to his followers ever turned on practical duties, he would, in a word, have more effectively indicated than he has done the eternal value of his Gospel. Jesus Christ said that the man who preferred father and mother to him was not worthy of Him. Buddha said that to obey father and mother was better than to serve the gods of heaven and earth ; and the approach of the two forms of teaching at the transcendental point is far closer than might be believed. The words of Christ asserting a continued identity — " I and the Father are one " — on one side touch, we may without irreverence say, the same side of the mys- tical ideal as that after which Buddha strove. Nirvana is constantly opposed to Sansara — the realm of change, illusion, coming and going. When Boehme said, "The man to whom eternity is as time, and time is as eternity, he is above all strife," had in his mind the identical thought. We ought not to isolate Nirvana, and view it apart from what was always held in contrast with it in Buddha's mind. In Nirvana was rest and stillness, and also simplicity and unity. These are the elements of a A SUGGESTION ABOUT BUnnmSM. 223 complete and ideal life — the perfection of sensi- bility and thought, not of death and nothingness. Transmigration was of the essence of the Brah- manic creed ; Buddhism proclaims a close to trans- migration, and reasserts the soul as soul. So long as the soul can be reborn, it can die ; to assert a point beyond which there was no rebirth was Buddha's way of again proclaiming immortality, pure and simple. A transmigration for individual existence was thus annihilated only in so far as it was dependent on evil or sensuous desires. Buddha held that Nirvana could be attained here ; and so our Saviour said, " TJie kingdom of God is within your As for God, it would take a whole article to make clear Buddha's idea ; but Nirvana was simply a re-union with Him. Some close students of the development of thought in India have found in ideas like these the general solution of difficulties otherwise insur- mountable in its progress from stage to stage, and one of them, to whom we must own indebtedness, has generally set forth thus the elementary con- ditions for any kind of interior comprehension of Brahminism and Buddhism : — " In India the march of inquiry was directed by two impulses : the search for a unifying, for an 224 A SUGGESTION ABOUT BUDDHISM. all-simplifying, principle, and the yearning to escape from transmigration, from the ceaseless series of re-embodiments, and all the miseries that waited the soul in birth after birth. The progress was qualified by the necessity of absorbing the earlier order of conceptions, of finding a place for the ancient theological imagery. The conciliation was effected by declaring that the gods and their worship belonged to the unreal, to the transmigra- tory fieri or illusory spheres of pleasure and pain, but yet that worship was the necessary preliminary of real Knowledge, as the only means of purifying the intellect of the aspirant for the reception of the truth. Let these three momenta of the Indian speculative procedure be carried in mind, and the reader will have no difficulty in understanding the complex texture of Indian cosmogonies." * We firmly believe there is something to be said for such a view, without in the least straining Buddha's words ; but Mr. Wheeler's theory takes no note of the possibility of interpretation in this direction, and though his book is, on the whole, fitted to be useful, and to supply a want, it might have been thus far better, more sympathetic and more comprehensive. * The Philosophy of the Upanishads," by A. E. Gough, in «' Calcutta Review," 1878, page i. GEORGE HERBERTS LOVE OF NATURE. What relation has passion and breadth of human nature to love of Nature in the modern sense ? We are not aware of any very exact and satisfactory attempt to answer the question. It is noticeable, certainly, in the case of what may be called the co7mnunicative lover of nature — typified to us in such men as Ruskin and Thoreau — that we have a certain coldness or bloodlessness along with great enthusiasm and incapacity to find full enjoy- ment in Nature apart from some form of self- expression. But love of Nature in its last phase should promote reticence. Ruskin and Thoreau differ in much : Thoreau, it is true, seemed to have great reserve and self-restraint, where Ruskin seems to have little ; but that may only be seem- ing ; for measures of self-control are very difficult 226 HERBER T'S LOVE OF NA TURE. to appraise, as not seldom more is taken out of the man who can maintain an aspect of self-support in a crisis than out of the man who more or less nervously yields under it. This, however, may safely be said that in all men of this type there is a certain pale and ineffectual fineness — a lack of passion in the common sense, and a kind of retreat from the acknowledgement of sexual desire. We might have named in this connection also William Cowper, and the Scottish poet, Thomas Aird, whose love of Nature and intimacy with animals were as express and characteristic as his poetic genius. Our readers may, perhaps, be a little surprised when we say that some remarks of Dr. A. B. Grosart on George Herbert, have suggested these sentences. Mr. Grosart claims for Herbert that he was a great Nature-lover. Well, from one point of view and that which we have just noted, he ought to have been. If ever there was a poet with- out passion, bloodless and hermetic, we may say that George Herbert was. Let any one read the story of Herbert's courtship, and then say whether we are right or not. It may seem an odd way to illustrate the point, but it is at least as good as argument by inferences from his works, and quaint HERBER TS LOVE OF NA TURE. 2 2 7 Isaac Walton has taken care to make it possible to us. Read : — " I shall now proceed to his marriage ; in order to which, it will be convenient that I first give the reader a short view of his person, and then an account of his wife, and of some circumstances concerning both. He was for his person of a stature inclining towards tallness ; his body was very straight, and so far from being cumbered with too much flesh, that he was lean to an ex- tremity. His aspect was cheerful, and his speech and motion did both declare him a gentleman ; for they were all so meek and obliging, that they purchased- love and respect from all who knew him. " These and his other visible virtues, begot him much love from a gentleman of a noble fortune, and a near kinsman to his friend, the Earl of Danby ; namely, from Mr. Charles Danvers, of Bainton, in the county of Wilts., England. This Mr. Danvers having known him long and familiarly, did so much affect him, that Jie often and piiblicly declared a desire that Mr. Herbert zvojild marry any of his nine daughters (for he had so many), but rather his daughter Jane than any other, because Jane was his beloved daughter. And he had often said tlie same to Mr. Herbert himself ; and that if he could 2 2 8 BERBER TS LOVE OF NA TURE. like her for a tvife, and she Jiivi for a husband, fane shoidd have a double blessing ; arid Mr. Danvers had so often said the like to Jane, and so much commended Mr. Herbert to her, that Jane became so much a Platonic (!) as to fall in love with Mr. Herbert unseen. " This luas a fair preparation for a marriage ; but, alas ! her father died before Mr. Herbert's retirement to Dantsey. Yet some friends to both parties secured their meeting ; at which time a mutual affection entered into both their hearts, as a conqueror enters into a surprised city ; and love having got such a possession, governed, and made there such laws and resolutions, as neither party was able to resist, insomuch that she changed her name into Herbert the third day after this inter- view. This haste might in others be thought a love-frenzy, or worse ; but it was not, for they had wooed so like princes, as to have select proxies (!) such as were true friends to both parties, such as well understood Mr. Herbert's and her temper of mind, and also their estates, so well before their interview, that the suddenness was Justified by the strictest rides of prudericey * And so certainly it would seem. * Edition of 1824. BERBER TS LOVE OF NA TURE. 2 2 9 Now, this we hold proves our point about the remote and passionless character of Herbert. From this we might have argued some turn for love of Nature. But Herbert lived in an age when Nature was seen only through conceits, and whether from constitution or from power of custom, he never came close enough to it. A writer in St. PauVs Magazine indeed said that Herbert showed no love of Nature, and Dr. Grosart severely took him to task. With the writer in St. PauVs, we maintain, at the risk of re-exciting Dr. Grosart's ire, that Herbert does not show much love of Nature. Love of Nature as a sentiment in the sense that Laprade, say, uses it, Herbert showed little of Nature is loved by him as a medium for communicating specific ideas rather than for itself To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, To hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour — Which Mr. Grosart quotes as elucidating George Herbert's love of Nature, does not at all imply that either the grain of sand or the wild flower in itself is seen truly. Blake himself categorically asserted such was not the case,* and certainly what he here * Blake declared, for example, that he did not see a round disc 230 HERBERTS LOVE OF NATURE. meant was not what Mr. Grosart means when he quotes the verse as illustrative of Herbert's direct love of Nature. But clearly the writer in St. PauFs, on the other hand, went too far when he said that Herbert viewed this present world as " only base and utterly indifferent." But we can say this, and say too that Herbert's " knowledge of the sights and sounds of Nature " is often too special for Mr. Grosart's purpose. That very stanza quoted by Mr. Grosart attests it. The conception of Nature revealed in it is surely artificial — that of a gardener rather than a poet — though, be it noted, the artifici- ality is well used to convey a mood in which the devoutest feelings are just enough coloured by fancy to take without much effort, a ready rhythmic form : — Rain, do not hurt my flowers^ but gently spend Your hony-drops; presse not to smell them here; When they are ripe their odour will ascend, And at your lodging with their thanks appeare. The poem is full of this artificial conception : it is the artificial conception of Nature, indeed, used of fire, when he looked at the sun rising, but an innumerable com- pany of the heavenly host crying, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty." And that this is no poetic figure, we find him writing deliberately, "Natural objects always did and do weaken and obliterate imagination in me," so that his verse can hardly be taken as bearing in the direction Mr. Grosart desires. HERBERT'S LOVE OF NA TURE. 2 3 1 directly as a symbol to illuminate a great spiritual law — the law of providential compensation — lying far beyond special instances, but here brought to shake hands with them, that the humour, or rather the wit, arises from as it does in many other in- stances. Witness : — Bees work for man, and yet they ?iever bruise Their Master's flower, but leave it, having done. As fair as ever and as fit for use ; So both the flower doth stay and honey run. [Interjectionally wc may say what a point Herbert would have made of the fertilization of plants !] Sheep eat the grasse, and dung the ground for ?nore ; Trees after bearing drop their leaves for soil ; Springs vent their streams, and by expense get store ; Clouds cool by heat and baths by cooling boil. Now the view here in the first two lines is that of the farmer as formerly we had that of the gardener ; that of the second two is scientific, but still artificial and special ; but of the sentiment of nature pure and simple, as we find it in Wordsworth and Burns,, we have very little. We call to mind many other phrases such as " slacknesse breeds worms," which shows peculiar knowledge ; nevertheless, though we run the very grave risk of being classed by Mr. Grosart among the " purblind critics," we cannot be 232 HERBERT'S LOVE OF NATURE. uncandid enough to pretend to see what we do not see — the sentiment of Nature proper in George Herbert — even at Mr. Grosart's bidding, and under such terrible penalties. We read in Mr. Grosart's introduction : — There is this also to be borne in mind, that while the age's character influenced Donne and Herbert, their own minds were by nature adapted to the style of their age. The age fed and nourished their peculiarities, but did not create them. Their peculiar inborn cha- racter — as later in Thomas Fuller — were in harmony with those of the age. Hence, where there was no field for those peculiarities, Herbert and Donne failed ; as the former in his " Psalms," the latter in his " Lamen- tations of Jeremiah ! " By the way [another digression] with reference here to a quotation onward, from " Anti- phon," as to Shakespeare having cast off his age's faults ! there is surely need for qualification. His mind, too, was in character with that of his age, in the matter both of subtlety of thought and expression, and it was his excess of those and his genius that elevated what would in others have been faults into graces. Now, certainly the tendency of Herbert's age was not towards love of Nature, as we now understand it, and as it is revealed to us in Cowper, Burns, Words- worth, and their followers, so that in claiming this so fully for Herbert, does not Mr. Grosart fall into the same error as that on which he makes a digres- sion to set Mr. George MacDonald right respecting the world-poet Shakespeare, who, besides, lived in an' age pre-eminently of revival and greatness } A^K' UN WIN takes pleasure in sending here- wilh a Catalogue of Books published by him. As each New Edition of it is issued, it tcill be sent post free to Booksellers, Libraries, Book Societies, and Book Buyers generally — a register bein^ kept for that putpose. Book Buyers are requested to order any Books they may require from their local Bookseller. Should any difficulty arise, the Publisher 7iformation. Anyone, however, whose notion of a book is not limited to novels ought to be able to read it with pleasure, and ean hardly do so without profit." — Academy. " Dr. Japp travels through a Tariety of subjects, always entertaining and instructive." — Spectalof. " Nowadays boys are so fed upon story books and books of adventure that we welcome a book which tells them something about the facts of the world they live in." — Graphic. OLD FAITHS IN NEW LIGHT. By Newman Smyth, D.D. C"rown 8vo., cloth PLANT LIFE : Popular Papers on the Pheno- mena of Botany. By EDWARD Step. With 148 Illustrations drawn by the Author. Third Thousand. 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With great taste and judgment, and with wide catholicity of sentiment, Mr. Orme has made his selections. His book is, indeed, a book of consolation. We believe it will find a welcome in many a household, and help many w ho suffer to bear their pain hopefully." — Spectator. BEAUTIES AND FRIGHTS, WITH THE STORY OF BOBINETTE. By Sarah Tytler, Author of " Papers for Thoughtful Girls," " Footprints, " &c. Illustrated by M. E. Edwards. Second Edition. Small 8vo., cloth extra, gilt edges ... OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. " Delightful sketches of girls' lives." — Academy. " Miss Tytler is one of the few writers of modern times who know how to write girls' stories. It is impossible for her to be dull ; her tales are always sprightly, easy, and clever, and while she docs not condescend to preach, there are admirable life-lessons to be learned in all she writes." — Literary World. " Clever bits of character sketching." — Fiiblisher'! Circular. Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, 26, Paternoster Square. 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" Tlie puhlishers have done well in issuing these little readable manuals for the guidance of the Londoner, who, pent up all the week over his de>k. or otherwise debarred from the sight of more natur.il oljjects than city sparrows, seeks in the short space granted him by the Saturday half-holiday movement, or on the feast-days of St. Lubbock, that closer acquaintance with the rural delights so necessary for his bodily and mental health. It is, of course, impossible in the short space of some seventy or eighty small pages to do more than indicate the cliief attractions of localities so pleasant by nature as those above named ; but these are very fairly set forth, and being illustrated by Sections of a map on the scale of nearly one and a half miles to the inch, will be found of decided utility to the pedestrian in search of an object."— r//6- Fie/ J. " Fulfil their purpose thoroughly as a tourist's companions in his rambles about districts within a short distance from London." — Bojkseller. "They combine the useful information of the hackneyed Ijcal guide-book with something which is rarerand more difficult to present -the fostering of a love of nature and the kindling of some enthusiasm for the objects generally passed unheeded by the run of holiday excursionists, because they have had no chance of learning how to observe, nor have tasted the delights of "it. . . . The information is very closely packed, and justice is done to the lovely scenery and scientific novelties of tlie neigh- bourhood. The books are certainly cheap and well got up." — Noiicunformlst. " The best guides of the kind we have vet seen." — Land and Water. " Will be found to add much interest to a Saturday afternoon walk into the country." — Nature. "Should achieve a wide popularity." — Court Circular. ".All models of what a gossiping guide-book should be."— SiHith London Press. OUR NOBLE SELVES; or, Gleanings about (irantham Surnames. By the Author of " Notes on the Months," '• Notes on Unnatural History," (S:c. ... ... ... ... ... ... o SISTER EDITH'S PROBATION. By E. CONDER Gr.w, Author of "Wise Words. Small, 8vo., cloth extra " The tlirce tales of which this volume is composed are not only well written, but cannon fail to strengthen those who read them, especially the yonrg. in pure and ho'y living."- -/.//(■■.7;7 ll'or/.i. Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, 26, Paternoster Square. A Handbook to THE FERNERY AND AQUARIUM, containing full directions how to make, stock, and maintain Ferneries and Freshwater Aquaria. By J. H. Martin and James Weston. With 43 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., cloth extra ... ... o i o Paper Covers... 009 «*^ Issued also in two parts, paper covers, 6d. each. ' ' We cordially recommend it as the best little brochure on ferns we have yet seen. Its merits far exceed those of much larger and more pretentious works." — Science Gossip. "Though what Mr. Weston has to say is comprised within tifty pages, it forms one of the best manuals on the subject we have seen." — English Mechanic. " Few of the people, perhaps, who are sincere lovers of flowers and gardens, imagine the ' fern paradise ' it is possible for them 10 make with very little trouble. To such we would commend this admirable manual. In brief compass, and without wasting words, it tells all that is necessary to be known lor the general cultivation of these lovely plants." — Literary World. ' ' Those who are anxious to know the methods by which the fresh-water, the insect, the microscopical and the marine aquaria, are managed with success will do well to consult Mr. Weston's pages."- Field Naturalist. \^Ready. ADULTERATIONS OF FOOD (How to Detect the). By the Author of " Ferns and Fern- eries." Numerous Illustrations. Crown 8vo,, sewed ... ... ... ... ... ... ... o " The little work Defore us offers many useful hints to house- holders as to the detection of everyday adulteration." — Pall Mall Gazette. THE BATH AND BATHING. By Dr. J. Farrar, F.R.C.P.E. Crown 8vo., limp cloth ... o "Dr. Farrar's manual is not only cheap, but it is so clear, concise, and practical that no one need fail to carry out his instructions, or in deriving wise counsel and direction from his pages." — Literary World. New and Recent Books. EDUCATIONAL WORKS. ARMY EXAMINATION SERIES. I. GEOMETRICAL DRAWL\G : Con- taining ^General Hints to Candidates. Former Papers set at the Preliminary and Further Ex- aminations, and Four Hundred Questions for Practice in Scales and General Problems. By C. H. OCTAVIUS Curtis. Illustrated. Crown 8vo., cloth extra ... ... ... ... ... o IL A MANUALOF FRENCH GRAMMAR. By Le Compte de la Houssaye, Officier de la Ldgion d'Honneur, French Examiner for Military and Civil Appointments. Crown 8vo., cloth extra... o III. GEOGRAPHY QUESTIONS: Espe- cially adapted for Candidates preparing for the Preliminary Examination. By R. H. Allpress, M.A., Trin. Coll., Camb. Crown 8vo., cloth extra o EASY LESSONS IN BOTANY. ByEowARO Step, Authorof "Plant Life." With 120 Illustrations by the Author. Third Edition. Linen covers ... o Also in two parts, paper covers, 3d. each. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. " Numerously illustrated, clearly written, with a good deal of matter packed with much dexterity into a small space." — Science Gossip. "The arrangement is good ; the iilustrationsare very numerous, there being three or four on almost every page ; and the writer has done much to simplify the subject." — Sc/iool Guardian. " Still another primer of botany ! Well, we cannot have too many, provided all are as good as this one." — Tlic Inquirer. POETICAL READER FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS. Arranged on an entirely new principle, with Illustrations specially done for the • work. In Two Parts, each ... Or in sections separately. OPINIONS OK THE PRESS. ■'The editor of these two little volumes has managed to strike out an entirely new line for his pupils, and one whicli scarcely at any point crosses the beaten track. . . . To many readers besides school-children his volumes will present all the charms of novelty. The compiler has evidently a large acquaintance with the poetical literature of our country, and an excellent ear for the music of jioetry. . . . The work is therefore one of exceptional interest." — Scliool Boird Chronicle. Mr. T, Fisher Uinain, c6, Paternoster Square. AN ENGLISH GRAMMAR FOR SCHOOLS. Adapted to the Requirements of the Revised Code. In Three Parts. Price 2d. each, or complete in one cover ... ... ... o o *:;;■-■= Adopted by the London School Board. FIRST NATURAL HISTORY READER. For Standard II. In accordance with the require- ments of the Revised Code. Beautifully Illustrated. Crown 8vo., cloth SPECIME.V OF THE ILLUSTKATIONS. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. "Written in a simple and pleasant style." — School Guardian. " The woodcuts, which are to be found on every page, will make the lessons pleasant to the scholars, and the text is wisely put in a semi-conversational form, calculated to induce intelligent ri.\\dms:."—'Pai>tisker's Circular. Published every ^A^ednesday during Term. PRICE SIXPENCE. Cljc #vfortr lllaga^inc: A Weekly Newspaper and Review. The aim of the promoters is to found a periodical which shall include among its contributors and readers both Graduate and Undergraduate members of the University, and which shall represent every side of Oxford life. Contributions of merit will be gladly accepted upon all subjects, and from w-riters of all opinions. Full and accurate information will bo obtained from a regular correspondent in each College, and i;i the chief Clubs and Societies of the University. The Management will be in the hands of an Editorial Com- mittee, vvhich will include Graduates and Undergraduates. London Publisher: T. FISHER UNWIN, 26, Paternoster Square. The SHIPWRECKED MARINER: B Qiiarterh} /llbaritimc /iftacia^inc. Edited by W. R. BUCK, Secretary of the Shipivrcckcd Mariners' Society. ILLUSTRATED. Published in January, April, July, and October. PRICE SIXPENCE. T. FISHER UNWIN, 26, Paternoster Square, E.C. THE || TEMPLE.ii ^^ - . . .,^ ■ . . * . - il SACRED POEMS liil •t/jS, AND PRIVATE EJA- CULATIONS. By Mr. Geqrce Herbert. PSAL. 29 In his Temple doth every ^^ man fpeakof his honour . &h:^ f^: C^^ ^ CAMBRIDGE: |l|ii| Printed by r/7o/;/.5«^/§, ii|i I'C^^i*! and ^(7^^r "D^K/V/, printers ,^^^'3' 'i||l totheuniverfme. i^||| ^|c3« • 1633. mM)^ JN'WIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS, LONDON AND CHILWORTH. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILIT^^ A A 001 423 626 9 m^3 :i-;S:»^5::^>># mmyr m^M^ §W: M^i iii 1