When I embarked upon the subject of metrical parody I said that it was a shoreless sea. For my own part, I enjoy sailing over these rippling waters, and cannot be induced to hurry. Let us put in for a moment at Belfast. There in 1874 the British Association held its annual meeting; and Professor Tyndall delivered an inaugural address in which he revived and glorified the Atomic Theory of the Universe. His glowing peroration ran as follows: "Here I must quit a theme too great for me to handle, but which will be handled by the loftiest minds ages after you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past." Shortly afterwards Blackwood's Magazine, always famous for its humorous and satiric verse, published a rhymed abstract of Tyndall's address, of which I quote (from memory) the concluding lines:—

Surely this translation of the Professor's misplaced dithyrambics into the homeliest of colloquialisms is both good parody and just criticism.

In 1876 there appeared a clever little book (attributed to Sir Frederick Pollock) which was styled Leading Cases done into English, by an Apprentice of Lincoln's Inn. It appealed only to a limited public, for it is actually a collection of sixteen important law-cases set forth, with explanatory notes, in excellent verse imitated from poets great and small. Chaucer, Browning, Tennyson, Swinburne, Clough, Rossetti, and James Rhoades supply the models, and I have been credibly informed that the law is as good as the versification. Mr. Swinburne was in those days the favourite butt of young parodists, and the gem of the book is the dedication to "J.S." or "John Stiles," a mythical person, nearly related to John Doe and Richard Roe, with whom all budding jurists had in old days to make acquaintance. The disappearance of the venerated initials from modern law-books inspired the following:—

Some five-and-twenty years ago there appeared the first number of a magazine called The Dark Blue. It was published in London, but was understood to represent in some occult way the thought and life of Young Oxford, and its contributors were mainly Oxford men. The first number contained an amazing ditty called "The Sun of my Songs." It was dark, and mystic, and transcendental, and unintelligible. It dealt extensively in strange words and cryptic phrases. One verse I must transcribe:—

I quote thus fully because Cambridge, never backward in poking fun at her more romantic sister, shortly afterwards produced an excellent little magazine named sarcastically The Light Green, and devoted to the ridicule of its cerulean rival. The poem from which I have just quoted was thus burlesqued, if, indeed, burlesque of such a composition were possible:—

The Light Green, which had only an ephemeral life, was, I have always heard, entirely, or almost entirely, the work of one undergraduate, who died young—Arthur Clement Hilton, of, St. John's.^[32] He certainly had the knack of catching and reproducing style. In the "May Exam.," a really good imitation of the "May Queen," the departing undergraduate thus addresses his "gyp":—

In 1872 "Lewis Carroll" brought out Through the Looking-glass, and every one who has ever read that pretty work of poetic fancy will remember the ballad of the Walrus and the Carpenter. It was parodied in The Light Green under the title of "The Vulture and the Husbandman." This poem described the agonies of a viva-voce examination, and it derived its title from two facts of evil omen—that the Vulture plucks its victim, and that the Husbandman makes his living by ploughing:—

The base expedients to which an examination reduces its victims are hit off with much dexterity in "The Heathen Pass-ee," a parody of an American poem which is too familiar to justify quotation:—

Deservedly dear to the heart of English youth are the Nonsense Rhymes of Edward Lear. It will be recollected that the form of the verse as originally constructed reproduced the final word of the first line at the end of the fifth, thus:—

But in the process of development it became usual to find a new word for the end of the fifth line, thus at once securing a threefold rhyme and introducing the element of unexpectedness, instead of inevitableness, into the conclusion. Thus The Light Green sang of the Colleges in which it circulated—

And—

And—

So far The Light Green.

Not at all dissimilar in feeling to these ebullitions of youthful fancy were the parodies of nursery rhymes which the lamented Corney Grain invented for one of his most popular entertainments, and used to accompany on the piano in his own inimitable style. I well remember the opening verse of one, in which an incident in the social career of a Liberal millionaire was understood to be immortalized:—

Twenty years ago we were in the crisis of the great Jingo fever, and Lord Beaconsfield's antics in the East were frightening all sober citizens out of their senses. It was at that period that the music-halls rang with the "Great MacDermott's" Tyrtaean strain—

and the word "Jingo" took its place in the language as the recognized symbol of a warlike policy. At Easter 1878 it was announced that the Government were bringing black troops from India to Malta, to aid our English forces in whatever enterprises lay before them. The refrain of the music-hall was instantly adapted with great effect, even the grave Spectator giving currency to the parody—

Two years passed. Lord Beaconsfield was deposed. The tide of popular feeling turned in favour of Liberalism, and "Jingo" became a term of reproach. Mr. Tennyson, as he then was, endeavoured to revive the patriotic spirit of his countrymen by publishing Hands all Round—a poem which had the supreme honour of being quoted in the House of Commons by Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett. Forthwith an irreverent parodist—some say Mr. Andrew Lang—appeared with the following counterblast:—

DRINKS ALL ROUND.

(Being an attempt to arrange Mr. Tennyson's noble words for truly patriotic, Protectionist, and Anti-aboriginal circles.)

The Jingo fever having abated, another malady appeared in the body politic. Trouble broke out in Ireland, and in January 1881 Parliament was summoned to pass Mr. Forster's Coercion Act. My diary for that date supplies me with the following excellent imitation of a veteran Poet of Freedom rushing with ardent sympathy into the Irish struggle.

A L'IRLANDE.

PAR VICTOR HUGO.

By the time that these lines were written the late Mr. J.K. Stephen—affectionately known by his friends as "Jem Stephen"—was beginning to be recognized as an extraordinarily good writer of humorous verse. His performances in this line were not collected till ten years later (Lapsus Calami, 1891), and his brilliant career was cut short, by the results of an accident, in 1892. I reproduce the following sonnet, not only because I think it an excellent criticism aptly expressed, but because I desire to pay my tribute of admiration to one of whom all men spoke golden words:—

I hope that there are few among my readers who have not in their time known and loved the dear old ditty which tells us how

Well, to all who have followed that touching story of love and grief I commend the following version of it. French, after all, is the true language of sentiment:—

The chiefs of the Permanent Civil Service are not usually, as Swift said, "blasted with poetic fire," but this delightful ditty is from the pen of Mr. Henry Graham, the Clerk of the Parliaments.

Of the metrical parodists of the present hour two are extremely good. Mr. Owen Seaman is, beyond and before all his rivals, "up to date," and pokes his lyrical fun at such songsters as Mr. Alfred Austin, Mr. William Watson, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and Mr. Richard Le Gallienne. But "Q." is content to try his hand on poets of more ancient standing; and he is not only of the school but of the lineage of "C.S.C." I have said before that I forbear, as a rule, to quote from books as easily accessible as Green Bays; but is there a branch of the famous "Omar KhayyÁm Club" in Manchester? If there be, to it I offer this delicious morsel, only apologizing to the uninitiated reader for the pregnant allusiveness, which none but a sworn KhayyÁmite can perfectly apprehend:—

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

Wake! for the closed Pavilion doors have kept

Their silence while the white-eyed Kaffir slept,

And wailed the Nightingale with "Jug, jug, jug!"

Whereat, for empty cup, the White Rose wept.