The Portland daily press., 1892-12-02

Walsh's Handy-Book of Literary Curiosl-
ties, | find an omission it can easily sup
ply from its own files. In the article on
that form of drollery known as Parody
Mr.. Walsh gives many famous examples
quoting as far back as The Splendid
Shilling of John Philips (Which Steele
pronounced the finest burlesque poem in
the English language, though to this
generation it seems more than tribe
heavy, and bringing his quotations
down to date, as traders say in their cir
culars. He alludes to 1.-THE Heptalogia,
OF the Seven Against Sense Swinburne's
parody on himself and his alliterative
methods-which may be good poetry,
but, as metal on metal, would be deemed
bad heraldry-and quotes freely from the
Anti-Jacobin, the Bon Gaultier Ballads
the Rejected Addresses, and the Echo
Club. If, as has been said, parody must
give humorous twist to the sentiments
initiated, if the imitation must be con-
sciously exaggerated and the fun appar-
ent ON the surface, then the following
stanzas from parody on Macaulay in
the Bon Gaultier Ballads (Which. though
written just after Wordsworth's death,
has present interest by reason of the
passing of Tennyson) fills the bill;''
"He's dead, he's dead, the Laureate's deadl'
twas thus the cry began,
And straightway every garrett roof gave up Its
minstrel man;
From Grub Street. and from Houndsditch, and
from Harrington Within,
The poets all toward Whitehall poured on with
eldritch din.
what is't We seek, We rebel knaves? What
make you there beneath?"
1.-THE bays, the bays! we want the bays! We
seek the laureate wreath!
We seek the butt of generous wine that cheers
Choose thou among us all, Sir Knight-we may
not tarrV long!"
Just now the island poets seem to be
stunning the bays rather than seeking
them. A neater parody than the Bon
Gaultier ballad is that on Byron, from
the Rejected Addresses:
For what is Hamlet but a hare in March?
And what is Brutus but q croaking owl?
And what is Rolla? Cupid steep'd in starch,
Orlando's helmet in Augustines cowl .......
Shakespeare, how true thine adage, "fa1r Is
fOul!'
To him whose soul is with fruition fraught
The song of Braham is an Irish howl,
Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,
And nought is everything, and everything IS
nOught.
But, to my mind, better by far than
these, because less dependent upon bur
lesque and catching with finer ear and
fuller understanding the note of the
singer and the method of his thought,
are certain parodies that appeared in the
PRESS sometime in the seventies. The
authorship of them is now an open Sc
cret, and so need not tell it. They pro-
TESS to be paraphrases of Mother Goose
lyrics, in which the original theme is de-
veloped in accordance with late theories
of metrical art; and the defects of versi-
fication and expression corrected by such
masters of the modern Tyre as Tennyson
Theophile Marzials, Dante Gabriel Ros-
setti, Morris, and Swinburne. They are
nine in number, and for ''fore-word'' is
the following exquisite trayesty of
Joaquin Miller-a better poem it is. too,
than many Miller has written:
All have given that was mine
Songs taught of seas, and wave-wild words,
And thoughts that rushed as huddled herds,
And poems Of the palm, the pine.
The world has Knocked and made its jest;
sSing well, for glory and for gain.
For praise and pay-a poets pain;
And tell US after which was bestl"
1t tried to cage in gilded bars
The wild bird, free of song and wing.
That scars, and scorns to stoop-to sing
Unless high-poised among the stars!
/ shrink from cruel scott and jeer-
sing no more. only play
A prelude to the full-voiced lay
OF better bards-and drop tear.
From narrow minds as isthmus sands
turn to sea-broad faith unbarred-
Tohands made hard and bronzed and tarred
give this book-I stretch my hands;
My eager hands, from distant lands.
Of the nine. I have space here for but
two more; and select those after Marzi-
ais and Victor Hugo-not because they
are the best but because they are the
hriefest. The MarziaIs is simply per-