History of English Humour, Vol. 2

E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Janet Blenkinship, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)
LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1878. All rights reserved.

Burlesque—Parody—The Splendid Shilling —Prior—Pope—Ambrose Philips—Parodies of Gray's Elegy—Gay.
Burlesque, that is comic imitation, comprises parody and caricature. The latter is a valuable addition to humorous narrative, as we see in the sketches of Gillray, Cruikshank and others. By itself it is not sufficiently suggestive and affords no story or conversation. Hence in the old caricatures the speeches of the characters were written in balloons over their heads, and in the modern an explanation is added underneath. For want of such assistance we lose the greater part of the humour in Hogarth's paintings.
We may date the revival of Parody from the fifteenth century, although Dr. Johnson speaks as though it originated with Philips. Notwithstanding the great scope it affords for humorous invention, it has never become popular, nor formed an important branch of literature; perhaps, because the talent of the parodist always suffered from juxtaposition with that of his original. In its widest sense parody is little more than imitation, but as we should not recognise any resemblance without the use of the same form, it always implies a similarity in words or style. Sometimes the thoughts are also reproduced, but this is not sufficient, and might merely constitute a summary or translation. The closer the copy the better the parody, as where Pope's lines
Here shall the spring its earliest sweets bestow Here the first roses of the year shall blow,
were applied by Catherine Fanshawe to the Regent's Park with a very slight change—
Here shall the spring its earliest coughs bestow, Here the first noses of the year shall blow.

Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the way of the Sacramentarians, not sat in the seat of the Zuinglians, or followed the counsel of the Zurichers.