Mirth and metre

MIRTH AND METRE.
Front.
LONDON AND NEW YORK: GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & CO. 1855.
MIRTH AND METRE.
BY TWO MERRY MEN.
Frank E. Smedley, AND Edmund H. Yates.
“I’D RATHER HAVE A FOOL TO MAKE ME MERRY, THAN EXPERIENCE TO MAKE ME SAD.”—SHAKSPEARE.
With Illustrations by M’Connell.
LONDON: GEO. ROUTLEDGE & CO., FARRINGDON STREET. NEW YORK: 18, BEEKMAN STREET. 1855.
If any one of those mysterious autocrats who “do” the reviews “on” some newspaper or serial shall, in his condescension, deign to inform public opinion what he may think about Mirth and Metre, that autocrat, unless he be in an unhoped-for state of benignity, will, doubtless, commence with the agreeable remark that “the work before us consists of certain Lays and Legends, written in paltry imitation of the productions of the in imitable Thomas Ingoldsby.”
Admitting the imputation without cavil, (except at the word “paltry,” which really is too bad, don’t you think so, dear reader?) the authors would inquire whether such an admission legitimately exposes them to hostile criticism? When the late Mr. Barham produced the “Ingoldsby Legends,” he, as it were, founded a new school of comic versification. That this is not a mere ipse dixit of our own is evinced by the fact that, in common parlance, a man who adopts this style of composition is said to have written an “Ingoldsby,” as he might be said to have written an Epic, had he chosen that form instead.
To assert that only a very small shred of Mr. Barham’s mantle has fallen upon any of his imitators (a fact to which none will more readily assent than the present writers), is simply to state that the standard we have proposed to ourselves is a high one, and proportionately difficult to attain.