LORD BYRON.
On [page 197] was inserted “The Enigma on the letter H,” with several parodies on it. This poem has been generally ascribed to Lord Byron, but from correspondence recently published in “Notes and Queries” there seems little doubt but that it was written by Miss Catherine Fanshawe. The following imitation of it appeared in The Gownsman (Cambridge) November 1830.
A Riddle.
I was fashion’d by nature, and formed in the sun,
And I’ve followed him since in the race he has run;
Not a country he warms but I’ve wandered it through,
From Kerguelens land to the verge of Peru;
Not a soul has been born, not a creature on earth,
But I have been there in the hour of birth;
I was present each minute in life as it pass’d,
And I mix’d with the dust it return’d to at last.
In the cup of the lily I love to repose,
And I guard, like a spirit, the bud of the rose.
In the feverish thoughts, and the doubt of a dream,
In the murmur that wakes from the bed of the stream;
In the struggle we hear when the tempest is high,
In the thunder that breaks ere we dream it is nigh;
In the fortune of war, in the plume of the brave,
In the surge, as it chafes on the crest of the wave,
I have ever been present, and ever must be,
Though the Universe had its beginning with me;
Though my fate is entwined with futurity too,
Yet I cannot last long, for I finish in you.
U.
——:o:——
Tobacco.
Sublime Tobacco! which from East to West
Cheers the tar’s labour or the Turkman’s rest;
Which on the Moslem’s ottoman divides
His hours, and rivals opium and his brides;
Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,
Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand;
Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe,
When tipp’d with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;
Like other charmers, wooing the caress,
More dazzlingly when daring in full dress,
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties—Give me a cigar!
The Island.
The Potato.
“Sublime potatoes! that, from Antrim’s shore
To famous Kerry, form the poor man’s store;
Agreeing well with every place and state—
The peasant’s noggin, or the rich man’s plate.
Much prized when smoking from the teeming pot,
Or in turf-embers roasted crisp and hot.
Welcome, although you be our only dish;
Welcome, companion to flesh, fowl, or fish;
But to the real gourmands, the learned few,
Most welcome, steaming in an Irish stew.”
T. Crofton Croker.
——:o:——
“Mazeppa Travestied: a Poem,” is the title of a small anonymous pamphlet published by C. Chapple, Pall Mall, London, in 1820. Price, Half-a-crown. It has an introductory address to “The Goddess of Milling, and her worshippers, The Fancy.”
The preface contains the following sensible passage “With regard to Travesty, or Parody in general, it may be observed that the use of it by no means necessarily implies a design of holding up the original to ridicule and contempt.” The parody itself, however, is so full of slang, and deals with such unsavoury topics, that no extracts from it can be given. Suffice it to say that it describes the adventures and amours of prize-fighters and their friends, in language worthy of the theme, although it must be admitted, the parody closely imitates the original poem in its construction. Following the Mazeppa Travestie comes a short parody descriptive of the defeat of Belasco, the Jewish prize-fighter.
The Defeat of Crack-a-Rib.
Belasco came down like a bruiser so bold,
And his bellows was good, and his nobbers all told:
And the shout of his backers was like the hurrah
Of the Black Diamond’s friends, when he queer’d Quashee’s jaw.
Like sheep in the pens, in that business so green,
All sporting their flimsies, the kiddies were seen;
Like those sheep, when the shearer has thought them full grown,
And fleeced them, those kiddies stood chilly and lone.
For the genius of Milling came down on the blast,
And bung’d up the eyes of the Jew pretty fast;
And the glims of the green ones with gloom ’gan to fill,
When they saw how the gilding was gone from their pill.
And there lay the cove with his mouth open wide
But through it there came not the sounds that defied;
And those who have made him are wild on the turf,
That the swell they had raised should prove nothing but surf.
And the pugilist’s fancy is loud in her wail,
For fear that her man should be clapt into jail;
And the queer’d ones of Israel no blunt can afford,
To flash in the ring, since their swell has been floor’d.
