The Heroine

by Eaton Stannard Barrett

Ut quondam iuvenes, ita nunc, mea turba, puellae

Inscribant spoliis: Naso magister erat.

It must be said, however, that the author of Woman, a Poem does not confine himself to the alluring graces. His best known and most quoted lines are written in praise of courage and fidelity:

Not she denied her God with recreant tongue,

Not she with traitrous kisses round him clung;

She, while Apostles shrank, could danger brave,

Last at his cross and earliest at his grave.

If he were to survive in a single quotation, it is probably by these lines that the author, who spent much labour on the revision and polishing of his poem, would wish to be remembered.

It may seem strange that the author of this romantic poem on Woman should have been so ready to parody the new school of prose romance. Miss Cherry Wilkinson, when she took the name of Cherubina, and commenced heroine, might certainly have found some useful hints for her behaviour in this earlier treatise. But the fact is that no parodist is successful who has not at some time fallen deeply under the spell of the literature that he parodies. Parody is, for the most part, a weak and clinging kind of tribute to the force of its original. Very perfect parodies, which catch the soul, as well as the form, of the models that they imitate, almost lose their identity and become a part of that which they were meant to ridicule. Feeble parodies, where poor matter, not strong enough to speak for itself, claims notice by the aid of a notorious tune, are even more conspicuously dependent on the vogue of their original. The art of a tailor is seen in the cut of a coat; to make a mechanical copy of it, substituting tartan or fustian for velvet, is what any Chinese slave can do. It is form in literature which is difficult to invent. When a poem or a story, by the individuality and novelty of its form, has caught the public taste, there are always some among its victims who are nothing if not critical. They cannot forget it, yet it does not content them. They think it narrow and partial in its conception; it does not mirror Nature exactly as they see her; in short, they have ideas of their own. These ideas perhaps have not vitality enough to create their own definite form, so when a form is presented to them they seize on it for their purpose. Hence every new and original kind in literature produces a tribe of imitators, some of them contented imitators, who undersell the first author with colourable copies; others discontented imitators, or parodists, who offer their own substitute for the author's wares, yet stamp it with his brand. The compliment is the same in either case; and the effect is not much different, for nothing so quickly exhausts the popularity of a work of art as its power of multiplying its kind. Some congenital weakness, it is fair to say, there must have been in the original, when the form designed for a single purpose serves so many others. The weakness is not always easy to detect; but it is always there. It may be the weakness of excess; an ample and loose-folded robe like Walt Whitman's is characteristic of its wearer, but can soon be adapted to a borrower. Or it may be the weakness of defect; the music and solemnity of the Psalm of Life are a world too wide for the shrunken body of the thought that they conceal. A perfect conception expressing itself inevitably in the form that has grown with its growth defies imitators. The great things of Virgil and of Dante suffer no parody. And this is what is meant by a classic.

Yet lesser books have their day; and young authors, or old authors trying a new kind of work, often begin by imitation. They discover their genius by their failure. The famous parodies (so to call them) are not parodies at all; their freedom from the servility of parody is what has given them their place in literature. Cervantes may have thought that he could criticize and banter the romances of chivalry by telling the adventures of a poor and high-minded gentleman travelling on the roads of Spain; but once the new situation was created it called for a new treatment. Fielding doubtless intended to parody Richardson by a tale of the chastity of a serving-man; and it is easy to see how a mere wit would have carried out the design. But Fielding, like Cervantes, was too rich in ideas, and too brave in purpose, to be another man's mocking servitor. First Mrs. Slipslop incommodes the framework by her intrusion, and then Parson Adams enters to complete the disaster. The breakdown of these pretended parodies is always due to the same cause—the appearance on an artificially designed scene of real character. Character, where it is fully conceived, will not take its orders from the scene-shifter; it reacts in surprising ways to slight accidental provocations; it will not play the part or speak the words assigned to it; it is consistent with nothing but itself; from self-revelation it soon passes to self-assertion, and subdues the world to its will, disordering all the puppet-show.