Just left my bed
A lifeless trunk, and scarce a dreaming head!
I have seen a transcript, by the favour of a gentleman who sent it to me, of Gray's "Directions for Heading History." It had its merit, at a time when our best histories had not been published, but it is entirely superseded by the admirable "Méthode" of Lenglet du Fresnoy.
Henry Stephen appears first to have started this subject of parody; his researches have been borrowed by the Abbé Sallier, to whom, in my turn, I am occasionally indebted. His little dissertation is in the French Academy's "Mémoires," tome vii. 398.
See a specimen in Aulus Gellius, where this parodist reproaches Plato for having given a high price for a book, whence he drew his noble dialogue of the Timæus. Lib. iii. c. 17.
See Spanheim Les Césars de L'Empéreur Julien in his "Preuves," Remarque 8. Sallier judiciously observes, "Il peut nous donner une juste idée de cette sorte d'ouvrage, mais nous ne savons pas précisement en quel tems il a été composé;" no more truly than the Iliad itself!
The first edition of this play is a solemn parody throughout. In the preface the author defends it from being, as "maliciously" reported, "a burlesque on the loftiest parts of Tragedy, and designed to banish what we generally call fine writing from the stage." When he afterwards quotes parallel passages from popular plays which he has parodied, he does so saying, "whether this sameness of thought and expression which I have quoted from them proceeded from an agreement in their way of thinking, or whether they have borrowed from our author, I leave the reader to determine!"
Les Parodies du Nouveau Théâtre Italien, 4 vols. 1738. Observations sur la Comédie et sur le Génie de Molière, par Louis Riccoboni. Liv. iv.
The Tailors; a Tragedy for Warm Weather, was originally brought out by Foote in 1767. There had been great disturbances between the master tailors and journeymen about wages at this time; and the author has amusingly worked out the disputes and their consequences in the heroic style of a blank verse tragedy.
Beattie on Poetry and Music, p. 111.
I have arranged many facts, connected with the present subject, in the fifth chapter of "The Literary Character," in the enlarged and fourth edition, 1828.