Parody may be considered as a form of comic versification. It is not enough that a parody should be in the same metre as the original poem it imitates. Nor is it sufficient that the first line or so has such a similarity as to suggest the original. In the best parodies each line of the original has an echo in the parody, and the words of the former are retained as far as possible in the latter, or replaced by others very similar.
Another form of parody is the parody of style, when, instead of selecting a particular poem to paraphrase, we imitate, in verse modelled on the form he usually adopts, the mannerisms of thought or expression for which any particular writer is distinguished.
Examples of both kinds of parody will be found in the "Rejected Addresses" of James and Horace Smith, which should be studied together with Hood, Barham, Wolcot, and Thackeray, by those who would read the best models of humorous, comic, or burlesque writing. I may add here that vers de société will be best studied in the writings of Praed, Prior, and Moore. From living writers it would be invidious to single out any, either as models or warnings.
CHAPTER IX.
OF SONG-WRITING.
Although song-writing is one of the most difficult styles of versification, it is now held in but little repute, owing to the unfortunate condition of the musical world in England. "Any rubbish will do for music" is the maxim of the music-shopkeeper, who is practically the arbiter of the art now-a-days, and who has the interests, he is supposed to represent, so little at heart that he would not scruple to publish songs, consisting of "nonsense verses"—as schoolboys call them,—set to music, if he thought that the usual artifice of paying singers a royalty on the sale for singing a song would prevail on the public to buy them.
Another reason why "any rubbish will do for music" has passed into a proverb is, that few amateur singers—and not too many professionals—understand "phrasing." How rarely can one hear what the words of a song are! Go to a "musical evening" and take note, and you will see that, in nine cases out of ten, when a new song has been sung, people take the piece of music and look over the words. A song is like a cherry, and ought not to require us to make two bites at it.
Nor is the injury inflicted on music due only to the amount of rubbish which is made to do duty for songs. The writings of our poets are ransacked for "words," and accompaniments are manufactured to poems which were never intended, and are absolutely unfitted, for musical treatment. Then, because it is found that poems are not to be converted into songs so easily as people think, the cry is not merely that "any rubbish will do for songs," but that "only rubbish will do,"—a cry that is vigorously taken up by interested persons.
The truth lies between the two extremes. A peculiar style of verse is required, marked by such characteristics, and so difficult of attainment, that some of our greatest poets—Byron for one—have failed as song-writers. English literature reckons but few really good song-writers. When you have named Moore, Lover, Burns, and Barry Cornwall, you have almost exhausted the list.
There is in the last edition of the works of the lamented writer I have just named—Samuel Lover—a preface in which he enters very minutely into the subject of song-writing. The sum of what he says is, that "the song being necessarily of brief compass, the writer must have powers of condensation. He must possess ingenuity in the management of metre. He must frame it of open vowels, with as few guttural or hissing sounds as possible, and he must be content sometimes to sacrifice grandeur or vigour to the necessity of selecting singing words and not reading ones." He adds that "the simplest words best suit song, but simplicity must not descend to baldness. There must be a thought in the song, gracefully expressed, and it must appeal either to the fancy or feelings, or both, but rather by suggestion than direct appeal; and philosophy and didactics must be eschewed."