When I can talk I’ll tell Mamma”
—And that’s my earliest recollection.
Charles Stuart Calverley is called the Prince of Parodists, but his genius deserves far higher praise than that.
His serious work is of a high order but it is for his humorous verse that he is most loved and praised.
His parodies while showing the best and finest burlesque qualities, are also poems in themselves, and are of an exquisite wit and a spontaneous humor rarely excelled.
One of the best is the ballad in which Rossetti’s manner is parodied in very spirit.
BALLAD
PART I
The auld wife sat at her ivied door,
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)