THE VARIATION HUMBUG.
There is perhaps more Humbug talked, printed, and practised in reference to Music than to anything else in the world, except Politics. And of all the musical humbugs extant it occurs to Mr. Punch that the Variation Humbug is the greatest. This party has not even the sense to invent a tune for himself, but takes somebody else’s, and starting therefrom as an acrobat leaps from a spring board, jumps himself into a musical reputation on the strength of the other party’s ideas. Mr. Punch wonders what would be thought of a poet who should try to make himself renown by this kind of thing—taking a well-known poem of a predecessor’s, and doing Variations on it after this fashion:—
Buggins’s Variations of the Busy Bee.
How doth the Little Busy Bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower,
From every opening flower, flower, flower,
That sparkles in a breezy bower,
And gives its sweetness to the shower,