What, if thou by a booby art mistook?
Thou, a dull coxcomb of his rules bereaving,
Hast stupified him by too much conceiving.
Calling thee obsolete bonhomme!—the fly
Has buzzed about thy glory—let him die.
This parody appeared in Punch, December 27, 1856, and another, very much resembling it appeared in the same paper in 1863:—
Mr. Milton modernised.
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The sovereigns of Brown, Robinson and Jones?
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid