Out of the song of the eternities,
Or unfit to attend the ear of God.
My mocking words aim at, not thee, but those
Who would strain praise for thee, disgracing Truth.
[Conclusion of Pot-Pourri.]
Many good and honest souls, neither prigs nor pedants, are disposed to look with suspicion on the parody. They are not incapable of appreciating its good points; they will even allow it, when it is so, to be very good fun of its kind; but it is the kind they cannot away with. Nor are they always of that sort—a numerous and flourishing sort in our day—which, being itself one monstrous parody, is naturally prone to look with dislike on all who are blessed—or cursed, as some would say—with a sense of the ridiculous. But they regard it as an abuse of the gifts both of nature and of art; as apt to degrade and vulgarize what should really elevate and refine; as itself intrinsically an injustice; and, indeed, the more unjust as it is the more skilful.
There is so much both of justice and reason in this dislike that one cannot but respect it, though seeing how unreasonably it may be pushed and how unjust it may become. It is based, primarily, of course, upon sentiment—but it is a sentiment, in its original shape, both honourable and true. The word sentiment has come in these days to have a ridiculous twang in our ears partly through the silly and perverted uses to which the thing itself is too often applied, and partly through a confusion between the two qualities, sentiment and sentimentality, which may best be distinguished perhaps by defining the latter as the abuse of the former. It is sentiment which leads us to mark the houses where great men have been born or lived; it is sentiment which leads us to gaze with reverent admiration on that place of honour in the British Museum wherein are enshrined the handwritings of so many of our illustrious dead; all the care we take to preserve the memorials of the past is inspired by sentiment. But it is a sentiment which every right-thinking man would be far more ashamed to miss than to share. It is a very different feeling, for example, from that which induced a young lady on the other side of the world to preserve under a glass case the cherry-stones which she had snatched from the plate of a Royal Duke; it is a very different feeling from that which induces so many pious souls to play such fantastic tricks at the knees of living men. This objection, then we are not disposed in the first instance to quarrel with, especially as most of the so-called parodies, burlesques, or “perversions” of to-day are certainly bad enough to cover even a greater intolerance. They are bad both in art and tactics. They deal too often with subjects which should be kept free even from the most good-natured ridicule, and they deal with them clumsily. There is a sort of mind to whom every success, however lawfully and honourably gained, is sufficient cause for mockery; the higher a great figure towers above their heads the more active are their monkeyish gambols at its feet. The living and the dead are alike the objects of their impish regard, and if they perhaps enjoy a livelier pleasure in the thought of the irritation they can cause to the living, they seem to share a peculiar satisfaction in showing themselves superior to any feeling of reverence for the dead—to say nothing of the fact that in the latter case the game is apt to be a little the safest. The most part of mankind will sooner laugh at their more successful fellows than try to imitate, or, at least, to respect them; it is easy, then, to understand why the most witless and illiberal parody will never want an audience.
Nevertheless, the parody in itself is not only capable of increasing the gaiety of nations by perfectly harmless and legitimate means, but can also, when properly handled and directed, be made to play the part of a chastener and instructor. It has been often said that to parody a writer is really to pay a compliment to his popularity; and this is so far true that no one would think it worth his while to parody any work which was not tolerably well known, for half the point of any imitation must always lie in the readiness with which its resemblance to the original is recognized; if the original be not known the imitation must necessarily fall flat. No really good writer was ever injured by a parody; few, we may suppose, have ever been annoyed by one. No one, for example, was more quick to recognize the cleverness and laugh at the fun of “A Tale of Drury Lane” in the Rejected Addresses than Scott himself; Crabbe, though he thought there was a little “undeserved ill-nature” in the prefatory address owned that in the versification of “The Theatre” he had been “done admirably.” On the other hand, we can fancy that Messieurs Fitzgerald and Spencer saw very little fun or wit, or anything but “undeserved ill-nature” in “The Loyal Effusion” and “The Beautiful Incendiary.” The paradoxical saying attributed to Shaftesbury, which so puzzled and irritated Carlyle, that ridicule is the test of truth, finds its true explanation in his real words, “A subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious.” Nothing good was ever destroyed by raillery; where it plays the part of iconoclast, the images it breaks are the images of false gods. Nay, and even to the true it may sometimes prove of service. It may gently admonish, for instance, the best and most established writer, when, from haste, from carelessness, from over-confidence, he is in danger of forfeiting his reputation; it may gently lead the tiro, while there is yet time, from the wrong into the right path. Nor on writers only may it be exercised with advantage. All men who have in any capacity become, as it were, the property of the public may by its means be warned that they are trespassing too far on their popularity, that they are in danger of becoming not only ridiculous themselves, but harmful to others; for every strong man who presumes upon his strength is capable of becoming a source of injury to his weaker brethren. We do not say that its lessons are always, or even often, taken to heart; but that does not detract from their possible virtue. If such a plea were allowed, what, in the name of humanity, would become of so many of us? What would become of our lawyers, our statesmen, our philosophers, our doctors, our policemen, our—appalling thought!—our critics, if the failure of their endeavours to set and to keep their erring brethren in the straight path were to be taken as a right reason for their abolition? Their resistance to error may seem hopeless, may be often ineffectual, but not for that should they abandon it; rather should they cry, with the author of Obermann, “Let us die resisting.”