Kottabos was a small magazine issued from Trinity College, Dublin, and published by William McGee.
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A PARODY BY CHARLES DICKENS.
The following parody, written by Charles Dickens, appeared in The Examiner for Saturday, August 7, 1841. Mr. Forster thus refers to it in his Life of Charles Dickens: “The last of these rhymes I will give entire. This has no touch of personal satire in it, and he would himself, for that reason, have least objected to its revival.” Thereupon Mr. Forster quotes seven only out of the eight stanzas he professes to give in full, omitting one which quite destroys his assertion that there was no personal satire in the parody. Mr. Forster was once described by a cabman as “that ’ere harbitrary cove;” to give a garbled quotation, and state that it is the entire poem is indeed an arbitrary act. The following is a complete reproduction of Mr. Dickens’s parody:—
The Fine Old English Gentleman.
New version (to be said or sung at all Conservative Dinners.)
I’ll sing you a new ballad, and I’ll warrant it first-rate,
Of the days of that old gentleman who had that old estate;
When they spent the public money at a bountiful old rate,
On ev’ry mistress, pimp, and scamp, at ev’ry noble gate,