Much grieved am I in spirit by the news of this day’s post,
Which tells me of the devil to pay with the paper money host:
’Tis feared that out of all their mass of promises to pay,
The devil alone will get his due: he’ll take them at his day.
This the first verse of one of the Paper Money Lyrics (in imitation of William Wordsworth) written by T. L. Peacock. The poem will be found in the third Volume of The Works of Thomas Love Peacock. London. R. Bentley & Son, 1875.
A great many parodies of Wordsworth are to be found in books published forty or fifty years ago, but they are, for the most part, dull and uninteresting, a few of the best only need be enumerated.
Old Cumberland Pedlar. In “Warreniana.” By W. F. Deacon. Longman & Co., London. 1824.
The Stranger, The Flying Tailor, and James Rigg. In “The Poetic Mirror.” By James Hogg. Longman & Co. London. 1816. Specimen the Fourth, in “Rejected Odes” (London, 1813), is a parody of “Alice Fell.”
The Story of Doctor Pill and Gaffer Quake, after the most approved modern style, and containing Words-worth imitation, appeared in Vol. 10 of The Satirist (London.) This is a long and spiteful parody of Goody Blake and Harry Gill, which was first published in Lyrical Ballads (Bristol) in 1798.
“Tim the Tacket, a lyrical ballad, supposed to be written by W. W.” is to be found in Poetical Works by William Motherwell, Paisley. Alexander Gardner. 1881. It is a fairly good imitation of style, and might pass for one of Wordsworth’s minor ballads.