And in such pomp doth here sepulchrèd lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die!
From Travels, by “Umbra.” 1865.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
In the second volume of this collection (p. 236) will be found several parodies of Matthew Arnold’s Sonnet to George Cruikshank, and The Forsaken Merman, which had been printed some years before. Yet a writer in the Saturday Review, in a notice of Arnold’s poems, made the following confession of his ignorance:—
“Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and most of our lesser poets besides, have been parodied again and again; we do not remember to have seen a single parody of Mr. Arnold.… There is a subtlety about the structure of his verse and the harmony of his lines which defies imitation.”
The Superfine Review makes such claims to omniscience that it is refreshing to find a writer on its staff not only stating his belief that Arnold had not been parodied, but that his poetry defied parody, and this soon after the reading world had been delighted with the following successful burlesque, in Mr. W. H. Mallock’s The New Republic, published in London by Messrs. Chatto & Windus:—
“Softly the evening descends,
Violet and soft. The sea