On March 5th, 1882, The Weekly Dispatch published the result of a Prize competition for parodies on Carlyle’s style. Four imitations were printed, but the prize was awarded to the following:
On the Parliamentary “Closure.”
Business in these latter days the national palaver has mostly ceased to do; talk in every variety, perorations, objurations clamorously vehement have inundated the poor palaver, well-nigh swamping what of sense and work remained to it. Strange have been the sights of late, honourable members struggling all day, all night, stormful, impetuously rampant, found still by saffron Phœbus motioning, dividing, weary, and reckless of everything, wishful only to make an end. Sacred truly are the rights of minorities, sacred too are other rights, for one the right to work and to progress; but this right of the not honourable member, shameless, unreasonable, treasonable to drone, and adjourn, and divide, senselessly and hopelessly seems not sacred; not to me, nor to the Eternal Reason. For from of old was it not given to the strong to rule, and rule well, at peril of their souls; and is not strength with the many and not the few, shriek and expostulate though they may, passionate, hysterical, futile—now to be overborne by the “evident sense of the majority” arresting the inane jabberings with true Puritan earnestness and vigour, rejoiced in by the Empyreans, enemies of froth and the Pit. The sense of the majority cannot too often be “evident.”
J. W. Hale.
People of the Present.
Omitted from Carlyle’s “Reminiscences.”
BROWN, THE POET.
Went last night in wet, bad weather to Dash’s to meet Brown. A lean, long, clothes-prop of a man, with a bilious complexion-spectral, hideous, discordant, almost infernal. Much common-coloured hair streaming over narrow shoulders. Asked leave to present me with his new volume of poems, the result being that I got to talking in the Annandale accent, and communicated large masses of my views on weak verse to all within hearing. Tuneful Brown shaken as with a passing earthquake. A very questionable impression of myself left in that quarter, I imagine.
ROBINSON, THE PAINTER.