LORD LYTTON.
In Volume V. of this Collection, (p. 222) parodies upon Lord Lytton’s Poems and Plays were given, burlesques upon his prose works remain to be noted.
Praises of the Ideal, the Beautiful, the True, and the Virtuous, abound in Lord Lytton’s Novels, of which desirable qualities his own life and character were singularly destitute.
Tennyson satirised him as a fop, whilst Thackeray treated him with well-merited ridicule and contempt, both in the “Epistles to the Literati,” and in “Novels by Eminent Hands.” The latter series originally appeared in Punch, and the parody of Lytton was entitled “George de Barnwell.” In this, a paltry thief and murderer was elevated into a hero, in much the same manner that Lytton had treated Eugene Aram.
It is quite unnecessary to give any extract from this well-known and accessible burlesque.
In connection with Thackeray’s well-known burlesque criticism on The Sea Captain by Lord Lytton (p. 225. Vol. V.) it should be mentioned that when that play was reproduced at the Lyceum Theatre under the lessee-ship of Mr. E. T. Smith, a continuation of Thackeray’s criticism appeared in The Mask, London, November 1868.
In this Thackeray’s style and orthography were mimicked, and Mr. Bandmann, who took the part of the prating hero Vivyan, was severely criticised for his stagey acting.
The Sea Captain had been damned in 1839, and The Rightful Heir scarcely merited a better fate, but it gave rise to a splendid burlesque, The Frightful Hair, by F. C. Burnand produced at The Haymarket Theatre, in December 1868, with Compton, Kendal, and Miss Ione Burke in the Cast.
The Diamond Death.
By Sir Pelham Little Bulwer, Bart.