Mr. Browning’s reply was to the effect that as he disapproved of every kind of Parody he refused permission to quote any of his poems, adding in somewhat ungracious language, that his publishers would be instructed to see that his wishes were complied with.
Perhaps the world does not greatly care whether Mr. Browning approves of Parody, or does not; neither can he very well expect that the completeness of this Collection should be sacrificed in deference to his distaste for a harmless branch of literature which has amused many of our greatest authors, and best of men. Byron and Scott could laugh at the Rejected Addresses, and enjoy a merry jest, even at their own expense, but let no dog bark when the great Sir Oracle opens his lips, and no daring humourist venture to travesty the poems of Mr. Robert Browning!
This injunction comes rather late, for numerous parodies of his works have already been written, of which some of the best must be included here. It is to be hoped that the perusal of them may induce some readers to seek in the originals those beauties which herein are only dimly shadowed forth.
Mr. Robert Browning was born at Camberwell in 1812, and educated at the London University. In September 1846, he married Miss Elizabeth Barrett, the poetess (who died in 1861), by whom he had one son, Mr. Robert Browning, the well-known artist.
HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX.
This is probably the best known of Mr. Browning’s earlier poems, it is given in Bell’s Standard Elocutionist, and various other collections.
On January 23, 1882, Mr. Browning wrote to the Oracle—“There is no sort of historical foundation for the poem about ‘Good News from Ghent.’ I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel, off the African coast, after I had been at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse, ‘York,’ then in my stable at home.
“It was written in pencil on the fly-leaf of Bartolio’s ‘Simboli,’ I remember.”
This Poem was chosen as the original for a Parody Competition in The World, and the two following parodies appeared in that entertaining journal on August 13, 1879.
How the Good News was brought from Ulundi to Landsman’s Drift.