There was not much help to Madge in this easy settlement of the difficulty. But she had a maxim which did help her: whenever you have a doubt as to which of two courses you should take, choose the one which is least agreeable to yourself. She decided to follow it in this instance, as she had done in many others of less importance.
THE MUSE OF PARODY.
Reader, are you of those who cannot tolerate their favourite authors or their favourite poems being parodied? A lady-friend of the writer’s lately said, in regard to one of the best-known poems of a distinguished poet: ‘I admired and liked it once; but I can hardly read it now, since I saw that dreadful parody of it that appeared in Punch.’ If you are of this sensitive class, we fear this article is not for you. But we feel pretty sure of an audience; for we know that the large majority of readers can relish a clever parody without in the least losing their enjoyment in or respect for the thing parodied. And it is well that it is so; for parody in some shape and to some extent is early as the beginnings of literature itself; and if the fame of poets depended on their immunity from travesty, every poet that has ever won his bays, and whose reputation now rests secure and impregnable, would have been laughed out of court long since.
In speaking of modern English parody, one’s thoughts turn first, almost inevitably, to the brothers Horace and James Smith, who, in Rejected Addresses, may be regarded as the first to practise parody in a systematised fashion, as a vehicle of fun and humour. The Rejected Addresses won high praise from Jeffrey, who pronounced the parody on Crabbe ‘an exquisite and masterly imitation;’ while the poet himself declared it to be ‘admirably done.’ We shall give a short extract from it, which we think hits off Crabbe’s manner in a way that fully justifies Jeffrey’s criticism:
John Richard William Alexander Dwyer
Was footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire;
But when John Dwyer listed in the Blues,
Emanuel Jennings polished Stubbs’s shoes.
Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy
Up as a corn-cutter—a safe employ;