Here the first roses of the year shall blow—
has been thus travestied by Miss Catherine Fanshawe, who accomplishes the step from the sublime to the ridiculous by the change of two words only:
Here shall the spring its earliest coughs bestow,
Here the first noses of the year shall blow.
Among living parodists, few, if any, excel Mr C. S. Calverley, who seems to possess every qualification for success in this sort of work. The reader will at once recognise how happily he has caught Tennyson’s method and manner in the following parody of The Brook, especially in the blank-verse portion. We quote two verses and the conclusion:
‘I loiter down by thorp and town;
For any job I’m willing;
Take here and there a dusty brown,
And here and there a shilling.
‘I steal from th’ parson’s strawberry plats,