PARODIES

OF THE WORKS OF

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN AUTHORS,

COLLECTED AND ANNOTATED BY

WALTER HAMILTON,

Fellow of the Royal Geographical and Royal Historical Societies;
Author of “A History of National Anthems and Patriotic Songs,” “A Memoir of George Cruikshank”
“The Poets Laureate of England,” “The Æsthetic Movement in England,” etc.

VOLUME VI.

CONTAINING PARODIES OF

A. C. Swinburne.   G. R. Sims.   Robert Browning.

F. Locker-Lampson.   Austin Dobson.   Dante G. Rossetti.

OSCAR WILDE.   J. DRYDEN.   A. POPE.   MARTIN F. TUPPER.

Ballades, Rondeaus, Villanelles, Triolets.

NURSERY RHYMES AND CHILDREN’S SONGS.

PARODIES AND POEMS IN PRAISE OF TOBACCO.

PROSE PARODIES.

SLANG, FLASH, AND CANT SONGS.

RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL PARODIES.

Bibliography of Parody, and Dramatic Burlesques

Some things are very good, pick out the best,

Good wits compiled them, and I wrote the rest;

If thou dost buy it, it will quit the cost,

Read it, and all thy labour is not lost.

John Taylor, the Water Poet.

REEVES & TURNER, 196, STRAND, LONDON, W.C.

1889.

PREFACE.

t is now a little more than six years since this publication was commenced, and the completion of the Sixth Volume enables me to say that nearly every Parody of literary merit, or importance, has been mentioned in its pages, whilst some thousands of the best have been given in full.

To form such a collection required not only an intimate knowledge of English Poetical Literature, but involved the reference to many very rare and scarce books, English, American, and Colonial.

I beg to offer my sincere thanks to the Authors who kindly permitted their copyright poems to be inserted in this volume, particularly to F. Locker-Lampson, Esq., and G. R. Sims, Esq., as well as to the following gentlemen, for copies of Parodies and other information they have afforded—Messrs. Cuthbert Bede, G. H. Brierley, of Cardiff; F. W. Crawford, T. F. Dillon Croker, Frank Howell, J. H. Ingram, Walter Parke, F. B. Perkins, of San Francisco; C. H. Stephenson, C. H. Waring, and Gleeson White.

In nearly every case the permission of the authors has been obtained for the re-publication of their Parodies; in the few instances where this was not done, it was owing to the impossibility of finding the author’s address.

During the progress of the work, some further Parodies appeared of Authors already dealt with, it is proposed to include these in a supplementary volume, which will be published at some future date.

It is believed that the ample Bibliographical information relating to Parodies and Burlesques contained in this volume will be specially useful to Librarians, Managers of Penny Readings, and Professors of Elocution.

Editors of Provincial Papers who offer prizes for Literary compositions should be on their guard against unscrupulous persons who copy Parodies from this Collection, and send them in as original compositions.

In much of the compilation, and especially those portions requiring the exercise of taste, and in the somewhat dreary process of proof reading, I have been greatly assisted by my wife, whose cheerful co-operation in all my labours adds just the zest which renders Life worth living.

Whilst bidding my subscribers Farewell, I wish to add that the subject of Parodies will continue to engage my attention, and that I shall always be grateful for any information, or examples, that may be sent to me, addressed to the care of Messrs. Reeves and Turner.

WALTER HAMILTON.

Christmas, 1889.

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

r. Swinburne, son of Admiral Charles Henry Swinburne, and grandson of Sir John Edward Swinburne, sixth baronet, was born in 1838, and educated first at Eton, and afterwards at Oxford.

Despite his ancient pedigree, his aristocratic connections, and his university education, the early writings of Mr. A. C. Swinburne, both in prose and verse, were coloured by Radical opinions of the most advanced description. Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth and Southey commenced thus, with results which should have taught him how unwise it is for a poet, who wishes to be widely read, to descend into the heated atmosphere of political strife.

The Undergraduate Papers, published by Mr. Mansell, Oxford, 1857-8, contained some of Mr. Swinburne’s earliest poems, these were followed by “Atalanta in Calydon,” “Chastelard,” and “Poems and Ballads.”

It will be readily understood that only a few brief extracts can be given from Mr. Swinburne’s poems, sufficient merely to strike the key notes of the Parodies.

THE CREATION OF MAN.

Before the beginning of years

There came to the making of man

Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;

Pleasure, with pain for leaven!

Summer, with flowers that fell;

Remembrance fallen from heaven,

And madness risen from hell;

Strength without hands to smite:

Love that endures for a breath;

Night, the shadow of light,

And life the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand

Fire, and the falling of tears,

And a measure of sliding sand

From under the feet of the years:

And froth and drift of the sea;

And dust of the labouring earth;

And bodies of things to be

In the houses of death and of birth;

And wrought with weeping and laughter,

And fashioned with loathing and love.

With life before and after,

And death beneath and above,

For a day and a night and a morrow,

That his strength might endure for a span

With travail and heavy sorrow,

The holy spirit of man.

For the winds of the north and the south

They gathered as into strife;

They breathed upon his mouth,

They filled his body with life;

Eyesight and speech they wrought

For the veils of the soul therein,

A time for labour and thought,

A time to serve and to sin;

They gave him light in his ways,

And love, and a space for delight,

And beauty and length of days,

And night, and sleep in the night.

His speech is a burning fire;

With his lips he travaileth;

In his heart is a blind desire,

In his eyes foreknowledge of death;

He weaves, and is clothed with derision;

Sows, and he shall not reap;

His life is a watch or a vision

Between a sleep and a sleep.

*  *  *  *  *

A. C. Swinburne.

American Parody.

Before the beginning of years,

There went to the making of man

Nine tailors with their shears,

A coupe and a tiger and span,

Umbrellas and neckties and canes,

An ulster, a coat, and all that—

But the crowning glory remains,

His last best gift was his hat.

And the mad hatters took in hand

Skins of the beaver, and felt,

And straw from the isthmus land,

And silk and black bear’s pelt:

And wrought with prophetic passion,

Designed on the newest plan,

They made in the height of fashion

The hat for the wearing of man.

A Poet’s Valentine.

Before the beginning of post

There came to the making of love

Rhyme and of follies a host;

Ducks with a dart and a dove;

Flow’rs with initials beneath,

Cupid conceal’d in a cell,

Lovers alone on a heath.

A Parson pulling a bell.

Follies all fetched afar,

Mirth for a maid and a man,

Jokes that jingle and jar,

And lines refusing to scan.

And still with the change of things

The annual craze comes back

With knocks and riotous rings

From the post piled up with a pack.

Still letters of love and laughter,

And verse in various time,

With roars that reach to the rafter,

And sheets of scurrilous rhyme.

Of old we counted our money

And played but a note for a kiss,

But now we send hampers of honey

And boxes of boisterous bliss.

Fun. February 15, 1868.

Shilling Dreadfuls.

“A nervous and well red-wigged gentleman, Mr. Allburnon-Charles Swingbun, ran excitedly to our rescue, and rhapsodically chaunted the following chorus from his ‘Atlas in Paddington’:

“Now in the railway years

There come to the making of books

Crime with its gift of fears,

Dream with mesmeric looks,

Nihilist Czar-abhorrence,

Acres of ‘snowy sward,’

Ouida, bottled in Florence,

And Broughton in Oxenforde;

Length, to deserve twelve pence;

Plot, to atone for pith;

Not a shadow of sense,

And boys the shadows of Smith.

And the tourist takes in hand

Paper with creasy back,

And a type he can understand,

As he sways with his rolling rack,

And froth and drift of the French,

And mirth that is meet to sell,

And bodies of things that drench

The diversions of Max O’Rell.

They are wrought with weeping for laughter,

And in fashion for chap and cove,

With Life before and after,

And Truth beneath and above.

For a day, for a night, for a nuisance

That the novice may fling his flukes,

And the publisher reap his usance—

The ‘Shillingsworth’ plague of books.”

Christmas Number of The World. 1885.

A chorus in “Atalanta in Calydon” commences:—

“For winter’s rains and ruins are over,

And all the season of snows and sins;

The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins.”

This passage was thus parodied by Mr. Austin Dobson:—

“For Mayfair’s balls and ballets are over,

And all the ‘Season’ of drums and dins;

The maids dividing lover and lover,

The wight that loses, the knight that wins;

And last month’s life is a leaf that’s rotten,

And flasks are filled and game bags gotten,

And from green underwood and cover

Pheasant on Pheasant his flight begins.”

——:o:——

The peculiar metre in which “Dolores” and the Dedication of the “Poems and Ballads” Volume are written, although it invites parody, is difficult to imitate successfully. The ending line of each stanza abruptly cut short is a trick in composition which few but Mr. Swinburne himself have thoroughly mastered.

The following stanzas from the Dedication will enable readers to perceive how closely they have been parodied by Mr. Pollock.

The sea gives her shells to the shingle,

The earth gives her streams to the sea;

They are many, but my gift is single,

My verses, the first-fruits of me.

Let the wind take the green and the grey leaf,

Cast forth without fruit upon air;

Take rose-leaf and vine-leaf and bay-leaf

Blown loose from the hair.

*  *  *  *  *

Though the world of your hands be more gracious

And lovelier in lordship of things,

Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious

Warm heaven of her imminent wings;

Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting,

For the love of old loves and lost times,

And receive in your palace of painting

This revel of rhymes.

*  *  *  *  *

Though the many lights dwindle to one light,

There is help if the heaven has one;

Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight,

And the earth dispossessed of the sun,

They have moonlight and sleep for repayment

When refreshed as a bride, and set free,

With stars and sea-winds in her raiment,

Night sinks on the sea.

“Dedication to J. S.”

This parody, dedicated to the notorious “John Stiles,” of the old law-books, was written by Mr. Pollock, and originally appeared in The Pall Mall Gazette. It has since been included in a small volume (published by Macmillan & Co., London, 1875) entitled “Leading Cases done into English,” by an apprentice of Lincoln’s Inn.

When waters are rent with commotion

Of storms, or with sunlight made whole,

The river still pours to the ocean

The stream of its effluent soul;

You, too, from all lips of all living

Of worship disthroned and discrowned,

Shall know by these gifts of my giving

That faith is yet found.

By the sight of my song-flight of cases

That bears on wings woven of rhyme

Names set for a sign in high places

By sentence of men of old time;

From all counties they meet and they mingle,

Dead suitors whom Westminster saw;

There are many, but your name is single,

The flower of pure law.

When bounty of grantors was gracious

To enfeoff you in fee and in tail,

The bounds of your land were made spacious

With lordship from Sale unto Dale;

Trusts had you, and services loyal,

Lips sovereign for ending of strife,

And the names of the world’s names most royal

For light of your life.

Ah desire that was urgent to Romeward,

And feet that were swifter than fate’s,

And the noise of the speed of them homeward

For mutation and fall of estates!

Ah the days when your riding to Dover

Was prayed for and precious as gold,

The journeys, the deeds that are over,

The praise of them told.

But the days of your reign are departed,

And our fathers that fed on your looks

Have begotten a folk feeble-hearted,

That seek not your name in their books;

And against you is risen a new foeman,

To storm with strange engines your home,

We wax pale at the name of him Roman,

His coming from Rome.

*  *  *  *  *

Yet I pour you this drink of my verses,

Of learning made lovely with lays,

Song bitter and sweet that rehearses

The deeds of your eminent days;

Yea, in these evil days from their reading

Some profit a student shall draw,

Though some points are of obsolete pleading,

And some are not law.

Though the Courts that were manifold dwindle

To divers Divisions of one,

And no fire from your face may rekindle

The light of old learning undone;

We have suitors and briefs for our payment,

While so long as a Court shall hold pleas,

We talk moonshine, with wigs for our raiment,

Not sinking the fees.

This “J. S.” was a mythical person introduced for the purposes of illustration, and constantly met with in old law books and reports. His devotion to Rome is shown by his desperate attempts to get there in three days: “If J. S. shall go to Rome in three days,” was then a standing example of an impossible condition, which modern science has robbed of most of its point.

——:o:——

THE BALLAD OF BURDENS.

This poem will be found on page 144 of Mr. Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads (first series). It is one of his best known ballads, and in 1879 it was chosen by the editor of The World as the model on which to found parodies describing the wet and gloomy summer of that year.

The successful poems in the competition were printed in The World, July 16, 1879. The first prize was won by a well known London Architect, the second by a Dublin gentleman who has since published several amusing Volumes of light poems.

First Prize.

A burden of foul weathers. Dim daylight

And summer slain in some sad sloppy way,

And pitiless downpour that comes by night,

And watery gleam that has no heart by day,

And change from gray to black, from black to gray,

And weariness that doth at each repine;

Grief in all work, and pleasure in no play—

Anno Salutis eighteen seventy-nine.

The burden of vain blossoms. This is sore

A burden of false hope in fruit-bearing: