The St. Paul's Magazine of January, 1872, contained a most amusing political Idyll, entitled "The Latest Tournament "-an Idyll of the Queen (respectfully inscribed to Alfred Tennyson, Esq., Poet Laureate). This parody, which consists of nearly 400 lines, describes, in a mock-heroic style, all the principal political celebrities of the day, its satire being aimed at the supposed Republican tendencies of the Liberal party.

"The Prince's Noses," a modern Idyll, by W. J. Linton, a parody of Tennyson's blank verse, appeared in Scribner's Monthly Magazine, April, 1880.

Punch, May 27, 1882, contained a poem entitled "On the Hill; or, Tennysonian Fragments, picked up near the Grand Stand." This was an imitation of style only.

"Tory Revels" (slightly altered from Tennyson) in Punch, August 26, 1882, commenced thus:"SIR GYPES TOLLODDLE, all an Autumn day, Gave his broad, breezy lands, till set of sun, Up to the Tories."

and described a Conservative political picnic. It concluded:

"Then there were fireworks; and overhead
SIR GYPES TOLLODDLE'S aisles of lofty limes
Made noise with beer and bunkum, and with squibs."

The Wheel World, October, 1882, contained a long parody, entitled "London to Leicester; a Bicycling Idyl, by Talfred Ennyson (Poet Laureate to the Mental Wanderers, B.C.)" This is written in very blank verse, and is chiefly interesting to 'Cyclists.

Pastime, June 29, 1883, contained "TENNIS, a Fragment of the Lost Tennisiad," and July 27, 1883, "The Lay of the Seventh Tournament," both being parodies of Tennyson's "Idylls of the King."

The small detached poems which Lord Tennyson has written for the magazines of late years, have been the cause of numerous and very unflattering parodies.

The following "Prefatory Poem," by Alfred Tennyson, appeared in the first number of the "Nineteenth Century," published in March, 1877, by Messrs. Henry S. King and Co., London :

THOSE that of late had fleeted far and fast
To touch all shores, now leaving to the skill
Of others their old craft, seaworthy still,
Have charier'd this; where mindful of the past,
Our true co-mates regather round the mast;
Of diverse tongue, but with a common will,
Here, in this roaring moon of daffodil
And crocus, to put forth and brave the blast;
For some descending from the sacred peak
Of hoar, high-templed faith, have leagued again
Their lot with ours, to rove the world about;
And some are wilder comrades, sworn to seek
If any golden harbour be for men

In seas of Death and sunless gulfs of Doubt.
Upon which Mr. John Whyte (of the Public
Library, Inverness) wrote the following:-

"I felt sure on reading the above lines that I had seen among my papers something nearly as prosy. The following is, I consider, not only quite as stiff as the foregoing, but it seems to me to prove beyond question that the one was suggested by the other. Whether the Poet Laureate or the author of The Last Hat' is the plagiarist, I leave others to decide.

THE LAST HAT LEFT.

THOSE low-born cubs who sneaked away so fast,
Have picked all the best hats, and left the worst
To others. For their craft may they be cursed
Who left me this! I mind me of the past-
I stalked along, and felt tall as a mast,
In my new beaver; with this bashed old pot,
Under the shining moon, like seedy sot,

I must go creeping forth, or brave the blast
Bareheaded. Should I chance to meet the beak,
I swear by faith, l'il send him on their trail;
The lot we'll follow the old world about,
Among their wilder comrades, sworn to seek
And find the thief; their doom be, if we fail-
Disease and death-long years of mumps and gout!"

·

"Anything failed again? Nay, what is there left to fail?'Harold,' or 'Mary,' or ' May,' or even the 'Lover's Tale?' What am I saying, and why? fails!-that must be a lie! Fails-what fails?-not my faith in play writing, not I. "Why will you call up here?—who are you?-what have you heard

That you all sit so solemn and quiet?—nobody's spoken a word.

O, to make of me-yes, his lordship! none of the scribbling

To be idle-I couldn't be idle-I do not write for a whim, And a guinea a line is better than a short "Italian Hymn." "So, William, I thank you gladly; I think you meant to be kind;

And I will not heed the mob, whilst they'll very quickly find

The poems will read as well by a Lord as ever they did before,

And the publishers sell more copies, and more, and more, and more.

See how it reads for yourself, to be stuck up on every wall, Lord Tennyson's Poems complete, in a specially printed Vol."

W.

The Nineteenth Century for November, 1881, contained a very uncomfortable kind of poem, by Tennyson, entitled " DESPAIR, a Dramatic Monologue." The argument of the poem was that "a man and his wife having lost faith in a God, and hope of a life to come, and being utterly miserable in this, resolve to end themselves by drowning. The woman is drowned, but the man is rescued by a minister of the sect he had abandoned."

The Fortnightly Review of the following month contained a parody which not only turned inside out the arguments of the original poem, but was so exquisitely worded as a burlesque that it was by many attributed to the pen of no less a poet than Mr. A. C. Swinburne.

DISGUST: A DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE.

(A woman and her husband, having been converted from free thought to Calvinism, and being utterly miserable in consequence, resolve to end themselves by poison. The man dies, but the woman is rescued by application of the stomach-pump).

I.

PILLS? talk to me of your pills? Well, that, I must say is cool.

Can't bring my old man round? he was always a stubborn old fool.

If I hadn't taken precautions-a warning to all that wiveHe might not have been dead, and I might not have been alive.

II.

You would like to know, if I please, how it was that our troubles began?

You see, we were brought up Agnostics, I and my poor old

man.

And we got some idea of selection and evolution, you know— Professor Huxley's doing-where does he expect to go!

III.

Well, then came trouble on trouble on trouble--I may say, a peck

And his cousin was wanted one day on the charge of forging a cheque

And his puppy died of the mange-my parrot choked on its perch.

This was the consequence, was it, of not going weekly to church?

IV.

So we felt that the best if not only thing that remained to be done

On an earth everlastingly moving about a perpetual sun, Where worms breed worms to be eaten of worms that have eaten their betters

And reviewers are barely civil-and people get spiteful letters

And a famous man is forgot ere the minute hand can tick nine

Was to send in our P.P.C., and purchase a packet of strychnine.

V.

Nay- but first we thought it was rational-only fair

To give both parties a hearing-and went to the meetinghouse there,

And there, you see, was an end of it all. It was obvious, in fact,

That, whether or not you believe in the doctrine taught in a tract,

Life was not in the least worth living. Because, don't you see?

Nothing that can't be, can, and what must be, must. Q. E.D. And the infinitesimal sources of Infinite Unideality

Curve in to the central abyss of a sort of a queer Personality. Whose refraction is felt in the nebule strewn in the pathway of Mars

Like the pairings of nails Eonian-clippings and snippings

of stars

We read together, while midnight blazed like the Yankee flag,

A reverend gentleman's work--the Conversion of Colonel Quagg.

And out of its pages we gathered this lesson of doctrine pure

Zephaniah Stockdolloger's gospel-a word that deserves to endure

Infinite millions on millions of Infinite Eons to come"Vocation," says he, "is vocation, and duty duty. Some." X.

And duty, said I, distinctly points out-and vocation, said he, Demands as distinctly-that I shouid kill you, and that you should kill me.

The reason is obvious-we cannot exist without creeds-who can?

So we went to the chemist's-a highly respectable churchgoing man

And bought two packets of poison. You wouldn't have done so. Wait.

It's evident, Providence is not with you, ma'am, the same thing as Fate.

Unconscious cerebration educes God from a fog,

But spell God backwards, what then? Give it up? the answer is, dog.

(I don't exactly see how this last verse is to scan,
But that's a consideration I leave to the secular man).

XI.

I meant of course to go with him-as far as I pleased-but first

To see how my old man liked it—I thought perhaps he might burst.

I didn't wish it—but still it's a blessed release for a wifeAnd he saw that I thought so-and grinned in derisionand threatened my life

If I made wry faces-and so I took just a sip-and he—
Well-you know how it ended—he didn't get over me.

XII.

Terrible, isn't it? Still, on reflection, it might have been

worse.

He might have been the unhappy survivor, and followed my hearse.

"Never do it again?" Why, certainly not. You don't Suppose I should think of it, surely? But anyhow-thereI won't.

There still remain a great many parodies of Tennyson's poems to be quoted, and every day increases their number. It will, therefore, be necessary to return to this author in some future part of this collection; the following references are given to some of the more easily accessible parodies, which space will not now permit me to quote in full:—

"Edinburgh Sketches and Miscellanies." By ERIC. Edinburgh and Glasgow: John Menzies and Company, 1876, contains Codger's Hall, a long and humorous parody of Locksley Hall; Once a Week, Echoes from the Clubs, and The Weekly Dispatch, October 19, 1884, also contained parodies of the same poem,

Lady Clara Vere de Vere was the subject of an advertising parody, of which the best verse

ran :

"Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

You put strange fancies in my head!
Do you remember that rich silk

You wore last year at Maidenhead ?
Now "velveteen" is all the go;
'Tis richer far, and costs much less,
The lion on your old stone gates

Is not more ancient than that dress."

whilst the Charge of the Light Brigade was thus imitated by a Birmingham tea-dealer :"Half a League! Half a League!

Half a League, onward!

Into Gant's tea shop

Walk many hundred.

Tea is the people's cry,

Which is the kind to buy?
Gant's at Two Shillings try,
Say many hundred !

Tea-men to right of us,

Ten-men to left of us,

Grocers all round us,

Find they have blundered."

There was another parody on the Charge of the Light Brigade, in Punch, December 19, 1868.

"The Song of the 'Skyed' one, as sung at the Academy on the first Monday in May," was a parody, in ten verses, commencing:AWAKE I must, and early, a proceeding that I hate, And cab it to Trafalgar Square, and ascertain my fate; For to-morrow's the Art-Derby, the looked-for opening day Of the Fine Art Exhibition, yearly shown by the R.A.

This appeared in Punch, May 11, 1861.

The May Queen was also imitated in a poem contained in Modern Society, March 29, 1884. It was entitled "Baron Honour," and was a very severe, and rather vulgar, skit on Lord Tennyson's adulation of the Royal Family.

In The Weekly Dispatch, September 9, 1883, five parodies were printed in a competition to anticipate the Poet Laureate's expected poem in commemoration of the late John Brown; a subject on which, however, Lord Tennyson has not as yet published a poem. In the same news

paper six parodies of Hands All Round were inserted on April 2, 1882.

These were very entertaining, and were severally entitled: "Pots all Round;" "Tennysonian Toryism Developed;" "Drinks all Round;" "Cheers all Round;" "Hands all Round (with the mask off)"; and "Howls all Round."

Truth, February 14, 1884, contained a parody entitled "In Memoriam; a Collie Dog." Punch also had a parody with the title "In Memoriam " on July 9, 1864.

"The Two Voices, as heard by Jones of the Treasury about Vacation time," was the title of a long parody in Punch, September 7, 1861.

There was also a political parody, on the same original, in Punch, May 11, 1878.

"Recollections of the Stock Exchange," a long parody of Recollections of the Arabian Nights, and dealing with the topic of Turkish Stocks, appeared in Punch, December 18, 1875.

"The Duchess's Song," after Tennyson, was in Punch, September 3, 1881; and British Birds, by Mortimer Collins (1878), contained, amongst others, a capital parody of Tennyson.

THE POETASTERS: A DRAMATIC CANTATA.
Chorus of Poetasters.

AN itch of rhymes has seized the times
Till every cobbler's turned a poet,
And he who taught the secret ought
In justice to be made to know it.

Rhyme, brothers, rhyme, vast odes and epics vaster,
And post them to the Master, Master, Master.

Bards, pour your benison on Baron Tennyson,
Who vulgarised the art of rhyming,
And set the twaddle that fills each noddle
In endless jingle-jangle chiming:
Rhyme, brothers, rhyme, each puling poetaster,
And inundate the Master, Master, Master.

Recitative and Aria: Lord Tennyson.
Bards, idle bards, I know not what ye mean!
Words powerfully expressive of despair
Rise to my lips and flash from out my eyes
In looking o'er the reams each post-bag yields.
But, mark me, I'll return the stuff no more.
When morning sees the groaning board
With my baronial breakfast spread-
With bacon crisp and snow-white bread,
And fragrant coffee freshly poured,

I greet with joy the cheerful sight,

When, hark! there comes the postman's knock:
I thrill as with a lightning shock
And bid adieu to appetite.

For song and stave and madrigal
Make dark to me the opening day,
And sonnet, ode, and roundelay
Sink on my spirit like a pall.
And lunch-time brings another host,
At each delivery they throng,
While any hour may bring along
Three tragedies by parcels-post;
And twelve-book epics, ton on ton,
Each with its laudatory ode
Of drivelling dedications, load
The vans of Carter, Paterson.

I can nor eat, nor drink, nor sleep
In peace;
I vow that from to-day
I'll have them carted straight away
Unopened to the rubbish-heap.

Call in the dustman'!-Lo! 'tis done!

The contract signed, I breathe again.
Come, load at once thy lingering wain
Blest henchman of oblivion !

Finale: Chorus of Foetasters.
Not return nor e'en acknowledge!
Dares he treat our verses thus?
Knows he not the might malignant
Of a poetaster's
cuss?"
Dreads he not our "spiteful letters,"
Epigrams, satiric skits?

Let him learn that would-be poets
Also shine as would-be wits.
Who is he to scorn our verses?
British taxpayers are we;
Is he not the Poet Laureate ?
Don't we stand his salary?
Straightway we'll transfer allegiance
To some other, blander bard,
Whom no paltry peerage renders
Uppish, arrogant, and hard.
Mr. Browning, for example,

Won't treat brother poets thus.
Though we may not understand him,
Doubtless he'll appreciate us;
He'll return with mild laudation
Our effusions every one.
Poetasters, snap your fingers
At the played-out Tennyson!

W. A.

St. James's Gazette, June 24, 1884.

The Reverend Charles Wolfe.

Since the June and July parts were published containing parodies on "The Burial of Sir John Moore," Truth has had a Parody Competition with that poem as the selected original. The Editor of Truth published no less than twentyfour parodies, many of which were very amusing.

Some of the best are given complete, with a few extracts from the remainder :

PARODIES OF

"THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE."
THE DEATH OF THE "CHilderses."

Nor half-sovereigns were we, but ten-shilling bits,
The thin, jaundiced children of Childers;
To name us the public were put to their wits,
As some called us 66
Guilders," some "Gilders."

We buried our heads in our cradle, the Mint,
And were sparingly fed by our nurses;

In our life, which was brief, we received without stint
Abuse, imprecations, and curses.

No useless retorts did we ever return

To those who so coldly received us :

But we patiently bore each contemptuous spurn,
Till sweet death in his mercy relieved us.
Few and short were our moments on earth,
And they were brief snatches of sorrow;
Our parents were told at the time of our birth,
We were only for idiots to borrow.

We thought, as we lay in our embryo mould,

Of the fun we should have when grown older;
But we learnt that all glittering things are not gold,
That a "gilder" is hardly a golder."

Lightly they talked of our humble alloy,
And how we were base and degraded ;
And tried in all possible ways to annoy
Our lives, which already were faded.
Though half our heavy blows and kicks,

We never thought once of returning;

We passed over the "Styx" without passing the "Pyx, ' Or the wonders of life ever learning.

Slowly but gladly, too tired to laugh,

We made room for the use of our betters; Heavy our grave-stone, and our epitaph Was a column of newspaper letters.

DALETH.

THE BURIAL OF THE SEASON.

NOT a "6
drum" was given, nor dance of note,
From the " course at fair Goodwood we'd hurried
Not a soul here but uttered farewell, and shot
Out of town, looking jaded and worried.

And lightly they'll talk of the "Master" that's gone,
And o'er his own "Hashes" abuse him;
But little he'll reck, if they'll let him sail on
In the yacht which was built to amuse him!

But half of our heavy trunks were down,

When the clock struck the hour for departing;
And we heard the distant discordant groan
Of the engine ready for starting!

THE BURIAL OF MY FELLOW LODGER'S BANJO.
NOT a "strum" was heard, not a tune or a note,
As his chords to the damp earth I hurried;
Not a soul there was by when I stripped off my coat,
O'er the grave where the banjo I buried.

I buried it darkly at dead of night,
The sods with a fire shovel turning.
My heart throbbing fast with a wild delight,
And revenge in my heart fiercely burning.
No useless fingers I close to it pressed,
Not as much as once did I sound it,
But I laid it gently down to its rest,
With a Daily News wrapped round it.

THE FATE OF GENERAL GORDON.

NOT a drum was heard, not a martial note,
As our Gordon to Khartoum was hurried;
But into the desert our hero we shot,

And there in the desert he's buried.

No useful soldiers were with him sent,

Neither horseman nor footman we found him; But alone, on a camel, our warrior went, With the foe and the desert all round him. Few and short were the prayers he made, Not a word of complaint or of sorrow; But we coldly declined to give him our aid, And told him to wait-till "to-morrow!" And he thought as he lay on his anxious bed, Or the foe-threatened city defended : "Tis plain that the men who are over my head Have ideas I've not quite comprehended." And lightly men talk of his fanatic ways,

Because life and wealth he nought reckons ; But little he recks of their blame or their praise, And goes straight where his own honour beckons. Not half of his heavy task is done,

That of "rescuing and retiring

"

He will not retire, for he has rescued none,
And thousands upon him are firing.

Slowly and sadly I lay my pen down,
'Tis a mean and pitiful story;

God grant we mayn't have to carve on his stone, "England left him alone in his glory."

GUINEA PIG.

THE FUNERAL OF ONE MORE VICTIM AT
MONTE CARLO.

NOT a franc he had, not a louis nor note,
As forth from the tables he hurried;
Resolved to discharge one fatal shot,
And leave his corpse to be buried.
They buried him deeply at dead of night,
The soil with their mattocks turning;
When the sinking moon refused her light,
And the lamps had ceased from burning.