“The man who first taught Englishmen their duty,
    And fenced with wooden walls his native isle,
    Now asks ONE SHILLING to preserve in beauty
    The Church that brooded o’er his infant smile."[29]

An electioneering address is, in its essence, an advertisement; and in this peculiar branch of literature it would be difficult to excel the following manifesto recently issued by a clergyman when candidate for a benefice to which the appointment is by popular election:—­

“I appeal with the utmost confidence for the full support of the IRISH AND ROMAN CATHOLICS, because I am a Son of the Emerald Isle; to FOREIGNERS, because they love Ireland; to HIGH CHURCH, LOW CHURCH, and BROAD CHURCH, because I am tolerant to all parties; to NONCONFORMISTS, because I have stated in my pamphlet on Reunion that they are “the salt of the earth and the light of the world;” to JEWS, because my love for the Children of Promise is well known; to ATHEISTS, because they have often heard me in Hyde Park telling them of the Author of Nature in its endless beauties;—­to one and all I appeal with the utmost confidence, and feel sure that the whole electorate will vote for me and do themselves honour, when they consider who I am, and when a person of my social and ecclesiastical standing allowed my name at all to be mentioned for a popular election.”

I am thankful to say that this “Son of the Emerald Isle” was left at the bottom of the poll.

FOOTNOTES: 

[29] Kindly communicated by “J.C.C.”

XXVI.

PARODIES IN PROSE.

“Parody,” wrote Mr. Matthew Arnold in 1882, “is a vile art, but I must say I read Poor Matthias in the World with an amused pleasure.”  It was a generous appreciation, for the original Poor Matthias—­an elegy on a canary—­is an exquisite poem, and the World’s parody of it is a rather dull imitation.  On the whole, I agree with Mr. Arnold that parody is a vile art; but the dictum is a little too sweeping.  A parody of anything really good, whether in prose or verse, is as odious as a burlesque of Hamlet; but, on the other hand, parody is the appropriate punishment for certain kinds of literary affectation.  There are, and always have been, some styles of poetry and of prose which no one endowed with an ear for rhythm and a sense of humour could forbear to parody.  Such, to a generation brought up on Milton and Pope, were the styles of the various poetasters satirized in Rejected Addresses; but excellent as are the metrical parodies in that famous book, the prose is even better.  Modern parodists, of whom I will speak more particularly in a future chapter, have, I think, surpassed such poems as The Baby’s Debut and A Tale of Drury Lane, but in the far more difficult art of imitating a prose style none that I know of has even approached the author of the Hampshire Farmer’s Address and Johnson’s Ghost.  Does any one read William Cobbett nowadays?  If so, let him compare what follows with the recorded specimens of Cobbett’s public speaking:—­