“14.  But the Telegraphists and the Sorters and the Postmen, and them that were of the tribes of Rag and of Tag, hardened their hearts, and were silent at the tenth hour; for they said among themselves, ’Shall the poor man shout in his poverty, and the hungry celebrate his lack of bread?’

“15.  Now Preece, Lord of Lightning, had wrought with a cord of metal that they who were at the conversazione might hear the shouting from the Post Offices.

“16.  And the tenth hour came; and lo! there was no great shout; and the tribes of Nob and Snob were as the voice of men calling in the wilderness.

“17.  Then was the wrath of Baines kindled against the tribes of Rag and Tag for that they had not shouted according to his word; and he commanded that their chief men and counsellors should be cast out of the Queen’s Post Office.

“18.  And Raikes, the Postmaster-General; told the Queen all the travail of Baines, the Inspector-General, and of them that were with him, and how they had wrought all for the greater glory of the Queen’s name.

“19.  And the Queen hearkened to the word of Raikes, and lifted up Baines to be a Centurion of the Bath; also she placed honours upon Cardin, the Receiver-General and Accountant-General; upon Preece, Lord of Lightning; upon Thompson, the Secretarial Officer; and upon Tombs, the Controller, so that they dazzled the eyes of the tribe of Snob, and were favourably entreated of the sons of Nob.

“20.  And they lived long in the land; and all men said pleasant things unto them.

“21.  But they of Tag and of Rag that had been cast out were utterly forgotten; so that they were fain to cry aloud, saying, ’How long, O ye honest and upright in heart, shall Snobs and Nobs be rulers over us, seeing that they are but men like unto us, though they imagine us in their hearts to be otherwise?’

“22.  And the answer is not yet.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[30] June 1897.

XXVII.

PARODIES IN VERSE.

Here I embark on the shoreless sea of metrical parody, and I begin my cruise by reaffirming that in this department Rejected Addresses, though distinctly good for their time, have been left far behind by modern achievements.  The sense of style seems to have grown acuter, and the art of reproducing it has been brought to absolute perfection.  The theory of development is instructively illustrated in the history of metrical parody.

Of the same date as Rejected Addresses, and of about equal merit, is the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, which our grandfathers, if they combined literary taste with Conservative opinions, were never tired of repeating.  The extraordinary brilliancy of the group of men who contributed to it guaranteed the general character of the book.  Its merely satiric verse is a little beside my present mark; but as a parody the ballad of Duke Smithson of Northumberland, founded on Chevy Chase, ranks high, and the inscription for the cell in Newgate where Mrs. Brownrigg, who murdered her apprentices, was imprisoned, is even better.  Southey, in his Radical youth, had written some lines on the cell in Chepstow Castle where Henry Marten the Regicide was confined:—­