“Dash down, dash down yon mandolin, beloved sister mine! 
    Those blushing lips may never sing the glories of our line: 
    Our ancient castles echo to the clumsy feet of churls. 
    The spinning-jenny houses in the mansion of our Earls. 
    Sing not, sing not, my Angelina! in days so base and vile,
    ’Twere sinful to be happy, ’twere sacrilege to smile. 
    I’ll hie me to my lonely hall, and by its cheerless hob
    I’ll muse on other days, and wish—­and wish I were—­A SNOB.”

But, though the spirit of this mournful song is the spirit of England’s Trust, the verbal imitation is not close enough to deserve the title of Parody.

The Ballads of Bon Gaultier, published anonymously in 1855, had a success which would only have been possible at a time when really artistic parodies were unknown.  Bon Gaultier’s verses are not as a rule much more than rough-and-ready imitations; and, like so much of the humour of their day, and of Scotch humour in particular, they generally depend for their point upon drinking and drunkenness.  Some of the different forms of the Puff Poetical are amusing, especially the advertisement of Doudney Brothers’ Waistcoats, and the Puff Direct in which Parr’s Life-pills are glorified after the manner of a German ballad. The Laureate is a fair hit at some of Tennyson’s earlier mannerisms:—­

    “Who would not be
    The Laureate bold,
    With his butt of sherry
    To keep him merry,
    And nothing to do but pocket his gold?”

But The Lay of the Lovelorn is a clumsy and rather vulgar skit on Locksley Hall—­a poem on which two such writers as Sir Theodore Martin and Professor Aytoun would have done well not to lay their sacrilegious hands.

We have now passed through the middle stage of the development which I am trying to trace; we are leaving clumsiness and vulgarity behind us, and are approaching the age of perfection.  Sir George Trevelyan’s parodies are transitional.  He was born in 1838, three times won the prize poem at Harrow, and brought out his Cambridge squibs in and soon after the year 1858. Horace at the University of Athens, originally written for acting at the famous “A.D.C.,” still holds its own as one of the wittiest of extravaganzas.  It contains a really pretty imitation of the 10th Eclogue, and it is studded with adaptations, of which the only possible fault is that, for the general reader, they are too topical.  Here is a sample:—­

“Donec gratus eram tibi.”

    Hor.  While still you loved your Horace best
                Of all my peers who round you pressed
                (Though not in expurgated versions),
                More proud I lived than King of Persians.

    Lyd.  And while as yet no other dame
                Had kindled in your breast a flame,
                (Though Niebuhr her existence doubt),
                I cut historic Ilia out.