Hor.  Dark Chloe now my homage owns,
                Skilled on the banjo and the bones;
                For whom I would not fear to die,
                If death would pass my charmer by.

    Lyd.  I now am lodging at the rus-
                In-urbe of young Decius Mus. 
                Twice over would I gladly die
                To see him hit in either eye.

    Hor.  But should the old love come again,
                And Lydia her sway retain,
                If to my heart once more I take her,
                And bid black Chloe wed the baker?

    Lyd.  Though you be treacherous as audit
                When at the fire you’ve lately thawed it,
                For Decius Mus no more I’d care
                Than for their plate the Dons of Clare.

Really this is a much better rendering of the famous ode than nine-tenths of its more pompous competitors; and the allusions to the perfidious qualities of Trinity Audit Ale and the mercenary conduct of the Fellows of Clare need no explanation for Cambridge readers, and little for others.  But it may be fairly objected that this is not, in strictness, a parody.  That is true, and indeed as a parodist Sir George Trevelyan belongs to the metrical miocene.  His Horace, when serving as a volunteer in the Republican Army, bursts into a pretty snatch of song which has a flavour of Moore:—­

    “The minstrel boy from the wars is gone,
      All out of breath you’ll find him;
    He has run some five miles, off and on,
      And his shield has flung behind him.”

And the Bedmaker’s Song in one of the Cambridge scenes is sweetly reminiscent of a delightful and forgotten bard:—­

    “I make the butler fly, all in an hour;
      I put aside the preserves and cold meats,
    Telling my master the cream has turned sour,
      Hiding the pickles, purloining the sweets.”

    “I never languish for husband or dower;
      I never sigh to see ‘gyps’ at my feet;
    I make the butter fly, all in an hour,
      Taking it home for my Saturday treat.”

This, unless I greatly err, is a very good parody of Thomas Haynes Bayly, author of some of the most popular songs of a sentimental cast which were chanted in our youth and before it.  But this is ground on which I must not trench, for Mr. Andrew Lang has made it his own.  The most delightful essay in one of his books of Reprints deals with this amazing bard, and contains some parodies so perfect that Mr. Haynes Bayly would have rejoicingly claimed them as his own.