gave to the solemn strains which had just so deeply engaged their attention.  It is supposed that we have one of these travestiers of the Iliad in one Sotades, who succeeded by only changing the measure of the verses without altering the words, which entirely disguised the Homeric character; fragments of which, scattered in Dionysius Halicarnassensis, I leave to the curiosity of the learned Grecian.[291] Homer’s Battle of the Frogs and Mice, a learned critic, the elder Heinsius, asserts, was not written by the poet, but is a parody on the poem.  It is evidently as good-humoured an one as any in the “Rejected Addresses.”  And it was because Homer was the most popular poet that he was most susceptible of the playful honours of the parodist; unless the prototype is familiar to us a parody is nothing!  Of these parodists of Homer we may regret the loss of one, Timon of Philius, whose parodies were termed Silli, from Silenus being their chief personage; he levelled them at the sophistical philosophers of his age; his invocation is grafted on the opening of the Iliad, to recount the evil-doings of those babblers, whom he compares to the bags in which AEolus deposited all his winds; balloons inflated with empty ideas!  We should like to have appropriated some of these silli, or parodies of Timon the Sillograph, which, however, seem to have been at times calumnious.[292] Shenstone’s “School Mistress,” and some few other ludicrous poems, derive much of their merit from parody.

This taste for parodies was very prevalent with the Grecians, and is a species of humour which perhaps has been too rarely practised by the moderns:  Cervantes has some passages of this nature in his parodies of the old chivalric romances; Fielding, in some parts of his “Tom Jones” and “Joseph Andrews,” in his burlesque poetical descriptions; and Swift, in his “Battle of Books,” and “Tale of a Tub;” but few writers have equalled the delicacy and felicity of Pope’s parodies in the “Rape of the Lock.”  Such parodies give refinement to burlesque.

The ancients made a liberal use of it in their satirical comedy, and sometimes carried it on through an entire work, as in the Menippean satire, Seneca’s mock Eloge of Claudius, and Lucian in his Dialogues.  There are parodies even in Plato; and an anecdotical one, recorded of this philosopher, shows them in their most simple state.  Dissatisfied with his own poetical essays, he threw them into the flames; that is, the sage resolved to sacrifice his verses to the god of fire; and in repeating that line in Homer where Thetis addresses Vulcan to implore his aid, the application became a parody, although it required no other change than the insertion of the philosopher’s name instead of the goddess’s;—­[293]

    Vulcan, arise! ’tis Plato claims thy aid!

Boileau affords a happy instance of this simple parody.  Corneille, in his Cid, makes one of his personages remark,

    Pour grands que soient les rois ils sont ce que nous sommes,
    Ils peuvent se tromper comme les autres hommes.