A CENTURY OF PARODY AND
IMITATION
JAMES AND HORACE SMITH
A
CENTURY OF PARODY
AND IMITATION
EDITED BY
WALTER JERROLD
AND
R. M. LEONARD
HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON, EDINBURGH, GLASGOW
NEW YORK, TORONTO, MELBOURNE, BOMBAY
1913
PREFATORY NOTE
The object of this compilation is to provide a corpus of representativeparodies and imitations of a century, beginning with RejectedAddresses (1812), which practically marked the birth of modern parody,and are here printed in their entirety. Prose parodies, excepting thosein Rejected Addresses, have been excluded; the derivation of the word'parody' may be referred to in justification. Emerson wrote in his'Fable'
so in this volume will be found all forms of imitations from, in Mr.Owen Seaman's words, 'the lowest, a mere verbal echo, to the highest,where it becomes a department of pure criticism.'
It is quite unnecessary to add to the published mass of writing, wiseand foolish, on the art and ethics of parody. Some of the pieces inthis book are included chiefly because they have an historical place inthe development of parody to its present high standard of execution andgood taste.
Isaac D'Israeli asserted that 'unless the prototype is familiar to us aparody is nothing.' As a matter of fact some of the best work is thatof which the originals have been forgotten long since; although, ofcourse, when the poets and the poems imitated are familiar the art ofthe imitator can be better appreciated.
The word 'century' has been interpreted with some licence. The work ofliving parodists does not fall[vi] within the scope of this collection,and it is a real self-denying ordinance which forbids the inclusionof triumphs by Sir Frederick Pollock, Mr. Owen Seaman, Sir ArthurQuiller-Couch, Mr. Barry Pain, the Rev. Anthony Deane, and others who,in their undergraduate days, enlivened the periodicals of Oxford andCambridge, or to-day show their dexterity in the pages of Punch. Byway of recompense, the volume contains parodies by some, still livingin 1812, whose work was published before Rejected Addresses. Theparodies which follow therefore range from George Ellis, who was bornin 1753, to Andrew Lang, who died in 1912. Very sparing use has beenmade of anonymous work, and in this connexion it may be well to explainthat 'Adolphus Smalls of Boniface' is ruled out, because, althoughpublished anonymously, it is known to be the joint composition in their