Read Ebook: Parodies of the works of English & American authors vol. III by Hamilton Walter Compiler

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NOTES AND CORRECTIONS.

Page 71, Column 2, line 6. Read "Mr. William Cadenhead."

Page 197. The Enigma on the letter H. here ascribed to Lord Byron was written by Miss Catherine Fanshawe.

PARODY strongly resembles mimicry, a principle in human nature not so artificial as it appears. Man may well be defined a mimetic animal. The African boy who amused the whole kafle he journeyed with, by mimicking the gestures and the voice of the auctioneer who had sold him at the slave market a few days before, could have had no sense of scorn, of superiority, or of malignity; the boy experienced merely the pleasure of repeating attitudes and intonations which had so forcibly excited his interest. The numerous parodies of Hamlet's soliloquy were never made in derision of that solemn monologue, no more than the travesties of Virgil by Scarron and Cotton; their authors were never so gaily mad as that. We have parodies on the Psalms by Luther; Dodsley parodied the book of Chronicles, and Franklin's most beautiful story of Abraham is a parody on the Scripture-style; not one of these writers, however, proposed to ridicule their originals; some ingenuity in the application was all that they intended. The lady-critic alluded to had suffered by a panic, in imagining that a parody was necessarily a corrosive satire. Had she indeed proceeded one step further, and asserted that PARODIES might be classed among the most malicious inventions in literature, in such parodies as Colman and Lloyd made on Gray's odes, in their odes to "Oblivion and Obscurity," her readings possibly might have supplied the materials of the present research.

PARODIES were frequently practised by the ancients, and with them, like ourselves, consisted of a work grafted on another work, but which turned on a different subject by a slight change of the expressions. It might be a sport of fancy, the innocent child of mirth; or a satirical arrow drawn from the quiver of caustic criticism; or it was that malignant art which only studies to make the original of the parody, however beautiful, contemptible and ridiculous. Human nature thus enters into the composition of parodies, and their variable character originates in the purpose of their application.

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.

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."

A slight alteration became a fine parody in Boileau's "Chapelain D?coifl?."

We find in Athenaeus the name of the Inventor of a species of parody which more immediately engages our notice--DRAMATIC PARODIES. It appears this inventor was a satirist, so that the lady-critic, whose opinion we had the honour of noticing, would be warranted by appealing to its origin to determine the nature of the thing. A dramatic parody, which produced the greatest effect, was "the Gigantomachia." as appears by the only circumstance known of it. Never laughed the Athenians so heartily as at its representation, for the fatal news of the deplorable state to which the affairs of the republic were reduced in Sicily arrived at its first representation--and the Athenians continued laughing to the end! as the modern Athenians, the volatile Parisians, might in their national concern of an OPERA COMIQUE. It was the business of the dramatic parody to turn the solemn tragedy, which the audience had just seen exhibited, into a farcical comedy; the same actors who had appeared in magnificent dresses, now returned on the stage in grotesque habiliments, with odd postures and gestures, while the story, though the same, was incongruous and ludicrous. The Cyclops of Euripides is probably the only remaining specimen; for this may be considered as a parody of the ninth book of the Odyssey--the adventures of Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus, where Silenus and a chorus of satyrs are farcically introduced, to contrast with the grave narrative of Homer, of the shifts and escape of the cunning man "from the one-eyed ogre." The jokes are too coarse for the French taste of Brumoy, who, in his translation, goes on with a critical growl and foolish apology for Euripides having written a farce; Brumoy, like Pistol, is forced to eat his onion, but with a worse grace, swallowing and execrating to the end.

In dramatic composition, Aristophanes is perpetually hooking in parodies of Euripides, whom of all poets he hated, as well as of AEschylus, Sophocles, and other tragic bards. Since that Grecian wit, at length, has found a translator saturated with his genius, and an interpreter as philosophical, the subject of Grecian parody will probably be reflected in a clearer light from his researches.

Dramatic parodies in modern literature were introduced by our vivacious neighbours, and may be said to constitute a class of literary satires peculiar to the French nation. What had occurred in Greece a similar gaiety of national genius unconsciously reproduced. The dramatic parodies in our own literature, as in "The Rehearsal," "Tom Thumb," and "The Critic," however exquisite, are confined to particular passages, and are not grafted on a whole original; we have neither naturalised the dramatic parody into a species, nor dedicated to it the honours of a separate theatre.

"Mon mari, pour le coup j'ai d?couvert l'affaire, Ne vous ?tonnez plus qu'? nos d?sirs contraire, Pour ma fille, Pierrot, ne montre que m?pris: Voil? l'unique objet dont son coeur est ?pris." , the offspring of a dangerous spirit of ridicule, and the malicious amusement of superficial minds.--"Were this true," retorts Fuzelier, "we ought to detest parodies; but we maintain, that far from converting virtue into a paradox, and degrading truth by ridicule, PARODY will only strike at what is chimerical and false; it is not a piece of buffoonery so much as a critical exposition. What do we parody but the absurdities of dramatic writers, who frequently make their heroes act against nature, common sense and truth? After all" he ingeniously adds, "it is the public, not we, who are the authors of these PARODIES; for they are usually but the echoes of the pit, and we parodists have only to give a dramatic form to the opinions and observations we hear. Many tragedies," Fuzelier, with admirable truth, observes, "disguise vices into virtues, and PARODIES unmask them." We have had tragedies recently which very much required parodies to expose them, and to shame our inconsiderate audiences, who patronised these monsters of false passions. The rants and bombast of some of these might have produced, with little or no alteration of the inflated originals, "A Modern Rehearsal," or a new "Tragedy for Warm Weather."

Of PARODIES, we may safely approve of their legitimate use, and even indulge their agreeable maliciousness; while we must still dread that extraordinary facility to which the public, or rather human nature, are so prone, as sometimes to laugh at what, at another time, they would shed tears.

"Quarrels, upbraidings, jealousies, and spleen, Grow too familiar in the comic scene; Tinge but the language with heroic chime, 'Tis passion, pathos, character sublime. What big round words had swell'd the pompous scene, A king the husband, and the wife a queen!"

This apology for Parody, extracted from "The Curiosities of Literature," was written by the late Mr. Isaac D'Israeli more than fifty years ago. Mr. Isaac D'Israeli was a Jewish gentleman of great literary attainments, and of a most amiable character. He was the father of the late Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Mr. Isaac D'Israeli died in 1848.

Dr. Oliver Goldsmith,

efore quoting the Parodies on the Poems of Oliver Goldsmith, mention must be made of three instances, in which he, himself, borrowed ideas from French sources. These are the well-known "Elegy on the Glory of her Sex, Mrs. Mary Blaize," the "Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog," and the favourite verses, entitled "Stanzas on Woman," commencing "When lovely woman stoops to folly," which appeared in "The Vicar of Wakefield," when first published in 1765. Before Goldsmith settled down in London as a struggling man of letters, he had spent some time wandering about on the Continent, and had obtained a fairly good insight into foreign literature. He had, therefore, in all probability seen the poems of S?gur, printed in Paris in 1719, in which the following lines occur:--

"Lorsqu'une femme, apr?s trop de tendresse, D'un homme sent la trahison, Comment, pour cette si douce foiblesse, Peut-elle trouver une gu?rison? Le seul rem?de qu'elle peut ressentir. La seule revanche pour son tort Pour faire trop tard l'amant repentir, H?las! trop tard,--est la mort."

These he appears to have almost literally translated, thus:--

When lovely woman stoops to folly And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away?

The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from ev'ry eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom--is to die.

A PARAPHRASE.

"When Woman," as Goldsmith declares, "stoops to folly," And finds out too late that false man can "betray," She is apt to look dismal, and grow "melan-choly," And, in short, to be anything rather than gay.

He goes on to remark that "to punish her lover, Wring his bosom, and draw the tear into his eye, There is but one method" which he can discover That's likely to answer--that one is "to die!"

He's wrong--the wan and withering cheek; The thin lips, pale, and drawn apart; The dim yet tearless eyes, that speak The misery of the breaking heart;

The wasted form, th'enfeebled tone That whispering mocks the pitying ear; Th' imploring glances heaven-ward thrown As heedless, helpless, hopeless here;

These wring the false one's heart enough If made of penetrable stuff.

A SONG FOR THE MILLION.

When Harry Brougham turns a Tory, Too late convinc'd that Whigs betray, What can revive his tarnish'd glory? What his desertion best repay?

"WHEN LOVELY WOMAN."

When lovely woman wants a favour, And finds, too late, that man won't bend, What earthly circumstance can save her From disappointment in the end?

The only way to bring him over, The last experiment to try, Whether a husband or a lover, If he have feeling, is--to cry!

A SONG.

When lovely woman, prone to folly, Finds that e'en ROWLAND'S oils betray; What charm can soothe her melancholy? What art can turn gray hairs away?

The only art gray hairs to cover, To hide their tint from every eye, To win fresh praises from her lover, And make him offer--is to dye.

A REMEDY.

When lovely woman stoops to poli- Tics, and finds it doesn't pay, What charm can wean her from her folly, And put her in the proper way?

The only plan we can discover, Is the one we now propose; That she should obtain a lover, Marry him, and mend his hose.

When lovely woman, hooped in folly, Grows more expansive every day, And makes her husband melancholy To think what bills he'll have to pay.

"ANOTHER WAY."

When lovely woman, Lump of Folly, Would show the world her vainest trait; Would treat herself as child her dolly, And warn each man of sense away.

The surest method she'll discover To prompt a wink from every eye, Degrade a spouse, disgust a lover, And spoil a scalp-skin--is to dye,

SHIRLEY BROOKS. 1866.

A SILLY MANAGER.

When Managers have stooped to folly, And find vulgarity won't pay, And audiences won't be jolly, But boldly rise and hiss the play:

In order their misdeeds to cover, Some clap-trap for the gods they try Before the farce is halfway over, And insult add to injury.

GOLDSMITH IMPROVED.

When lovely woman takes to lollies, And finds, too late, her teeth decay, What penitence can cure her follies, What chloroform her pain allay?

If beauteous, she'll be kindly pitied; If ugly, each good-tooth'd one's butt. So she must get her mouth refitted, Or, what is better--keep it shut!

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