A
Century of Parody
and Imitation

Catherine Maria Fanshawe (1765–1834):

Fragment in Imitation of Wordsworth

James Hogg (1770-1835):

The Flying Tailor

David Macbeth Moir (1798-1851):

The Rime of the Auncient Waggonere

John Hamilton Reynolds (1796-1852):

Peter Bell: A Lyrical Ballad

Phoebe Cary (1824-1871):

‘The Day Is Done’
The Wife

Bayard Taylor (1825-1878):

Ode on a Jar of Pickles
Angelo Orders His Dinner
Cimabuella
From ‘The Taming Of Themistocles’
All Or Nothing
The Sewing-Machine

Charles Stuart Calverley (1831-1884):

Proverbial Philosophy
The Cock and The Bull
Lovers, and A Reflection
Ballad

Thomas Hood the Younger (1835-1874):

Ravings

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909):

The Poet and the Woodlouse
The Person of the House
Nephelidia
Poeta Loquitur

James Kenneth Stephen (1859-1892):

Ode on a Retrospect of Eton College
To A. T. M.

Prefatory Note

The word ‘century’ has been interpreted with some license. The work of living parodists does not fall within the scope of this collection, and it is a real self-denying ordinance which forbids the inclusion of triumphs by Sir Frederick Pollock, Mr. Owen Seaman, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Mr. Barry Pain, the Rev. Anthony Deane, and others who, in their undergraduate days, enlivened the periodicals of Oxford and Cambridge, or to-day show their dexterity in the pages of Punch. By way of recompense, the volume contains parodies by some, still living in 1812, whose work was published before Rejected Addresses. The parodies which follow therefore range from George Ellis, who was born in 1753, to Andrew Lang, who died in 1912. Very sparing use has been made of anonymous work, and in this connexion it may be well to explain that ‘Adolphus Smalls of Boniface’ is ruled out, because, although published anonymously, it is known to be the joint composition in their Balliol days of Dr. W. W. Merry, the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, and Alfred Blomfield, afterwards Bishop of Colchester.