"Three Colonels, in three different counties born, Armagh and Clare and Lincoln did adorn. The first in direst bigotry surpassed: The next in impudence: in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go-- To beard the third, she shaved the former two." A similarly happy turn to an old quotation was given by Baron Parke, afterwards Lord Wensleydale. His old friend and comrade at the Bar, Sir David Dundas, had just been appointed Solicitor-General, and, in reply to Baron Parke's invitation to dinner, he wrote that he could not accept it, as he had been already invited by seven peers for the same evening. He promptly received the following couplets:-- "Seven thriving cities fight for Homer dead Through which the living Homer begged his bread." "Seven noble Lords ask Davie to break bread Who wouldn't care a d--were Davie dead." The _Ingoldsby Legends_--long since, I believe, deposed from their position in public favour--were published in 1840. Their principal merits are a vein of humour, rollicking and often coarse, but genuine and infectious; great command over unusual metres; and an unequalled ingenuity in making double and treble rhymes: for example-- "The poor little Page, too, himself got no quarter, but Was served the same way, And was found the next day, With his heels in the air, and his head in the water-butt." There is a general flavour of parody about most of the ballads. It does not as a rule amount to more than a rather clumsy mockery of mediaevalism, but the verses prefixed to the _Lay of St. Gengulphus_ are really rather like a fragment of a black-letter ballad. The book contains only one absolute parody, borrowed from Samuel Lover's _Lyrics of Ireland_, and then the result is truly offensive, for the poem chosen for the experiment is one of the most beautiful in the language--the _Burial of Sir John Moore_, which is transmuted into a stupid story of vulgar debauch. Of much the same date as the _Ingoldsby Legends_ was the _Old Curiosity Shop_, and no one who has a really scholarly acquaintance with Dickens will forget the delightful scraps of Tom Moore's amatory ditties with which, slightly adapted to current circumstances, Dick Swiveller used to console himself when Destiny seemed too strong for him. And it will be remembered that Mr. Slum composed some very telling parodies of the same popular author as advertisements for Mrs. Jarley's Waxworks; but I forbear to quote here what is so easily accessible.