_Fellow of the Royal Geographical and Royal Historical Societies; Author of "The Æsthetic Movement in England," "The Poets Laureate of England," "A Memoir of George Cruikshank," etc._ INTRODUCTION. I have, for many years past, been collecting Parodies of the works of the most celebrated British and American Authors. This I have done, _not_ because I entirely approve of the custom of turning high-class work into ridicule, but because many of the parodies are in themselves works of considerable literary merit. Moreover, as "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," so does a parody show that its original has acquired a certain celebrity, for no author would waste his time, or his talent, in composing a burlesque of an unknown, or obscure work. Numerous articles on parodies are to be found scattered up and down in odd corners of old magazines and reviews, a few small books have been written on the topic; but, until now, no attempt has been made to give, in a connected form, a history of parody with examples and explanatory notes. This, then, is what I propose to do in the following articles, and those who desire to possess a complete set of parodies on any favourite author, would do well to preserve these papers for future reference. PARODY is a form of composition of a somewhat ungracious description, as it owes its very existence to the work it caricatures; but it has some beneficial results in drawing our attention to the defects of some authors, whose stilted language and grandiloquent phrases have veiled their poverty of ideas, their sham sentiment, and their mawkish affectations. The first attribute of a parody is that it should present a sharp contrast to the original either in subject, or treatment of the subject; that if the original subject should be some lofty theme, the parody may reduce it to a prosaic matter-of-fact narrative. If, on the other hand, the topic selected be one of every day life, it may be made exceedingly amusing if described in high-flown mock heroic diction. If the original errs in sentimental affectation, so much the better for the parodist. Thus many of Tom Moore's best known songs are mere windy platitudes in very musical verse, which afford excellent and legitimate materials for ridicule. The nearer the original diction is preserved, and the fewer the alterations needed to produce a totally opposite meaning or ridiculous contrast, the more complete is the antithesis, the more striking is the parody; take for instance Pope's well-known lines:-- "Here shall the Spring its earliest _sweets_ bestow, Here the first _roses_ of the year shall blow," which, by the alteration of two words only, were thus applied by Miss Katherine Fanshawe to the Regent's Park when it was first opened to the public:-- "Here shall the Spring its earliest _coughs_ bestow, Here the first _noses_ of the year shall blow."