It seems to us, also, that Jeffrey has rated the virtue of _sound_ in a parody too low――which is, perhaps, only to say that he rates the whole art of parody higher than we do. Surely it is an essential of this sort of imitation that the words should strike the ear with the very echo of the original. For this reason the specimens we have quoted seem to us so particularly good; and for the same reason, with the exception of the “Lay of the Lovelorn,” the clever ballads of Bon Gaultier do not seem to us to really come under the definition of parodies at all. And it is this quality which gives the point to Mr. Bromley Davenport’s “Lowesby Hall.”[20] In such lines as these――though, indeed, the whole parody is so good that selection is difficult――it is the _sound_ which does everything, but how inimitably it does it!―― Here at least I’ll stay no longer, let me seek for some abode, Deep in some provincial country far from rail or turnpike road; There to break all links of habit, and to find a secret charm In the mysteries of manuring and the produce of a farm. To deplore the fall of barley, to admire the rise of peas, Over flagons of October, giant mounds of bread and cheese; Never company to dinner, never visitors from town, Just the Parson and the Doctor (Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown). Droops the heavy conversation to an after-dinner snort, And articulation dwindles with the second flask of port. We are very far from saying that parody is a matter of sound only; to borrow a well-known line, The sound must seem an echo to the sense. But certainly it strikes us as being a very important point, and we doubt whether any really clever parody ever was written, or ever will be, in which it does not play a conspicuous part, if not the most conspicuous. And this, perhaps, is the reason why those greatest works of poetry, where the style strikes one as the natural and inevitable vehicle of the thought, are really above the reach of parody; why all attempts to parody them, however clever, lose their cleverness in the larger consciousness of bad taste. But to place all parodies under this ban is surely unreasonable. It is unreasonable, as depriving the world of a great deal of harmless amusement, and also, as we have said, of a method, often more truly efficacious than more serious castigation, of exposing incompetence and affectation. _The Saturday Review_, February 14, 1885. [Illustration] Miss Ann Taylor’s “My Mother.” MY MOTHER. Who fed me from her gentle breast, And hush’d me in her arms to rest, And on my cheek sweet kisses prest? My Mother. When sleep forsook my open eye, Who was it sung sweet hushaby, And rock’d me that I should not cry? My Mother.