“If a man is determined to make a noise in the world, he is as sure to encounter abuse and ridicule, as he who gallops furiously through a village, must reckon on being followed by the curs in full cry. Experienced persons know, that in stretching to flog the latter, the rider is very apt to catch a bad fall; nor is an attempt to chastise a malignant critic attended with less danger to the author. _On this principle I let parody, burlesque, and squibs, find their own level_; and while the latter hissed most fiercely, I was cautious never to catch them up, as school-boys do, to throw them back against the naughty boy who fired them off, wisely remembering that they are in such cases apt to explode in the handling.” The philosophical temperament of which he here boasts was soon put to a severe test, for George Colman the younger produced a parody in which every technical blemish in _The Lady of the Lake_ was mercilessly ridiculed, and every improbability maliciously exaggerated, whilst Scott’s long Notes on antiquarian and philological topics were imitated with very comical mock gravity. This clever satire was entitled, “THE LADY OF THE WRECK; _or Castle Blarneygig_,” by George Colman the younger, inscribed to the author of “_The Lady of the Lake_.” This poem was published by Longmans and Co., London, and was illustrated by some curious and very well executed little woodcuts. The scene of the story is laid in Ireland, and the author thus explains his reason for selecting that country:―― “Let not the reader, whose senses have been delightfully intoxicated by that Scottish _Circe_, the “_Lady of the Lake_,” accuse the present author of plagiary. The wild Irish and wild Caledonians bore a great resemblance to each other, in very many particulars; and two Poets, who have any “method in their madness,” may, naturally, fall into similar strains of wildness, when handling subjects equally wild and remote. ’Tis a wild world, my masters! The author of this work has merely adopted the style which a northern GENIUS has, of late, rendered the Fashion, and the _Rage_. He has attempted, in this instance, to become a maker of the _Modern-Antique_; a vendor of a new coinage, begrim’d with the ancient ærugo; a constructor of _the dear pretty sublime_, and _sweet little grand_; a writer of a short epick poem, stuff’d with romantick knick-knackeries, and interlarded with songs and ballads, _à la mode de_ Chevy Chase, Edom o’ Gordon, Sir Launcelot du Lake, &c., &c. How is such a writer to be class’d?” Scott’s descriptions of scenery, his love of sport, and chivalrous tone are all, in this burlesque, reduced to a very prosaic level; thus the lines in Canto I commencing:――