And still with the change of things The annual craze comes back With knocks and riotous rings From the post piled up with a pack. Still letters of love and laughter, And verse in various time, With roars that reach to the rafter, And sheets of scurrilous rhyme. Of old we counted our money And played but a note for a kiss, But now we send hampers of honey And boxes of boisterous bliss. _Fun._ February 15, 1868. ―――― SHILLING DREADFULS. “A nervous and well red-wigged gentleman, Mr. Allburnon-Charles Swingbun, ran excitedly to our rescue, and rhapsodically chaunted the following chorus from his ‘Atlas in Paddington’: “Now in the railway years There come to the making of books Crime with its gift of fears, Dream with mesmeric looks, Nihilist Czar-abhorrence, Acres of ‘snowy sward,’ Ouida, bottled in Florence, And Broughton in Oxenforde; Length, to deserve twelve pence; Plot, to atone for pith; Not a shadow of sense, And boys the shadows of Smith. And the tourist takes in hand Paper with creasy back, And a type he can understand, As he sways with his rolling rack, And froth and drift of the French, And mirth that is meet to sell, And bodies of things that drench The diversions of Max O’Rell. They are wrought with weeping for laughter, And in fashion for chap and cove, With _Life_ before and after, And _Truth_ beneath and above. For a day, for a night, for a nuisance That the novice may fling his flukes, And the publisher reap his usance―― The ‘Shillingsworth’ plague of books.” Christmas Number of _The World_. 1885. ―――― A chorus in “Atalanta in Calydon” commences:―― “For winter’s rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins.” This passage was thus parodied by Mr. Austin Dobson:―― “For Mayfair’s balls and ballets are over, And all the ‘Season’ of drums and dins; The maids dividing lover and lover, The wight that loses, the knight that wins; And last month’s life is a leaf that’s rotten, And flasks are filled and game bags gotten, And from green underwood and cover Pheasant on Pheasant his flight begins.” ――――:o:―――― The peculiar metre in which “Dolores” and the Dedication of the “Poems and Ballads” Volume are written, although it invites parody, is difficult to imitate successfully. The ending line of each stanza abruptly cut short is a trick in composition which few but Mr. Swinburne himself have thoroughly mastered. The following stanzas from the Dedication will enable readers to perceive how closely they have been parodied by Mr. Pollock.