In parody of every kind, from the most admiring imitation down to the most boisterous burlesque, Thackeray stands at the head of all other imitators. The _Rejected Addresses_ of James and Horace Smith (1812) is usually regarded as the masterpiece in this art; and Scott good-humouredly said that he could have mistaken the death of Higginbottom for his own verses. But Thackeray's _Novels by Eminent Hands_ are superior even to the _Rejected Addresses_. _Codlingsby_, the parody of Disraeli's _Coningsby_, may be taken as the most effective parody in our language: intensely droll in itself, it reproduces the absurdities, the affectations, the oriental imagination of Disraeli with inimitable wit. Those ten pages of irrepressible fooling are enough to destroy Disraeli's reputation as a serious romancer. No doubt they have unfairly reacted so as to dim our sense of Disraeli's real genius as a writer. When we know _Codlingsby_ by heart, as every one with a sense of humour must do, it is impossible for us to keep our countenance when we take up the palaver about Sidonia and the Chosen Race. The _Novels by Eminent Hands_ are all good: they are much more than parodies; they are real criticism, sound, wise, genial, and instructive. Nor are they in the least unfair. If the balderdash and cheap erudition of Bulwer and Disraeli are covered with inextinguishable mirth, no one is offended by the pleasant imitations of Lever, James, and Fenimore Cooper. All the burlesques are good, and will bear continual re-reading; but the masterpiece of all is _Rebecca and Rowena_, the continuation in burlesque of _Ivanhoe_. It is one of the mysteries of literature that we can enjoy both, that the warmest admirers of Scott's glorious genius, and even those who delight in _Ivanhoe_, can find the keenest relish in _Rebecca and Rowena_, which is simply the great romance of chivalry turned inside out. But Thackeray's immortal burlesque has something of the quality of Cervantes' _Don Quixote_--that we love the knight whilst we laugh, and feel the deep pathos of human nature and the beauty of goodness and love even in the midst of the wildest fun. And this fine quality runs through all the comic pieces, ballads, burlesques, pantomimes, and sketches. What genial fun in the _Rose and the Ring_, in _Little Billee_, in _Mrs. Perkins' Ball_, in the _Sketch Book_, in _Yellowplush_. It is only the very greatest masters who can produce extravaganzas, puerile tomfooleries, drolleries to delight children, and catchpenny songs, of such a kind that mature and cultivated students can laugh over them for the fiftieth time and read them till they are household words. This is the supreme merit of _Don Quixote_, of _Scapin_, of _Gulliver_, of _Robinson Crusoe_. And this quality of immortal truth and wit we find in _Rebecca and Rowena_, in the _Rose and the Ring_, in _Little Billee_, in _Codlingsby_, and _Yellowplush_. The burlesques have that Aristophanic touch of beauty,