THE CLAIMS OF GREECE.

THE Claims of Greece! The Claims of Greece!
No doubt Miss SAPPHO loved and sung,

But how can Europe keep the peace,
The wily Greek and Turk among :
Eternal summer may be there,
But noise of war is in the air.

The nations look on Marathon,

And wonder sometimes will there be

A fight like that which erst went on

Between the mountains and the sea:
Where Turk and Greek may find a grave,
If neither party will behave.

A BISMARCK sat with furrowed brow,
And scanned the Treaty of Berlin,
Quoth he, "There'll be a fearful row,
My interference must begin.
We'll arbitrate." He spoke, when lo!
Both Greece and Turkey answered "No!"

Lord Brougham sat on the rocky brow
Which looks on sea-girt Cannes, I wis;
But wouldn't like to sit there now,

Unless 'twere warmer than it is.
I went to Cannes the other day,
But found it much too damp to stay.

The mountains look on Monaco,
And Monaco looks on the sea
And, playing their some hours ago,
I meant to win enormously;
But, though my need of coin was bad
I lost the little that I had.

Ye have the Southern charges yet
Where is the Southern climate gone
Of two such blessings, why forget
The cheaper and the better one?
My weekly bill my wrath inspires;
Think ye I meant to pay for fires?
Why should I stay? no worse art thou,
My country! On the genial shore
The local east winds whistle now,

The local fogs spread more and more; But in the sunny South the weather Beats all you know of put together.

I cannot eat-I cannot sleep-
The waves are not so blue as I;
Indeed, the waters of the deep

Are dirty brown, and so's the sky.
I get dyspepsia when I dine—

Oh, dash that pint of country wine!"

This parody appeared in Temple Bar for March 1886, in

a paper entitled Humours of Travel by Herman Merivale, but it had previously been printed in a volume entitled "The White Pilgrim, and other Poems" by the same author, and published by Chapman and Hall, London 1883.

THE SMILES OF PEACE.

THE smiles of Peace, the smiles of Peace,
Which Gladstone in Midlothian sung!

A song we hope may never cease

Though Jingoes yell, with blatant tongue,
To fight-not for themselves, you bet!
And howl for blood, and-" Heavy Wet!"

We look up to the Grand Old Man,
And he looks out upon the sea
Of stormy politics, which can

Be still'd by none so well as he !
For standing at the Nation's helm,
He safely guides the British Realm.

Fill high the bowl with Gladstone wine

The sunny purple wine he gave

Let fame and Bacchus round him twine
The wreaths that crown the good and brave!
His solid worth the nation rules,
Though worried by bombastic fools.

Trust not to Tories for a peace-
They have a chief who longs for war,
Let tax and income tax increase.
Pay! 'tis what we're created for,
Better to fight, and glory win,
Than hoard a pile of useless "tin."

RENOUNCE THE PAPER UNION CREED.

THE Liberal seats! the Liberal seats!
That we in 'eighty proudly won!
Whence-while we suffered few defeats-
We saw the Stupid Party run!
Again we fight these borough's, yet
Nothing, except disgrace, we get !

The Unionist and Tory crews,

Led on, alas! by honest Bright,
Have gained the day; and men refuse

To vote the Grand Old Chieftain right,
Save in the Island of the West,
Where scarce a Tory dares contest.

The Liberals look to Chamberlain,

And Chamberlain looks sour and glum ;

Yet, seeing what he had to gain,

We'd hoped that Joseph round would come.

For, gazing back upon his past,

We could not think his-spleen ?—would last.

The chief sat in St. Stephen's, where

He'd nobly worked for fifty years;

He saw the Liberals crowded there,

And heard with joy their hearty cheers.
He looked at them one winter's day-
And in the summer-where were they?
And where are they? And where art thou,
O Gladstone? In thy voiceless age

The heroic task comes harder now;

Soon must thou quit "the ungrateful stage." And must thy part, praised in all lands, Degenerate into pigmy hands?

'Tis something, in this shameful hour,

When beaten, with the fettered race, To know at least that those in power

This question cannot choose but face. And they may yield to craven fear,

However brave they now appear. Why should we moan o'er times more blest? Why should we wail? Our fathers worked!

The Tory must not peaceful rest,

The Irish Bill must not be burked! 'Tis but delayed, and time shall see Another Ireland, glad and free!

Coercion now? Repression still?

Ah, no-that sort of thing is dead!
You may reject our Home Rule Bill,

But tell us, what have you instead?
The eighty-six recruited come,—
Say, can coercion make them dumb?
In vain, in vain! Strike other chords!
Renounce your Paper Union Creed !
In spite of thirty thousand swords,
The Irish nation will be freed!
See! rising at their country's call,
Who fronts you in St. Stephen's Hall!

You have the Liberal leader yet;

Where is the Liberal phalanx gone? You have two courses. Why regret

To take the nobler, manlier one? You have the path that Justice showsAnd you've a nation to oppose !

Renounce the Paper Union creed!

You cannot govern men with this Your Irish brethren you may need

When foreign foes around you hiss, Renounce it, and the Irish then

Will prove themselves your countrymen.

The peasant of the sister Isle

Has with our best and bravest bled,
That peasant now is all that's vile-

Or-is your sense of justice dead?
Do right, and you perhaps will find
Him generous still, and brave, and kind.
No more these idle fictions whine!

On Liffey's banks, on Shannon's shore, Exists the remnant of a line

Such as your English mothers bore. And there, perhaps, some seed is sown The British blood might proudly own. Trust not the Tories and their pranks,

Despite the tales their leader tells ;

In Irish hearts and Irish ranks

The old, strong love of justice dwells! But Tory force and Tory fraud Would crimson swift Rebellion's sword!

Renounce the Paper Union Creed !

Our party, though now in the shade, Shall still, with glorious Gladstone, lead!

Repulsed we are; not yet dismayed.
No isle whose shore the Atlantic laves
Can ever be the land of slaves.

Place what you will before the House,
There nothing, save an Irish bill,

Will pass. Meanwhile, let Liberals rouse-
Prove Liberal England's Liberal still!
The Irish claim we must concede,
And have no Paper Union Creed.

Pall Mall Gazette. July 13, 1886.

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G.W.

Warreniana, by Mr. William F. Deacon (London, 1824), contained an excellent parody on Childe Harold, unfortunately it is too long to give in full, but some stanzas may be quoted.

THE CHILDE'S PILGRIMAGE.

I.

WHILEOME in Limehouse docks there dwelt a youth,
Childe Higgins hight, the childe of curst ennui,
Despair, shame, sin, with aye assailing tooth,
Had worn his beauty to the bone.-Ah me!

A lone unloving libertine was he;

For reft of health and hope's delusive wiles,
And tossed in youth on passion's stormy sea,
He stood a wreck 'mid its deserted isles,

Where vainly pleasure wooes and syren woman smiles.

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AFTER THE EXAMINATION.

1.

WITHOUT One lingering look he leaves
The spot of all his troubles past,
With thoughtful heart; for he believes
The dons have made this chance his last.
Those hated schools, brain-addling place,
That seems to haunt his mind for ever,
And sight of which before his face,

Makes all his limbs with horror shiver-
Shiver as though had fallen smack
A douche of water on his back
And arms and neck and head and face,
So hated was that awful place;
But it must come, and all must go
Where, sitting sternly in a row
Examiners, with looks that chill,
Pluck those that do their papers ill.

II.

And he has gone to his lonely room
To sit alone by the fireside;
He stirs the fire with the broom,

And does eccentric things beside. For flurried by the exam. he seems, And while his hissing kettle steams, He mutters deep within his breast, "What causes this delay?

If with Testamur I am blest,
It can't be far away."
And then the toasting-fork he takes,
And with it in the cinders rakes,

And makes it in a fearful mess,
And then he walks in restlessness
About his room, while minutes creep
More slowly than in prison keep.

III.

He plucked his toothpick in his pocket,
But sheathed it ere the point was bare;
He rolled his eye within its socket,

And passed his fat hand through his hair;
Nay more he took his meerschaum then,
And gazed upon it with a look

Of absent wonder, then he took
And put it in its case again;

And mopped his brow all cold and damp,
And blew his nose, and lit his lamp,

Then in his arm chair sat and numbered
The weary minutes till he slumbered.

From Lays of Modern Oxford. By Adon.
Chapman and Hall, 1874.

London.

(These lines parody stanzas 4, 5, and 7 of Parasina. The same volume contains a parody of The Prisoner of Chillon, entitled Snowed Up, but it is not of sufficient interest to be quoted.)

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MISCELLANEOUS PARODIES OF LORD BYRON'S WORKS.

A very large number of Parodies of Byron's poems have been produced in the form of small pamphlets, either on political or social events, or of purely local interest. It will be sufficient to enumerate the principal of these, the curious in such matters can easily refer to them in the Library of the British Museum.

The Age of Soapsuds. A Satire, by Lord Vyron. London. W. Edwards, 1839; pp. 15

In his preface the author remarks: "We live in an age of bubbles, and if the Soapsud' of the following lines seem blown about on the gale of fancy-all I can say is, I write to please myself, and not the critics."

Despair: A Vision. Derry Down and John Bull: A Simile. Being two Political Parodies on "Darkness," and a scene from "The Giaour," by Lord Byron. London. T. Hughes 1820.-Political, and of no interest at present.

Arlis's Pocket Magazinefor 1825, contained a parody of "The Maid of Athens," entitled Sarah, I Love Thee.

Poem. By

A Satiric

Railway Adventures and Anecdotes, edited by Richard Pike, 1884, contains a parody on the lines commencingThere was a sound of Revelry by night." The Mongrelites; or, The Radicals so-called. Published in New York, by Van Evrie, Horton and Co., in 1866 (59 pp.) This is said by the author to be an imitation of Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," but as it relates to the party politics of the United States it does not come within the scope of this collection,

Two prize poems, in imitation of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers were printed in The World, April 14, 1880. The subject chosen was Electioneering Speeches, the poems were therefore of merely passing interest

In 1834 a small sixpenny pamphlet was published by Chalmers and Son, of Edinburgh, entitled Lays of Straiton House. It contained several poems, written in imitation of Lord Byron, Thomas Moore, and of a few popular songs. These were descriptive of the Caledonian Bazaar and its contents were of local interest only, and are now quite out of date.

Abel: written, but with great humility, in reply to Lord Byron's Cain. By Owen Howell, London: John Mardon, 1843; PP. 22.

"The object of Lord Byron in his drama 'Cain,' was to embody all the emotions of Despair as they act upon the human mind; in the present poem (if it deserves the name) the author has endeavoured to personify Hope, and to bring together as many pleasing expectations as pussible."

Cain: A Poem, intended to be published in Parts, containing an Antidote to the Impiety and Blasphemy of Lord Byron's Cain. By Henry Wilkinson, Stone-gate, York. London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy. 1824.

PP. 97.

(A short poem, with voluminous notes, violently abusive of Lord Byron's poem, and his theological views.) Several of Lord Byron's poems have been produced upon the stage, the most notable examples being Manfred, brought out at Drury Lane Theatre some years since, with grand scenic effects; and Mazeppa, at Astley's Theatre, with Ada Isaacs Menken in the title rôle. Mazeppa has, however, long been quite a stock piece with Circus proprietors, and as far back as December 27, 1858, a burlesque of it (written by the late Henry James Byron) was produced at the Olympic Theatre, with F. Robson, H. Wigan, Miss Wyndham, and Mrs. Emden in the caste, which had a long and successful run. The late Mr. Gilbert Abbot a'Beckett wrote a burlesque, entitled Man-Fred in 1828; and Mr. H. Such Granville wrote "Sardana polus, or The Light of other Days, an original Ninevitish Burlesque," which was first performed at St. George's Hall, on December 23, 1868, when the author performed the part of Zarina,

"The Bride of Abydos; or, The Prince, the Pirate, and the Pearl" was the title of another Burlesque, written by the late Henry James Byron,* and produce at the Strand Theatre, with a strong caste, including Mr. H. J. Turner, Miss M. Oliver, and Miss Swanborough. As a rule these burlesques merely give a ludicrous turn to the plot of the criginal poems, and contain little which could be quoted as interesting parodies.

Amongst the numerous Parodies, Imitations and continuations of Lord Byron's unfinished poem, Don Juan, the following may be mentioned: Don Juan Unmasked, 1819.

Gordon, a review of Don Juan, 1821.

The Templar. A Poem in the Stanza and Spirit of Don Juan, with allusions to Lord Byron. 1822.

A Sequel to Don Juan, London, 1825.

Juan Secundus, 1825.

An Apology for Don Juan, Cantos 1 and 11, 1824.
The Seventeenth Canto of Don Juan, London, 1829.

Don Juan Junior, a poem (with notes), by Byron's Ghost, edited by G. K. Wythen Baxter, 1839.

Don Juan reclaimed, 1840.

Termination of Don Juan, H. W. Wetton, 1864.

Don Juan, Canto the Seventeenth. London, Thomas Cooper and Co., 1870. (In this curious production the author has spread his scanty materials over 56 pages, by the simple expedient of leaving about a quarter of them blank )

Some Rejected Stanzas of Don Juan, with Byron's own curious notes. From an unpublished manuscript in the

In connection with these burlesques, it may be noted that this prolific dramatic author and inveterate punster was remotely connected with Lord Byron, to whom, indeed, he hore a slight personal resemblance. Admiral John Byron, the grandfather of the poet, was the great-great-uncle of the author of "Our Boys," in other words, both the poet and the dramatist were lineal descendants of William the fourth Lord Byron.