e tenth hour came; and lo! there was no great shout; and the
tribes of Nob and Snob were as the voice of men calling in the
wilderness.

"17. Then was the wrath of Baines kindled against the tribes of Rag and
Tag for that they had not shouted according to his word; and he
commanded that their chief men and counsellors should be cast out of the
Queen's Post Office.

"18. And Raikes, the Postmaster-General; told the Queen all the travail
of Baines, the Inspector-General, and of them that were with him, and
how they had wrought all for the greater glory of the Queen's name.

"19. And the Queen hearkened to the word of Raikes, and lifted up Baines
to be a Centurion of the Bath; also she placed honours upon Cardin, the
Receiver-General and Accountant-General; upon Preece, Lord of Lightning;
upon Thompson, the Secretarial Officer; and upon Tombs, the Controller,
so that they dazzled the eyes of the tribe of Snob, and were favourably
entreated of the sons of Nob.

"20. And they lived long in the land; and all men said pleasant things
unto them.

"21. But they of Tag and of Rag that had been cast out were utterly
forgotten; so that they were fain to cry aloud, saying, 'How long, O ye
honest and upright in heart, shall Snobs and Nobs be rulers over us,
seeing that they are but men like unto us, though they imagine us in
their hearts to be otherwise?'

"22. And the answer is not yet."

FOOTNOTES:

[30] June 1897.

XXVII.

PARODIES IN VERSE.

Here I embark on the shoreless sea of metrical parody, and I begin my
cruise by reaffirming that in this department _Rejected Addresses_,
though distinctly good for their time, have been left far behind by
modern achievements. The sense of style seems to have grown acuter, and
the art of reproducing it has been brought to absolute perfection. The
theory of development is instructively illustrated in the history of
metrical parody.

Of the same date as _Rejected Addresses_, and of about equal merit, is
the _Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_, which our grandfathers, if they
combined literary taste with Conservative opinions, were never tired of
repeating. The extraordinary brilliancy of the group of men who
contributed to it guaranteed the general character of the book. Its
merely satiric verse is a little beside my present mark; but as a parody
the ballad of _Duke Smithson of Northumberland_, founded on _Chevy
Chase_, ranks high, and the inscription for the cell in Newgate whe