couplet, saying or singing:--

"Match me such marvel, save in college port,
That rose-red liquor, half as old as Short."

The Rev. E.T. Turner, till recently Registrar of the University, has
been known to say: "I was present when that egg was laid." It is
satisfactory to know that the undergraduate who laid it--William Basil
Tickell Jones--attained deserved eminence in after-life, and died Bishop
of St. David's.

When Burgon was writing his prize-poem about Petra, Lord John Manners
(afterwards seventh Duke of Rutland), in his capacity as Poet Laureate
of Young England, was writing chivalrous ditties about castles and
banners, and merry peasants, and Holy Church. This kind of mediaeval
romanticism, though glorified by Lord Beaconsfield in _Coningsby_,
seemed purely laughable to Thackeray, and he made rather bitter fun of
it in _Lines upon my Sister's Portrait, by the Lord Southdown._

"Dash down, dash down yon mandolin, beloved sister mine!
Those blushing lips may never sing the glories of our line:
Our ancient castles echo to the clumsy feet of churls.
The spinning-jenny houses in the mansion of our Earls.
Sing not, sing not, my Angelina! in days so base and vile,
'Twere sinful to be happy, 'twere sacrilege to smile.
I'll hie me to my lonely hall, and by its cheerless hob
I'll muse on other days, and wish--and wish I were--A SNOB."

But, though the spirit of this mournful song is the spirit of _England's
Trust_, the verbal imitation is not close enough to deserve the title of
Parody.

The _Ballads of Bon Gaultier_, published anonymously in 1855, had a
success which would only have been possible at a time when really
artistic parodies were unknown. Bon Gaultier's verses are not as a rule
much more than rough-and-ready imitations; and, like so much of the
humour of their day, and of Scotch humour in particular, they generally
depend for their point upon drinking and drunkenness. Some of the
different forms of the Puff Poetical are amusing, especially the
advertisement of Doudney Brothers' Waistcoats, and the Puff Direct in
which Parr's Life-pills are glorified after the manner of a German
ballad. _The Laureate_ is a fair hit at some of Tennyson's earlier
mannerisms:--

"Who would not be
The Laureate bold,
With his butt of sherry
To keep him merry,
And nothing to do but pocket his gold?"

But _The Lay of the Lovelorn_ is a clumsy and rather vulgar sk