Mice, a
learned critic, the elder Heinsius, asserts, was not written by the
poet, but is a parody on the poem. It is evidently as good-humoured an
one as any in the "Rejected Addresses." And it was because Homer was the
most popular poet that he was most susceptible of the playful honours of
the parodist; unless the prototype is familiar to us a parody is
nothing! Of these parodists of Homer we may regret the loss of one,
Timon of Philius, whose parodies were termed Silli, from Silenus being
their chief personage; he levelled them at the sophistical philosophers
of his age; his invocation is grafted on the opening of the Iliad, to
recount the evil-doings of those babblers, whom he compares to the bags
in which AEolus deposited all his winds; balloons inflated with empty
ideas! We should like to have appropriated some of these _silli_, or
parodies of Timon the Sillograph, which, however, seem to have been at
times calumnious.[292] Shenstone's "School Mistress," and some few other
ludicrous poems, derive much of their merit from parody.

This taste for parodies was very prevalent with the Grecians, and is a
species of humour which perhaps has been too rarely practised by the
moderns: Cervantes has some passages of this nature in his parodies of
the old chivalric romances; Fielding, in some parts of his "Tom Jones"
and "Joseph Andrews," in his burlesque poetical descriptions; and Swift,
in his "Battle of Books," and "Tale of a Tub;" but few writers have
equalled the delicacy and felicity of Pope's parodies in the "Rape of
the Lock." Such parodies give refinement to burlesque.

The ancients made a liberal use of it in their satirical comedy, and
sometimes carried it on through an entire work, as in the Menippean
satire, Seneca's mock _Eloge_ of Claudius, and Lucian in his Dialogues.
There are parodies even in Plato; and an anecdotical one, recorded of
this philosopher, shows them in their most simple state. Dissatisfied
with his own poetical essays, he threw them into the flames; that is,
the sage resolved to sacrifice his verses to the god of fire; and in
repeating that line in Homer where Thetis addresses Vulcan to implore
his aid, the application became a parody, although it required no other
change than the insertion of the philosopher's name instead of the
goddess's;--[293]

Vulcan, arise! 'tis _Plato_ claims thy aid!

Boileau affords a happy instance of this simple parody. Corneille, in
his Cid, makes one of h