The Bon Gaultier Ballads | Page 4

a wreath of roses the night that first we met," he made a parody of its rhythmical cadence the medium for presenting some leading incidents in the career of a Circe of "the boozing ken," as thus,--
"She wore a rouge like roses the night that first we met; Her lovely mug was smiling o'er mugs of heavy wet;?Her red lips had the fulness, her voice the husky tone, That told her drink was of a kind where water was unknown."
Then after a few more glimpses of this charming creature in her downward progress, the bard wound up with this characteristic close to her public life,--
"I saw her but a moment, but methinks I see her now,?As she dropped the judge a curtsey, and he made her a bow."
But it would be out of place to dwell longer upon those reckless imitations. The only poem which ultimately found a place in the Bon Gaultier volume was "The Death of Duval."
The paper was a success. Aytoun was taken by it, and sought an introduction to me by our common friend Edward Forbes the eminent Naturalist, then a leading spirit among the students of the Edinburgh University, beloved and honoured by all who knew him. Aytoun's name was familiar to me from his contributions to 'Blackwood's Magazine,' and I was well pleased to make his acquaintance, which rapidly grew into intimate friendship, as it could not fail to do with a man of a nature so manly and genial, and so full of spontaneous humour, as well as of marked literary ability. His fancy had been caught by some of the things I had written in this and other papers under the name of Bon Gaultier, and when I proposed to go on with articles in a similar vein, he fell readily into the plan and agreed to assist in it. Thus a kind of Beaumont and Fletcher partnership was formed, which commenced in a series of humorous papers that were published in Tait's and Fraser's Magazines during the years 1842, 1843, and 1844. In these papers appeared, with a few exceptions, the verses which form the present volume. They were only a portion, but no doubt the best portion, of a great number of poems and parodies which made the chief attraction of papers under such headings as "Puffs and Poetry," "My Wife's Album," "The Poets of the Day," and "Cracknels for Christmas."
In the last of these the parody appeared under the name of "The Jilted Gent, by Theodore Smifzer," which, as "The Lay of the Lovelorn," has become perhaps the most popular of the series. I remember well Aytoun bringing to me some ten or a dozen lines of admirable parody of "Locksley Hall." That poem had been published about two years before, and was at the time by no means widely known, but was enthusiastically admired by both Aytoun and myself. What these lines were I cannot now be sure, but certainly they were some of the best in the poem. They were too good to appear as a fragment in the paper I was engaged upon, and I set to work to mould them into the form of a complete poem, in which it is now known. It was introduced in the paper thus:--
"There is a peculiar atrocity in the circumstances which gave rise to the following poem, that stirs even the Dead Sea of our sensibilities. The lady appears to have carried on a furious flirtation with the bard--a cousin of her own--which she, naturally perhaps, but certainly cruelly, terminated by marrying an old East Indian nabob, with a complexion like curry powder, innumerable lacs of rupees, and a woful lack of liver. A refusal by one's cousin is a domestic treason of the most ruthless kind; and, assuming the author's statement to be substantially correct, we must say that the lady's conduct was disgraceful. What her sensations must be on reading the following passionate appeal we cannot of course divine; but if one spark of feeling lingers in her bosom, she must, for four-and-twenty hours at least, have little appetite for mulligatawny."
The reviewer then quotes the poem down to the general commination, ending with
"Cursed be the clerk and parson,--cursed be the whole concern!"
He then resumes his commentary:--
"This sweeping system of anathema may be consonant to what the philosophers call a high and imaginative mood of passion, but it is surely as unjust as any fulminations that ever emanated from the Papal Chair. No doubt Cousin Amy behaved shockingly; but why, on that account, should the Bank of England, incorporated by Royal Charter, or the most respectable practitioner who prepared the settlements, along with his innocent clerk, be handed over to the uncovenanted mercies of the foul fiend? No, no, Smifzer, this will never do! In a more