How little did I dream, when writing this, that I should hear the parody quoted through the years up till now almost as often as the original poem! Smifzer was wiser than Tennyson, for he never spoiled the effect of his poem by admitting, like Tennyson in his “Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After,” that it

   was a good thing that “spider-hearted” Amy threw him over as she did.

   Luckily for us, not a few poets were then living whose style and manner of thought were sufficiently marked to make imitation easy, and sufficiently popular for a parody of their characteristics to be readily recognised. Lockhart’s “Spanish Ballads” were as familiar in the drawing-room as in the study. Macaulay’s “Lays of Ancient Rome,” and his two other fine ballads, were still in the freshness of their fame. Tennyson and Mrs Browning were opening up new veins. These, with Moore, Leigh Hunt, Uhland, and others of minor note, lay ready to our hands, as Scott, Byron, Crabbe, Coleridge, Moore, Wordsworth, and Southey had done to James and Horace Smith in 1812, when writing the “Rejected Addresses.” Never, probably, were verses thrown off with a keener sense of enjoyment, and assuredly the poets parodied had no warmer admirers than ourselves. Very pleasant were the hours when we met, and now Aytoun and now myself would suggest the subjects for each successive article, and the verses with which they were to be illustrated. Most commonly this

   was done in our rambles to favourite spots in the suburbs of “our own romantic town,” on Arthur Seat, or by the shores of the Forth, and at other times as we sat together of an evening, when the duties of the day were over, and joined in putting line after line together until the poem was completed. In writing thus for our own amusement we never dreamed that these “nugæ literariæ” would live beyond the hour. It was, therefore, a pleasant surprise when we found to what an extent they became popular, not only in England, but also in America, which had come in for no small share of severe though well-meant ridicule. In those days who could say what fate might have awaited us had we visited the States, and Aytoun been known to be the author of “The Lay of Mr Colt” and “The Fight with the Snapping Turtle,” or myself as the chronicler of “The Death of Jabez Dollar” and “The Alabama Duel”? As it was, our transatlantic friends took a liberal revenge by instantly pirating the volume, and selling it by thousands with a contemptuous disregard of author’s copyright.

   For Aytoun the extravagances of melodrama

   

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