MIRTH AND METRE.
MIRTH AND METRE—p. 80.
LONDON AND NEW YORK:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & CO.
1855.
MIRTH AND METRE.
BY
TWO MERRY MEN.
Frank E. Smedley,
AND
Edmund H. Yates.
“I’D RATHER HAVE A FOOL TO MAKE ME MERRY, THAN EXPERIENCE
TO MAKE ME SAD.”—SHAKSPEARE.
With Illustrations by M’Connell.
LONDON:
GEO. ROUTLEDGE & CO., FARRINGDON STREET.
NEW YORK: 18, BEEKMAN STREET.
1855.
PREFACE.
If any one of those mysterious autocrats who “do” the reviews“on” some newspaper or serial shall, in his condescension, deignto inform public opinion what he may think about Mirth andMetre, that autocrat, unless he be in an unhoped-for stateof benignity, will, doubtless, commence with the agreeable remarkthat “the work before us consists of certain Lays and Legends,written in paltry imitation of the productions of the inimitableThomas Ingoldsby.”
Admitting the imputation without cavil, (except at the word“paltry,” which really is too bad, don’t you think so, dear reader?)the authors would inquire whether such an admission legitimatelyexposes them to hostile criticism? When the late Mr. Barhamproduced the “Ingoldsby Legends,” he, as it were, founded a newschool of comic versification. That this is not a mere ipse dixitof our own is evinced by the fact that, in common parlance, aman who adopts this style of composition is said to have writtenan “Ingoldsby,” as he might be said to have written an Epic, hadhe chosen that form instead.
To assert that only a very small shred of Mr. Barham’s mantlehas fallen upon any of his imitators (a fact to which none will morereadily assent than the present writers), is simply to state thatthe standard we have proposed to ourselves is a high one, andproportionately difficult to attain.
is a fact which does not appear to have checked the energies orparalysed the ambition of the “king of men;” nor was Waterloothe less a great victory because Julius Cæsar had a few centuriesbefore successfully invaded Gaul.
To our thinking, however, the common sense of the matterlies (after the usual fashion of that inestimable quality) in a nutshell.A servile copy of any particular style—a hash of