Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 130.djvu/583

Rh  trampling on the corpses of John Doe and Richard Roe respectively. That itself is humorous enough, but the rhapsody on "J. S." is still more brilliant, and one of the most perfect parodies in our language: — As regards parody, the least happy is, we think, the one on Tennyson, "Wigglesworth v. Dallison," though it would be hard to give in verse a better account of the lawsuit and the issue. Perhaps Mr. Tennyson's easy and yet full-mouthed style does not tickle the apprentice of Lincoln's Inn as quite so ludicrous in connection with a law-suit as the style of Swinburne, or Browning, or Rossetti's antique ballads, or even Clough. Certainly the case of "Scott v. Shepherd," as related by "any pleader to any student," in the best and brusquest possible Browningese, and the case of "Mostyn v. Fabrigas," a case of action for trespass for a wrong done in the island of Minorca by the governor of the said island, the action being brought in the English courts, where the governor supposed that no action would lie for a trespass done beyond the seas, the account of it being given in one of the happiest imitations of the old ballad literature which we have ever seen, are narrated with a skill in combining the study of law points with racy parody on poetic style, such as has hardly been surpassed. On the whole, we think the antique ballad style suits these cases better than any other poetic setting. There is a gossipiness in the old ballads which reminds one of the gossipiness of the old lawyers, and the two, skilfully connected, make what is more like a real and racy work of art than any of the more obvious parodies. The latter are satirical, but these old ballads on law cases have almost the effect of old-fashioned poems written in good faith; and the quaintness of effect so produced gives more pleasure than any parody.

 

 From Temple Bar.

day, four hundred and fifty years ago, or thereabouts, there knocked at the gates of the city of Lüneburg, on the Elbe, as strange a rabble rout as had ever been 