A PIG’S-EYE VIEW OF LITERATURE
The Lives and Times of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron
BYRON and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
But it didn’t impair the poetical feats
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley and Keats.
Oscar Wilde
IF, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
THE pure and worthy Mrs. Stowe
Is one we all are proud to know
As mother, wife, and authoress,—
Thank God I am content with less!
D. G. Rossetti
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Buried all of his libretti,
Thought the matter over,—then
Went and dug them up again.
Thomas Carlyle
CARLYLE combined the lit’ry life
With throwing teacups at his wife,
Remarking, rather testily,
“Oh, stop your dodging, Mrs. C.!”
Charles Dickens
WHO call him spurious and shoddy
Shall do it o’er my lifeless body.
I heartily invite such birds
To come outside and say those words!
Alexandre Dumas and His Son
ALTHOUGH I work, and seldom cease,
At Dumas père and Dumas fils,
Alas, I cannot make me care
For Dumas fils and Dumas père.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
SHOULD Heaven send me any son,
I hope he’s not like Tennyson.
I’d rather have him play a fiddle
Than rise and bow and speak an idyll.
George Gissing
WHEN I admit neglect of Gissing,
They say I don’t know what I’m missing.
Until their arguments are subtler,
I think I’ll stick to Samuel Butler.
Walter Savage Landor
UPON the work of Walter Landor
I am unfit to write with candor.
If you can read it, well and good;
But as for me, I never could.
George Sand
WHAT time the gifted lady took
Away from paper, pen, and book,
She spent in amorous dalliance
(They do those things so well in France).