George Powell's book are quite excellent, and avoid the chief
danger of such work—the danger of being fur-fetched and fantastic. The parody of a nursery rhyme must keep the simplicity and directness of the original, and never fail to remind those who read it of the ground from which it springs. A very good example of what we mean is to be found in Mr. Powell's " Little Boy Blue" :—
"Little Boy Blue
Come blow up this town, It's right in the way, and We must have it down.
Splendid cathedral, Blow it up, too;
We must be marching, Prussian Boy Blue."
Here the point and the poignancy of the verses are clearly • The Crown Prince's First Lesson-Book; or, Nur-4ov Rhianel for the Timm By George U. Powell. London : Grant Bielnirde. [le. =Li
derivable from their nearness to the original Another excellent parady is " Pat a Cake, Pat a Cake " :— " Pat a cake, pat a cake, Pan-German, Make a World-Empire (That is, if you can). siake it and shape it And mark it with G, And put it in the atlas For Daddy and me."
Mr. Powell could not, of course, have been so successful with his nursery rhymes had be not possessed a very com- petent knowledge of German aspirations and German methods of expression. Here is " Ambition," a Pan-German lay:—
" There was a Pan-German And what do you think? He lived upon nothing But envy and ink.
Bernhardi and Treitschke Were all of his diet, And so this Pan-German
Could never be quiet !"
One of Mr. Powell's parodies will appeal particularly to American readers. It is a successful variation of that most delightful of nursery airs, "Pussy-Cat, Pussy-Cat, where have you been?" It exactly expresses what the American people think of the Kaiser's attempts to bamboozle them:—
"Diplomat, Diplomat, where have you been? Courting of President, Monarch and Queen, Diplomat, Diplomat, what did they say? Said they were not taking any to-day."
It would not be fair to quote the whole of Mr. Powell's book. We must leave something for our readers to make acquaint- ance with when they purchase it for their own reading, as we hope they will. We may mention, however, that one of the best of the long parodies is " Zeppelin." Other good pieces of satire are " The Popular Song " and " William and the B—s," the latter after Charles Lamb. " The Alphabet," too, has some good lines in it, though on the whole it is not one of Mr. Powell's successes. We may end our notice of this amusing book with the "Lullaby " " Sleep, Hohenzollern, nor dream of remorse, Cradled in Culture,' reposed on Brute Force, When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, Down will come Culture and Empire and all."
The print and general get-up of Mr. Powtll's book are attractive, and the tail-pieces, or " decorations " as they are called on the title-page, drawn by Mr. Scott Calder, are dis- tinctly good and in every way appropriate. Admirable is the one which decorates " Krupp ! Krupp ! Krupp ! " in which a great gun, across which a German is straddled, is being drawn by two fantastic mules. Quite good, too, is the Jack-in-the- box Pan-German leaping out of his inkstand.
Previous page
