&c."
Of the same kind was the parody of Charles Hanbury Williams at the
commencement of the last century, "Old England's Te Deum"--the character
of which may be conjectured from the first line
"We complain of Thee, O King, we acknowledge thee to be a
Hanoverian."
Sometimes parodies of this kind had even a religious object, as when Dr.
John Boys, Dean of Canterbury in the reign of James I., in his zeal,
untempered with wisdom, attacked the Romanists by delivering a form of
prayer from the pulpit commencing--
"Our Pope which art in Rome, cursed be thy name,"
and ending,
"For thine is the infernal pitch and sulphur for ever and ever. Amen."
"The Religious Recruiting Bill" was written with a pious intention, as
was also the Catechism by Mr. Toplady, a clergyman, aimed at throwing
contempt upon Lord Chesterfield's code of morality. It is almost
impossible to draw a hard and fast line between travesty and harmless
parody--the feelings of the public being the safest guide. But to
associate Religion with anything low is offensive, even if the object in
view be commendable.
Some parodies of Scripture are evidently not intended to detract from
its sanctity, as, for instance, the attack upon sceptical philosophy
which lately appeared in an American paper, pretending to be the
commencement of a new Bible "suited to the enlightenment of the age,"
and beginning--
"Primarily the unknowable moved upon kosmos and evolved protoplasm.
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