E
Revista de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales
N. 12, 2 (2022), pp. 387-404
: 0214-0691
https://doi.org/10.33776/erebea.v12i2.7782
Fecha de recepción: 24/III/2022
Fecha de aceptación: 11/XI/2022
P
P. G. Patmore, parodia, imitación, Ro-
manticismo, reseña literaria.
K
P. G. Patmore, parody, imitation, Ro-
manticism, literature review.
R
Este estudio ofrece la visión del ensayis-
ta Peter George Patmore sobre el Roman-
ticismo a través de la parodia a reseñas en
Rejected Articles (1826), una obra esencial
para entender un Romanticismo parale-
lo al canon más tradicional. Partiendo de
una introducción contextual del autor y la
obra, se centra metodológicamente en la
discusión sobre la naturaleza y estrategias
paródicas de la obra. El resultado muestra
una mejor comprensión del desarrollo de
la crítica literaria romántica del momento,
y una visión del Romanticismo poco con-
vencional en torno a los procesos de publi-
cación de la época. Asimismo, se logra un
retrato indirecto y original de estereotipos
de importantes escritores románticos, a
merced del mercado editorial, demostran-
do así la necesidad de recuperar el valor crí-
tico y literario de la obra de Patmore.
A
is study oers the essayist P. G. Pat-
more’s view of Romanticism through the
parody of literary reviews in Rejected Ar-
ticles (1826), an essential work for under-
standing a Romanticism that ran parallel to
the more traditional canon. Starting with a
contextual introduction of the author and
his work, it methodologically focuses on
the discussion of the nature and parodic
strategies of the work. e result provides
a better understanding of the development
of Romantic literary criticism of his time,
and an unconventional view of Romanti-
cism in terms of the publication processes
of the time. It also provides an indirect and
original portrayal of stereotypes of relevant
Romantic writers at the mercy of the pub-
lishing market, demonstrating in that way
the need to retrieve the critical and literary
value of Patmore’s work.
P. G. P’ R
rejected articles (1826)
María Rocío Ramos Ramos
Universidad de Huelva
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. P,
Few critics have studied Peter George Patmore (1786-1855), author of the
parody collection Rejected Articles (1826)1. One of the exceptions is e Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography (2004) which only includes his name as a col-
umnist for the New Monthly Magazine, mentioning his various pseudonyms and
his three-volume autobiographical work−My Friends and Acquaintance: Being
Memorials, Mind-portraits, and Personal Recollections of Deceased Celebrities of the
Nineteenth Century; with Selections from their Unpublished Letters (1854). Curi-
ously, his Rejected Articles was not echoed for a long time, even though it is an
important volume for the study of a type of Romanticism that ran parallel to the
traditional canon and that shows many essential features of the literary parody
of the time.
In fact, Patmore’s name is often recognised as the father of the celebrated
Victorian poet Coventry Patmore or for his friendship with important essayists
such as Hamilton Reynolds, Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt. ese aspects
are mentioned before his astute skill as a parodist. Another reason for his lack of
notoriety was the fact that in 1821 he acted in a duel as second of John Scott−
editor of the London Magazine—after which Scott died.2 Directly connected with
the scandal, Patmore ed to France and although he escaped unscathed from the
trial, his reputation was forever tarnished.
Sources such as the afore mentioned e Oxford Dictionary of National Biog-
raphy record the incident, the prosecution and subsequent acquittal of Patmore,
and note that ackery nevertheless continued to refer to him twenty-ve years
later as «that murderer» (2004, p. 44). His friendship with Hazlitt did not help
his reputation either. He was the person to whom Hazlitt confessed his adulter-
ous relationship with Sara Walker and referred to in Liber amoris (1823) as «C.P.».
Surprisingly, among so many personal details, this biographical dictionary does
not mention Rejected Articles.
Patmore’s witty parodic work has been slow to be recognised, Gregory Dart
(2006) being one of the few voices to conrm its worth by equating Rejected
Articles with William Frederick Deacon’s Warreniana and describing both works
as «two of the most brilliant collections of the age» (26). Rejected Articles is under-
stood within the context of the so-called «literary magazine culture» of the nine-
teenth century as dened by David G. Stewart:
1 For the study and quotations taken from this work, the edition of Graeme Stones and John
Strachan Parodies of the Romantic Age (1999) has been used−specically volume 5 edited by Stra-
chan.
2 Interestingly Rolf P. Lessenich notes the normality and number of duels in the Romantic
period: «Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Keats, and Hazlitt, as well as Lockhart, John Wilson, James Hogg
and John Scott all at one time or another received, issued, or threatened to issue a challenge to duel»
(2012, p. 95).
María Rocío Ramos Ramos
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[…] magazine culture is divided between two bitterly opposed
factions: the liberal, reformist, poetically inventive writers of the
Hunt school, and their political and cultural opponents at Tory
journals like Blackwood’s. e bitterness of the opposition nds its
perfect expression in one of the most commonly discussed incidents
in magazine culture, the Scott-Christie duel of 1821 (2006, p. 202).
e writer was aware of the value and importance of the literary press of his
time and, no doubt, of its impact on the reputations of Romantic writers and
literary gures of the day. As he reveals in Letters on England (Strachan 1999, p.
), he was well acquainted with all the intricacies of the journalistic publishing
world. Patmore was aware of the various and enriching possibilities of the literary
journals and reviews of the day, and had rst-hand knowledge of the profession,
among many others, with Henry Colburn—a publisher known for his promo-
tional techniques.
His work reveals not only London life in journalistic terms. Patmore was a
Londoner by birth and clearly shows his attachment to and knowledge of the
context he controls. But he also showed that his work was clearly a product of his
journalistic career and experience. Rejected Articles cannot be understood without
explaining the relationship of the treatment of Romantic themes and authors in
the most relevant newspapers of the time, nor without explaining Patmore’s ex-
perience as a review writer—especially of theatre in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Maga-
zine.
He worked not only for the most important literary journals of the late 1810s
and early 1820s−Blackwood’s, London, New Monthly, Retrospective Review and
Westminster Review−but also with important intellectual institutions, such as
the Surrey Institution where he was secretary and met Hazlitt in 1817 as a re-
sult of the latter’s lectures on English poets. rough these lectures he became
acquainted with their subjects and personalities, especially with the Lake poets
—Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey—and wrote one of his rst reviews for
Blackwood’s in 1818, even though this newspaper was Hazlitt’s declared enemy.
His early endorsement of Hazlitt was later complemented by his work under
the editor John Scott in the London Magazine, a magazine that supported Cock-
ney poets. As a successful reviewer of plays—a position Hazlitt had previously
held—he received the pejorative appellation «Tims», and because of his friend-
ship with Hazlitt, insults such as «Cockney», especially from the conservative
Blackwood’s who considered Hazlitt a threat to the established order. us, in
the summer of 1820 Patmore «was rmly established as Blackwood’s ‘Tims’»,
«the empty-headed Cockney youth, friend of ‘pimpled Hazlitt’ and ‘Signor Le
Hunto’» (Strachan, 1999, p. ).
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Patmore was thus a victim, like many, of the struggles between newspapers
and the public. A large number of his works are published anonymously or under
pseudonyms3. It is therefore not surprising that the opening quotation he chose
for the rst two editions of Rejected Articles dealt with the concept of truth and
its exposition:
But be these verities, master Steward?—
—Nay, good Alice, now thou questionest less wisely than is thy
wont.
ey are that they are; and as that I tell them to thee. If they
like thee,
well; if not, it would not make them, though they were ten times
verities.
Old Play
e period from 1820 at the New Monthly revived his taste for literary con-
tributions and he wrote following Southey and his taste for travel books, later
expanding his interest to subjects such as art criticism—British Galleries of Art,
1824. In 1826 he wrote Mirror of the Months—a calendar of rural and urban life
in London—the same year in which he published Rejected Articles and when he
met Lamb.
e importance of his work Rejected Articles, moreover, denes him as one of
the great representatives of the «spoof review», the parodic exercise that imitated
book reviews and criticism and which he masterfully carried out thanks to his
experience as an author, journalist and editor. It is necessary to take into account
his years as an author on Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, London Magazine,
New Monthly, e Retrospective Review and Westminster Review and, above all, his
experience as editor of the New Monthly between 1841 and 1853. us, his rst-
hand knowledge of the literary journalistic press and the context of the period
allows us not only to understand the evolution of Romantic literary criticism of
the time in a parodic key, but also to discover an unconventional image of Ro-
manticism in terms of the publication processes of the time.
. P rejected articles
George Kitchin pointed in 1931 to Deacon as the immediate model for Re-
jected Articles, but in fact this work is a skilful imitation of the collection of verse
parodies by the brothers Horace and James Smith, Rejected Addresses: or the New
eatrum Poetarum (1812). Patmore pays homage to these authors whose work
3 Among others «Victoire de Soligny», the pseudonym under which he published Letters on
England (1823) and «M. De Saint Foix», used in the New Monthly Magazine.
María Rocío Ramos Ramos
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he knew well. He creates a similar collection but now in prose where he focuses
on the world of the literary journals and reviews of the day. He himself admitted
this connection in My Friends and Acquaintance, boasting of its origin in Rejected
Addresses and dening it as a game of wit and insisting on its benevolent aim:
«a jeu-d’esprit of mine, which aimed at being, to the prose literature of the day,
something like what the ‘Rejected Addresses’ was to the poetry,—with its marked
dierence, however, that my imitations were in a great measure bôna de ones»
(Patmore, 1854, vol. , p. 3).
It was precisely this concept of «jeu-d’esprit» that was used in the United
States in e North American Review (1840) when the Smiths’ work was reprinted,
praising the comic potential and sense that Patmore undoubtedly pursued in his
own creation. is American review of Rejected Addresses justied its reprint by
referring to its «good-humoured wit of the imitations» and praised its fame and
value (534). e review noted that the rst edition was out of print and how it
was desirable to produce a second edition for the delight of future generations:
«e book was wholy out of print here, and the republication will be welcomed,
as well by those who laughed over the pages of the work on its rst appearance
as by the younger generation of readers, who have only heard its fame» (1840, p.
535).
In 1826 Patmore became a visionary when he appreciated the work of the
Smith brothers and created his own concept and style of parody from them,
based on the repetition of an imitative pattern that detailed the style of a well-
known literary author or reviewer. His interest lay more in reproducing recognis-
able themes and stylistic peculiarities than in ridiculing his chosen gures, among
whom he had included the Smiths themselves. e result was so good that Hor-
ace Smith himself had acknowledged the value of the work in 1840, in the second
volume of his brother’s biography—Memoirs, Letters, and Comic Miscellanies in
Prose and Verse, of the Late James Smith, Esq., one of the Authors of the ‘Rejected
Addresses’—calling it «one of the luckiest hits in literature» (25).
e point of union with the Smith brothers’ work lies in the reason why it
came into being. Graeme Stones has explored the origins of Rejected Addresses by
relating it to the re at Drury Lane eatre in 1809 which necessitated its recon-
struction. A commemorative address was required for its reopening, and the orga-
nising committee received an avalanche of proposals, which it rejected in favour
of Lord Byron as the most suitable speaker. In response to the dissatisfaction of
the rejected authors, the Smith brothers wrote Rejected Addresses, a work in which
they claimed to collect some of the speeches submitted (Stones 1994, p. 135).
is original literary creation, based on an actual event, brought together verse
supposedly written by such well-known personalities as William omas Fitzger-
ald, Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Cobbett, Moore, Southey, Scott, W. R. Spencer,
Matthew «Monk» Lewis, Coleridge, George Crabbe, George Colman the young-
P. G. Patmore’s view of Romanticism through the parody of literary reviews...
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er and eodore Hook, with a contribution by Horace Smith himself. is fact
was also recorded in the Clyclopaedia of English Literature; A History, Critical and
Biographical, of British Authors, from the Earliest to the Present Time (1844) where
allusion was made to the fortuitous origin of the work and the enormous scale
of its success: «Mr Ward, secretary to the theatre suggested to the witty brothers
the composition of a series of humorous addresses, professedly composed by the
principal authors of the day. e work was ready by the opening of the theatre,
and its success was almost unexampled» (Chambers 1844, p. 430).
Based on this model, Patmore anonymously published Rejected Articles in May
1826, the year in which his Mirror of the Months was also published, with the help
of John Colburn. ere was a second edition in August of the same year, which
appeared under the author’s name, and a third edition in 1834 in which the title
was changed to Imitations of Celebrated Authors; or, Imaginary Rejected Articles,
emphasising the imitative key of the work. e fourth edition in 1844 was the
last one. Curiously, the text was not recovered until Strachan’s edition in 19994.
Used for this study it incorporates in its appendix two important contributions
that were included in the August 1826 edition, which parody Byron’s style—«De-
moniacals»—and Horace Smith’s—«Dining Out»—and which replaced another
composition called «e Review of Tremaine». Both parodies are curious exer-
cises in the eect of parody, revision and exaggeration of Romantic traits and
themes that have underpinned the whole work. Logically, they would count on
the complicity of the reader who would recognise well the keys of the imitated
authors and the ingenious imitation of their styles.
Patmore, like the Smiths, succeeds in his work in visualising the important
process of acceptance and rejection of contributions in the publishing market of
the time, especially in literary journals. By collecting prose contributions pur-
portedly written by famous authors, he exposed the lack of rigour, objectivity or
personal sympathies in the selection of publishers, but above all he reviewed the
patterns of Romantic writing at the time, thus oering an indirect and original
portrait of the stereotypes of important Romantic writers, indirectly pointing to
the hardships and diculties of authors at the mercy of the publishing market.
. T rejected articles
Rejected Articles and its parody keys highlight the role of publishers in the re-
ception of contributions and, above all, the reality of the concept of “reputation”
at the time, which has been extensively studied by Ashley J. Cross (2001) and
which analyses the pressure exerted by the system: «Its substance was determined
from outside by critics and reviewers, by readers and market demands and by the
4 Another later online edition is oered by GALE Group’s Nineteenth Century Collections On-
line: European Literature, 1790-1840: e Corvey Collection (July 2017).
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literary tradition. It often had little grounding in a writer’s sense of his/her own
value, though it was nonetheless essential for continued publication» (2001, p.
571).
us, Patmore’s work acts as a mirror in which the relevance of the writ-
er’s public image, fundamental to understanding the Romantic movement, is
exposed. Cross’s reection is along these lines: «Such continual self-defence sug-
gests that any reputation was always also misrepresentation, any sense of original
genius was embattled, even illusory» (2001, p. 572). Hence, the traditional con-
cept of «genius» attributed to Romantic writers was in a permanent state of «dis-
possession», depending on many occasions on the reviews and representations of
them and their works, as well as on the economic diculties in the sales market.
Patmore takes advantage of this context to respond with the collection of
his articles, presenting them as the rejected creations of prominent essayists and
authors such as Charles Lamb, William Cobbett, Horace and James Smith, John
Wilson, William Hazlitt, Francis Jerey, Leigh Hunt and Byron. e work, in
fact, is a personal manifesto against the style and politics of the newspapers that
constituted the network of literary culture in early nineteenth-century Britain−
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Edinburgh Review, London Magazine, New
Monthly Magazine and Register. A very brief preface to the rst edition of 1826,
collected by Strachan, justied the vindictive nature of the collection: «[…] the
Editor of the present Volume states, that it is the joint production of several
gentlemen who have long been distinguished for the piquancy of their Periodical
writings, and that every Article it contains has been ‘Rejected’ from at least one
celebrated Journal of the day» (1999, p. 1).
All parts of Rejected Articles—with the exception of the parody of Byron with
«Demoniacals»—are prose contributions in a total of twelve supposedly rejected.
Including Patmore’s own, the names of the imitated essayists, as in Rejected Ad-
dresses or Warreniana, are listed in recognisable acronyms in the table of contents
of the work, showing the variety of the chosen styles. Moreover, with very dif-
ferent themes, the compositions were coherently united as samples of literary
criticism which, both for readers of the nineteenth century and for readers of our
contemporary period, are of interest for reviewing literary themes and styles with
the keys to the intelligentsia of the time. Patmore highlights the importance and
relevance of the critical commentaries on Romantic authors or written by them,
demonstrating the essayistic richness of the movement and the informative and
powerful character of the publishing houses and the press to praise or denigrate
creative minds. us, bearing in mind how the speeches for the opening of the
Drury Lane eatre were once rejected, Patmore oered a peculiar homage to
other potential «displaced writers» and found in this the reason for a humorous
vindication of authors as victims of the publishing system. e Preface ironically
questions the action of editors and their unscrupulousness by mentioning the «re-
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morseless pens of the Periodical Editors» (Strachan, 1999, p. 1) and manages with
his sustained parodic exercise to examine the essential and not always fair part of
the editorial and journalistic process. His parody is essential in the tradition as a
link between the Smith brothers and the line that omas Love Peacock (1785-
1866) would also mark in his inuential parodic essay e Four Ages of Poetry
(1820) where, by parodying Hesiod, Peacock reviews the poetry of the dierent
ages focusing on Romantic Poetry, exposing with no little irony the dierent
poetic expressions of his time5.
3.1 parodying literary reviews in R A
3.1.1 Blackwood’s magazine and novel reviews
«Review of Tremaine» is a parody that imitates the cruel style adopted by
Blackwood’s newspaper against the Cockney school and its signatory, Patmore
himself, whom they called «‘low-bred and ignorant cockney’ Tims» (Strachan
1999, p. ). It is a tough composition which Patmore in successive editions
decided to replace with two others, the Horatio Smith imitation «Dining Out»
and Byron’s «Demoniacals», and which Strachan includes in his edition as an
appendix.
With «Review of Tremaine», Patmore openly parodies the style of Blackwood’s
Magazine and one of the newspaper’s typical devices, the so-called “spoof review”
which, in Strachan’s words, was «a fundamental and entirely intentional misread-
ing of the book under discussion» (53). e technique of reviewing the novel is
thus parodied by imitating Blackwood’s attack on Robert Plumer Ward’s novel
Tremaine, or the Man of Renement (1825), to show that it is the work of an ig-
norant writer of the «Cockney» school and that it is notable for its vulgarity and
immorality. e imitation is signed by Christopher North, the pseudonym adopt-
ed in 1826 by John Wilson (1785-1854), one of the newspaper’s best-known
critics. e essay is full of typical Blackwood’s attacks from the rst line and in
general against the representatives of the Cockney school —who it denigrates
with expressions of the calibre of «these ‘crisp’ Cocknies at their dirty work» (57),
«this low rabble» (58), «their exploits» (58), «their vagaries» (58), «coxcombical
cocknies» (70). But also in a particular key, against Hazlitt and Patmore himself,
who is included among those criticised: «What, for example, can be more ludi-
crous than to see a couple of cocknies, like Hazlitt and Tims, snivelling over the
decline of the Fine Arts, as they would over a sh upon a hook» (58).
e essay abounds with quotations from Plumer’s novel in sustained criti-
cism. e novel is even referred to as a «manual of cockneyism» and a systematic
attempt is made to recreate the abusive tone of the newspaper in its devastating
5 See García Ramos (2003) for more details about Peacock’s analysis on Romantic poetry, and
Joukovsky (2017) for more details on Peacock’s use of the essayist Jerey’s voice in this essay.
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critique. us, the novel is disparagingly referred to as «important new work»(75)
and even proposes a dierent title, “Life and Adventures of a Cockney” (75). All
of this is done in order to show a complete rejection of the main romantic char-
acter, Tremaine, who is ironically referred to as «the man of Renement»through-
out the essay, echoing the title of the reviewed novel. Imbued with a roman-
tic spirit, the character is ridiculed and Patmore recreates the cruel tone of the
paper by arguing that Tremaine devotes almost 650 pages to declaring his love. A
declaration that is further marred by an incident, «the OVERSETTING OF A
TEA-URN» (74), which, being absurd, is exaggeratedly recreated as a cruel and
dangerous accident. e narrator further comments sarcastically: «Now, we put
it to the most candid of readers, whether any being but a cockney, could have
conceived the idea of bringing a long-standing love aair to a crisis, by means of
such a catastrophe as this?» (75).
Overall, Patmore shows that he knows how to recreate and imitate Blackwood’s
style. He adopts a jovial but sarcastic tone of malicious superiority. ere is an
abundance of direct ad hominem attacks that abuse personal reproach. e value
of the work reviewed is belittled in line-by-line criticism, taking paragraphs out
of context and in an unhealthy enjoyment that accentuates specic passages to
denigrate them for playful eect. Patmore further copies Blackwood’s continued
use of many exclamatory phrases or the use of italics to emphasise with disdain
any observation. e author, in his parody of content and style, repays with harsh
parody the shattering eects of the original newspaper, showing the fearsome face
of the mockery taken to its extremes.
3.1.2 John Wilson and his Shakespeare reviews
In «Letters on Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet», Patmore again parodies the
style of exacerbated criticism of the aforementioned John Wilson who used to
sign his well-known «Letters on Shakespeare» in Blackwood’s with the acronym T.
C. e original essay «On Hamlet» is parodied and allusions are made to another
work by Wilson—e Isle of Palms. Patmore poses as a fake famous professor who
reviews and criticises Romeo and Juliet, which although he describes as a «divine
drama», he touches on various almost absurd aspects in his systematic attack on
Shakespeare’s work, such as the fact that the death of the characters is not su-
ciently tragic: «e catastrophe was not tragic enough, forsooth; and they must
have the lovers meet face to face, and die in each others’ arms by lingering tor-
ments: the one torn to pieces in body by the physical eects of the poison, and in
mind by the still more terrible poison of rage and despair at seeing his lady after
he has killed himself to be with her […]» (91-92).
Patmore plays the role of a devastating critic who dares to attack all the ele-
ments of the famous tragedy—plot, characters, ending, etc.—and who dares to
describe Shakespeare’s play as a shoddy melodrama. e interest of the parody lies
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rstly in the mockery of Wilson’s style of criticism, which he presents through
a ctitious critic, demeaning his level of authority and calling into question his
actual knowledge of the play. Secondly, the parodic text is a clear demonstration
of the interest and xation that the gure of Shakespeare and his work still held
in Romanticism, which systematically intrudes on literary and non-literary works
whose reviews are exposed through the literary press.
3.1.3 James Smith and Travel Literature
In the sixth essay, «Grimm’s Ghost. e Culpeppers on the Continent», Pat-
more shows his admiration for the author James Smith in a peculiar and parodic
homage based on the author’s well-known work, «Grimm’s Ghost». Patmore’s
starting point was what had been the greatest success of the elder of the Smith
brothers: a series of comic sketches published between March 1821 and De-
cember 1825 in the New Monthly. ey revealed English bourgeois life in satir-
ical prose with forays into the epistolary genre. As Strachan (1999, 97) notes,
they were part of an existing tradition that went back to the eighteenth century
with Christopher Anstey’s New Bath Guide (1766) and repeated the technique
of Smith’s contemporaries such as omas Haynes Bayley’s Rough Sketches of
Bath (1817) and omas Moore’s e Fudge Family in Paris (1818). All of these
works followed patterns of English good humour and satirical criticism. Based on
characters living in London previously created by Smith—the Culpepper family
and the Dixon family—he goes a step further and through a narrator portrays
their adventures on a trip to France, completing the record of their wanderings
with three letters written by one of the daughters, Clara Culpepper, to her friend
Belinda Binks of Bucklersbury, repeating the device of the sham letters, a constant
motif of romantic parody6. e reader recognises the whole earlier tradition, not
only because of the title clues and the clear indication of the author, but because
it is expressed «See New Monthly Magazine passim» (99), showing with the Latin
particle passim—from beginning to end—the imitative character of the whole
document.
Patmore imitates Smith’s benevolent satire, a version with «Horatian tone»
as Strachan (1999, p. 97) points out, but his parody is concerned with the re-
vision of the lifestyle of English bourgeois families, paying particular attention
to their vain pretensions and fashions of the Romantic era. In a brief rst part,
the narrator comments on the Culpeppers’ absurd passion for fashion, especially
their exaggerated taste for the French. He describes the moment when they have
decided to change all their habits, including the use of furniture, for the French,
experiencing in the house what he calls «an entire ‘French Revolution’» (101),
6 Blackwood’s went so far as to call the New Monthly «the New Misses’ Magazine» (Stewart
2006, 207), mockingly pointing to its excessive sentimentality and large female readership.
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of which he repeatedly gives details: «a French clock and French china on the
mantle-piece; a French glass over the replace; French lamps on the French-fash-
ionable card-tables; and French polish on everything in the room, except in its
inhabitants.» (101). is leads them and the Dixons to want to experience French
culture at rst hand on a trip to Boulogne.
Patmore parodies Smith’s familiar style by showing his abundant use of puns.
Hence, in describing domestic changes−carpets or seats−he combines words that
adopt the supposedly French sound−seat/settee or city/cittee: «e furniture has
also undergone a no less radical reform. e grim old Kidderminster is discarded
in favour of a brilliant Brussels of a kaleidoscope pattern [. . .]—to say nothing of
a settee in each window, the like of which, as Old Culpepper facetiously observes,
was never seen in the Cittee before» (101).
Similarly, the Dixon family’s pretensions to undertake a journey simply to
copy the habits of other families or their total ignorance of places are also exposed
in puns used by the characters. us, in explaining their motivations for travel-
ling, the Dixon family’s comments indicate their total ignorance and limitations
in terms of local references to new places to see. e father of the Culpepper
family, hearing that his wife wants to copy the steps of other English families,
thus connects the sound of the word for the Rhine River in Germany—Rhine—
with the word «rind», which reminds him of the cheese rinds in his friend Dixon’s
shop in England:
I railly do think the young folks ought to see some’at of foreign
ways. Why there’s them Hincks’s gals have been to Rome, and Italy,
and the Rhine, and’ —[. . .] this mention of the Rhine roused him
(elder Culpepper) from his chin-on-elbow-supported attitude, in a
moment. ‘e Rind!’ reiterated he with a good humoured chuckle
—«ha! ha! the Rind! they needn’t go far to see that. ey’ve only to
step into our friend Dixon’s shop in Fenchuch Street, and they may
see plenty of Rind, and smell it too, for that matter» (102)
e colloquial tone, the lack of grammatical correctness, and the father’s
laughter give a glimpse of the humour that Patmore was so struck by in Smith’s
work. Patmore transforms it by creating a narrator aected by the novelties of
progress who politely withdraws before the boat trip begins: «Having, in my
present state of being, a mortal or rather an immortal antipathy to anything in
the shape of smoke, the reader will not be surprised to learn that I decline accom-
panying our travellers any farther than to see them safe o from the Tower stairs.
I must therefore consign to another pen the task of communicating the events
consequent on the voyage» (103).
is gives way to Clara’s voice, with which Patmore shows that she knows the
tradition of women’s sham letters to perfection. Vain, light-hearted and oblivi-
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ous, Clara records the family’s steps in France while still thinking of herself and
a frivolous and pretentious bourgeois life. In her letters to her friend Belinda,
negative comments abound, indicating the conceited superiority of this social
class, based on its own well-being and its inability to adapt. In addition to the
many comments about the bad voyage in the rst letter, there are traces of the
young woman’s exaggerated and banal speech, which Patmore intensies with key
words in italics:
[…] and all in a moment I began to be so sick, and so frightened,
and Pa was so cross about having consented to come, and Ma was
so angry with Ned and me for having persuaded her to persuade
him, and Ned, (who didn’t seem to mind it a bit,) was so provoking,
and everything was so disagreeable, that I can’t bear even to think
of it now it’s all over; so I shall only say that the nasty sea water has
quite annihilated my sweet green Spencer, and turned Ma’s crimson
pelisse all over as black as the chimney (103-104)
Clara’s concerns are undoubtedly centred on her physique and her belong-
ings, and the reader—who would expect a travelogue with details of French
life−receives just a recounting of banal details alternating between misunderstood
French character traits, a spoiled child’s experience, and an obsessive attention to
the appearance and clothing of those she sees. rough her letter, Clara represents
a romanticised and caricatured female sector that pursues men like the charac-
ter of Captain ackeray, who consistently ignores her and her noisy, whining
family. Patmore captures Smith’s comedy well and turns it on its head, imitating
it in a new episode of these families with burlesque intent and verbose style, full
of digressions, which never quite nish what they announce: «I have lled my
paper cram full again, without getting to the end—or rather hardly to the be-
ginning—of our adventure with the Captain» (111). e exaggeratedly frivolous
character of the young woman, her conceptions of life according to the French
sentimental novels she reads−such as Bernadin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie
of 1788—and her excessive superciality, give a jocular and mocking tone to her
vision of London society, far removed from the political demands, for example,
that we see in the parody of Cobbett. It thus shows the genius of manipulating
parody in dierent genres with a critical sense. In these cases, the support in the
main work is fundamental as part of the work and not so much as the focus of
the parody’s attack. Patmore thus oers here another kind of parody that plays
at rewriting the style of the admired author with the sequel to the Culpeppers.
3.1.4 Francis Jerey and the reviews of foreign novels
In the ninth essay, “Brother Jonathan; or e New Englanders. Rejected from
the Edinburgh Review”, Patmore reviews John Neal’s American novel Brother
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Jonathan: or, e New Englanders (1825) in imitation of Francis Jerey’s style in
the Edinburgh Review and showing the importance of the vogue for American
literature among readers. It is an interesting document of a peculiar Romanticism
in that it marks Jerey’s cosmopolitanism in imitating an American author/work
and above all because it is generated at a time when the literary boundaries be-
tween British and American are still very clear.
Neal tried to oer the quintessentially American novel by including Amer-
ican dialect and speech patterns. However, in the review whose style Patmore
parodies, the novel is described as chaotic and over-imaginative on the part of
the author. To this end, Patmore abuses quotations from the novel in his article,
in turn mimicking this aspect of Jerey’s criticism. At the beginning of the essay,
in a note, Patmore tells us why the article was rejected by the Edinburgh Review,
«the writer of Brother Jonathan has neutralized his American title to the patronage
of the ‘Prince of Critics’, by becoming a writer in Blackwood’s Magazine» (175),
the rival journal.
e essay ironically considers Brother Jonathan, «the most extraordinary work
of its kind which this age of extraordinary works has put forth—in Great Britain,
we mean» (176), criticising its length and the fact that the plot takes place in a
single year but in three long 450-page volumes. He also mentions shortcomings
in the plot, unoriginality and uniqueness, for example in having three heroines−
Edith Cummin, Olive and Emily—instead of one. He also criticises the novel’s
reliance on mere observation, or its poor punctuation, which is sometimes the
cause of its inconsistencies. To this end, he resorts to long quotations from the
novel, imitating Jerey’s style. e essay ends by once again criticising Neal: «In
short, if this is a rst production in its way, and its author is young, we should be
accused of extravagance if we were to express the extent of our hopes as to what
may follow it. But its author has written two or three such works, we almost de-
spair of his ever writing a better» (202).
It shows that romantic reviews of foreign books predominate at the time,
which shows an important transnational dimension of the romantic movement.
On the other hand, they reveal the severe criticism of Romantic production. And
nally, it shows the kind of criticism that abounded on literature itself.
3.1.5 Leigh Hunt and the rewriting of Italian literature
In the tenth and last essay—«Boccaccio and Fiametta. A Tale of the Green-
wood-Shade»—Patmore parodies Leigh Hunt’s style by exploiting the excessive
theoretical burden of the well-known author and critic but, above all, his interest
in Italian literature which he had demonstrated by translating Boccaccio in Foli-
age; or Poems Original and Translated (1818).7 is interest in Italian culture is
7 In his conception of the Romantic poet not only as an individual but as a member of groups,
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well captured by Jerey N. Cox (2003), who has emphasised the interest in his
literature in Renaissance Italy. In fact,
As the Italy of Dante and Boccaccio replaced the Rome of Hor-
ace, so the «four great Masters of our Song”—Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Spencer, Milton, and presumably Byron—became great through
an engagement with Italian literature. (II. 34-5, 64). Hunt modi-
es the received pattern of cultural history, replacing the line from
Greece to Rome, neoclassical France and England with a dierent
one that moves from Greece to Renaissance Italy to England, so
linking three cultures dedicated to imaginative poetry and political
liberty (quoted in Roe 2003, pp. 65-66).
Patmore transforms the title of Hunt’s original 1820 work—Amyntas: A Tale
of the Woods—and recreates the plot of Bocaccio’s love for Fiametta, daughter of
the King of Naples, in a bucolic setting in a Neapolitan setting. However, it mixes
many elements, and justies in one of the editorial notes, «I am a little puzzled
by the paper myself» (205) by asserting that although the essay is written by the
author of the initials L. H.—which clearly allude to Leigh Hunt—it has other
styles. is is why Strachan has detected only a few echoes of Hunt and more
quotations from Keats and describes the composition as «a whimper rather than
a resounding imitative bang» (Strachan 1999, p. 203).
e essay however, exemplies a literary review, marking the Romantic par-
ody in all its details. e basis of the play is detailed, a clandestine, bucolic love
that arises from the lovers’ meeting in the forest, when she−beautiful plagiarist
(210)—steals some verses—«Fugitive Pieces» (208)—that he writes on the bark
of trees. is idyll ends when the king calls Boccaccio to Naples to present him
with his secret treasure, his daughter, who turns out to be Fiametta. e poet
returns to Florence while she marries the «Prince of Arragon» (225). Parodied
above all is the reexive charge with which the supposed Hunt tries to justify the
experience of frustrated youthful love: «Let us believe that if Boccaccio had not,
in his early youth, met with this ill-starred ‘aair of the heart,’ he would have kept
aloof from those scenes into which his sad thoughts threw him, and the world
have been without that famous ‘Decameron’ which those scenes at once impelled
and qualied him to write» (225).
schools or circles, and because of the inuence and reection of the cultural interaction between the
members of the Cockney School on Foliage, Jerey N. Cox (2003) considers the work already in
the title of his study «A Cockney Manifesto» (58). According to Cox, Hunt’s circle—Keats, Shelley,
Hazlitt, or Lamb, and Moore and Byron as allies of the group—is not simply the external context
of the work but an inherent part of the texts. Referring to the social sonnets in the play, Cox adds:
«Taken together, the sonnets in Foliage recreate the people, settings and ideas that comprised the
Cockney School; they do not record private preferences, but shared commitments» (62).
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Patmore also pays homage to Byron with this parody. He takes the title of the
rst collection the author wrote when he was 14 years old—«Fugitive Pieces»—
and in doing so alludes to another thwarted experience, as it was unsuccessful
and was never published. As Antonio Ballesteros states: «El volumen no alcanzó
difusión alguna, pues, siguiendo el consejo del reverendo omas Beecher, amigo
del poeta, que consideraba que algunos poemas eran excesivamente explícitos en
su exposición de los sentimientos amorosos, Byron quemó los ejemplares» (2011,
p. 243).
e connection between Hunt and Byron that Patmore uses is not accidental
either, as these two authors shared a residence in Livorno in the early 1820s, while
collaborating on the edition of the magazine e Liberal. e parody therefore
oers winks to the reader while imitating a review of the time, taking Hunt as the
main author and giving the clues to understand the romantic elements that he
brought to bear on his compositions.
. C
Patmore’s collection of parodies reuses details from the style of each imitated
essayist and author, often including their personal details. Simultaneously, it re-
visits social, cultural and literary issues, especially in features of the journalistic
format. In so doing, the collection, in fact, oers an example of the variety of the
literary press of the rst two decades of the nineteenth century, functioning, in
David G. Stewart’s words, as a «magazine of magazines» (2006, p. 209).
Patmore dened his work as a «jeu-d’esprit of mine» (Strachan 1999, p. ), as
a divertimento from which today we can obtain invaluable information about the
development of Romanticism, in a style and format that allows us to recognise
keys to the movement that are very dierent from those associated with conven-
tional Romanticism. However, it can be armed that this unconscious tone of
the parody game contained a profound knowledge of the imitated authors. e
author is capable of adopting the style, themes and pressures to which the writers
were subjected. us, his creation is closer to pure imitation than to parody and
seems to be a personal project in which the sorrows and diculties of the imitat-
ed authors are known−whether they were friends or enemies.
Patmore’s contribution evidences his relevant role in the world of literary pub-
lications of Romanticism, because of his interest in and reection of aesthetic
rather than its conicting political styles. His benevolent parody reveals the pro-
cess in which the journals were read: their gestation, reception and rejection. It
establishes the anities and dierences in the way literature was treated and used
as a bridge for social and political commentary. His parody is basically imitation
and starts above all from admiration for the authors whose works and styles are
parodied, such as the Smiths or Hazlitt, or the cruelty with which they are treat-
ed, such as the style of Blackwood’s, or his respect for intellectual work, as shown
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in his copy of Professor Wilson in his commentary on Shakespeare. He does not
conceal his overt intention, for he takes exactly the name of the imitated plays,
which are easily identiable. He produces an intelligent parody with a witty result
that makes the reader smile, especially because it shows that he is capable of fol-
lowing the thread that the original author had already started, as in «Tremaine»,
in his composition on Shakespeare—which is presented as n. 2 of the already
existing Letters on Shakespeare—or in «Grimm’s Ghost», where he indicates that
he follows the series already started in the New Monthly Magazine.
If his role as a journalist had predominated until now, his important and ori-
ginal use of the parody of the Smith brothers should be considered and revalued.
His work is fundamental in that it oered the reading public of the time a vade
mecum of the dierent types of romantic essay in existence, emulating to perfec-
tion and with a great sense of humour the dierent aesthetic styles of some of the
best-known authors of his time.
R
Ballesteros, Antonio (2011). Poesía romántica inglesa. Antología bilingüe. Publi-
caciones ADE.
Chambers, Robert (ed.) (1844). Cyclopaedia of English Literature; A History,
Critical and Biographical, of British Authors, from the Earliest to the Present
Time. William and Robert Chambers.
Cox, Jerey N. (2003). Leigh Hunt’s Foliage: a Cockney manifesto. In E. Nicho-
las Roe (ed.) Leigh Hunt. Life, Poetics, Politics (pp. 58-77). Routledge.
Cross, Ashley J. (2001). From Lyrical Ballads to Lyrical Tales: Mary Robinson’s
Reputation and e Problem of Literary Debt. Studies in Romanticism, 40(4),
571-605.
Dart, G. (2006). Graeme Stones and John Strachan (ed.), Parodies of the Romantic
Age.
Joukovsky, Nicholas A. (2017). Peacock’s Modest Proposal: the two voices of e
Four Ages of Poetry. Philological Quarterly, 96(4), 489-516
Kitchin, George (1931). A Survey of Burlesque and Parody in English. Oliver and
Boyd.
Lessenich, Rolf P. (2012). Neoclassical Satire and the Romantic School, 1780-1830.
V&R Unipress/Bonn UP.
Mathew, H. C. G., and Harrison, Brian (eds.). (2004). Oxford Dictionary of Na-
tional Biography. From the Earliest times to the year 2000 (vol. 43). Oxford UP.
Patmore, Peter George (1823). Letters on England. By Victoire, Count De Soligny
(vol. 1). Henry Colburn.
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— (). My Friends and Acquaintance: Being Memorials, Mind-Portraits, and
Personal Recollections of Deceased Celebrities of the Nineteenth Century: with
Selections from their Unpublished Letters. 3 vols. Saunders and Otley.
Ramos Ramos, M.ª del Rocío (2003). Shelley’s Debt upon Peacock’s e Four
Ages of Poetry. In I Encontro de Estudos Românticos (pp. 87-93). Facultade de
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Rejected Addresses, or the New eatrum Poetarum. From the Nineteenth London
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e North American Review, 50(107), 1840, pp. 534-535.
Stewart, David G. (2006). Patmore’s Rejected Articles and the Image of the Maga-
zine Market. Romanticism, 12(3), 200-211.
Stones, Graeme (1994). Parody and Romanticism. PhD diss., supervisor: L. Al.
Newlyn. University of Oxford.
Strachan, John (ed.) (1999). Rejected Articles. Vol. 4. In Graeme Stones and John
Strachan (eds.) Parodies of the Romantic Age. 5 vols. Pickering & Chatto.
