es,
and such fantastique humours.

_Chorus._ Good Mercury defend us.

The same charitable allowance may be conceded to the songs composed by
the Cavaliers in the Civil War. We should not be surprised to find a
tone of levity in them, but they were certainly not intended to throw
any discredit on our Church. In "The Rump, or an exact collection of the
choicest poems and songs relating to the late times from 1639" we have
"A Litany for the New Year," of which the following will serve as a
specimen--

"From Rumps, that do rule against customes and laws
From a fardle of fancies stiled a good old cause,
From wives that have nails that are sharper than claws,
Good Jove deliver us."

Among the curious tracts collected by Lord Somers we find a "New
Testament of our Lords and Saviours, the House of our Lords and
Saviours, the House of Commons, and the Supreme Council at Windsor." It
gives "The Genealogy of the Parliament" from the year 1640 to 1648, and
commences "The Book of the Generation of Charles Pim, the son of Judas,
the son of Beelzebub," and goes on to state in the thirteenth verse that
"King Charles being a just man, and not willing to have the people
ruinated, was minded to dissolve them, (the Parliament), but while he
thought on these things. &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 n