od's Magazine,' and I
was well pleased to make his acquaintance, which rapidly grew into
intimate friendship, as it could not fail to do with a man of a nature so
manly and genial, and so full of spontaneous humour, as well as of marked
literary ability. His fancy had been caught by some of the things I had
written in this and other papers under the name of Bon Gaultier, and when
I proposed to go on with articles in a similar vein, he fell readily into
the plan and agreed to assist in it. Thus a kind of Beaumont and
Fletcher partnership was formed, which commenced in a series of humorous
papers that were published in Tait's and Fraser's Magazines during the
years 1842, 1843, and 1844. In these papers appeared, with a few
exceptions, the verses which form the present volume. They were only a
portion, but no doubt the best portion, of a great number of poems and
parodies which made the chief attraction of papers under such headings as
"Puffs and Poetry," "My Wife's Album," "The Poets of the Day," and
"Cracknels for Christmas."

In the last of these the parody appeared under the name of "The Jilted
Gent, by Theodore Smifzer," which, as "The Lay of the Lovelorn," has
become perhaps the most popular of the series. I remember well Aytoun
bringing to me some ten or a dozen lines of admirable parody of "Locksley
Hall." That poem had been published about two years before, and was at
the time by no means widely known, but was enthusiastically admired by
both Aytoun and myself. What these lines were I cannot now be sure, but
certainly they were some of the best in the poem. They were too good to
appear as a fragment in the paper I was engaged upon, and I set to work
to mould them into the form of a complete poem, in which it is now known.
It was introduced in the paper thus:--

"There is a peculiar atrocity in the circumstances which gave rise to
the following poem, that stirs even the Dead Sea of our
sensibilities. The lady appears to have carried on a furious
flirtation with the bard--a cousin of her own--which she, naturally
perhaps, but certainly cruelly, terminated by marrying an old East
Indian nabob, with a complexion like curry powder, innumerable lacs
of rupees, and a woful lack of liver. A refusal by one's cousin is a
domestic treason of the most ruthless kind; and, assuming the
author's statement to be substantially correct, we must say that the
lady's conduct was disgr