11/53 He had declared to himself that all humbug was odious, and should be by him laughed down to the extent of his capacity. His Yellowplush, his Catherine Hayes, his Fitz-Boodle, his Barry Lyndon, and Becky Sharp, with many others of this kind, were all invented and treated for this purpose and after this fashion. I shall have to say more on the same subject when I come to _The Snob Papers_. In this instance he wrote a very pretty ballad, _The Willow Tree_,--so good that if left by itself it would create no idea of absurdity or extravagant pathos in the mind of the ordinary reader,--simply that he might render his own work absurd by his own parody. |