Namby Pamby is a term for affected, weak, and maudlin speech/verse. However, its origins are in Namby Pamby (1725), by Henry Carey

Henry Carey (writer)

Henry Carey was an English poet, dramatist and song-writer. He is remembered as an anti-Walpolean satirist and also as a patriot. Several of his melodies continue to be sung today, and he was widely praised in the generation after his death...

.

Carey wrote the poem as a satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 of Ambrose Philips

Ambrose Philips

-Life:He was born in Shropshire of a Leicestershire family. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1699. He seems to have lived chiefly at Cambridge until he resigned his fellowship in 1708, and his pastorals were probably written in...

 and published it in his Poems on Several Occasions. Its first publication was Namby Pamby: or, a panegyrick on the new versification address'd to A----- P----, where the A-- P-- was Ambrose Philips. Philips had written a series of ode

Ode

Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...

s in a new prosody of seven syllable lines and dedicated it to "all ages and characters, from Walpole

Robert Walpole

Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....

 sterrer of the realm, to miss Pulteney in the nursery." This 3.5' line was a matter of consternation for more conservative poets, and a matter of mirth for Carey. Carey adopts Philips's choppy line form for his parody

Parody

A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 and latches onto the dedication to nurseries to create an apparent nursery rhyme

Nursery rhyme

The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.-Lullabies:...

 that is, in fact, a grand bit of nonsense and satire mixed.

Philips was a figure who had become politically active and was a darling of the Whig

British Whig Party

The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...

 party. He was also a target of the Tory

Tory

Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...

 satirists. Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

 had criticized Philips repeatedly (in The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

 and in his Peri Bathos, among other places), and praising or condemning Philips was a political as much as poetic matter in the 1720's.

The poem begins with a mock-epic opening (as had Pope's Rape of the Lock and as had Dryden's

John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...

 MacFlecknoe), calling all the muses to witness the glory of Philips's prosodic reform:

"All ye Poets of the Age!

All ye Witlings of the Stage!

Learn your Jingles to reform!

Crop your Numbers and Conform:

Let your little Verses flow

Gently, Sweetly, Row by Row:

Let the Verse the Subject fit;

Little Subject, Little Wit.

Namby-Pamby is your Guide;

Albion's Joy, Hibernia's Pride."

Carey's Namby Pamby was an enormous success. It was so successful that people began to call Philips himself "Namby Pamby" (as, for example, in The Dunciad

The Dunciad

The Dunciad is a landmark literary satire by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times. The first version was published in 1728 anonymously. The second version, the Dunciad Variorum was published anonymously in 1729. The New Dunciad, in four books and with a...

in 1727), as he had been renamed by the poem, and Carey was referred to as "Namby Pamby Carey." The poem sold well and has been used as children's literature

Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

since Carey's day.

External links

• Namby-Pamby: or, A Panegyric on the New Versification at Representative Poetry Online