Tweedledum and Tweedledee the most celebrated and most frequently quoted (and sometimes misquoted) epigrams", satirising the disagreements between George Frideric Handel and Giovanni Bononcini, written by John Byrom (1692–1763): Although Byrom is clearly the author of the epigram, the last two lines have also been attributed to Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. While the familiar form of the rhyme was not printed until around 1805, when it appeared in "Original Ditties for the Nursery", it is possible that Byrom was drawing on an existing rhyme. The characters are perhaps best known from Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice Found There" (1871).
John Byrom headed with "Christmas Day for Dolly", was first published in Harrop's "Manchester Mercury" in 1746. Although Byrom is probably best remembered for this Christmas carol, he was regarded by his contemporaries as a poet and a literary man. Most of his poems, the best-known of which is "My spirit longeth for Thee", were religious in tone. He is also remembered for his epigrams and, above all, his coinage of the phrase "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" (in connection with a dispute about the merits of the two composers, Handel and Bononcini). Byrom did not lead an ordinary provincial life. He was a