History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2)
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Transcriber's note:
The letter "e" with a macron is rendered [=e] in this text.
The astute reader will notice there is no Chapter XV in the
Table of Contents or in the text. This was a printer's error
in the original book. The chapters were incorrectly numbered,
but no chapter was missing. This e-book has been transcribed
to match the original.
HISTORY OF ENGLISH HUMOUR
With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour.
by
THE REV. A. G. L'ESTRANGE,
Author of
"The Life of the Rev. William Harness,"
"From the Thames to the Tamar,"
Etc.
In Two Volumes.
Vol. II.
London:
Hurst and Blackett, Publishers,
13, Great Marlborough Street.
1878.
All rights reserved.
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAPTER I.
Burlesque--Parody--The "Splendid Shilling"--Prior--Pope--Ambrose
Philips--Parodies of Gray's Elegy--Gay 1
CHAPTER II.
Defoe--Irony--Ode to the Pillory--The "Comical Pilgrim"--The
"Scandalous Club"--Humorous Periodicals--Heraclitus
Ridens--The London Spy--The British
Apollo 22
CHAPTER III.
Swift--"Tale of a Tub"--Essays--Gulliver's Travels--Variety
of Swift's Humour--Riddles--Stella's Wit--Directions
for Servants--Arbuthnot 44
CHAPTER IV.
Steele--The Funeral--The Tatler--Contributions of Swift--Of
Addison--Expansive Dresses--"Bodily Wit"--Rustic
Obtuseness--Crosses in Love--Snuff-taking 62
CHAPTER V.
Spectator--The Rebus--Injurious Wit--The Everlasting
Club--The Lovers' Club--Castles in the Air--The
Guardian--Contributions by Pope--"The Agreeable
Companion"--The Wonderful Magazine--Joe Miller--Pivot
Humour 77
CHAPTER VI.
Sterne--His Versatility--Dramatic Form--Indelicacy--Sentiment
and Geniality--Letters to his Wife--Extracts
from his Sermons--Dr. Johnson 99
CHAPTER VII.
Dodsley--"A Muse in Livery"--"The Devil's a Dunce"--"The
Toy Shop"--Fielding--Smollett 113
CHAPTER VIII.
Cowper--Lady Austen's Influence--"John Gilpin"--"The
Task"--Goldsmith--"The Citizen of the World"--Humorous
Poems--Quacks--Baron Muenchausen 127
CHAPTER IX.
The Anti-Jacobin--Its Objects and Violence--"The
Friends of Freedom"--Imitation of Latin Lyrics--The
"Knife Grinder"--The "Progress of Man" 141
CHAPTER X.
Wolcott--Writes against the Academicians--Tales of a
Hoy--"New Old Ballads"--"The Sorrows of Sunday"--Ode
to a Pretty Barmaid--Sheridan--Comic Situations--"The
Duenna"--Wits 150
CHAPTER XI.
Southey--Drolls of Bartholomew Fair--The "Doves"--Typographical
Devices--Puns--Poems of Abel Shufflebottom 164
CHAPTER XII.
Lamb--His Farewell to Tobacco--Pink Hose--On the
Melancholy of Tailors--Roast Pig 175
CHAPTER XIII.
Byron--Vision of Judgment--Lines to Hodgson--Beppo--Humorous
Rhyming--Profanity of the Age 184
CHAPTER XIV.
Theodore Hook--Improvisatore Talent--Poetry--Sydney
Smith--The "Dun Cow"--Thomas Hood--Gin--Tylney
Hall--John Trot--Barham's Legends 196
CHAPTER XVI.
Douglas Jerrold--Liberal Politics--Advantages of Ugliness--Button
Conspiracy--Advocacy of Dirt--The "Genteel
Pigeons" 207
CHAPTER XVII.
Thackeray--His Acerbity--The Baronet--The Parson--Medical
Ladies--Glorvina--"A Serious Paradise" 216
CHAPTER XVIII.
Dickens--Sympathy with the Poor--Vulgarity--Geniality--Mrs.
Gamp--Mixture of Pathos and Humour--Lever
and Dickens compared--Dickens' power of Description--General
Remarks 226
CHAPTER XIX.
Variation--Constancy--Influence of Temperament--Of
Observation--Bulls--Want of Knowledge--Effects
of Emotion--Unity of the Sense of the Ludicrous 241
CHAPTER XX.
Definition--Difficulties of forming one of Humour 276
CHAPTER XXI.
Charm of Mystery--Complication--Poetry and Humour
compared--Exaggeration 285
CHAPTER XXII.
Imperfection--An Impression of Falsity implied--Two
Views taken by Philosophers--Firstly that of Voltaire,
Jean Paul, Brown, the German Idealists, Leon Dumont,
Secondly that of Descartes, Marmontel and Dugald
Stewart--Whately on Jests--Nature of Puns--Effect of
Custom and Habit--Accessory Emotion--Disappointment
and Loss--Practical Jokes 307
CHAPTER XXIII.
Nomenclature--Three Classes of Words--Distinction between
Wit and Humour--Wit sometimes dangerous,
generally innocuous 339
HISTORY OF ENGLISH HUMOUR.
CHAPTER I.
Burlesque--Parody--The "Splendid Shilling"--Prior--Pope--Ambrose
Philips--Parodies of Gray's Elegy--Gay.
Burlesque, that is comic imitation, comprises parody and caricature. The
latter is a valuable addition to humorous narrative, as we see in the
sketches of Gillray, Cruikshank and others. By itself it is not
sufficiently suggestive and affords no story or conversation. Hence in
the old caricatures the speeches of the characters were written in
balloons over their heads, and in the modern an explanation is added
underneath. For want of such assistance we lose the greater part of the
humour in Hogarth's paintings.
We may date the revival of Parody from the fifteenth century, although
Dr. Johnson speaks as though it originated with Philips. Notwithstanding
the great scope it affords for humorous invention, it has never become
popular, nor formed an important branch of literature; perhaps, because
the talent of the parodist always suffered from juxtaposition with that
of his original. In its widest sense parody is little more than
imitation, but as we should not recognise any resemblance without the
use of the same form, it always implies a similarity in words or style.
Sometimes the thoughts are also reproduced, but this is not sufficient,
and might merely constitute a summary or translation. The closer the
copy the better the parody, as where Pope's lines
"Here shall the spring its earliest sweets bestow
Here the first roses of the year shall blow,"
were applied by Catherine Fanshawe to the Regent's Park with a very
slight change--
"Here shall the spring its earliest coughs bestow,
Here the first noses of the year shall blow."
But all parody is not travesty, for a writing may be parodied without
being ridiculed. This was notably the case in the Centones,[1] Scripture
histories in the phraseology of Homer and Virgil, which were written by
the Christians in the fourth century, in order that they might be able
to teach at once classics and religion. From the pious object for which
they were first designed, they degenerated into fashionable exercises of
ingenuity, and thus we find the Emperor Valentinian composing some on
marriage, and requesting, or rather commanding Ausonius to contend with
him in such compositions. They were regarded as works of fancy--a sort
of literary embroidery.
It may be questioned whether any of these parodies were intended to
possess humour; but wherever we find such as have any traces of it, we
may conclude that the imitation has been adopted to increase it. This
does not necessarily amount to travesty, for the object is not always to
throw contempt on the original. Thus, we cannot suppose "The Battle of
the Frogs and Mice," or "The Banquet of Matron,"[2] although written in
imitation of the heroic poetry of Homer, was intended to make "The
Iliad" appear ridiculous, but rather that the authors thought to make
their conceits more amusing, by comparing what was most insignificant
with something of unsurpassable grandeur. The desire to gain influence
from the prescriptive forms of great writings was the first incentive to
parody. We cannot suppose that Luther intended to be profane when he
imitated the first psalm--
"Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the way of the
Sacramentarians, not sat in the seat of the Zuinglians, or followed
the counsel of the Zurichers."
Probably Ben Jonson saw nothing objectionable in the quaintly whimsical
lines in Cynthia's Revels--
_Amo._ From Spanish shrugs, French faces, smirks, irps,
and all affected humours.
_Chorus._ Good Mercury defend us.
_Pha._ From secret friends, sweet servants, loves, doves,
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 not intended to detract from
its sanctity, as, for instance, the attack upon sceptical philosophy
which lately appeared in an American paper, pretending to be the
commencement of a new Bible "suited to the enlightenment of the age,"
and beginning--
"Primarily the unknowable moved upon kosmos and evolved protoplasm.
"And protoplasm was inorganic and undifferentiated, containing all
things in potential energy: and a spirit of evolution moved upon
the fluid mass.
"And atoms caused other atoms to attract: and their contact begat
light, heat, and electricity.
"And the unconditioned differentiated the atoms, each after its
kind and their combination begat rocks, air, and water.
"And there went out a spirit of evolution and working in protoplasm
by accretion and absorption produced the organic cell.
"And the cell by nutrition evolved primordial germ, and germ
devolved protogene, and protogene begat eozoon and eozoon begat
monad and monad begot animalcule ..."
We are at first somewhat at a loss to understand what made the "Splendid
Shilling" so celebrated: it is called by Steele the finest burlesque in
the English language. Although far from being, as Dr. Johnson asserts,
the first parody, it is undoubtedly a work of talent, and was more
appreciated in 1703 than it can be now, being recognised as an imitation
of Milton's poems which were then becoming celebrated.[3] Reading it at
the present day, we should scarcely recognise any parody; but blank
verse was at that time uncommon, although the Italians were beginning to
protest against the gothic barbarity of rhyme, and Surrey had given in
his translation of the first and fourth books of Virgil a specimen of
the freer versification.
Meres says that "Piers Plowman was the first that observed the true
quality of our verse without the curiositie of rime" but he was not
followed.
The new character of the "Splendid Shilling" caused it to bring more
fame to its author than has been gained by any other work so short and
simple. It was no doubt an inspiration of the moment, and was written by
John Philips at the age of twenty. There is considerable freshness and
strength in the poem, which commences--
"Happy the man, who void of cares and strife
In silken or in leathern purse retains
A splendid shilling: he nor hears with pain
New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale;
But with his friends, when nightly mists arise
To Juniper's Magpie or Town Hall[4] repairs.
Meanwhile he smokes and laughs at merry tale,
Or pun ambiguous or conumdrum quaint;
But I, whom griping penury surrounds,
And hunger sure attendant upon want,
With scanty offals, and small acid tiff
(Wretched repast!) my meagre corps sustain:
Then solitary walk or doze at home
In garret vile, and with a warming puff.
Regale chilled fingers, or from tube as black
As winter chimney, or well polished jet
Exhale mundungus, ill-perfuming scent."
He goes on to relate how he is besieged by duns, and what a chasm there
is in his "galligaskins." He wrote very little altogether, but produced
a piece called "Blenheim," and a sort of Georgic entitled "Cyder."
Prior, like many other celebrated men, partly owed his advancement to an
accidental circumstance. He was brought up at his uncle's tavern "The
Rummer," situate at Charing Cross--then a kind of country suburb of the
city, and adjacent to the riverside mansions and ornamental gardens of
the nobility. To this convenient inn the neighbouring magnates were wont
to resort, and one day in accordance with the classic proclivities of
the times, a hot dispute, arose among them about the rendering of a
passage in Horace. One of those present said that as they could not
settle the question, they had better ask young Prior, who then was
attending Westminster School. He had made good use of his opportunities,
and answered the question so satisfactorily that Lord Dorset there and
then undertook to send him to Cambridge. He became a fellow of St.
John's, and Lord Dorset afterwards introduced him at Court, and obtained
for him the post of secretary of Legation at the Hague, in which office
he gave so much satisfaction to William III. that he made him one of his
gentlemen of the bed chamber. He became afterwards Secretary of the Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland, Ambassador in France, and Under Secretary of
State.
During his two year's imprisonment by the Whigs on a charge of high
treason--from which he was liberated without a trial--he prepared a
collection of his works, for which he obtained a large sum of money. He
then retired from office, but died shortly afterwards in his
fifty-eighth year.
Prior is remarkable for his exquisite lightness and elegance of style,
well suited to the pretty classical affectations of the day. He delights
in cupids, nymphs, and flowers. In two or three places, perhaps, he
verges upon indelicacy, but conceals it so well among feathers and rose
leaves, that we may half pardon it. Although always sprightly he is not
often actually humorous, but we may quote the following advice to a
husband from the "English Padlock"
"Be to her virtues very kind,
And to her faults a little blind,
Let all her ways be unconfined,
And clap your padlock on her mind."
"Yes; ev'ry poet is a fool;
By demonstration Ned can show it;
Happy could Ned's inverted rule,
Prove ev'ry fool to be a poet."
"How old may Phyllis be, you ask,
Whose beauty thus all hearts engages?
To answer is no easy task,
For she has really two ages.
"Stiff in brocade and pinched in stays,
Her patches, paint, and jewels on:
All day let envy view her face,
And Phyllis is but twenty-one.
"Paint, patches, jewels, laid aside,
At night astronomers agree,
The evening has the day belied,
And Phyllis is some forty-three."
"Helen was just slipt from bed,
Her eyebrows on the toilet lay,
Away the kitten with them fled,
As fees belonging to her prey."
"For this misfortune, careless Jane,
Assure yourself, was soundly rated:
And Madam getting up again,
With her own hand the mouse-trap baited.
"On little things as sages write,
Depends our human joy or sorrow;
If we don't catch a mouse to-night,
Alas! no eyebrows for to-morrow."
He wrote the following impromptu epitaph on himself--
"Nobles and heralds by your leave,
Here lies what once was Matthew Prior,
The son of Adam and of Eve,
Can Bourbon or Nassau go higher."
But he does not often descend to so much levity as this, his wing is
generally in a higher atmosphere. Sir Walter Scott observes that in the
powers of approaching and touching the finer feelings of the heart, he
has never been excelled, if indeed he has ever been equalled.
Prior wrote a parody called "Erle Robert's Mice," but Pope is more
prolific than any other poet in such productions. His earlier taste
seems to have been for imitation, and he wrote good parodies on Waller
and Cowley, and a bad travesty on Spencer. "January and May" and "The
Wife of Bath" are founded upon Chaucer's Tales. Pope did not generally
indulge in travesty, his object was not to ridicule his original, but
rather to assist himself by borrowing its style. His productions are the
best examples of parodies in this latter and better sense. Thus, he
thought to give a classic air to his satires on the foibles of his time
by arranging them upon the models of those of Horace. In his imitation
of the second Satire of the second Book we have--
"He knows to live who keeps the middle state,
And neither leans on this side nor on that,
Nor stops for one bad cork his butler's pay,
Swears, like Albutius, a good cook away,
Nor lets, like Naevius, every error pass,
The musty wine, foul cloth, or greasy glass."
There is a slight amount of humour in these adaptations, and it seems to
have been congenial to the poets mind. Generally he was more turned to
philosophy, and the slow measures he adopted were more suited to the
dignified and pompous, than to the playful and gay. Occasionally,
however, there is some sparkle in his lines, and, we read in "The Rape
of the Lock"--
"Now love suspends his golden scales in air,
Weighs the men's wits against the lady's hair,
The doubtful beam long nods from side to side,
At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside."
Again, his friend Mrs. Blount found London rather dull than gay--
"She went to plain work and to purling brooks,
Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks,
She went from opera, park, assembly, play,
To morning walks and prayers three hours a day,
To part her time 'twixt reading and bohea,
To muse and spill her solitary tea,
Or o'er cold coffee trifle with a spoon,
Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon,
Divert her eyes with pictures in the fire,
Hum half a tune, tell stories to the Squire,
Up to her Godly garret after seven,
There starve and pray--for that's the way to Heaven."
He was seldom able to bring a humorous sketch to the close without
something a little objectionable. Often inclined to err on the side of
severity, he was one of those instances in which we find acrimonious
feeling associated with physical infirmity. "The Dunciad" is the
principal example of this, but we have many others--such as the epigram:
"You beat your pate and fancy wit will come,
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home."
At one time he was constantly extolling the charms of Lady Wortley
Montagu in every strain of excessive adulation. He wrote sonnets upon
her, and told her she had robbed the whole tree of knowledge. But when
the ungrateful fair rejected her little crooked admirer, he completely
changed his tone, and descended to lampoon of this kind--
"Lady Mary said to me, and in her own house,
I do not care for you three skips of a louse;
I forgive the dear creature for what she has said,
For ladies will talk of what runs in their head."
He is supposed to have attacked Addison under the name of Atticus. He
says that "like the Turk he would bear no brother near the throne," but
that he would
"View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise,
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And with our sneering teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike,
Alike reserved to blame or to commend,
A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend,
Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obleeging that he ne'er obleeged."
Pope at first praised Ambrose Philips, and said he was "a man who could
write very nobly," but afterwards they became rivals, and things went so
far between them that Pope called Philips "a rascal," and Philips hung
up a rod with which he said he would chastise Pope. He probably had
recourse to this kind of argument, because he felt that he was worsted
by his adversary in wordy warfare, having little talent in satire. In
fact, his attempts in this direction were particularly clumsy as--"On a
company of bad dancers to good music."
"How ill the motion with the music suits!
So Orpheus fiddled, and so danced the brutes."
Still there is a gaiety and lightness about many of his pieces. The
following is a specimen of his favourite style. Italian singers, lately
introduced, seem to have been regarded by many with disfavour and alarm.
TO SIGNORA CUZZONI.
"Little syren of the stage,
Charmer of an idle age,
Empty warbler, breathing lyre,
Wanton gale of fond desire,
Bane of every manly art,
Sweet enfeebler of the heart;
O! too pleasing is thy strain,
Hence, to southern climes again,
Tuneful mischief, vocal spell,
To this island bid farewell,
Leave us, as we ought to be,
Leave the Britons rough and free."
To parody a work is to pay it a compliment, though perhaps
unintentionally, for if it were not well known the point of the
imitation would be lost. Thus, the general appreciation of Gray's
"Elegy" called forth several humorous parodies of it about the middle
of the last century. The following is taken from one by the Rev. J.
Duncombe, Vicar of Bishop Ridley's old church at Herne in Kent. It is
entitled "An Evening Contemplation in a College."
"The curfew tolls the hour of closing gates,
With jarring sound the porter turns the key,
Then in his dreamy mansion, slumbering waits,
And slowly, sternly quits it--though for me.
"Now shine the spires beneath the paly moon,
And through the cloister peace and silence reign,
Save where some fiddler scrapes a drowsy tune,
Or copious bowls inspire a jovial strain.
"Save that in yonder cobweb-mantled room,
Where lies a student in profound repose,
Oppressed with ale; wide echoes through the gloom,
The droning music of his vocal nose.
"Within those walls, where through the glimmering shade,
Appear the pamphlets in a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow bed till morning laid,
The peaceful fellows of the college sleep.
"The tinkling bell proclaiming early prayers,
The noisy servants rattling o'er their head,
The calls of business and domestic cares,
Ne'er rouse these sleepers from their drowsy bed.
"No chattering females crowd the social fire,
No dread have they of discord and of strife,
Unknown the names of husband and of sire,
Unfelt the plagues of matrimonial life.
"Oft have they basked along the sunny walls,
Oft have the benches bowed beneath their weight,
How jocund are their looks when dinner calls!
How smoke the cutlets on their crowded plate!
"Oh! let not Temperance too disdainful hear
How long their feasts, how long their dinners last;
Nor let the fair with a contemptuous sneer,
On these unmarried men reflections cast.