He makes further comments upon their habits and diet, observing that both Burton and Galen especially disapprove of cabbage.

In "Roast Pig" we have one of those homely subjects which were congenial to Lamb.

"There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over roasted crackling—as it is well called—the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance—with the adhesive oleaginous—O call it not fat—but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it—the tender blossoming of fat—fat cropped in the bud—taken in the shoot in the first innocence—the cream and quintessence of the child pig's yet pure food—the lean—no lean, but a kind of animal manna—or rather fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosian result, or common substance.

"Behold him, while he is doing—it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth than a scorching heat, that he is passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string! Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age; he hath wept out his pretty eyes—radiant jellies—shooting stars....

"His sauce should be considered. Decidedly a few bread crumbs done up with his liver and brains, and a dish of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic, you cannot poison them or make them sharper than they are—but consider he is a weakling—a flower."

Lamb gives his opinion that you can no more improve sucking pig than you can refine a violet.

Thus he proceeds along his sparkling road—his humour and poetry gleaming one through the other, and often leaving us in pleasant uncertainty whether he is in jest or earnest. Though not gifted with the strength and suppleness of a great humorist, he had an intermingled sweetness and brightness beyond even the alchemy of Addison. We regret to see his old-fashioned figure receding from our view—but he will ever live in remembrance as the most joyous and affectionate of friends.



CHAPTER VIII.

Byron—Vision of Judgment—Lines to Hodgson—Beppo—Humorous Rhyming—Profanity of the Age.

Moore considered that the original genius of Byron was for satire, and he certainly first became known by his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." Nevertheless, his humorous productions are very small compared with his sentimental. It might perhaps have been expected that his mind would assume a gloomy and cynical complexion. His personal infirmity, with which, in his childhood, even his mother was wont to taunt him, might well have begotten a severity similar to that of Pope. The pressure of friends and creditors led him, while a mere stripling, to form an uncongenial alliance with a stern puritan, who, while enjoying his renown, sought to force his soaring genius into the trammels of commonplace conventionalities. On his refusing, a clamour was raised against him, and those who were too dull to criticise his writings were fully equal to the task of finding fault with his morals. It may be said that he might have smiled at these attacks, and conscious of his power, have replied to his social as well as literary critics

"Better to err with Pope than shine with Pye,"

and so he might, had he possessed an imperturbable temper, and been able to forecast his future fame. But a man's career is not secure until it is ended, and the throne of the author is often his tomb. Moreover, the same hot blood which laid him open to his enemies, also rendered him impatient of rebuke. Coercion roused his spirit of opposition; he fell to replies and retorts, and to "making sport for the Philistines." He would show his contempt for his foes by admitting their charges, and even by making himself more worthy of their vituperation. And so a great name and genius were tarnished and spotted, and a dark shadow fell upon his glory. But let us say he never drew the sword without provocation. In condemning the wholesale onslaught he made in the "Bards and Reviewers," we must remember that it was a reply to a most unwarrantable and offensive attack made upon him by the "Edinburgh Review," written as though the fact of the author being a nobleman had increased the spleen of the critic. It says:—

"The poesy of this young lord belongs to the class which neither gods nor men are said to permit. Indeed we do not recollect to have seen a quantity of verse with so few deviations in either direction for that exact standard. His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below the level than if they were so much stagnant water.... We desire to counsel him that he forthwith abandon poetry and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities, which are great, to better account."[15]

So his profanity in the "Vision of Judgment," was in answer to Southey's poem of that name, the introduction of which contained strictures against him. Accused of being Satanic, he replies with some profanity, and with that humour which he principally shows in such retorts—

"Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate, His keys wore rusty, and the lock was dull, So little trouble had been given of late— Not that the place by any means was full; But since the Gallic era 'eighty-eight' The devils had ta'en a longer, stronger pull, And 'a pull together,' as they say At sea—which drew most souls another way.

"The angels all were singing out of tune, And hoarse with having little else to do, Excepting to wind up the sun and moon, Or curb a runaway young star or two, Or wild colt of a comet, which too soon Broke out of bounds o'er the ethereal blue, Splitting some planet with its playful tail As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale."

The effect of Southey reading his "Vision of Judgment" is thus given:—

"Those grand heroics acted as a spell, The angels stopped their ears, and plied their pinions, The devils ran howling deafened down to hell, The ghosts fled gibbering, for their own dominions."

His poem on a lady who maligned him to his wife, seems to show that he did not well distinguish where the humorous ends and the ludicrous begins. He represents her—

"With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown A cheek of parchment and an eye of stone, Mark how the channels of her yellow blood Ooze at her skin, and stagnate there to mud, Cased like the centipede in saffron mail, A darker greenness of the scorpion's scale, Look on her features! and behold her mind As in a mirror of itself defined."

No one suffered more than Byron from his humour being misapprehended. His letters abound with jests and jeux d'esprit, which were often taken seriously as admissions of an immoral character. We gladly turn to something pleasanter—to some of the few humorous pieces he wrote in a genial tone—

EPIGRAM.

The world is a bundle of hay Mankind are the asses who pull Each tugs in a different way, The greatest of all is John Bull.

Lines to Mr. Hodgson (afterwards Provost of Eton) written on board the packet for Lisbon,

Huzza! Hodgson, we are going, Our embargo's off at last, Favourable breezes blowing Bend the canvas o'er the mast, From aloft the signal's streaming Hark! the farewell gun is fired, Women screeching, tars blaspheming, Tell us that our time's expired. Here's a rascal Come to task all, Prying from the custom house; Trunks unpacking, Cases cracking, Not a corner for a mouse, 'Scapes unsearched amid the racket Ere we sail on board the packet....

Now our boatmen quit the mooring, And all hands must ply the oar: Baggage from the quay is lowering, We're impatient, push from shore. "Have a care that case holds liquor— Stop the boat—I'm sick—oh Lord!" "Sick, ma'am, d—me, you'll be sicker, Ere you've been an hour on board." Thus are screaming Men and women, Gemmen, ladies, servants, tacks; Here entangling, All are wrangling, Stuck together close as wax, Such the general noise and racket Ere we reach the Lisbon packet.

Fletcher! Murray! Bob! where are you? Stretched along the deck like logs— Bear a hand, you jolly tar, you! Here's a rope's end for the dogs. Hobhouse muttering fearful curses As the hatchway down he rolls, Now his breakfast, now his verses, Vomits forth and d—ns our souls.

In Beppo there is much gay carnival merriment and some humour—a style well suited to Italian revelry. When Laura's husband, Beppo, returns, and is seen in a new guise at a ball, we read—

"He was a Turk the colour of mahogany And Laura saw him, and at first was glad, Because the Turks so much admire philogyny, Although the usage of their wives is sad, 'Tis said they use no better than a dog any Poor woman, whom they purchase like a pad; They have a number though they ne'er exhibits 'em, Four wives by law and concubines 'ad libitum."

On being assured that he is her husband, she exclaims—

"Beppo. And are you really truly, now a Turk? With any other women did you wive? Is't true they use their fingers for a fork? Well, that's the prettiest shawl—as I'm alive! You'll give it me? They say you eat no pork. And how so many years did you contrive To—Bless me! did I ever? No, I never Saw a man grown so yellow! How's your liver?"

More than half the poem is taken up with digressions, more or less amusing, such as—

"Oh, mirth and innocence! Oh milk and water! Ye happy mixtures of more happy days! In these sad centuries of sin and slaughter Abominable man no more allays His thirst with such pure beverage. No matter, I love you both, and both shall have my praise! Oh, for old Saturn's reign of sugar-candy! Meantime I drink to your return in brandy."

We may observe that there is humour in the rhymes in the above stanzas. He often used absurd terminations to his lines as—

"For bating Covent garden, I can hit on No place that's called Piazza in Great Britain."

People going to Italy, are to take with them—

"Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar and Harvey, Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye."

We are here reminded of the endings of some of Butler's lines. Such rhymes were then regarded as poetical, but in our improved taste we only use them for humour. Lamb considered them to be a kind of punning, but in one case the same position, in the other the same signification is given to words of the same sound. The following couplet was written humorously by Swift for a dog's collar—

"Pray steal me not: I'm Mrs. Dingley's Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies."

Pope has the well known lines,

"Worth makes the man and want of it the fellow, And all the rest is leather and prunella."

Miss Sinclair also, in her description of the Queen's visit to Scotland, has adopted these irregular terminations with good effect—

"Our Queen looks far better in Scotland than England No sight's been like this since I once saw the King land.

Edina! long thought by her neighbours in London A poor country cousin by poverty undone;

The tailors with frantic speed, day and night cut on, While scolded to death if they misplace a button.

And patties and truffles are better for Verrey's aid, And cream tarts like those which once almost killed Scherezade."

The parallelism of poetry has undergone very many changes, but there has generally been an inclination to assimilate it to the style of chants or ballad music. The forms adopted may be regarded as arbitrary—the rythmical tendency of the mind being largely influenced by established use and surrounding circumstances. We cannot see any reason why rhymes should be terminal—they might be at one end of the line as well as at the other. We might have—

"Early rose of Springs first dawn, Pearly dewdrops gem thy breast, Sweetest emblem of our hopes, Meetest flower for Paradise."

But there are signs that all this pedantry, graceful as it is, will gradually disappear. Blank verse is beginning to assert its sway, and the sentiment in poetry is less under the domination of measure. No doubt the advance to this freer atmosphere will be slow, music has already adopted a wider harmony. Ballads are being superseded by part singing, and airs by sonatas. The time will come when to produce a jingle at the end of lines will seem as absurd as the rude harmonies of Dryden and Butler now appear to us.

It would not be just to judge of the profanity of Byron by the standard of the present day. We have seen that two centuries since parodies which to us would seem distasteful, if not profane, were written and enjoyed by eminent men. Probably Byron, a man of wide reading had seen them, and thought that he too might tread on unforbidden ground and still lay claim to innocence. The periodicals and collections of the time frequently published objectionable imitations of the language of Scripture and of the Liturgy, evidently ridiculing the peculiarities inseparable from an old-fashioned style and translation. In the "Wonderful Magazine" there was "The Matrimonial Creed," which sets forth that the wife is to bear rule over the husband, a law which is to be kept whole on pain of being "scolded everlastingly."

A litany supposed to have been written by a nobleman against Tom Paine, was in the following style.

THE POOR MAN'S LITANY.

"From four pounds of bread at sixteen-pence price, And butter at eighteen, though not very nice, And cheese at a shilling, though gnawed by the mice, Good Lord deliver us!"

The "Chronicles of the Kings of England," by Nathan Ben Sadi were also of this kind, parodies on Scripture were used at Elections on both sides, and one on the Te Deum against Napoleon had been translated into all the European languages. But a most remarkable trial took place in the year 1817, that of William Hone for publishing profane parodies against the Government. From this we might have hoped that a better taste was at length growing up, but Hone maintained that the prosecution was undertaken on political grounds, and that had the satires been in favour of the Government nothing would have been said against them. He also complained of the profanity of his accuser, the Attorney-General, who was perpetually "taking the Lord's name in vain" during his speech. Some parts of Hone's publications seem to have debased the Church Services by connecting them with what was coarse and low, but the main object was evidently to ridicule the Regent and his Ministers, and this view led the jury to acquit him. Still there was no doubt that his satire reflected in both ways. His Catechism of a Ministerial member commenced—

Question. What is your name?

Answer. Lick-spittle.

Ques. Who gave you this name?

Ans. My Sureties to the Ministry in my political charge, wherein I was made a member of the majority, the child of corruption, and a locust to devour the good things of this kingdom.

The supplications in his Litany were of the following kind—

"O Prince! ruler of thy people, have mercy upon us thy miserable subjects."

Some of Gillray's caricatures would not now be tolerated, such as that representing Hoche ascending to Heaven surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim—grotesque figures with red nightcaps and tri-coloured cockades having books before them containing the Marseillaise hymn. In another Pitt was going to heaven in the form of Elijah, and letting his mantle drop on the King's Ministers.

It must be admitted that there is often a great difficulty in deciding whether the intention was to ridicule the original writing or the subject treated in the Parody. A variety of circumstances may tend to determine the question on one side or the other, but regard should especially be had as to whether any imperfection in the original is pointed out. The fault may be only in form, but in the best travesties the sense and subject are also ridiculed, and with justice.

Such was the aim in the celebrated "Rejected Addresses," and it was well carried out. This work now exhibits the ephemeral character of humour, for, the originals having fallen into obscurity, the imitations afford no amusement. But we can still appreciate a few, especially the two respectively commencing:—

"My brother Jack was nine in May, And I was eight on New Year's day; So in Kate Wilson's shop, Papa, (he's my papa and Jack's,) Bought me, last week, a doll of wax, And brother Jack a top."...

And—

"O why should our dull retrospective addresses, Fall damp as wet blankets on Drury Lane fire? Away with blue devils, away with distresses, And give the gay spirit to sparkling desire.

"Let artists decide on the beauties of Drury, The richest to me is when woman is there; The question of houses I leave to the jury; The fairest to me is the house of the fair."

The point in these will be recognised at once, as Wordsworth and Moore are still well known.



CHAPTER XIV.

Theodore Hook—Improvisatore Talent—Poetry—Sydney Smith—The "Dun Cow"—Thomas Hood—Gin—Tylney Hall—John Trot—Barbara's Legends.

Theodore Hook was at Harrow with Lord Byron, and characteristically commenced his career there by breaking one of Mrs. Drury's windows at the suggestion of that nobleman. His father was a popular composer of music, and young Theodore's first employment was that of writing songs for him. This, no doubt, gave the boy a facility, and led to the great celebrity he acquired for his improvisatore talent. He was soon much sought for in society, and a friend has told me that he has heard him, on sitting down to the piano, extemporize two or three hundred lines, containing humorous remarks upon all the company. On one occasion, Sir Roderick Murchison was present, and some would have been a little puzzled how to bring such a name into rhyme, but he did not hesitate a moment running on:—

"And now I'll get the purchase on, To sing of Roderick Murchison."

Cowden Clark relates that when at a party and playing his symphony, Theodore asked his neighbour what was the name of the next guest, and then sang:—

"Next comes Mr. Winter, collector of taxes, And you must all pay him whatever he axes; And down on the nail, without any flummery; For though he's called Winter, his acts are all summary."

Horace Twiss tried to imitate him in this way, but failed. Hook's humour was not of very high class. He was fond of practical jokes, such as that of writing a hundred letters to tradesmen desiring them all to send goods to a house on a given day. Sometimes he would surprise strangers by addressing some strange question to them in the street. He started the "John Bull" newspaper, in which he wrote many humorous papers, and amused people by expressing his great surprise, on crossing the Channel, to find that every little boy and girl could speak French.

He wrote cautionary verses against punning:—

"My little dears, who learn to read, pray early learn to shun That very silly thing, indeed, which people call a pun; Read Entick's rules, and 'twill be found how simple an offence It is to make the self-same sound afford a double sense. For instance, ale may make you ail, your aunt an ant may kill, You in a vale may buy a veil, and Bill may pay the bill; Or if to France your bark you steer, at Dover it may be, A peer appears upon the pier, who blind still goes to sea."

But he was much given to the practice he condemns—here is an epigram—

"It seems as if Nature had cunningly planned That men's names with their trades should agree, There's Twining the tea-man, who lives in the Strand, Would be whining if robbed of his T."

Mistakes of words by the uneducated are a very ordinary resource of humorists, but, of course, there is a great difference in the quality of such jests. Mrs. Ramsbottom in Paris, eats a voulez-vous of fowl, and some pieces of crape, and goes to the symetery of the Chaise and pair. Afterwards she goes to the Hotel de Veal, and buys some sieve jars to keep popery in.

Hook was a strong Tory, and some of his best humour was political. One of his squibs has been sometimes attributed to Lord Palmerston.

"Fair Reform, Celestial maid! Hope of Britons! Hope of Britons! Calls her followers to aid; She has fit ones, she has fit ones! They would brave in danger's day, Death to win her! Death to win her; If they met not by the way, Michael's dinner! Michael's dinner!"

Alluding to a dinner-party which kept several Members from the House on the occasion of an important division.

Among his political songs may be reckoned "The Invitation" (from one of the Whig patronesses of the Lady's Fancy Dress Ball,)

"Come, ladies, come, 'tis now the time for capering, Freedom's flag at Willis's is just unfurled, We, with French dances, will overcome French vapouring, And with ice and Roman punch amaze the world; There's I myself, and Lady L——, you'll seldom meet a rummer set, With Lady Grosvenor, Lady Foley, and her Grace of Somerset, While Lady Jersey fags herself, regardless of the bustle, ma'am, With Lady Cowper, Lady Anne, and Lady William Russell, ma'am. Come, ladies, come, &c."

There is a sort of polite social satire running through Theodore Hook's works, but it does not exhibit any great inventive powers. In "Byroniana," he ridicules the gossiping books written after Byron's death, pretending to give the minutest accounts of his habits and occasional observations—and generally omitting the names of their authority. Thus Hook tells us in a serio-comic tone:—

"He had a strong antipathy to pork when underdone or stale, and nothing could induce him to partake of fish which had been caught more than ten days—indeed, he had a singular dislike even to the smell of it. He told me one night that —— told —— that if —— would only —— him —— she would —— without any compunction: for her ——, who though an excellent man, was no ——, but that she never ——, and this she told —— and —— as well as Lady —— herself. Byron told me this in confidence, and I may be blamed for repeating it; but —— can corroborate it; if it happens not to be gone to ——"

The following written against an old-fashioned gentleman, Mr. Brown, who objects to the improvements of the age, is interesting. It is amusing now to read an ironical defence of steam, intended to ridicule the pretensions of its advocates.

"Mr. Brown sneers at steam and growls at gas. I contend that the utility of constructing a coach which shall go by hot water, nearly as fast as two horses can draw it at a trifling additional expense, promises to be wonderfully useful. We go too fast, Sir, with horses; besides, horses eat oats, and farmers live by selling oats; if, therefore, by inconveniencing ourselves, and occasionally risking our lives, we can, however imperfectly, accomplish by steam what is now done by horses, we get rid of the whole race of oat-sowers, oat-sellers, oat-eaters, and oat-stealers, vulgarly called ostlers."

Sydney Smith especially aimed at pleasantry in his humour, there was no animosity in it, and generally no instruction. Mirth, pure and simple, was his object. Rogers observes "After Luttrell, you remembered what good things he said—after Smith how much you laughed."

In Moore's Diary we read "at a breakfast at Roger's, Smith, full of comicality and fancy, kept us all in roars of laughter." His wit was so turned, that it never wounded. When he took leave of Lord Dudley, the latter said, "You have been laughing at me constantly, Sydney, for the last seven years, and yet in all that time, you never said a thing to me that I wished unsaid."

It would be superfluous to give a collection of Smith's good sayings, but the following is characteristic of his style. When he heard of a small Scotchman going to marry a lady of large dimensions, he exclaimed,

"Going to marry her? you mean a part of her, he could not marry her all. It would be not bigamy but trigamy. There is enough of her to furnish wives for a whole parish. You might people a colony with her, or give an assembly with her, or perhaps take your morning's walk round her, always providing there were frequent resting-places and you were in rude health. I was once rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast, but only got halfway, and gave up exhausted."

Smith's humour was nearly always of this continuous kind, "changing its shape and colour to many forms and hues." He wished to continue the merriment to the last, but such repetition weakened its force. His humour is better when he has some definite aim in view, as in his letters about America, where he lost his money. But we have not many specimens of it in his writings, the following is from "The Dun Cow:"—

"The immense importance of a pint of ale to a common man should never be overlooked, nor should a good-natured Justice forget that he is acting for Lilliputians, whose pains and pleasures lie in very narrow compass, and are but too apt to be treated with neglect and contempt by their superiors. About ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, perhaps, the first faint shadowy vision of a future pint of beer dawns on the fancy of the ploughman. Far, very far is it from being fully developed. Sometimes the idea is rejected; sometimes it is fostered. At one time he is almost fixed on the 'Red Horse,' but the blazing fire and sedulous kindness of the landlady of the 'Dun Cow' shake him, and his soul labours! Heavy is the ploughed land, dark, dreary, and wet the day. His purpose is at last fixed for beer! Threepence is put down for the vigour of the ale, and one penny for the stupefaction of tobacco, and these are the joys and holidays of millions, the greatest pleasure and relaxation which it is in the power of fortune to bestow."

Such kindly feelings as animated Sydney Smith were found more fully developed in Thomas Hood. He made his humour minister to philanthropy. The man who wrote the "Song of the Shirt" felt keenly for all the sufferings of the poor—he even favoured some of their unreasonable complaints. Thus he writes the "Address of the Laundresses to the Steam Washing Company," to show how much they are injured by such an institution. In a "Drop of Gin," he inveighs against this destructive stimulant.

"Gin! gin! a drop of gin! What magnified monsters circle therein, Bagged and stained with filth and mud, Some plague-spotted, and some with blood."

He seems not to be well pleased with Mr. Bodkin, the Secretary for the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity—

"Hail! king of shreds and patches, hail! Dispenser of the poor! Thou dog in office set to bark All beggars from the door!

* * * * *

"Of course thou art what Hamlet meant To wretches, the last friend; What ills can mortals have that can't With a bare bodkin end."

Mr. M'Adam is apostrophized—

"Hail Roadian, hail Colossus, who dost stand, Striding ten thousand turnpikes on the land? Oh, universal Leveller! all hail!"

In a sporting dialogue in "Tylney Hall," we have—

"'A clever little nag, that,' said the Squire, after a long one-eyed look at the brown mare, 'knows how to go, capital action.'

"'A picture, isn't she?' said the Baronet. 'I bought her last week by way of a surprise to Ringwood. She was bred by old Toby Sparks at Hollington, by Tiggumbob out of Tolderol, by Diddledumkins, Cockalorum, and so forth.'

"'An odd fish, old Toby;' said the Squire, 'always give 'em queer names: can jump a bit, no doubt?'

"'She jumps like a flea,' said Dick, 'and as for galloping, she can go from anywhere to everywhere in forty minutes—and back again.'"

We may also mention his description of an old-fashioned doctor.

"At first sight we were in doubt whether to set him down as a doctor or a pedagogue, for his dress presented one very characteristic appendage of the latter, namely a square cut black coat, which never was, never would be, and probably never had been, in fashion. A profusion of cambric frills, huge silver shoe-buckles, a snuff-box of the same metal, and a gold-headed cane belonging rather to the costume of the physician of the period. He wore a very precise wig of a very decided brown, regularly crisped at the top like a bunch of endive, and in front, following the exact curves of the arches of two bushy eyebrows. He had dark eyes, a prominent nose, and a wide mouth—the corners of which in smiling were drawn towards his double chin. A florid colour on his face hinted a plethoric habit, while a portly body and a very short thick neck bespoke an apoplectic tendency. Warned by these indications, prudence had made him a strict water-drinker, and abstemious in his diet—a mode of treatment which he applied to all his patients short or tall, stout or thin, with whom whatever their disease, he invariably began by reducing them, as an arithmetician would say, to their lowest terms. This mode of treatment raised him much in the estimation of the parish authorities."

The humour in the following is of a lighter and more tricksy kind—

WRITTEN IN A YOUNG LADY'S ALBUM.

"Upon your cheek I may not speak, Nor on your lip be warm, I must be wise about your eyes, And formal with your form; Of all that sort of thing, in short, On T. H. Bayly's plan, I must not twine a single line, I'm not a single man."

On hearing that Grimaldi had left the stage, he enumerates his funny performances—

"Oh, who like thee could ever drink, Or eat—smile—swallow—bolt—and choke, Nod, weep, and hiccup—sneeze and wink? Thy very gown was quite a joke! Though Joseph Junior acts not ill, 'There's no fool like the old fool still.'"

His felicity in playing with words is well exhibited in the stanzas on "John Trot."

"John Trot he was as tall a lad As York did ever rear, As his dear granny used to say, He'd make a Grenadier.

"A serjeant soon came down to York With ribbons and a frill; My lad, said he, let broadcast be, And come away to drill.

"But when he wanted John to 'list, In war he saw no fun, Where what is call'd a raw recruit, Gets often over-done.

"Let others carry guns, said he, And go to war's alarms, But I have got a shoulder-knot Imposed upon my arms.

"For John he had a footman's place, To wait on Lady Wye, She was a dumpy woman, tho' Her family was high.

"Now when two years had passed away Her lord took very ill, And left her to her widowhood, Of course, more dumpy still.

"Said John, I am a proper man, And very tall to see, Who knows, but now her lord is low She may look up to me?

"'A cunning woman told me once Such fortune would turn up, She was a kind of sorceress, But studied in a cup.'

"So he walked up to Lady Wye, And took her quite amazed, She thought though John was tall enough He wanted to be raised.

"But John—for why? she was a dame Of such a dwarfish sort— Had only come to bid her make Her mourning very short.

"Said he, 'your lord is dead and cold, You only cry in vain, Not all the cries of London now, Could call him back again.

"'You'll soon have many a noble beau, To dry your noble tears, But just consider this that I Have followed you for years.

"'And tho' you are above me far, What matters high degree, When you are only four foot nine, And I am six foot three?

"'For though you are of lofty race, And I'm a low-born elf, Yet none among your friends could say, You matched beneath yourself.'

"Said she, 'such insolence as this Can be no common case; Though you are in my service, Sir, Your love is out of place.'

"'O Lady Wye! O Lady Wye! Consider what you do; How can you be so short with me, I am not so with you!'

"Then ringing for her serving-men, They show'd him to the door; Said they, 'you turn out better now, Why didn't you before?'

"They stripp'd his coat, and gave him kicks For all his wages due, And off instead of green and gold He went in black and blue.

"No family would take him in Because of this discharge, So he made up his mind to serve The country all at large.

"'Huzza!' the serjeant cried, and put The money in his hand, And with a shilling cut him off From his paternal land.

"For when his regiment went to fight At Saragossa town, A Frenchman thought he look'd too tall, And so he cut him down."

Barham's humour, as seen in his "Ingoldsby Legends," is of a lower character, but shows that the author possessed a great natural facility. He had keen observation, but his taste did not prevent his employing it on what was coarse and puerile. Common slang abounds, as in "The Vulgar Little Boy;" he talks of "the devil's cow's tail," and is little afraid of extravagances. His metre often assists him, and we have often comic rhyming as where "Mephistopheles" answers to "Coffee lees," and he says:—

"To gain your sweet smiles, were I Sardanapalus, I'd descend from my throne, and be boots at an alehouse,"

But in raising a laugh and affording a pleasant distraction by fantastic humour on common subjects, the "Ingoldsby Legends" have been highly successful, and they are recommended by an occasional historical allusion, especially at the expense of the old monks. Being written by a man of knowledge and cultivation, they rise considerably above the standard of the contributions to lower class comic papers, which in some respects they resemble.



CHAPTER XVI.

Douglas Jerrold—Liberal Politics—Advantages of Ugliness—Button Conspiracy—Advocacy of Dirt—The "Genteel Pigeons."

There is an earnestness and a political complexion in the humour of Douglas Jerrold, such as might be expected from a man who had been educated in the school of adversity. He was born in a garret at Sheerness, where his father was manager of the theatre; and as he grew up in the seaport among ships, sailors and naval preparations, his ambition was fired, and he entered the service as a midshipman. On his return, after a short period, he found his father immersed in difficulties, due probably to the inactivity at the seaport in time of peace. Many a man has owed his success in life partly to his following his father's profession, and here fortune favoured Jerrold, as his maritime experiences assisted him as a writer for the stage. We can easily understand how "Black-eyed Susan" would move the hearts of sailors returning after a long voyage. Meanwhile the inner power and energy of the man developed itself in many directions; he perfected himself in Latin, French and Italian literature, wrote "leaders" for the "Morning Herald," and articles for Magazines. All his works were short, and those which were most approved never assumed an important character. The most successful enterprise in his career was his starting "Punch," in conjunction with Gilbert' A-Beckett and Mark Lemon.

Jerrold was a staunch and sturdy liberal, and his original idea was that of a periodical to expose every kind of hypocrisy, and fraud, and especially to attack the strongholds of Toryism. "Punch" owed much at its commencement to the pen of Jerrold, and has well retained its character for fun, although it scarcely now represents its projector's political ardour.

His conversation overflowed with pleasantry, and in conversation he sometimes hazarded a pun, as when he asked Talfourd whether he had any more "Ions" in the fire. But the critic, who says that "every jest of his was a gross incivility made palatable by a pun," is singularly infelicitous, for as a humorous writer he is almost unique in his freedom from verbal humour. His style is often adagial or exaggerated, and we are constantly meeting such sentences as;

"Music was only invented to gammon human nature, and that is the reason that women are so fond of it."

"A fellow from a horsepond will know anybody who's a supper and a bed to give him."

"To whip a rascal for his rags is to pay flattering homage to cloth of gold."

"A suspicious man would search a pincushion for treason, and see daggers in a needle case."

"Wits, like drunken men with swords, are apt to draw their steel upon their best acquaintance."

"What was talked of as the golden chain of love, was nothing but a succession of laughs, a chromatic scale of merriment reaching from earth to Olympus."

St. Giles' and St. James' is written to show that "St. James in his brocade may probably learn of St. Giles in his tatters." It abounds in quaint and humorous moralizing. Here is a specimen—

"We cannot say if there really be not a comfort in substantial ugliness: ugliness that unchanged will last a man his life, a good granite face in which there shall be no wear or tear. A man so appointed is saved many alarms, many spasms of pride. Time cannot wound his vanity through his features; he eats, drinks, and is merry in spite of mirrors. No acquaintance starts at sudden alteration, hinting in such surprise, decay and the final tomb. He grows old with no former intimates—churchyard voices—crying 'How you're altered.' How many a man might have been a truer husband, a better father, firmer friend, more valuable citizen, had he, when arrived at legal maturity, cut off, say—an inch of his nose. This inch—only an inch!—would have destroyed the vanity of the very handsomest face, and so driven the thought of a man from a vulgar looking-glass, a piece of shop crystal—and more, from the fatal mirrors carried in the heads of women, to reflect heaven knows how many coxcombs who choose to stare into them—driven the man to the glass of his own mind. With such small sacrifice he might have been a philosopher. Thus considered, how many a coxcomb may be within an inch of a sage!"

In another passage of the same book we read—

"Was there not Whitlow, beadle of the parish of St. Scraggs? What a man-beast was Whitlow! how would he, like an avenging ogre, scatter apple-women! how would he foot little boys guilty of peg-tops and marbles! how would he puff at a beggar—puff like the picture of the north wind in a spelling book! What a huge heavy purple face he had, as though all the blood of his body were stagnant in his cheeks! and then when he spoke, would he not growl and snuffle like a dog? How the parish would have hated him, but that the parish heard there was a Mrs. Whitlow; a small fragile woman, with a face sharp as a penknife, and lips that cut her words like scissors! and what a forlorn wretch was Whitlow with his head brought once a night to the pillow! poor creature! helpless, confused; a huge imbecility, a stranded whale! Mrs. Whitlow talked and talked; and there was not an apple-woman that in Whitlow's sufferings was not avenged: not a beggar that, thinking of the beadle at midnight, might not in his compassion have forgiven the beadle of the day. And in this punishment we acknowledge a grand, a beautiful retribution. A Judge Jeffreys in his wig is an abominable tyrant; yet may his victims sometimes smile to think what Judge Jeffreys suffers in his night cap!"

It is almost unnecessary to observe that the writer of Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures was somewhat severe upon the fair sex. His idea of a perfect woman is that of one who is beautiful, "and can do everything but speak." In the "Chronicles of Clovernook"—i.e. of his little retreat near Herne Bay—he gives an account of the Hermit of Bellyfulle, who lives in "the cell of the corkscrew," and among many amusing paradoxes, maintains the following,

"Ay, Sir, the old story—the old grievance, Sir, twixt man and woman," said the hermit.

"And what is that, Sir?" we asked.

The hermit shaking his head, and groaning cried, "Buttons."

"Buttons!" said we.

Our hermit drew himself closer to the table, and spreading his arms upon it, leaned forward with the serious air of a man prepared to discuss a grave thing. "Buttons," he repeated. Then clearing his throat he began, "In the course of your long and, I hope, well spent life, has it never come with thunderbolt conviction on you that all washerwomen, clear-starchers, getters up of fine linen, or under whatever name Eve's daughters—for as Eve brought upon us the stern necessity of a shirt, it is but just that her girls should wash it—under whatever name they cleanse and beautify flax and cotton, that they are all under some compact, implied or solemnly entered upon amongst themselves and their non-washing, non-starching, non-getting up sisterhood, that by means subtle and more mortally certain, they shall worry, coax, and drive all bachelors and widowers soever into the pound of irredeemable wedlock? Has this tremendous truth, sir, never struck you?'

"'How?—by what means?' we asked.

"'Simply by buttons.' answered the hermit, bringing down his clenched fist upon the table.

"We knew it—we looked incredulous.

"'See here, sir,' said the Hermit, leaning still farther across the table, 'I will take a man, who on his outstart in life, set his hat a-cock at matrimony—a man who defies Hymen and all his wicked wiles. Nevertheless, sir, the man must have a shirt, the man must have a washerwoman, Think you that that shirt returning from the tub, never wants one, two—three buttons? Always, sir, always. Sir, though I am now an anchorite I have lived in your bustling world, and seen—ay, quite as much as anyone of its manifold wickedness. Well, the man—the buttonless man—at first calmly remonstrates with his laundress. He pathetically wrings his wrists at her, and shows his condition. The woman turns upon him her wainscot face and promises amendment. The thing shall never happen again. Think you the next shirt has its just and lawful number of buttons? Devil a bit!'"

In "The Bright Poker," he seems to pay a compliment under a guise of sarcasm:—

"And here my dear child, let me advise you to avoid by all means what is called a clean wife. You will be made to endure the extreme of misery under the base, the inviduous pretext of being rendered comfortable. Your house will be an ark tossed by continual floods. You will never know what it is to properly accommodate your shoulders to a shirt, so brief will be its visit to your back ere it again go to the washtub. And then for spiders, fleas, and other household insects, sent especially into our homesteads to awaken the enquiring spirit of man, to at once humble his individual pride by the contemplation of their sagacity, and to elevate him by the frequent evidence of the marvels of animal life—all these calls upon our higher faculties will be wanting, and lacking them your immortal part will be dizzied, stunned by the monotony of the scrubbing-brush, and poisoned past the remedy of perfume by yellow soap. Your wife and children, too, will have their faces continually shining like the holiday saucers on the mantel-piece. Now consider the conceit, the worse than arrogance of this; the studied callous forgetfulness of the beginning of man. Did he not spring from the earth?—from clay—dirt—mould—mud—garden soil, or composition of some sort, for theological geology (you must look in the dictionary for these words) has not precisely defined what; and is it not the basest impudence of pride to seek to wash and scrub and rub away the original spot? Is he not the most natural man who in vulgar meaning is the dirtiest? Depend upon it, there is a fine natural religion in dirt; and yet we see men and women strive to appear as if they were compounded of the roses and lilies in Paradise instead of the fine rich loam, that feeds their roots. Be assured of it, there is great piety in what the ignorant foolishly call filth. Take some of the Saints for an example—off with their coats, and away with their hair shirts; and even then, my son, so intently have they considered and been influenced by the lowly origin of man, that with the most curious eye, and most delicate finger, you shall not be able to tell where either saint or dirt begins or ends."

In a "Man made of Money," we have something original—a dialogue between two fleas, as they stand on the brow of Mr. Jericho—

"'My son,' says the elder, 'true it is, man feeds for us. Man is the labouring chemist for the fleas; for them he turns the richest meats and spiciest drinks to flea wine. Nevertheless, and I say it with much pain, man is not what he was. He adulterates our tipple most wickedly.'

"'I felt it with the last lodgers,' says the younger flea. 'They drank vile spirits, their blood was turpentine with, I fear, a dash of vitriol. How they lived at all, I know not. I always had the headache in the morning. Here however,' and the juvenile looked steadfastly down upon the plain of flesh, the wide champaign beneath him—'here we have promise of better fare.'"

But Douglas Jerrold's best humour is usually rather in the narrative and general issue than in any sudden hits or surprises. His "Sketches of The English" are humorous and admirably drawn, but it would be difficult to produce a single striking passage out of them. One of the most amusing stories in his collection of "Cakes and Ale" is called "The Genteel Pigeons."—A newly married couple return home before the end of the honeymoon, but wish to keep their arrival secret. George Tomata, a connection of the family, but unknown to Pigeon, calls at the house, and is denied admittance by the servant, but Pigeon, happening to come down asks if he has any message of importance to transact—

"'Not in the least, no—not at all,' answered Tomata leisurely ascending the stairs, and with Mr Pigeon entering the drawing-room, 'So, the Pigeons are not at home yet eh?'

"'Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon the day of their marriage,' answered Pigeon softly, 'went to Brighton.'

"'Ha! well, that's not three weeks yet. Of course, Sir, you are intimate with Mr. Pigeon?'

"'I have the pleasure, sir,' said Samuel.

"'You lodge here, no doubt? Excuse me, although I have not with you the pleasure—and doubtless it is a very great one—of knowing Pigeon, still I am very intimate with his little wife.'

"'Indeed, Sir. I never heard her name—'

"'I dare say not, Sir; I dare say not. Oh very intimate; we wore petticoats together. Baby companions, sir—baby companions—used to bite the same pear.'

"'Really sir,'—and Pigeon shifted in his seat—'I was not aware of so early and delicate a connection between yourself and Mrs. Pigeon.'

"'We were to have been married, yes, I may say, the wedding-ring was over the first joint of her finger.'

"'And pray, sir,' asked Pigeon, with a face of crimson, 'pray, sir, what accident may have drawn the ring off again?'

"'You see, sir,' said George Tomata, arranging his hair by an opposite mirror, 'my prospects lay in India—in India, sir. Now Lotty—'

"'Who, sir?' exclaimed Pigeon, wrathfully.

"'Charlotte,' answered Tomata. 'I used to call her Lotty, and she—he! he!—she used to call me 'Love-apple.' You may judge how far we were both gone. For when a woman begins to play tricks with a man's name you may be sure she begins to look upon it as her future property.'

"'You are always right, sir, no doubt,' observed Pigeon, 'but you were about to state the particular hindrance to your marriage with'——

"'To be sure, Lotty—as I was going to observe, was a nice little sugar-plum, a very nice little sugar-plum—as you will doubtless allow.'

"It was with much difficulty that Pigeon possessed himself of sufficient coolness to admit the familiar truth of the simile; he however admitted the wife of his bosom to be a nice little sugar-plum.

"'Very nice indeed, but I saw it—I felt convinced of it, and the truth went like twenty daggers to my soul—but I discovered—'

"'Good heavens,' exclaimed Pigeon, 'discovered what?'

"'That her complexion,' replied Tomata, 'beautiful as it was would not stand Trincomalee.'

"'And was that your sole objection to the match?' inquired Pigeon solemnly.

"'I give you my honour as a gentleman that I had no other motive for breaking off the marriage. Sir, I should have despised myself, if I had; for, as I observed, we were both gone—very far gone indeed.'

"'No doubt, sir,' answered Pigeon, burning to avow himself. 'But as a friend of Mr. Pigeon, allow me to assure you that the lady was not found too far gone to admit of a perfect recovery.'

"'I'm glad of it; hope it is so. By the way what sort of a fellow is Pigeon? Had I been in London—I only came up yesterday—I should have looked into the match before it took place. Lotty could expect no less of me. What kind of an animal is this Pigeon?'

"'Kind of an animal, sir?' stammered Pigeon. 'Why, sir, he——'

"'Ha! that will do,' said the abrupt Tomata, 'as you're his friend I'll not press you on that point. Poor Lotty—sacrificed I see!'"

After more amusing dialogue he throws his card on the table and says he shall call, adding,

"'If Pigeon makes my Lotty a good husband, I'll take him by the hand; if, however, I find him no gentleman—find that he shall use the girl of my heart with harshness, or even with the least unkindness—'

"'Well, sir!'—Pigeon thrusting his hands into his pockets swaggered to Tomata—'what will you do then, sir?'

"'Then, sir. I shall again think the happiness of the lady placed in my hands and thrash him—thrash him severely.'"



CHAPTER XVII.

Thackeray—His Acerbity—The Baronet—The Parson—Medical Ladies—Glorvina—"A Serious Paradise."

Thackeray resembled Lamb in the all-pervading character of his humour. He adorned with it almost everything he touched, but did not enter into it heart and soul, like a man of really joyous mirth-loving disposition. His pages teem with sly hits and insinuations, but he never developes a comic scene, and we can scarcely find a single really laughable episode in the whole course of his works. So little did he grasp or finish such pictures that we rarely select a passage from Thackeray for recitation. He thought more of plot and stratagem than of humour, and used the latter, not for its own sake, but mostly to give brilliance to his narrative, to make his figures prominent, and his remarks salient. He thus silvers unpalatable truths, and although he disowns being a moralist, we generally see some substratum of earnestness peeping through the eddies of his fancy. With him, humour is subservient. And he speaks from his inner self, when he exclaims, "Oh, brother wearers of motley! Are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and tumbling, and the jingling of the cap and bells."

We may say that much of Thackeray's humour is more inclined to produce a grin than a smile—merely to cause a grimace, owing to the bitterness from which it springs. It must be remembered, however, that the greater part of modern wit consists of sarcastic criticism, though it is not generally severe.

In Thackeray we do not find any of that consciousness of the imbecility of man, which made some French writers call the humour of Democritus "melancholy." The "Vanity" of which he speaks is not that universal emptiness alluded to by the surfeited author of Ecclesiastes, nor has it even the ordinary signification of personal conceit. No; he implies something more culpable, such immorality as covetousness, deception, vindictiveness, and hypocrisy. He approaches the Roman Satirists in the relentless hand with which he exposes vice. Some of his characters are monstrous, and almost grotesque in selfishness, as that of Becky Sharp, to whom he does not allow one good quality. Cunning and unworthy motives add considerably to the zest of his humour. He says—

"This history has Vanity Fair for a title, and Vanity Fair is a very vain foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falseness and pretentions. One is bound to speak the truth, as one knows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells, or a shovel hat; and a deal of disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such an undertaking."

Here is his description of a baronet, Sir Pitt Crawley;—

"The door was opened by a man in dark breeches and gaiters with a dirty coat, a foul old neck cloth lashed round his bristly neck, a shining bald head, a leering red face, a pair of twinkling grey eyes, and a mouth perpetually on the grin.

"'This Sir John Pitt Crawley's?' says John, from the box.

"'Ees,' says the man at the door, with a nod.

"'Hand down these ere trunks then,' said John.

"'Hand 'n down yourself,' said the porter.

"'Don't you see I can't leave my horses? Come bear a hand, my fine feller, and Miss will give you some beer,' said John, with a hoarse laugh.

"The bald-headed man, taking his hands out of his breeches pockets, advanced on this summons, and throwing Miss Sharp's trunk over his shoulder, carried it into the house.

"On entering the dining room by the orders of the individual in gaiters, Rebecca found that apartment not more cheerful than such rooms usually are when genteel families are out of town.... Two kitchen chairs and a round table and an attenuated old poker and tongs were however gathered round the fire place, as was a saucepan over a feeble sputtering fire. There was a bit of cheese and bread, and a tin candlestick on the table, and a little black porter in a pint pot.

"'Had your dinner, I suppose? It is too warm for you? Like a drop of beer?'

"'Where is Sir Pitt Crawley?' said Miss Sharp majestically.

"'He, he! I'm Sir Pitt Crawley. Reclect you owe me a pint for bringing down your luggage. He, he! Ask Tinker if I ayn't. Mrs. Tinker, Miss Sharp, Miss Governess, Mrs. Charwoman, ho ho!'

"The lady addressed as Mrs. Tinker, at this moment made her appearance with a pipe and paper of tobacco, for which she had been dispatched a minute before Miss Sharp's arrival; and she handed the articles over to Sir Pitt, who had taken his seat by the fire.

"'Where's the farden?' says he, 'I gave you three halfpence. Where's the change, old Tinker?'

"'There,' replied Mrs. Tinker, flinging down the coin, 'it's only baronets as cares about farthings.'

"'A farthing a day is seven shillings a year,' answered the M.P., 'seven shillings a year is the interest of seven guineas. Take care of your farthings, old Tinker, and your guineas will come quite nat'ral.' ...

"And so with injunctions to Miss Sharp to be ready at five in the morning, he bade her good night, 'You'll sleep with Tinker to-night,' he said, 'it's a big bed, and there's room for two. Lady Crawley died in it. Good night.'"

He sums up Sir Pitt's character by saying. "He never had a taste, emotion or enjoyment, but what was sordid and foul."

Sir Pitt's brother, the Rector of the parish, is represented as being almost as abominable as himself, though in a different way—

"The Reverend Bute Crawley was a tall, stately, shovel-hatted man, far more popular in the county than the Baronet. At College he pulled stroke oar in the Christchurch boat, and had thrashed all the best bruisers of the 'town.' He carried his taste for boxing and athletic exercises into private life, there was not a fight within twenty miles at which he was not present, nor a race, nor a coursing match, nor a regatta, nor a ball, nor an election, nor a visitation dinner, nor indeed a good dinner in the whole county, but he found means to attend it. He had a fine voice, sung 'A Southerly Wind and a Cloudy Sky,' and gave the 'whoop' in chorus with general applause. He rode to hounds in a pepper and salt frock, and was one of the best fishermen in the county."

The following is a sample of the conversation he holds with his wife, who, we are told "wrote this worthy Divine's sermons"—

"'Pitt can't be such an infernal villain as to sell the reversion of the living, and that Methodist milksop of an eldest son looks to Parliament,' continued Mr. Crawley, after a pause.

"'Sir Pitt will do anything,' said the Rector's wife, 'we must get Miss Crawley to make him promise it, James.'

"'Pitt will promise anything,' replied the brother, 'he promised he'd pay my college bills, when my father died; he promised he'd build the new wing to the Rectory. And it is to this man's son—this scoundrel, gambler, swindler, murderer, of a Rawdon Crawley, that Matilda leaves the bulk of her money. I say it's unchristian. By Jove it is. The infamous dog has got every vice except hypocrisy, and that belongs to his brother."

"'Hush, my dearest love! we're in Sir Pitt's grounds,' interposed his wife.

"'I say he has got every vice, Mrs. Crawley. Don't bully me. Didn't he shoot Captain Marker? Didn't he rob young Lord Dovedale at the Cocoa Tree? Didn't he cross the fight between Bill Soames and the Cheshire Trump by which I lost forty pound? You know he did; and as for women, why you heard that before me, in my own magistrates room—'

"'For heaven's sake, Mr. Crawley,' said the lady, 'spare me the details.'"

It was in a great measure to this severe sarcasm that Thackeray owed his popularity. He justly observes:—

"My rascals are no milk-and-water rascals, I promise you ... such people there are living in the world, faithless, hopeless, charityless; let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks and fools; and it was to combat and expose such as those no doubt, that laughter was made."

But he does not always seem to attribute merriment to this humble and unpleasant origin; he produces some passages really meant for enjoyment, and doing justice to his gift, attacks frivolities and failings, which are not of an important kind. Thus, he speaks in a jocund strain of the vanity of "fashionable fiddle-daddle and feeble court slip-slop," and exclaims, "Ah, ladies! Ask the Reverend Mr. Thurifer if Belgravia is not a sounding brass, and Tyburnia a tinkling cymbal!"

He tells us that "The affection of young ladies is of as rapid a growth as Jack's beanstalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night," and in the following passage he exhibits the conduct of an amiable and estimable girl, when under this fascinating spell—

"Were Miss Sedley's letters to Mr. Osborn to be published, we should have to extend this novel to such a multiplicity of volumes, as not the most sentimental reader could support; she not only filled large sheets of paper, but crossed them with the most astonishing perverseness, she wrote whole pages out of poetry books without the least pity, the underlined words and passages with quite a frantic emphasis; and in fine gave the usual tokens of her condition. Her letters were full of repetition, she wrote rather doubtful grammar sometimes, and in her verses took all sorts of liberties with the metre."

Speaking of a very religious and medical lady—

"Pitt had been made to accept Saunders McNitre, Luke Waters, Giles Jowles, Podger's Pills, Rodger's Pills, Pokey's Elixir—every one of her ladyship's remedies, spiritual and temporal. He never left her house without carrying respectfully away with him piles of her quack theology and medicine. O, my dear brethren and fellow-sojourners in Vanity Fair, which among you does not know and suffer under such benevolent despots? It is in vain you say to them, 'Dear madam, I took Podger's specific at your orders last year, and believe in it. Why am I to recant, and accept the Rodger's articles now?' There is no help for it; the faithful proselytizer, if she cannot convince by argument, bursts into tears, and the recusant finds himself taking down the bolus, and saying 'Well, well, Rodger's be it.'"

A still more alarming attack is thus represented:—

"Glorvina had flirted with all the marriageable officers, whom the depots of her country afforded, and all the bachelor squires who seemed eligible. She had been engaged to be married a half-score of times in Ireland, besides the clergyman at Bath, who had used her so ill. She had flirted all the way to Madras with the captain and chief-mate of the Ramchunder East Indiaman, and had a season at the Presidency. Everybody admired her; everybody danced with her; but no one proposed that was worth marrying.... Undismayed by forty or fifty previous defeats, Glorvina laid siege to Major Dobbin. She sang Irish melodies at him unceasingly. She asked him so frequently and so pathetically 'Will you come to the bower,' that it is a wonder how any man of feeling could have resisted the invitation. She was never tired of inquiring if 'Sorrow had his young days faded,' and was ready to listen and weep like Desdemona at the stories of his dangers and campaigns. She was constantly writing notes over to him at his house, borrowing his books, and scoring with her great pencil marks such passages of sentiment or humour, as awakened her sympathy. No wonder that public rumour assigned her to him."

In the following, Thackeray is more severe—

"His wife never cared about being called Lady Newcome. To manage the great house of Hobson brothers and Newcome, to attend to the interests of the enslaved negro: to awaken the benighted Hottentot to a sense of the truth; to convert Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Papists; to arouse the indifferent and often blasphemous mariner; to guide the washerwoman in the right way; to head all the public charities of her sect, and do a thousand secret kindnesses that none knew of; to answer myriads of letters, pension, endless ministers, and supply their teeming wives with continuous baby-linen, to hear preachers daily bawling for hours, and listen untired on her knees, after a long day's labour, while florid rhapsodists belaboured cushions above her with wearisome benedictions; all these things had this woman to do, and for nearly fourscore years she fought her fight womanfully."

This pious lady's residence was a "serious Paradise;"

"As you entered at the gate gravity fell on you; and decorum wrapped you in a garment of starch. The butcher boy who galloped his horse and cart madly about the adjoining lanes and commons, whistled wild melodies (caught up in abominable play-house galleries) and joked with a hundred cook-maids,—on passing that lodge fell into an undertaker's pace, and delivered his joints and sweetbreads silently at the servant's entrance. The rooks in the elms cawed sermons at morning and evening: the peacocks walked demurely on the terraces; and the guinea-fowls looked more quaker-like than those savoury birds usually do. The lodge-keeper was serious, and a clerk at a neighbouring chapel. The pastors who entered at that gate, and greeted his comely wife and children, fed the little lambkins with tracts. The head-gardener was a Scotch Calvinist, after the strictest order, only occupying himself with the melons and pines provisionally, and until the end of the world, which event, he could prove by infallible calculations was to come off in two or three years at farthest."

In one place, a collision is represented between the old and young schools of criticism:

"The Colonel heard opinions that amazed and bewildered him; he heard that Byron was no great poet, though a very clever man; he heard that there had been a wicked persecution against Mr. Pope's memory and fame, and that it was time to reinstate him; that his favourite, Dr. Johnson, talked admirably, but did not write English; that young Keats was a genius to be estimated in future days with young Raphael; and that a young gentleman of Cambridge, who had lately published two volumes of verses, might take rank with the greatest poets of all. Dr. Johnson not write English! Lord Byron not one of the greatest poets of the world! Sir Walter a poet of the second order! Mr. Pope attacked for inferiority and want of imagination; Mr. Keats, and this young Mr. Tennyson of Cambridge, the chiefs of modern poetic literature? What were these new dicta which Mr. Warrington delivered with a puff of tobacco smoke, to which Mr. Honeyman blandly assented, and Clive listened with pleasure?... With Newcome, the admiration for the literature of the last century was an article of belief, and the incredulity of the young men seemed rank blasphemy. 'You will be sneering at Shakespeare next,' he said, and was silenced, though not better pleased, when his youthful guests told him that Dr. Goldsmith sneered at him too; that Dr. Johnson did not understand him, and that Congreve in his own day, and afterwards, was considered to be, in some points, Shakespeare's superior."

In the next he relapses into his stronger sarcasm—

"There are no better satires than letters. Take a bundle of your dear friends' letters of ten years back—your dear friend, whom you hate now. Look at a file of your sister's! how you clung to each other until you quarrelled about the twenty pound legacy.... Vows, love promises, confidence, gratitude! how queerly they read after a while.... The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that faded utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank, so that you might write on it to somebody else."

Again:—

"Many persons who let lodgings in Brighton have been servants themselves, are retired housekeepers, tradesfolk, and the like. With these surrounding individuals Hannah, treated on a footing of equality, bringing to her mistress accounts of their various goings on; 'how No. 6 was let; how No. 9 had not paid his rent again; how the first floor at 27 had game almost every day, and made-dishes from Mutton's; how the family who had taken Mrs. Bugsby's had left, as usual, after the very first night, the poor little infant blistered all over with bites on its dear little face; how the Miss Leary's were going on shameful with the two young men, actually in their sitting-room, mum, where one of them offered Miss Laura Leary a cigar; how Mrs. Cribb still went cuttin' pounds and pounds of meat off the lodgers' jints, emptying their tea-caddies, actually reading their letters. Sally had been told so by Polly, the Cribb's maid, who was kep', how that poor child was kep,' hearing language perfectly hawful!'"

Thus in all Thackeray's descriptions there is more or less satire. He was always making pincushions, into which he was plunging his little points of sarcasm, and owing to his confining himself to this kind of humour he avoids the common danger of missing his mark. He is occasionally liberal of oaths and imprecations, and when any one of his characters is offended, he generally relieves his feelings by uttering "horrid curses." Barnes Newcome sends up "a perfect feu d'artifice of oaths." But he is entirely free from indelicacy, and merely elegantly shadows forth the Eton form of punishment, as that "which none but a cherub can escape." In this respect he seems to have set before him the example of Mr. Honeyman, of whom he says he had "a thousand anecdotes, laughable riddles and droll stories (of the utmost correctness, you understand.)"

Perhaps one of his least successful attempts at humour is a collection of fables at the commencement of the Newcomes in which we have conversations between a fox, an owl, a wolf in sheep's clothing, and a donkey in a lion's skin, and such incongruities as would have shocked Aristophanes. His Christmas books depend mostly on the broad caricatures with which they are embellished, and upon a large supply of rough joking.

Thackeray wrote a work named the "English Humorists," but he omits in it all mention of the humour by which his authors were immortalized. Certainly the ordinary habits and little foibles of great men are more entertaining to the general public than inquiries into the nature of their talent, which would only interest those fond of study and investigation.



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.

We shall be paying Hood no undue compliment if we couple his name with that of Dickens as betokening the approach of milder and gentler sentiments. They were themselves the chief pioneers of the better way. Hitherto the poor and uneducated had been regarded with a certain amount of contempt; their language and stupidity had formed fertile subjects for the coarse ridicule of the humorist. But now a change was in progress; broader views were gaining ground, and a time was coming when men, notwithstanding the accidents of birth and fortune, should feel mutual sympathy, and

"brothers be for a' that."

With Dickens the poor man was not a mere clown or blockhead; but beneath his "hodden gray" often carried good feeling, intelligence, and wit. He was rather humorous than ludicrous, and had some dignity of character. Since his time, consideration for the poor has greatly increased; we see it in the large charitable gifts, which are always increasing—in the interest taken in schools and hospitals. Probably the respectable and quiet character of the labouring classes has contributed to raise them in the estimation of the richer part of the community.

A large portion of English humour is now employed upon so-called vulgarity. The modification of feeling with regard to the humbler classes has caused changes in the signification of this word. Originally derived from "vulgus," the crowd, it meant that roughness of language and manner which is found among the less educated. It did not properly imply anything culpable, but had a bad sense given it by those who considered "gentlemanly" to imply some moral superiority. The worship of wealth so caused the signification of this latter word to exceed its original reference to high birth, that we now hear people say that there are real gentlemen among the poorer classes; and, conversely, we at times speak of the vulgarity of the rich, as of their pride, impertinence, or affectation—just as Fielding used the word "mob" to signify contemptible people of any class. It is evident that some moral superiority or deficiency is thus implied. There may be, on the whole, some foundation for such distinctions, but they are not so much recognised as they were, scarcely at all in the cases of individuals, and the provincial accents and false grammar of the poor are more amusing than formerly, because we take a kindlier interest in that class.

M. Taine does not seem to have exercised his usual penetration when he says that English humour "far from agreeable, and bitter in taste, like their own beverages, abounds in Dickens. French sprightliness, joy, and gaiety is a kind of good wine only grown in the lands of the sun. In its insular state it leaves an aftertaste of vinegar. The man who jests here is seldom kindly and never happy; he feels and censures the inequalities of life." On the contrary, we are inclined to think that French humour is fully as severe as English—they have such sayings as that "a man without money is a body without blood," and their great wits were not generally free from bitterness.

There is little that is personal or offensive in Dickens. It is said that he was threatened with a prosecution for producing the character of Squeers, but in general his puppets are too artificial to excite any personal resentment. There are evidently set up merely to be knocked down. Few would identify themselves with Heap or Scrooge, and although the moral taught is appreciated by all, no class is hit, but only men who seem to be preeminent in churlishness or villainy. Dickens is remarkable for his gentleness whenever his humour touches the poor, and while he makes amusement out of their simplicity and ignorance, he throws in some sterling qualities. They often form the principal characters in his books, and there is nearly always in them something good-natured and sympathetic. Sam Weller is a pleasant fellow, so is Boots at the Holly Tree Inn. Mrs. Jarley, who travels about to fairs with wax-works, is a kindly and hospitable old party. She asks Nell and her grandfather to take some refreshment—

"The grandfather humbly pulled off his hat and thanked her. The lady of the caravan then bade him come up the stairs, but the drum proving an inconvenient table for two, they descended again and sat upon the grass, where she handed down to them the tea-tray, the bread and butter, the knuckle of ham, and in short everything of which she had partaken herself, except the bottle which she had already embraced an opportunity of slipping into her pocket.

"'Set 'em out near the hind wheels, child, that's the best place,' said their friend superintending the arrangements from above. 'Now hand up the tea-pot for a little more hot water, and a pinch of fresh tea, and then both of you eat and drink as much as you can, and don't spare anything; that's all I ask you.'

"While they were thus engaged the lady of the caravan alighted on the earth, and with her hands clasped behind her, and her large bonnet trembling excessively, walked up and down in a measured tread and very stately manner surveying the caravan from time to time with an air of calm delight and deriving particular gratification from the red panels and brass knocker. When she had taken this gentle exercise for some time, she sat down upon the steps and called 'George,' whereupon a man in a carter's frock, who had been so shrouded in a hedge up to this time as to see everything that passed without being seen himself, parted the twigs that concealed him and appeared in a sitting attitude supporting on his legs a baking dish, and a half gallon stone bottle, and bearing in his right hand a knife, and in his left a fork.

"'Yes, missus,' said George.

"'How did you find the cold pie, George?'

"'It worn't amiss, mum.'

"'And the beer?' said the lady of the caravan with an appearance of being more interested in this question than the last, 'is it passable, George?'

"'It's more flatterer than it might be,' George returned, 'but it a'nt so bad for all that.'

"To set the mind of his mistress at rest, he took a sip (amounting in quantity to a pint or thereabouts) from the stone bottle, and then smacked his lips, winked his eye, and nodded his head. No doubt with the same amiable desire he immediately resumed his knife and fork as a practical assurance that the beer had wrought no bad effect upon his appetite.

"The lady of the caravan looked on approvingly for some time and then said,

"'Have you nearly finished?'

"Wery nigh, mum,' and indeed after scraping the dish all round with his knife and carrying the choice brown morsels to his mouth, and after taking such a scientific pull at the stone bottle that, by degrees almost imperceptible to the sight, his head went farther and farther back until he lay nearly at his full length upon the ground, this gentleman declared himself quite disengaged, and came forth from his retreat.

"'I hope I haven't hurried you, George,' said his mistress, who appeared to have a great sympathy with his late pursuit.

"'If you have,' returned the fellow, wisely reserving himself for any favourable contingency, 'we must make it up next time, that's all.'"

Mrs. Gamp has a touch of sympathy in her exuberance. Contemplating going down to the country with the Dickens' company of actors, she tells us—

"Which Mrs. Harris's own words to me was these, 'Sairey Gamp,' she says, 'why not go to Margate? Srimps,' says that dear creetur, 'is to your liking. Sairey, why not go to Margate for a week, bring your constitution up with srimps, and come back to them loving arts as knows and wallies you, blooming? Sairey,' Mrs. Harris says, 'you are but poorly. Don't denige it, Mrs. Gamp, for books is in your looks. You must have rest. Your mind,' she says, 'is too strong for you; it gets you down and treads upon you, Sairey. It is useless to disguige the fact—the blade is a wearing out the sheets.' 'Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 'I could not undertake to say, and I will not deceive you ma'am, that I am not the woman I could wish to be. The time of worrit as I had with Mrs. Colliber, the baker's lady, which was so bad in her mind with her first, that she would not so much as look at bottled stout, and kept to gruel through the month, has agued me, Mrs. Harris. But, ma'am,' I says to her, 'talk not of Margate, for if I do go anywhere it is elsewheres, and not there.' 'Sairey,' says Mrs. Harris solemn, 'whence this mystery? If I have ever deceived the hardest-working, soberest, and best of women, mention it.' ... 'Mrs. Harris, then,' I says, 'I have heard as there is an expedition going down to Manjester and Liverpool a playacting, If I goes anywhere for change it is along with that.' Mrs. Harris clasps her hands, and drops into a chair, 'And have I lived to hear,' she says, 'of Sairey Gamp, as always kept herself respectable, in company with play-actors.' 'Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 'be not alarmed, not reg'lar play-actors—hammertoors.' 'Thank Evans!' says Mrs. Harris, and bustizes into a flood of tears,"

Dickens saw with Hood the power to be obtained by uniting pathos with humour. Such an intermixture at first appears inharmonious, but in reality produces sweet music. There is something corresponding to the course of external nature with its light and shade its sunshine and showers, in this melancholy chased away by mirth, and joy merging into sadness. Here, Dickens has held up the mirror, and shown a bright reflection of the outer world. Out of many choice specimens, we may select the following from the speech of the Cheap Jack—

"'Now, you country boobies,' says I, feeling as if my heart was a heavy weight at the end of a broken sash-line, 'I give you notice that I am going to charm the money out of your pockets, and to give you so much more than your money's worth that you'll only persuade yourselves to draw your Saturday-night's wages ever again afterwards, by the hopes of meeting me to lay 'em out with, which you never will; and why not? Because I've made my fortune by selling my goods on a large scale for seventy-five per cent less than I give for them, and I am consequently to be elevated to the House of Peers next week by the title of the Duke of Cheap, and Markis Jack-a-looral."

He puts up a lot and after recommending it with all his eloquence pretends to knock it down—

"As there had been no bid at all, everybody looked about and grinned at everybody, while I touched little Sophy's face (he was holding her in his arms) and asked her if she felt faint or giddy. 'Not very, father; it will soon be over.' Then turning from the pretty patient eyes, which were opened now, and seeing nothing but grins across my lighted greasepot. I went on again in my cheap Jack style. 'Where's the butcher?' (my mournful eye had just caught sight of a fat young butcher on the outside of the crowd) 'She says the good luck is the butcher's, where is he?' Everybody handed over the blushing butcher to the front, and there was a roar, and the butcher felt himself obliged to put his hand in his pocket and take the lot. The party so picked out in general does feel obliged to take the lot—good four times out of six. Then we had another lot the counterpart of that one and sold it sixpence cheaper, which is always very much enjoyed. Then we had the spectacles. It ain't a special profitable lot, but I put 'em on, and I see what the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to take off the taxes, and I see what the sweetheart of the young woman in the shawl is doing at home, and I see what the Bishops has got for dinner, and a deal more that seldom fails to fetch up their spirits, and the better their spirits the better they bids. Then we had the ladies' lot—the tea-pots, tea-caddy, glass sugar-basin, half-a-dozen spoons, and caudle cup—and all the time I was making similar excuses to give a look or two, and say a word or two to my poor child. It was while the second ladies' lot was holding 'em enchained that I felt her lift herself a little on my shoulder to look across the dark street. 'What troubles you darling?' 'Nothing troubles me, father, I am not at all troubled. But don't I see a pretty churchyard over there?' 'Yes, my dear.' 'Kiss me twice, dear father, and lay me down to rest upon that churchyard grass, so soft and green.' I staggered back into the cart with her head dropped on my shoulder, and I says to her mother, 'Quick, shut the door! Don't let those laughing people see.' 'What's the matter?' she cries, 'O woman, woman,' I tells her, 'you'll never catch my little Sophy by her hair again, for she has flown away from you.'"

Dickens' strongest characters, and those he loved most to paint, are such as contain foibles and eccentricities, or much dulness and ignorance in conjunction with the best feelings and intentions, so that his teaching seems rather to be that we should look beyond mere external trifles. Those he attacks are mostly middle-class people, or those slightly below them—the dogs in office, and the dogs in the manger. The artifice and cunning of the waiter of the Hotel at Yarmouth, where little Copperfield awaits the coach, is excellently represented.

"The waiter brought me some chops and vegetables, and took the covers off in such a bouncing manner, that I was afraid I must have given him some offence. But he greatly relieved my mind by putting a chair for me at the table, and saying very affably 'Now sixfoot come on!'

"I thanked him and took my seat at the board; but found it extremely difficult to handle my knife and fork with anything like dexterity, or to avoid splashing myself with the gravy, while he was standing opposite, staring so hard, and making me blush in the most dreadful manner every time I caught his eye. After watching me into the second chop, he said:

"There's half a pint of ale for you, will you have it now?'

"I thanked him and said 'Yes'—upon which he poured it out of a jug into a large tumbler, and held it up against the light and made it look beautiful.

"'My eye!' he said 'It seems a good deal, don't it.'

"'It does seem a good deal,' I answered with a smile, for it was quite delightful to me to find him so pleasant. He was a twinkling-eyed, purple-faced man, with his hair standing upright all over his head; and as he stood with one arm akimbo, holding up the glass to the light, with one hand he looked quite friendly.

"'There was a gentleman here yesterday,' he said, 'a stout gentleman by the name of Topsawyer, perhaps you know him?'

"'No,' I said, I don't think—

"'In breeches and gaiters, broad-brimmed hat, grey coat, speckled choker,' said the waiter.

"'No,' I said bashfully, 'I hav'n't the pleasure—'

"'He came here,' said the waiter, looking at the light through the tumbler, 'ordered a glass of this ale, would order it, I told him not—drank it, and fell dead. It was too old for him. It oughtn't to be drawn, that's the fact.'

"I was very much shocked to hear of this melancholy accident, and said I thought I had better have some water. 'Why, you see,' said the waiter, looking at the light through the tumbler with one of his eyes shut, 'our people don't like things being ordered and left. It offends them. But I'll drink it, if you like. I'm used to it, and use is everything. I don't think it will hurt me if I throw my head back and take it off quick; shall I?'

"I replied that he would much oblige me by drinking it, if he thought he could do it safely, but by no means otherwise. When he did throw his head back and take it off quick, I had a horrible fear, I confess, of seeing him meet the fate of the lamented Topsawyer, and fall lifeless on the carpet. But it did not hurt him. On the contrary. I thought he seemed the fresher for it. 'What have we got here?' he said, putting a fork into my dish. 'Not chops?'

"'Chops.' I said.

"'Lord bless my soul,' he exclaimed, 'I didn't know they were chops. Why, a chop's the very thing to take off the bad effect of that beer. Ain't it lucky?'

"So he took a chop by the bone in one hand and a potato in the other, and ate away with a very good appetite to my extreme satisfaction. He afterwards took another chop and another potato, and after that another chop and another potato. When we had done he brought me a pudding, and having set it before me seemed to ruminate, and to be absent in his mind for some moments.

"'How's the pie?' he said, rousing himself.

"'It's a pudding,' I made answer.

"'Pudding,' he exclaimed, 'why, bless me, so it is. What?' looking nearer at it, 'you don't mean to say it's a batter pudding!'