History of English Humour Volume II Part 20

"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 _c.r.a.pe_, 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 f.a.gs 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 a.s.sembly 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 repet.i.tion 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 compa.s.s, 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 inst.i.tution. 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, c.o.c.kalorum, 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 d.i.c.k, '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 ALb.u.m.

"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.