History of English Humour Volume II Part 2

_Cuddy._ In good roast beef my landlord sticks his knife, And capon fat delights his dainty wife; Pudding our parson eats, the squire loves hare, But white-pot thick is my Buxoma's fare; While she loves white-pot, capon ne'er shall be Nor hare, nor beef, nor pudding, food for me.

The following is not without point at the present day--

TO A LADY ON HER Pa.s.sION FOR OLD CHINA.

What ecstasies her bosom fire!

How her eyes languish with desire!

How blessed, how happy, should I be, Were that fond glance bestowed on me!

New doubts and fears within me war, What rival's here? A China jar!

China's the pa.s.sion of her soul, A cup, a plate, a dish, a bowl, Can kindle wishes in her breast, Inflame with joy, or break her rest.

Husbands more covetous than sage, Condemn this China-buying rage, They count that woman's prudence little, Who sets her heart on things so brittle; But are those wise men's inclinations Fixed on more strong, more sure foundations?

If all that's frail we must despise, No human view or scheme is wise.

Gay's humour is often injured by the introduction of low scenes, and disreputable accompaniments.

"The Dumps," a lament of a forlorn damsel, is much in the same style as the Pastorals. It finishes with these lines--

"Farewell ye woods, ye meads, ye streams that flow, A sudden death shall rid me of my woe, This penknife keen my windpipe shall divide, What, shall I fall as squeaking pigs have died?

No--to some tree this carcase I'll suspend; But worrying curs find such untimely end!

I'll speed me to the pond, where the high stool, On the long plank hangs o'er the muddy pool, That stool, the dread of every scolding queen: Yet sure a lover should not die, so mean!

Thus placed aloft I'll rave and rail by fits, Though all the parish say I've lost my wits; And thence, if courage holds, myself I'll throw, And quench my pa.s.sion in the lake below."

He published in 1727 "The Beggar's Opera," the idea had been suggested by Swift. This is said to have given birth to the English Opera--the Italian having been already introduced here. This opera, or musical play, brought out by Mr. Rich, was so renumerative that it was a common saying that it made "Rich gay, and Gay rich."

In "The Beggar's Opera" the humour turns on Polly falling in love with a highwayman. Peachum gives an amusing account of the gang. Among them is Harry Paddington--"a poor, petty-larceny rascal, without the least genius; that fellow, though he were to live these six months would never come to the gallows with any credit--and Tom Tipple, a guzzling, soaking sot, who is always too drunk to stand, or make others stand. A cart is absolutely necessary for him." Peachum, and his wife lament over their daughter Polly's choice of Captain Macheath. There are numerous songs, such as that of Mrs. Peachum beginning--

"Our Polly is a sad s.l.u.t! nor heeds what we have taught her, I wonder any man alive will ever rear a daughter."

Polly, contemplating the possibility of Macheath's being hanged exclaims--

"Now, I'm a wretch indeed. Methinks, I see him already in the cart, sweeter and more lovely than the nosegay in his hand! I hear the crowd extolling his resolution and intrepidity! What volleys of sighs are sent down from the windows of Holborn, that so comely a youth should be brought to disgrace. I see him at the tree! the whole circle are in tears! even butchers weep! Jack Ketch himself hesitates to perform his duty, and would be glad to lose his fee by a reprieve. What then will become of Polly?"

To Macheath

Were you sentenced to transportation, sure, my dear, you could not leave me behind you?

_Mac._ "Is there any power, any force, that could tear thee from me.

You might sooner tear a pension out of the hands of a courtier, a fee from a lawyer, a pretty woman from a looking-gla.s.s, or any woman from quadrille."[5]

Gay may have taken his idea of writing fables from Dryden whose cla.s.sical reading tempted him in two or three instances to indulge in such fancies. They were clever and in childhood appeared humorous to us, but we have long ceased to be amused by them, owing to their excessive improbability. Such ingenuity seems misplaced, we see more absurdity than talent in representing a sheep as talking to a wolf. To us fables now present, not what is strange and difficult of comprehension, but mentally fanciful folly. In some few instances in La Fontaine and Gay, the wisdom of the lessons atones for the strangeness of their garb, and the peculiarity of the dramatis personae may tend to rivet them in our minds. There is something also fresh and pleasant in the scenes of country life which they bring before us. But the taste for such conceits is irrevocably gone, and every attempt to revive it, even when recommended by such ingenuity and talent as that of Owen Meredith, only tends to prove the fact more incontestably. In Russia, a younger nation than ours, the fables of Kriloff had a considerable sale at the beginning of this century, but they had a political meaning.

CHAPTER II.

Defoe--Irony--Ode to the Pillory--The "Comical Pilgrim"--The "Scandalous Club"--Humorous Periodicals--Herac.l.i.tus Ridens--The London Spy--The British Apollo.

Defoe was born in 1663, and was the son of a butcher in St. Giles'. He first distinguished himself by writing in 1699 a poetical satire ent.i.tled "The True Born Englishman," in honour of King William and the Dutch, and in derision of the n.o.bility of this country, who did not much appreciate the foreign court. The poem abounded with rough and rude sarcasm. After giving an uncomplimentary description of the English, he proceeds to trace their descent--

"These are the heroes that despise the Dutch And rail at new-come foreigners so much, Forgetting that themselves are all derived From the most scoundrel race that ever lived; A horrid race of rambling thieves and drones Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns; The Pict and painted Briton, treacherous Scot, By hunger, theft, and rapine hither brought; Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains; Who joined with Norman-French compound the breed From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed.

Dutch, Walloons, Flemings, Irishmen, and Scots, Vaudois, and Valtolins and Huguenots, In good Queen Bess's charitable reign, Supplied us with three hundred thousand men; Religion--G.o.d we thank! sent them hither, Priests, protestants, the devil, and all together."

The first part concludes with a view of the low origin of some of our n.o.bles.

"Innumerable city knights we know From Bluecoat hospitals and Bridewell flow, Draymen and porters fill the City chair, And footboys magisterial purple wear.

Fate has but very small distinction set Betwixt the counter and the coronet.

Tarpaulin lords, pages of high renown Rise up by poor men's valour, not their own; Great families of yesterday we show And lords, whose parents were the Lord knows who."

So much keen and clever invective levelled at the higher cla.s.ses of course had its reward in a wide circulation; but we are surprised to hear that the King noticed it with favour; the author was honoured with a personal interview, and became a still stronger partizan of the court.

Defoe called the "True Born Englishman",

"A contradiction In speech an irony, in fact a fiction;"

and we may observe that he was particularly fond of an indirect and covert style of writing. He thought that he could thus use his weapons to most advantage, but his disguise was seen through by his enemies as well as by his friends. Irony--the stating the reverse of what is meant, whether good or bad--is often resorted to by those treading on dangerous ground, and admits of two very different interpretations. It is especially ambiguous in writing, and should be used with caution.

Defoe's "Shortest Way with the Dissenters" was first attributed to a High Churchman, but soon was recognised as the work of a Dissenter. He explained that he intended the opposite of what he had said, and was merely deprecating measures being taken against his brethren; but his enemies considered that his real object was to exasperate them against the Government. Even if taken ironically, it hardly seemed venial to call furiously for the extermination of heretics, or to raise such lamentation as, "Alas! for the Church of England! What with popery on one hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between two thieves!" Experience had not then taught that it was better to let such effusions pa.s.s for what they were worth, and Defoe was sentenced to stand in the pillory, and suffer fine and imprisonment He does not seem to have been in such low spirits as we might have expected during his incarceration, for he employed part of his time in composing his "Hymn to the Pillory,"

"Hail hieroglyphic state machine, Contrived to punish fancy in: Men that are men in thee can feel no pain, And all thy insignificants disdain."

He continues in a strong course of invective against certain persons whom he thinks really worthy of being thus punished, and proceeds--

"But justice is inverted when Those engines of the law, Instead of pinching vicious men Keep honest ones in awe: Thy business is, as all men know, To punish villains, not to make men so.

"Whenever then thou art prepared To prompt that vice thou shouldst reward, And by the terrors of thy grisly face, Make men turn rogues to shun disgrace; The end of thy creation is destroyed Justice expires of course, and law's made void.

"Thou like the devil dost appear Blacker than really thou art far, A wild chimeric notion of reproach Too little for a crime, for none too much, Let none the indignity resent, For crime is all the shame of punishment.

Thou bugbear of the law stand up and speak Thy long misconstrued silence break, Tell us who 'tis upon thy ridge stands there So full of fault, and yet so void of fear, And from the paper on his hat, Let all mankind be told for what."

These lines refer to his own condemnation, and the piece concludes,--

"Tell them the men who placed him here Are friends unto the times, But at a loss to find his guile They can't commit his crimes."

Defoe seems to have thoroughly imbibed the ascetic spirit of his brethren. He was fond of denouncing social as well as political vanities. The "Comical Pilgrim" contains a considerable amount of coa.r.s.e humour, and in one place the supposed cynic inveighs against the drama, and describes the audience at a theatre--

"The audience in the upper gallery is composed of lawyers, clerks, valets-de-chambre, exchange girls, chambermaids, and skip-kennels, who at the last act are let in gratis in favour to their masters being benefactors to the devil's servants. The middle gallery is taken up by the middling sort of people, as citizens, their wives and daughters, and other jilts. The boxes are filled with lords and ladies, who give money to see their follies exposed by fellows as wicked as themselves. And the pit, which lively represents the pit of h.e.l.l, is crammed with those insignificant animals called beaux, whose character nothing but wonder and shame can compose; for a modern beau, you must know, is a pretty, neat, fantastic outside of a man, a well-digested bundle of costly vanities, and you may call him a volume of methodical errata bound in a gilt cover. He's a curiously wrought cabinet full of sh.e.l.ls and other trumpery, which were much better quite empty than so emptily filled.

He's a man's skin full of profaneness, a paradise full of weeds, a heaven full of devils, a Satan's bedchamber hung with arras of G.o.d's own making. He can be thought no better than a Promethean man; at best but a lump of animated dust kneaded into human shape, and if he has only such a thing as a soul it seems to be patched up with more vices than are patches in a poor Spaniard's coat. His general employment is to scorn all business, but the study of the modes and vices of the times, and you may look upon him as upon the painted sign of a man hung up in the air, only to be tossed to and fro with every wind of temptation and vanity."

It would appear that servants had in his day many of the faults which characterise some of them at present. In "Everybody's Business is n.o.body's Business" we have an amusing picture of the over-dressed maid of the period.

"The apparel," he says, "of our women-servants should be next regulated, that we may know the mistress from the maid. I remember I was once put very much to the blush, being at a friend's house, and by him required to salute the ladies. I kissed the chamber-jade into the bargain, for she was as well dressed as the best. But I was soon undeceived by a general t.i.tter, which gave me the utmost confusion; nor can I believe myself the only person who has made such a mistake."

Again "I have been at places where the maid has been so dizzied with idle compliments that she has mistook one thing for another, and not regarded her mistress in the least, but put on all the flirting airs imaginable. This behaviour is nowhere so much complained of as in taverns, coffee houses, and places of public resort, where there are handsome barkeepers, &c. These creatures being puffed up with the fulsome flattery of a set of flies, which are continually buzzing about them, carry themselves with the utmost insolence imaginable--insomuch that you must speak to them with the utmost deference, or you are sure to be affronted. Being at a coffee-house the other day, where one of these ladies kept the bar, I bespoke a dish of rice tea, but Madam was so taken up with her sparks that she quite forgot it. I spoke for it again, and with some temper, but was answered after a most taunting manner, not without a toss of the head, a contraction of the nostrils, and other impertinences, too many to enumerate. Seeing myself thus publickly insulted by such an animal, I could not choose but show my resentment. 'Woman,' said I sternly, 'I want a dish of rice tea, and not what your vanity and impudence may imagine; therefore treat me as a gentleman and a customer, and serve me with what I call for. Keep your impertinent repartees and impudent behaviour for the c.o.xcombs that swarm round your bar, and make you so vain of your blown carca.s.s.' And indeed, I believe the insolence of this creature will ruin her master at last, by driving away men of sobriety and business, and making the place a den of vagabonds."