Read Ebook: Short stories from Life: The 81 prize stories in Life's Shortest Story Contest by Masson Thomas L Author Of Introduction Etc

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Ebook has 1555 lines and 78251 words, and 32 pages

OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

Burlesque--Parody--The "Splendid Shilling"--Prior--Pope--Ambrose Philips--Parodies of Gray's Elegy--Gay 1

Defoe--Irony--Ode to the Pillory--The "Comical Pilgrim"--The "Scandalous Club"--Humorous Periodicals--Heraclitus Ridens--The London Spy--The British Apollo 22

Swift--"Tale of a Tub"--Essays--Gulliver's Travels--Variety of Swift's Humour--Riddles--Stella's Wit--Directions for Servants--Arbuthnot 44

Steele--The Funeral--The Tatler--Contributions of Swift--Of Addison--Expansive Dresses--"Bodily Wit"--Rustic Obtuseness--Crosses in Love--Snuff-taking 62

Spectator--The Rebus--Injurious Wit--The Everlasting Club--The Lovers' Club--Castles in the Air--The Guardian--Contributions by Pope--"The Agreeable Companion"--The Wonderful Magazine--Joe Miller--Pivot Humour 77

Sterne--His Versatility--Dramatic Form--Indelicacy--Sentiment and Geniality--Letters to his Wife--Extracts from his Sermons--Dr. Johnson 99

Dodsley--"A Muse in Livery"--"The Devil's a Dunce"--"The Toy Shop"--Fielding--Smollett 113

Cowper--Lady Austen's Influence--"John Gilpin"--"The Task"--Goldsmith--"The Citizen of the World"--Humorous Poems--Quacks--Baron M?nchausen 127

The Anti-Jacobin--Its Objects and Violence--"The Friends of Freedom"--Imitation of Latin Lyrics--The "Knife Grinder"--The "Progress of Man" 141

Wolcott--Writes against the Academicians--Tales of a Hoy--"New Old Ballads"--"The Sorrows of Sunday"--Ode to a Pretty Barmaid--Sheridan--Comic Situations--"The Duenna"--Wits 150

Southey--Drolls of Bartholomew Fair--The "Doves"--Typographical Devices--Puns--Poems of Abel Shufflebottom 164

Lamb--His Farewell to Tobacco--Pink Hose--On the Melancholy of Tailors--Roast Pig 175

Byron--Vision of Judgment--Lines to Hodgson--Beppo--Humorous Rhyming--Profanity of the Age 184

Theodore Hook--Improvisatore Talent--Poetry--Sydney Smith--The "Dun Cow"--Thomas Hood--Gin--Tylney Hall--John Trot--Barham's Legends 196

Douglas Jerrold--Liberal Politics--Advantages of Ugliness--Button Conspiracy--Advocacy of Dirt--The "Genteel Pigeons" 207

Thackeray--His Acerbity--The Baronet--The Parson--Medical Ladies--Glorvina--"A Serious Paradise" 216

Dickens--Sympathy with the Poor--Vulgarity--Geniality--Mrs. Gamp--Mixture of Pathos and Humour--Lever and Dickens compared--Dickens' power of Description--General Remarks 226

Variation--Constancy--Influence of Temperament--Of Observation--Bulls--Want of Knowledge--Effects of Emotion--Unity of the Sense of the Ludicrous 241

Definition--Difficulties of forming one of Humour 276

Charm of Mystery--Complication--Poetry and Humour compared--Exaggeration 285

Imperfection--An Impression of Falsity implied--Two Views taken by Philosophers--Firstly that of Voltaire, Jean Paul, Brown, the German Idealists, L?on Dumont, Secondly that of Descartes, Marmontel and Dugald Stewart--Whately on Jests--Nature of Puns--Effect of Custom and Habit--Accessory Emotion--Disappointment and Loss--Practical Jokes 307

Nomenclature--Three Classes of Words--Distinction between Wit and Humour--Wit sometimes dangerous, generally innocuous 339

HISTORY OF ENGLISH HUMOUR.

Burlesque--Parody--The "Splendid Shilling"--Prior--Pope--Ambrose Philips--Parodies of Gray's Elegy--Gay.

We may date the revival of Parody from the fifteenth century, although Dr. Johnson speaks as though it originated with Philips. Notwithstanding the great scope it affords for humorous invention, it has never become popular, nor formed an important branch of literature; perhaps, because the talent of the parodist always suffered from juxtaposition with that of his original. In its widest sense parody is little more than imitation, but as we should not recognise any resemblance without the use of the same form, it always implies a similarity in words or style. Sometimes the thoughts are also reproduced, but this is not sufficient, and might merely constitute a summary or translation. The closer the copy the better the parody, as where Pope's lines

"Here shall the spring its earliest sweets bestow Here the first roses of the year shall blow,"

were applied by Catherine Fanshawe to the Regent's Park with a very slight change--

"Here shall the spring its earliest coughs bestow, Here the first noses of the year shall blow."

But all parody is not travesty, for a writing may be parodied without being ridiculed. This was notably the case in the Centones, Scripture histories in the phraseology of Homer and Virgil, which were written by the Christians in the fourth century, in order that they might be able to teach at once classics and religion. From the pious object for which they were first designed, they degenerated into fashionable exercises of ingenuity, and thus we find the Emperor Valentinian composing some on marriage, and requesting, or rather commanding Ausonius to contend with him in such compositions. They were regarded as works of fancy--a sort of literary embroidery.

It may be questioned whether any of these parodies were intended to possess humour; but wherever we find such as have any traces of it, we may conclude that the imitation has been adopted to increase it. This does not necessarily amount to travesty, for the object is not always to throw contempt on the original. Thus, we cannot suppose "The Battle of the Frogs and Mice," or "The Banquet of Matron," although written in imitation of the heroic poetry of Homer, was intended to make "The Iliad" appear ridiculous, but rather that the authors thought to make their conceits more amusing, by comparing what was most insignificant with something of unsurpassable grandeur. The desire to gain influence from the prescriptive forms of great writings was the first incentive to parody. We cannot suppose that Luther intended to be profane when he imitated the first psalm--

"Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the way of the Sacramentarians, not sat in the seat of the Zuinglians, or followed the counsel of the Zurichers."

Probably Ben Jonson saw nothing objectionable in the quaintly whimsical lines in Cynthia's Revels--

The same charitable allowance may be conceded to the songs composed by the Cavaliers in the Civil War. We should not be surprised to find a tone of levity in them, but they were certainly not intended to throw any discredit on our Church. In "The Rump, or an exact collection of the choicest poems and songs relating to the late times from 1639" we have "A Litany for the New Year," of which the following will serve as a specimen--

"From Rumps, that do rule against customes and laws From a fardle of fancies stiled a good old cause, From wives that have nails that are sharper than claws, Good Jove deliver us."

Among the curious tracts collected by Lord Somers we find a "New Testament of our Lords and Saviours, the House of our Lords and Saviours, the House of Commons, and the Supreme Council at Windsor." It gives "The Genealogy of the Parliament" from the year 1640 to 1648, and commences "The Book of the Generation of Charles Pim, the son of Judas, the son of Beelzebub," and goes on to state in the thirteenth verse that "King Charles being a just man, and not willing to have the people ruinated, was minded to dissolve them, , but while he thought on these things. &c."

Of the same kind was the parody of Charles Hanbury Williams at the commencement of the last century, "Old England's Te Deum"--the character of which may be conjectured from the first line

"We complain of Thee, O King, we acknowledge thee to be a Hanoverian."

"Our Pope which art in Rome, cursed be thy name,"

and ending,

"For thine is the infernal pitch and sulphur for ever and ever. Amen."

"The Religious Recruiting Bill" was written with a pious intention, as was also the Catechism by Mr. Toplady, a clergyman, aimed at throwing contempt upon Lord Chesterfield's code of morality. It is almost impossible to draw a hard and fast line between travesty and harmless parody--the feelings of the public being the safest guide. But to associate Religion with anything low is offensive, even if the object in view be commendable.

Some parodies of Scripture are evidently not intended to detract from its sanctity, as, for instance, the attack upon sceptical philosophy which lately appeared in an American paper, pretending to be the commencement of a new Bible "suited to the enlightenment of the age," and beginning--

"Primarily the unknowable moved upon kosmos and evolved protoplasm.

"And protoplasm was inorganic and undifferentiated, containing all things in potential energy: and a spirit of evolution moved upon the fluid mass.

"And atoms caused other atoms to attract: and their contact begat light, heat, and electricity.

"And the unconditioned differentiated the atoms, each after its kind and their combination begat rocks, air, and water.

"And there went out a spirit of evolution and working in protoplasm by accretion and absorption produced the organic cell.

"And the cell by nutrition evolved primordial germ, and germ devolved protogene, and protogene begat eozoon and eozoon begat monad and monad begot animalcule ..."

We are at first somewhat at a loss to understand what made the "Splendid Shilling" so celebrated: it is called by Steele the finest burlesque in the English language. Although far from being, as Dr. Johnson asserts, the first parody, it is undoubtedly a work of talent, and was more appreciated in 1703 than it can be now, being recognised as an imitation of Milton's poems which were then becoming celebrated. Reading it at the present day, we should scarcely recognise any parody; but blank verse was at that time uncommon, although the Italians were beginning to protest against the gothic barbarity of rhyme, and Surrey had given in his translation of the first and fourth books of Virgil a specimen of the freer versification.

Meres says that "Piers Plowman was the first that observed the true quality of our verse without the curiositie of rime" but he was not followed.

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