The natural history of the Cockney has been frequently illustrated, and
never so successfully as in time past in the pages of Maga. But nature
is inexhaustible in all her creations. You might study a lifetime, and
yet not fully master the properties of one of those little Infusoria
that wriggle or spin about in a phial of foul or fair water, and a still
wider subject of study is of course supplied by any larger animal, such
as a Cockney, placed as he is a little lower than the angels, and
half-way down, or there abouts, between a man and a chimpanzee.
Upon careful inquiry it would probably be found, that in most nations
the population, though all purporting to be men and women, consists in a
good measure of beings that stand several degrees below the point of
humanity. France, among several specimens of a higher order, has
occasionally shown that a considerable proportion of its inhabitants was
a hideous cross between the tiger and the baboon. Holland has had its
Grotius and its Erasmus, but the otter and the beaver breed make up the
mass of those who go by the name of Dutchmen. There has been no want in
Germany of clear-sighted men, but the mole, the bat, and the owl furnish
a large contingent to the ranks of its _literati_. In other nations we
see a greater or less preponderance of the wolf or the bear, the goat or
the goose, the ass, the hog, or the hippopotamus. Such being the
universal condition of the world, we should rather be proud than
otherwise, that, in England, we can boast of a secondary tribe, made,
perhaps, by some of nature's journeymen, but that yet imitate humanity
so respectably, so amiably, and so amusingly, as the Cockney must be
admitted to do.
A Cockney is by locality very much what a tailor is by trade. Though a
remote sub-multiple of a man, he is enterprising, indefatigable, cutting
his way to his object through every thing with a ready tongue and a
quick wit. Yet he is deficient in some qualities indispensable to the
species _homo_. Courage the Cockney undoubtedly possesses, because he is
always among those who are said to rush in where others fear to tread.
But veneration is utterly wanting in his composition; and here the
resemblance to the tailor is conspicuous; as we never knew a single snip
that had the slightest reverence for any thing under heaven--if, indeed,
the assertion should not be made in still broader terms. In the tailor
this effect, defective, comes by an obvious cause. The intolerable
liberties which the vulgar fraction is permitted to take with people's
persons, divesting the best and bravest of us of the halo of heroism
that surrounds us at a distance; and the fact that the great mysteries
of dress, the paraphernalia of our dignity and decency, and the chief
emblems of our manhood and domestic authority, emerge exclusively from
the hands of this insignificant but indispensable maker of men, are
enough to extinguish within him all sentiment of respect for any thing
human or divine. The Cockney arrives at a similar state of easy and
impudent _non-chalance_ by a different process. Littered in London, and
living there all his life, he is proud of its position among cites; and
he comes, by a natural process of reasoning, to ascribe its importance
to its connexion with his own person and people, and to see nothing
better or greater in the universe than himself and what belongs to him.
The feeling grows with his growth, and is fed by a full indulgence in
all the good things with which the land of Cockayne abounds, and which
the most morose of mortals must admit to be eminently conducive to
self-complacency.
The Cockney, thus devoid of all diffidence in himself, is prepared for
every thing in the scale of human thought or action; pleasuring or
politics, theatricals or theology, an Epping hunt or an Epic poem. In
literature we may say of him, nearly in the words applied by Dr Johnson
to Goldsmith, that there is scarcely any kind of composition that he
does not handle, and none that he handles which he does not adorn with
graces all his own.
It is wonderful, however, to see with what success a Cockney can
sometimes disguise himself. He will write you a book, in which, several
pages on end, you think you are reading the thoughts of some ordinary
mortal. But the cloven foot always appears before you are done with him.
In poetry, indeed, you can go but a short way till the cat is let out of
the bag. That unfortunate letter R! No lessons in elocution, no change
of climate, can eradicate the deep-seated mischief of its
mispronunciation in a Cockney whose years of pupilarity have been passed
on the spot of his birth.
These remarks have been elicited by a disappointment we have recently
suffered, in being led to purchase the book referred to at the
commencement of this article. We saw it advertised by an alluring
title--"REYNARD THE FOX--a renowned Apologue of the Middle Ages
reproduced in Rhyme." We bought the book, and were delighted with its
appearance. A quaint, antique, cream-coloured binding--a golden vignette
on the outside, of the fox making his obeisance to Noble the king of the
beasts, and the lioness his spouse--a beautiful paper and type within,
with red and blue illuminations interspersed at the heads of chapters
and paragraphs;--all this combined to whet our appetite for a delicious
treat. We read the preface and introduction, if not with pleasure, at
least with patience, and with wonderfully few misgivings as to the
truth, the worst feature in them being the tendency to Carlyleism, to
which, however offensive in itself, custom has made us somewhat callous.
But we had not perused a page or two of the reproduction in rhyme
itself, when we discovered that we were wandering in the regions of
Cockneyland, with one of its most distinguished natives for our guide.
Our immediate purpose is to offer an exposition, not of the old Reynard,
but of its present "reproduction." We may say, however, that we think
the original work is one peculiarly ill-suited to be appreciated or
reproduced by one of Mr Naylor's compatriots. It is a product of true
genius, humour, and sagacity. The author must have looked at beasts and
men with a keen eye, and from the vantage ground of a contemplative
mind; and he has worked out his thoughts in a plain and simple style of
illustration, and embodied them in easy and natural language. There is
much merriment in his work, but no straining after wit. There is all the
knowledge of the day that an accomplished man could be expected to
possess, but no parade of learning. There is no quaintness in the style,
and no effort in the verse. The age of _Hudibras_ had not come; and that
of the _Ingoldsby Legends_, or _Miss Kilmansegg_, was still further off.
The old Flemish writers of Reynard exhibit judgment as well as talent,
and their Low Saxon successor, though himself a reproducer, has asserted
a claim both to freedom and originality. The quiet, sensible, unaffected
treatment of their subject, which these old versifiers exhibit, where
the topics offered so much temptation to burlesque and extravagance, is
the thing of all others least likely to be comprehended or relished in
the meridian of Bow Bells.
But, then, Goethe has successfully translated the book; and, therefore,
Mr Naylor must do the same. This is a common mode of syllogising in
Cockayne. Homer, Dante, Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, have done such and
such things, and therefore a Cockney is to do them also. Whatever may be
the precise minor premise involved in this argument, we venture to
suggest a doubt of its soundness. Mr Naylor tells us he has followed
Alkmar's and Goethe's example, "mindful ever of the requisitions
insisted on by Novalis in all paraphrastic translations, that they
should convey accurately an idea of the first type, whilst, at the same
time, the translator made his author speak after that appreciation of
his work which exists in his own mind, no less than according to the
poet's original conception." Mr Naylor may have succeeded in making his
author speak after that appreciation of his work which exists in his own
mind; but if the "first type" of Reynard had been no better than the
reproduction gives us an idea of, the shapeless and sickly cub would not
have lived an hour into the thirteenth century.
Before Mr Naylor resolved on reproducing Reynard in English rhyme, he
should have inquired whether it was not already as well done as he was
likely to do it. In his elaborate enumeration of his predecessors in the
task of translation, he thus writes:--"There is also _said_ to be a
translation of Reynard into English _doggerel_, by _one_ Soltau, a
German"--"known," as he adds in a note, "as the translator of _Hudibras_
into German." We have now before us the translation so slightingly
alluded to, published at Hamburg in 1826. In all external and physical
recommendations, this homely volume is far inferior to the London
reproduction; but we shall immediately give our readers an opportunity
of judging whether the doggerel of "one Soltau, a German," is not at
least as good as that of "one Naylor, a Cockney."
Take the opening of the poem, which, in the original, is full of
freshness and spirit, with all the joyousness of a holiday scene.