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The Book-Lover’s Library.
Edited by
Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A.
STUDIES
IN
JOCULAR LITERATURE.
_A POPULAR SUBJECT MORE CLOSELY
CONSIDERED._
BY
W. CAREW HAZLITT.
_Ne moy reproues sans cause, quar mon entent est de
bone amour._
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LONDON:
ELLIOT STOCK, 62 PATERNOSTER ROW
1890
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE REAL USE AND IMPORTANCE OF
JESTS AND ANECDOTES 1
II. ORIGIN OF THIS CLASS OF LITERATURE, AND ITS DEPENDENCE
ON THE CONDITIONS OF SOCIETY--JESTS BEFORE JEST-BOOKS--
INFLUENCE OF THE ARTS OF WRITING AND PRINTING LONG
SUBSEQUENT TO THE INTRODUCTION OF CARICATURE AND
HUMOUR 13
III. LITERATURE AND THE DRAMA AS CONTRIBUTORIES TO JOCULAR
LITERATURE--DEPENDENCE ON SURROUNDINGS AND
CIRCUMSTANCES 22
IV. JUSTIFICATION FOR THE PRESENT UNDERTAKING--LITERARY
INTEREST OF THE SUBJECT--THE VARIOUS CLASSES OF
JEST--THE SERIOUS ANECDOTE THE ORIGINAL TYPE, AND
THE JEST AN EVOLUTION--GREEK AND ROMAN EXAMPLES--THE
“DEIPNOSOPHISTÆ” OF ATHENÆUS 29
V. THE “NOCTES ATTICÆ”--PECULIAR VALUE OF THE WORK--THE
“LIVES OF THE PHILOSOPHERS,” BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS--
CHARACTER OF THE BOOK--THE GOLDEN TRIPOS 46
VI. THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY--GREEK EPIGRAMS--HERODOTUS--
ARISTOPHANES--PLATO 57
VII. FORMULATION OF THE JEST--EDITORIAL TREATMENT OF
STORIES--SOPHISTICATED VERSIONS 69
VIII. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED--THE ANECDOTE-MONGER 79
IX. THE MARRED ANECDOTE--GAULARDISMS--M. GOUSSAUT--THE
RETORT AND THE PUN--“MALONIANA”--METRICAL
ADAPTATIONS--SECOND-HAND FACETIÆ--PARALLEL VERSIONS 92
X. AFFILIATION OF STORIES--PARALLEL ILLUSTRATIONS--THE
LITERARY CLUB--REYNOLDS, JOHNSON, AND GARRICK--TWO
TUDOR JEST-BOOKS--EUROPEAN GRAFTS ON ORIENTAL
ORIGINALS--MARTIN ELGINBROD--PARSON HOBART--THE
“BRAVO OF VENICE” 111
XI. THE BALLAD AND THE NURSERY RHYME--PHILOSOPHICAL SIDE
OF THE QUESTION--“JACK THE GIANT-KILLER” 129
XII. CONTINENTAL INFLUENCE--THE “ANA”--THE “CONVIVIAL
DISCOURSES”--WHIMSICAL INVENTIONS--SHAKESPEAR
JEST-BOOKS--CHANGE IN PUBLIC TASTE 142
XIII. THE “HUNDRED MERRY TALES”--THE AUTHORSHIP DISCUSSED 156
XIV. “MERRY TALES AND QUICK ANSWERS” 162
XV. FACETIOUS BIOGRAPHIES 168
XVI. ANALECTA 177
XVII. THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 183
XVIII. “JOE MILLER’S JESTS”--HISTORY, CHARACTER, AND SUCCESS
OF THE PUBLICATION--JOHN MOTTLEY THE EDITOR 188
XIX. JEST-BOOKS CONSIDERED AS HISTORICAL AND LITERARY
MATERIAL--THE TWOFOLD POINT ILLUSTRATED--LOCALISATION
OF STORIES 200
XX. THE SO-CALLED “TALES OF SKELTON”--SPECIMENS OF
THEM--SIR THOMAS MORE AND THE LUNATIC--THE FOOLISH
DUKE OF NEWCASTLE--PENNANT THE ANTIQUARY--THE
“GOTHAMITE TALES”--STORIES CONNECTED WITH WALES AND
SCOTLAND 210
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STUDIES IN JOCULAR LITERATURE
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CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE REAL USE AND IMPORTANCE OF JESTS AND
ANECDOTES.
One of the Anglo-Saxon kings gave the manor of Walworth to his jester
Nithardus; and we have all heard how the magnificent benefaction of
St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, subsequently repaired by Sir Richard
Whittington, was founded by Rahere, the _joculator_ and favourite of
a later monarch of this isle. In former days, to be a fool within
certain lines, or a buffoon of a special type, was a walk of life not
to be despised either by a man or by his friends. The jokes which he
made were negotiable securities of first-class value. Not a five-pound
note, but broad lands and the smiles of a prince, awaited the fortunate
utterer of the _bon-mot_ and the fountain of merriment and good humour.
Even in the time of Charles II. the prosperity of the vocation had
sensibly declined. Charles liked people who contributed to his
amusement; but shabby constitutional restraints precluded him from
endowing a pleasant fellow, who could play a conjurer’s tricks with the
risible muscles and the purse-strings of his sovereign, with a large
and valuable estate.
Nay, before the Stuart era, Henry VII., whose parsimony has been
exaggerated, and who gave freely to many charitable objects, had to
content himself with presenting the makers of _jeux d’esprit_ with a
few shillings--the shillings, of course, of that epoch.
The greater rarity of learning, and its status as a special mystery
or cult, surrounded these ancient scholars with an atmosphere which
we have not only a difficulty, but a sort of delicacy, perhaps, in
thoroughly penetrating, so as to enable us to arrive at an absolutely
accurate valuation of their gifts. Among their contemporaries and even
immediate descendants they were regarded as something more than human;
and this sentiment, while it, as a rule, limited itself to worshipful
awe, not unfrequently degenerated into a superstitious dread fatal to
the possessors of incomprehensible faculties.
* * * * *
The first impression of nine persons out of ten, on taking up a Book of
Jests or Anecdotes, is that it is merely a volume prepared for their
momentary diversion--to be bought at a stall for a trifle, cursorily
studied, and thrown on one side.
But the moment that one approaches this description of literature
in a critical spirit, it begins to wear a changed, and yet perhaps
a more interesting, aspect. The application of a microscope of very
inconsiderable power is found by a philosophical student of the subject
to be adequate to the detection of much that is new and curious, lying
either on the surface or not very far from it.
Anecdote-literature, in which I always desire to understand as included
the Jest, seems to me fairly resonant with the life of other days--in
larger measure than has been usually supposed, simply because on a
superficial view we are very apt to content ourselves with the foregone
conclusion, that a story, whether humorous or otherwise, is nothing but
a story.
The notes to the series of Old English Jest-Books, edited by myself
in 1864, and the frequent citations of such works in our philological
literature, bring us to the consideration of another point of view,
in which it is well, perhaps, that we should try to tolerate these
facetious miscellanies, and regard with indulgence their sins alike
against propriety and against wit. A dull story is frequently redeemed,
it may be observed in studying such publications, by the light which it
sheds on an otherwise unintelligible phrase or allusion--or, indeed, by
the service which it renders in having rescued one from oblivion.
The accidental formation, more than twenty years ago, of this
acquaintance with our own jocular literature, and the periodical
renewal of it in an editorial capacity, have naturally led me to pay
rather close attention to the JEST in its numerous varieties and stages
of growth, and to cast from time to time a scrutinising eye over the
contents of the extensive series of works in this class which has come
under my notice.
The result, almost unconsciously to myself, has been that the theory on
the subject, with which I started in life, has made room for one of a
different complexion and drift; and I propose to offer in the following
pages some suggestions for reducing to a better and more intelligent
order certain of the _facetiæ_ and _jeux d’esprit_, by way of sample,
in the Collections, and to point out, to the best of my ability, how
they have been subjected to disguising or transforming processes by
political, literary, or commercial inducements.
Although the independent reading of the more thoughtful and studious
had long brought them, of course, to a more enlightened inference,
I almost apprehend that, until Mr. Wright’s volume on Grotesque and
Caricature appeared, the loose general notion was that there was not
much worth regarding in the present direction beyond the imperishable
pages of Joe Miller; and I certainly think that a very narrow minority
conceived in how wide and many-sided a meaning the Jest is susceptible
of being understood.
On the contrary, the Jest offers itself to our consideration in a
surprising diversity of types and garbs; and the project which I have
now before me is, in fact, an attempt to treat for the first time, in a
catholic and critical spirit, a theme which has been usually viewed as
frivolous and undignified.
It is a matter of notoriety that some of our best antiquaries have
loved to trace to their sources the comic and romantic tales which we
have borrowed from the Continent, and to note the variations introduced
for the sake of novelty, local requirement, or dramatic exigency, by a
succession of writers in the same or in different languages.
A vast amount of labour and scholarship has been expended in
illustrating by this light the works of Shakespear and our other
early playwrights, as well as in recovering the clues to the material
on which Chaucer and Spenser built their undying productions.
Moreover, both in England and abroad, a great deal has been achieved
in elucidating the literary history of our ancient jest-books, and
improving our intimacy with the true origin of the stories and their
subsequent adventures, in more or less numerous disguises, from the
_Hundred Merry Tales_ to _Joe Miller_ or what may perhaps be termed the
_Milleriana_.
But when one has assiduously sifted all this learning, one finds that
it very naturally limits itself, as a rule, to the very early books, so
far as _facetiæ_ are concerned,--to that branch of the subject which
belongs to Archæology; and, in short, I do not know that I have been to
any but the most trifling extent forestalled in the design which I here
try to carry out, of arranging and analysing the humorous traditions
which we have received from our forefathers touching the celebrities
of all ages and countries, yet more exclusively those who flourished
within a measurable distance of time, or those whom no distance of time
is capable of affecting; or, once more, such relations as owe, not to
the names, but to the matter, their continuity of life.
The origin of all jocular or semi-serious literature and art is
referable, of course, to a stage of human development when the
deviation from a certain standard of feeling or opinion could be
appreciable; and it does not require the long establishment of a
settled society, judging from the habits of savage and illiterate
communities, before a sense of the ludicrous and grotesque begins to
form part of the popular sentiment.
The ludicrous and grotesque are, to a certain extent, relative or
conditional terms. The canons of propriety and right in primitive
life are so widely different from those which prevail in a state
of civilisation, that what we should regard as fit material for a
jest-book is elsewhere treated as a piece of serious history. A
departure from the line of expression or deportment sanctioned by
common usage has proved in all countries and all ages a fertile
source of satire and caricature; but then that line, like the needle,
is subject to variation, and the fixture of character is not, as is
the case with straight and curved lines in mathematics, a matter of
doctrine and fact, but one mainly of local circumstance and costume.
The joke has proved in all ages a factor of manifold power and use.
It has ridiculed and exposed corruptions in the body politic and in
the social machinery. It has laughed at some things because they were
new, and at others because they were old. It has preserved records of
persons and ideas, and traits of ancient bygone manners, which must
otherwise have perished; and it frequently stands before us with its
esoteric moral hidden not much below its ostensible and immediate
purport.
Jests present humanity to our observation in its holiday attire, its
Sunday best, or at least under some exceptional and temporary aspect.
Quin and Foote, Mathews and Sydney Smith, Frank Talfourd and Henry
Byron, had their grave, and very grave, intervals. Hood himself said
that he had to be a lively Hood for a livelihood; and it was mournfully
true, as the records of his every-day life, chastened by illness
and sorrow, only too well establish. The pleasant or comic episodes
may be an occasional incidence of the least happy existence or the
least fortunate career; and the anecdotes, humorous or otherwise,
of celebrated men and women are receivable with allowance as traits
of character and conduct, for which some special circumstance, or a
union of circumstances, is answerable. In the general tenor of the
most favoured experiences the serious element is apt to preponderate;
the heyday of our years is like short, intermittent sunshine; and we
ought to come to the study of ANA, if we wish to judge them correctly,
with a recollection of what they are, and also what they are not. They
who have enjoyed the privilege of a personal acquaintance with the
gayest of our modern humourists--and there are many such (including
the present writer) among us still--are best qualified to pronounce
an opinion upon this point; and they know how much of darkness and
anguish often there is behind the scenes or off the boards. The jokes
by or about any given individual do not, after all, amount to a great
deal, when they are spread over thirty or forty years: all the genuine
sayings of Theodore Hook or Douglas Jerrold would not fill more than
a few octavo pages; and these things are to be taken, not as indices
to the habitual unbroken mood of the man, but rather as samples of
felicity of phrase or thought to be gotten, like mineral ore, under
auspicious conditions from a wealthy soil.
We are too grossly subservient to habit and use. We naturally accustom
ourselves, unless we reflect, to figure the clown with his tongue
perpetually in his cheek and the wit discharging his shafts without
cessation or repose--just as, on the contrary, no one would be prepared
to believe, without the strongest proof, that a tailor had made a pun,
or that a railway porter had written a Greek epigram.
If we try to realise in our imagination Grimaldi stretched on a bed
of sickness, a jovial companion in a gouty paroxysm, or an excellent
friend, the author of utterances which have delighted and convulsed the
stage, in the extremity of mental depression or physical suffering, we
shall be better able to see that the Anecdote generically, and the Jest
in particular, are fortuitous emanations and not parcel of our daily
being.
Facetious narrations are too seldom subjected to the test of
circumstantial evidence. We are not apt to ask ourselves the question,
who delivered the joke, or ushered it into print? There are cases,
of course, where the author of a sally or rejoinder himself repeats
it to a third party, possibly in its original shape, possibly with
embellishments; but there must be, nay, there are numberless instances
in which a funny thing is given to a person, not because he said it,
but because he might or would have done so. It is an assignment by
inference and likelihood.
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