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.
A justification for the present inquiry may be found, then, in the
historical, biographical and literary interest with which it abounds,
and in the multiplicity of aspects under which the topic is capable of
being contemplated.
The Jest resembles a tree of many branches. It is couched in a wide
variety of shapes--namely, the Riddle, the Epigram, the Apologue or
Tale, the Repartee, the Quibble, and the Pun.
Of these, the Apologue and the Riddle are the most ancient--the latter
being entitled to priority, if we take into account its positive origin
in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves, although the jocular or comic
development is so much more recent. The same criticism applies to the
Apologue which was transplanted from Oriental soil, where it has ever
been a favourite method of conveying instruction and amusement, into
the oldest Western vehicles for the same twofold purpose, such as the
_Gesta Romanorum_, the _Fables_ of Æsop, and _Reynard the Fox_. These
productions, with many others, were designed as a method of inculcating
moral precepts and political lessons under a fictitious or romantic
garb. The facetious adaptation was a later growth, and first manifests
itself in the French and Latin _fabliaux_ in prose or verse edited for
us by Méon and Wright.
Next in the scale of antiquity to the Apologue and Riddle we may
be warranted in ranking the Epigram; and this, too, like the two
others to which I have been referring, was in its inception and early
employment satirical rather than burlesque for the most part. Humour
did not enter at first into its composition or design. Any one who
looks through the Greek Anthology may see that the productions in that
language are serious narratives treated in a terse and condensed style.
The Quibble and Repartee were tolerably popular features and
characteristics in the jest-books of the seventeenth century, when the
formation of literary clubs, and the increased correspondence between
men of parts and wit, naturally led to the growth of that large body
of sayings which the printed and MSS. collections have handed down to
us. The age immediately succeeding that of Shakespear saw the uprise
of the quip and crank, and the retort courteous, “conceits, clinches,
flashes, and whimzies,” and all the rest of the merry, motley company.
Such utterances they were as undoubtedly appealed with success to their
auditors and readers; but so thorough is the change which has stolen
over our taste and feeling in these matters, that, in turning over the
leaves of a volume of _facetiæ_, which was once read with avidity and
delight, the impression now produced is a mingled one of surprise and
disappointment.
The humorous literature, like the coinage, of a particular era, seems
as if it were part of it; and it is in a vast majority of instances
incapable of assimilation or transfer, as I shall endeavour to prove
by a few casual selections from miscellanies which were in prime vogue
and favour when James I. was on the throne, and those three renowned
hostelries, the Mermaid, the Mitre, and the Devil, were flourishing
centres of all that was cultivated and spiritual.
The serious Anecdote naturally took precedence of its jocular evolution
or offspring; and indeed the latter, as is obvious enough, could hardly
exist as a congener, till artificial and more or less complicated forms
of social life had been developed. Even the entries in such books as
Plutarch, where he narrates some incident in the biography of one of
his heroes of a nature less grave than usual, and of a sufficiently
playful or salient nature to have tempted the editors of the ancient
collections of _facetiæ_ to include them in their pages, cannot quite
properly be said to be exceptions to the rule, that the Jest, as we
understand it, was unknown to the ancients, although all civilised
nations have in their turn possessed a keen sense of the laughable, and
have devised methods of holding up to derision those who deviated from
the prevailing standard of decorum, morality, or etiquette; or, again,
who exposed themselves to personalities from special causes.
The selections from classic sources in the _Merry Tales and Quick
Answers_, printed in the time of Henry VIII., have on this account a
tendency to weight the book, and render it less attractive and readable
at the present time than its famous contemporary, entitled _A Hundred
Merry Tales_, which was prepared on a more judicious principle, and
excluded all but tales of more or less current interest.
The favourite Greek and Roman authors with compilers of _Ana_ have been
at all periods Plutarch, Aulus Gellius, Lucian, Athenæus, and Diogenes
Laertius. It is very rarely that Homer or Cicero is enlisted in their
service by the caterers for popular entertainment; and even in the
case of the _Merry Tales and Quick Answers_ the stories about the
ancients are appended at the end, as if they had been an afterthought
or a stratagem for making out the copy.
There is a coincidence between Lucian and Athenæus in this
respect,--that the _jeux d’esprit_, such as they are, in both writers
occur almost exclusively in their remarks on Courtesans; and we ought
to be the less surprised at such a circumstance, when we call to mind
that the Greek _hetairai_ were precisely the class which chiefly
mixed with men of wit, and was most apt to yield subject-matter for
pleasant sallies and epigrammatic clinches. Among the Romans, too, as
we easily collect from the writings of their amatory poets and the
lighter productions of Horace, the women of pleasure were accomplished
and attractive; but no type exactly parallel to the Greek _hetaira_,
as she is depicted in the pages of literary history, seems ever to
have existed in Italy, and the nearest approach to her socially is
perhaps the Parisian grisette, and, in point of culture and mental
qualities, the gay female throng which haunted the court of Charles II.
Both these, however, were, while presenting features of resemblance,
essentially dissimilar from their prototype, who was a natural
emanation of the climate, government, and moral atmosphere in which she
was born and bred.
Notwithstanding the undoubted presence of a feeling for humour among
the Greeks and other remote nationalities, one finds it possible to
lay down the _Deipnosophistæ_ and the _Hetairæ_ with an unrelaxed
countenance; and one arrives at the conclusion that all the best things
have perished, or that much of the comic effect produced at table
or on the stage was due to local costume and to evanescent gesture
and pantomime,--just as the triumphs of Grimaldi and Liston among
ourselves, and Richard Tarlton before them, depended so materially on
personal mannerism and _extempore_ grimace.
In Lucian the most remarkable specimen, and that which has been most
frequently quoted and borrowed, is the retort of the lady to her lover
about the small size of the cask of wine which he had sent to her,
considering its reputed age; and this is also in the _Deipnosophistæ_,
where it is related, however, of Phryne.
Perhaps the most interesting feature in the latter work, in connection
with the immediate topic, is the notice which we get of the Athenian
Club of the SIXTY, in the time of Demosthenes. Even the names or
_sobriquets_ of some of the members have survived; and Philip of
Macedon honoured the institution by the expression of his regret
that his other avocations precluded him from joining it, and by a
simultaneous request that a collection of all the good sayings uttered
at its gatherings should be sent to him. Whether or not this flattering
requisition was supplied, there is no record; but in any case it
shadows the possibility of a jest-book far more ancient, and presumably
also more copious, than that of Hierocles.
It thus appears, moreover, that the earliest companionship of
anecdotes of all descriptions is with the feast and the cup; the lost
conversational gems of the Attic Sexagint were distilled over the
convivial glass; and the pages of Athenæus are put forward in like
manner as the gradual progeny of table-talk--table-talk which may have
received in not a few instances the polishing touches of an editor.
The student who may be at the pains to consult the _Deipnosophistæ_ and
its analogues will probably concur with me in the opinion that such
repositories were little calculated to prove advantageous resorts for
later compilers of _bons-mots_. Not merely is it that the bulk of the
matter is not with ease transfusible into a modern language, but the
spirit and atmosphere of these effusions are foreign to our sympathies;
and the wittiest sayings of the wittiest of Corinthian humourists, male
or female, are apt to strike us, not having the context, as vapid and
pointless.
Athenæus has preserved several of the repartees of Gnathæna, the
celebrated courtesan. One of the best of them appears to be her play
upon words, when Pausanius, who was nicknamed _Laccus_, fell into a
cask, and she remarked that the cellar (_laccus_) had fallen into the
cask. Another is by no means contemptible. “Once, when a chattering
fellow was relating that he had just come from the Hellespont, ‘Why,
then,’ said she, ‘did you not go to the first city in that country?’
and when he asked what city, ‘To Sigeum,’ said she.” But in a third,
which occurs immediately below, the salt is very thinly sprinkled:--
“On one occasion, when Chærephon came to sup with her without an
invitation, Gnathæna pledged him in a cup of wine. ‘Take it,’ said
she, ‘you proud fellow!’ ‘I proud?’ ‘Who can be more so,’ said she,
‘when you come without even being invited?’”
Here is one of another _hetaira_, Nico by name:--
“Once, when she met a parasite, who was very thin in consequence of
a long sickness, she said to him, ‘How lean you are!’ ‘No wonder,’
says he, ‘for what do you think is all I have had to eat these three
days?’ ‘Why, a leather bottle,’ says she, ‘or perhaps your shoes.’”
Our author adduces these and several other ineptitudes of similar
calibre in honest good faith, and assures us that the lady was always
very neat and witty in all she said. He adds that she compiled a
code of laws for banquets, in compliance with which her friends were
required to pay their respects to her and her daughters; but these
regulations have not been preserved. It is to be hoped that they were
wiser than her jocular achievements.
The same criticism is, in the main, applicable to the gossip which
Athenæus has bequeathed to us about three other distinguished members
of the sisterhood--Lais, Glycera and Thais. One of these items
concerns, however, the dramatist Menander, and awakens an independent
interest:--
“Once, when Menander the poet had failed with one of his plays, and
came to her house, Glycera brought him some milk, and recommended
him to drink it. But he said he would rather not, for there was some
γραῦς in it, that word signifying either an old woman or the scum
on milk. But she replied, ‘Blow it away, and take what there is
beneath.’”
There is a second anecdote, which deserves attention, apart from any
merit of its own, because it illustrates the very ancient symbolism of
the seal or signet, which survived down to modern times:--
“A lover of hers once sent his seal to Lais the Corinthian, and
desired her to come to him. But she said, ‘I cannot come; it is only
clay!’”
A certain dramatic interest centres in the famous Phryne, whose
adventure in a court of justice is so well known. There is a story that
her contemporary, the courtesan Gnathæna aforesaid, once twitted her
with her dulness, insinuating that her wit ought to be sharpened on a
whetstone; but assuredly the two subjoined bits are quite as good as
anything that is cited of Gnathæna herself:--
“Once, when a slave, who had been flogged, was giving himself airs as
a young man towards her, and saying that he had been often entangled,
she pretended to look vexed; and when he asked her the reason, ‘I am
jealous of you,’ said she, ‘because you have been so often smitten.’”
“A very covetous lover of hers was coaxing her, and saying to her,
‘You are the Venus of Praxiteles.’ ‘And you,’ said she, playing
on the double meaning of the sculptor’s name, ‘are the Cupid of
Phidias.’”
Turning from the fair sex to that which claims no such distinction, we
do not find ourselves face to face with any improvement in quality. The
following is quoted by Athenæus from Xenophon:--
“Philip the jester, having knocked at the door, told the boy who
answered, to tell the guests who he was, and that he was desirous to
be admitted; and he said that he came provided with everything which
could qualify him for supping at other people’s expense.”
Take another, the pith of which resides in the twofold circumstance
that Lysimachus had two prime favourites, Bithys and Paris, and that
the performers on the comic stage had, as a rule, short names:--
“Demetrius Poliorcetes was a man very eager for anything which could
make him laugh, as Phylarchus tells us in the sixth book of his
History. And he it was who said, that the palace of Lysimachus was in
no respect different from a comic theatre, for that there was no one
there bigger than a dissyllable.”
So Athenæus; but the particular citation goes rather to prove that
Demetrius endeavoured to provoke mirth in others, and that if he
succeeded in this instance, the risible organs of his friends must
have been almost painfully sensitive. Thus much it appeared almost
indispensable to furnish by way of warranty for what had been said just
before in disparagement of the ancient school of humour.
Nor are the examples cited by Athenæus under _Parodies_, which might
seem at first blush to belong to the same genus or family, more
felicitous or impressive. There, as in the other sections devoted
to _Courtesans_ and _Jesters_, the double meaning and the quibble
preponderate, and some of the points demand a solution which nearly
amounts to a gloss or an essay. There is positively nothing worth
copying.
But I have entered into these details because I can then finally
dismiss the _Deipnosophistæ_, which offers no parallels to the modern
_Ana_, save and except the hackneyed tale of the little cask of great
age, which Taylor, the Water Poet, in his _Wit and Mirth_, applies to
“a proper gentlewoman” in his own rather clumsy fashion.
Of semi-serious epigrams in prose-form the author of the
_Deipnosophistæ_ supplies us with at least one noteworthy specimen,
where he speaks of Myrtilus as discoursing on every subject as if he
had studied that alone. This fine sentiment is akin to the description
of Aristippus:--
“Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res,”
and to the “Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit,” which has been applied to
our Goldsmith.
The epigram is by nature and necessity unliteral. It is an _ex-officio_
extravagance or hyperbole, from which you must take a liberal discount.
One of the mediæval worthies, Alanus ab Insulis, was designated the
_Universal Doctor_. It was a complimentary _façon de parler_.
We are here somehow reminded of the account which Macaulay makes
Charles II. give of Sydney Godolphin, that he was such an excellent
courtier, “because he was never in the way, and never out of the way.”
Then, again, we get it in such forms as “the Admirable Crichton,”
“Single-Speech Hamilton,” “Capability Brown,” or “Athenian Stuart,”
where a real or reputed specialism is summed up in a word. So that
the editor of books of epigrams, who does not go beyond the ordinary
familiar types, leaves a good deal of the field unreaped.
The _Deipnosophistæ_ constituted a work, which most naturally suggested
to mediæval and later compilers miscellanies formed on an analogous
basis, but adapted from time to time to the changing demands of public
taste. The most remarkable of these productions, perhaps, was the
_Mensa Philosophica_, of which the authorship is a matter of dispute,
but which was constructed to some extent out of the _Saturnalia_ of
Macrobius, and of which there is an Elizabethan counterpart, entitled
_The Schoolmaster or Teacher of Table Philosophy_. This, and the
_Convivial Discourses_ elsewhere mentioned, seem to breathe the air of
a social system, when men lingered over the dinner or supper table, or
adjourned, as was not unusual, after the actual meal to indulge in wine
and conversation.
I shall now proceed to treat the _Greek Anthology_, the _Noctes
Atticæ_, and the _Lives of the Philosophers_, which, like Lucian and
Athenæus, are simply of value as the foundations and pioneers of the
class of literature which I am examining, and as introductory to the
leading purpose in view. It must become evident that the sources of
the vein of wit which pervades modern literature and society is to be
sought elsewhere--in circumstances and conditions of life altogether
different--in our political development, climate and blood.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]