FACETIOUS BIOGRAPHIES.
Leaving behind us these two admirable productions, we encounter an
interesting group of compilations, which differ essentially from
them in structure and treatment. They constitute a sort of family of
books, and are of a biographical cast, with an imperfect attempt at
chronological sequence. I shall enumerate some of them:--
_The Jests of the Widow Edith._
_The Merry Tales of Skelton._
_The Jests of Scogin._
_Tarlton’s Jests._
_The Merry Conceited Jests of George Peele._
_The Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson._
_Dobson’s Dry Bobs._
The original motive for associating a particular individual with
a publication was obviously the stimulus which his reputation was
expected to lend to the sale. The real tie between a facetious
miscellany and its god-parent was, in nine cases out of ten, absolutely
nominal. In the reputed adventures and pranks of the Widow Edith,
Skelton and Scogin, there is the largest share of verisimilitude; but
the printed accounts, especially in the case of Scogin, are so long
posterior to the epoch at which the heroes flourished, that there was
infinite opportunity for laying to their credit any current jokes or
tricks of a suitable complexion.
Of the three, the tracts dealing with the poet and the widow leave the
impression, on perusal, of being narratives of authentic incidents in
a far greater degree than the _Scoginiana_; and some of the anecdotes
of Skelton are superlatively funny,--for instance, that which narrates
“how the cobbler told Master Skelton it is good sleeping in a whole
skin.” But it is unfortunately too lengthy for transcription. There is
not only a stronger air of probability about the anecdotes which we
here find of the parson of Diss than in those which occur of Scogin,
but an agreeable exemption from grossness, although it has been
surmised that both came from the same pen--that of Dr. Andrew Borde, of
Pevensey.
Shakespearian readers are familiar with the passage in _Henry IV._,
Part I., Act ii., where Falstaff is discovered asleep behind the
arras, and his pockets are turned out, disclosing a tavern account, in
which the charge for sack is the principal item, and for bread only
a halfpenny is set down; whereupon Prince Hal exclaims to Poins, “O
monstrous! but one halfpennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of
sack!” The germ of this passage seems to be in the story relating “how
the Welshman did desire Skelton to aid him in his suit to the king for
a patent to sell drink”; and another point is that the song “Back and
side go bare, go bare,” etc., introduced into _Gammer Gurton’s Needle_,
embodies the same idea.
Chaucer makes his Sumner describe himself as “a man of little
sustenance,” but does not let us hear whether his predilections were
for liquids or solids.
Apart from their dubious personality, the jests of Scogin have their
clear utility and worth as a picture of archaic social life; they
furnish glimpses of obsolete manners and notions with merciless
candour, and eclipse almost the entire body of _Ana_ in unrestrained
licence of expression. But, as I have hinted, Scogin is more or less
of a lay-figure, and some of the achievements for which he enjoys the
credit are of foreign origin. At least two of them meet the eye in the
“Book which the Knight of the Tower made for the Use of His Daughters,”
printed by Caxton, and not unknown to Dr. Borde; and this, while it
may detract from their originality, is a plea on their behalf, as some
of the borrowed matter, which was thought fit reading for young ladies
by a noble French author and their parent, is certainly among the less
decent portions of a not very decent volume.
The good knight himself, however, was part of a world less verbally
or outwardly prudish than ours. He had only to dip into the written
literature of his time to find plenty of such anecdotes as he
introduced into his book, and as have become familiar to us through the
collections of _fabliaux_, where numerous examples offer themselves to
our view of the identical conditions of ancient domestic life. I shall
not attempt to decide whether the moral atmosphere of France in the
thirteenth century was better or worse than that which we breathe; but
the knight and his family were surrounded by it, and knew no other.
Of the other jest-books falling within the biographical category, the
_Jests of George Peele_ and the _Conceits of Hobson_ are palpable
_réchauffés_--warmed-up dishes of stale viands. The same is to be
predicated of _Dobson’s Dry Bobs_, which claims on the title-page to be
a kind of sequel to Scogin.
_Tarlton’s Jests_ present the aspect of a tolerably contemporary, if
not homogeneous and individual, assortment of witticisms and exploits.
They are chiefly redolent of the court and the theatre, the two scenes
of his activity and triumphs; and if all the things which they make
him say or do were not said or done by him, it is not easy to point
out the sources to which the editor of the original book went. Tarlton
was undoubtedly a man of rare powers, and his celebrity must have long
outlived him. He died in the plague-year 1588, before Shakespear came
to settle in London, yet not before the great dramatist might have seen
him and spoken to him; and for some time I have entertained a suspicion
that he may be the Yorick of _Hamlet_.
The _Jest of the Widow Edith, the lying Widow which still liveth_,
is an early Tudor book (1525), which, though not dissimilar in its
nature from Skelton and Scogin and the German _Eulenspiegel_, varies
distinctly from them all in being a history in doggerel rhyme, composed
by one of the dupes of a licentious and unprincipled adventuress, named
Edith, whose stratagems and impostures are rehearsed in this quaint
metrical record with graphic minuteness. The date of the tract--the
first quarter of the sixteenth century--its popular tenor, and its
uniqueness of type, may together do something to disarm our anger at
its literary poverty and its occasional latitude,--although, were not a
lady in the question, it is not so offensive as the low buffoonery of
Scogin, or as some of the items which found their way into the Tarlton
volume.
The relations of Skelton with his parishioners in Norfolk form a
curious chapter in the ecclesiastical annals of the reign of Henry
VIII. His eminence as a writer and celebrity as a humourist have
doubtless contributed to preserve for our edification a tolerable
salvage of his sayings and doings while he held preferment in the
Church; but it is the circumstance that he was something more than a
loose parson which has given such prominence to his irregularities,
just as there were, in the time of Shakespear, deer-poachers whose
names we have not been enabled to recollect.
The so-called _Merry Tales of Skelton_ amount, in reality, to a slight
biographical sketch strung together in sectional form. There even
appears a sort of attempt at chronological propriety, as they begin
prior to his instalment at Diss and close at a point in his life when
he was under the displeasure of Wolsey--not for his profligacy of
behaviour, but for his vituperative writings against that powerful
minister.
As a picture of the manners of the time, without a study and knowledge
of which it is obviously futile to try or presume to judge Skelton
or anybody else belonging to it, the narrative of the mistress whom
the poet kept at his living, his reprehension by the bishop, and the
scene in Diss church when (according to the jest-book) he rated his
congregation for complaining of him and openly exhibited the child,
baffles competition, when one takes into account the relations of the
pastor to his flock, the severity of ecclesiastical discipline, and the
rebuke which Skelton had suffered immediately before at the hands of
his spiritual chief. It is when we contemplate such social phenomena
that we become more and more forcibly convinced that the Reformation
was not a crusade against immorality, but a political fight between the
Church and State. In the case of Skelton himself, his licentiousness
would probably have never involved him in serious trouble had he not
chosen to attack Wolsey.
But the entire texture of this small miscellany of humour, scandal
and libertinism is cross-woven; and its serious value is, to my
apprehension, greater than its comic. For it not only sheds light on
certain points in the career of the singular man with whose name the
tales are directly associated, but on the whole surrounding atmosphere.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XVI.
ANALECTA.
It was not till the Greeks and Romans had arrived at an advanced stage
of civilisation that scope was afforded to the class of writers of
whom we are accustomed to regard Athenæus and Aulus Gellius as typical
examples; and somewhat on a similar principle the development of the
jest in the more modern acceptation is traceable back only to a certain
stage of social order, when a perception of the ridiculous or eccentric
was quickened into life by the establishment of an artificial standard
among us of politeness and opinion.
Another and distinct section of jest-books consists of what may be
treated as the pioneers of the English Ana--collections made by editors
from other books and from hearsay among their friends or in company;
and of these I shall content myself with adducing as specimens--
1. _Wits, Fits, and Fancies_, by Anthony Copley, 1595.
2. _Certain Conceits and Jests_, 1614.
3. _Wit and Mirth_, by John Taylor the Water Poet, 1629.
4. _Conceits, Clinches, Flashes, and Whimzies_, by Robert
Chamberlain, 1639.
5. JOE MILLER’S _Jest-Book_, 1739.
A century and ten years elapsed between the publications of Taylor and
Miller; but the earliest edition of the latter was barely more than a
pamphlet, and would not be at first sight recognised by those who are
only familiar with the more recent issues, in which the original text
has been amplified and overlaid, till the slender proportions of the
shilling book of 1739 are completely effaced.
The copious title of Taylor’s performance speaks for itself: “Wit
and Mirth, chargeably collected out of Taverns, Ordinaries, Inns,
Bowling Greens and Alleys, Alehouses, Tobacco-shops, Highways, and
Water-passages, made up and fashioned into Clinches, Bulls, Quirks,
Yerks, Quips, and Jerks.” The arrangement closely follows that of
_Tarlton’s Jests_ and the _Conceits and Jests_; but the plan is widely
dissimilar, since Taylor has comparatively little to say about himself,
and the work, such as it is, is his own; whereas Tarlton stood to the
book which carries his name merely in the relation of sponsor, and the
whole is devoted by the actual editor to him and his real or putative
extravagances.
The self-evident truth is, that Master Taylor jotted down every smart
saying or racy passage which fell in his way by road or river, or
wherever his professional and private engagements happened to take him.
He was rather indiscriminate and not very squeamish; and his budget
exhibits wares of all sorts as well as of all shades of quality and
every variety of character, new and old, original and borrowed, prose
and verse. Yet, taken as a whole, the farrago has very great general
merit; and we must be content to set what is dull and dirty, clumsy
sophistications or inferior variants, against the moderate residue of
valuable permanent matter, where we get unique touches of contemporary
persons or little insights into the thought and habits of the age. The
whole, if the author is to be believed, underwent at his ingenious
and experienced hands a sort of churning process; and, altogether, it
is a book which we lay down, as we do all others of the kind, with an
uncertain and dissatisfied sensation.
If I transcribe three samples from the _Wit and Mirth_, it must be with
the proviso that no one shall blame me if, on resorting to the work,
they do not meet with much more of equal excellence:--
“Master Thomas Coriat (on a time) complained against me to King
James, desiring his Majesty that he would cause some heavy punishment
to be inflicted upon me for abusing him in writing (as he said I
had); to whom the King replied, that when the lords of his honourable
privy council had leisure, and nothing else to do, then they should
hear and determine the differences betwixt Master Coriat the scholar
and John Taylor the sculler; which answer of the King was very
acceptable to Master Coriat.”
“A soldier upon his march found a horse-shoe and stuck it at his
girdle, when, passing through a wood, some of the enemy lay in
ambush, and one of them discharged his musket; and the shot by chance
lighted against the fellow’s horse-shoe. ‘Ha! Ha!’ quoth he, ‘I
perceive that little armour will serve a man’s turn, if it be put on
in the right place!’”
“A chorister, or singing-man, at service in a cathedral church, was
asleep when all his fellows were singing; which the Dean espying,
sent a boy to him to waken him, and asked him why he did not sing.
He, being suddenly awaked, prayed the boy to thank Master Dean for
his kind remembrance, and to tell him that he was as merry as those
that did sing.”
There is a story about Barkstead, the poet and actor, which is hardly
suitable for repetition, although it reminds us of one narrated of St.
Louis of France; and there is a second of Field the dramatist, which is
not worth quoting. The account of the drowsy chorister really refers to
Richard Woolner, who belonged in the early years of Elizabeth to the
choir at Windsor, and whose propensity for somnolence was doubtless
occasioned or aggravated by his voracious appetite. This Richard
Woolner was a pleasant fellow in his intervals of consciousness; and
in 1567 an account of him and his oddities, no longer known, appears to
have been printed. Sir John Harington mentions him in his _Brief View
of the State of the Church_.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.
The taste for these _Analecta_ grew with the supply. They proved
popular and easy reading, and did not exact much reflection on the part
of the peruser or a large amount of literary skill in the compiler. No
operation is perhaps simpler than the construction of a book out of a
series of paragraphs found at intervals and strung together at random.
_Tarlton’s Jests_ seems to have led the way and set the fashion, and
the press has been busy with such _olla podrida_ ever since.
Judgment in selection is, of course, the grand postulate in this as in
every department of art, and it is precisely there that the workman
in all times has fallen short of success; so that the whole mass of
pirated matter, from first to last, is capable of yielding scarcely
more than sufficient to fill a volume of fair compass.
For instance, I discern only a single scrap in the _Certain Conceits
and Jests_, 1614:--
“There was a certain fool that always, when the sun shone, would
weep, and when the rain rained would laugh; and his reason was, that
sunshine followed rain, but rain sunshine.”
So, again, in the _Conceits, Clinches, Flashes, and Whimzies_, of 1639,
where the arrangement is similarly in paragraphs, but where at the same
time the contents answer better to the title than to the Ana, there are
287 heads, and to discover half a dozen passable illustrations is a
task of difficulty. These _bijoux_, which the author, a Lancashire man,
carefully garnered up as they struck his own fancy, or fell from the
society which he kept, are after the following style:--
“An antiquary,” says one, “loves everything (as Dutchmen do cheese)
for being mouldy and worm-eaten.”
“A simple fellow in gay clothes is like a cinnamon-tree; the bark is
of more worth than the body.”
“Another said, a woman was like a piece of old grogram, always
fretting.”
A few more might be added, not for their wit, but for their casual
elucidation of some obsolete word or custom; but we must not deny
the writer the credit of introducing the PUN. Better have been made
since; but, after all, we are here in the days of Charles I. N^{o.} 145
inquires why few women loved to eat eggs? _Answer_: Because they cannot
endure to bear _the yoke_. A far from brilliant effort spoiled in the
wording!
“Why are tailors like woodcocks? _A._ Because they live by their long
bills.”
Perchance, the best in this indifferent medley is N^{o.} 177, which
depends on the different meanings of _liber_ and _libra_:--
“A rich bookseller wished himself a scholar, and one said to him:
‘You are one already, being _doctus in libris_.’ ‘Nay,’ replied the
other, ‘I am but _dives in libris_.’”
These classical essays do not suit our climate very well, yet nothing
is to be objected to them where, as in the one just cited, they are
_pure_. But I strongly dislike hybrids, by which I intend such a
retort as the Oxford Don is alleged to have made to the youths who
hissed him as he passed--_Laudatur_ AB HIS; and the quotation of a line
from the Eclogue of Virgil, where a lady’s dress is torn by a fiddle,
is barely more than a verbal conceit, though incomparably preferable
to the aggravating _all-us jelly-us_ of Brother Crug, which is a mere
phonetic abortion.
Whatever verdict may be pronounced on their successors, as they
approach our own period, it must be said of the assemblages of
_facetiæ_, made public by former generations down to the last century,
that they leave us no alternative but this conclusion--that, with
exceedingly few exceptions, considering the space of time involved,
the genuine, enjoyable, laughable, recallable jest was unknown to
antiquity, and is the offspring of modern thought and conditions.
Of the _jeux d’esprit_ and humour of the olden days the archaic cast
is not merely in the spelling or in the matter, but it is in the bone
and blood; and just as it would be idle to imagine that an Englishman
of the Tudor epoch could be converted into a modern Englishman by
arraying his person in modern clothes, so it is futile to attempt to
draw the jocular literature of passed centuries into harmony with our
own by adapting the orthography and language to the prevailing mode.
Save in a few rare cases, where the life of the subject is
indestructible, the entire body of old-fashioned wit and wisdom is as
exotic as a tropical plant within the Arctic circle.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XVIII.
“JOE MILLER’S JESTS”--HISTORY, CHARACTER, AND SUCCESS OF THE
PUBLICATION--JOHN MOTTLEY THE EDITOR.
Possibly it might be more correct to regard _Joe Miller’s Jests_ as
marking a new era in this branch of literature and department of
ingenuity than as a work possessing pretensions to rank as a model to
succeeding editors of similar collections. I am speaking of the little
shilling volume originally issued under the care of John Mottley in
1739, and not of the modern publication which bears the same name, and
has little beyond the name in common with it.
Mottley’s book appeared just when the stage and the literary world
were beginning to assume an importance and to exhibit a development
favourable to the formation of coteries and centres; and as the
conditions and spirit of contemporary life govern so completely the
facetious and satirical speech of an age or a century, the social and
political changes which accompanied the accession of the Hanoverian
dynasty introduced a new school of wit among the frequenters of the
theatres, clubs and coffee-houses. In fact, the popularity and success
of _Joe Miller’s Jests_ at the commencement mainly arose from their
association with a defunct actor and their share, such as it was,
of dramatic flavour. There had been, and was, an abundance of books
dedicated to a similar object, in the market; but this particular one
was supposed in some special and mysterious manner to depict, in the
first place, the hitherto unknown and unsuspected humorous side of
Joe’s character, and, secondly, to embody master-strokes of other great
wits of the day and brother comedians of Drury. The new Court and
Government of the Georges were to have their own fresh appointments
and effects throughout, authors and actors included; and the light
literature of the time shared the universal influence. The merriments
and drolleries of the Stuart era were discarded to make room for a
different style of production, of which Joe Miller happened to be the
first in the field, though by no means so in order of excellence.
Yet, in spite of the shortcomings of this famous volume, there remains
the important consideration, that it contained a certain enduring
element in its cast and tone, and that substantially all those books
which have poured incessantly from the press since that day follow
the same lines and general principle. The older collections are
archæological and pre-historic; the precedent _Ana_ and _Facetiæ_
are as saurians to the ordinary reader; and Miller and his humble
imitators--the Sheridans, the Footes, and the Sydney Smiths--shut out
from observation, so far as the community at large goes, the jocular
treasures and triumphs of ante-Millerian Britain.
In the last century, among Dr. Johnson and his friends, the Elizabethan
and Jacobean literature of all kinds met with limited acceptance and
lukewarm admiration; its principal utility and interest were from the
point of view of the adapter or plagiarist; and innumerable appeals
to public favour presented themselves in forms with which the reader
and the buyer had more immediate touch and sympathy. The rarest and
most precious editions of Shakespear and other writers of his epoch
were to be had for a smaller sum than the _Life of Joe Hains_, the
_Jests of Polly Peachum_, or any other fugitive performance damp from
the printers. Malone tells us that Dr. Johnson could not admire the
Duke of Buckingham’s _Rehearsal_, and thought that “it had not wit
enough to keep it sweet, nor sufficient vitality to preserve it from
putrefaction”--a truly Johnsonian pleonasm, but also a key to the
sentiment of the generation to which Johnson belonged, and of which he
was decidedly a more than average representative. But here we have
a case where the writer could hardly have been viewed as obsolete or
illegible in the same manner and sense as the older playwrights; but
Johnson nevertheless--and thousands would have concurred with him--did
not relish the humour of a piece produced only some twenty years before
he was born. The context and atmosphere were wanting; and if such was
the feeling about the _Rehearsal_--of which the merit has recommended
it, by-the-bye, to a recent editor--what prospect of survival could
exist for the swarm of popular cates with which the English press had
teemed from the reign of Henry VIII. to the Revolution?
Malone preserves an anecdote which helps to illustrate the difference
between the old and modern schools tolerably well:
“Mr. Lock, of Norbury Park, well known for his collection of
pictures, statues, etc., was a natural son. On his marriage with the
daughter of Lady Schaub, who had been very gallant, Horace Walpole
said very happily, ‘Then everybody’s daughter is married to nobody’s
son.’”
The _jeu d’esprit_ was reserved for Walpole, though the circumstance
on which it was founded had happened often enough before; but in point
of fact it was a saying strictly characteristic of the period, and in
the author of it we recognise a signally representative type of the
latter-day, as contrasted with the old-world, wit.
Walpole, indeed, belonged to the modern school of humourists, which may
be said to date back to the era of the Restoration, but which did not,
so to speak, attain adult growth till the fuller development of the
club and the coffee-house as aids to the theatre in the establishment
of new jocular canons and doctrines.
The book called _Joe Miller’s Jests_ was, both in its inception and its
progress, an emanation from the altered state of feeling in regard to
such matters. The early editions were, in a literary aspect, wretched
enough, and destitute alike of judgment and taste on the part of the
compiler. But if the sponsorship of Miller was originally of a nominal
and shadowy character, it must be said that, as the volume received
from time to time additions, which doubled and trebled its bulk, from
an endless variety of fresh sources, the fatherhood of the worthy actor
became by degrees absolutely fictitious--a mere _nom de plume_; and
it is not too much to allow that, with all its weaknesses, the work
in its augmented shape, as the ordinary reader is accustomed to come
across it, is a creditable sample of its kind, and will probably yield
a better insight into the particular field of inquiry than any other
single publication in our language.
Of course, the first impression of 1739 and the current text are so
distinct from each other as to have practically little in common
between them beyond the name and the tradition. It started by being
a strange tissue of deceptive pretences; but it hit the nail on the
head; the notion tickled the public fancy; and the title is almost
part of the British constitution. The ancient lines have long been
obliterated; the pamphlet of seventy pages has swollen into a volume
of five hundred; and the editor and publisher are recollected only by
the curious; while in all literary centres and among nearly all classes
of readers the man whose name was affixed to the venture without his
consent or knowledge, and whose personal capabilities in the joking way
were below zero, remains a household word from century to century, like
the superscription over a venerable house of business of partners who
have been dead and buried these hundred years, and survive above the
door and on the bill-heads from considerations of expediency.
John Mottley, who strang together the _editio princeps_ of Joe
Miller in 1739 for a bookseller, cannot be commended for the skill
and care with which he executed his task. It is a singular jumble
of anecdotes of all complexions about persons in various walks of
life. The seventy-two pages were reckoned, no doubt, dog-cheap at a
shilling, under all the imposing circumstances and seeing the choice
nature of the miscellany, and the highly distinguished personages to
whose _memorabilia_ it strictly limited its cognisance--_videlicet_
and to wit, King Charles II., Mr. Gun Jones, Sir Richard Steele, the
Duchess of Portsmouth, a country clergyman, Ben Jonson, Mrs. C----m,
Sir William Davenant, two free-thinking Authors, a very modest young
gentleman of the County of Tipperary, Tom Barrett, Lord R., Henry IV.
of France, the Emperor Tiberius, and others. A richer bill of fare
was barely possible, and it is difficult to understand why Mottley
should not have been proud to associate himself with such company and
with such a feast of delights, instead of employing the pseudonymy of
Jenkins. This playful piece of _supercherie_, however, was outdone by
the courageous declaration that the contents were mostly “transcribed
from the mouth” of Joe himself, and the remainder collected in his
society; for, as a serious matter of truth, the sole item in the thin
octavo, which the collection makes, really attributable to the then
recently deceased comedian, is of a nature calculated to inspire us
with satisfaction that the title-page is less veracious than it ought
to have been, and almost as much a truant in an opposite direction as
was perhaps practicable. The material gathered by Mottley in the first
instance was indifferent enough surely; but the solitary specimen which
he actually furnishes of the facetious vein of his hero must induce
everybody to feel thankful that he stopped short there:--
“Joe Miller sitting one day in the window of the Sun Tavern, in Clare
Street, a fishwoman and her maid passing by, the woman said, ‘Buy my
soles, buy my maids!’ ‘Ah, you wicked old creature!’ said honest Joe.
‘What! Are you not content to sell your own soul, but you would sell
your maid’s too?’”
The benevolent forbearance of Mottley was advantageous to the sale of
the book confided to his editorship; and the best jest of all was the
title and conception. To put forward as the author of all good things
a poor fellow who could not make a joke, or even see it when it was
made by a friend, was an idea as happy as if some speculative genius
were to announce a jest-book by Mr. Spurgeon or the philanthropic Earl
of Shaftesbury. But the most popular of preachers or philanthropists
would not have answered the purpose so well at the moment as a defunct
theatrical performer, equally impervious to humour, but to the
play-going public infinitely more familiar, not as a wit, nor even as
the cause of it in others, but on purely negative grounds. A notable
piece of triumphant charlatanry, as this _Joe Miller_ in the first
beginning was, has happened, from a singular caprice of fortune, to
overshoot the original design and proportions, to change its fugitive
and perishable nature, and to accommodate itself from time to time to
enlarged and different requirements.
The circumstance must be treated as accidental; for, looking at the
question on every side, the book has had from the commencement a host
of competitors, possessing at least equal merit, at least equally
inviting forefronts, and even the superstitious prestige of the
green-room. But these, one and all, unaccountably disappeared from the
public view; and Miller proved the only phœnix, the only sterling
coin, the only lasting trademark.
Spiller’s Jests, Penkethman’s, Quin’s, nay, Garrick’s, were things of
a season, the _nugæ canoræ_ of their day. Joe witnessed their coming
and going; and he is with us yet! He will endure as long as the earth’s
crust--as long as Shakespear, and longer, perchance, than Milton.
One of the consequences of this huge and matchless renown is that, in
the amplified _Vade Mecum for Wits_ of Joe the Great, a considerable
assortment of comic incidents is enrolled under that talismanic name an
age or twain after the date, when all that was soluble of the Miller of
Millers had been lifted across from the purlieus of Clare Market to the
hospitable shelter of St. Clement’s opposite.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIX.
JEST-BOOKS CONSIDERED AS HISTORICAL AND LITERARY MATERIAL--THE
TWOFOLD POINT ILLUSTRATED--LOCALISATION OF STORIES.
Having now dealt at reasonable length with those points of view which
have reference to the sophistication and affiliation of Jests, let us
proceed to regard this highly fruitful topic from one or two other
aspects; and firstly I propose to invite attention to the valuable
material which the writer on old English manners and institutions
may find here ready to his hand. There is barely a custom or an
idea prevalent among our forefathers which the vast body of printed
_Ana_, and especially the _Shakespear Jest-Books_, 1864, do not
afford the means of illustrating and facilities for more clearly
comprehending. The stories embraced within the entire range of jocular
literature are so multifarious in their origin and drift, while they
so largely partake of a popular character, that they richly reimburse
our examination of them, even when, as so frequently happens, their
literary and artistic claims are slender to excess.
In the _Hundred Merry Tales_, 1526, there is the story of the lad who
took his shoes to be mended, whence comes the information to us that
the charge for this kind of work was at that period threepence. Then,
in another item of the series, which in its totality is decidedly
unconventional, we perceive how young fellows just emerging from
boyhood wore the hair on the upper lip as well as the beard. The story
_Of the Courtier and the Carter_ aptly serves to throw light on a point
which does not appear to be sufficiently understood--the application
of the terms _cart_ and _carter_ to ordinary vehicles for the
conveyance of travellers of all degrees,--so much so that the rough,
old-fashioned lawyer, desirous of an audience with Queen Elizabeth,
while she was on a journey, cried out to her coachman, “Stop thy cart,
good fellow, stop thy cart!” and the ancient French hunting chariots
were merely an evolution from the primitive agricultural model.
It is difficult to resist the temptation to smile at the whimsical
suggestion of the curate “who preached the articles of the Creed,” that
such as were not satisfied about them from his communication had better
go to Coventry and see them on the stage at the Corpus Christi play.
What a vivid glimpse rises before us of the feeling and costume of
three or four centuries ago, when we read the account given in another
of the _Tales_, “of the man that desired to be set on the pillory,” in
order that, while he was there, his confederates in the crowd might
pick the honest folks’ pockets and empty the butchers’ aprons, as they
gaped at the spectacle!
The expedients for swindling which formerly throve, enter not a
little into these miscellanies; and the drollery of the incidents of
a fraud naturally outlive the temporary elements. The narrative of
a sharper, who is, by the way, described as “a merry man,” and who
distributed bills announcing the performance of a play, belongs to the
earlier years of Elizabeth; but it was a trick repeated, doubtless,
more than once. The particular story is laid somewhere about 1567,
and it establishes several curious details respecting the theatrical
exhibitions of that date. The scene was Northumberland Place, in the
city of London, and the proceedings were to commence at two in the
afternoon. Two men were stationed at the gate with a box to take the
money--a penny or a halfpenny at least--and as soon as the fellow
conceived that there was no likelihood of collecting more, he sent the
two box-keepers in to “keep the room,” mounted a horse which waited for
him at an adjoining inn, and rode off to Barnet.
This episode is additionally curious and interesting, because it
anticipates by almost forty years a precisely similar adventure placed
on record by Chamberlain the letter-writer as having occurred within
his knowledge in 1602. In both cases the actors were advertised to be
_amateurs_, which, as the piece was to be presented on a scaffold in
the market-place, was a novel attraction and a happy stroke.
The epigram of Sir Thomas More on one who took the fly out of a glass
of water, and replaced it when he had done drinking, has been made the
basis for a jest; but was itself founded on the common superstition
that such an act was lucky.
The current pronunciation of an early West of England name underlies
the pleasantry that Master You having wedded Mistress You, he was ever
afterwards known as Master W. The old Devonshire Yeos were probably
called _Yous_ by their provincial neighbours.
There is an abundance of historical sayings with a facetious vein
or tag; and some of them are highly interesting little traits and
sidelights. During the Wars of the Roses, an unfortunate man met in
succession with two parties, of whom one was for Edward IV. and the
other for Henry VI. To the inquiry of the first he replied that he was
Henry’s man, wherefore they beat him; and to the second that he was
Edward’s, which brought him the same luck. So the next time, to be
quite safe, he declared himself to be the Devil’s man; and when they
said, “Then the Devil go with thee!” “Amen!” quoth he: “he is the best
master I’ve served to-day.”
There are two survivals about a priest just at the epoch of the
Reformation; they are evidently little touches from life. This learned
clerk is made to preach a sermon on Charity, and in it to avouch that
no man can get to heaven without charity, except only the King’s Grace,
God save him! Then, when the royal visitors came down to his parts to
make their report, he was interrogated as to what he did and how he
passed his time. “I occupy myself in reading the New Testament,” says
he. “That is very well,” say the Commissioners; “but prythee, Sir, who
made the New Testament?” “That did King Henry the Eighth,” replies the
priest, “Lord have mercy on his soul!”
There is a strong air of verisimilitude in the salutation of Richard
III., as he was collecting his forces in Thicket’s field, by the
Northern man: “Diccon, Diccon, by the mis, I’se blith that thaust
king”; and there are in the same tract (_Merry Tales and Quick
Answers_) a couple of characteristic scraps, the only remaining
footprints, as it were, of the Canon of Hereford, whose deficiency in
intelligence and scholarship they celebrate.
Gossip and satire concerning the priesthood seem, from a very remote
period, to have been received with relish and tolerance; but tales
exposing the rapacity, ignorance and licentiousness of the cloth were
circulated from political motives with even greater eagerness and
immunity just prior to that grand climax which abrogated the papal
supremacy in England for ever.
It is necessary, and not difficult, to distinguish between narrated
incidents, which veritably belong to a specific vicinity, and such
fictitious variants as are merely localised for the nonce. Of the
latter the jest-books, which contributed so largely to the activity
of the press from the accession of the Stuarts to their restoration,
are rich in examples, as I have already pointed out. _Pasquil’s Jests_
is one of the worst offenders in this way. “How a merchant lost his
purse between Waltham and London” is nothing more than a new-birth
of the account in _Merry Tales and Quick Answers_, where Ware is the
place specified; and “How mad Coomes of Stapforth, when his wife was
drowned, sought her against the stream,” reproduces No. 55 of the
same older miscellany, which is itself copied and varied from a Latin
_fabliau_. Manchester, Hertfordshire, Kingston, Lincolnshire, and
other neighbourhoods are fixed as the theatres of adventures in these
books, without the slightest eye to topographical fitness. The anterior
publications had perhaps set the fashion to some extent, and notably
so the Gothamite Tales; but the resuscitation of used matter with some
superficial investiture of novelty became a sort of necessity, when
the popular demand for these wares increased out of proportion to the
supply.
In certain of the collections, on the contrary, and most especially
and largely in the two Tudor ones so often quoted, we meet with little
dramatic scenes, laid here or there, with a fair accompaniment of
probability in support of the attribution. I shall take the course of
referring those who may care to follow this part of the argument to the
_Hundred Merry Tales_,--
No. 29. Of the Welshman, who said that he could get but a little mail.
No. 33. Of the priest, who said Our Lady was not so curious a woman.
No. 40. Of Master Skelton, who brought the Bishop of Norwich two
pheasants.
No. 71. Of the priest that would say two gospels for a groat.
No. 87. Of Master Whittington’s dream.
And to _Merry Tales and Quick Answers_,--
No. 54. Of Master Vavasor and Turpin his man.
No. 94. Of the Cheshire man called Evelyn.
No. 132. Of him that sold two loads of hay.
No. 134. How the image of the Devil was lost and sought.
I think that all the articles which I have just indicated manifest a
realism of portraiture and complexion which should commend and endear
them to the studiers and lovers of the old English life; in the edition
of the _Hundred Merry Tales_ which the Royal Library at Göttingen owns,
and which I have lately reprinted in facsimile, there is a further item
falling within the same category--the highly amusing and doubtless
veracious tale of the Maltman of Colebrook, which may be appropriately
bracketed with the one “of him that sold two loads of hay.”
Both are, in fact, relations of actual events thrown into a readable
shape with a modicum of colouring.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER 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.
Besides these two repertories, the _Merry Tales of Skelton_ contain a
racy and diverting account of a trick played by the poet on a Kendal
man, with whom he was riding from Oxford to London. They baited at
Uxbridge, and while his companion was out of the room, Skelton took his
cap, which he had left behind on the table, inserted some butter inside
the lining, and put it back in its place. When the owner returned, he
placed it on his head, of which the warmth soon had the anticipated
effect. The butter ran down the fellow’s face and neck, and Skelton
assured him that he had the sweating sickness. The Kendal man was in
great terror of his life, and Skelton advised him to go to bed at once.
A little hot water applied to the cap and its proprietor set matters
right; the joke was explained and forgiven, and the two rode on to town
the next morning. Such practical hoaxes were doubtless frequent enough;
and the laureated parson of Diss was never, one is apt to apprehend, so
thoroughly at home as when he had something of the kind in hand.
The modern works offer in a similar manner, and perhaps, on the whole,
to a greater extent, authentic examples of local occurrences. There is
the celebrated adventure of Sir Thomas More with the lunatic on the
flat roof of his house at Chelsea, which runs somewhat parallel to one
which the Duke of Wellington had with a crazy fellow at Apsley House:--
“When Sir Thomas More was one day on the flat-leaded roof of his
house at Chelsea, a lunatic succeeded somehow in getting to him, and
tried to throw him down, crying, ‘Leap, Tom, leap!’ The Chancellor
was in his dressing-gown, and, besides, was too old a man to have
any chance against the madman. Sir Thomas had a little dog with him.
‘Let’s throw him down first,’ said he, ‘and see what good fun that
will be’; so the fellow took up the animal, and threw him down.
‘Now,’ said More, ‘run and fetch him back, and let us try again, for
I think it is good sport.’ The madman went, and as soon as he had
disappeared, More rose and secured the door.”
As representatives of the same class, belonging to different periods,
the subjoined must serve:--
“A gentleman, who possessed a small estate in Gloucestershire, was
allured to town by the promises of the Duke of Newcastle, who, for
many months, kept him in constant attendance, until, the poor man’s
patience being quite exhausted, he one morning called upon his
patron, and told him that he had at length got a place. The Duke very
cordially shook him by the hand, and congratulated him on his good
fortune, telling him that in a few days a good thing would have been
in his gift; ‘but pray, sir,’ added he, ‘where is your place?’ ‘In
the Gloucester coach,’ replied he: ‘I secured it last night.’”
“Pennant, the antiquary, had an unaccountable antipathy to wigs.
Dining at Chester with an officer who wore this covering for the
head, when they had drunk pretty freely, after many wistful looks,
Pennant started up, seized the caxon, and threw it into the fire.
The wig was in a moment in flames, and so was the officer, who
immediately drew his sword. Downstairs flies Pennant, and the officer
after him, through all the streets of Chester; but the former escaped
through superior local knowledge.”
“A quack-doctor, haranguing the populace at Hammersmith, said, ‘To
this village I owe my birth and education; I dearly love it and
its inhabitants, and will cheerfully give a present of a crown to
every one who will accept it.’ The audience received this notice
with infinite satisfaction. ‘Here, ladies and gentlemen,’ added he,
putting his hand into a bag, and taking out a parcel of packets,
‘these inestimable medicines I usually sell for five and sixpence
each, but in favour, of this, my native village, I will take sixpence
apiece.’”
Where the profusion of illustrative matter is inexhaustible, a survey
of a subject is bound to limit itself to suggestion and sample. But
the remarks and indications which have been afforded, must testify at
any rate to the residence in these vast stores, on which I have been
drawing, of a utility and dignity in numerous cases beyond their value
as mere temporary vehicles for distraction and mirth, and to their
claim to a subsidiary place among historical and social monuments.
The localisation of interest in an adventure or incident does not seem
at first to have struck those who laboured for the public entertainment
as a commercial expedient deserving of study and trial. But as the
volume of jocular and anecdotal literature swelled, and the competition
for favour and novelty grew keener in proportion, the resort to new
devices for imparting a relish and edge to old properties comprised
the association of jests which had weathered numberless seasons,
with some fresh person or neighbourhood. Hence arises the multitude
of collections and headings identifying books of the present class
or portions of their contents with particular places and particular
individuals, such as the _Cobbler of Canterbury_, the _Footpost of
Dover_, and the _Gravesend Tilt-Boat_, or, in the case of personality,
the numerous entries in _Pasquil’s Jests_ of stories of Merry Andrew
of Manchester, Coomes of Stapforth, and so on, all of which are
resuscitations of stale and bygone material.
The work which led the way and set the mode in this direction was
perhaps _The Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham_, by Andrew Borde.
It was a dexterous and attractive method of substituting for the vague
generalisations of anterior compilers “a local habitation and a name.”
It fixed the geography of the event, and established its authenticity
beyond dispute; for, as the phrase is in the narratives of early
murders and other phenomena, any gentleman, who doubted the veracity of
the writer, might go and inquire for himself on the spot.
The idea of lending a local colouring and flavour to anecdotes
originated, however, probably among the early Italian collectors
of _burle_ and _facetie_, of which some are transferred to our own
miscellanies; and the practice dates back to a period when the literary
life was bounded by the walls of capitals, or did not at most overstep
their outskirts.
The stories, which present themselves in this class of book about the
inhabitants of Scotland and Wales, generally bear on the pilfering
propensities occasioned by poverty, facilitated by geographical
position, and justified by the sense of wrong. Their habits of
parsimony were acquired by the Scots during centuries of miserable
and oppressive misgovernment, and survived the stern necessity out of
which they arose. The Welsh borderer, if one judges from the tales
current about him in the old _facetiæ_, and from what history itself
reveals, combined with an addiction to “lifting” and drunkenness a
certain pusillanimity of spirit, which may be less injurious to the
community, but is more to be contemned in the individual. He was too
often, besides being a thief and a sot, a sneaking rascal. The nursery
rhyme about Taffy is a piece of veracious tradition, an accurate reflex
of the state of society in the lower grades in the Principality down to
the last century, or even until Wales was brought within the operation
of more stringent laws and a more efficient police. The humorous side
of the numberless legendary anecdotes about the Cambro-Britons has
been rendered abundantly visible by the gatherers of _Ana_; but when
we regard this material in the aggregate, and explore a little beneath
the surface, we arrive at the interesting discovery that in this, as in
every other group of similar relics, there is a good deal deserving of
careful study and collation, and that the whole body of such literature
ought henceforth to be, much more than it has, I think, hitherto been,
treated as a branch of the national Folk-lore.
The merriments at the expense of Taffy, if they do not turn on his
dishonesty, are pretty sure to deal with his passion for liquor and
toasted cheese. Congruity and fitness are seldom respected in this
line of literary work; and in one of the Hundred Merry Tales, St.
Peter, upon the representation of God that the Welshmen in heaven,
with their noisy ways, were a nuisance to all the rest, engages to
get rid of them. He goes to the entrance-gates and shouts _Cause
bobe!_ and forthwith every Cambro-Briton rushes out to see where his
favourite delicacy is to be had. The sly apostle, the moment they are
all outside, closes the door, and the Christian Elysium is its old self
again.
This whimsical piece of invention may be bracketed with a second
narrated in the so-called _Tales of Skelton_, in which the other
gastronomic failing of the Principality is amiably depicted; although
the two stories are of different types, the one being a pleasant
extravagance, while the other, which I now give, may have been an
actual incident.
It professes to be an account “how the Welshman did desire Skelton to
aid him in his suit to the king for a patent to sell drink.”
“Skelton, when he was in London, went to the King’s Court, where
there did come to him a Welshman, saying, ‘Sir, it is so, that many
do come up out of my country to the King’s Court, and some get of
the King by patent a castle, and some a park, and some a forest, and
some one fee and some another, and they live like honest men; and I
should live as honestly as the best, if I might have a patent for
selling good drink. Wherefore I pray you write a petition for me to
give into the King’s hands.’ ‘Very good,’ said Skelton. ‘Sit down,’
said the Welshman, ‘and write, then.’ ‘What shall I write?’ asked
Skelton. The Welshman said, ‘Write _Drink_. Now write _More drink_.’
‘What now?’ said Skelton. ‘Write now _A great deal of drink_; and put
to all this drink _A little crumb of bread, and a great deal of drink
to it_, and read out what you have written.’ ‘_Drink, more drink, and
a great deal of drink, and a little crumb of bread, and a great deal
of drink to it._’ Then quoth the Welshman, ‘put out _the little crumb
of bread_, and set down _all drink and no bread_; and if I might have
this petition signed by the King, I care for no more, as long as I
live.’ ‘Well, then,’ said Skelton, ‘when you have got yours passed,
I will try to get another for bread, that you with your drink, and I
with my bread, may seek our living together with bag and staff.’”
Whether Andrew Borde, the pleasant Sussex Doctor of Physic, really
wrote the little book of stories about Skelton, whom he might very well
have personally known, must be numbered among the uncertainties; but
Borde’s estimate of Taffy is cognate to that of Skelton himself, as
delivered to us in the book and in the _Hundred Merry Tales_. For in
his _Introduction of Knowledge_, 1542, the Doctor puts into the mouth
of his Cambro-Briton these lines:--
“I am a Welshman, and do dwell in Wales;
I have loved to search budgets, and look in mails,”
which seems to portray the predatory borderer and the thief by breeding
and instinct.
It is perhaps, at the same time, a matter for speculation whether these
traits of Welsh character were not more current after the accession of
the Tudors. Henry the Seventh, as his _Privy Purse Expenses_ establish,
was very lavish in his presents to his countrymen; and the royal
partiality tended very possibly to render them unpopular in England,
and to bring their foibles and frailties into print. The very tale
above given reads like a burlesque on the importunity of Taffy for
privileges and monopolies at Henry’s hands, and at the same time jeers
pretty broadly at his propensity for intemperance.
There is a story of a Scottish minister who went South, and was invited
to stay to dinner at an acquaintance’s. After they had dined, the
whiskey was brought in; the minister took to it kindly, and accepted a
proposal to remain till the morning. As the spare bed had to be aired,
and there was not time to prepare the warming-pan, the lady of the
house told Jenny the maidservant to undress, and get into the bed to
warm the sheets for their guest; but Jenny unluckily (or otherwise)
fell asleep, and when the visitor went up, he found her still in
possession. “Well,” said he to himself, “the dinner was good; the
whiskey was capital; but--this is hospitality indeed!”
We will not pursue the narration further. It is obviously a parody
on the conventional order of things, having by possibility some
indebtedness to the simple manners of a bygone time and less fastidious
sleeping arrangements. The improvised warming-pan might have suggested
itself to the guidwife; but we cherish a suspicion that the _ex
post facto_ improver is answerable for the pleasantry as it stands.
In jocular history everybody is at angles to real life; people do
precisely what they ought not to do, say what they ought not to say,
are found where they ought not to be found. That is the soul of the
matter; and therein lies the cunning of the wire-puller. He is for
general purposes what Grobianus is for Cato and Mrs. Grundy. He seldom
invents; he has a preference for ready-made material which he can
employ as a groundwork or starting-point; for a familiar name goes a
long way. The artist has to be wary how he deals with his puppet or
lay-figure; he treads upon eggs a little; much depends on the turn
given; the anecdote which he tells need not be true, God knows; it may
be naughty within bounds; but it must be amusing. That is peremptory.
The _Bull_, in its jocular acceptation, has been commonly viewed as a
genuine Irish product; but may it not be, on the contrary, of Italian
and ecclesiastical descent? The papal brief, in the first place,
borrowed its name from the leaden seal which was attached to it; the
odium under which Popery and its supporters fell in the time of
Elizabeth next led to the passage of the _bull_ into our vocabulary
as a term of ridicule or contempt; and, finally, when the strong
political feeling had subsided, the expression stood for any piece of
harmless extravagance or hyperbolical bravado. These side-growths of
meaning are curious and instructive enough, and present many strange
and unsuspected survivals. To go no farther than the word before us,
the modern Italian attaches to his letter a _bolla_ without reflecting
on its actual and archaic significance, just as he perpetuates bygone
methods of locomotion by continuing to call the railway carriage a
_poste_.
Perhaps the characterisation of an imperial German decree of 1356 as
“_a golden bull_” is not more alien to the original sense and function
of the word than its pressure into service by the Italian of our day to
signify a postage-stamp.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
INDEX.
Adroyns, John, 94.
Æsop, 30.
Affiliation of Stories, 111.
Alanus ab Insulis, 43.
Ana or Analecta, 177 _et seqq._
Anecdote, Serious, 32.
Aristippus, 43.
Aristophanes, 64.
Armstrong, Archibald, 108.
Artistic origin of the Jest, 13-14.
Athenæus, 33, 34, 37-43.
Atmosphere and costume, 25.
Aulus Gellius, 33, 46-50.
Bagot, Sir W., 101.
Balguy, Dr., 67.
Bardolph, 124.
Barkstead, William, 181.
Bartholomew’s (St.) Hospital, 1.
Boccaccio, Gio., 119.
Borde, Andrew, 19, 170.
_Bravo of Venice, The_, by Monk Lewis, 88, 127-8.
Brighton, 103.
Bull, the Jocular, 222.
Burbage, Richard, 115.
Burke, E., 101.
Burns, R., 67.
Burton, Robert, 118.
Byron, H. J., 10.
Byron, Lord, 124.
Chamberlain, John, 204.
Chamberlain, Robert, 178, 184.
Charles II., 2, 79.
Chaucer, 7, 119.
Chesterfield, Lord, 81-2, 95.
Church, the Early, and the Jesters, 20-1.
Cibber, Colley, 97.
Cicero, 33.
Colnbrook, Maltman of, 153.
Coleridge, S. T., 124.
_Conceits and Jests, Certain_, 178, 184.
Continental influence, 142-5.
_Convivial Discourses, The_, 44.
Copley, Anthony, 178.
Crichton, James, the “Admirable,” 43.
_Deipnosophistæ_, 36-7, 43-4.
Devil Tavern, The, 32, 98.
Diogenes and Alexander, Story of, 86.
Diogenes Laertius, 33, 50-6.
Edith, The Widow, 168, 173.
Edward IV., 19, 205.
Egyptian artists, 16.
Elginbrod, Martin, 122-3.
Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature, Neglect of, in the Last Century,
191-3.
Engraving, Influence of the, 15.
Epigram, The, 67-8.
Erasmus, 118.
_Eulenspiegel_, 173.
Fabliaux, 30.
Farmer, Dr., 111.
Foote, S., 10.
Formulation of Jests, 69.
_Four Elements_, Interlude of, 156-8.
Franklin, Benjamin, 109.
Garrick, David, 116.
Gaulardisms, 94.
_Gesta Romanorum_, 30.
Gillray and Rowlandson, 15.
Godolphin, Sydney, 43.
Goldsmith, O., 43, 93.
Gothamite Tales, The, 215.
Goussaut, M., 94-5.
Greek Anecdotes, 37-43.
---- Anthology, The, 45, 57-65.
---- Epigrams, 59-64.
---- Parodies, 42.
Greene, Robert, 97.
Grimaldi, Joseph, 12, 35.
Grisette, Parisian, 34.
Grotesque and caricature, 6, 14.
_Guid and Godly Ballats, The_, 131.
Harington, Sir John, 118, 182.
Harvey, Gabriel, 159.
Hawkins, Sir John, 116.
Henry VII., 2, 220.
Henry VIII., 21.
Henry IV. of France, 86-8.
Herodotus, 63.
Herring, Archbishop, 93.
Hetairai, the Greek, 34, 38, 40.
Heywood, John, 112, 158-60, 162.
_High Life Below Stairs_, 97.
Hobart, Parson, 126.
Hobson, Old, 168, 172.
Homer, 33.
Hood, Thomas, 10.
Hook, Theodore, 11.
_Hundred Merry Tales_, 7, 98, 111, 113, 153-61, 167, 201, 208.
Jack of Dover, 141, 149.
Jack the Giant-Killer, 136.
Jerrold, Douglas, 11, 73.
Joe Miller, 6, 7, 98, 178, 188 _et seqq._
Johnson, Dr., 116.
Jonson, Benjamin, 98, 105, 107.
_Knight of the Burning Pestle, The_, 107.
_Knight of the Tour Landry_, 171.
Lamb, Charles, 73, 79, 114, 124.
Liston, 35.
Literary Club, The, 115-16.
Literature and the Drama, 22.
Lock, Mr., of Norbury, 192.
London Tavern, The, 82-3.
Lucian, 33, 35, 62.
Mackintosh, Sir James, 53.
Macrobius, _Saturnalia_ of, 44.
_Malaprop, Mrs._, 95-6.
Malone, E., 24, 80-81, 101, 115-16, 192.
_Maloniana_, 20, 101.
“Martin said to his man,” a ballad, 131.
Matthews, Charles, 10.
May, Thomas, 98.
_Mensa Philosophica_, 44.
Mermaid, The, 32.
_Merry Tales and Quick Answers_, 33-4, 105, 117, 119, 123, 162-7.
Mitre, The, 32.
More, Sir Thomas, 118, 154-67.
Mother Bunch, 149.
Mottley, John, 188-99.
Myrtilus, 43.
_New Wife of Beath_, 75-7.
Newcastle, Duke of, 212.
Nithardus, 1.
Oriental influence, 16, 121-4.
Parallelisms, 105-7, 112-14.
Parodies, Greek, 42.
Parr, Dr., 53.
Partington, Mrs., 90-91.
Pasquil’s Jests, 147.
Pausanius Laccus, 37.
Peele, George, 168.
Pennant, Thomas, 212-13.
Philip of Macedon, 36.
Phryne, 36, 40.
Piozzi, Mrs., 116.
Plato, 64.
_Plutarch’s Lives_, 32-3.
Pool Valley, Brighton, 105.
Quin, 10.
Rahere, 1.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 116.
Rameses dynasty, 16.
Randolph, Thomas, 98-9.
Rastells, The, 154, 158, 162.
Raumer, F. von, 96.
Ravenscroft’s _Deuteromelia_, 130-31.
_Reynard the Fox_, 30.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 116.
Richard III. and the Northern man, 206.
Richardson, Jonathan, 24, 81.
Roses, Wars of the, 204-5.
Sackful of News, The, 147.
_Schoolmaster, The, or Teacher of Table Philosophy_, 44.
Schools of humour, old and modern, 193.
_Scogin, Jests of_, 19-21, 109, 168.
Scottish minister, Story of a, 220-21.
Scottish stories, 90, 215.
Shakespear, 7, 115, 124, 146.
---- Jest-Books, 152-67.
Sheridan, R. B., 110, 113.
Shoes, mending of, 201.
Sixty, The Athenian Club of the, 36, 65-6.
Skelton, John, 159, 168, 174-6, 210, 218.
Smith, Sydney, 9.
Spenser, 7, 159.
Strawberry, 140.
Tadema, Alma, R.A., 97.
Talfourd, Frank, 10.
Tarlton, Richard, 35, 152, 168, 172, 179, 183.
Tavern-life, 32.
Taylor the Water Poet, 153, 178-82.
Testament, New, Anecdote of the, 205.
Thales, 52-3.
Tooke, John Horne, 82-3.
Turanian art, 16.
Typography, 15, 17.
United States, 28.
Wales and the Welsh, characteristics of, 217-19.
Walpole, Horace, 125, 193.
Walworth, 1.
Warton, Joseph, 67.
Wellington, Duke of, 211.
Whittington, Sir Richard, 1.
Wooden Legs, The Man with, 78.
Woolner, Richard, 181.
Wright Thomas, 5.
Yeo, an ancient Devonshire family, 204.
Yorick, 173.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Superscripted characters are preceded by a caret character: N^{o.}.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.