History of English Humour Volume II Part 18

The following is from an Essay "On the Melancholy of Tailors."

"Observe the suspicious gravity of their gait. The peac.o.c.k is not more tender, from a consciousness of his peculiar infirmity, than a gentleman of this profession is of being known by the same infallible testimonies of his occupation, 'Walk that I may know thee.'

"Whoever saw the wedding of a tailor announced in the newspapers, or the birth of his eldest son?

"When was a tailor known to give a dance, or to be himself a good dancer, or to perform exquisitely upon the tight rope, or to s.h.i.+ne in any such light or airy pastimes? To sing, or play on the violin?

Do they much care for public rejoicings, lightings up, ringing of bells, firing of cannons, &c.

"Valiant I know they be, but I appeal to those who were witnesses to the exploits of Eliot's famous troop whether in their fiercest charges they betrayed anything of that thoughtless oblivion to death with which a Frenchman jigs into battle, or, whether they did not show more of the melancholy valour of the Spaniard upon whom they charged that deliberate courage which contemplation and sedentary habits breathe."

Lamb accounts for this melancholy of tailors in several ingenious ways.

"May it not be that the custom of wearing apparel, being derived to us from the fall, and one of the most mortifying products of that unhappy event, a certain seriousness (to say no more of it) may in the order of things have been intended to have been impressed upon the minds of that race of men to whom in all ages the care of contriving the human apparel has been entrusted."

He makes further comments upon their habits and diet, observing that both Burton and Galen especially disapprove of cabbage.

In "Roast Pig" we have one of those homely subjects which were congenial to Lamb.

"There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over roasted crackling--as it is well called--the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance--with the adhesive oleaginous--O call it not fat--but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it--the tender blossoming of fat--fat cropped in the bud--taken in the shoot in the first innocence--the cream and quintessence of the child pig's yet pure food--the lean--no lean, but a kind of animal manna--or rather fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosian result, or common substance.

"Behold him, while he is doing--it seemeth rather a refres.h.i.+ng warmth than a scorching heat, that he is pa.s.sive to. How equably he twirleth round the string! Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age; he hath wept out his pretty eyes--radiant jellies--shooting stars....

"His sauce should be considered. Decidedly a few bread crumbs done up with his liver and brains, and a dish of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic, you cannot poison them or make them sharper than they are--but consider he is a weakling--a flower."

Lamb gives his opinion that you can no more improve sucking pig than you can refine a violet.

Thus he proceeds along his sparkling road--his humour and poetry gleaming one through the other, and often leaving us in pleasant uncertainty whether he is in jest or earnest. Though not gifted with the strength and suppleness of a great humorist, he had an intermingled sweetness and brightness beyond even the alchemy of Addison. We regret to see his old-fas.h.i.+oned figure receding from our view--but he will ever live in remembrance as the most joyous and affectionate of friends.

CHAPTER VIII.

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

Moore considered that the original genius of Byron was for satire, and he certainly first became known by his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." Nevertheless, his humorous productions are very small compared with his sentimental. It might perhaps have been expected that his mind would a.s.sume a gloomy and cynical complexion. His personal infirmity, with which, in his childhood, even his mother was wont to taunt him, might well have begotten a severity similar to that of Pope.

The pressure of friends and creditors led him, while a mere stripling, to form an uncongenial alliance with a stern puritan, who, while enjoying his renown, sought to force his soaring genius into the trammels of commonplace conventionalities. On his refusing, a clamour was raised against him, and those who were too dull to criticise his writings were fully equal to the task of finding fault with his morals.

It may be said that he might have smiled at these attacks, and conscious of his power, have replied to his social as well as literary critics

"Better to err with Pope than s.h.i.+ne with Pye,"

and so he might, had he possessed an imperturbable temper, and been able to forecast his future fame. But a man's career is not secure until it is ended, and the throne of the author is often his tomb. Moreover, the same hot blood which laid him open to his enemies, also rendered him impatient of rebuke. Coercion roused his spirit of opposition; he fell to replies and retorts, and to "making sport for the Philistines." He would show his contempt for his foes by admitting their charges, and even by making himself more worthy of their vituperation. And so a great name and genius were tarnished and spotted, and a dark shadow fell upon his glory. But let us say he never drew the sword without provocation.

In condemning the wholesale onslaught he made in the "Bards and Reviewers," we must remember that it was a reply to a most unwarrantable and offensive attack made upon him by the "Edinburgh Review," written as though the fact of the author being a n.o.bleman had increased the spleen of the critic. It says:--

"The poesy of this young lord belongs to the cla.s.s which neither G.o.ds nor men are said to permit. Indeed we do not recollect to have seen a quant.i.ty of verse with so few deviations in either direction for that exact standard. His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below the level than if they were so much stagnant water.... We desire to counsel him that he forthwith abandon poetry and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities, which are great, to better account."[15]

So his profanity in the "Vision of Judgment," was in answer to Southey's poem of that name, the introduction of which contained strictures against him. Accused of being Satanic, he replies with some profanity, and with that humour which he princ.i.p.ally shows in such retorts--

"Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate, His keys wore rusty, and the lock was dull, So little trouble had been given of late-- Not that the place by any means was full; But since the Gallic era 'eighty-eight'

The devils had ta'en a longer, stronger pull, And 'a pull together,' as they say At sea--which drew most souls another way.

"The angels all were singing out of tune, And hoa.r.s.e with having little else to do, Excepting to wind up the sun and moon, Or curb a runaway young star or two, Or wild colt of a comet, which too soon Broke out of bounds o'er the ethereal blue, Splitting some planet with its playful tail As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale."

The effect of Southey reading _his_ "Vision of Judgment" is thus given:--

"Those grand heroics acted as a spell, The angels stopped their ears, and plied their pinions, The devils ran howling deafened down to h.e.l.l, The ghosts fled gibbering, for their own dominions."

His poem on a lady who maligned him to his wife, seems to show that he did not well distinguish where the humorous ends and the ludicrous begins. He represents her--

"With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown A cheek of parchment and an eye of stone, Mark how the channels of her yellow blood Ooze at her skin, and stagnate there to mud, Cased like the centipede in saffron mail, A darker greenness of the scorpion's scale, Look on her features! and behold her mind As in a mirror of itself defined."

No one suffered more than Byron from his humour being misapprehended.

His letters abound with jests and _jeux d'esprit_, which were often taken seriously as admissions of an immoral character. We gladly turn to something pleasanter--to some of the few humorous pieces he wrote in a genial tone--

EPIGRAM.

The world is a bundle of hay Mankind are the a.s.ses who pull Each tugs in a different way, The greatest of all is John Bull.

Lines to Mr. Hodgson (afterwards Provost of Eton) written on board the packet for Lisbon,

Huzza! Hodgson, we are going, Our embargo's off at last, Favourable breezes blowing Bend the canvas o'er the mast, From aloft the signal's streaming Hark! the farewell gun is fired, Women screeching, tars blaspheming, Tell us that our time's expired.

Here's a rascal Come to task all, Prying from the custom house; Trunks unpacking, Cases cracking, Not a corner for a mouse, 'Scapes unsearched amid the racket Ere we sail on board the packet....

Now our boatmen quit the mooring, And all hands must ply the oar: Baggage from the quay is lowering, We're impatient, push from sh.o.r.e.

"Have a care that case holds liquor-- Stop the boat--I'm sick--oh Lord!"

"Sick, ma'am, d--me, you'll be sicker, Ere you've been an hour on board."

Thus are screaming Men and women, Gemmen, ladies, servants, tacks; Here entangling, All are wrangling, Stuck together close as wax, Such the general noise and racket Ere we reach the Lisbon packet.

Fletcher! Murray! Bob! where are you?

Stretched along the deck like logs-- Bear a hand, you jolly tar, you!

Here's a rope's end for the dogs.

Hobhouse muttering fearful curses As the hatchway down he rolls, Now his breakfast, now his verses, Vomits forth and d--ns our souls.

In Beppo there is much gay carnival merriment and some humour--a style well suited to Italian revelry. When Laura's husband, Beppo, returns, and is seen in a new guise at a ball, we read--

"He was a Turk the colour of mahogany And Laura saw him, and at first was glad, Because the Turks so much admire philogyny, Although the usage of their wives is sad, 'Tis said they use no better than a dog any Poor woman, whom they purchase like a pad; They have a number though they ne'er exhibits 'em, Four wives by law and concubines 'ad libitum."

On being a.s.sured that he is her husband, she exclaims--

"_Beppo._ And are you really truly, now a Turk?

With any other women did you wive?

Is't true they use their fingers for a fork?

Well, that's the prettiest shawl--as I'm alive!

You'll give it me? They say you eat no pork.

And how so many years did you contrive To--Bless me! did I ever? No, I never Saw a man grown so yellow! How's your liver?"

More than half the poem is taken up with digressions, more or less amusing, such as--