History of English Humour Volume I Part 5

"He receives a benefit who gives to a worthy person."

"He to whom more than is just is allowed, wishes for more than he gets."

"A man who talks well on the road is as good as a carriage."

"He unjustly accuses Neptune who is s.h.i.+p-wrecked twice."

"By overlooking an old injury you invite a new one."

These sayings are of a worldly-wise and proverbial character, and, therefore, as has been already observed, although not actually humorous, are easily capable of being so regarded.

Caesar awarded the prize to Publius instead of Laberius, because, as it is supposed, of some reflections the latter made upon him. But it may have been that Caesar was right, and Publius' wit was the most salient.

Scarcely any specimens remain of Laberius' talent. Aulus Gellius says that he coined many strange words, and he seems to have made considerable use of alliteration.

We may suppose that the humour of Cicero was somewhat hereditary, for he records a saying of his grandfather that "the men of our time are like Syrian slaves; the more Greek they know, the greater knaves they are!"

It is fortunate the grandson inherited the old man's wit without his plebeian prejudices, and became as celebrated for his culture as for his readiness. In his work ent.i.tled "The Orator," he commends humour as a means of gaining influence, and a vehicle for moral instruction.

"Orators," he says, "joke with an object, not to appear jesters, but to obtain some advantage." But we may feel sure he did not keep this dry and profitable end always in view, for he wrote a jest-book, and was nick-named by his enemies "Scurra Consularis,"[21] the consular buffoon.

A man can scarcely have a talent for humour without being conscious of its fascination, and being sometimes led away by it--as Cicero says, "it pleases the listeners"--but he need not therefore descend to buffoonery.

We should not be inclined to accuse a man of that, who tells us that "a regard to proper times, moderation and forbearance in jesting, and a limitation in the number of jokes, will distinguish the orator from the buffoon;" who says that "indelicacy is a disgrace, not only to the forum, but to any company of well-bred people," and that neither great vice nor great misery is a subject for ridicule. From all this we may gather that Cicero was full of graceful and clever jocosity, but did not indulge in what was vapid and objectionable. Both by precept and practice he approved good verbal humour. The better cla.s.s of puns was used in the literature of the time, as we find by St. Paul and others, not in levity, but merely as embellishments.[22]

Cicero replied to Vibius Curius, who was telling a falsehood about his age: "Then when we declaimed at the schools together, you were not born;" and to Fabia, Dolabella's wife, who said she was thirty, "No doubt, for I have heard you say so twenty years." When he saw Lentulus, his cousin--a little man girt with a big sword: "Who," he asked, "has fastened my cousin to that sword?" and on being shown a colossal bust of his brother, who was also small, he exclaimed, "The half of my brother is greater than the whole." One day Cicero had supped with Damasippus, and his host had said--putting some inferior wine before him--"Drink this Falernian, it is forty years old!" "It bears its age well," replied Cicero.

We have a most interesting collection of good sayings in "The Orator,"

which although not spoken by Cicero himself, were those which he had from time to time noticed, and probably jotted down. Here is one of Caesar's (Strabo). A Sicilian, when a friend made lamentation to him that his wife had hanged herself upon a fig tree: "I beseech you," he said, "give me some shoots of that tree that I may plant them." Some one asked Cra.s.sus whether he should be troublesome if he came to him before it was light. Cra.s.sus said, "You will not." The other rejoined, "You will order yourself to be awakened then." To which Cra.s.sus replied, "Surely, I said that you would not be troublesome."

To return to the Caesars. The humorous vein which we have traced in the family descended to Augustus--the great nephew of Julius. Some of his sayings, which have survived, show him to have been as pleasant in his wit as he was proverbially happy in his fortunes.

When the inhabitants of Tarraco made him a fulsome speech, telling him that they had raised an altar to him as their presiding deity, and that, marvellous to relate, a splendid palm tree had grown up on it: "That shows," replied the Emperor, "how often you kindle a fire there." To Galba, a hunchback orator, who was pleading before him, and frequently saying, "Set me right, if I am wrong," he replied, "I can easily correct you, but I cannot set you right."

The following will give a slight idea of the variety of his humour.

When he heard that, among the children under two years old whom Herod had ordered to be slain, his own son had been killed, he said, "It is better to be Herod's pig than his son." Being entertained on one occasion with a very poor dinner, and without any ceremony, as he was pa.s.sing out he whispered in the ear of his host, "I did not know that I was such a friend of yours." A Roman knight having died enormously in debt, Augustus ordered them to buy him his bed-pillow at the auction, observing: "The pillow of a man who could sleep when he owed so much must be truly soporific." A man who had been removed from a cavalry command and asked for an allowance, "not from any mercenary motive, but that I may seem to have resigned upon obtaining the grant from you," he dismissed with the words: "Tell everybody you have received it. I will not deny it."

Augustus kept a jester, Gabba, and patronised mimes, and among other diversions with which he amused himself and his friends, was that of giving presents by lottery; each drew a ticket upon which something was named, but on applying for the article a totally different thing was received, answering to a second meaning of the name. This occasioned great merriment, a man who thought he was to get a grand present was given a little sponge, or rake, or a pair of pincers; another who seemed to have no claim whatever, obtained something very valuable. The humour was not great, but a little refres.h.i.+ng distraction was thus obtained from the cares of state. There is no loss in light literature so much to be deplored as that of the correspondence between Augustus and Mecaenas.

The latter prided himself upon his skill in poetry and humour, and we may be sure that he sent some of his choicest productions to Augustus, who in turn exerted himself to send something worthy of the eye of so celebrated a critic. It is not impossible that the Emperor showed himself equal, if not superior to the friend of Horace.

Those who succeeded to the imperial purple proved very different from their ill.u.s.trious predecessor, and in Persius the severity of Roman satire re-appears. We could scarcely expect a man who lived under Nero, and after the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius to write with the mild placidity of the Augustan poet. Moreover, the satires of Persius were written at an early age--twenty-eight, and youth always feels acutely, and expresses strongly. Some of his attacks are evidently aimed at Nero, but his princ.i.p.al object is to denounce the vices of the times. Hence, indolence and prurient literature are stigmatised. He ridicules the extremes of extravagance, and of that parsimony by which it is usually accompanied. "Am I on a festive day to have a nettle dressed for me, and a smoked pig's cheek with a hole in its ear, in order that that grandson of yours may be surfeited with goose liver, and indulge in patrician amours. Am I to be a living anatomy that his pope's stomach may shake with fat."[23] Alluding to the absurdity of the prayers generally offered up, he uses language worthy of a Christian.

"You ask for vigour, but rich dishes and fat sausages prevent the G.o.ds from granting your behest. You ask what your fleshly mind suggests. What avails gold in sacrifice? Offer justice to G.o.d and man--generous honour, and a soul free from pollution."

In Persius we miss the light geniality of Horace and the pure language of the Augustan age, but we mark the complexity and finesse of a later date, a form of thought bespeaking a comprehensive grasp, and suitable to subtle minds. But as regards his humour it depends much on exaggeration, and is proportionably weak, and beyond this we have little but the coining of some words,[24] the using others in unaccustomed senses, and a large seasoning of severity. He evidently aimed rather at being corrective than amusing, and his covert attacks upon Nero were, no doubt, well understood. Humour of a poor kind was evidently fas.h.i.+onable at the day--the Emperor himself wrote Satires and was so fond of comic performances that he first encouraged and rewarded a celebrated pantomimic actor named Paris, and then put him to death for being his rival in the mimetic art. Even Seneca could not resist the example of his contemporaries, and we find the sedate philosopher attacking his enemy with severe ridicule. Claudius had him sent into exile for eight years to the picturesque but lonely Island of Corsica; and Seneca who liked something more social and luxurious, held him up in a satire bordering upon lampoon. The fanciful production was called the Apolokokyntosis of Claudius; that is his apotheosis, except that, instead of the Emperor being deified, he is supposed to be "gourdified," changed not into a G.o.d, but into a pumpkin. Seneca, after deriding Claudius' bodily defects, accuses him of committing many atrocities, and finally sends him down from heaven to the nether world, where a new punishment is invented for him--he is to be always trying to throw dice out of an empty box.

One of the most remarkable characters in the reign of Nero was t.i.tus Petronius Arbiter. He was a great favourite with the Emperor, and held some official appointment--the duties of which he is said to have discharged with ability. In his writings he is supposed to condemn immorality, but he enlarges so much upon what he disapproves that we doubt whether he does not promote the vice he pretends to condemn.[25]

His "Satyricon" is not intended to be a satire, but an imitation of one of those old Greek comedies which treated of the doings of Satyrs and grotesque country deities. It is the first comic prose work, for in early times verse was thought as necessary to humour as to poetry. The whole work is enveloped in a voluptuous atmosphere; it is written in a gay roystering style, but although the indelicacy is great the humour is small. Occasionally it is interesting, as giving an insight into private life in the days of Nero. Here we find Trimalchio, a rich man, providing for the amus.e.m.e.nt of his guests, as well as for their sumptuous entertainment. One dish was a wild boar, which was placed on the table with a cap of liberty on its head. Petronius asked the meaning of this. "Why," said he, "your servant could explain that, it is no riddle. This boar escaped from yesterday's dinner where it was dismissed by the guests, and he now returns to table as a freedman." Afterwards a much larger hog was brought in. "What!" cried Trimalchio, looking closely at it, "is not his inside taken out? No! it is not; call the cook, call the cook." The cook being brought in, excused himself saying that he forgot. "Forgot!" cried Trimalchio, "why, he talks as if it were only a pinch of pepper omitted. Strip him." In a moment the cook was stripped to be flogged. All interceded for him, but Petronius felt somewhat indignant at such an oversight, and said he must be a careless rascal to forget to disembowel a hog. Trimalchio with a pleasant look said, "Come, you with the short memory, see if you can bowel him before us." The cook slashed with his knife, and out tumbled a load of puddings and sausages. All the servants raised a shout, and the cook was presented with a cup of wine, and a silver crown.

Petronius shared the fate of Seneca. He was suspected of conspiring against the Emperor, and his life being demanded, he preferred to suffer by his own hand rather than by that of the executioner. He caused his veins to be opened, but strangely whimsical to the last, and wis.h.i.+ng to die slowly, he had them closed at intervals. In his dying state he was daily carried about the streets of c.u.mae, and received his friends, made love verses and humorous epigrams, and endeavoured to withdraw his thoughts from the sad reality by indulging in all kinds of amusing caprices. At length he expired--another distinguished victim of Nero's cruelty.

Juvenal, who wrote under Domitian, a little later than Persius, equalled him in severity--due either to his natural disposition or to the spectacle presented by the ever increasing demoralization of Rome. Like Persius, he makes use of much metaphor and involution in his works--showing the literary taste and intellectual ac.u.men of a settled state of society, but an early age is impressed upon his pages in the indelicacy with which he is frequently chargeable. His depiction of guilt was appreciated at that day, but under the Christian dispensation vice is thought too sinful, and in a highly civilised state too injurious to be laughable. The views then held were different, and Tacitus considered it a mark of great superiority in the Germans that they did not laugh at crimes. Juvenal tells us that the Romans jeered at poverty. There was much in the character of this satirist to raise him in the estimation of right-minded men. His tastes were simple, he loved the country and its homely fare, and although devoid of ambition, was highly cultivated. No doubt he was rather austere than genial: his aim was to instruct and warn rather than amuse; and where he approaches humour it is merely from complexity of style, in coining words and barbarisms, or in comparisons mostly dependent upon exaggeration. The following is one of his best specimens, though over-weighted with severity. It gives an idea of the state of Rome at the time. A drunken magnate and his retinue stop a citizen in the street, and insolently demand--

"With whose vinegar and beans are you blown out? What cobbler has been eating leeks and sheepshead with you? Answer, or be kicked." "This,"

says Juvenal "is a poor man's liberty. When pummelled, he begs that he may be allowed to escape with a few of his teeth remaining."

Juvenal longs for the sword of Lucilius, and the lamp of Horace, that he may attack the vices of Rome, but he himself is more severe than either. Forgers, gamblers and profligates are a.s.sailed, and names are frequently given, though we often cannot now decide whether they belonged to real persons. Laughing at those who desire length of years without remembering the concomitant infirmities of age, he says:

"All kinds of disease dance around the aged in a troop, of which if you were to ask the names I could sooner tell you how many lovers Hippia had, how many patients Themison killed in one autumn, or how many allies Basilus and Hirrus defrauded." He condemns the increased desire for luxury. "Do not," he warns, "long for a mullet, when you have only a gudgeon in your purse." The rule of the day was to purchase sensual indulgence at any cost, "Greediness is so great that they will not even invite a parasite." Excessive selfishness leads to every kind of dishonesty. "A man of probity is as rare as a mule's foal, or as a shower of stones from a cloud." "What day is so sacred that it fails to produce thieving, perfidy, fraud, gain sought through every crime, and money acquired by bowl and dagger. The good are so scarce that their number is barely as great as that of the gates of Thebes, or the mouths of the fertilizing Nile."

He attacks every kind of social abuse, and does not even spare the ladies--some are too fast, some are learned and pedantic, some cruel to their slaves--even scourging them with cowhides. "What fault," he asks, "has the girl committed, if your own nose has displeased you?" As to religion, that has disappeared altogether. "What a laugh your simplicity would raise in public, if you were to require of anyone that he should not perjure himself, but believe that there was some deity in the temple, or at the ensanguined altar! That the souls of the departed are anything, and the realms below, and the punt-pole and frogs of the Stygian pool, and that so many thousands pa.s.s over in one boat, not even the boys believe, except those who are too young to pay for their bath."

The language used in the last pa.s.sage is no doubt an example of the profane manner in which some men spoke at that day, but in general, we must remember that these pictures are humorous and overdrawn. Still, some of the offences spoken of with horror by Juvenal were treated almost as lightly by contemporary poets as they had been by Aristophanes.

There is a slightly foreign complexion about the productions of Martial, which reminds us that he was a Spaniard. Even at this time there seems to have been a sparkle and richness in the thoughts that budded in that sunny clime. Martial was a contemporary of Juvenal, and addressed two or three of his epigrams to him. His works consisted of fourteen books, containing altogether more than fifteen hundred of these short poems.

The appearance of such works may be taken as indicative of the condition of Rome at the time. The calls of business had become more urgent from the increase of the population and development of commerce, while the unsatisfactory state of the Government and of foreign affairs kept men's minds in agitation and suspense. Martial himself observes that those were no times for poems of any length, and that some of his friends would not even read his longer pieces, though they never exceeded thirty lines. The period demanded something light and short--a book which could be taken up and laid down without any interruption of the narrative. But the swifter current of affairs had also produced a keener or more active turn of mind, so that it was necessary not only to be short, but also pithy. It was not necessary to be humorous, but it was essential to be concise and interesting, and thus Martial gave to the epigram that character for point which it has since maintained.

Nothing could be more attractive than allusions to contemporary men, pa.s.sing scenes, or novelties of the day, and when we read his works we seem to be transported by magic into the streets and houses of ancient Rome. On one page we have the sanguinary scenes of the circus; in another we see the ladies waving their purple fans, and hear them toasted in as many gla.s.ses as they have letters to their names.

From this kind of gaiety Martial graduates into another--that of pleasantry. In an epitaph on his barber, he bids the earth lie light upon him, adding, "It could not be lighter than his artistic hand." From his censure of bad wit, it is evident that he drew great distinctions between broad and subtle humour. "Every man," he says, "has not a _nose_," _i.e._, a keen perception--cannot smell a fault. He is very seldom guilty of a pun, and says in one place that he has not adopted verbal tricks, imitating echoes, or making lines which can be read backwards or forwards.[26] Nor has he any intention to indulge in bitter reflections; he says,--

"My page injures not those it hates, and no reputation obtained at the expense of another is pleasing to me. Some versifiers wish publications which are but darts dipped in the blood of Lycambus to be mine, and vomit forth the poison of vipers under my name. My sport is harmless."

But he well saw that some little severity was necessary for humour, for he chides a dull poet:

"Although the epigrams which you write are always sweetness itself, and more spotless than a white-leaded skin, and although there is in them neither an atom of salt, nor a drop of bitter gall, yet you expect, foolish man, that they will be read. Why, not even food is pleasant if wholly dest.i.tute of acid seasoning, nor is a face pleasing which shows no dimples. Give children your honey, apples, and luscious figs--the Chian fig, which has sharpness, pleases my taste."

Following this view we find him often sarcastic, but not personal, the names being fict.i.tious, or if not, those of well known public men. In a few instances he is a little ill-natured, and writes, "Laugh, if thou art wise, girl, laugh, said Ovid, but he did not say this to all girls, not, for instance, to Maximina, who has only three teeth, and those the colour of pitch and boxwood. Avoid the pantomimes of Philistion and gay feasts. It befits you to sit beside an afflicted mother, and a wife lamenting her husband. Weep, if thou art wise, girl, weep."

Martial often uses the figure called by the Greek grammarians "contrary to expectation." The point of the whole epigram lies in the last word or line, which changes the drift of the whole.

"His funeral pile was strewn with reed, His tearful wife brought fragrant myrrh, The bier, the grave, the ointment were prepared, He named me as his heir, and he--got well."

"Sorry is Athenagoras not to send the gifts, Which in mid-winter he is wont to send; Whether he be sorry I shall shortly see, But sorry he has certainly made me."

"You feast so often without me, Lupercus, I've found a way by which to pay you out, I am incensed, and if you should invite me, What would I do, you ask me? Why--I'd come."

The growing appreciation of this kind of writing had already led Meleager, a cynic philosopher of Gadara, to form the first collection of Greek epigrams, which he prettily termed the anthology or bouquet.

Martial has been commended at the expense of the Greeks, but he borrowed considerably from them in form and matter. His epigrams were more uniformly suggestive and concentrated than those of any previous writer, and he largely contributed to raise such compositions from being merely inscriptive into a branch of literature. He opened a new field, and the larger portion of these productions in Greek were written about this time. They are not generally humorous, with the exception of a few from Philo and Leonidas of Alexandria who lived about 60 B.C., from Ammia.n.u.s in 120 B.C., and from Lucilius, a great composer of this kind, of whose history nothing is known but that he lived in the reign of Nero. The following are from the last-mentioned.

"Some say, Nicylla, that thou dyest thy hair, which thou boughtest most black at the market."

"All the astrologers prophesied that my uncle would be long-lived except Hermocleides, who said he would not be so. This, however, was not until we were lamenting his death."

The following are free translations from the same writer.

"Poor Cleon out of envy died, His brother thief to see Nailed near him to be crucified Upon a higher tree."

On a bad painter.