“ It is a field which has been neglected by anthologists and essayists; one of its few serious recognitions being in a certain "Treatise of Figurative Language," which says: "Nonsense; shall we dignify that with a place on our list? Assuredly will vote for doing so every one who hath at all duly noticed what admirable and wise uses it can be, and often is, put to, though never before in rhetoric has it been so highly honored. How deeply does clever or quaint nonsense abide in the memory, and for how many a decade—from earliest youth to age's most venerable years." ”

“ Although like Lear's in some respects, Lewis Carroll's nonsense is perhaps of a more refined type. There is less of the grotesque and more poetic imagery. But though Carroll was more of a poet than Lear, both had the true sense of nonsense. Both assumed the most absurd conditions, and proceeded to detail their consequences with a simple seriousness that convulses appreciative readers, and we find ourselves uncertain whether it is the manner or the matter that is more amusing. ”

“ It is a fad at present for a man to relate a nonsensical story, and then, if his hearer does not laugh, say gravely: "You have no sense of humor. That is a test story, and only a true humorist laughs at it." Now, the hearer may have an exquisite sense of humor, but he may be lacking in a sense of nonsense, and so the story gives him no pleasure. De Quincey said, "None but a man of extraordinary talent can write first-rate nonsense." ”

“ Or keep your dirt, to your certain hurt, and an imminent walloping!"
"You must wash—you must scrub—you must scrape!" growled Jack,
"you must traffic with cans and pails,
Nor keep the spoil of the good brown soil in the rim of your
finger-nails!
The morning path you must tread to your bath—you must wash ere
the night descends,
And all for the cause of conventional laws and the soapmakers'
dividends!
But if 'tis sooth that our meal in truth depends on our washing,
Jill,
By the sacred right of our appetite—haste—haste to the top of
the hill!" ”

“ A water bird, a gawky bird, a sing'lar bird, by jingo!
Lewis Gaylord Clark.
KINDNESS TO ANIMALS Speak gently to the herring and kindly to the calf,
Be blithesome with the bunny, at barnacles don't laugh!
Give nuts unto the monkey, and buns unto the bear,
Ne'er hint at currant jelly if you chance to see a hare!
Oh, little girls, pray hide your combs when tortoises draw nigh,
And never in the hearing of a pigeon whisper Pie!
But give the stranded jelly-fish a shove into the sea,—
Be always kind to animals wherever you may be! ”

“ And Petrarch in my rhymes.
But all is over! When the sun
Dries up the boundless main,
When black is white, false-hearted one,
I may be yours again!
When passion's early hopes and fears
Are not derided things;
When truth is found in falling tears,
Or faith in golden rings;
When the dark Fates that rule our way
Instruct me where they hide
One woman that would ne'er betray,
One friend that never lied;
When summer shines without a cloud,
And bliss without a pain;
When worth is noticed in a crowd,
I may be yours again!
When science pours the light of day
Upon the lords of lands ”

“ Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch
on the temples of terror,
Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who
is dumb as the dust-heaps of death:
Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional
exquisite error,
Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by
beatitude's breath.
Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit
and soul of our senses
Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in the
semblance and sound of a sigh ”

“ As with my hat upon my head
I walked along the Strand,
I there did meet another man
With his hat in his hand.
The tender infant, meek and mild,
Fell down upon the stone;
The nurse took up the squealing child,
But still the child squealed on.
The Doctor is also responsible for
If a man who turnips cries,
Cry not when his father dies,
'Tis a proof that he would rather
Have a turnip than a father.
And indeed, among our best writers there are few who have not dropped into nonsense or semi-nonsense at one time or another. ”

“ Perhaps, partly because of such neglect, the work of the best nonsense writers is less widely known than it might be.
But a more probable reason is that the majority of the reading world does not appreciate or enjoy real nonsense, and this, again, is consequent upon their inability to discriminate between nonsense of integral merit and simple chaff.
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it. Never in the tongue
Of him that makes it,
and a sense of nonsense is as distinct a part of our mentality as a sense of humor, being by no means identical therewith. ”

“ And a girl wanders out without any knowledge,
And a bird wanders out, and a cow wanders out,
Likewise one wether, and they wander together—
There's a good deal of wandering lying about.
But it's all for the best; I've been told by my friends, Sir,
That in verses I'd written the meaning was slight;
I've tried with no meaning—to make 'em amends, Sir—
And find that this kind's still more easy to write.
The title has nothing to do with the verses,
But think of the millions—the laborers who
In busy employment find deepest enjoyment,
And yet, like my title, have nothing to do! ”

“ Absence of sense is not necessarily nonsense, any more than absence of justice is injustice.
Etymologically speaking, nonsense may be either words without meaning, or words conveying absurd or ridiculous ideas. It is the second definition which expresses the great mass of nonsense literature, but there is a small proportion of written nonsense which comes under the head of language without meaning.
Again, there are verses composed entirely of meaningless words, which are not nonsense literature, because they are written with some other intent. ”

“ And Jill she ran like a winging bolt, a bolt from the bow released,
But Jack like a stream of the lightning gleam, with its pathway
duly greased;
He ran down hill in front of Jill like a summer-lightning flash—
Till he suddenly tripped on a stone, or slipped, and fell to the
earth with a crash. ”

“ Chance lets the gate sway that opens on hate's way and shews on
shame's beach
Crouched like an imp sly change watch sweet love's shrimps lie, a
toothful in each.
IV Time feels his tooth slip on husks wet from Truth's lip, which
drops them and grins—
Shells where no throb stirs of life left in lobsters since joy
thrilled their fins—
Hues of the pawn's tail or comb that makes dawn stale, so red for
our sins!
V Leaves love last year smelt now feel dead love's tears melt—flies
caught in time's mesh!
Salt are the dews in which new time breeds new sin, brews blood
and stews flesh ”

“ Let us, then, give Nonsense its place among the divisions of Humor, and though we cannot reduce it to an exact science, let us acknowledge it as a fine art.
A NONSENSE ANTHOLOGY JABBERWOCKY 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!" ”

“ Only a short study of the subject is required to convince us that De Quincey was right; and he might have added, none but a man of extraordinary taste can appreciate first-rate nonsense. As an instance of this, we may remember that Edward Lear, "the parent of modern nonsense-writers," was a talented author and artist, and a prime favorite of such men as Tennyson and the Earls of Derby; and John Ruskin placed Lear's name at the head of his list of the best hundred authors.
"Don't tell me," said William Pitt, "of a man's being able to talk sense; every one can talk sense. Can he talk nonsense?" ”

“ Lewis Carroll was a man of intellect and education; his funniest sayings are often based on profound knowledge or deep thought. Like Lear, he never spoiled his quaint fancies by over-exaggerating their quaintness or their fancifulness, and his ridiculous plots are as carefully conceived, constructed, and elaborated as though they embodied the soundest facts. No funny detail is ever allowed to become too funny ”

“ When the cabman—in liquor—drives a blue roan, a kicker,
Into the land of the dear long ago.
Ah!—Ah, again!—You will come to me, fall on me—
You are so heavy, and I am so flat.
And I? I shall not be at home when you call on me,
But stray down the wind like a gentleman's hat:
I shall list to the stars when the music is purple,
Be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled into rings;
Turn to sparks, and then straightway get stuck in the gateway
That stands between speech and unspeakable things.
As I mentioned before, by what light is it lighted?
Oh! Is it fourpence, or piebald, or gray? ”

“ And for our tasks our bodies seem more fit—
"Might of the night, unfleeing, sight unseen."
Charles Battell Loomis.
ALONE Alone! Alone!
I sit in the solitudes of the moonshades,
Soul-hungering in the moonshade solitudes sit I—
My heart-lifts beaten down in the wild wind-path.
Oppressed, and scourged and beaten down are my heart-lifts.
I fix my gaze on the eye-star, and the eye-star flings its dart
upon me.
I wonder why my soul is lost in wonder why I am,
And why the eye-star mocks me,
Why the wild wind beats down my heart-lifts;
Why I am stricken here in the moonshade solitudes. ”

“ You have fallen down with a broken crown—the half-crown debt is
paid!"
They have taken Jack to the room at the back where the family
medicines are,
And he lies in bed with a broken head in a halo of vinegar;
While, in that Jill had laughed her fill as her brother fell to
earth,
She had felt the sting of a walloping—she hath paid the price of
her mirth!
Here is the tale—and now you have the whole of it,
Here is the story—well and wisely planned,
Beauty—Duty—these make up the soul of it—
But, ah, my little readers, will you mark and understand?
Anthony C. Deane. ”

“ As flies run up the window-pane,
So fly my thoughts, dear love, to thee!
Anonymous.
THE PARTERRE I don't know any greatest treat
As sit him in a gay parterre,
And sniff one up the perfume sweet
Of every roses buttoning there.
It only want my charming miss
Who make to blush the self red rose;
Oh! I have envy of to kiss
The end's tip of her splendid nose.
Oh! I have envy of to be
What grass 'neath her pantoffle push,
And too much happy seemeth me
The margaret which her vestige crush. ”

“ If coal-black ghosts turn soldiers for the State,
With wooden eyes, and lightning-rods for plumes?
Oh! too, too shocking! barbarous, savage taste!
To eat one's mother ere itself was born!
To gripe the tall town-steeple by the waste,
And scoop it out to be his drinking-horn.
No more: no more! I'm sick and dead and gone;
Boxed in a coffin, stifled six feet deep;
Thorns, fat and fearless, prick my skin and bone,
And revel o'er me, like a soulless sheep.
Henry Coggswell Knight, 1815.
NONSENSE Oh that my Lungs could bleat like butter'd Pease ”

“ Thackeray wrote spirited nonsense, but much of it had an under-meaning, political or otherwise, which bars it from the field of sheer nonsense.
The sense of nonsense is no respecter of persons; even staid old Dr. Johnson possessed it, though his nonsense verses are marked by credible fact and irrefutable logic. ”

“ Among living authors, one who has written a great amount of good nonsense is Mr. Gelett Burgess, late editor of The Lark.
According to Mr. Burgess' own statement, the test of nonsense is its quotability, and his work stands this test admirably, for what absurd rhyme ever attained such popularity as his "Purple Cow"? This was first printed in The Lark, a paper published in San Francisco for two years, the only periodical of any merit that has ever made intelligent nonsense its special feature.
Another of the most talented nonsense writers of to-day is Mr. Oliver Herford. ”

“ It is only nonsense for nonsense' sake that is now under our consideration.
Doubtless the best and best-known example of versified words without meaning is "Jabberwocky." Although (notwithstanding Lewis Carroll's explanations) the coined words are absolutely without meaning, the rhythm is perfect and the poetic quality decidedly apparent, and the poem appeals to the nonsense lover as a work of pure genius. ”

“ Hare, ware, frown, whack,
Halico balico, we, wi, we, wack,
is not strictly a nonsense verse, because it was invented and used for "counting out," and the arbitrary words simply take the place of the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc.
Also, the nonsense verses with which students of Latin composition are sometimes taught to begin their efforts, where words are used with no relative meaning, simply to familiarize the pupil with the mechanical values of quantity and metre, are not nonsense. ”

“ As Alice was a-sitting at her window-sill one day,
A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way;
She cast her eyes upon him, and he looked so good and true,
That she thought, "I could be happy with a gentleman like you!"
And every morning passed her house that cream of gentlemen,
She knew she might expect him at a quarter unto ten,
A sorter in the Custom-house, it was his daily road
(The Custom-house was fifteen minutes' walk from her abode.)
But Alice was a pious girl, who knew it wasn't wise
To look at strange young sorters with expressive purple eyes ”

“ Those their greatest authors who never wrote,
And their deepest the least profound.
Now, such were the folks of that wonder-land,
A curious people, as you will own;
But are there none of the race abroad,
Are no specimens elsewhere known?
Well, I think that he whose views of life
Are crooked, wrong, perverse, and odd,
Who looks upon all with jaundiced eyes—
Sees himself and believes it God,
Who sneers at the good, and makes the ill,
Curses a world he cannot mend ”