William Carew Hazlitt

“ But the pages of this Greek Anthology, of which I employ for convenience the ordinary English version, have to be winnowed in the same proportion as those of the other classical or quasi-classical books which we have just left behind us, in order to extract matter which is perfectly intelligible without the context. For everybody must feel that a translation has no chemical virtue beyond the exchange of terms. A Greek epigram, in nine instances out of ten, is a Greek epigram none the less though it be clothed in an English dress. ”

“ Greek Anthology, the Noctes Atticæ, and the Lives of the Philosophers, which, like Lucian and Athenæus, are simply of value as the foundations and pioneers of the class of literature which I am examining, and as introductory to the leading purpose in view. It must become evident that the sources of the vein of wit which pervades modern literature and society is to be sought elsewhere—in circumstances and conditions of life altogether different—in our political development, climate and blood. ”

“ For while during centuries the feeling for the grotesque or absurd, together with the almost inborn propensity for the exposure of foibles and vices in an enemy, a rival, or an obnoxious public character, had its outlets only through the agency of art, and the sculptor or draughtsman was the sole resource of those who loved caricature and farce, the introduction of caligraphy by no means diminished the call for the graphic delineators of comedy and satire. ”

“ 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 [187] 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. ”

“ If we try to realise in our imagination Grimaldi stretched on a bed of sickness, a jovial companion in a gouty paroxysm, or an excellent friend, the author of utterances which have delighted and convulsed the stage, in the extremity of mental depression or physical suffering, we shall be better able to see that the Anecdote generically, and the Jest in particular, are fortuitous emanations and not parcel of our daily being. ”

“ If it be the case that “a jest’s prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it,” it is equally true that a pleasantry depends for [25] its thorough success on the atmosphere in which it receives utterance, and on the personality of the narrator. Something which might seem racy and piquant to an Oriental, would very probably fall flat in an ancient Greek and Roman gathering; and it demanded all the surrounding costume of Greece or Rome to give salience and effect to those specimens of wit, which do not often, as they are recorded, strike us as remarkably brilliant. ”

“ Anecdote-literature, in which I always desire to understand as included the Jest, seems to me fairly resonant with the life of other days—in larger measure than has been usually supposed, simply because on a superficial view we are very apt to content ourselves with the foregone conclusion, that a story, whether humorous or otherwise, is nothing but a story. ”

“ But then, only a little way farther—in the forty-eighth anecdote—we are confronted with the admirable apologue “Of the friar that told the three children’s fortunes,” where, after declaring to the horrified mother that of her family one should be a beggar, a second a thief, and the third an assassin, he consoles her by saying that she might make the one who was to be a beggar a friar, the one who was to be a thief a lawyer, and him who was destined to be a murderer a physician. ”

“ On the other hand, it may happen that a jest bears upon some permanent incidence of human society, and passes with merely verbal changes from one age, one language, and one country, to another; like the episode mentioned by Lucian in his Hetairai and likewise by Gellius, of the lady who, when her admirer sent her a cask of wine, commending its age, retorted that it was very small for its age,—where we observe that the conditions, being neither local nor temporary, are capable of universal and perpetual application. ”

“ It was natural for the old booksellers to draw into their service, in offering a popular volume to the public, some more or less magnetic name, which might play the part of foster-parent to the jocular collections of an obscure literary adventurer; but it seems incredible that any reader or editor should have been found so wanting in perception as to set seriously down to Archibald Armstrong a jest-book and a tract, which passed current as his at the time of their original appearance. ”

“ When we cross over from an investigation of the older literature in order to make a general survey of the modern [150] school, it is like the migration to a different climate. Something resembling an organic revolution has occurred in this sphere of action and ingenuity. New literary and theatrical agencies have been in operation. Great political convulsions and the overthrow of dynasties have made their secondary effects sensible. The Georges have turned everything upside down. Grandfather’s jest-book is equally out of date with his opinions and his costume. ”

“ Tradition is too [117] indispensable to be cut away, yet too treacherous to believe without misgiving or without some convergence of proof. I have been turning over the pages of the Hundred Merry Tales and the Merry Tales and Quick Answers in quest of a few specimens of what might be adduced and regarded as original matter, and how thin is my harvest! Yet, onerous as are the obligations even of these ancient collections, the debt, it must be owned, is of a character and degree differing very essentially from that under which their successors lie to them again. ”

“ 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 [201] 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. ”

“ Facetious narrations are too seldom subjected to the test of circumstantial evidence. We are not apt to ask ourselves the question, who delivered the joke, or ushered it into print? There are cases, of course, where the author of a sally or rejoinder himself repeats it to a third party, possibly in its original shape, possibly with embellishments; but there must be, nay, there are numberless instances in which a funny thing is given to a person, not because he said it, but because he might or would have done so. ”

“ There is an epigram on a miser, who calculated, while he was ill in bed, that it would cost a drachma more to live than to die, and refused to see a physician; and a second on a bad poet and a clumsy surgeon, of whom it is said that they had destroyed more persons than “the waters in the time of Deucalion, or than Phaeton, who burned up those upon the earth.”
The Anthology is of a mingled yarn, like our own Miscellanies, in which the most delicate wit and the broadest fun so frequently [64] find themselves next neighbours. ”

“ He is joke-proof, or he misses the point by a hair. He builds an arch, and does not see that he has forgotten the keystone. This criticism holds good both of Jerrold and Charles Lamb, two men who have never been surpassed in their astonishing mastery of the mot in its real meaning and compass. Yet some of Lamb’s happiest hits have been robbed of their vitality by the neglect on the part of his biographers of that nicety which is so imperative in the registration of these casual traits. ”

“ What does not strike us as very droll might strike a Dutchman three centuries since very naturally and very forcibly as being so. We know, of course, how much depends in these cases on a turn of phrase, a trick of pronunciation, or any other subsidiary element; and so far as the Epistolæ are concerned, it must be borne in mind that such a travesty was then a novel experiment in literature, and was apt enough to tickle the fancy of a man who was at once so good a classical scholar and modern Latinist as Erasmus. ”

“ The first impression of nine persons out of ten, on taking up a Book of Jests or Anecdotes, is that it is merely a volume prepared for their momentary diversion—to be bought at a stall for a trifle, cursorily studied, and thrown on one side. ”

“ The inimitable account of John Adroyns, who, after performing on some provincial stage the part of his Satanic majesty, walked home in his theatrical garb, and met with a complication of mishaps, is an excellent specimen of the professed jocular compilation by a third person, as distinguished from a piece of humour delivered to us exactly or approximately in the terms which the actor or actors employed. So long as a pleasantry presents itself to notice with honest credentials, there is no ground for complaint and no source of difficulty ”

“ There are, nevertheless, clear grounds for regarding this Century of good things as a gathering to which More and Heywood were contributors, rather than as the exclusive property of either of them, or of any one else. For we see, for instance, that in the fortieth story a man so celebrated and even notorious as Skelton, and at the time of the publication of the Tales still living, is described as “one Master Skelton, a poet laureate,” which seems to argue the presence behind the scenes of an editor not very conversant with contemporary literature or literary history ”

“ The fruitful outpourer of good sayings may have ceased to rank among living celebrities, and the scintillations of his genius are gathered into the workshop; or, if he scatters his treasures during his life, like a prodigal, among his familiars, it is a marvel if there are not one or two deft hands waiting to dress the nuggets for the market, and even to wrap them up so adroitly, that their own father would scarcely recognise them! ”

“ In former days, to be a fool within certain lines, or a buffoon of a special type, was a walk of [2] life not to be despised either by a man or by his friends. The jokes which he made were negotiable securities of first-class value. Not a five-pound note, but broad lands and the smiles of a prince, awaited the fortunate utterer of the bon-mot and the fountain of merriment and good humour.
Even in the time of Charles II. the prosperity of the vocation had sensibly declined. Charles liked people who contributed to his amusement ”

“ The standard of politeness has perhaps been raised, if that of morality has not. We confine ourselves in our vices to the [165] closet, and observe good behaviour in the street, and even, on the whole, at the theatre. But, to return to the more immediate subject, the coarseness and ribaldry which distinguish and season the early jest-books principally emanate from the lower strata of the population—from the folk, in fact—which is no whit superior at this moment to the use and enjoyment of a similar phraseology and a similar description of merriment. ”

“ THE literary formulation of the Jest, though it seems to be a matter which should go without saying, is, on the contrary, an aspect of the inquiry which presents itself least of all to the mind of the student. The best artificial anecdote in point of structure is apt to be edited material, and does not come to our hands, as a rule, ipsissimis verbis, or in the stage of raw unmanufactured goods. ”

“ The origin of all jocular or semi-serious literature and art is referable, of course, to a stage of human development when the deviation from a certain standard of feeling or opinion could be appreciable ”

“ Origin of this Class of Literature, and its Dependence on the Conditions of Society—Jests before Jest-books—Influence of the Arts of Writing and Printing Long Subsequent to the Introduction of Caricature and Humour.
THE earliest form or phase of the Jest was the product of an illiterate age. A knowledge of the art of writing was a discovery long subsequent to the rise of a taste for the expression of the laughable, for the sake either of amusement or of ridicule. The primitive authors of jokes were men who employed, not the pen, but the chisel and the brush ”

“ Into certain works of fiction, not professedly or specifically jocular, the humorous side or element has been unwittingly introduced by the authors in connection with the treatment of their topics; and in one or two cases at least it is so much so, that the whole production amounts to little better than an elaborate and tedious jest. ”

“ Where such features occur in a collection of children’s rhymes, they are to be treated as waifs and strays, which have smuggled themselves in under some disguise, and require an experienced eye to single them out. All that can be said is, that the book is not much the better for them, and would not be much the worse without them. They have a bizarre air. They are apt to strike a jarring chord. ”

“ But, on the other hand, there are two classes which, from their nature, have a peculiar and an inherent liability to sophistication—namely, the Epigram and the Story; [100] and in fact the very structure of these ought to be, as a general rule, a sufficient indication and evidence of their artificial development. The droll and amusing tales in the old English jest-books have been obviously woven into a narrative shape by the original recipient of the particulars, or by some one else more experienced in the science of literary cuisine. ”

“ The favourite Greek and Roman authors with compilers of Ana have been at all periods Plutarch, Aulus Gellius, Lucian, Athenæus, and Diogenes Laertius. It is very rarely that Homer or Cicero is enlisted in their service by the caterers [34] for popular entertainment; and even in the case of the Merry Tales and Quick Answers the stories about the ancients are appended at the end, as if they had been an afterthought or a stratagem for making out the copy. ”