BATHOS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 249, 20 October 1928, Page 16 (Supplement)

BATHOS.

FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE

RIDICULOUS.

It is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous; a step often taken by bombastical writers. A well-known instance is in the lines—

And thou, Dalhousle, the great god of war, ' .... Lieutenant-Colonel to the Sari of liar.

Such anti-climaxes destroy all the effect of what precedes them, and even when not so glaring as the above are to be avoided. Obituary Lapses. Poets of reputation are sometimes caught tripping in this respect. Alexander Smith, so popular in the middle of the last century, ends a serious poem with the lines:— My heart Is In the grave with her; The family went abroad. Even Tennyson supplies a similar instance in the concluding lines of "Enoch Arden" — So passed the strong, heroic soul away: And when they burled him the little port Had seldom seen a costlier funeraL

Epitaphs furnish unintentional anticliamxes in abundance; the following couple are noted by Professor Nichol:— Robert Boyle, the father of Chemistry and brother of the Earl of Cork.

He was a good husband, an exemplary parent, an honest man, and a first-rate shot.

The anti-climax is a favourite and effective weapon in the hands of the burlesque writer:—

Lead us to some sunny isle Yonder o'er the western deep, Where the skies for ever smile And the blacks forever sleep.

Tricks of Parody.

Bathos is the stock-in-trade of the parodist, who raises a laugh by contrasting the seriousness of the original with the levity of the parody. Such a form of humour is often to be deprecated, but the reader may feel amused without remorse at the unintentional bathos of such anti-climaxes as the following, which is taken from a speech of Lord Kenyon to a dishonest butler who had stolen his master's wine:— Prisoner at the bay, you stand convicted . . . of a crime of inexpressible atrocity, a crime that defiles the sacred springs of domestic confidence, and is calculated to strike alarm into the breast of every Englishman who invests largely in the choicer vintages of Southera Europe. To end with, the judge accused him of "feathering his nest with his master's bottles." A final instance is taken from Horace Smith's "Tin Trumpet." He quotes an account of a storm written by "a lady of some celebrity in literature," who states "that in spite of the captain's entreaties I firmly persisted in remaining upon deck although the tempest had now increased to such a frightful hurricane that it was not without great difficulty I could hpldup my parasoh"