THE MAN WHO INVENTED LIMERICKS.

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 46, 6 July 1908, Page 8

THE MAN WHO INVENTED LIMERICKS.

The inventor of the limerick has long been beyond the reach of gratitude or blame. He died nearly 20 years ago, after contributing much to the world's gaiety.

Not that his claim to fame rested solely on his invention of limericks. For Edward Lear, the father of the modern limerick, was a famous artist long before he wrote the “Book of- Nonsense," which has provided many thousands of people—young and old— with endless amusement. Lear, who was born in 1813. was a native of Lancashire, and from his boyhood had a passion for painting. His cleverness in this direction attracted the attention of the Earl of Derby, who sent him to Italy and Greece, where Lear painted many magnificent landscapes. He exhibited at the Royal Academy for nearly twenty-five years, although the public knew him better perhaps, by his illustrated books of travel than by his paintings. Lear's ornithological and other zoological drawings, too, became famous for their extreme fidelity to Nature and the great artistic skill with which the figures were executed.

“How came it, then, that such a man invented limericks ?" the reader will probably be asking by this time. Lear explained this himsellf some time before he died. It seems that a friend suggested to him that the lines beginning “There was an old Man of Tobago" formed a type of verse which lent itself to limitless variety for rhymes and pictures. "And thenceforth," says Lear, “the greater part of the original drawings and verses for the first ‘Book of Nonsense’ were struck off with a pen no assistance .Raving ever been given me in any way but that of uproarious delight and welcome at the appearance of every new absurdity." And yet we can scarcely hold up all Lear’s limericks as examples to be copied. Lear took great liberties with the King’s English, and was not at all particular about inventing adjectives when he could find nothing in the dictionary to fit. But they came so trippingly off the tongue, and were so very funny, that the new words were hailed with delight. In the following limerick, for instance, Lear provided a new species of animals : There was an old person of Ware Who rode on the back of a bear ; When they asked, “Does it trot ?' A He said, “Certainly not ! He's a Moppsikon Floppsikon bear !" Equally amusing are the lines which read There was a young person of Crete Whose toilet was far from complete ; She dressed in a sack Spickle-speckJed with black, That ombliferous person of Crete. Only now and again, however, did Lear exercise his ingenuity in the matter of coining words, and the following rhymes are fair examples of what he could do without resorting to any inventiveness There was a young lady whose chin Resembled the point of a pin ; So she had it made sharp. And purchased a harp, And played several tunes with her chin. There was an old man of Vienna, Who lived upon tincture of senna When that did not agree He took camomile tea, That nasty old man of Vienna.There was an old person whose habits Induced him to feed upon rabbits; When he’d eaten eighteen He turned perfectly green, , Upon which he relinquished those habits. There was an old lady whose folly. Induced her to sit in a holly; Whereupon, by a thorn In her dress being torn, I She quickly became melancholy. —"Tit-Bits."