JOKES.

Western Star, Issue 374, 21 August 1880, Page 9 (Supplement)

JOKES.

Pew things are more difficult 1 to define than a joke. Some minds are peculiarly apt to detect them, others cannot he made to apprehend them at . all. Good specimens, as a rule, are rare. Albert Smith once suggested the foundation of a hospital for “decayed and worn-out jokes,” and it would be easy to name a score of jests that might reasonably claim admission into such an institution, on the double grounds of age and poverty. Jokes wear a very long time, and their badness does not appear to shorten their term of existence. Long after they have ceased to fulfil their original avocation of amusing their hearers or readers, they drag on a melancholy life. Dull speakers bring them in to fill up blanks in their addresses, ephemeral publications fall back on them to supply the dearth of other news. The point of the jest, the bloom of the flower, has long passed ; away, but the faded relics remain. Next to writing a good novel we should imagine it must be the most difficult of tasks to originate a good joke. No one can do so deliberately in cold blood. How tedious does the professed “funny man” generally become. As to the inveterate punster, he; is Simply a bore, and deserves to be ranked with the practical joker, as objectionable specimens of humanity. Jokes change in fashion with the age, the wit of one century is the tediousness of another. We may see this in reading old authors. Take : Shakespeare's plays. Can any one deny that some parts of the “ comedy business” occasionally strike him as heavy, far-fetched, and (if we dare breathe such heresy) even tedious ? Specimens of tlie best and most delicately finished jokes, quaint satirical allusions that must provoke smiles as long as humanity remains the same, abound in our great poet’s pages; but are there not also examples of what we know was reckoned courtly wit in the days of Elizabeth, hut what seems dull fun to 336

modern ears P Perhaps Shakespeare himself inserted such dialogues less as jests than as specimens of the conversations of the age. The same pencil that drew Falstaff, and Shallow, and Dogberry, who amuse us still because their prototypes yet walk tho earth, could hardly have recorded, say, the tedious fun of the schoolmaster Holofernes, in Love’s Labor Lost, as a specimen of genuine humor. Perhaps it was of such passages George 111. was mindful when he expressed an opinion that Shakespeare was “ sad stuff.“ "Whatever may by our opinion of the Ring’s taste, it is impossible to withhold our admiration of his candour. How many people held similar views of a much-praised, littleread author (Milton for example), but lack courage to avow them ? Jokes have always flourished! more in France than England, our neighbours apparently understanding the creation and appreciation of such delicate goods better than we do. If Sydney Smith is _to be believed, his power of understanding a joke at all halts on this side the Tweed ; yet the Scotch have a dry humour that is peculiarly their own, and all of iis can recall some excellent jests of purely Scottish origin. Ireland is supposed to have a monopoly of that type of joke called “ bulls ; ” but we think Miss Edgeworth was right when she claimed as one of the choicest specimens of this classs that uttered by an English clergyman, when he informed his flock that “ Moses teatables of stone were made of skittim wood.”

Jokes have a historical character about them. We can distinguish the' airy, wif of the last century, the light persiflage that might have been uttered in tbe buodoir of Madame de Pompadour, or at the supper table of the Eegency; the ponderous humor of the 10th century; the grave, half-savage jesting of the Middle Ages. These latter present a curious chapter in the history of humor. As in many of Swift’s works, what a strange undercurrent of melancholy bitterness underlies the jest. The ag«j that produced the Dance of Death, “Eeynard the Pox,” “ The Vision of Piers Ploughman,’’ had cynicism in its laughter. It is in no spirit of merry good fellowship that most of themedimval jesters wrote their satires, painted their pictures, carved the quaint sarcasm on their age that yet look down on us from roof and battlement. Probably, as I)israeli holds, “such things were the expression of suppressed opinion.” The scaffold and the stake awaited the too zealous reformer, but the jester was privileged- Therefore did men who saw the evil of their age, and yet were not “ born to be martyrs;” give' Vent to their feelings in the safer form of covert satire, Savonarola and Luther openly attacked the Church abuses of iho day, but centuries before other voices had been whispering what they uttered aloud, Dante had beheld Popes in the abysses of his “ Inferno/’ As far back as 1300, satirical pictures of churchmen existed. Paintings aed sculptures of a wolf preaching to a flock of sheep ; a fox addressing geese ; a cat, dressed as an abbess, holding a platter for a mouse to lick ; an ape, sitting by the side of a dying man, holding up a crucifix with one hand, and rifling his pockets with the other—these, and a hundred other broader satires greet us in tbe pages of missals, the gargoyles of churches, the pillars of cathedrals. It is difficult to account for their admission into such places, save on the theory that the people satirised were too dull to comprehend the ridicule; but they stand as an expression of the bitterness that filled the heart of the sculptor or painter, as he expressed by his art the feelings he dared not put into words. We can imagine the discontented heir whose father had been induced to enrich some abbey at his expense, cheerfully undertaking to embellish the church with his carving, and throwing into the countenance of the ape, who is robbing the dying man, as strong a likeness as he dared to the monk who had preached his broad lands away. Perhaps the good fathers never saw his meaning—anyway they permitted the carving to remain. ; Later centuries brought another curb i oils ( style of wit into fashion. “ A jest, I May catch Mm! whom a sermon flies,’ j writes an old poet ; and divines of th j sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ap pear tp! have agreed yvith him, and en--1 deavoured to combine the jest and sermon in their discourses. Jokes, not always of the most refined kind, abound in the pages of Latimer; and; even writers like Jeremy Taylor have ooj casional quaint allusions that it is difficult to read without a smile. Such pulpit ■humor was, of course, eclipsed by the •Preaching Friars of earlier days; but their coarse buffoonery can hardly be dignified by the name of jesting. It was, as a rule, as clumsy as it was profane, interesting only to the student of history as a representation of the curious manner in which , in the age are mingled gross superstition with utter irreverence; and many trembled before a relic and made coarse jests on the most sacred Of subjects. The old “ Miracle Plays ’’ present some strange examples of this kind Caricature, or satirical joking, has long ‘been a favorite political weapon. Punch’s “ cartoons ” have been preceded by centuries of like sketches. Disraeli mentions a rare print circulated in England shortly after the marriage of Philip and Mary, in which the Queen is represented as extremely thin and wasted, with several Spaniards hanging on her and sucking her like leeches. At the foot was printed a list of all the pensions and dignities she had conferred on her husband and his retinue. English jealousy of foreigners appears to be an old story. Some great men have amused themselves by collecting all the satirical “ squibs ” issued about them, and, as it were, joined in the laugh at their own expense. Others, again, have so dreaded ridicule that the satirical remarks of adversaries have embittered —sometimes

absolutely shortened—their lives. The singular jealousy of men (or women) of lalent, exhibited by both Louis XIV. and Napoleon 1., was said to have proceeded from a dread of being satirised by them. Mdme. de Stael’s talent appear to have been the only reason for the Emperor’s inveterate dislike to her. Many an unlucky joker has ruined bis prospects in life by an ill-timed, hori-mot, It required a very generous nature to forgive an insult of this description. William the Conqueror’s cruel treatment of the city whose inhabitants had hung skins over their walls for “ the grandson of the tanner;” Henry Y-’s revenge for the Dauphin’s insulting present of tennis historical examples of the evil end of an unreasonable jest. “As for jest,” writes Lord Bacon, “there are certain things that ought to be privileged against it, namely, religion, great persons, matters of state, any man’s present business of importance, and any case that deserveth pity.” This definition would hardly suit modern ideas. Imagine* an election time when “ great persons and matters of state” were to be held sacred from ridicule! The comic publications might as well give up business at once. Yet there is wisdom as well as kindliness in part of the counsel.— J English Paper.