Studies in jocular literature

The Book-Lover’s Library.
Edited by Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A.
STUDIES IN JOCULAR LITERATURE.
A POPULAR SUBJECT MORE CLOSELY CONSIDERED.
BY W. CAREW HAZLITT.
Ne moy reproues sans cause, quar mon entent est de bone amour.
LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK, 62 PATERNOSTER ROW 1890
Introductory Remarks on the Real Use and Importance of Jests and Anecdotes.
ONE of the Anglo-Saxon kings gave the manor of Walworth to his jester Nithardus; and we have all heard how the magnificent benefaction of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, subsequently repaired by Sir Richard Whittington, was founded by Rahere, the joculator and favourite of a later monarch of this isle. In former days, to be a fool within certain lines, or a buffoon of a special type, was a walk of 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; but shabby constitutional restraints precluded him from endowing a pleasant fellow, who could play a conjurer’s tricks with the risible muscles and the purse-strings of his sovereign, with a large and valuable estate.
Nay, before the Stuart era, Henry VII., whose parsimony has been exaggerated, and who gave freely to many charitable objects, had to content himself with presenting the makers of jeux d’esprit with a few shillings—the shillings, of course, of that epoch.
The greater rarity of learning, and its status as a special mystery or cult, surrounded these ancient scholars with an atmosphere which we have not only a difficulty, but a sort of delicacy, perhaps, in thoroughly penetrating, so as to enable us to arrive at an absolutely accurate valuation of their gifts. Among their contemporaries and even immediate descendants they were regarded as something more than human; and this sentiment, while it, as a rule, limited itself to worshipful awe, not unfrequently degenerated into a superstitious dread fatal to the possessors of incomprehensible faculties.