So they row’d, and there we landed—
O venusta Sirmio!
Can one doubt for a moment that he was thinking, when he wrote these words, of that superb stanza with which the “Yonghy Bonghy” opens:
On the coast of Coromandel,
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods,
Dwelt the Yonghy Bonghy Bo.
Personally, I prefer Lear’s poem; it is the richer and the fuller of the two.
Lear’s genius is at its best in the Nonsense Rhymes, or Limericks, as a later generation has learned to call them. In these I like to think of him not merely as a poet and a draughtsman—and how unique an artist the recent efforts of Mr. Nash to rival him have only affirmed—but also as a profound social philosopher. No study of Lear would be complete without at least a few remarks on “They” of the Nonsense Rhymes. “They” are the world, the man in the street; “They” are what the leader-writers in the twopenny press would call all Right-Thinking Men and Women; “They” are Public Opinion. The Nonsense Rhymes are, for the most part, nothing more nor less than episodes selected from the history of that eternal struggle between the genius or the eccentric and his fellow-beings. Public Opinion universally abhors eccentricity. There was, for example, that charming Old Man of Melrose who walked on the tips of his toes. But “They” said (with their usual inability to appreciate the artist), “It ain’t pleasant to see you at present, you stupid old man of Melrose.” Occasionally, when the eccentric happens to be a criminal genius, “They” are doubtless right. The Old Man with a Gong who bumped on it all the day long deserved to be smashed. (But “They” also smashed a quite innocuous Old Man of Whitehaven merely for dancing a quadrille with a raven.) And there was that Old Person of Buda, whose conduct grew ruder and ruder; “They” were justified, I dare say, in using a hammer to silence his clamour. But it raises the whole question of punishment and of the relation between society and the individual.
When “They” are not offensive, they content themselves with being foolishly inquisitive. Thus, “They” ask the Old Man of the Wrekin whether his boots are made of leather. “They” pester the Old Man in a Tree with imbecile questions about the Bee which so horribly bored him. In these encounters the geniuses and the eccentrics often get the better of the gross and heavy-witted public. The Old Person of Ware who rode on the back of a bear certainly scored off “Them.” For when “They” asked: “Does it trot?” He replied, “It does not.” (The picture shows it galloping ventre à terre.) “It’s a Moppsikon Floppsikon bear.” Sometimes, too, the eccentric actually leads “Them” on to their discomfiture. One thinks of that Old Man in a Garden, who always begged every one’s pardon. When “They” asked him, “What for?” he replied, “You’re a bore, and I trust you’ll go out of my garden.” But “They” probably ended up by smashing him.