A favorite trick of the Nonsensists is the coining of words to suit their needs, and Lear and Carroll are especially happy in their inventions of this kind.
Lear gives us such gems as scroobious, meloobious, ombliferous, borascible, slobaciously, himmeltanious, flumpetty, and mumbian; while the best of Lewis Carroll's coined words are those found in "Jabberwocky."
Another of the great Nonsensists is W. S. Gilbert. Unlike Lear or Carroll, his work is not characterized by absurd words or phrases; he prefers a still wider scope, and invents a ridiculous plot. The "Bab Ballads," as well as Mr. Gilbert's comic opera librettos, hinge upon schemes of ludicrous impossibility, which are treated as the most natural proceedings in the world. The best known of the "Bab Ballads" is no doubt "The Yarn of the 'Nancy Bell,'" which was long since set to music and is still a popular song. In addition to his talent for nonsense, Mr. Gilbert possesses a wonderful rhyming facility, and juggles cleverly with difficult and unusual metres.
In regard to his "Bab Ballads," Mr. Gilbert gravely says that "they are not, as a rule, founded on fact," and, remembering their gory and often cannibalistic tendencies, we are grateful for this assurance. An instance of Gilbert's appreciation of other people's nonsense is his parody of Lear's verse:
There was an old man in a tree
Who was horribly bored by a bee;
When they said, "Does it buzz?"
He replied, "Yes, it does!
It's a regular brute of a bee!"
The parody attributed to Gilbert is called "A Nonsense Rhyme in
Blank Verse":
There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp;
When they asked, "Does it hurt?"
He replied, "No, it doesn't,
But I thought all the while 'twas a Hornet!"
Thackeray wrote spirited nonsense, but much of it had an under-meaning, political or otherwise, which bars it from the field of sheer nonsense.
The sense of nonsense is no respecter of persons; even staid old Dr. Johnson possessed it, though his nonsense verses are marked by credible fact and irrefutable logic. Witness these two examples:
As with my hat upon my head
I walked along the Strand,
I there did meet another man
With his hat in his hand.