Now in this there is absolutely nothing that will bear analysis; it is the laughing spirit of the man that carries you on, amusing you in spite of yourself, in spite of your decided feeling that really there is nothing to laugh at. But, somehow, what with the ready jingle of the rhyme, and the perfect good humour of the ridicule, amused you are.
Barham's loudest fun was generated when he had to deal with obsolete and obsolescent superstitions. He loved to laugh at the vulgar idea of the Devil—the fiend with horns, tail, and hoofs, whom Cuvier ruthlessly dismissed as 'a graminivorous animal.' Thus, in the 'Lay of Saint Cuthbert,' we find him describing a group of demons at dinner:—
'Few ate more hearty
Than Madame Astarte,
And Hecate, considered the belles of the party.
Between them was seated Leviathan, eager
To do the polite, and take wine with Belphegor:
Here was Morbleu (a French devil) supping soup-meagre,
And there, munching leeks, Davy Jones of Tredegar—