LAMPOON, a virulent satire either in prose or verse; the idea of injustice and unscrupulousness seems to be essential to its definition. Although in its use the word is properly and almost exclusively English, the derivation appears to be French. Littré derives it from a term of Parisian argot, lamper, to drink, greedily, in great mouthfuls. This word appears to have begun to be prevalent in the middle of the 17th century, and Furetière has preserved a fragment from a popular song, which says:—
| Jacques fuyant de Dublin Dit à Lauzun, son cousin, “Prenez soin de ma couronne, J’aurai soin de ma personne, Lampons! lampons!” |
—that is to say, let us drink heavily, and begone dull care. Scarron speaks of a wild troop, singing leridas and lampons. There is, also, a rare French verb, lamponner, to attack with ridicule, used earlier in the 17th century by Brantôme. In its English form, lampoon, the word is used by Evelyn in 1645, “Here they still paste up their drolling lampoons and scurrilous papers,” and soon after it is a verb,—“suppose we lampooned all the pretty women in Town.” Both of these forms, the noun and the verb, have been preserved ever since in English, without modification, for violent and reckless literary censure. Tom Brown (1663-1704) was a past master in the art of lampooning, and some of his attacks on the celebrities of his age have a certain vigour. When Dryden became a Roman Catholic, Brown wrote:—
| Traitor to God and rebel to thy pen, Priest-ridden Poet, perjured son of Ben, If ever thou prove honest, then the nation May modestly believe in transubstantiation. |
Several of the heroes of the Dunciad, and in particular John Oldmixon (1673-1742), were charged without unfairness with being professional lampooners. The coarse diatribes which were published by Richard Savage (1697-1743), mainly against Lady Macclesfield, were nothing more nor less than lampoons, and the word may with almost equal justice be employed to describe the coarser and more personal portions of the satires of Churchill. As a rule, however, the lampoon possessed no poetical graces, and in its very nature was usually anonymous. The notorious Essay on Woman (1764) of John Wilkes was a lampoon, and was successfully proceeded against as an obscene libel. The progress of civilization and the discipline of the law made it more and more impossible for private malice to take the form of baseless and scurrilous attack, and the lampoon, in its open shape, died of public decency in the 18th century. Malice, especially in an anonymous form, and passing in manuscript from hand to hand, has continued, however, to make use of this very unlovely form of literature. It has constantly reappeared at times of political disturbance, and the French have seldom failed to exercise their wicked wit upon their unpopular rulers. See also [Pasquinade].
(E. G.)
LAMPREY, a fish belonging to the family Petromyzontidae (from πέτρος and μύζω, literally, stone-suckers), which with the hag-fishes or Myxinidae forms a distinct subclass of fishes, the Cyclostomata, distinguished by the low organization of their skeleton, which is cartilaginous, without vertebral segmentation, without ribs or real jaws, and without limbs. The lampreys are readily recognized by their long, eel-like, scaleless body, terminating anteriorly in the circular, suctorial mouth characteristic of the whole sub-class. On each side, behind the head, there is a row of seven branchial openings, through which the water is conveyed to and from the gills. By means of their mouth they fasten to stones, boats, &c., as well as to other fishes, their object being to obtain a resting-place on the former, whilst they attach themselves to the latter to derive nourishment from them. The inner surface of their cup-shaped mouth is armed with pointed teeth, with which they perforate the integuments of the fish attacked, scraping off particles of the flesh and sucking the blood. Mackerel, cod, pollack and flat-fishes are the kinds most frequently attacked by them in the sea; of river-fish the migratory Salmonidae and the shad are sometimes found with the marks of the teeth of the lamprey, or with the fish actually attached to them. About fifteen species are known from the coasts and rivers of the temperate regions of the northern and southern hemispheres. In Great Britain and Europe generally three species occur, viz. the large spotted sea-lamprey (Petromyzon marinus), the river-lamprey or lampern (P. fluviatilis), and the small lampern or “pride” or “sand-piper” (P. branchialis). The first two are migratory, entering rivers in the spring to spawn; of the river-lamprey, however, specimens are met with in fresh water all the year round. In North America about ten species of lamprey occur, while in South America and Australasia still others are found. Lampreys, especially the sea-lamprey, are esteemed as food, formerly more so than at present; but their flesh is not easy of digestion. Henry I. of England is said to have fallen a victim to this, his favourite dish. The species of greatest use is the river-lamprey, which as bait is preferred to all others in the cod and turbot fisheries of the North Sea. Yarrell states that formerly the Thames alone supplied from 1,000,000 to 1,200,000 lamperns annually, but their number has so much fallen off that, for instance, in 1876 only 40,000 were sold to the cod-fishers. That year, however, was an unusually bad year; the lamperns, from their scarcity, fetched £8, 10s. a thousand, whilst in ordinary years £5 is considered a fair price. The season for catching lamperns closes in the Thames about the middle of March. The origin of the name lamprey is obscure; it is an adaptation of Fr. lamproie, Med. Lat. lampreda; this has been taken as a variant of another Med. Lat. form Lampetra, which occurs in ichthyological works of the middle ages; the derivation from lambere petras, to lick stones, is a specimen of etymological ingenuity. The development of lampreys has received much attention on the part of naturalists, since Aug. Müller discovered that they undergo a metamorphosis, and that the minute worm-like lamperns previously known under the name of Ammocoetes, and abundant in the sand and mud of many streams, were nothing but the undeveloped young of the river-lampreys and small lamperns. See [Cyclostomata].