‘Was walking with Homer, and talking
The very best Greek I was able—was able—
When Guy, Earl of Warwick, with Johnson and Garrick,
Would dance a Scotch-reel on the table—the table;
When Hannibal, rising, declared ’twas surprising
That gentlemen made such a riot—a riot—
And sent in a bustle to beg Lord John Russell
Would hasten and make them all quiet—all quiet.’
It may be that Mr. W. S. Gilbert had this in his mind when, in ‘Patience,’ he pictured the processes by which to manufacture a heavy dragoon; but here, again, the design is too obvious, the incongruity a little too apparent. The late Shirley Brooks extracted much fun out of a mosaic of quotations from the poets, beginning:
‘Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
That to be hated needs but to be seen,
Invites my lay; be present, sylvan maids,
And graceful deer reposing in the shades.’
Very good nonsense is this, if not of the best; and it leads us up naturally to the more consummate performances of Mr. Calverley, whose exquisite mimicry of Mr. Browning and Miss Ingelow, in their most incomprehensible or most affected moods, is too well known to need description. Favourable mention may also be made of a certain ballad composed by the late Professor Palmer, in illustration of his inability to master nautical terms, which he furbishes up in mirth-provoking fashion.
But, putting aside Mr. Lear, the most successful, the most precious nonsense ever written has been supplied by writers still, happily, in our midst. And of these, of course, Mr. Lewis Carroll is obviously facile princeps—not only by reason of the immortal ‘Jabberwocky,’ but by reason, also, of ‘The Hunting of the Snark,’ in which there are some very felicitous passages.
‘They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care,
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.’
It requires genius, of a kind, to conceive and execute such lines as these, easy as (no doubt) it seems to write them. Not that Mr. Carroll is unapproachable. There are probably many who think that his ‘Jabberwocky’ is at least equalled by Mr. Gilbert’s ‘Sing for the Garish Eye,’ in which the invented words are truly ‘Carrollian’:
‘Sing for the garish eye,
When moonless brandlings cling;
Let the froddering crooner cry,
And the braddled sapster sing!’—
though, to be sure, Mr. Gilbert could hardly be expected to do anything better than that lovely quatrain of Bunthorne’s about ‘The dust of an earthy to-day’ and ‘The earth of a dusty to-morrow.’
The example set by Mr. Lear has been followed by many versifiers, who have sought to create their effects after a manner now sufficiently familiar. Thus, we have had multitudinous efforts like the following: