I have dwelt on this point because the biographical scrap, so far from standing alone or being a rare type, is a member of an exceedingly numerous family, and the stricture has a common application to it and its congeners.
The Retort and the Pun, and indeed the entire genus of succincter jests, are least prone to editorial treatment. But, on the other hand, there are two classes which, from their nature, have a peculiar and an inherent liability to sophistication—namely, the Epigram and the Story; and in fact the very structure of these ought to be, as a general rule, a sufficient indication and evidence of their artificial development. The droll and amusing tales in the old English jest-books have been obviously woven into a narrative shape by the original recipient of the particulars, or by some one else more experienced in the science of literary cuisine. The inimitable account of John Adroyns, who, after performing on some provincial stage the part of his Satanic majesty, walked home in his theatrical garb, and met with a complication of mishaps, is an excellent specimen of the professed jocular compilation by a third person, as distinguished from a piece of humour delivered to us exactly or approximately in the terms which the actor or actors employed. So long as a pleasantry presents itself to notice with honest credentials, there is no ground for complaint and no source of difficulty; but it is where an anecdote is introduced under fictitious colours, that the critical inquirer is apt to feel, if not embarrassment, at least annoyance.
I shall transcribe one illustration of this kind of cross-bred offspring from Maloniana:—
“Few classical quotations have ever been more neatly applied than the following. Mr. Burke had been speaking in the House of Commons for some time, and paused. He soon proceeded, and some time afterwards paused again, so long (which with him is very uncommon) that Sir William Bagot thought he had done, and got up to speak. ‘Sir’ (said Mr. B.), ‘I have not finished.’ Sir W. B. made an apology, and said, ‘As the hon. gentleman had spoken a long time, and had paused unusually long also, he imagined that he had concluded, but he found he was mistaken. Some allowance, however, he hoped, would be made for him as a country gentleman, for—
‘Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis; at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.’”
If the process by which the passage from the poet, “so neatly applied,” was, subsequently to the event, spliced to it, is not apparent to the reader, I confess that it is so to myself; and few things are less probable than the pronunciation of such an impromptu under such conditions. Yet we find Malone, a man of the world and a sagacious critic, setting down the passage in undisturbed credulity and absolute good faith as a fact within his knowledge and as a spontaneous performance in its integrity. It may seem very remarkable that its superficial unlikelihood should not have struck him; but it is the case that entertaining gossip or laughable traits concerning celebrated people usually pass unchallenged, even when a slight scrutiny would suffice to expose their spuriousness either in whole or in part; and it must be remembered that the bulk of our Ana have come to us through channels infinitely more open to corrupting agencies and less discriminating than Malone. But the Jest, in its many varieties, is indulgently regarded, whether by the general public, which takes the matter as proven, or by the literary fraternity itself, for whom it serves as a pleasant relaxation from severer studies.
As it is with the Story, so also it fares with the Epigrammatic bon-mot or facetious notion thrown into the metrical form. There is a tolerably familiar one, which carries plainly enough on its front, when we approach the subject in an inquiring temper, the traces of its parentage:—
“A fisherman one morn display’d
Upon the Steine his net;
Corinna could not promenade,