Studies in jocular literature

by William Carew Hazlitt

It was as if the jest-books of all prior epochs had been gathered unexceptionally up, and burned by the common hangman, to let the British community start afresh. So broad was the line of demarcation between the Old régime and the New; and it is not difficult to see that this truly marvellous change is an evolution from novel phases and developments of social life, and was just what was to be anticipated. In this special way, perhaps, a more complete alteration had taken place since the Tudor period than has taken place between the last century and the present one; or, in other words, in the last hundred and fifty years. We cannot believe that an ordinary reader of Henry VIII.’s days would have had any relish or value for the fun of the earlier half of the eighteenth century; but an ordinary reader of the present time perfectly appreciates the anecdotes and humour—not exactly of the primitive lean fasciculus to which Joe Miller was at the outset limited, but of the wits who flourished under Walpole and side by side with Pope.

This group of men, authors, actors, dandies, and bons viveurs—is the true lineal ancestry of Sheridan and Matthews, Sydney Smith and Jerrold; and, mutatis mutandis, the form, temper, and tone of the school have suffered no material variation, since its first rise into an immortal existence under the auspices of Miller within the genial precinct of Clare Market.

It is upward of two decades since I launched the so-called “Shakespear Jest-Books”; and, looking at them to-day, I cannot help saying that I see in them a means supplied to the inquirer of forming a comparative estimate between the ancient school and the early English on the one hand, and the modern English on the other. The volumes form a selection of types from 1526 to 1639, and embrace within their limits almost every variety of jocular invention. Even in the miscellany which passed under the name of Tarlton’s Jests there had been commencing symptoms of a change of fashion and requirement; and in Taylor the Water Poet’s budget of facetiæ, which he christened his Wit and Mirth, 1629, we perceive that the revolution has reached a farther stage. The strokes of fun, which delighted the contemporary readers of the Hundred Merry Tales, still preserved their place; but with them are mingled anecdotes more redolent and characteristic of the Stuart period, preparing us for those still later and still grosser publications which marked the reign of the second Charles.

The Hundred Merry Tales, with which the series naturally and properly opens, sets the example of plagiarism by adopting stories from still earlier sources; but the obligations of the book to ready-made or convertible material are relatively slight, and the best portions, including the inimitable account of the “Miller that stole the nuts of the tailor that stole a sheep,” and the dramatic story of the Maltman of Colebrook, seem, so far as one has the means of judging, to be founded on actual incidents.

The tales bear constant and unmistakable testimony of having been composed by some one who possessed a keen sense of humour and a hearty relish for the ludicrous; that they were from the hand of a literary man and a scholar of no mean ability, is not to be reasonably doubted; and if we were informed on credible authority that some of them offered to us the fruits of the leisure of even so distinguished a public character as Sir Thomas More, we should receive the ascription without misgiving, and feel that there were among his graver works some which we could better spare.

Not only the relationship subsisting between More and the Rastells, but the peculiar tone and cast of the tales, long since induced me to speculate on the possible concern of the author of Utopia in their production; and every one is aware that More was noted for his pleasant and facetious conversation, although it may not be so generally familiar that he signalised himself as a versifier, and as the writer of the droll tale of the tipstaff who tried to pass himself off as a friar. Yet of course there is not a tittle of direct evidence in this direction; and, again, it is impossible to avoid the persuasion that not indeed the mere fatherlessness of the work or absence of a name on the title, but the complete silence of the biographers and literary critics of and after the time on this point, tell against the idea. On the other hand, the official position of More, in an even greater measure than his religious tenets as a strict upholder of the Romish hierarchy, made the open association of his name with an enterprise so uncomplimentary to the Catholic priesthood eminently impolitic and inexpedient either as actual part of the title or as mere matter of hearsay.

But if it was not More himself, it was a person of congenial temperament, of whose identity he must have had some shrewd hint from the printer, and who had no taste for literary notoriety or for the ordinary bookseller’s garnish in the way of seductive forefronts. For a title-page more laconic and uncommercial was probably never bestowed on a book of the kind.

CHAPTER XIII.

The “Hundred Merry Tales”—The Authorship Discussed.