Opening…

Foreword

Outlining is a modern art. For centuries we have collected and selected, compiled and compended, but only of late have we outlined.

And an Outline is a result differing in kind from the other work mentioned, and presenting different conditions and contingencies.

An Outline, owing to its sweep of magnificent distances, can touch only the high spots, and can but skim those. Not in its province is criticism or exhaustive commentary. Not in its scope are long effusions or lengthy extracts.

Nor may it include everybody or everything that logically belongs to it.

An Outline is at best an irregular proposition, and the Outliner must follow his irregular path as best he may. But one thing is imperative, the Outliner must be conscientious. He must weigh to the best of his knowledge and belief the claims to inclusion that his opportunities present. He must pick and choose with all the discernment of which he is capable and while following his best principles of taste he must sink his personal preferences in his regard for his Outline as a whole.

Nor can he pick and choose his audience. To one reader,--or critic,--a hackneyed selection is tiresome, while to another it is a novelty and a revelation. And it must be remembered that a hackneyed poem is a favorite one and a favorite is one adjudged best, by a consensus of human opinion, and is therefore a high spot to be touched upon.

While the Outline is generally chronological, it is not a history and dates are not given. Also, when it seemed advisable to desert the chronological path for the topographical one, that was done.

Yet Foreign Literatures cannot be adequately treated in an Outline printed in English. Translations are at best misleading. If the translation is a poor one, the pith and moment of the original is partly, or wholly lost. And if the translation be of great merit, the work may show the merit of the new rendition rather than the original.

And aside from all that, few translations of Humor are to be found.

The translators of foreign tongues choose first the philosophy, the fiction or the serious poetry of the other nations, leaving the humor, if any there be, to hang unplucked on the tree of knowledge.

So the foreign material is scant, but the high spots are touched as far as could be found convenient.

The Outline stops at the year 1900. Humor since then is too close to be viewed in proper perspective.

But the present Outliner mainly hopes to show how, with steady footstep, from the Caveman to the current comics Humor has followed the Flag.

C. W. NEW YORK, April, 1923.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All rights on poems and prose in this volume are reserved by the authorized publisher, the author, or the holder of copyright, with whom special arrangements have been made for including such material in this work. The editor expresses thanks for such permission as indicated below.

D. APPLETON & COMPANY: For “To a Mosquito” by William Cullen Bryant; “Tushmaker’s Tooth-Puller” by G. H. Derby; and for “The Sad End of Brer Wolf” by Joel C. Harris, from Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings.

THE CENTURY CO.: For an extract from the “Chimmie Fadden” stories; and for the poem “What’s in a Name?” by R. K. Munkittrick.

DAVID MCKAY COMPANY: For “Ballad of the Noble Ritter Hugo” by Charles G. Leland.

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY: For “At the Sign of the Cock” by Owen Seaman; “Here Is the Tale” by Anthony C. Deane; and “On a Fan” and “The Rondeau” by Austin Dobson.

FORBES & COMPANY: For “If I Should Die To-Night” and “The Pessimist” by Ben King.

HARPER & BROTHERS: For “Elegy” and “Mavrone” by Arthur Guiterman. With the permission of the Estate of Samuel L. Clemens, the Mark Twain Company, and Harper & Brothers, publishers, with a full reservation of all copyright privileges is included an extract from the “Jumping Frog” by Mark Twain.

HURST & COMPANY: For an extract from “Bill Nye.”

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY: With their permission and by special arrangement with them as authorized publishers of the following authors’ works, are used selections from: Charles E. Carryl, Guy Wetmore Carryl, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James T. Fields, Bret Harte, John Hay, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, John G. Saxe, E. R. Sill, Bayard Taylor.

LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY: For five limericks and “The Two Old Bachelors” from Nonsense Books.

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.: For “A Philosopher” by Sam Walter Foss from Dreams in Homespun; also for an extract from “The Partington Papers” by B. P. Shillaber.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY: For verses from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS: For “Two Men” and “Miniver Cheevy” by E. A. Robinson from The Children of the Night and The Town Down the River.

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY: For an extract from Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley).

An Outline of Humor

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Introduction

Speaking exactly, an Outline of the World’s Humor is an impossibility.

For surely the adjectives most applicable to humor are elusive, evasive, evanescent, ephemeral, intangible, imponderable, and other terms expressing unavailability.

To outline such a thing is like trying to trap a sunbeam or bound an ocean.

Yet an Outline of the History of the World’s recorded humor as evolved by the Human Race, seems within the possibilities.

First of all, it must be understood that the term humor is here used in its broadest, most comprehensive sense. Including both wit and humor; including the comic, fun, mirth, laughter, gayety, repartee,--all types and classes of jests and jokes.

The earliest reference to this mental element is that of Aristotle, and the word he uses to represent it is translated the Ridiculous.

His definition states that the Ridiculous is that which is in itself incongruous, without involving the notion of danger or pai

Coleridge thus refers to Aristotle’s definition:

“Where the laughable is its own end, and neither inference nor moral is intended, or where at least the writer would wish it so to appear, there arises what we call drollery. The pure, unmixed, ludicrous or laughable belongs exclusively to the understanding, and must be presented under the form of the senses; it lies within the spheres of the eye and the ear, and hence is allied to the fancy. It does not appertain to the reason or the moral sense, and accordingly is alien to the imagination. I think Aristotle has already excellently defined the laughable, τò γελοíον, as consisting of, or depending on, what is out of its proper time and place, yet without danger or pain. Here the impropriety--τò ἄτοπον--is the positive qualification; the dangerlessness--τò ἀχίνδυνον--the negative. The true ludicrous is its own end. When serious satire commences, or satire that is felt as serious, however comically drest, free and genuine laughter ceases; it becomes sardonic. This you experience in reading Young, and also not unfrequently in Butler. The true comic is the blossom of the nettle.”

Yet, notwithstanding Coleridge’s scientific views on the subject, Humor is not an exact science. It is, more truly, an art, whose principles are based on several accepted theories, and some other theories, not so readily accepted or admitted only in part by these who have thought and written on the subject.

A true solution of the mystery of why a joke makes us laugh, has yet to be found. To the mind of the average human being, anything that makes him laugh is a joke. Why it does so, there are very few to know and fewer still to care.

Nor are the Cognoscenti in much better plight. A definition of humor has been attempted by many great and wise minds. Like squaring the circle, it has been argued about repeatedly, it has been written about voluminously. It has been settled in as many different ways as there have been commentators on the subject. And yet no definition, no formula has ever been evolved that is entirely satisfactory.

Aristotle’s theory of the element of the incongruous has come to be known as the Disappointment theory, or Frustrated Expectation.

But Aristotle voiced another theory, which he, in turn, derived from Plato.

Plato said, though a bit indefinitely, that the pleasure we derive in laughing at the comic is an enjoyment of other people’s misfortune, due to a feeling of superiority or gratified vanity that we ourselves are not in like plight.

This is called the Derision theory, and as assimilated and expressed by Aristotle comes near to impinging on and coinciding with his own Disappointment theory.

Moreover, he attempted to combine the two.

For, he said, we always laugh at someone, but in the case, where laughter arises from a deceived expectation, our mistake makes us laugh at ourselves.

In fact, Plato held, in his vague and indefinite statements that there is a disappointment element, a satisfaction element, and sometimes a combination of the two in the make-up of the thing we are calling Humor.

All of which is not very enlightening, but it is to be remembered that those were the first fluttering flights of imagination that sought to pin down the whole matter; yet among the scores that have followed, diverging in many directions, we must admit few, if any, are much more succinct or satisfactory.

The Derision or Discomfiture Theory holds that all pleasure in laughing at a comic scene is an enjoyment of another’s discomfiture. Yet it must be only discomfiture, not grave misfortune or sorrow.

If a man’s hat blows off and he runs out into the street after it, we laugh; but if he is hit by a passing motor car, we do not laugh. If a fat man slips on a banana peel and lands in a mud puddle, we laugh; but if he breaks his leg we do not laugh.

It is the ridiculous discomfiture of another that makes a joke, not the serious accident, and though there are other types and other theories of the cause of humor, doubtless the majority of jokes are based on this principle.

From the Circus Clown to Charlie Chaplin, episodes of discomfiture make us laugh. Every newspaper cartoon or comic series hinges on the discomfiture of somebody. The fly on the bald head, the collar button under the bureau, the henpecked husband, all depend for their humor on the trifling misfortune that makes its victim ridiculous.

An enjoyment of this discomfiture of a fellow man is inherent in human nature, and though there are subtler jests, yet this type has a grip on the risibilities that can never be loosened.

Can we doubt that it was the Serpent’s laughing at the discomfiture of Adam and Eve, caught in deshabille, that caused them to rush for the nearest fig tree? Or perhaps, their eyes being opened, they laughed at one another. Anyway, they were decidedly discomfited, and did their best to remedy matters.

This Derision Theory includes also the jests at the ignorance or stupidity of another. The enormous vogue of the Noodle jokes, some centuries ago, hinged on the delight felt in the superiority of the hearer over the subject of the jest. All laughable blunders, every social faux pas, all funny stories of children’s sayings and doings are based on the consciousness of superiority. Practical jokes represent the simplest form of this theory, as in them the discomfiture of the other person is the prime element, with no subtle byplay to relieve it.

A mild example is the polite rejoinder of the street car conductor when a lady asked at which end of the car she should get off.

“Either end, madame,” he responded, “both ends stop.”

An extreme specimen is the man who told the story of a burning house--“I saw a fellow up on the roof,” he related, “and I called to him, ‘Jump, and I’ll catch you in a blanket!’ Well, I had to laugh,--he jumped,--and I didn’t have no blanket!”

Implied discomfiture is in the story of the agnostic, who was buried in his evening clothes. “Poor Jim,” said a funeral guest; “he didn’t believe in Heaven and he didn’t believe in Hell; and there he lies, all dressed up and no place to go!”

Almost a practical joke is the man who, reading a newspaper, suddenly exclaimed, “Why, here’s a list of people who won’t eat onions any more!” And when his hearer asked to see the list, he handed over the obituary column.

The Disappointment Theory, though overlapping the Derision Theory at times, is based on the idea that the essence of the laughable is the incongruous.

Hazlitt says:

“We laugh at absurdity; we laugh at deformity. We laugh at a bottle-nose in a caricature; at a stuffed figure of an alderman in a pantomime, and at the tale of Slaukenbergius. A dwarf standing by a giant makes a contemptible figure enough. Rosinante and Dapple are laughable from contrast, as their masters from the same principle make two for a pair. We laugh at the dress of foreigners, and they at ours. Three chimney-sweepers meeting three Chinese in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, they laughed at one another till they were ready to drop down. Country people laugh at a person because they never saw him before. Any one dressed in the height of the fashion, or quite out of it, is equally an object of ridicule. One rich source of the ludicrous is distress with which we cannot sympathize from its absurdity or insignificance. It is hard to hinder children from laughing at a stammerer, at a negro, at a drunken man, or even at a madman. We laugh at mischief. We laugh at what we do not believe. We say that an argument or an assertion that is very absurd, is quite ludicrous. We laugh to show our satisfaction with ourselves, or our contempt for those about us, or to conceal our envy or our ignorance. We laugh at fools, and at those who pretend to be wise--at extreme simplicity, awkwardness, hypocrisy, and affectation.”

A beautiful definition of the Disappointment Theory is Max Eastman’s, “The experience of a forward motion of interest sufficiently definite so that its ‘coming to nothing’ can be felt.”

Mr. Eastman says further:

“It is more like a reflex action than a mental result. It arises in the very act of perception, when that act is brought to nothing by two conflicting qualities of fact or feeling. It arises when some numb habitual activity, suddenly obstructed, first appears in consciousness with an announcement of its own failure. The blockage of an instinct, a collision between two instincts, the interruption of a habit, a ‘conflict of habit systems,’ a disturbed or misapplied reflex--all these catastrophes, as well as the coming to nothing of an effort at conceptual thought, must enter into the meaning of the word disappointment, if it is to explain the whole field of practical humor. The ‘strain’ in that expectation is what makes it capable of humorous collapse. It is an active expectation. The feelings are involved.”

The point of the Disappointment Theory, that of frustrating a carefully built up expectation is exemplified in jests like these.

“Is your wife entertaining this winter?” asks one society man of another. “Not very,” is the reply.

“I have to go to Brooklyn--” says a perplexed-looking old lady to a traffic policeman. “Are you asking directions, ma’am, or just telling me your troubles?”

The incongruity may be merely a collocution of words.

Mark Twain described Turner’s Slave Ship as “A tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes.”

In a newspaper cartoon, a wife says to her husband, “Even if it is Sunday morning and a terribly hot day, that’s no reason you should go around looking like the dog’s breakfast!”

So we see the element of surprise must be combined with the element of appropriate inappropriateness to gain the desired result.

In this story expectation is aroused for a human tragedy. The incongruity and disappointment make its humor.

As Mr. Caveman was gnawing at a bone in his cave one morning, Mrs. Caveman rushed in, exclaiming, “Quick! get your club! Oh, quick!”

“What’s the matter?” growled Mr. Caveman.

“A sabre-toothed tiger is chasing mother!” gasped his wife.

Mr. Caveman uttered an expression of annoyance.

“And what the deuce do I care,” he said, “what happens to a sabre-toothed tiger?”

It must be admitted that a hard and fast line cannot be drawn between the two theories given us by the Greek philosophers.

Cicero subscribed to the Derision theory, and said the ridiculous rested on a certain meanness and deformity, and a joke to be pleasing must be on somebody. But he declared, also, that the most eminent kind of the ridiculous is that in which we expect to hear one thing and hear another said.

Several other Greek and Roman philosophers tackled the subject without adding anything of importance, and some of them, as well as later writers declared that the comic could never be defined, but is to be appreciated only by taste and natural discernment; while many moderns agree that all theories are inadequate and contradictory, however useful they may be for convenience in discussion.

Perhaps the trouble may be that only serious-minded people attempt a definition of humor, and they are not the ones best fitted for the work.

For the discussion goes on still, and is as fascinating to some types of mentality as is the question of perpetual motion or the Fountain of Immortal Youth.

A useful commentary on the matter, and one appropriate at this juncture is the following extract from the works of the celebrated theologian, Dr. Isaac Barrow, an Englishman of the Seventeenth century.

“It may be demanded,” says he, “what the thing we speak of is, and what this facetiousness doth import; to which question I might reply, as Democritus did to him that asked the definition of a man--’Tis that which we all see and know! and one better apprehends what it is by acquaintance, than I can inform him by description. It is indeed a thing so versatile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so many postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notice thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale; sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound; sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of luminous expression; sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude. Sometimes it is lodged in a sly question; in a smart answer; in a quirkish reason; in a shrewd intimation; in cunningly diverting or cleverly restoring an objection; sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme of speech; in a tart irony; in a lusty hyperbole; in a startling metaphor; in a plausible reconciling of contradictions; or in acute nonsense. Sometimes a scenical representation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture, passeth for it. Sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness, gives it being. Sometimes it riseth only from a lucky hitting upon what is strange; sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the purpose. Often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, a manner of speaking out of the simple and plain way (such as reason teacheth and knoweth things by), which by a pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression doth affect and amuse the fancy, showing in it some wonder, and breathing some delight thereto. It raiseth admiration, as signifying a nimble sagacity of apprehension, a special felicity of invention, a vivacity of spirit, and reach of wit more than vulgar; it seeming to argue a rare quickness of parts, that one can fetch in remote conceits applicable; a notable skill that he can dexterously accommodate them to a purpose before him; together with a lively briskness of humour not apt to damp those sportful flashes of imagination. Whence in Aristotle such persons are termed επιδéξιοι, dexterous men, and ευτροποι, men of facile and versatile manners, who can easily turn themselves to all things, or turn all things to themselves. It also procureth delight, by gratifying curiosity with its rareness or semblance of difficulty (as monsters, not for their beauty but their rarity--as juggling tricks, not for their use but their abstruseness--are beheld with pleasure); by diverting the mind from its road of serious thoughts; by instilling gaiety and airiness of spirit; by provoking to such dispositions of spirit in way of emulation or compliance; and by seasoning matter, otherwise distasteful or insipid, with an unusual and thence grateful tang.”--Barrow’s Works, Sermon 14.

Also in the Seventeenth century there sprang into being a definition that has lived, possibly because of the apt wording of its phrase.

It is by Thomas Hobbes, who declared for the Derision Theory, but with less sweetness and light than it had hitherto enjoyed.

“Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those Grimaces called LAUGHTER,” said Hobbes in the “Leviathan,” “and is caused either by some sudden act of their own, that pleaseth them; or by the apprehension of some deformed thing in another, by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud themselves. And it is incident most to them, that are conscious of the fewest abilities in themselves; who are forced to keep themselves in their own favour, by observing the imperfections of other men. And therefore much laughter at the defects of others, is a signe of Pusillanimity. For of great minds, one of the proper workes is, to help and free others from scorn; and compare themselves onely with the most able.”

and, also from Hobbes:

“The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly: for men laugh at the follies of themselves past, when they come suddenly to remembrance, except they bring with them any present dishonour.”--Treatise on Human Nature, chap. ix.

There is small doubt that the vogue of Hobbes’ definition of this theory rests on the delightfully expressive, “Sudden Glory,” for those two words beautifully picture the emotion caused by the unexpected opportunity to laugh at the discomfiture of another.

Locke followed with a dry and meaningless dissertation, and Coleridge wrote his discerning but all too brief remarks.

Many German writers gave profound if unimportant opinions.

Addison wrote pleasantly about it, and George Meredith, while accepting the Derision Theory, modified its harshness thus:

“If you believe that our civilization is founded in common-sense (and it is the first condition of sanity to believe it), you will, when contemplating men, discern a Spirit overhead; not more heavenly than the light flashed upward from glassy surfaces, but luminous and watchful; never shooting beyond them, nor lagging in the rear; so closely attached to them that it may be taken for a slavish reflex, until its features are studied. It has the sage’s brows, and the sunny malice of a faun lurks at the corners of the half-closed lips drawn in an idle wariness of half tension. That slim feasting smile, shaped like the long-bow, was once a big round satyr’s laugh, that flung up the brows like a fortress lifted by gunpowder. The laugh will come again, but it will be of the order of the smile, finely tempered, showing sunlight of the mind, mental richness rather than noisy enormity. Its common aspect is one of unsolicitous observation, as if surveying a full field and having leisure to dart on its chosen morsels without any fluttering eagerness. Men’s future upon earth does not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present does; and whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning shortsightedly, plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with their professions, and violate the unwritten but perceptible laws binding them in consideration one to another; whenever they offend sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or mined with conceit, individually, or in the bulk--the Spirit overhead will look humanely malign and cast an oblique light on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is the Comic Spirit.”

With Kant, however, the other theory of Aristotle came into notice. Kant declared, “Laughter is the affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.”

This was dubbed by Emerson, “Frustrated Expectation,” and describes the Disappointment Theory as Sudden Glory describes the Derision Theory.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets of the World of Humor.

There are many other theories and sub-theories, there are long and prosy books written about them, but are outside our Outline.

A general understanding of the humorous element is all we are after and that has now been set forth.

* * * * *

A question closely akin to What is Humor? is What is a Sense of Humor?

The phrase seems self-explanatory, and is by no means identical with the thing itself. Nor are the two inseparable. Humor and the sense of humor need not necessarily lie in the same brain.

Two erudite writers on this subject have chosen to consider the phrase as a unique bit of terminology.

Mr. Max Eastman says; “The creation of that name is the most original and the most profound contribution of modern thought to the problem of the comic.”

While Professor Brander Matthews says; “Ample as the English vocabulary is today, it is sometimes strangely deficient in needful terms. Thus it is that we have nothing but the inadequate phrase sense of humor to denominate a quality which is often confounded with humor itself, and which should always be sharply discriminated from it.”

Now it would seem that the phrase was simply a matter of evolution, coming along when the time was ripe. Surely it is no stroke of genius, nor yet is it hopelessly inadequate.

It must be granted that a sense of the humorous is as logical a thought as a sensitive ear for music, or, to be more strictly analogous, a sense of moderation or that very definite thing, card sense.

Sense, used thus, is almost synonymous with taste, and a taste for literature or for the Fine Arts in no way implies a productive faculty in those fields. A taste for humor would mean precisely the same thing as a sense of humor, and the taste or the sense may be more or less natural and more or less cultivated, as in the matter of books or pictures.

A taste for music is a sense of music, and one may appreciate and enjoy music and its rendition to the utmost without being able to sing a note or play upon any instrument whatever.

One may be a music critic or an art critic, or even a critic of literature, without being able to create any of these things.

Why, then, put forth as a discovery that one may have a sense of humor without being humorous and vice versa?

Humor is creative, while the sense of humor is merely receptive and appreciative.

Many great humorists have little or no sense of humor. Try to tell a joke to an accredited joker and note his blank expression of uncomprehension. It is because he has no sense of humor that he takes himself seriously.

Such was the case with Dickens, with Carlyle, with many renowned wits. The humorist without the sense of humor is a bore. He tells long, detailed yarns, proud of himself, and not seeing his hearers’ lack of interest.

The man with a sense of humor is a joy to know and to be with.

The man who possesses both is already an immortal.

Now as the sense of humor is negative, recipient, while humor is positive and creative, it follows that a sense of humor alone cannot produce humorous literature.

These mute, inglorious Miltons, therefore, have no place in our Outline, but they deserve a passing word of recognition for the assistance they have been to the humorists, by way of being applauding audiences.

For humor, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One with an acute sense of humor will see comic in stones, wit in the running brooks,--while a dull or absent sense of humor can see no fun save in the obvious jest.

The lines,

“A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear Of him who hears it. Never in the tongue Of him who makes it.”

in Love’s Labour’s Lost proves that Shakespeare understood the meaning and value of a sense of humor.

Although it was at a much later date that the word humor came to be used as now, to mean a gentle, good-natured sort of fun.

All types of humor are universal and of all time. But the first definitions were arrived at by the men of Greece and Rome, who were scholarly and analytical, hence the hair-splitting and meticulous efforts to treat it metaphysically.

Humor today rarely is used in a caustic or biting sense,--that is reserved for wit.

Which brings us to another great and futile question,--the distinction between wit and humor.

There is not time or space to take up this subject fully here. But we can sum up the decisions and opinions of some few of the thinking minds that have been bent upon it.

As the best and most comprehensive is the dissertation by William Hazlitt, most of this is here given.

“Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy. Humour, as it is shown in books, is an imitation of the natural or acquired absurdities of mankind, or of the ludicrous in accident, situation, and character; wit is the illustrating and heightening the sense of that absurdity by some sudden and unexpected likeness or opposition of one thing to another, which sets off the quality we laugh at or despise in a still more contemptible or striking point of view. Wit, as distinguished from poetry, is the imagination or fancy inverted and so applied to given objects, as to make the little look less, the mean more light and worthless; or to divert our admiration or wean our affections from that which is lofty and impressive, instead of producing a more intense admiration and exalted passion, as poetry does. Wit may sometimes, indeed, be shown in compliments as well as satire; as in the common epigram--

“‘Accept a miracle, instead of wit: See two dull lines with Stanhope’s pencil writ.’

But then the mode of paying it is playful and ironical, and contradicts itself in the very act of making its own performance an humble foil to another’s. Wit hovers round the borders of the light and trifling, whether in matters of pleasure or pain; for as soon as it describes the serious seriously, it ceases to be wit, and passes into a different form. Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference, or an ingenious and striking exposition of those evanescent and glancing impressions of objects which affect us more from surprise or contrast to the train of our ordinary and literal preconceptions, than from anything in the objects themselves exciting our necessary sympathy or lasting hatred.

“That wit is the most refined and effectual, which is founded on the detection of unexpected likeness or distinction in things, rather than in words.

“Wit is, in fact, a voluntary act of the mind, or exercise of the invention, showing the absurd and ludicrous consciously, whether in ourselves or another. Cross-readings, where the blunders are designed, are wit; but if any one were to light upon them through ignorance or accident, they would be merely ludicrous.

“Lastly, there is a wit of sense and observation, which consists in the acute illustration of good sense and practical wisdom by means of some far-fetched conceit or quaint imagery. The matter is sense, but the form is wit. Thus the lines in Pope--

“’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike; yet each believes his own--’

are witty rather than poetical; because the truth they convey is a mere dry observation on human life, without elevation or enthusiasm, and the illustration of it is of that quaint and familiar kind that is merely curious and fanciful.”

Thus Hazlitt: yet it is not necessary to be so verbose in the matter of discriminating wit from humor.

They are intrinsically different though often outwardly alike.

Wit is intensive or incisive, while humor is expansive. Wit is rapid, humor is slow. Wit is sharp, humor is gentle. Wit is intentional, humor is fortuitous.

But to my mind the great difference lies in the fact that wit is subjective while humor is objective.

Wit is the invention of the mind of its creator; humor lies in the object that he observes. Wit originates in one’s self, humor outside one’s self.

Again, wit is art, humor is nature. Wit is creative fancy, more or less educated and skilled. Humor is found in a simple object, and is unintentional.

Yet in these, as in all definitions, we must stretch a point when necessary; we must make allowances for viewpoints and opinions, and we must agree that the question is not one that may be answered by the card.

Nor is it necessary in the present undertaking.

An Outline of Humor is planned to include all sorts and conditions of fun, all types and distinctions of wit and humor from the earliest available records, or deductions from records, down to the dawn of the Twentieth Century.

* * * * *

Man has been defined as the animal capable of laughter. Although this definition has been attacked by lovers of quadrupeds, it has held in the minds of thinkers and students. Aristotle, Milton, Hazlitt, Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Bergson and many other distinguished scholars hold that the playfulness seen in animals is in no way an indication of their sense of humor.

The Laughing Hyena and the Laughing Jackass are so called only because their cry has a likeness to the sound of raucous human laughter, but it is no result of mirthful feeling.

Hazlitt says man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.

The playfulness of dogs or kittens is often assumed to be humor, when it is mere imitative sagacity. The stolid, imperturbable gravity of animals’ faces shows no appreciation of mirth.

Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of the large brown eyes of oxen as imperfect organisms, because they may show no sign of fun.

Yet it is, in a way, a matter of opinion, for the instinct of humor was among the latest to evolve in the human race, and rudimentary hints of it may be present in other animals as in our own children. A monkey or a baby will show amusement when tickled, but this is mere physical reflex action, and cannot be called a true sense of humor.

Many animal lovers assume intelligences in their pets that are mere reflections of their own mental processes or are thoughts fathered by their own wishes.

It is, however, of little importance, for however appreciative of fun an animal may be, it cannot create or impart wit or humor, and most certainly it cannot laugh.

Bergson goes even farther. He declares the comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly human.

He states: You may laugh at an animal, but only because you have detected in it some human attitude or expression.

This is easily proved by the recollection of the fun of Puss In Boots or The Three Bears, and the gravity of a Natural History.

Therefore, Bergson argues, man is not only the only animal that laughs, he is the only animal which is laughed at, for if any other animal or any lifeless object provokes mirth, it is only because of some resemblance to man in appearance or intent.

So, with such minor exceptions as to be doubtful or negligible, we must accept man as the only exponent or possessor of humor.

And it is one of the latest achievements of humanity.

First, we assent, was the survival of the fittest. Followed a sense of hunger, a sense of safety, a sense of warfare, a sense of Tribal Rights,--through all these stages there was no time or need for humor.

Among the earliest fossilized remains no funny bone has been found.

Doubtless, too, a sense of sorrow came before the sense of humor dawned. Death came, and early man wept long before it occurred to him to laugh and have the world laugh with him. Gregariousness and leisure were necessary before mirth could ensue. All life was subjective; dawning intelligence learned first to look out for Number One.

Yet it was early in the game that our primordial ancestors began to see a lighter side of life.

Indeed, as Mr. Wells tells us, they mimicked very cleverly, gestured, danced and laughed before they could talk!

And the consideration of the development of this almost innate human sense is our present undertaking.

The matter falls easily,--almost too easily,--into three divisions.

Let us call them, Ancient, Middle and Modern.

This is perhaps not an original idea of division, but it is certainly the best for a preliminary arrangement. And it may not be convenient to stick religiously to consecutive dates; our progress may become logical rather than chronological.

As to a general division, then, let us consider Ancient Humor as a period from the very beginning down to the time of the Greeks. The Middle Division to continue until about the time of Chaucer. And the Modern Period from that time to the present.

ANCIENT HUMOR

After careful consideration of all available facts and theories of the earliest mental processes of our race, we must come to the conclusion that mirth had its origin in sorrow; that laughter was the direct product of tears.

Nor are they even yet completely dissevered. Who has not laughed till he cried? Who has not cried herself into hysterical laughter? All theories of humor include an element of unhappiness; all joy has its hint of pain.

And so, when our archæologists hold the mirror up to prehistoric nature, we see among the earliest reflected pictures, a procession or group of evolving humanity about to sacrifice human victims to their monstrous superstitions and, withal, showing a certain festival cheerfulness. Moreover, we note that they are fantastically dressed, and wear horns and painted masks. Surely, the first glimmerings of a horrid mirth are indubitably the adjunct of such celebrations.

Since we have reason to believe that man mimicked before he could talk,--and, observing a baby, we have no difficulty in believing this,--we readily believe that his earliest mimicries aroused a feeling of amusement in his auditors, and as their applause stimulated him to fresh effort, the ball was set rolling and the fun began.

From mimicry was born exaggeration and the horns and painted masks were grotesque and mirth-provoking.

Yet were they also used to inculcate fear, and moreover had significance as expressions of sorrow and woe.

Thus the emotions, at first, were rather inextricably intermingled, nor are they yet entirely untangled and straightened out.

Not to inquire too closely into the vague stories of these prehistoric men, not to differentiate too exactly between Cro-Magnards and Grimaldis, we at least know a few things about the late Palæolithic people, and one indicative fact is that they had a leaning toward paint.

They buried their dead after painting the body, and they also painted the weapons and ornaments that were interred with him.

It is owing to this addiction to paint that scientists have been enabled to learn so much of primordial life, for the pigments of black, brown, red, yellow and white still endure in the caves of France and Spain.

And, since it is known that they painted their own faces and bodies we can scarce help deducing that they presented grotesque appearances and moved their fellows to laughter.

But any earnest thinker or student is very likely to get out of his subject what he brings to it, at least, in kind. And so, archæologists and antiquarians, being of grave and serious nature, have found no fun or humor in these early peoples,--perhaps, because they brought none to their search.

It remains, therefore, for us to sift their findings, and see, if by a good chance we may discover some traces of mirth among the evidential remains of prehistoric man.

It would not be, of course, creative or even intentional humor, but since we know he was a clever mimic, we must assume the appreciation of his mimicry by his fellows.

Moreover, he was deeply impressed by his dreams, and it must have been that some of those dreams were of a humorous nature.

We are told his mentality was similar to that of a bright little contemporary boy of five. This theory would give him the power of laughter at simple things and it seems only fair to assume that he possessed it.

In the beginnings of humanity there was very close connection between man and the animals. Not only did man kill and eat the other animals, but he cultivated and bred them, he watched them and studied their habits.

It is, therefore, not surprising that man’s earliest efforts at drawing should represent animals.

The earliest known drawings, those of the Palæolithic men show the bison, horse, ibex, cave bear and reindeer. The drawing at first was primitive, but later it became astonishingly clever and life-like.

Also, among these primitive peoples, there was some attempt at sculpture, in the way of little stone or ivory statuettes. These incline to caricature, and are probably the first dawning of that tendency of the human brain.

Yet the accounts of these earliest men show little that can be definitely styled humorous, and while we cannot doubt they possessed a sense of mirth, they have left us scant traces of it, or else the solemn archæologists have overlooked such.

The latter may be the case, for a scholar with a sense of humor, Thomas Wright, declares as follows:

“A tendency to burlesque and caricature appears, indeed, to be a feeling deeply implanted in human nature, and it is one of the earliest talents displayed by people in a rude state of society. An appreciation of, and sensitiveness to, ridicule, and a love of that which is humorous, are found even among savages, and enter largely into their relations with their fellow men. When, before people cultivated either literature or art, the chieftain sat in his rude hall surrounded by his warriors, they amused themselves by turning their enemies and opponents into mockery, by laughing at their weaknesses, joking on their defects, whether physical or mental, and giving them nicknames in accordance therewith,--in fact, caricaturing them in words, or by telling stories which were calculated to excite laughter. When the agricultural slaves (for the tillers of the land were then slaves) were indulged with a day of relief from their labours, they spent it in unrestrained mirth. And when these same people began to erect permanent buildings, and to ornament them, the favourite subjects of their ornamentation were such as presented ludicrous ideas. The warrior, too, who caricatured his enemy in his speeches over the festive board, soon sought to give a more permanent form to his ridicule, which he endeavoured to do by rude delineations on the bare rock, or on any other convenient surface which presented itself to his hand. Thus originated caricature and the grotesque in art. In fact, art itself, in its earliest forms, is caricature; for it is only by that exaggeration of features which belongs to caricature, that unskilful draughtsmen could make themselves understood.”

An early development of humor was seen in the recognition of the fool or buffoon.

It is not impossible that this arose because of the discovery or invention of intoxicating drinks.

This important date is set, not very definitely, somewhere between 10,000 B.C. and 2,000 B.C. Its noticeable results were merriment and feast-making. At these feasts the fool, who was not yet a wit, won the laughter of the guests by his idiocy, or, often by his deformity. The wise fool is a later development.

But at these feasts also appeared the bards or rhapsodists, who entertained the company by chanting or reciting stories and jokes.

These are called the artists of the ear as the rock painters are called the artists of the eye. And with them language grew in beauty and power. They were living books, the only books then extant. For writing came slowly and was a clumsy affair at best for a long period. The Bards sang and recited and so kept alive folk-tales and jests that remain to this day.

Writing, like most of the inventions of man served every other purpose before that of humor.

At first it was only for accounts and matters of fact. In Egypt it was used for medical recipes and magic formulas. Accounts, letters, name lists and itineraries followed; but for the preservation of humorous thought writing was not used. That was left to the bards, and of course, to the caricaturists.

Therefore, Egyptian art usually presents itself in solemn and dignified effects with no lightness or gayety implied.

Yet we are told by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, the early Egyptian artists cannot always conceal their natural tendency to the humorous, which creeps out in a variety of little incidents. Thus, in a series of grave historical pictures on one of the great monuments at Thebes, we find a representation of a wine party, where the company consists of both sexes, and which evidently shows that the ladies were not restricted in the use of the juice of the grape in their entertainments; and, as he adds, “the painters, in illustrating this fact, have sometimes sacrificed their gallantry to a love of caricature.” Among the females, evidently of rank, represented in this scene, “some call the servants to support them as they sit, others with difficulty prevent themselves from falling on those behind them, and the faded flower, which is ready to drop from their heated hands, is intended to be characteristic of their own sensations.” Sir Gardner observes that “many instances of a talent for caricature, are observable in the compositions of the Egyptian artists, who executed the paintings of the tombs at Thebes, which belong to a very early period of the Egyptian annals. Nor is the application of this talent restricted always to secular subjects, but we see it at times intruding into the most sacred mysteries of their religion.”

A class of caricatures which dates from a very remote period, shows comparisons between men and the particular animals whose qualities they possess.

As brave as a lion, as faithful as a dog, as sly as a fox or as swinish as a pig,--these things are all represented in these ancient caricatures.

More than a thousand years B.C. there was drawn on an Egyptian papyrus a cat carrying a shepherd’s crook and driving a flock of geese. This is but one section of a long picture, in which the animals are often shown treating their human tyrants in the manner they are usually treated by them.

All sorts of animals are shown, in odd contortions and grotesque attitudes, and not infrequently the scene or episode depicted refers to the state or condition of the human soul after death.

It is deduced that from these animal pictures arose the class of stories called fables, in which animals are endued with human attributes.

And also connected with them is the belief in metempsychosis or the transmission of the human soul into the body of an animal after death, which is a strong factor in the primitive religions.

Indeed, the intermingling of humans and animals is inherent in all art and literature, as, instance the calling of Our Lord a Lamb, or the Holy Ghost, a Dove.

Or, as to this day we call our children lambs or kittens, or, slangily, kids. As we still call a man an ass or a puppy; or a woman, a cat.

An argument for evolution can perhaps be seen in the inevitable turning back to the animals for a description or representation of human types.

At any rate, early man used this sort of humor almost exclusively, and so combined it with his serious thought, even his religions, that it was a permanently interwoven thread.

And the exaggeration of this mimicry of animals resulted in the grotesque and from that to the monstrous, as the mind grew with what it fed on, and caricature developed and progressed.

Also, a subtler demonstration of dawning wit and humor is seen in the deliberate and intentional burlesque of one picture by another.

In the British Museum is an Egyptian papyrus showing a lion and a unicorn playing chess, which is a caricature of a picture frequently seen on ancient monuments. And in the Egyptian collection of the New York Historical Society there is a slab of limestone, dating back three thousand years, which depicts a lion, seated upon a throne as king. To him, a fox, caricaturing a High Priest, offers a goose and a fan. This, too, is a burlesque of a serious picture.

Again, a lion is engaged in laying out the dead body of another animal, and a hippopotamus is washing his hands in a water jar.

One of these burlesque pictures shows a soul doomed to return to its earthly home in the form of a pig. This picture, of such antiquity that it deeply impressed the Greeks and Romans, is part of the decoration of a king’s tomb.

The ancient Egyptians, it may be gathered from their humorous pictures, were not averse to looking on the wine when it was red. Several delineations of Egyptian servants carrying home their masters after a carouse, are graphic and convincing; while others, equally so, show the convivial ones dancing, standing on their heads or belligerently wrestling.

The tombs of the ancient Egyptians abound in these representations of over-merry occasions, and it all goes to prove the close connection in the primitive mind of the emotions of grief and mirth.

Yet, The Book of the Dead that monument of Egyptian literature, and the oldest in the world, contains only records of conquests and a few stories and moral sayings,--not a trace of humor. That, in ancient Egypt is represented solely by the ready and deft pencil of the caricaturist.

* * * * *

Though humor came to them later, the earliest records of the Eastern and Oriental countries show little or no traces of the comic.

Indeed eminent authorities state that there is not a single element of the amusing in the art or literature of the Babylonians or Assyrians. It may be that the eminent authorities hadn’t a nose for nonsense, or the statement may be true. We never shall know.

But both these peoples had great skill in drawing and sculpture, and though their records are chiefly historical or religious, we cannot help feeling there may have been some jesting at somebody’s expense.

However, there are no existing records of any sort, and we fear the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians must go down in history as serious-minded folk.

The Hebrews show up much better.

In recent years Renan and Carlyle both declared the Jewish race possessed no sense of humor, but their opinions probably reflected their own viewpoint.

For the early examples of Hebrew Satire and Parody are distinctly humorous both in intent and in effect.

Parody is, of course, the direct outcome of the primeval passion for mimicry. The first laugh-provoker was no doubt an exaggerated imitation of some defect or peculiarity of another. And the development of the art of amusement took centuries to get past that preliminary thought.

The tendency to imitation was the impetus that turned the religious hymns into ribaldry and wine-songs, and the religious or funeral festivals into orgies of grotesque masquerading.

And Hebrew literature is renowned for its parodies of serious matters both of church and state.

With this race, satire sprang from parody and grew and thrived rapidly.

To quote from the learned Professor Chotzner:

“Since the birth of Hebrew literature, many centuries ago, satire has been one of its many characteristics. It is directed against the foibles and follies of the miser, the hypocrite, the profligate, the snob. The dull sermonizer, who puts his congregation to sleep, fares badly, and even the pretty wickednesses of the fair sex do not escape the hawk-eye of the Hebrew satirist. The luxury and extravagance of the ‘Daughters of Zion’ were attacked by no less a person than Isaiah himself; but human nature, especially that of a feminine kind, was too strong even for so eminent a prophet as he was, and there is no reason to suppose that the lady of those days wore one trinket the less in deference to his invective.

“There are, in fact, several incidents mentioned here and there in the pages of the Bible, which are decidedly of a satirical nature. Most prominent among them are the two that refer respectively to Bileam, who was sermonized by his ass, and to Haman who, as the Prime Minister of Persia, had to do homage publicly to Mordecai, the very man whom he greatly hated and despised. Nay, we are told, that, by the irony of fate, Haman himself ended his life on the exceptionally huge gallows which, while in a humorous turn of mind, he had ordered to be erected for the purpose of having executed thereon the object of his intense hatred.

“And again, there are two excellent satires to be found respectively in the 14th chapter of Isaiah, and in the 18th chapter of the 1st Book of Kings. In the first, one of the mighty Babylonian potentates is held up to derision, on account of the ignominious defeat he had sustained in his own dominions, after he had been for a long time a great terror to contemporary nations, living in various parts of the ancient world. Even the trees of the forests are represented there as having mocked at his fall, saying: ‘Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us.’ In the second satire, the false prophets of Baal are ridiculed by Elijah for having maimed their bodies, in order to do thereby honour to a deity which is sometimes sarcastically referred to in the Bible as being ‘the god of flies.’

“Delightfully satirical are also the two fables quoted in the Bible in connection with Jotham and Nathan, the Prophet. These are commonly well-known, and no extracts from them need be given here.

“The satirical turn of mind manifested by Hebrew writers living in Biblical times, has been transmitted by them as a legacy to their descendants, who flourished in subsequent ages down to the present day. The first among them was Ben Sira who, in 180 B.C., wrote a book, some of the contents of which are satirical, for there the vanity of contemporary women, and the arrogance of some of the rich in the community are ridiculed with mild sarcasm.

“But much more keen was the sense of the satirical that was possessed by some of the ancient Rabbis, who were among those that brought into existence the vast and interesting Talmudical literature. One of their satires, called ‘Tithes,’ runs as follows:--

“In Palestine there once lived a widow with her two daughters, whose only worldly possessions consisted of a little field. When she began to plough it, a Jewish official quoted to her the words of the lawgiver Moses: ‘Thou shalt not plough with ox and ass together.’ When she began to sow, she was admonished in the words of the same lawgiver not to sow the fields with two kinds of seed. When she began to reap and pile up the stacks, she was told that she must leave ‘gleanings,’ the poor man’s sheaf, and the ‘corner.’

“When the harvest time came, she was informed that it was her duty to give the priest’s share, consisting of the first and second ‘tithes.’ She quietly submitted, and gave what was demanded of her. Then she sold the field, and bought two young ewes, in order that she might use their wool, and profit by their offspring. But, as soon as the ewes gave birth to their young, a priest came, and quoted to her the words of Moses: ‘Give me the first-born, for so the Lord hath ordained.’ Again she submitted, and gave him the young.

“When the time of shearing came, the priest again made his appearance, and said to her that, according to the Law, she was obliged to give him ‘the shoulder, the two cheeks, and the maw.’

“In a moment of despair, the widow said: ‘Let all the animals be consecrated to the Lord!’ ‘In that case,’ answered the priest, ‘they belong altogether to me; for the Lord hath said: “Everything consecrated in Israel shall be thine.”’ So, he took the sheep, and went his way, leaving the widow and her two daughters in great distress, and bathed in tears!”

A WIFE’S RUSE

(A Rabbinical Tale)

“There is a Rabbinical law which makes it obligatory upon every Jewish husband to divorce his wife, if after ten years of married life she shall remain childless. Now, there once lived in an Oriental town a man and his wife who were greatly attached to each other, but who had, unfortunately, no children, though they had been married for a considerable time.

“When the end of the tenth year of their marriage was approaching, they both went to the Rabbi, and asked him for his advice. The Rabbi listened with great sympathy, but declared his inability to alter or modify the law in their favour. The only suggestion, he said, that he could make, was, that on the last night before their final separation, they should celebrate a little feast together, and that the wife should take some keepsake from her husband which would be a permanent token of her husband’s unchangeable affection for her.

“Thus, on the last night, the wife prepared a sumptuous meal for the two of them, and, amidst much merriment and laughter, she filled and refilled her husband’s goblet with sparkling wine. Under its influence, he fell into a heavy sleep, and while in this condition, he was carried by his wife’s orders to her father’s abode, where he continued to sleep till the following morning. When he awoke, and was wondering at his strange surroundings, his cunning wife came smilingly into the room, and said: ‘Of, my dear husband, I have actually carried out the Rabbi’s suggestion, inasmuch as I have taken away from home a most precious keepsake. This is your own dear self, without whom it would be impossible for me to live.’

“The husband, moved to tears, embraced her most affectionately, and promised that they should live together to the end. Thereupon they joyfully returned home, and, going again to the Rabbi, they told him what had happened, and asked him for his forgiveness and blessing, which he readily accorded them. And, indeed, the Rabbi’s blessing had an excellent result. For after the lapse of some time, they both enjoyed the happiness of fondling a bright little child of their own.”

Arabian and Turkish thought and speech seem to be tinged with the sense of the bizarre and strange rather than the grotesque. Their earliest folk tales and pleasant stories, from which later grew the Arabian Nights, form a cumulative, though broken chain from ancient to modern times.

Persian humor leans toward the romantic and sentimental, but no ancient fragments are available. From the later writers, as Omar and Sadi, we feel convinced there was an early literature but we can find none to quote.

India shows the oldest and most definite signs of early folk lore and retold tales.

Buddha’s Jatakas produced the stories that later proved the germs of merry tales by Boccaccio and Chaucer. That these later writers put in all the fun is not entirely probable.

Some antiquarians claim to find humor in the hymns of the Rig Vedas, whose date is indefinitely put at between 2,000 and 1,500 B.C. while others of different temperament deny it.

From this example the reader may judge for himself.

THE HYMN OF THE FROGS

“When the first shower of the rainy season Has fallen on them, parched with thirst and longing, In glee each wet and dripping frog jumps upward; The green one and the speckled join their voices.

“They shout aloud like Brahmans drunk with soma, When they perform their annual devotions: Like priests at service sweating o’er the kettle, They issue forth; not one remains in hiding.

“The frogs that bleat like goats, that low like cattle, The green one and the speckled give us riches; Whole herds of cows may they bestow upon us, And grant us length of days through sacrificing.”

The Jatakas of Buddha, though religious writings, and teachings by parables, are not without humor. The one about the silly son who killed the mosquito on his father’s bald head with a heavy blow of an ax, has its funny side. Or the old monarch who had reigned 252,000 years and still had 84,000 years more ahead of him, and went into solitary retirement because he discovered a gray hair in his head. Another shrewd fellow made an enormous fortune out of the sale of a dead mouse.

Of course, the animals figure largely. There is the tale of the monkeys who watered a garden and then pulled up the plants to see if their roots were wet, and the angry crows who tried to drink up the sea.

Riddles, too, must be remembered.

Though not many specimens have been preserved, yet we remember Samson’s riddle, so disastrous to the Philistines.

“Out of the eater came forth meat; and out of the strong came forth sweetness.”

And when his susceptibility to cajolery led him to tell his wife the answer, and she tattled, his comment was the pithy; “If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle.”

The Sphinx’s riddle is well known. “What animal goes on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and on three at night?”

The answer being: Man, who goes on all-fours in infancy, walks upright in middle life, and adds a staff in old age.

An ancient riddle is ascribed to the problematical personality of Homer, though it was doubtless originated before his time,--if he had a time.

Homer, the tale goes, met some boys coming home from a fishing trip. On his asking them of their luck, they replied, “What we caught we threw away; what we didn’t catch, we have.”

It seems they referred to fleas, not fish, and his inability to guess this so enraged Homer, that he killed himself.

And here is a free translation of an ancient Arabian riddle.

“The loftiest cedars I can eat, Yet neither paunch nor mouth have I. I storm whene’er you give me meat, Whene’er you give me drink, I die.”

The answer is Fire, and as may be seen, the type of riddle is precisely such as are found in the puzzle columns of today’s papers.

Riddles are frequently mentioned in Ancient Literature,-- every country or race indulging in them. Josephus tells us that Solomon and Hiram of Tyre were in the habit of exchanging riddles.

So we find that a love of fun or playfulness was inherent in our early ancestors, yet it did not reach a height to be called genuine creative humor.

But there is always the feeling that if more of the translators themselves possessed more humor, they might find more in the originals.

As a rule, translators and antiquarian researchers are so engaged in serious seeking that they would probably pass over humor if they ran across it.

When a man is prospecting for iron or coal, he may easily be blind to indications of wells of natural oil.

More wit and humor of Ancient India has come down to us through the caricatures and grotesque drawings than in words.

The innumerable pictures of the God Krishna are the most humorous of these.

Krishna appears to have been a veritable Don Juan, and his multitude of lady friends numbered up to many thousands.

It is narrated that a friend of his, who had no wife, begged for just one from Krishna’s multiplicity.

“Court any one you wish,” said the light-hearted god, pleasantly.

So the friend went from house to house of Krishna’s various wives, but one and all, they declared themselves quite satisfied with husband, Krishna, and moreover each one was convinced that he was hers alone. The seeker visited sixteen thousand and eight houses, and then gave it up.

The endless pictures of Krishna represent him surrounded by lovely ladies, and a curious detail of these drawings is that in many instances the group of girls is wreathed and twisted into the shape or semblance of a bird or a horse or an elephant, presenting an interesting and not unpleasing effect.

Now, all we have given so far, seems indeed a meager grist for the first division of our Outline. But one may not find what does not exist.

There is no doubt that humor was known and loved from the dawning of independent thought, but as it was not recorded, save for a few drawings, on the enduring rocks, it died with its originators.

Humor was the last need of a self-providing race, and even when found it was a luxury rather than a necessity.

As a fair example of the earliest tales that have lived in various forms ever since their first recital, is appended the bit of ancient Hindoo folk-lore, called

THE GOOD WIFE AND THE BAD HUSBAND

In a secluded village there lived a rich man, who was very miserly, and his wife, who was very kind-hearted and charitable, but a stupid little woman that believed everything she heard. And there lived in the same village a clever rogue, who had for some time watched for an opportunity for getting something from this simple woman during her husband’s absence. So one day, when he had seen the old miser ride out to inspect his lands, this rogue of the first water came to the house, and fell down at the threshold as if overcome by fatigue. The woman ran up to him at once and inquired whence he came. “I am come from Kailása,” said he; “having been sent down by an old couple living there, for news of their son and his wife.” “Who are those fortunate dwellers in Siva’s mountain?” she asked. And the rogue gave the names of her husband’s deceased parents, which he had taken good care, of course, to learn from the neighbours. “Do you really come from them?” said the simple woman. “Are they doing well there? Dear old people! How glad my husband would be to see you, were he here! Sit down, please, and rest until he returns. How do they live there? Have they enough to eat and dress themselves withal?” These and a hundred other questions she put to the rogue, who, for his part, wished to get away as soon as possible, knowing full well how he would be treated if the miser should return while he was there. So he replied, “Mother, language has no words to describe the miseries they are undergoing in the other world. They have not a rag of clothing, and for the last six days they have eaten nothing, and have lived on water only. It would break your heart to see them.” The rogue’s pathetic words deceived the good woman, who firmly believed that he had come down from Kailása, a messenger from the old couple to herself! “Why should they so suffer,” said she, “when their son has plenty to eat and clothe himself withal, and when their daughter-in-law wears all sorts of costly garments?” So saying, she went into the house, and soon came out again with two boxes containing all her own and her husband’s clothes, which she handed to the rogue, desiring him to deliver them to the poor old couple in Kailása. She also gave him her jewel-box, to be presented to her mother-in-law. “But dress and jewels will not fill their hungry stomachs,” said the rogue. “Very true; I had forgot: wait a moment,” said the simple woman, going into the house once more. Presently returning with her husband’s cash chest, she emptied its glittering contents into the rogue’s skirt, who now took his leave in haste, promising to give everything to the good old couple in Kailása; and having secured all the booty in his upper garment, he made off at the top of his speed as soon as the silly woman had gone indoors.

Shortly after this the husband returned home, and his wife’s pleasure at what she had done was so great that she ran to meet him at the door, and told him all about the arrival of the messenger from Kailása, how his parents were without clothes and food, and how she had sent them clothes and jewels and store of money. On hearing this, the anger of the husband was great; but he checked himself, and inquired which road the messenger from Kailása had taken, saying that he wished to follow him with a further message for his parents. So she very readily pointed out the direction in which the rogue had gone. With rage in his heart at the trick played upon his stupid wife, he rode off in hot haste, and after having proceeded a considerable distance, he caught sight of the flying rogue, who, finding escape hopeless, climbed up into a pipal tree. The husband soon reached the foot of the tree, when he shouted to the rogue to come down. “No, I cannot,” said he; “this is the way to Kailása,” and then climbed to the very top of the tree. Seeing there was no chance of the rogue coming down, and there being no one near to whom he could call for help, the old miser tied his horse to a neighbouring tree, and began to climb up the pipal himself. When the rogue observed this, he thanked all his gods most fervently, and having waited until his enemy had climbed nearly up to him, he threw down his bundle of booty, and then leapt nimbly from branch to branch till he reached the ground in safety, when he mounted the miser’s horse and with his bundle rode into a thick forest, where he was not likely to be discovered. Being thus balked the miser came down the pipal tree slowly, cursing his own stupidity in having risked his horse to recover the things which his wife had given the rogue, and returned home at leisure. His wife, who was waiting his return, welcomed him with a joyous countenance, and cried, “I thought as much: you have sent away your horse to Kailása, to be used by your old father.” Vexed at his wife’s words, as he was, he replied in the affirmative, to conceal his own folly.

MIDDLE DIVISION

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I. GREECE

In essaying an Outline of the World’s Humor, the greatest obstacle to our work is the insufficiency of data.

While we are sure there was humor in the early days, we cannot get much of it for publication. The Fables and Folk Tales that come down to us are of uncertain origin and date. Traditions have been traced to their inception but the tracery is of vague and shadowy lines.

Wherefore it is well nigh impossible to formulate or systematize our chronology.

The simple division of Ancient, Middle and Modern must serve for a main arrangement, with the subdivision of the Middle into Greece, Rome, and the Mediæval Ages.

Greece will include generally the time from 500 B.C. to 500 A.D., although its traditions reach farther back into antiquity.

The whole Middle Division must include all from 500 B.C. to about 1300 A.D.

So, we see the boundaries are inevitable if not entirely satisfactory.

Greece was the primeval European civilization, and in the year 500 B.C. it already had its own literature and the Iliad and Odyssey were even then antique.

These, at this time, were traditionally ascribed to Homer as they have ever since remained. But Homer’s individual existence is a matter of doubt, and his history and personality are as unknown as those of the ancient patriarchs of the Old Testament.

Even from this distant viewpoint the humor of antiquity is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder.

Coleridge says definitely, “Amongst the classic ancients there was little or no humor.” But, on the other hand, that eminent antiquarian, William Hayes Ward says, “The Greeks were the maddest, jolliest race of men that ever inhabited our planet. As they loved games and play, they loved the joke.”

So, as more than any other human emotion, humor is a matter of opinion, we must dig up whatever nuggets we can and not assay them too meticulously.

Like Homer, Æsop, is wrapped in mystery. Like Homer, too, various cities claimed the honor of being his birthplace. The truth is not known.

Tradition places Æsop in the sixth century, B.C. and makes him a dwarf and, originally, a slave.

Though probably not a historic personage, his name is inseparably connected with the Fables that have been known to us for centuries; and, according to scholars, some of them were known a thousand years earlier to the Egyptians.

Of these things we cannot speak positively, but Æsop’s Fables certainly come at or near the beginnings of Greek Literature, and their place is here.

ÆSOP’S FABLES

THE LION, THE BEAR, THE MONKEY, AND THE FOX

The Tyrant of the forest issued a proclamation, commanding all his subjects to repair immediately to his royal den. Among the rest, the Bear made his appearance; but pretending to be offended with the steams which issued from the Monarch’s apartments, he was imprudent enough to hold his nose in his Majesty’s presence. This insolence was so highly resented, that the Lion in a rage laid him dead at his feet. The Monkey, observing what had passed, trembled for his carcass; and attempted to conciliate favor by the most abject flattery. He began with protesting, that for his part he thought the apartments were perfumed with Arabian spices; and exclaiming against the rudeness of the Bear, admired the beauty of his Majesty’s paws, so happily formed, he said, to correct the insolence of clowns. This fulsome adulation, instead of being received as he expected, proved no less offensive than the rudeness of the Bear; and the courtly Monkey was in like manner extended by the side of Sir Bruin. And now his Majesty cast his eye upon the Fox. “Well, Reynard,” said he, “and what scent do you discover here?” “Great Prince,” replied the cautious Fox, “my nose was never esteemed my most distinguishing sense; and at present I would by no means venture to give my opinion, as I have unfortunately got a terrible cold.”

Reflection

It is often more prudent to suppress our sentiments, than either to flatter or to rail.

THE PARTIAL JUDGE

A Farmer came to a neighbouring Lawyer, expressing great concern for an accident which he said had just happened. “One of your oxen,” continued he, “has been gored by an unlucky bull of mine, and I shall be glad to know how I am to make you a reparation.” “Thou art a very honest fellow,” replied the Lawyer, “and wilt not think it unreasonable that I expect one of thy oxen in return.” “It is no more than justice,” quoth the Farmer, “to be sure: but what did I say!--I mistake--It is your bull that has killed one of my oxen.” “Indeed,” says the Lawyer, “that alters the case: I must inquire into the affair; and if”--“And if!” said the Farmer, “the business I find would have been concluded without an if, had you been as ready to do justice to others as to exact it from them.”

Reflection

The injuries we do, and those we suffer, are seldom weighed in the same scales.

It is all very well for some wiseacres to say, “Humor came in with civilization,” for others to say, “Humor took its rise in the Middle Ages,” or to set any other arbitrary time.

The truth is that Humor, is an innate emotion, and in a general sense, it is the child of religion.

The primitive religions were conducted with Festival Ceremonies, whose celebrations were of such symbolic nature, and later, such burlesque of symbolism that gaiety ensued and then ribaldry.

The worship of the god Dionysus,--later mixed up in tradition with Bacchus,--was responsible for much reckless license that was the earliest form of comedy.

Dionysus, being deity of the vineyard, as well as of phallic worship, lent himself readily to the grotesque representations and hysterical orgies of his followers and Greek Comedy was probably the outcome of this.

In these Dionysiac festivals the processions and parades represented everything imaginable that was bizarre or ridiculous.

As in all ages, before and since, the mummers clothed themselves in the likeness of animals, and invented horrible masks.

Comedy came to be abuse, ridicule and parody of sacred things.

Notwithstanding Coleridge’s comment, laughter was universal in Greece and Plato declared the agelastoi or non-laughers to be the least respectable of mortals.

Small wonder then that their mirth exhibited itself in drawings and paintings. These mediums were easier to come by than writings, and the early grotesques and caricatures of the Greeks are drawings on Greek vases which show the playfulness as well as the serious purpose of the artist-potter. The first and greatest of Greek poets adds strokes of wit to his stories of the Trojan war. When Ulysses returns from the siege of Ilium he stops at the island of Sicily, and he and his companions are caught by the one-eyed giant Polyphemus and imprisoned in his cave. Then comes the story of the crafty leader’s escape, after some of his companions had been slain and eaten by the monster. It is a most amusing story, told with all Greek humor, how the giant was blinded with the burnt stick which gouged out his eye while in a drunken sleep; how the Greeks escaped through the entrance by clinging under the bodies of his sheep, while he felt of them one by one to see that not a Greek escaped. Then comes the giant’s howling call to his distant companions, and in answer to their question, who had blinded him, his telling them that “Outis” (Nobody) had done it, Outis (Nobody) being the name Ulysses had given the giant as his own. “If nobody has done it”, replied his companions, “then it is the act of the gods”, and they left him to endure his loss. Thus the Greeks escape to their ships and taunt the monster as they flee away, followed by his vain pursuit. Homer relieves the wisdom of Ulysses and the dignity of Agamemnon with the gibes of Thersites or the rude humor of the suitors of Penelope, the trick of whose embroidery is itself an amusing story.

Greece, of course, was the cradle of all that we now call art. Landscape painters, painters of animals and portrait limners, as well as still life artists and sculptors and workers in mosaics reached a high state of perfection.

Then naturally the caricaturists and comic artists could not be wanting there. Burlesque affected their pencils and brushes as it had their speech and caricature and parody were rampant.

A marvelous example is the parody or caricature of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. It is taken from an oxybaphon which was brought from the Continent to England, where it passed into the collection of Mr. William Hope. The oxybaphon, or, as it was called by the Romans, acetabulum, was a large vessel for holding vinegar, which formed one of the important ornaments of the table, and was therefore very susceptible of pictorial embellishment of this description. It is one of the most remarkable Greek caricatures of this kind yet known, and represents a parody on one of the most interesting stories of the Grecian mythology, that of the arrival of Apollo at Delphi. The artist, in his love of burlesque, has spared none of the personages who belonged to the story. The Hyperborean Apollo himself appears in the character of a quack doctor, on his temporary stage, covered by a sort of roof, and approached by wooden steps. On the stage lies Apollo’s luggage, consisting of a bag, a bow, and his Scythian cap. Chron is represented as labouring under the effects of age and blindness, and supporting himself by the aid of a crooked staff, as he repairs to the Delphian quack doctor for relief. The figure of the centaur is made to ascend by the aid of a companion, both being furnished with the masks and other attributes of the comic performers. Above are the mountains, and on them the nymphs of Parnassus, who, like all the other actors in the scene, are disguised with masks, and those of a very grotesque character. On the right-hand side stands a figure which is considered as representing the epoptes, the inspector or overseer of the performance, who alone wears no mask. Even a pun is employed to heighten the drollery of the scene, for instead of ΠΥΘΙΑΣ, the Pythian, placed over the head of the burlesque Apollo, it seems evident that the artist had written ΠΕΙΘΙΑΣ, the consoler in allusion, perhaps, to the consolation which the quack-doctor is administering to his blind and aged visitor.

The comic and grotesque led on to the representation of the monstrous, and queer, strange figures became part of their art and architecture. Out of these, perhaps, grew the hideous masks and strange distortions of the human figure.

Perhaps this is why Æsop was represented as a dwarf and a hunchback.

But the whole trend of the grotesque and monstrous in religious ornamentation grew and flourished on into the Middle Ages and later, and the gargoyles of our latest churches show the persisting influence.

The old comedy of Greece has been called the comedy of caricature, and hand in hand, verbal and pictorial parody have come to us down the centuries.

Pictorial burlesque, however, was not placed on the public monuments, but lent itself more readily to objects of common usage or individual belongings. It is found abundantly on the pottery of Greece and Rome and abounded in the wall paintings of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

This is not the place to discuss the identity of Homer. Whether a real man, a group of men or a myth, the works of Homer are immortal and, for the most part serious.

Our task is to find anything humorous in the Greek epics.

It is not easy, indeed, it is almost impossible. But we subjoin an extract which, we may say, comes the nearest to humor in Homer.

THE BEATING OF THERSITES

Ulysses’ ruling thus restrained The host from flight; and then again the Council was maintained With such a concourse that the shore rang with the tumult made; As when the far-resounding sea doth in its rage invade His sandy confines, whose sides groan with his involved wave, And make his own breast echo sighs. All sate, and audience gave. Thersites only would speak all. A most disordered store Of words he foolishly poured out, of which his mind held more Than it could manage; anything with which he could procure Laughter, he never could contain. He should have yet been sure To touch no kings; t’oppose their states becomes not jesters’ parts. But he the filthiest fellow was of all that had deserts In Troy’s brave siege. He was squint-eyed, and lame of either foot; So crookbacked that he had no breast; sharp-headed, where did shoot (Here and there ’spersed) thin, mossy hair. He most of all envied Ulysses and Æacides, whom still his spleen would chide. Nor could the sacred king himself avoid his saucy vein; Against whom since he knew the Greeks did vehement hates sustain, Being angry for Achilles’ wrong, he cried out, railing thus: “Atrides, why complain’st thou now? What wouldst thou more of us? Thy tents are full of brass; and dames, the choice of all, are thine, With whom we must present thee first, when any towns resign To our invasion. Want’st thou, then, besides all this, more gold From Troy’s knights to redeem their sons, whom to be dearly sold I or some other Greek must take? Or wouldst thou yet again Force from some other lord his prize, to soothe the lusts that reign In thy encroaching appetite? It fits no prince to be A prince of ill, and govern us, or lead our progeny By rape to ruin. Oh, base Greeks, deserving infamy, And ills eternal, Greekish girls, not Greeks, ye are! Come, flee Home with our ships; leave this man here to perish with his preys, And try if we helped him or not. He wronged a man that weighs Far more than he himself in worth. He forced from Thetis’ son, And keeps his prize still. Nor think I that mighty man hath won The style of wrathful worthily; he’s soft, he’s too remiss; Or else, Atrides, his had been thy last of injuries.” Thus he the people’s pastor chid; but straight stood up to him Divine Ulysses, who, with looks exceeding grave and grim, This bitter check gave: “Cease, vain fool, to vent thy railing vein On kings thus, though it serve thee well; nor think thou canst restrain, With that thy railing faculty, their wills in least degree; For not a worse, of all this host, came with our king than thee, To Troy’s great siege; then do not take into that mouth of thine The names of kings, much less revile the dignities that shine In their supreme states, wresting thus this motion for our home, To soothe thy cowardice; since ourselves yet know not what will come Of these designments, if it be our good to stay, or go. Nor is it that thou stand’st on; thou revil’st our general so, Only because he hath so much, not given by such as thou, But our heroes. Therefore this thy rude vein makes me vow, Which shall be curiously observed, if ever I shall hear This madness from thy mouth again, let not Ulysses bear This head, nor be the father called of young Telemachus, If to thy nakedness I take and strip thee not, and thus Whip thee to fleet from council; send, with sharp stripes, weeping hence This glory thou affect’st to rail.” This said, his insolence He settled with his scepter; struck his back and shoulders so That bloody wales rose. He shrunk round, and from his eyes did flow Moist tears, and, looking filthily, he sate, feared, smarted, dried His blubbered cheeks; and all the press, though grieved to be denied Their wished retreat for home, yet laughed delightsomely, and spake Either to other: “Oh, ye gods, how infinitely take Ulysses’ virtues in our good! Author of counsels, great In ordering armies, how most well this act became his heat, To beat from council this rude fool. I think his saucy spirit Hereafter will not let his tongue abuse the sovereign merit, Exempt from such base tongues as his.” --The Iliad.

Attributed to Homer by many, and stoutly denied by others, is a comedy called The Battle of the Frogs and Mice.

Again we note the device of animals masquerading as human beings.

Samuel Wesley, himself a humorist, calls this the oldest burlesque in the world, and he also dubs it, The Iliad in a Nutshell. He holds that Homer wrote it as a parody of his own masterpiece, while, conversely, Statius contends that it is a work of youth, written by Homer before he wrote The Iliad. Chapman deems it the work of the poet’s old age, and as none may decide when doctors disagree, many scholars deny a Homeric authorship to it at all. Plutarch asserts the real author was Pigres of Halicarnassus, who flourished during the Persian war.

This first burlesque known to literature has the following plot.

A mouse, while slaking his thirst on the margin of a pond, after a hot pursuit by a weasel, enters into conversation with a frog on the merits of their respective modes of life. The frog invites the mouse to a nearer inspection of the abode and habits of his own nation, and for this purpose offers him a sail on his back. When the party are at some distance from land, the head of an otter suddenly appears on the surface. The terrified frog at once dives to the bottom, disengaging himself from his rider, who, with many a struggle and bitter imprecations on his betrayer, is involved in a watery grave. Another mouse, who from the shore had witnessed the fate of his unfortunate comrade, reports it to his fellow-citizens. A council is held, and war declared against the nation of the offender.

“Jupiter and the gods deliberate in Olympus on the issue of the contest. Mars and Minerva decline personal interference, as well from the awe inspired by such mighty combatants as from previous ill-will towards both contending powers, in consequence of injuries inflicted by each on their divine persons or properties. A band of mosquitoes sound the war-alarum with their trumpets, and, after a bloody engagement, the frogs are defeated with great slaughter. Jupiter, sympathising with their fate, endeavours in vain by his thunders to intimidate the victors from further pursuit. The rescue of the frogs, however, is effected by an army of land-crabs, who appear as their allies, and before whom the mice, in their turn, are speedily put to flight.”

The Battle of the Frogs and Mice, then, is well described as the earliest and most successful extant specimen of the “mock-heroic,” the double object of which is, according to Barrow’s famous definition, to debase things pompous and elevate things mean. An amusing version of this Homeric jeu d’esprit was published in 1851 by an author who gave himself out as the “Singing Mouse,” “the last minstrel of his race.” “The theme,” he says, “belongs to that heroic age of which history has recorded that the very mountains laboured when a mouse was born.” The metre of this translation has been altered from the stately elegance of the original to one which is perhaps better fitted to the subject in itself than to its special object as a travestie on the epic style of the Iliad. The names of the heroes are happily rendered; but it will be seen that some difference exists between this author and the one just cited as to certain of the zoological terms in the poem.

THE MEETING

I

It fell on a day that a mouse, travel-spent, To the side of a river did wearily win; Of the good house-cat he had baffled the scent, And he thirstily dipt his whiskered chin; When, crouched in the sedge by the water’s brink, A clamorous frog beheld him drink. “And tell me, fair sir, thy title and birth, For of high degree thou art surely come; I have room by my hearth for a stranger of worth, And a welcome to boot to my royal home. For, sooth to speak, my name is Puffcheek, And I come of Bullfrog’s lordly line; I govern the bogs, the realm of the frogs, A sceptred king by right divine.”

II

Then up and spake the mighty mouse: “And, courteous stranger, ask’st thou, then, What’s known alike to gods and men, The lineage of Crumplunderer’s house? Me Princess Lickfarina bare, Daughter of good King Nibble-the-flitch, And she weaned me on many a dainty rare, As became great Pie-devourer’s heir, With filberts and figs and sweetmeats rich.

III

“Never mortal mouse, I ween, Better versed in man’s cuisine; Not a bun or tartlet, graced With sweeping petticoat of paste, Not an oily rasher or creamy cheese, Or liver so gay in its silver chemise; Not a dish by artiste for alderman made, Ever escaped my foraging raid For when the mice pour on pantry and store, In foray or fight, I am aye to the fore.

IV

“I fear not man’s unwieldy size, To his very bedside I merrily go; At his lubberly length the ogre lies, And sleep never leaves his heavy-sealed eyes Though I pinch his heel and nibble his toe. But enemies twain do work my bane, And both from my inmost soul I hate, The cat and the kite, who bear me spite; And, third, the mouse-trap’s fatal bait; And the ferret foul I abhor from my soul, The robber! he follows me into my hole!”

Wesley’s rendering of the dénouement is a thoroughly good specimen of the mock-heroic style which runs through the original:

The Muses knowing all things list not show The Wailings for the Dead and Funeral Rites, To blameless Æthiopians must they go To feast with Jove for twelve succeeding nights. Therefore abrupt thus end they. Let suffice The gods’ august assembly to relate, Heroic Frogs and Demigods of Mice, Troxartes’ vengeance and Pelides’ fate. Hosts routed, lakes of gore, and hills of slain, An Iliad, work divine! raised from a day’s campaign.

By this time Greece was ready for definite mirth and laughter. What has come to be known as the Old Comedy was to the Athenians, we are told, what is now shown in the influences of the newspaper, the review, the Broadside, the satire, the caricature of the times and manners.

Nor were cartoons missing, for the grotesque pictures were as important a factor as the verbal or written words.

The Old Comedy is marked by political satire of a virulent personality. This is prohibited in the Middle Comedy, and replaced by literary and philosophical criticism of the ways of the citizens. The New Comedy, more repressed still, is the comedy of manners, and its influence continued to the Roman stage and further.

Of the Old Comedy, save for a few lesser lights, Aristophanes is the sole representative.

At the festivals of the god Dionysus, two elements were present. One the solemn rites, which developed into tragedy, and the other the grotesque and ribald orgies which were equally in evidence and which culminated in the idea of comedy.

The license of these symbolic representations was unbridled and all rules of decorum and decency were violated in the frenzied antics.

Doubtless many writings now lost to us were filled with the broad humor of the day, but we have only the plays of Aristophanes left.

Of the life of this Athenian not much is known. He was born after 450 B.C. and it was after the Peloponnesian War that he wrote his plays.

The principal and best known of his eleven extant plays is _The Frogs_.

Of this, two clever translations are given.

One, is thus introduced by a writer in The Quarterly Review:

“One of the temples or theatres appropriated to the service of Bacchus in Athens, and in which the scenic performances of the old Greeks took place, was situated near a part of that metropolis usually called ‘The Marshes,’ and those who know by experience what tenants such places commonly harbour in more southern climates will think it not impossible that the representatives of the stage, and more particularly in theatres which were generally without a roof, were occasionally disturbed, to the great annoyance of the dramatists, by the noisy vociferations of these more ancient and legitimate Lords of the Marshes. One of them was not a man to be offended with impunity by biped or quadruped; and wherever the foes of Aristophanes were to be found, on land or in water, he had shafts both able and willing to reach them.

“In his descent to the lower world, the patron of the stage is accordingly made to encounter a band of most pertinacious and invincible frogs; and the gradations through which the mind of Bacchus runs, after the first moments of irritation have subsided, from coaxing to bullying, from affected indifference to downright force, are probably a mere transcript of the poet’s own feelings under similar circumstances.”

SCENE.--The Acherusian Lake--BACCHUS at the oar in CHARON’S Boat --CHARON--Chorus of Frogs--In the background a view of Bacchus’s Temple or Theatre, from which are heard the sounds of a Scenic Entertainment.

Semich. 1. Croak! croak! croak!

Semich. 2. Croak! croak! croak!

[In answer, with music 8ve lower.

Full Chorus. Croak! croak! croak!

Leader of the Chorus. When flagons were foaming, And roysterers roaming, And bards flung about them their gibe and their joke; The holiest song Still was found to belong To the Sons of the Marsh with their--

Full Chorus. Croak! croak!

Leader. Shall we pause in our strain, Now the months bring again The pipe and the minstrel to gladden the folk? Rather strike on the ear, With a note sharp and clear, A chant corresponding of--

Chorus. Croak! croak!

Bacchus (mimicking). Croak! croak! By the Gods, I shall choke If you pester and bore my ears any more With your croak! croak! croak!

Leader. Rude companion and vain, Thus to carp at my strain, But keep in the vein, And attack him again With a croak! croak! croak!

Chorus (crescendo). Croak! croak! croak!

Bacchus (mimicking). Croak! croak! Vapour and smoke! Never think it, old huff, That I care for such stuff As your croak! croak! croak!

Chorus (fortissimo). Croak! croak! croak!

Bacchus. Now fires light on thee And waters soak, And March winds catch thee Without any cloak. For within and without, From the tail to the snout, Thou’rt nothing but-- Croak! croak! croak!

Leader. And what else, captious newcomer, say, should I be? But you know not to whom you are talking, I see.

[With dignity.

I’m the friend of the Muses, and Pan with his pipe Loves me better by far than a cherry that’s ripe: Who gives them their tone and their moisture but I? And therefore for ever I’ll utter my cry Of--

Chorus. Croak! croak! croak!

Bacchus. I’m blistered, I’m flustered, I’m sick, I’m ill.

Chorus. Croak! croak! croak!

Bacchus. My dear little bull-frog, do prithee keep still.

Chorus. Croak! croak! croak!

Bacchus. ’Tis a sorry vocation, that reiteration; I speak on my honour, most musical nation Of croak! croak! croak!

Leader (maestoso). When the sun rides in glory and makes a light day ’Mid lilies and plants of the water I stray; Or when the sky darkens with tempest and rain, I sink like a pearl in my watery domain. But sinking or swimming I lift up my song, Or drive a gay dance with my eloquent throng. Then hey, bubble, bubble, For a knave’s petty trouble Shall I my high charter and birthright revoke? Nay, my efforts I’ll double And drive him like stubble Before me with--

Chorus. Croak! croak! croak!

Bacchus. I’m ribs of steel, I’m heart of oak, Let us see if a note Can be found in this throat, To answer their (croaks loudly) croak! croak! croak!

Leader. Poor vanity’s son! And dost think me undone With a clamour no bigger Than a maiden’s first snigger? But strike up a tune

[To Chorus.

He’ll not forget soon Of our croak! croak! croak!

Chorus (with discordant crash of music). Croak! croak! croak!

Bacchus. I’m cinder, I’m coke! I have got my death-stroke. O that ever I woke To be galled by the yoke Of this croak! croak! croak!

Leader. Friend, friend, I may not be still, My destinies high I must needs fulfil. And the march of creation, despite reprobation, Must proceed with--,

[To Chorus.

My lads, may I make application For a--

Chorus. Croak! croak! croak!

Bacchus (in a minor key). Nay, nay! Take your own way, I’ve said out my say, And care nought by my fai’ For your croak! croak! croak!

Leader. Care or care not, ’tis the same thing to me; My voice is my own, and my actions are free. I have but one note, and I chant it with glee, And from morning to night that note it shall be

Chorus. Croak! croak! croak!

Bacchus. Nay then, old rebel, I’ll stop your treble With a poke! poke! poke!

[Dashing at the Frogs.

Take this from my rudder, and that from my oar, And now let us see if you’ll trouble us more With your croak! croak! croak!

Leader. You may batter and bore, You may thunder and roar, Yet I’ll never give o’er Till I’m hard at death’s door-- This rib, by the way, is confoundedly sore).

Semich. 1. With my croak! croak! croak!

Semich. 2 (dim.). Croak! croak! croak!

Full Chorus (in a dying cadence). Croak! croak! croak!

[The Frogs disappear.

Bacchus (looking over the boat’s edge). Spoke! spoke! spoke!

[To CHARON.

Pull away, my old friend, For at last there’s an end To their croak! croak! croak!

[BACCHUS pays his two oboli and is landed.

THE PASSAGE OF THE STYX

CHARON, BACCHUS, and XANTHIAS

Charon. Hoy! Bear a hand there! Heave ashore!

Bacchus. What’s this?

Xanthias. The lake it is--the place he told us of. By Jove! and there’s the boat--and here’s old Charon!

Bacchus. Well, Charon! Welcome, Charon! Welcome kindly!

Charon. Who wants the ferryman? Anybody waiting To leave the pangs of life? A passage, anybody? To Lethe’s wharf? To Cerberus’ reach? To Tartarus? To Tænarus? To Perdition?

Bacchus. Yes, I.

Charon. Get in then.

Bacchus. Tell me, where are you going? To perdition, really?

Charon. Yes, to oblige you, I will-- With all my heart. Step in there.

Bacchus. Have a care! Take care, good Charon! Charon, have a care!

(Getting into the boat.)

Come, Xanthias, come!

Charon. I take no slaves aboard, Except they’ve volunteer’d for the naval victory.

Xanthias. I could not; I was suffering with sore eyes.

Charon. Off with you, round by the end of the lake.

Xanthias. And whereabouts shall I wait?

Charon. At the Stone of Repentance, By the Slough of Despond, beyond the Tribulations. You understand me?

Xanthias. Yes, I understand you-- A lucky, promising direction, truly.

Charon (to BACCHUS). Sit down at the oar. Come, quick, if there are more coming!-- Hullo! what’s that you’re doing?

(BACCHUS _is seated in a buffoonish attitude in the side of the boat where the oar was fastened._)

Bacchus. What you told me. I’m sitting at the oar.

Charon. Sit there, I tell you, You fatguts; that’s your place.

Bacchus (changes his place). Well, so I do.

Charon. Now ply your hands and arms.

Bacchus (makes a silly motion with his arms). Well, so I do.

Charon. You’d best leave off your fooling. Take to the oar, And pull away.

Bacchus. But how shall I contrive? I’ve never served on board; I’m only a landsman; I’m quite unused to it.

Charon. We can manage it. As soon as you begin you shall have some music; That will teach you to keep time.

Bacchus. What music’s that?

Charon. A chorus of frogs--uncommon musical frogs.

Bacchus. Well, give me the word and the time.

Charon. Whooh, up, up! Whooh, up, up!

CHORUS OF FROGS

Brekeke-kesh, koash, koash! Shall the choral quiristers of the marsh Be censured and rejected as hoarse and harsh, And their chromatic essays Deprived of praise? No; let us raise afresh Our obstreperous brekeke-kesh! The customary croak and cry Of the creatures At the theaters In their yearly revelry. Brekeke-kesh, koash, koash!

Bacchus (rowing in great misery). How I’m maul’d! How I’m gall’d! Worn and mangled to a mash-- There they go! Koash, koash!

Frogs. Brekeke-kesh, koash, koash!

Bacchus. Oh, beshrew, All your crew! You don’t consider how I smart.

Frogs. Now for a sample of the art! Brekeke-kesh, koash, koash!

Bacchus. I wish you hanged, with all my heart! Have you nothing else to say? Brekeke-kesh, koash, all day!

Frogs. We’ve a right, We’ve a right, And we croak at ye for spite. We’ve a right, We’ve a right, Day and night, Day and night, Night and day, Still to creak and croak away. Phœbus and every Grace Admire and approve of the croaking race; And the egregious guttural notes That are gargled and warbled in their lyrical throats. In reproof Of your scorn, Mighty Pan Nods his horn; Beating time To the rime With his hoof, With his hoof. Persisting in our plan, We proceed as we began. Brekeke-kesh, brekeke-kesh, Koash, koash!

Bacchus. Oh, the frogs, consume and rot ’em! I’ve a blister on my bottom! Hold your tongues, you noisy creatures!

Frogs. Cease with your profane entreaties, All in vain forever striving; Silence is against our natures; With the vernal heat reviving, Our aquatic crew repair From their periodic sleep, In the dark and chilly deep, To the cheerful upper air. Then we frolic here and there All amid the meadows fair; Shady plants of asphodel Are the lodges where we dwell; Chanting in the leafy bowers All the livelong summer hours, Till the sudden gusty showers Send us headlong, helter-skelter, To the pool to seek for shelter. Meager, eager, leaping, lunging, From the sedgy wharfage plunging To the tranquil depth below, There we muster all a-row; Where, secure from toil and trouble, With a tuneful hubble-bubble, Our symphonious accents flow. Brekeke-kesh, koash, koash!

Bacchus. I forbid you to proceed.

Frogs. That would be severe, indeed, Arbitrary, bold, and rash-- Brekeke-kesh, koash, koash!

Bacchus. I command you to desist-- Oh, my back, there! Oh, my wrist What a twist! What a sprain!

Frogs. Once again We renew the tuneful strain-- Brekeke-kesh, koash, koash!

Bacchus. I disdain--hang the pain!-- All your nonsense, noise, and trash. Oh, my blister! Oh, my sprain!

Frogs. Brekeke-kesh, koash, koash! Friends and frogs, we must display All our powers of voice to-day. Suffer not this stranger here, With fastidious, foreign ear, To confound us and abash Brekeke-kesh, koash, koash!

Bacchus. Well, my spirit is not broke; If it’s only for the joke, I’ll outdo you with a croak. Here it goes--(very loud) “Koash, koash!”

Frogs. Now for a glorious croaking crash, (still louder) Brekeke-kesh, koash, koash!

Bacchus (splashing with his oar). I’ll disperse you with a splash.

Frogs. Brekeke-kesh, koash, koash!

Bacchus. I’ll subdue Your rebellious, noisy crew-- Have among you there, slap-dash! (Strikes at them.)

Frogs. Brekeke-kesh, koash, koash! We defy your oar, and you.

Charon. Hold! We’re ashore. Now shift your oar. Get out. Now pay your fare.

Bacchus. There--there it is--the twopence.

--The Frogs.

Another play of Aristophanes is The Birds.

The plot of this is simply that two Athenians, disgusted with the state of things in their native city, form the idea of building a city where the birds shall regain their old traditional supremacy.

The proposal is happily received by the birds and the city of Nephelococyggia, or Cloud-cuckoo-town is the result.

It was merely a burlesque on the Athenians who were given to building castles in the air.

Lack of space forbids further quotation from Aristophanes, but his comedies are available to all who wish to read them.

Among the predecessors of Aristophanes was Cratinus, who was an enemy of water drinkers, and expressed the dictum that no verses written by abstainers could ever please or live!

Another, whose fragmentary lines have a certain modern ring, is Simonides, who left us a poem of the ladies, which, it has been said, gave the tone to all the Greek pasquinades of the same class. He compares the different types of ladies to various members of the lower orders in creation; and the “Fine Lady” is represented by a high-bred steed.

THE FINE LADY. BY SIMONIDES.

Next in the lot a gallant dame we see, Sprung from a mare of noble pedigree; No servile work her spirit proud can brook, Her hands were never taught to bake or cook; The vapour of the oven makes her ill, She scorns to empty slops or turn the mill. To wash or scour would make her soft hands rough, Her own ablutions give pursuit enough; Three baths a day, with balms and perfumes rare, Refresh her tender limbs. Her long rich hair Each time she combs and decks with blooming flowers. No spouse more fit than she the idle hours Of wealthy lords or kings to recreate, And grace the splendour of their courtly state; For men of humbler sort no better guide Heaven in its wrath to ruin can provide.

Two more examples of the wit of Cratinus follow:

“Apollo, of fine verses here’s a gush! They come, like springs and fountains, with a rush. A river’s in his windpipe! Turn the tap; This spouting, if not stopped, will cause some dire mishap.”

“How can one stop him from this thirst for drink? How can one? Well, I’ve found a way, I think. For every cup and every mug I’ll smash, His flasks and pitchers into fragments dash, Shiver all kinds of pots that come to table, And not one crock to keep shall he be able.”

Plato Comicus (as distinguished from the philosopher), who carried on a poetic contest with Aristophanes, ranks among the best of the poets of the Old Comedy, but only a few fragments of his work remain.

Here are two of them:

“Henceforth no four-legged creature should be slain, Except the pig; of this the reason’s plain. Its use--unless for food--man vainly seeks; It only gives him bristles, dirt, and squeaks.”

“We’re swamped with ‘public men’; for one scamp dead, Two louder talkers, greater scamps, instead Spring up like Hydra’s heads: the more’s the pity We have no Iolaus in the city To singe the necks from which these pests arise, In whom foul lives alone secure the prize.”

As students of the Classics themselves find great difficulty in drawing strict boundaries between the Old and Middle Comedy, we need not pay careful attention to exact dates, but accept the general idea that one passed into the other at about the time the Peloponnesian War ended.

This was 404 B.C. and Middle Comedy may be said to extend from that date until the overthrow of the Athenians by Philip of Macedon in 338 B.C.

The most distinguished poet of the Middle Comedy was Antiphanes, who lived in the Fourth Century, B.C.

His lines are epigrammatic and frequently refer to the prevailing theme of drunkenness.

“No trade more pleasant is, no art, Than ours who play the flatterer’s part. The painter overworked gets cross, Your farmer learns his risk by loss; While care and pains each workman takes, “Laugh and get fat” our motto makes. Fun, laughter, banter, drink, I hold Are life’s chief pleasures--next to gold.”

“I have a vintner near who keeps a shop, The only man who, when I want a drop, Mixes my grog to suit my special taste; Not neat,--nor letting water run to waste.”

“Wives are bad property, I’d have you know,-- Except in countries where grapes do not grow.”

“’Tis life in paradise to find a host To dine with, where you’ve not to count the cost. And so new shifts to try I shall not pause, To get a bite that’s toothsome for my jaws.”

“One single thing I trust a woman saying, To other statements no attention paying: ‘When I am dead, I won’t return to grieve you.’ Till death takes place, in naught else I’ll believe you.”

“What! when you court concealment, will you tell The matter to a woman? Just as well Tell all the criers in the public squares! ’Tis hard to say which of them louder blares.”

“Married? He’s done for! Ah! I had misgiving. And yet I only lately left him living.”

“Two states there are that we can always prove,-- If one’s in liquor, and if one’s in love. Both words and looks these two conditions show; By these if the denial’s false we know.”

Another epigrammatist was

ANAXANDRIADES

He who composed the ditty, “Health is best, Good looks come next, then money,” and the rest, Right in the first, in the other two was wrong. None but a madman could have made that song! Next after “health” comes “wealth”; your handsome face, When pinched by famine, loses all its grace.

A man who doubts if he should marry, Or thinks he has good cause to tarry, Is foolish if he takes a wife, The source of half the plagues in life! A poor man to a rich wife sold Exchanges liberty for gold. If she has nothing, then, ’tis true, There is a different ill to rue;

For now he has, with all his need, Two mouths instead of one to feed. Perhaps she’s ugly; married life Thenceforth is never-ending strife! Perhaps she’s pretty; then your boast Is made by all your friends their toast. Does ugly, handsome, poor, or rich, Bring most ill luck?--I know not which.

One course in life there is that’s hard to roam, Back from a husband’s to a father’s home; And every decent wife should fear to tread it; The “homing heat” wins nothing but discredit.

Other Greek wits offer these:

EUBULUS

He who first drew or modelled Love with wings Might paint a swallow; but how many things In Love are different from a bird! Not light To him who bears the weight, nor quick in flight, Unmoved the imp upon his shoulders sits. How can a thing have wings that never flits?

For sober folk three bowls alone I mix, For health, cheer, sleep; the order thus I fix. The first they toss off; that’s for stomach’s sake. The next, for love and pleasure, all may take. The third, the few who are with wisdom blessed; It sends them home to bed, to take their rest. The fourth’s no longer mine! ’tis “drinkers’ bowl.” A fifth they call for; then they shout and howl. The sixth sends forth the party for a lark. The seventh to fight and bear the drunkard’s mark. Lawsuits the eighth. The ninth breeds furious talking; The tenth, to rave and lose the power of walking. Small though the bowl, much wine, if poured in neat, The head at first affects, and last the feet.

ARISTOPHON

Bad luck to him who second came to wed! The first I blame not; home a wife he led Not knowing what a curse a wife might prove, What deadly feuds oft spring from miscalled love. But he who married next, in haste unwise Rushed to his fate with fully opened eyes.

ALEXIS

Your Sophists say, it is not Love almighty That roams on wings, but lovers that are flighty. Love wrongly bears the blame; ’twas one who knew Nought of his ways who first winged Cupids drew. A drunken party coming up! To evade them I must try. My sole chance now to keep my cloak is having wings to fly.

Old Chaerephon some trick is always trying, As now, to dine without his share supplying, Early he goes to shops which cooks beset, To whom by contract crockery is let, And when he sees one choosing dishes, “Say,” He cries, “what house do you cook for to-day?” So, when the door’s left gaping, he contrives To slip in as the first guest that arrives.

In wine and man this difference appears: The old man bores you, but the old wine cheers. Men do not, like your wine, improve by age; The more their years, the less their ways engage.

Aristotle, though the first to put into words the definition of the ridiculous, can furnish no extracts which come within our present scope.

Indeed the great teacher considered comedy from its dramatic side rather than as mere humor.

One of his pupils, Theophrastus, left us some fragments, especially a short collection of character sketches which show both wit and humor.

OF SLOVENLINESS

This vice is a lazy and beastly negligence of a man’s person, whereby he becomes so filthy as to be offensive to those who are about him. You’ll see him come into a company when he is covered all over with a leprosy or scurf, or with very long nails, and he says those distempers are hereditary, that his father and grandfather had them before him. He will speak with his mouth full, and gurgle at his cup in drinking. He will intrude into the best company in ragged clothes. If he goes with his mother to the soothsayers, he cannot even then refrain from coarse and profane expressions. When he is making his oblations at the temple, he will let the dish fall out of his hand, and laugh as at some jocular exploit. At the finest concert of music he cannot forbear clapping his hands and making a rude noise. He will pretend to sing along with the singers, and rail at them when they leave off. --The Characters.

OF LOQUACITY

If we would define loquacity, it is an excessive affluence of words. The prater will not suffer any person in company to tell his own story, but, let it be what it will, tells you you mistake the matter, that he takes the thing right, and that if you will listen, he will make it clear to you. If you make any reply, he suddenly interrupts you, saying, “Why, sir, you forget what you were talking about; it’s very well you should begin to remember, since it is most beneficial for people to inform one another.” Then presently he says, “But what was I going to say? Why, truly, you very soon apprehend a thing, and I was waiting to see if you would be of my sentiment in this matter.” And thus he always takes such occasions as these to prevent the person he talks with the liberty of breathing. After he has thus tormented all who will hear him, he is so rude as to break into the company of persons met to discuss important affairs, and drives them away by his troublesome impertinence. Thence he goes into the public schools and places of exercise, where he interrupts the masters by his foolish prating, and hinders the scholars from improving by their instruction. If any person shows an inclination to go away, he will follow him, and will not part from him till he comes to his own door. If he hears of anything transacted in the public assembly of the citizens, he runs up and down to tell it to everybody. He gives you a long account of the famous battle that was fought when Aristophanes the orator was governor, or when the Lacedæmonians were under the command of Lysander; then tells you with what general applause he made a speech in public, repeating a great deal of it, with invectives against the common people, which are so tiresome to those that hear him that some forget what he says as soon as it is out of his mouth, others fall asleep, and others leave him in the midst of his harangue. If this talker be sitting on the bench, the judge will be unable to determine matters. If he’s at the theater, he’ll neither let you hear nor see anything; nor will he even permit him that sits next to him at the table to eat his meat. He declares it very hard for him to be silent, his tongue being so very well hung that he’d rather be accounted as garrulous as a swallow than be silent, and patiently bears all ridicule, even that of his own children, who, when they want to go to rest, request him to talk to them that they may the sooner fall asleep.

--The Characters.

One of the Characters described by Theophrastus is The Stupid Man, and runs thus:

“The stupid man is one who, after doing a sum and setting down the total, will ask the person next him, ‘What does it come to?’”

It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that this is the beginning or at least the popularizing of the class of jests known as Noodles or Noodle Stories.

For all nations and races have folk-lore that details the sayings and doings of the witless or silly.

The Literature of the Orient abounds in these tales and European stories of the same sort are equally abundant.

The collection of jokes ascribed to Hierocles, may or may not have been gathered by that Alexandrian philosopher. The only form in which we may read them is said to have been made not earlier than the Ninth Century, but the stories themselves are among the very earliest of the traditional jests of all time.

Some of these old jokemongers’ witticisms are capital--so good, in fact, that the parentage of many of them has been claimed by modern wits. No doubt we shall recognise some old friends as we read:

I. A pedant (for so we must probably translate, in conventional phrase, the pervading Scholastichus of the old jokemonger) wishing to teach his horse not to eat much, gave him no food. Eventually the horse died of starvation; and he complained to his friends, “I have suffered a great loss, for just when I had taught my horse to live upon nothing he died.”

II. A pedant having bought a cask of wine, sealed it. But his slave bored a hole and stole the wine. The master was amazed to find that, though his seals were unbroken, the wine gradually diminished. Someone suggested that he should examine whether it had been taken out from the bottom. “Fool,” he replied, “it isn’t the lower part that’s gone. It’s the upper.”

III. A pedant suffered shipwreck in a tempest, and seeing the passengers tie themselves to different articles on board, fastened himself to one of the anchors.

IV. Another had to cross a river, and went on board the ferry-boat on horseback. Somebody asked him why he did so, and he replied because he was in a hurry.

V. Yet another, anxious to know whether he looked well when he was asleep, stood before a looking-glass with his eyes shut to see.

VI. A landlord, who had a house to sell, went about amongst his friends, carrying a brick as a specimen.

In connection with these stories may be cited the following, from a Persian jest-book: A poor wrestler, who had passed all his life in forests, resolved to try his fortune in a great city, and as he drew near it he observed with wonder the crowds on the road, and thought, “I shall certainly not be able to know myself among so many people if I have not something about me that the others have not.” So he tied a pumpkin to his right leg and, thus decorated, entered the town. A young wag, perceiving the simpleton, made friends with him, and induced him to spend the night at his house. While he was asleep, the joker removed the pumpkin from his leg and tied it to his own, and then lay down again. In the morning, when the poor fellow awoke and found the pumpkin on his companion’s leg, he called to him, “Hey! get up, for I am perplexed in my mind. Who am I, and who are you? If I am myself, why is the pumpkin on your leg? And if you are yourself, why is the pumpkin not on my leg?”

Modern counterparts of the following jest are not far to seek: Quoth a man to a pedant, “The slave I bought of you has died.” Rejoined the other, “By the gods, I do assure you that he never once played me such a trick while I had him.” The old Greek pedant is transformed into an Irishman, in our collections of facetiæ, who applied to a farmer for work. “I’ll have nothing to do with you,” said the farmer, “for the last five Irishmen I had all died on my hands.” Quoth Pat, “Sure, sir, I can bring you characters from half a dozen gentlemen I’ve worked for that I never did such a thing.” And the jest is thus told in an old translation of Les Contes Facetieux de Sieur Gaulard: “Speaking of one of his Horses which broake his Neck at the descent of a Rock, he said, Truly it was one of the handsomest and best Curtalls in all the Country; he neuer shewed me such a trick before in all his life.”

Equally familiar is the jest of the pedant who was looking out for a place to prepare a tomb for himself, and on a friend indicating what he thought to be a suitable spot, “Very true,” said the pedant, “but it is unhealthy.” And we have the prototype of a modern “Irish” story in the following: A pedant sealed a jar of wine, and his slaves perforated it below and drew off some of the liquor. He was astonished to find his wine disappear while the seal remained intact. A friend, to whom he had communicated the affair, advised him to look and ascertain if the liquor had not been drawn off from below. “Why, you fool,” said he, “it is not the lower, but the upper, portion that is going off.”

It was a Greek pedant who stood before a mirror and shut his eyes that he might know how he looked when asleep--a jest which reappears in Taylor’s Wit and Mirth in this form: “A wealthy monsieur in France (hauing profound reuenues and a shallow braine) was told by his man that he did continually gape in his sleepe, at which he was angry with his man, saying he would not belieue it. His man verified it to be true; his master said that he would neuer belieue any that told him so, except (quoth hee) I chance to see it with mine owne eyes; and therefore I will have a great Looking glasse at my bed’s feet for the purpose to try whether thou art a lying knaue or not.”

Not unlike some of our “Joe Millers” is the following: A citizen of Cumæ, on an ass, passed by an orchard, and seeing a branch of a fig-tree loaded with delicious fruit, he laid hold of it, but the ass went on, leaving him suspended. Just then the gardener came up, and asked him what he did there. The man replied, “I fell off the ass.”--An analogue to this drollery is found in an Indian story-book, entitled Kathȧ Manjari: One day a thief climbed up a cocoanut tree in a garden to steal the fruit. The gardener heard the noise, and while he was running from his house, giving the alarm, the thief hastily descended from the tree. “Why were you up that tree?” asked the gardener. The thief replied, “My brother, I went up to gather grass for my calf.” “Ha! ha! is there grass, then, on a cocoanut tree?” said the gardener. “No,” quoth the thief; “but I did not know; therefore I came down again.”--And we have a variant of this in the Turkish jest of the fellow who went into a garden and pulled up carrots, turnips, and other kinds of vegetables, some of which he put into a sack, and some into his bosom. The gardener, coming suddenly on the spot, laid hold of him, and said, “What are you seeking here?” The simpleton replied, “For some days past a great wind has been blowing, and that wind blew me hither.” “But who pulled up these vegetables?” “As the wind blew very violently, it cast me here and there; and whatever I laid hold of in the hope of saving myself remained in my hands.” “Ah,” said the gardener, “but who filled this sack with them?” “Well, that is the very question I was about to ask myself when you came up.”

The Greek Anthology brings together short poems and epigrams written during the thousand years between Simonides’ time and the sixth century A.D.

Collected shortly before the beginning of the Christian Era and added to later, they comprise about four thousand five hundred specimens, by three hundred authors. Few of these are witty, as, indeed, few are epigrammatic, but of them we quote some which seem most appurtenant.

FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY

LUCIAN

DARKNESS

“A blockhead bit by fleas put out the light, And, chuckling, cried, ‘Now you can’t see to bite!’”

CRATES

CURES FOR LOVE

“Hunger, perhaps, may cure your love, Or time your passion greatly alter; If both should unsuccessful prove, I strongly recommend a halter.”

JULIAN

BEER

“What! whence this, Bacchus? For, by Bacchus’ self, The son of Jove, I know not this strange elf. The other smells like nectar; but thou here Like the he-goat. Those wretched Celts, I fear, For want of grapes, made thee of ears of corn. Demetrius art thou, of Demeter born, Not Bacchus, Dionysus, nor yet wine-- Those names but fit the products of the vine; Beer thou mayst be from barley; or, that failing, We’ll call thee ale, for thou wilt keep us ailing.”

AGATHIAS

GRAMMAR AND MEDICINE

“A thriving doctor sent his son to school To gain some knowledge, should he prove no fool; But took him soon away with little warning, On finding out the lesson he was learning-- How great Pelides’s wrath, in Homer’s rime, Sent many souls to Hades ere their time. ‘No need for this my boy should hither come; That lesson he can better learn at home; For I myself, now, I make bold to say, Sent many souls to Hades ere their day, Nor e’er found want of grammar stop my way.’”

NEARCHUS

A SINGER

“Men die when the night-raven sings or cries; But when Dick sings, e’en the night-raven dies.”

AMMIANUS

AN EPITAPH

“Light lie the earth, Nearchus, on thy clay, That so the dogs may easier find their prey.”

LUCILIUS

ENVY

“Poor Diophon of envy died, His brother thief to see Nailed next to him and crucified Upon a higher tree.”

A PROFESSOR WITH A SMALL CLASS

“Hail, Aristides, rhetoric’s great professor! Of wondrous words we own thee the possessor. Hail ye, his pupils seven, that mutely hear him-- His room’s four walls, and the three benches near him.”

FALSE CHARMS

“Chloe, those locks of raven hair, Some people say you dye with black; But that’s a libel, I can swear, For I know where you buy them black.”

A SCHOOLMASTER WITH A GAY WIFE

“You in your school forever flog and flay us, Teaching what Paris did to Menelaus; But all the while, within your private dwelling, There’s many a Paris courting of your Helen.”

BOARD OR LODGING

“Asclepiades, the miser, in his house Espied one day, to his surprise, a mouse. ‘Tell me, dear mouse,’ he cried, ‘to what cause is it I owe this pleasant but unlooked-for visit?’ The mouse said, smiling, ‘Fear not for your hoard; I come, my friend, to lodge, and not to board.’”

ANON

CONVENIENT PARTNERSHIP

“Damon, who plied the undertaker’s trade, With Doctor Crateas an agreement made. What linens Damon from the dead could seize, He to the doctor sent for bandages; While the good doctor, here no promise-breaker, Sent all his patients to the undertaker.”

ANON

LONG AND SHORT

“Dick cannot blow his nose whene’er he pleases His nose so long is, and his arm so short; Nor ever cries, ‘God bless me!’ when he sneezes-- He cannot hear so distant a report.”

ANON

THE LERNEANS

“Lerneans are bad: not some bad and some not But all; there’s not a Lernean in the lot, Save Procles, that you could a good man call. But Procles--is a Lernean, after all.”

ANON

PERPLEXITY

“Sad Heraclitus, with thy tears return; Life more than ever gives us cause to mourn. Democritus, dear droll, revisit earth; Life more than ever gives us cause for mirth. Between you both I stand in thoughtful pother, How I should weep with one, how laugh with t’other.”

Beside his short poems, we quote a little of the prose of

LUCIAN

A QUESTION OF PRECEDENCE

ZEUS, ÆSCULAPIUS, and HERACLES

“Zeus. Do, Æsculapius and Heracles, stop your wrangling, in which you indulge as if you were a couple of mortals; for this sort of behavior is unseemly, and quite strange to the banquets of the gods.

“Heracles. But, Zeus, would you have that quack drug-dealer there take his place at table above me?

“Æsculapius. By Zeus, yes, for I am certainly the better man.

“Heracles. How, you thunderstruck fellow, is it, pray, because Zeus knocked you on the head with his bolt for your unlawful actions, and because now, out of mere pity, by way of compensation, you have got a share of immortality?

“Æsculapius. What! have you, for your part, Heracles, altogether forgotten your having been burned to ashes on Mount Œta, that you throw in my teeth this fire you talk of?

“Heracles. We have not lived at all an equal or similar sort of life--I, who am the son of Zeus, and have undergone so many and great labors, purifying human life, contending against and conquering wild beasts, and punishing insolent and injurious men; whereas you are a paltry herb-doctor and mountebank, skilful, possibly, in palming off your miserable drugs upon sick fools, but who have never given proof of any noble, manly disposition.

“Æsculapius. You say well, seeing I healed your burns when you came up but now half-burned, with your body all marred and destroyed by the double cause of your death--the poisoned shirt, and afterward the fire. Now I, if I have done nothing else, at least have neither worked like a slave, as you have, nor have I carded wool in Lydia, dressed in a fine purple gown; nor have I been beaten by that Omphale of yours, with her golden slipper. No, nor did I, in a mad fit, kill my children and my wife!

“Heracles. If you don’t stop your ribald abuse of me at once, you shall very speedily learn your immortality will not avail you much; for I will take and pitch you head first out of heaven, so that not even the wonderful Pæon himself shall cure you and your broken skull.

“Zeus. Have done, I say, and don’t disturb the harmony of the company, or I will pack both of you off from the supper-room; although, to speak the truth, Heracles, it is fair and reasonable Æsculapius should have precedence of you at table, inasmuch as he even took precedence of you in death.”

--“Dialogues of the Gods.”

ODYSSEUS’S TRICK ON POLYPHEMUS

POSEIDON and POLYPHEMUS

“Polyphemus. Oh, father, what have I endured at the hands of the cursed stranger, who made me drunk and put out my eye, assaulting me when I was lulled to sleep!

“Poseidon. Who dared to do this, my poor Polyphemus?

“Polyphemus. In the first instance, he called himself Outis; but when he had got clear away, and was out of reach of my arrow, he said that his name was Odysseus.

“Poseidon. I know whom you speak of--him of Ithaca, and he was on his return voyage from Ilium. But how did he do it, for he is by no means a man of too much courage?

“Polyphemus. Returning from my accustomed attending of my flock, I caught a number of fellows in my cave, evidently having designs on my herds; for when I placed the stone block against the door--the rock is of huge size--and had lighted the fire by igniting the tree which I brought from the mountain, evidently they appeared to be trying to conceal themselves. Well, when I had got hold of some of them I devoured them for a pack of thieves, as was reasonable. Hereupon that most villainous rascal, whether he was Outis or Odysseus, pours out a sort of drug and gives me to drink--sweet, indeed, and of delicious smell, but most insidious, and which caused great disorder in my head; for, immediately upon my drinking, everything seemed to me to be in a whirl, and the cave itself was turned upside down, and I was no longer at all in my senses; and at last I was dragged down into sleep. Then sharpening the bar, and igniting it besides, he blinded me as I slept, and from that time I am a blind man, at your service, Poseidon.

“Poseidon. How soundly you slept, my son, that you did not jump up while you were being blinded! But as for this Odysseus, then, how did he escape? For he could not--I am well assured that he could not--move away the rock from the door.

“Polyphemus. Yes, but it was I who removed it, that I might the better catch him as he was going out; and, sitting down close to the door, I groped for him with extended hands, letting only my sheep go out to pasture, after having given instructions to the ram what he was to do in my place.

“Poseidon. I perceive: they slipped away unnoticed, under the sheep. But you ought to have shouted, and called the rest of the Cyclopes to your aid.

“Polyphemus. I did summon them, father, and they came. But when they asked the sneaking rascal’s name, and I said it was Outis, thinking I was in a mad fit, they took themselves off at once. Thus the cursed fellow tricked me with his name; and what especially vexes me is, that he actually threw my misfortune in my teeth. ‘Not even,’ said he, ‘will your father Poseidon cure you.’

“Poseidon. Never mind, my child, for I will revenge myself upon him; he shall learn that, even if it is not possible for me to heal the mutilation of people’s eyes, at all events the fate of voyagers is in my hands. And he is still at sea.”

--Dialogues of the Sea-Gods.

Remembering that the dividing lines may not be too strictly drawn, we close our survey of Greek Humor with some of the fragments of Menander.

Menander, who was to the Middle or New Comedy what Aristophanes was to the Old Comedy, left only fragments. One bit, rather longer than the others, shows, with the inevitable animal element not lacking, a surprisingly modern spirit of satire.

“Suppose some god should say: Die when thou wilt, Mortal, expect another life on earth; And for that life make choice of all creation What thou wilt be--dog, sheep, goat, man, or horse; For live again thou must; it is thy fate; Choose only in what form; there thou art free. So help me, Crato, I would fairly answer Let me be all things, anything but man. He only of all creatures feels afflictions. The generous horse is valued for his worth. And dog by merit is preferred to dog, And warrior cock is pampered for his courage, And awes the baser brood. But what is man? Truth, virtue, valour, how do they avail him? Of this world’s good the first and greatest share Is flattery’s prize. The informer takes the next. And barefaced knavery garbles what is left. I’d rather be an ass than what I am And see these villains lord it o’er their betters.”

Other Fragments of Menander follow.

“Be off! these shams of golden tresses spare; No honest woman ever dyes her hair.”

“Better to have, if good you rightly measure, Little with joy than much that brings not pleasure, Scant means with peace than piles of anxious treasure.”

“Marriage, if truth be told (of this be sure), An evil is--but one we must endure.”

“Wretched is he that has one son; or, rather, More wretched he who of more sons is father.”

“Think this, on marriage when your mind is set: If the harm is small, ’tis the chief good you’ll get.”

“Slave not for one who has been himself a slave; Steers, loosed from ploughs, of toil small memory have.”

“A handsome person, with perverted will, Is a fine craft that’s handled without skill.”

“Let not a friend your cherished secrets hear; Then, if you quarrel, you’ve no cause for fear.”

“More love a mother than a father shows: He thinks this is his son; she only knows.”

“Fathers’ and lovers’ threats no truth have got. They swear dire vengeance,--but they mean it not.”

“Your petty tyrant’s insolence I hate; If wrong is done me, be it from the great.”

“A lie has often, I have known before, More weight than truth, and people trust it more.”

“Don’t talk of birth and family; all of those Who have no natural worth on that repose. Blue blood, grand pedigree, illustrious sires He boasts of, who to nothing more aspires. What use long ancestry your pride to call? One must have had them to be born at all! And those who have no pedigree to show, Or who their grandsires were but scantly know.”

“From change of homes or lack of friends at need, And so have lost all record of their breed, Are not more “low-born” than your men of blood; A nigger’s well-born, if he makes for good!”

The following are a few more epigrammatic bits from the writings of less noted contemporaries.

PHILIPPIDES

’Tis easy, while at meals you take your fill, To say to sickly people, Don’t be ill! Easy to blame bad boxing at a fight, But not so for oneself to do it right. Action is one thing, talk another quite.

Your fortune differs as to bed and board; Your wife--if ugly--can good fare afford.

DIPHILUS

Learn, mortal, learn thy natural ills to bear: These, these alone thou must endure; but spare A heavier load upon thyself to bring By burdens that from thine own follies spring.

When I am asked by some rich man to dine, I mark not if the walls and roofs are fine, Nor if the vases such as Corinth prizes,-- But solely how the smoke from cooking rises. If dense it runs up in a column straight, With fluttering heart the dinner-hour I wait. If, thin and scant, the smoke-puffs sideway steal, Then I forebode a thin and scanty meal.

So plain is she, her father shuns the sight: She holds out bread; no dog will take a bite. So dark is she, that entering a room Night seems to follow her, and all is gloom.

APOLLODORUS

Sweet is a life apart from toil and care; Blessed lot, with others such repose to share! But if with beasts and apes you have to do, Why, you must play the brute and monkey too!

In youth I felt for the untimely doom Of offspring carried to an early tomb. But now I weep when old men’s death I see; That moved my pity; this comes home to me.

Seek not, my son, an old man’s ways to spurn; To these in old age you yourself will turn. Herein we fathers lose a point you gain; When you of “father’s cruelty” complain, “You once were young,” we tauntingly are told. We can’t retort, “My son, you once were old.”

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