sions, where the presence of Fame's trumpet or the ancient lyre is out of the question.

But the most agreeable form of irony, especially when carried to any length, is that which betrays the absurdity it treats of (or what it considers such) by an air of bonhomie and good faith, as if the thing ridiculed were simplest matter of course, and not at all exposed by the pretensions with which it is artfully set on a level. It is that of Marot and La Fontaine; of Pulci, Berni, and Voltaire. In the elder of these Italians, and in the two oldest of the Frenchmen, it is best assumed, as far as regards simplicity; but in Berni and Voltaire it is most laughable, because by a certain excess and caricature of indifference it gives its cue to the reader, and so makes him a party to the joke, as rich comic actors do with their audiences. Such is Voltaire's exquisite banter on War, in which he says, that a monarch picks up a parcel of men "who have nothing to do, dresses them in coarse blue cloth at two shillings a yard, binds their hats with coarse white worsted, turns them to the right and left, and marches away with them to GLORY."-Dictionnaire Philosophique, Art. Guerre.

Thus also, speaking of the Song of Solomon (to the poetry of which, and the oriental warrant of its imagery, he was too much a Frenchman of that age to be alive, notwithstanding his genius), he says of it, that it is not in the style of the Greeks and Romans; but then he adds, as if in its defence, that Solomon was "a Jew ;" and "a Jew is not obliged to write like Virgil." ("Un Juif n'est pas obligé d'écrire comme Virgile."-Id., Art. Salomon.)

It is impossible to help laughing at this, however uncritical. Very lucky was it for the interest and varieties of poetry, that the East was not obliged to write like the West; and much less to copy a copyist? Voltaire was a better Christian than he took himself for, and the greatest wit that ever lived; but Solomon had more poetry in his little finger-at least, of the imaginative sort-than the Frenchman in his whole mocking body.

5th Burlesque, or Pure Mockery, from burlare, Ital., to jest with, to jeer. The word, I take it, comes from the same imitative root as burrasca and burberia (storm and swelling), and

originates in the puffing and blowing of the cheeks of the old comedians. This is the caricature and contradiction of the serious in pretension, as the mock-heroic is the echo and the misapplication of the dignified in style. It farcically degrades, as the other playfully elevates; and is a formidable exhibition, when genius is the performer. Aristophanes, by means of it, confounded Socrates with the Sophists, and prepared the way for his murder. Its greatest type in the English language is Hudibras, which reversed the process of Aristophanes, and rescued good sense and piety out of the coarse hands of the Puritans. Plentiful specimens of it from that poem will be found in the present volume. The work of Rabelais is a wild but profound burlesque of some of the worst abuses in government and religion, and has had a corresponding effect on the feelings, or unconscious reasonings, of the world. This must be its excuse for a coarseness which was perhaps its greatest recommendation in the "good old times," though at present one is astonished how people could bear it. Rabelais' combination of work and play, of merriment and study, of excessive animal spirits with prodigious learning, would be a perpetual marvel, if we did not reflect that nothing is more likely to make a man happy, particularly a Frenchman, than his being able to indulge his genius, and cultivate the task he is fit for. Native vivacity and suitable occupation conspire to make his existence perfect. Voltaire is a later instance. Thus there can be no doubt that the mirth of Rabelais was as real as it seems. Indeed it could not otherwise have been so incessant. It is a pity somebody does not take up the wonderful translation of him by Urquhart, and make a good single volume of it, fit for modern readers. It would include all the best points, and even what Barrow would have called its most 66 acute nonsense," jargon, which sometimes is the only perfect exhibition of the nonsense it ridicules. Such, for instance, is the gibberish so zealously poured forth by the counsel for plaintiff and defendant in the court of law (Book the Second), and the no less solemn summing up, in the same language, by the learned judge. A little correction would soon render that passage admissible into good company. What, too, could be more easily retained in like manner, than the account of the gi

gantic despot Gargantua, who "ate six pilgrims in a salad ?" of the Abbey of the Thelemites, or people who did as they pleased (natural successors of the prohibited)? of the reason "why monks love to be in kitchens ?" of the Popemania and the decretals? of the storm at sea, and how Panurge would have given anything to have been out of it on dry land, even to the permission to somebody to kick him? Admirable things have the wits and even the gravest reformers (the wits themselves are sometimes the gravest) got out of this prince of buffoons, whom the older I grow (always excepting the detestable coarseness taught him by the monks) the more I admire; for I now think that his Oracle of the bottle meant the sincerity which is to be found in wine, and that his despair of "extracting water out of pumice-stones," and of "washing asses' heads without losing his soap" pointed only at things that ought to be impossible, and not at those hopes for the world which his own heartiness tended to animate. Steele, Swift, Sterne, nay the Puritans themselves, as far as they were men of business, got wisdom out of Rabelais; and so perhaps has the noble Society of his modern countrymen, whose motto is, "Help yourself, and Heaven will help you." "Put your trust in God," said the Cromwellite, "and keep your powder dry." "Pantagruel," says Rabelais, "having first implored the assistance of Heaven, held fast, by the pilot's advice, of the mast of the ship" (book iv., chap. 19).

"We must implore, invoke, pray, beseech and supplicate Heaven," quoth Epistemon; " but we mustn't stop there; we must, as holy writ says, cooperate with it.”

"Devil take me," said Friar John, "but the close of Seville would all have been gathered, vintaged, gleaned, and swallowed up, if I had only sung From the snares of the enemy,' like the rest of the scoundrelly monks; and hadn't bestirred myself to save the vineyard as I did."

Friar John had stripped himself to his waistcoat to help the seamen. Epistemon, Ponocrates, and the rest did as much. Panurge alone sat on the deck, weeping and howling. "Odzooks!" cried Friar John: "What! Panurge playing the calf! Panurge whining! Panurge braying! Would it not become thee much better to lend us a helping hand, than to keep sitting there like a baboon and lowing like a cow?" "Be, be, be, bous, bous, bous," returned Panurge (he was blubbering and swallowing the water that broke over them);-"Friar John, my friend, my good father,

I'm drowning; I drown; I'm a dead man, my dear father in God; I'm a dead man, my friend; your valor cannot save me from this; alas! alas! we're above E la (a term in music), above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges. Be, be, be, bous. Alas! we're above G Sol Re Ut. I sink, I sink, my father, my uncle, my all. The water's got into me. I pash it in my shoes-bous, bous, bous, pash-I drown-alas! alas! hu, hu, hu, hu, bous, bous, bobous, ho, ho, alas! Would to Heaven I were in company with those good holy fathers we met this morning going to council, -so godly, so comely, so fat and happy, my friend. Holos, holos, holos, alas! ah, see there! This devilish wave (God forgive me) I mean this wave of Providence, will sink our vessel. Alas, Friar John, my father, my friend ;-confess me. I'm down on my knees. I confess my sinsyour blessing."

"Go to the devil," said Friar John; "will you never leave off whining and snivelling? Come and help us.”

"Don't swear," said Panurge, "don't swear, holy father, my friend, I beseech you. To-morrow as much as you please. I drown. I'll give eighteen hundred thousand crowns to any one that will set me on shore. Oh, my dear friend, I confess hear me confess: a little bit of a will or testament at any rate."

"His will!" said Friar John. "Stir your stumps, now or never, you pitiful rascal. The poor devil's frightened out of his wits."

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"Bous, bous, bous," continued Panurge. I sink; I die, my friends. I die in charity with all the world. Farewell. Bous, bous, bousowwanwaus. St. Michael! St. Nicholas! now or never. Deliver me from this danger, and I here make a solemn vow to build you a fine large little chapel or two between Condé and Monsoreau, where neither cow nor calf shall feed. Oh, oh! pailfuls are getting down my throat-bous, bous. How devilish bitter and salt it is! Oh, you sinn'd just now, Friar John, you did indeed; you sinn'd when you swore; think of that, my FORMER CRONY! former, I say, because it's all over with us; with you as well as with me. Oh, I sink, I sink. Oh to be but once again on dry ground; never mind how or in what condition; oh, if I was but on firm land, with somebody kicking me.'

But I must get out of the company of Rabelais, or I shall never see land in this essay. The above is a hasty specimen of the sort of abridgment which I think might be made of this immortal jester; and after the fashion of the disinterestedness which he and other scholars have taught me, I here make a present of the

*This extract is abridged from two different editions of the variorum translation of Rabelais; or rather the concluding passage is added, and quoted from memory, out of the one I first met with; which I take to be the best.

notion to the booksellers. It is good to be brought up in the company of the cheerful.

PARODY (Пlapadia, Side-song?-song turned from its purpose) is sometimes pure burlesque, and sometimes a species of complimental irony, hovering between burlesque and mock-heroic. Dr. King's Art of Cookery, quoted in the foregoing section, is a parody on Horace's Art of Poetry, and commences like its original with remarks on the fault of incongruity :

Ingenious Lister, were a picture drawn

With Cynthia's face, but with a neck like brawn,
With wings of turkey, and with feet of calf,

Though drawn by Kneller, it would make you laugh.

(I do not think it would, any more than the like monstrosity in Horace. It would be simply shocking.

both as to books and dishes.)

But the rest is good,

Such is, good sir, the figure of a feast
By some rich farmer's wife and sister drest;
Which, were it not for plenty and for steam,
Might be resembled to a sick man's dream :
Where all ideas huddling run so fast,
That syllabubs come first, and soups the last.
Not but that cooks and poets still were free
To use their power in nice variety;
Hence, mackerel seem delightful to the eyes,
Though dress'd with incoherent gooseberries:
Crabs, salmon, lobsters, are with fennel spread,
Who never touch'd that herb till they were dead:
Yet no man lards salt pork with orange-peel,
Or garnishes his lamb with spitch-cock'd eel.

Parody is not only a compliment instead of a satire, as some people think it, but a compliment greater than it is thought by others, for it is a greater test of merit. Sometimes it is so close, yet amusing, as to become almost identical; in which case it betrays the existence of something too much like itself in the original; that is to say, unintentionally subject to a derisive echo. Mr. Crabbe, an acute though not impartial observer of common life, a versifier of singular facility, and a genuine wit, had nevertheless a style so mixed up with conventionalisms and