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The word Burlesque came to us through the French from the Italian "burlesco"; "burla" being mockery or raillery, and implying always an object. Burlesque must, burlarsi di uno, mock at somebody or something, and when intended to give pleasure it is nothing if not good-natured. One etymologist associates the word with the old English "bourd," a jest; the Gaelic "burd," he says, means mockery, and "buirleadh," is language of ridicule. Yes, and "burrail" is the loud romping of children, and "burrall" is weeping and wailing in a deep-toned howl. Another etymologist takes the Italian "burla," waggery or banter, as diminutive from the Latin "burra," which means a rough hair, but is used by Ausonius in the sense of a jest. That etymology no doubt fits burlesque to a hair, but, like Launce's sweetheart, it may have more hair than wit.

The first burlesque in this volume—Chaucer's "Rime of Sir Thopas," written towards the close of the fourteenth century—is a jest upon long-winded story-tellers, who expatiate on insignificant detail; for in his day there were many metrical romances written by the ancestors of Mrs. Nickleby. Riding to Canterbury with the other pilgrims, Chaucer good-humouredly takes to himself the part of the companion who jogs along with even flow of words, luxuriating in all trivial detail until he brings Sir Thopas face to face with an adventure, for he meets a giant with three heads. But even then there is the adventure to be waited for. The story-teller finds that he must trot his knight back home to fetch his armour, and when he "is comen again to toune," it takes so many words to get him his supper, get his armour on, and trot him out again, that the inevitable end comes, with rude intrusion of some faint-hearted lording who has not courage to listen until the point of the story can be descried from afar. So the best of the old story-tellers, in a book full of examples of tales told as they should be, burlesqued misuse of his art, and the "Rime of Sir Thopas" became a warning buoy over the shallows. "I cannot," said Sir Thomas Wyatt, in Henry VIII.'s reign,

The second burlesque in this volume, Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle," written in eight days, appeared in 1611, six years after the publication of the First Part, and four years earlier than the Second Part, of Don Quixote. The first English translation of Don Quixote (Shelton's) appeared in 1612. The Knight of the Burning Pestle is, like Don Quixote, a burlesque upon the tasteless affectations of the tales of chivalry. Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher worked together as playwrights in the reign of James I. All their plays were produced during that reign. Beaumont died in the same year as Shakespeare, having written thirteen plays in fellowship with Fletcher. Forty more were written by Fletcher alone, but the name of Beaumont is, by tradition of a loving fellowship, associated with them all. "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" is all the merrier for being the work of men who were themselves true poets. It should be remembered that this play was written for a theatre without scenery, in which gentlemen were allowed to hire stools on the stage itself for a nearer view of the actors; and it is among this select part of the audience that the citizen intrudes and the citizen's wife is lifted up, when she cries, "Husband, shall I come up, husband?" "Ay, cony; Ralph, help your mistress up this way; pray, gentlemen, make her a little room; I pray you, sir, lend me your hand to help up my wife.... Boy, let my wife and I have a couple of stools, and then begin."

The next burlesque in our collection is "The Rehearsal," which was produced in 1671 to ridicule the extravagance of the "heroic" plays of the Restoration. The founder of this school in England was Sir William Davenant who was living and was Poet Laureate—and wearer of the bays, therefore, was Bayes—when the jest was begun by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and other wits of the day. The jest was so long in hand that, in 1668, when Davenant died, and Dryden succeeded him as Laureate, the character of Bayes passed on to him. The plaster on the nose pointed at Davenant, who had lost great part of his nose. The manner of speaking, and the "hum and buzz," pointed at Dryden, who was also in 1671 the great master of what was called heroic drama. Bold rhodomontade was, on the stage, preferred to good sense at a time when the new French criticism was enforcing above all things "good sense" upon poets, as a reaction against the strained ingenuities that had come in under Italian influence. Let us leave to Italy her paste brilliants, said Boileau, in his Art PoÉtique, produced at the same time as "The Rehearsal," all should tend to good sense. But Dryden in his plays (not in his other poems) boldly translated Horace's serbit humi tutus, into

The particular excellence attained by flying out of sight of sense is burlesqued in the Duke of Buckingham's "Rehearsal."

John Philips, the delicate and gentle son of a vicar of Bampton, read Milton with delight from his boyhood and knew Virgil almost by heart. At college he wrote, for the edification of a comrade who did not know how to keep a shilling in his pocket, "The Splendid Shilling," a poem first published in 1705—which set forth, in Miltonic style applied to humblest images, the comfort of possessing such a coin. The Miltonic grandeur of tone John Philips happily caught from a long and loving study of the English poet whom he reverenced above others, and "The Splendid Shilling" has a special charm as a burlesque in which nobody is ridiculed.

The burlesque poem called "Namby Pamby," of which the title has been added to the English vocabulary, was written by Henry Carey, in ridicule of the little rhymes inscribed to certain babies of distinguished persons by Ambrose Philips, or, as he is translated into nursery language, "Namby Pamby Pilli-pis." Ambrose Philips was a friend and companion of Addison's, and a gentleman who prospered fairly in Whig government circles. Pope's annoyance at the praise given to Ambrose Philips's pastorals which appeared in the same Miscellany with his own, and Addison's praise in the Spectator of his friend's translation of Racine's Andromache as "The Distrest Mother," have caused Ambrose Philips to be better remembered in the history of literature than might otherwise have been necessary. When he wrote no longer of

and took to nursery lyrics, he gave Henry Carey an opportunity of putting a last touch to his monument for the instruction of posterity. The two specimens here given of the original poems that suggested "Namby Pamby" are addressed severally to two babes in the nursery of Daniel Pulteney, Esq. Another of the babies who inspired him was an infant Carteret, whose name Carey translated into "Tartaretta Tartaree." Some lines here and there, seven in all, which are not the wittier for being coarse, have been left out of "Namby Pamby." This burlesque was first published in 1725 or 1726; my copy is of the fifth edition, dated 1726, and was appended to "A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling; its Dignity, Antiquity, and Excellence, with a Word upon Pudding, and many other Useful Discoveries of great Benefit to the Publick. To which is added, Namby Pamby, A Panegyric on the new Versification address'd to A—— P——, Esq."

Henry Fielding produced his "Tom Thumb" in 1730, and added the notes of Scriblerus Secundus in 1731, following the example set by the Dunciad as published in April 1729, with the "Prolegomena of Scriblerus and Notes Variorum." Paul Whitehead added notes of a Scriblerus Tertius to his "Gymnasiad" in 1744. Fielding was twenty-four years old when he added to his "Tom Thumb" the notes that transmit to us lively examples of the stilted language of the stage by which, as a gentleman's son left to his own resources, he was then endeavouring to live. This was four years before his marriage, and ten years before he revealed his transcendent powers as a novelist.

Henry Carey's "Chrononhotonthologos," three years later, in 1734, carried on the war against pretentious dulness on the stage. The manner of the great actors was, like the plays of their generation, pompous and rhetorical, full of measured sound and fury signifying nothing. Garrick, who made his first appearance as an actor in 1741, put an end to this. "If the young fellow is right," said Quin, "We are all in the wrong;" little suspecting that they really were all in the wrong. Henry Carey, a musician by profession, played in the orchestra and also supplied the stage with ballad and burlesque farces and operas. But also he wrote "Namby Pamby." It was said of him that "he led a life free from reproach, and hanged himself October 4th, 1743."

"The Rovers, or the Double Arrangement," was a contribution to "The Anti-Jacobin," by George Canning, and his friends George Ellis and John Hookham Frere. Canning had established "The Anti-Jacobin," of which the first number was published on the 20th of November, 1797. Its poetry, generally levelled through witty burlesque at the false sentiment of the day, was collected in 1801 into a handsome quarto. This includes "The Rovers," which is a lively caricature of the sentimental German drama. Goethe's "Stella," as read in the translation used by the caricaturists, is not less comical than the caricature. I have a copy of the "Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin," in which one of the original writers has, for the friend to whom he gave the book, marked with his pen and ink details of authorship. From this it appears that the description of the dramatis personÆ in "The Rovers" was by Frere, the Prologue by Canning and Ellis, the opening scene by Frere as far as Rogero's famous song, which was by Canning and Ellis. All that follows to the beginning of the fourth act was by Canning, except that Frere wrote the scene in the second act on the delivery of a newspaper to Beefington and Puddingfield. The fourth act and the final stage directions were by Frere, except the Recitative and Chorus of Conspirators. These were by George Ellis.

"Bombastes Furioso," first produced in 1810, was by William Barnes Rhodes, who had published a translation of Juvenal in 1801 and "Epigrams" in 1803. He formed a considerable dramatic library, of which there was a catalogue printed in 1825.

Next comes in this collection the series of burlesques of the styles of poets famous and popular in 1812, published in that year as "Rejected Addresses," by Horace and James Smith. Of these brothers, sons of an attorney, one was an attorney, the other a stockbroker, one aged thirty-seven, the other thirty-three, when the book appeared which made them famous, and of which the first edition is reprinted in this volume. The book went through twenty-four editions. James Smith wrote no more, but Horace to the last amused himself with literature. "Is it not odd," Leigh Hunt wrote of him to Shelley, "that the only truly generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, was a stockbroker! And he writes poetry too; he writes poetry, and pastoral dramas, and yet knows how to make money, and does make it, and is still generous." The Fitzgerald who is subject of the first burlesque used to recite his laudatory poems at the annual dinners of the Literary Fund, and is the same who was referred to in the opening lines of Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers:"

This Miscellany closes with some of the "Odes and Addresses to Great People," with which Thomas Hood, at the age of twenty-six, first made his mark as a wit. The little book from which these pieces are taken was the joint work of himself and John Hamilton Reynolds, whose sister he had married. It marks the rise of the pun in burlesque writing through Thomas Hood, who, when dying of consumption, suggested for his epitaph, "Here lies one who spat more blood and made more puns than any other man."

H. M.

June, 1885.

Burlesque Plays and Poems.

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