When Bunthorne has recited his 'wild, weird, fleshly thing,' called 'Oh, Hollow! Hollow! Hollow!' the Duke of Dunstable remarks that it seems to him to be nonsense. 'Nonsense, perhaps,' replies the Lady Saphir, 'but oh, what precious nonsense!' And there really is a sense in which nonsense--genuine, diverting nonsense--is precious indeed. There is so little of it. The late Edward Lear bubbled over with true whimsicality. His 'Book of Nonsense' is what it professes to be--the most delightful non-sense possible. But of how much of that sort of thing does English literature boast? There is plenty of unconscious nonsense, of course, but it is not of the right quality. Dryden said of Shadwell that he reigned, 'without dispute, throughout the realms of nonsense absolute'--he 'never deviated into sense'--and yet he was the dullest of dull dogs. The fact is, that nothing is more difficult than to write amusing nonsense, and it is worth noting how few people, comparatively speaking, have ever attempted to produce it.
One of the earliest efforts of the kind in the language is a certain passage in Udall's 'Ralph Roister Doister,' where Dame Christian receives from the hero a letter which seems, on the face of it, insulting:
'Sweete mistresse, where as I love you nothing at all,
Regarding your substance and richesse chief of all,
To your personage, beauty, demeanour, and wit,
I commend me unto you never a whit,'
and so on--the joke lying, of course, in the incorrectness of the punctuation adopted. In general, the Elizabethans were too much in earnest to write absolute nonsense. Nonsense is to be found in Shakespeare, but usually in parody of the euphemists of his time. Some of the
personae are made to talk sad stuff, but it has not the merit of being 'precious' in the Lady Saphir's sense. It is very tedious indeed, and one likes to think that Shakespeare, perhaps, did not write it, after all. Drummond, in his 'Polemo-Middinia,' gave an early example of a kind of
jeu d'esprit which has since been frequently imitated--a species of dog-Latin
in extremis:
'Hic aderunt Geordy Akinhedius and little Johnus,
Et Jamy Richaeus, et stout Michel Hendersonus,
Qui jolly tryppas ante alios dansare solebat,
Et bobbare bene, et lassas kissare boneas.'
But though this is not wholly unamusing, it is hardly, as nonsense, up to the standard instituted for us by Mr. Lear.
The real thing is more nearly visible in Swift's macaronic lines about Molly--'Mollis abuti, Hasan acuti,' etc.--another vein of fun which has been exceedingly well worked out by successive writers. But such inspirations as these have too much method in them to be quite admissible. Much better was Swift's 'Love Song in the Modern Taste,' beginning:
'Fluttering spread thy purple pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart.'
Even this, however, has too much sense for it to pass muster. Nor can one receive Johnson's
'If a man who turnips cries,
Cry not when his father dies,'
and so on, as sufficiently nonsensical. It is simply a
jeu de mots, and no more, though funny enough as it stands. One is better satisfied when one comes to the 'Tom Thumb' of Henry Fielding and the 'Chrononhotonthologos' of Henry Carey, though even in those diverting squibs it is rarely that the versifier surrenders himself wholly to 'Divine Nonsensia.' That charming goddess was saluted to more purpose in 'The Anti-Jacobin,' where she was invoked to make charming fun of 'The Loves of the Plants.' In 'The Progress of Man' (in the same delectable collection) occurs the inspired passage:
'Ah, who has seen the mailed lobster rise,
Clap her broad wings, and, soaring, claim the skies
When did the owl, descending from her bower,
Crop, 'mid the fleecy flocks, the tender flower?
Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb,
In the salt wave and, fish-like, strive to swim?'
But even this is too consistent in its grotesqueness to be perfect nonsense.
One becomes acquainted with better nonsense the nearer one gets to one's own times. How clever, for instance, was that well-known 'dream' of Planche's, in which he fancied that he
'Was walking with Homer, and talking
The very best Greek I was able--was able--
When Guy, Earl of Warwick, with Johnson and Garrick,
Would dance a Scotch-reel on the table--the table;
When Hannibal, rising, declared 'twas surprising
That gentlemen made such a riot--a riot--
And sent in a bustle to beg Lord John Russell
Would hasten and make them all quiet--all quiet.'
It may be that Mr. W. S. Gilbert had this in his mind when, in 'Patience,' he pictured the processes by which to manufacture a heavy dragoon; but here, again, the design is too obvious, the incongruity a little too apparent. The late Shirley Brooks extracted much fun out of a mosaic of quotations from the poets, beginning:
'Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
That to be hated needs but to be seen,
Invites my lay; be present, sylvan maids,
And graceful deer reposing in the shades.'
Very good nonsense is this, if not of the best; and it leads us up naturally to the more consummate performances of Mr. Calverley, whose exquisite mimicry of Mr. Browning and Miss Ingelow, in their most incomprehensible or most affected moods, is too well known to need description. Favourable mention may also be made of a certain ballad composed by the late Professor Palmer, in illustration of his inability to master nautical terms, which he furbishes up in mirth-provoking fashion.
But, putting aside Mr. Lear, the most successful, the most precious nonsense ever written has been supplied by writers still, happily, in our midst. And of these, of course, Mr. Lewis Carroll is obviously
facile princeps--not only by reason of the immortal 'Jabberwocky,' but by reason, also, of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' in which there are some very felicitous passages.
'They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care,
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.'
It requires genius, of a kind, to conceive and execute such lines as these, easy as (no doubt) it seems to write them. Not that Mr. Carroll is unapproachable. There are probably many who think that his 'Jabberwocky' is at least equalled by Mr. Gilbert's 'Sing for the Garish Eye,' in which the invented words are truly 'Carrollian':
'Sing for the garish eye,
When moonless brandlings cling;
Let the froddering crooner cry,
And the braddled sapster sing!'--
though, to be sure, Mr. Gilbert could hardly be expected to do anything better than that lovely quatrain of Bunthorne's about 'The dust of an earthy to-day' and 'The earth of a dusty to-morrow.'
The example set by Mr. Lear has been followed by many versifiers, who have sought to create their effects after a manner now sufficiently familiar. Thus, we have had multitudinous efforts like the following:
'There was an old priest in Peru
Who dreamt he'd converted a Jew:
He woke in the night
In a deuce of a fright,
And found it was perfectly true.'
Performances of that sort are, however, easy; and more merit attaches to such studies in unintelligibility as Bret Harte's 'Songs without Sense,' of which the 'Swiss Air' is a good example:
'I'm a gay tra, la, la,
With my fal, lal, la, la,
And my bright--
And my light--
Tra, la, le. [
Repeat.]
Then laugh, ha, ha, ha,
And ring, ting, ling, ling,
And sing fal, la, la,
La, la, le.' [
Repeat.]
Probably, however, the poetry of pure nonsense has never been better represented than in these contemporary verses on the suitable topic of 'Blue Moonshine':
'Ay! for ever and for ever
Whilst the love-lorn censers sweep,
Whilst the jasper winds dissever,
Amber-like, the crystal deep;
Shall the soul's delirious slumber,
Sea-green vengeance of a kiss,
Teach despairing crags to number
Blue infinities of bliss.'
[The end]
William Davenport Adams's essay: Nonsense Verses