CHAPTER XII. ·

Ludicrous Exaggeration.

MEN of wit sometimes like to pamper a joke into exaggeration; into a certain corpulence of facetiousness. Their relish of the thing makes them wish it as large as possible; and the enjoyment of it is doubled by its becoming more visible to the eyes of others. It is for this reason that jests in company are sometimes built up by one hand after another," threepiled hyperboles,❞— till the over-done Babel topples and tumbles down amidst a merry confusion of tongues.

Falstaff was a great master of this art: he loved a joke as large as himself; witness his famous account of the men in buckram. Thus he tells the Lord Chief Justice, that he had lost his voice "with singing of anthems;" and he calls Bardolph's red nose "a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire light;" and says it has saved him "a thousand marks in links and torches," walking with it "in the night, betwixt tavern and tavern." See how he goes heightening the account of his recruits at every step:- "You would think I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals, lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks.--A mad fellow met me on the way and told me I had unloaded all the gib. bets and pressed the dead bodies-No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat.Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on; for indeed I had most of them out of prison.— There's but a shirt and a-half in all my company;-and the half shirt is two napkins, tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves."

An old schoolfellow of ours (who, by the way, was more fond of quoting Falstaff than any other of Shakspeare's characters) used to be called upon for a story, with a view to a joke of this sort; it

being an understood thing that he had a privilege of exaggeration, without committing his abstract love of truth. The reader knows the ld blunder attributed to Goldsmith about a dish of green peas. Somebody had been applauded in company for advising his cook to take some ill-dressed peas to Hammersmith, "because that was the way to Turn'em Green;" upon which Goldsmith is said to have gone and repeated the pun at another table in this fashion: "John should take those peas, I think, to Hammersmith." "Why so, Doctor?" "Because that is the way to make 'em green.' Now our friend would give the blunder with this sort of additional dressing: "At sight of the dishes of vegetables, Goldsmith, who was at his own house, took off the covers, one after another, with great anxiety, till he found that peas were among them; upon which he rubbed his hands with an air of infinite and prospective satisfaction. You are fond of peas, Sir?' said one of the company. Yes, Sir,' said Goldsmith, 'particularly so:-I eat them all the year round;-I mean, Sir, every day in the season. I do not think there is anybody so fond of peas as I am.' 'Is there any particular reason, Doctor,' asked a gentleman present,' why you like peas so much, beyond the usual one of their agreeable taste?'-'No, Sir, none whatsoever :—none, I assure you' (here Goldsmith showed a great wish to impress this fact on his guests): 'I never heard any particular encomium or speech about them from any one else: but they carry their own eloquence with them they are things, Sir, of infinite taste.' (Here a laugh, which put Goldsmith in additional spirits.) But, bless me!' he exclaimed, looking narrowly into the peas:-'I fear they are very ill-done: they are absolutely yellow instead of green' (here he put a strong emphasis on green); and you know, peas should be emphatically green :-greenness in a pea is a quality as essential as whiteness in a lily. The cook has quite spoilt them:-but I'll give the rogue a lecture, gentlemen, with your permission.' Goldsmith then rose and rang the bell violently for the cook, who came in ready booted and spurred. 'Ha!' exclaimed Goldsmith, 'those boots and spurs are your salvation, you knave. Do you know, Sir, what you have done?'—' No, Sir.'-' Why, you have made the peas yellow, Sir. Go instantly, and take 'em to Hammer.

smith.' "To Hammersmith, Sir?' cried the man, all in astonishment, the guests being no less so please, Sir, why am I to take 'em to Hammersmith?'—' Because, Sir,' (and here Goldsmith looked round with triumphant anticipation) 'that is the way to render those peas green.'

There is a very humorous piece of exaggeration in Butler's Remains, a collection, by the bye, well worthy of Hudibras, and indeed of more interest to the general reader. Butler is defrauded of his fame with readers of taste who happen to be no politicians, when Hudibras is printed without this appendage The piece we allude to is a short description of Holland :

We do not know, and perhaps it would be impossible to discover, whether Butler wrote his minor pieces before those of the great patriot Andrew Marvell, who rivalled him in wit and excelled him in poetry. Marvell, though born later, seems to have been known earlier as an author. He was certainly known publicly before him. But in the political poems of Marvell there is a ludicrous character of Holland, which might be pronounced to be either the copy or the original of Butler's, if in those antiBatavian times the Hollander had not been baited by all the wits; and were it not probable that the unwieldy monotony of his character gave rise to much the same ludicrous imagery in many of their fancies. Marvell's wit has the advantage of Butler's, not in learning or multiplicity of contrasts (for nobody evel beat him there), but in a greater variety of them, and in being able, from the more poetical turn of his mind, to bring graver and more imaginative things to wait upon his levity.

He thus opens the battery upon our amphibious neighbor:

He goes on in a strain of exquisite hyperbole :

How did they rivet with gigantic piles

Thorough the centre their new-catched miles;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground;
Building their watʼry Babel far more high

To catch the waves, than those to scale the sky.
Yet still his claim the injured ocean layed,
And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played;
As if on purpose it on land had come

To show them what's their Mare Liberumt;
A dayly deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level-coyl ;
The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest:
And oft the Tritons, and the Sea-nymphs, saw
Whole shoals of Dutch served up for cabillau.
Or, as they over the new level ranged,
For pickled herrings, pickled Heeren changed.
Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake;
'Therefore necessity, that first made kings,

Something like government among them brings;

Dryden afterwards, of fighting for gain, in his song of Come. dare

"Tne Gods from above the mad labor behold." A Free Ocean

For as with Pigmys, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures grain,
Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he that drains.
Not who first sees the rising sun, commands;
But who could first discern the rising lands;
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their lord and country's father speak;
To make a bank was a great plot of state;-
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.

We can never read these and some other ludicrous verses of Marvell, even when by ourselves, without laughter.

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