History of English Humor (Vol. 1&2). A. G. K. L'Estrange
Latin versification is supposed to have died out with Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers in the sixth century, but an advance was made towards playing with words by the introduction of rhymes in the church hymns. Some trace of them is found in the verses of Hilary in the fourth century, but we find them first regularly adopted in a Latin panegyric written for Clotaire II. in France at the commencement of the seventh. Some suppose that "Leonine verses" were invented shortly afterwards by Pope Leo II. As in the days of Greece and Rome, the development of poetry was accompanied by a considerable activity in the fabrication of metres. This did not limit itself to a distich or alternate rhyme called "tailed" or "interlaced," but included the "horned," "crested," and "squared" verses—the last forming double acrostics. Sometimes half a dozen lines were made to rhyme together. This movement, pedantic as it was, showed an advance in finding similarities in things dissimilar, a change in the appreciation of the harmony. Previously rhymes were considered ludicrous, as they seem to us now in prose, and even in the French drama. The old Welsh poetry depended merely upon alliteration—as in the words ascribed to the British Queen—
"Ruin seize thee, ruthless king."
And among our old proverbs we have "Many men of many minds." "Fools build houses, for wise men to live in." "First come, first served." The motto of the Duke of Athole runs "Furth fortune and fill the fetters."
The "Exeter Book," presented to his cathedral by Leofric, first Bishop of Exeter in 1046 deserves notice, as indicative of the course of early Anglo-Saxon literature. Here we have first religious meditations and legends of Saints, then proverbial, or as they are called "gnomic" verses, next allegorical descriptions by means of animals, and finally riddles. The last are very long, and generally consist of emblematic descriptions.
It is a part of the great system of compensation under which we live, that those who are most highly praised are most exposed to the attacks of the envious, and that those who stand on an eminence above others should have their bad as well as their good deeds recorded. And thus we find that the earliest shafts of censure were directed against princes and priests, and the first Norman satires of which we hear were some songs called Sirventois, against Arnould, who was chaplain to Robert Courthose in the time of William Rufus. He was apparently an excellent man, established schools at Caen, and was afterwards promoted to be patriarch of Jerusalem. The next attack of which we have any record was that made by Luc de la Barr against Henry I. The nature of the imputations it contained may be conjectured from the fact, that the king ordered the writer's eyes to be put out. Another satire was directed against Richard, "King of the Romans," who was taken prisoner at Lewes. It was written to triumph over him, and taunt him with his defeat, and the nearest approach to humour in it is where it speaks of his making a castle of a windmill, which is supposed to refer to his having been captured in such a building. The humour in the satires of this time was almost entirely of a hostile or optical character. We have two metrical ballads of the thirteenth century directed against the Scotch and French, but containing little but animosity. There is also one complaining of heavy taxation in the reign of Edward I., but generally the church was attacked, as the clergy formed a prominent mark in every parish in the country, and were safer game than the king or barons. Thus, in the Harleian MSS., there is an ancient French poem pretending to eulogise a new conventual order for both men and women, who are to live together in great luxury and be bound to perpetual idleness. Several monasteries in England are mentioned as affording instances of such a mode of living.
The earliest literary assault we have on the church in this country was written probably in the thirteenth century—Warton says, soon after the conquest—in a mixture of Saxon and Norman. A monastery, composed of various kinds of gems and delicacies, represents the luxury of the monks—
"Fur in see, bi west Spayngne
Is a lond ihote Cokaygne:
Ther nis lond under heuen-riche
Of wel of godness hit iliche.
"Ther is a wel fair abbei,
Of white monkes and of grei,
Ther beth bowris and halles
Al of pasteiis beth the walles
Of fleis, of fisse, and rich met,
The likfullist that man mai et.
Fluren cakes beth the schingles[40] alle Of cherche, cloister, boure, and halle. The pinnes[41] beth fat podinges Rich met to princez and kinges. "An other abbei is ther bi For soth a gret fair nunnerie; Vp a riuer of sweet milke, Whar is gret plente of silk."
He goes on to speak of the monks and nuns as dancing together in a very indecorous manner.
The clergy were often humorous themselves—Nigellus Wireker, a monk of Canterbury, who is supposed to have lived in the time of Richard I., wrote a very amusing attack on his brethren. It is in Latin elegiac verse, and as being directed against ambition and discontent may be compared with the first satire of Horace. But he wrote in a less advanced state of civilisation to that in which the Roman poet lived, and he carries on his discourse by means of conversations of animals. The work is called the Brunellus—the name of an ass.
The poem is directed against passion and avarice—and especially against the monks, who, he says deserve to be called pastors, not a pascendo but a poscendo. But he takes so much interest in the animals he introduces, that he seems to lose sight of his moral object. He delights in the speeches of a cock and crow, but his main story is that the ass, Brunellus, is dissatisfied, because, having long ears he thinks he ought to have a long tail. He betakes himself to Galienus to consult him, who endeavours to dissuade him from adopting any surgical or medical means, and reminds him that if he has a short tail he has a very large head. He inculcates contentment by a story of two cows, one of which, through impatience when her tail has stuck in the mud, says it is not an honour but an onus, and so pulls it off, and becomes a laughing stock to the world. The other cow waits patiently, and makes a long speech containing references to Cato and the Trojan war.
Prescription given by Galienus to the ass Brunellus to make his tail grow:
"Some marble's fat and seven fold furnace shade
The offspring of a male and female mule,
A little of the milk of goose and kite
A punchbowl's racing, and a wolf's alarms;
Of dogs and hares alliance take a drachm,
And kisses which the lark gives to her hawk."
The ass begs Galienus to bestow upon him his blessing, which he does with mock gravity—
"May Jove to thee a thousand omens give,
And to thy tail ten thousand omens more;
Mayst thou drink water, and on thistles feed,
Be thy bed marble, and thy covering dew.
May hail and snow and rain be ever near,
Ice and hoar frost thy constant comfort be!"
The ass, whose extraordinary performances are narrated, is appointed the "nuntius" of a bishop.
The man who showed at this time the greatest judgment in humour and insight into its nature, was John of Salisbury. His Polycraticus is worthy of a religious character; but he speaks in it of "Court Trifles" under which he places dice, music and dreams. Many of his observations show a taste and knowledge in advance of his time. "Our age," he says, "has fallen back to fables," and he speaks as though the jesters of the day indulged in very questionable jokes and performances. He notices the force of a jest made by a man who would himself fall under it, as when a pauper laughs at poverty. Also he refers to the effect of accusing a man of the faults to which his virtues may lead, as of telling a liberal man he is a spendthrift. "So Diogenes told Antisthenes, his master, that he had made him a doctor instead of a rich man—a dweller in a tub, instead of in a mansion." Well-timed pleasantries, he says, are of use in oratory, but convivial jesting is dangerous, remarks or personal defects are objectionable, and as Lycurgus ordered, all jokes should be without