No More Learning

The parent of modern nonsense-writers, he is distinguished
from all his followers and imitators by the superior consistency with which
he has adhered to his aim,--that of amusing his readers by fantastic
absurdities, as void of vulgarity or cynicism as they are incapable of
being made to harbor any symbolical meaning. He "never deviates into
sense;" but those who appreciate him never feel the need of such deviation.
He has a genius for coining absurd names and words, which, even when they
are suggested by the exigencies of his metre, have a ludicrous
appropriateness to the matter in hand. His verse is, with the exception of
a certain number of cockney rhymes, wonderfully flowing and even
melodious--or, as he would say, _meloobious_--while to all these
qualifications for his task must finally be added the happy gift of
pictorial expression, enabling him to double, nay, often to quadruple, the
laughable effect of his text by an inexhaustible profusion of the quaintest
designs. Generally speaking, these designs are, as it were, an idealization
of the efforts of a clever child; but now and then--as in the case of the
nonsense-botany--Mr. Lear reminds us what a genuine and graceful artist he
really is. The advantage to a humorist of being able to illustrate his own
text has been shown in the case of Thackeray and Mr. W. S. Gilbert, to
mention two familiar examples; but in no other instance of such a
combination have we discovered such geniality as is to be found in the
nonsense-pictures of Mr. Lear. We have spoken above of the melodiousness of
Mr. Lear's verses, a quality which renders them excellently suitable for
musical setting, and which has not escaped the notice of the author
himself. We have also heard effective arrangements, presumably by other
composers, of the adventures of the Table and the Chair, and of the cruise
of the Owl and the Pussy-cat,--the latter introduced into the "drawing-room
entertainment" of one of the followers of John Parry. Indeed, in these days
of adaptations, it is to be wondered at that no enterprising librettist has
attempted to build a children's comic opera out of the materials supplied
in the four books with which we are now concerned.
The first of these,
originally published in 1846, and brought out in an enlarged form in 1863,
is exclusively devoted to nonsense-verses of one type. Mr. Lear is careful
to disclaim the credit of having created this type, for he tells us in the
preface to his third book that "the lines beginning, 'There was an old man
of Tobago,' were suggested to me by a valued friend, as a form of verse
leading itself to limitless variety for Rhymes and Pictures. " Dismissing
the further question of the authorship of "There was an old man of Tobago,"
we propose to give a few specimens of Mr. Lear's Protean powers as
exhibited in the variation of this simple type. Here, to begin with, is a
favorite verse, which we are very glad to have an opportunity of giving, as
it is often incorrectly quoted, "cocks" being substituted for "owls" in the
third line:

"There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard! '"

With the kindly fatalism which is the distinctive note of the foregoing
stanza, the sentiment of our next extract is in vivid contrast:--


"There was an Old Man in a tree,
Who was terribly bored by a bee;
When they said, 'Does it buzz? ' he replied, 'Yes, it does!
It's a regular brute of a Bee. '"

To the foregoing verse an historic interest attaches, if, that is, we are
right in supposing it to have inspired Mr. Gilbert with his famous
"Nonsense-Rhyme in Blank Verse. " We quote from memory:--

"There was an Old Man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp.
When they asked, 'Does it hurt? ' he replied, 'No, it doesn't,
But I thought all the while 'twas a Hornet!