CHAPTER LX.

SHOWING CAUSE WHY THE QUESTION WHICH WAS NOT ASKED OUGHT TO BE ANSWERED.

                         Nay in troth I talk but coarsely,
But I hold it comfortable for the understanding.
                                           BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.

“What, more buffoonery!” says the Honorable Fastidious Feeble-wit who condescends to act occasionally as Small Critic to the Court Journal:— “what, still more of this buffoonery!”

“Yes, Sir,—vous ne recevrez de moy, sur le commencement et milieu de celuy-cy mien chapitre que bouffonnerie; et toutesfois bouffonnerie qui porte quant à soy une philosophie et contemplation generale de la vanité de ce monde.”1

1 PASQUIER.

“More absurdities still!” says Lord Make-motion Ganderman, “more and more absurdities!”

“Aye, my Lord!” as the Gracioso says in one of Calderon's Plays,

¿sino digo lo que quiero,
de que me sirve ser loco?

“Aye, my Lord!” as the old Spaniard says in his national poesy, “mas, y mas, y mas, y mas,” more and more and more and more. You may live to learn what vaunted maxims of your political philosophy are nothing else than absurdities in masquerade; what old and exploded follies there are, which with a little vamping and varnishing pass for new and wonderful discoveries;

                     What a world of businesses
Which by interpretation are mere nothings!2

This you may live to learn. As for my absurdities, they may seem very much beneath your sapience; but when I say hæ nugæ seria ducunt, (for a trite quotation when well-set is as good as one that will be new to every body) let me add, my Lord, that it will be well both for you and your country, if your practical absurdities do not draw after them consequences of a very different dye!

2 BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.

No, my Lord, as well as Aye, my Lord!

Never made man of woman born
Of a bullock's tail, a blowing-horn;
Nor can an ass's hide disguise
A lion, if he ramp and rise.3

3 PEELE.

“More fooling,” exclaims Dr. Dense: he takes off his spectacles, lays them on the table beside him, with a look of despair, and applies to the snuff-box for consolation. It is a capacious box, and the Doctor's servant takes care that his master shall never find in it a deficiency of the best rappee. “More fooling!” says that worthy Doctor.

Fooling, say you, my learned Dr. Dense? Chiabrera will tell you

——che non è ria
Una gentil follia,—

my erudite and good Doctor;

But do you know what fooling is? true fooling,—
The circumstances that belong unto it?
For every idle knave that shews his teeth,
Wants, and would live, can juggle, tumble, fiddle,
Make a dog-face, or can abuse his fellow,
Is not a fool at first dash.4

4 BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.

It is easy to talk of fooling and of folly, mais d'en savoir les ordres, les rangs, les distinctions; de connoître ces differences delicates qu'il y a de Folie à Folie; les affinités et les alliances qui se trouvent entrè la Sagesse et cette meme Folie, as Saint Evremond says; to know this is not under every one's nightcap; and perhaps my learned Doctor, may not be under your wig, orthodox and in full buckle as it is.

The Doctor is all astonishment, and almost begins to doubt whether I am fooling in earnest. Aye, Doctor! you meet in this world with false mirth as often as with false gravity; the grinning hypocrite is not a more uncommon character than the groaning one. As much light discourse comes from a heavy heart, as from a hollow one; and from a full mind as from an empty head. “Levity,” says Mr. Danby, “is sometimes a refuge from the gloom of seriousness. A man may whistle ‘for want of thought,’ or from having too much of it.”

“Poor creature!” says the Reverend Philocalvin Frybabe. “Poor creature! little does he think what an account he must one day render for every idle word!”

And what account, odious man, if thou art a hypocrite, and hardly less odious if thou art sincere in thine abominable creed,—what account wilt thou render for thine extempore prayers and thy set discourses! My words, idle as thou mayest deem them, will never stupify the intellect, nor harden the heart, nor besot the conscience like an opiate drug!

“Such facetiousness,” saith Barrow, “is not unreasonable or unlawful which ministereth harmless divertisement and delight to conversation; harmless, I say, that is, not entrenching upon piety, not infringing charity or justice, not disturbing peace. For Christianity is not so tetrical, so harsh, so envious as to bar us continually from innocent, much less from wholesome and useful pleasure, such as human life doth need or require. And if jocular discourse may serve to good purposes of this kind; if it may be apt to raise our drooping spirits, to allay our irksome cares, to whet our blunted industry, to recreate our minds, being tired and cloyed with graver occupations; if it may breed alacrity, or maintain good humour among us; if it may conduce to sweeten conversation and endear society, then is it not inconvenient, or unprofitable. If for those ends we may use other recreations, employing on them our ears and eyes, our hands and feet, our other instruments of sense and motion; why may we not as well to them accommodate our organs of speech and interior sense? Why should those games which excite our wit and fancies be less reasonable than those whereby our grosser parts and faculties are exercised? yea, why are not those more reasonable, since they are performed in a manly way, and have in them a smack of reason; seeing also they may be so managed, as not only to divert and please, but to improve and profit the mind, rousing and quickening it, yea, sometimes enlightening and instructing it, by good sense conveyed in jocular expression.”

But think not that in thus producing the authority of one of the wisest and best of men, I offer any apology for my levities to your Gravityships! they need it not and you deserve it not.

Questi—
Son fatti per dar pasto a gl' ignoranti;
Ma voi ch' avete gl' intelletti sani,
Mirate la dottrina che s'asconde
Sotto queste coperte alte e profonde.

Le cose belle, e preziose, e care,
Saporite, soavi e dilicate,
Scoperte in man non si debbon portare
Perchè da' porci non sieno imbrattate. 5

5 ORLANDO INNAMORATO.

Gentlemen, you have made me break the word of promise both to the eye and ear. I began this chapter with the intention of showing to the reader's entire satisfaction, why the question which was not asked, ought to be answered; and now another chapter must be appropriated to that matter! Many things happen between the cup and the lip, and between the beginning of a chapter and the conclusion thereof.