CHAPTER CXLVIII.

WHEREIN A SUBSTITUTE FOR OATHS, AND OTHER PASSIONATE INTERJECTIONS IS EXEMPLIFIED.

What have we to do with the times? We cannot cure 'em:
Let them go on: when they are swoln with surfeits
They'll burst and stink: Then all the world shall smell 'em.
                                                            BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.

Once more Reader I commence with

Aballiboozobanganorribo;

Do not suppose that I am about to let thee into the mysteries of that great decasyllabon! Questo è bene uno de' piu profondi segreti ch' abbia tutto il mondo, e quasi nessuno il sa; e sia certo che ad altri nol direi giammai. 1 No Reader! not if I were before the High Court of Parliament, and the House of Commons should exert all its inquisitorial and tyrannical powers to extort it from me, would I let the secret pass that ἐρκος ὀδοντῶν within which my little trowel of speech has learnt not to be an unruly member. I would behave as magnanimously as Sir Abraham Bradley King did upon a not-altogether-dissimilar occasion. Sir Abraham might have said of his secret as Henry More says of the Epicurean Philosophy, “Truly it is a very venerable secret; and not to be uttered or communicated but by some old Silenus lying in his obscure grot or cave; nor that neither but upon due circumstances, and in a right humour, when one may find him with his veins swelled out with wine, and his garland fallen off from his head through his heedless drowsiness. Then if some young Chromis and Mnasylus, especially assisted by a fair and forward Ægle, that by way of a love-frolic will leave the tracts of their fingers in the blood of mulberries on the temples and forehead of this aged Satyr, while he sleeps dog-sleep, and will not seem to see for fear he forfeit the pleasure of his feeling,—then I say, if these young lads importune him enough,—he will utter it in a higher strain than ever.”

1 BIBBIENA.

But by no such means can the knowledge of my profounder mystery be attained. I will tell thee however, good reader, that the word itself, apart from all considerations of its mystical meaning, serves me for the same purpose to which the old tune of Lilliburlero was applied by our dear Uncle Toby,—our dear Uncle I say, for is he not your Uncle Toby, gentle Reader? yours as well as mine, if you are worthy to hold him in such relationship; and so by that relationship, you and I are Cousins.

The Doctor had learnt something from his Uncle William, which he used to the same effect, tho' not in the same way. William Dove in that capacious memory of his, into which every thing that he heard was stored, and out of which nothing was lost, had among the fragments of old songs and ballads which he had picked up, sundry burdens or chorusses, as unmeaning as those which O'Keeffe used to introduce in some of the songs of his farces, always with good farcical effect. Uncle Toby's favourite was one of them;

        Lilli burlero bullen a-la;
Lero lero, lilli burlero, lero lero, bullen a-la;
Lero lero, lilli burlero, lero lero, bullen a-la.

Without knowing that it was designed as an insult to the French, he used to say and sing in corrupted form,

Suum, mun, hey no nonny,
    Dolphin, my boy, my boy,
    Sessa, let him trot by.

Another was that from the ballad in honour of the Earl of Essex, called Queen Elizabeth's Champion, which Johnson quoted in the Isle of Sky; and Johnson is not the only omnivorous reader in whose memory it has stuck;

Raderer too, tandaro tee
Radarer, tandorer, tan do ree.

And he had treasured up the elder fragment,

    Martin Swart and his men.
        Sodledum, sodledum,
    Martin Swart and his men,
        Sodledum bell,
    With hey troly loly lo, whip here Jack,
Alumbeck, sodledum, syllerum ben,
    Martin Swart and his merry men.

He had also this relic of the same age, relating as it seems to some now forgotten hero of the strolling minstrels,

            Rory-bull Joyse,
Rumble down, tumble down, hey, go now now.

Here is another, for he uttered these things ‘as he had eaten ballads.’

A story strange I will you tell,
    But not so strange as true,
Of a woman that danced upon the rope,
    And so did her husband too:
        With a dildo, dildo, dildo,
            With a dildo, dildo, dee.

And he had one of Irish growth, which he sometimes tacked on to this last for the rhyme's sake

Callino, callino,
Callino, castore me,
    Era ëe, Era ëe
Loo loo, loo loo lee.

All these were favourites with little Daniel; and so especially for his name's sake, was

My juggy, my puggy, my honey, my coney,
    My deary, my love, my dove.

There was another with which and the Dovean use thereof, it is proper that the reader should now be made acquainted, for it would otherwise require explanation, when he meets with it hereafter. This was the one which, when William Dove trotted little Daniel upon his knee, he used to sing more frequently than any other, because the child, then in the most winning stage of childhood, liked it best of all, and it went to the tune of “God save great George our King” as happily as if that noble tune had been composed for it. The words were,

Fa la la lerridan,
Dan dan dan derridan,
Dan dan dan derridan,
        Derridan dee.

To what old ditty they formed the burden I know not, nor whether it may be (as I suspect) a different reading of “Down, down, down derry down,” which the most learned of living Welshmen supposes to be a Druidical fragment: but the frequent repetition of his own abbreviated name seldom failed to excite in the child one of those hearty and happy laughs which are never enjoyed after that blessed age has past. Most of us have frequently laughed till our sides ached, and many not unfrequently it may be feared laugh till their hearts ache. But the pure, fresh, unalloyed innocent laughter of children, in those moods when they

——seem like birds, created to be glad,2—

that laughter belongs to them and to them only. We see it and understand it in them; but nothing can excite more than a faint resemblance of it in ourselves.

2 GONDIBERT.

The Doctor made use of this burden when any thing was told him which excited his wonder, or his incredulity; and the degree in which either was called forth might be accurately determined by his manner of using it. He expressed mirthful surprize, or contemptuous disbelief by the first line, and the tune proceeded in proportion as the surprize was greater, or the matter of more moment. But when any thing greatly astonished him, he went thro' the whole, and gave it in a base voice when his meaning was to be most emphatic.

In imitation, no doubt, of my venerable friend in this his practice, though perhaps at first half unconscious of the imitation, I have been accustomed to use the great decasyllabon, with which this present Chapter commences, and with which it is to end. In my use of it however, I observe this caution,—that I do not suffer myself to be carried away by an undue partiality, so as to employ it in disregard of ejaculatory propriety or to the exclusion of exclamations which the occasion may render more fitting. Thus if I were to meet with Hercules, Mehercule would doubtless be the interjection which I should prefer; and when I saw the Siamese Twins, I could not but exclaim O Gemini!

Further, good Reader, if thou wouldest profit by these benevolent disclosures of Danielism and Dovery, take notice I say, and not only take notice, but take good notice,—N. B.—there was this difference between the Doctor's use of his burden, and mine of the decasyllabon, that the one was sung, and the other said, and that they are not “appointed to be said or sung,” but that the one being designed for singing must be sung, and the other not having been adapted to music must be said. And if any great Composer should attempt to set the Decasyllabon, let him bear in mind that it should be set in the hypodorian key, the proslambanomenos of which mode is, in the judgement of the Antients, the most grave sound that the human voice can utter, and that the hearing can distinctly form a judgement of.

Some such device may be recommended to those who have contracted the evil habit of using oaths as interjectional safety-valves or convenient expletives of speech. The manner may be exemplified in reference to certain recent events of public notoriety.

We see which way the stream of time doth run,
And are enforced from our most quiet sphere
By the rough torrent of occasion.3

3 SHAKESPEARE.

Upon hearing one morning that in the Debate of the preceding night Mr. Brougham had said no change of administration could possibly affect him, I only exclaimed A! A short-hand writer would have mistaken it for the common interjection, and have written it accordingly Ah! But it was the first syllable of my inscrutable word, and signified mere notation without wonder or belief.

When in the course of the same day there came authentic intelligence that Mr. Brougham was to be the Lord Chancellor of the New Administration, so little surprize was excited by the news, that I only added another syllable and exclaimed Abal!

Reading in the morning papers that Sir James Graham was to be first Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord Althorpe to lead the House of Commons, the exclamation proceeded one step farther and became Aballi!

This was uttered in a tone that implied disbelief; for verily I gave the Cabinet Makers credit for a grain of sense more than they possessed, (a grain mark you, because they had nothing to do with scruples;) I supposed there was a mistake as to the persons,—that Sir James Graham whose chief knowledge was supposed to lie in finance and his best qualification in his tongue, was to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that Lord Althorpe who had no other claim to consideration whatever than as being Earl Spencer's eldest son, (except that as Hodge said of Diccon the Bedlam, he is ‘even as good a fellow as ever kissed a cow,’) was intended for the Admiralty where Spencer is a popular name. But when it proved that there was no mistake in the Newspapers, and that each of these ministers had been deliberately appointed to the office for which the other was fit, then I said Aballiboo!

The accession of Mr. Charles Grant and his brother to such an Administration, brought me to Aballiboozo! with a shake of the head and in a mournful tone; for I could not but think how such a falling off would astonish the Soul of Canning, if in the intermediate state there be any knowledge of the events which are passing on earth.

When the Ministry blundered into their Budget, I exclaimed Aballiboozobang! with a strong emphasis upon the final syllable, and when they backed out of it, I came to Aballiboozobanga!

The Reform Bill upon a first glance at its contents, called forth Aballiboozobanganor—I would have hurried on two steps farther, to the end of the decasyllabon, if I had not prudently checked myself and stopt there,—foreseeing that new cause for astonishment must now arise daily.

When Sir Robert Peel did not upon the first reading kick out this mass of crudities, and throw out the Cabinet after it, neck and shoulders, hip and thigh, I said in bitterness Aballiboozobanganorri!

And when that Cabinet waxing insolent because they had raised the mob to back them, declared that they would have the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill, then I expressed my contempt, amazement, and indignation, by uttering in its omnisignificant totality the great word

ABALLIBOOZOBANGANORRIBO.