thickets upon travellers, and how they roared to frighten their prey, and quite worked up poor Doolan's feelings to the highest pitch. As we approached the wooded part of the road I enjoined strict silence, and made Doolan walk ahead with me, the others following. Every night-jar that flew up made him jump; when at last, in the gloomiest part of the road, we heard a most savage bubbling sort of growl or roar, very familiar to my ears, but electrifying to poor Paddy, who stopped short, and exclaimed,

"O, be the phowers, what's that?"

"Look out, Larry, there's a tiger coming!" whispered Mac. Another roar.

"O blissid Moses, we'll all be kilt entoirely! Look at here now, Meejor, I'm paid for food for powther an' bullets, but it ain't in my commission for to be aten by wild bastes like a knacker's horse, so just roight about face. O, the saints be wid us!" (An awful roar.) "Let me go, Mac; stay an' be aten av ye will. Mother o' Moses! come along, Meejor, like a dacint body, do now!"

'Here another roar and a bang

in the air from my gun, which was followed by a demoniacal explosion from the camel, put the finishing touch to poor Doolan's fortitude; for he turned and bolted up the road, calling on all the saints to protect him, whilst we fired off a salvo in the air, and nearly died with laughter.

'I never saw Larry Doolan again, for the regiment marched early, and my camp moved in a different direction. But I heard from Macpherson a year after, and he said that Paddy was a deal more bearable, and whenever he was inclined to be obstreperous in his old way an allusion to the Koraie tiger generally brought him to his senses.'

'His countrymen are not often so cowardly,' I remarked.

'No, nor was Doolan a coward in the main. I believe he was a fairly plucky man, and has since done good service in the field; but it was rather trying to his nerves to be taken out at night to a jungly road, and made to listen to awful roars by what he supposed was a savage tiger. The whole thing was strange to him, and was not, as he expressed it, "in his commission."

So far as I know, there is no perfect equivalent in English for the French word persiflage,—unless, adopting a vulgarism, we call it the art of poking fun. The lack is owing no doubt to the partial absence of the quality itself. We are not without persifleurs, as I hope to show presently; but persiflage is not primarily or in itself an English attribute. We are humorous and we are witty; but, somehow or other, persiflage pure and simple-the play of light and airy sarcasm, of wit which is rather lambent than pungent, of humour which is rather bright than grim-does not seem indigenous to the soil, and is, on the whole, but rarely to be met with in the course of English literature.

Yet when the persifleurs do occur in English they are exceedingly admirable. I should name Chaucer as the first example, and, after him, Shakespeare, in those exquisite wit-combats which we associate with the names of Beatrice and Benedick, of Rosalind and Orlando. Here, as in everything else, Shakespeare is preeminent, doing with innate and inimitable grace what his more ponderous contemporaries failed even in attempting. Ben Jonson could be witty and be humorous, but then how heavily, and with what obvious effort! Not even Dryden had the mastery of persiflage; he was too precise in mind; he never hovered, like Charles Lamb, upon the confines of truth; everything he saw was clearly cut and caparisoned, and complete as far as it went. He was an admir

able satirist, but satire is not persiflage; in which, on the other hand, Butler might have been successful, had he not been so downright and dogged in temperament. Hudibras is, as we all know, a delightful mock epic, but it is not persiflage-its lines are like so many blows delivered accurately and offensively upon the head of the enemy. Nor can you say of Wycherley and Congreve, the two great masters of artificial comedy, that they possessed the happy art of graceful ridicule. Their satire is too mordaut; their epigrams bite and burn, instead of playfully scorching; and they are surpassed with ease by the more kindly humour of the delicious genius which produced She Stoops to Conquer and the Vicar of Wakefield. For the great poem of persiflage-for the greatest work of art in that way in this, or probably in any language -we must go to the Rape of the Lock, which is the first of the only two perfect specimens of the kind which we possess. The second is that wonderful piece of sustained raillery, Don Juan, which in its carelessness and freedom is even superior to its predecessor. In the Rape of the Lock the art is perhaps the least bit too obvious; everything is so admirably well contrived that your admiration is reserved first for the accomplished artist, and only afterwards for the work of art. But in Don Juan the persiflage, if less well proportioned and less effective from one point of view, is, on the whole, more enjoyable,

as being more spontaneous and fresh. Persiflage ought not to be too obviously associated with the midnight oil, as, with all its airiness, we cannot help associating the great work of Pope. It ought not to be too accurate and correct, too level in its excellence-in fact, too uniformly brilliant. It ought to have the appearance of being unpremeditated-of being the chance outpouring of an overflowing mind. And such, in a great measure, is Don Juan, which its author unravelled swiftly and unconcernedly from the web of his very powerful intellect. It has no trace of effort, no indication of anxious and most patient polish. The epigrams, when they come, come unexpectedly, and the intervals between them are made of the lightof up passages est and most delicate persiflage. Then, after Byron, the first names that strike us are those of Messrs. Martin and Aytoun, whose Bon Gualtier Ballads have been the source of exquisite delight to thousands, and contain, indeed, some of the best instances of modern parody. Their very popularity, however, renders it unnecessary to dwell upon them here, nor is it necessary to do more than allude to the very clever handiwork of men like Brough, A'Beckett, Thackeray, Shirley Brooks, and Mortimer Collins. What I propose to do is to glance very briefly at some of the best works of living, or recently living, persifleurs, of whom the gathering is by no means small or unimportant. The time, indeed, is prolific of such poets, for it is essentially one in which persiflage finds itself most prevalent and powerful. Now, more than ever, does the zeit-geist dispose us to look at things from the cynical point of view of men of the world, who, if they did not

laugh, must cry. There is too a genial, as distinguished from a morbid, cynicism, which is kindly in its expression, and if it pokes fun at life does so with an eye to the suppression of the bad and to the elevation of the good in it. Many an earnest thought and aspiration is hidden under the seeming carelessness of a persifleur.

It is, however, quite possible to be a persifleur from a pure enjoyment of the art of quizzing. Mr. Calverley especially appears to be a writer of this stamp. His little volume of Fly-Leaves is full of delicious fun. There is no arrière pensée about it.

The

author is a moqueur and nothing else. His is a kindly mockery, but mockery it is, and of the quaintest character. At one time it is a picnic party that he quizzes: 'Kerchief in hand, I saw them stand;

In every kerchief lurk'd a lunch; When they unfurl'd them it was grand To watch bronzed men and maidens.

crunch

The sounding celery-stick, and ram
The knife into the blushing ham.
Dash'd the bold fork through pies of
pork;

O'er hard-boil'd eggs the salt - spoon
shook;

Leapt from its lair the playful cork:

Yet some there were to whom the brook Seem'd sweetest beverage, and for meat They chose the red root of the beet. Such are the sylvan scenes that thrill This heart! The lawns, the happy shade,

Where matrons, whom the sunbeams grill,

Stir with slow spoon their lemonade; And maidens flirt (no extra charge) In comfort at the fountain's marge!' Some of these lines are excellent

specimens of the mock-heroic. At another time the poet selects the itinerant organ-grinder as the object of his praises:

''Tis not that thy mien is stately;

'Tis not that thy tones are soft; 'Tis not that I care so greatly

For the same thing play'd so oft: But I've heard mankind abuse thee; And perhaps it's rather strange, But I thought that I would choose thee For encomium, as a change.'

The inevitable monkey is accordingly celebrated with bewitching gravity:

'And thy mate, the sinewy Jocko,

From Brazil or Afric came, Land of Simoom and Sirocco,

And he seems extremely tame.
There he woo'd and won a dusky
Bride, of instincts like his own;
Talk'd of love till he was husky
In a tongue to us unknown.

Side by side 'twas theirs to ravage
The potato-ground, or cut
Down the unsuspecting savage
With the well-aim'd cocoa-nut:

Till the miscreant Stranger tore him
Screaming from his blue-faced fair;
And they flung strange raiment o'er him,
Raiment that he could not bear.'

Another mood finds Mr. Calverley thinking of his First Love,' and wondering where she is now, and what she is doing. He asks: Has she wedded some gigantic shrimper, That sweet mite with whom I loved to play?

Is she girt with babes that whine and whimper,

That bright being who was always gay?'

Then answers:

'Yes; she has at least a dozen wee things! Yes; I see her darning corduroys, Scouring floors, and setting out the teathings

For a howling herd of hungry boys.' But then he is for ever congratulating himself his 'scapes upon from matrimony. Here is the way in which he opens On the Brink :'

'I watch'd her as she stoop'd to pluck
A wild flower in her hair to twine;
And wish'd that it had been my luck
To call her mine.

Anon I heard her rate with mad,

Mad words the babe within its cot; And felt particularly glad

That it had not.'

'Precious Stones' is the title of a lyric in which he celebrates the loyalty with which some ladies preserved the cherry-stones which 'my prince' left upon his plate. For a time he assumes the personality of one of the ecstatic damsels, and tells how

'Lightly the spoonfuls enter'd

That mouth on which the gaze
Of ten fair girls was centred
In rapturous amaze.

Soon that august assemblage clear'd
The dish; and, as they ate,
The stones all coyly reappear'd
On each illustrious plate.

And when his Royal Highness
Withdrew to take the air,
Waiving our natural shyness,
We swoop'd upon his chair:
Policemen at our garments clutch'd;
We mock'd those feeble powers;

And soon the treasures that had touch'd
Exalted lips were ours.'

He concludes:

'Let Parliament abolish

Churches and states and thrones;
With reverent hand I'll polish
Still, still my cherry-stones.
A clod, a piece of orange-peel,
An end of a cigar,

Once trod on by a princely heel,
How beautiful they are!'

Modern toadyism is here pleasantly ridiculed. Mr. Calverley in another place quizzes the supernaturally contented portion of mankind, of whom he says:

'Friend, there be they on whom mishap
Or never or so rarely comes,
That, when they think thereof, they snap
Derisive thumbs.

The trout, the grouse, the early pea,

By such, if there, are freely taken;
If not, they munch with equal glee
Their bit of bacon.

When for that early train they're late,
They do not make their woes the text
Of sermons in the Times, but wait
On for the next;

And jump inside, and only grin
Should it appear that that dry wag,
The guard, omitted to put in
Their carpet-bag.'

At another, the object of his 'solemn mockery' is the (late) inoffensive beadle of the Burlington Arcade, who is thus addressed in grave Byronic rhythm:

'Yes, ye are beautiful. The young street boys Joy in your beauty.

bar

Are ye there to

The dim aisle's stillness, where in noon's mid-glow

Trip fair-hair'd girls to boot-shop or bazaar;

Where at soft eve serenely to and fro The sweet boy-graduates walk, nor deem the pastime slow.'

In a third instance, the motives that animate the ordinary moneyhunter are exposed with charming frankness and insouciance:

'Canst thou love me, lady?

I've not learn'd to woo;
Thou art on the shady
Side of sixty-two.
Still I love thee dearly!
Thou hast lands and pelf;
But I love thee merely,
Merely for thyself.

Wilt thou love me, fairest?

Though thou art not fair;
And I think thou wearest

Some one else's hair.
Thou couldst love, though, dearly;
And, as I am told,
Thou art very nearly

Worth thy weight in gold.
Love me, bashful fairy!

I've an empty purse;

And I've "moods" which vary,
Mostly for the worse.
Love me, lady, dearly,
If you'll be so good;
Though I don't see clearly

On what ground you should.
Love me, ah, or love me

Not, but be my bride!
Do not simply shove me
(So to speak) aside!
P'r'aps it would be dearly
Purchased at the price;
But a hundred yearly

Would be very nice.'

Elsewhere Mr. Calverley's humour runs into the vein of parody, a popular form of persiflage, in which he is very happy. Indeed, we have had few things so able as his poetical travesties since 'Bon Gualtier' furnished the reductio ad absurdum of 'Locksley Hall.' Many of his predecessors have written ably in particular cases, but few single writers have produced so many admirable specimens of this sort of tour de force. Here, for example, is Browning in his wildest mood:

'You see this pebble-stone? It's a thing I bought

Of a bit of a chit of a boy i' the mid o' the day

I like to dock the smaller parts o' speech, As we curtail the already curtail'd cur (You catch the paronomasia, play 'po' words?)

Did, rather, i' the pre-Landseerian days. Well, to my muttons. I purchased the

concern,

And clapt it i' my poke, having given for

same

By way o' chop, swop, barter, or exchange

"Chop" was my snickering dandiprat's

own term

One shilling and fourpence, current coin o' the realm.

O-n-e, one, and f-o-u-r, four Pence, one and fourpence-you are with me, sir?'

Here is Miss Ingelow, with all her affectation of a diction marked by the revival of old obsolete terms and other curious eccentricities of expression:

'Boats were curtsying, rising, bowing (Boats in that climate are so polite), And sands were a ribbon of green endowing,

And O, the sun-dazzle on bark and bite!...

Song-birds darted about, some inky

As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds, Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinkyThey reck of no eerie to come, those birds!

But they skim over bents which the mill-stream washes,

Or hang in the lift 'neath a white cloud's hem;

They need no parasols, no goloshes; And good Mrs. Trimmer she feedeth them.'

It is impossible not to sympathise with the persifleur when, at the conclusion of the piece from which I quote, he draws the moral:

'O, if billows and pillows, and hours and flowers,

And all the brave rhymes of an elder day,

Could be furl'd together, this genial weather,

And carted, or carried on "wafts"