EUTRAPELIA:

AN OMNIUMGATHERUM LITERARIUM, CHIEFLY ILLUSTRATIVE OF
BARROW ON 'WIT.'

VI.

THE "PAT ALLUSION."

§ 2.

Sometimes it [Eutrapelia] lieth in pat allusion to a known story.-BARROW : Sermon XIV.

To further illustrate the "pat allusion," present we next a draft on Alexander Pope. No fear, in his case, of its being dishonoured, with that mere negation, no effects."

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Ridiculing certain stiff and stately dinner-parties, he thus patly alludes to the prandial privations of the Governor of Barataria :

Is this a dinner? this a genial room?
No, 'tis a temple, and a hecatomb,
A solemn sacrifice, performed in state,
You drink by measure, and to minutes eat;

So quick retires each flying course, you'd swear
Sancho's dread doctor and his wand were there.*

Another example. The poet is bewailing the penalties a poet has to pay, in respect of troublesome notoriety, importunate intruders, and the like. Then comes allusion to a "known story:"

A third.

'Tis sung, when Midas' ears began to spring

(Midas, a sacred person and a king),

His

very minister who spied them first

(Some say his Queen), was forced to speak, or burst.

And is not mine, my friend, a sorer case,

When every coxcomb perks them in my face ?t

When the Goddess in the Dunciad has anointed Cibber, her chosen son, "God save King Cibber!" is heard from dunces in chorus far and near, from "familiar White's" and Drury-lane, and Hockley-hole -shouting their Vivat rex! with lusty roar :

So when Jove's block descended from on high

(As sings thy great grandfather Ogilby),‡
Loud thunder to its bottom shook the bog,

And the hoarse nation croaked, God save King Log!§

In the following book, Pope exhibits Great Cibber sitting "high on a gorgeous seat, that far outshone Henley's gilt tub or Fleckno's Irish throne;" while enraptured crowds turn coxcombs as they gaze, and his peers shine round him with glory reflected from him, their central sun :

*Pope's "Moral Essays." Ep. IV.

† Pope's "Prologue to the Satires." (Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.)
Alluding to Ogilby's version of Æsop's Fables.

§ The Dunciad. Book I.

then comes allusion to a known story again, not this time from Esop, but from Paulus Jovius:

Not with more glee, by hands pontific crowned,
With scarlet hats wide-waving circled round,
Rome in her Capitol saw Querno sit,

Throned on seven hills, the antichrist of wit.*

(Camillo Querno, the commentators tell us, was introduced as a buffoon to Leo X., and promoted by that letters-loving pontiff to the honours of the laurel; "a jest which the court of Rome and the Pope himself entered into so far, as to cause him to ride on an elephant to the Capitol, and to hold a solemn festival on his coronation.") The less known a story is, however, the less is, cæteris paribus, its effect. A pat allusion that needs a note to explain it, may be considered not pat, and so far a failure. This objection noway applies to the mythological allusion in our next

extract:

When Dulness smiling,-Thus revive the Wits!
But murder first, and mince them all to bits.
As erst Medea (cruel, so to save!),

A new edition of old

son gave;

Let standard authors, thus, like trophies born,
Appear more glorious as more hacked and torn.
And you, my critics, in the chequered shade,

Admire new light through holes yourselves have made.†

In addition to the reference to Æson recoctus, there is a humorous effect produced by the parody in the last line on a well-known line of Waller's -for Pope, no doubt, had Waller's verse in his mind at the time, and perhaps intended a reminder too of Milton, in the "chequered shade" of the line before.

Generations have already been, and generations to come, we suppose, will be, amused by the Sir John Cutler allusion, in "Martinus Scriblerus," in illustration of man's individuality. "They make a great noise about this Individuality: how a man is conscious to himself that he is the same Individual he was twenty years ago; notwithstanding the flux state of the particles of matter that compose his body. We think this is capable of a very plain answer, and may be easily illustrated by a familiar example. Sir John Cutler had a pair of black worsted stockings, which his maid darned so often with silk, that they became at last a pair of silk stockings. Now, suppose those stockings of Sir John's endued with some particular degree of consciousness at every particular darning, they would have been sensible that they were the same individual pair of stockings both before and after the darning; and this sensation would have continued in them through all the succession of darnings; and yet, after the last of all, there was not perhaps one thread left of the first pair of stockings, but they were grown to be silk stockings, as was said before."+ Good as the story is, we have perhaps no right to it here, as a "known story," which we should have had, on the other hand, to the analogous narrative of Sir Francis Drake's ship.

Robert Lloyd-the dissipated, reckless, short-lived friend of Churchill

The Dunciad. Book II.

† Ibid. Book IV.

"Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus,” ch. xii.

May-VOL. CX. No. CCCCXXXVII.

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and Cowper (discordant conjunction of names-so worldly a cleric and so unworldly a layman!)—has the following allusion in his rhyming Epistle to a Lady, introduced with copious compliments enow on "female knack at prose," in the form of letter-writing: "in

With mine, disgrace a lady's prose,
And put a nettle next a rose ?
Who would, so long as taste prevails,
Compare St. James's with Versailles?
The nightingale, as story goes,
Famed for the music of his woes,

In vain against the artist tried,

But strained his tuneful throat-and died.*

Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World" is often enlivened by “pat allusion" to stories appropriate to the Chinese cosmopolite. Here again, perhaps, is a class which does not properly fall within our category-and this on two grounds, from their being (first) something less than "known" stories, and (secondly) something more than mere "allusions." One example nevertheless may be foisted into such an omniumgatherum as the present, without much further damage to our already compromised character for consistency. The Chinese philosopher accompanies his friend, the Man in Black, to Westminster Hall. "But bless me," he exclaims, "what numbers do I see here-all in black-how is it possible that half this multitude find employment?" His companion explains, that they live by watching each other :-for instance, the catchpole watches the man in debt, the attorney watches the catchpole, the counsellor watches the attorney, and all find sufficient employment. "I conceive you," shrewdly answers our intelligent foreigner, "they watch each other, but it is the client that pays them all for watching; it puts me in mind"-here comes the pat allusion-" of a Chinese fable, which is entitled 'Five animals at a meal:'

"A grasshopper filled with dew was merrily singing under a shade; a whangam, that eats grasshoppers, had marked it for its prey, and was just stretching forth to devour it; a serpent that had for a long time fed only on whangams, was coiled up to fasten on the whangam; a yellow bird was just upon the wing to dart on the serpent; a hawk had just stooped from above, to seize the yellow bird; all were intent on their prey, and unmindful of their danger: so the whangam eat the grasshopper, the serpent eat the whangam, the yellow bird the serpent, and the hawk the yellow bird; when, sousing from on high, a vulture gobbled up the hawk, grasshopper, whangam, and all in a moment." The critical may object that the fable, though piquant, is im-pertinent, by going too far, and implying too much.

From Cowper's poems we may select examples more strictly pertinent to our purpose. Here is one-where the poet is describing an author's delight in the work of his own hands:

He views it with complacency supreme,
Solicits kind attention to his dream,
And daily more enamoured of the cheat,
Kneels, and asks Heaven to bless the dear deceit.

*Rob. Lloyd's Poems: Familiar Letter of Rhymes to a Lady.
† Citizen of the World. Letter XCVIII.

So one, whose story serves at least to show
Men loved their own productions long ago,
Wooed an unfeeling statue for his wife,

Nor rested till the gods had given it life.*

In Cowper's day, profane swearing in ordinary conversation was miserably common among Persons of Quality-the biggest big-wigs of the bench being, too often, the biggest sinners in this respect. Cowper severely satirises their habit of fixing "attention, heedless of your pain, with oaths like rivets forced into the brain," and goes on a tale to tell : A Persian, humble servant of the sun, Who, though devout, yet bigotry had none, Hearing a lawyer, grave in his address, With adjurations every word impress, Supposed the man a bishop, or at least, God's name so much upon his lips, a priest, Bowed at the close with all his graceful airs,

And begged an interest in his frequent prayers.†

The happy use to which Cowper could turn a story, borrowed from east or west, was never perhaps more happily proved than in the closing lines of his hearty, genial Epistle to his hearty, genial old friend, Joseph Hill:

But not to moralise too much, and strain
To prove an evil of which all complain
(I hate long arguments verbosely spun),
One story more,§ dear Hill, and I have done :
Once on a time an emperor, a wise man,
No matter where, in China or Japan,
Decreed that whosoever should offend
Against the well-known duties of a friend,
Convicted once, should ever after wear
But half a coat, and show his bosom bare.
The punishment importing this, no doubt,
That all was naught within, and all found out.

Oh, happy Britain! we have not to fear
Such hard and arbitrary measure here;
Else, could a law like that which I relate,
Once have the sanction of our triple state,
Some few, that I have known in days of old,
Would run most dreadful risks of catching cold;
While you, my friend, whatever wind should blow,
Might traverse England safely to and fro,
An honest man, close-buttoned to the chin,
Broad-cloth without, and a warm heart within.||

Cowper: "The Progress of Error."

† Ibid.: "Conversation." The reader will be reminded, perhaps, of an innocent because unconscious bravura, of "cussin' and swearin'," on the part of Jacky, the Australian savage, or demi-semi-savage, in Mr. Charles Reade's novel, “It is Never too late to Mend."

Namely, the rarity of true friendship; the prevalence of false.

§ Cowper had just told, with uncommon vivacity and point, the story of cynical Horatio and his servant, who "begged to go abroad," to see a friend-so rare a sight, Horatio protests, that he must needs have his cloak fetched, and see it too-"the first I ever saw."

Epistle to Joseph Hill, Esq.

This is true eutrapelia, in one of its most refined aspects; "genteel Of this sort comedy" in no vulgar sense, and of no common sort. Cowper was an approved good master—a veritable master of arts. Few indeed who have gone in for honours to the same tripos-of grace, humour, and heart-have taken anything like so good a degree.

(On the same theme, of Friendship and its counterfeits, he makes pat allusion [in "The Task"] to Gay's fable of the Hare with many Friends. He is describing one of his pet hares, and concludes with the promise―

If I survive thee, I will dig thy grave;
And when I place thee in it, sighing say,

At least I knew one hare that had a friend.*)

Here is another "fabulous" allusion, occurring in the midst of a sort of natural history of despotism, its rise and progress

Thus kings were first invented, and thus kings

Were burnished into heroes, and became

The arbiters of this terraqueous swamp,

Storks among frogs, that have but croaked and died.†

In his strictures on the Commemoration of Handel in Westminster Abbey, Cowper makes allusion to a story of quite another sort:

But hush!-the Muse perhaps is too severe,
And with a gravity beyond the size

And measure of the offence, rebukes a deed
Less impious than absurd, and owing more
To want of judgment than to wrong design.

So in the chapel of old Ely House,

When wandering Charles, who meant to be the Third,
Had fled from William, and the news was fresh,

The simple clerk, but loyal, did announce,

And eke did rear right merrily, two staves,

Sung to the praise and glory of King George.§

In some of his anti-slave-trade stanzas, Cowper attacks the " argument" of those who said, Well, but if we don't buy the poor black fellows, somebody else will-the French, Dutch, or Danes, for instanceand perhaps treat them much worse than we should :-his apology for bringing in the following story shall also be ours-so pat in the apology if not the story itself:

Your scruples and arguments bring to my mind
A story so pat, you may think it is coined
On purpose to answer you, out of my

But I can assure you I saw it in print.

mint

A youngster at school, more sedate than the rest,
Had once his integrity put to the test;

His comrades had plotted an orchard to rob,
And asked him to go and assist in the job.

He was shocked, sir, like you, and answered, "Oh no!
What! rob our good neighbour? I pray you don't go!

*The Task. Book III.

† Ibid. Book V.
Duke of Cumberland, the so-called "Butcher" of Culloden.
The Task. Book VI.

Addressed to the Slave-Trade apologist, by hypothesis.