SONNET. SITTING in this easeful paradise Of summer sunshine and of myriad flowers, Watch the gold-banded bee, on restless wing Which now, from scented air and rural scene, Is gathering sweets, since all with them is fraught, And hours like these feed after-solitude. ON THE COMIC WRITERS OF ENGLAND. BY CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE. VII.-BURLESQUE WRITERS. T is scarcely requisite to say that the term "burlesque" is derived from the Italian, burlesca, or the verb burlare, which means simply to "joke," to "banter," and even to "play." The term is applied to expressions in language, displays of gesture, or impressions of countenance-the intention being to excite laughter. Legitimate burlesque in composition consists in investing subjects or events of "great pith and moment" in the costume and dialect of vulgar life; or, vice versa, of elevating a daily occurrence, by a strained hyperbole of language, into a situation of classic dignity. Caricature in art is burlesque; comic pantomime is burlesque; but farce is not always burlesque, although all dramatic burlesque ranges under the head of farce. Farce (as it appears to me) relies mainly for its success upon exaggerating the fortuitous combinations of events in the intercourses of life, bordering on the improbable even to a licence of the impossible, the language still retaining the broad features of conventional humour. Burlesque, I think, consists in describing events or persons in language ungenial with the subject, and without reference to their intrinsic character. Burlesque is the farce of portraiture and description; and farce is the burlesque of events and occurrences, civil, social, or domestic. The "burletta" in dramatic composition (which means nothing more than "a little jest ") is confined simply to scenes of gay and sprightly humour-its characteristics, like its title, are diminutive; neither does it range strictly within the prescribed circle of our modern acceptation of the term "burlesque;" moreover, it is always associated with music-it is, in short, a little comic opera, or musical farce. Furthermore, the burlesque style is applicable to oratory and common conversation. Sheridan employed it upon occasion with singular felicity in his place in Parliament, when it was his cue to throw contempt upon the acts of his political opponents. One instance occurred in his mock-heroic flourish (as ludicrous as it was unfair) in ridicule of the Associated Volunteers, when the country was threatened with invasion by the first Bonaparte. With infinite humour he described their military evolutions, ending in a climax of nine tailors, commanded by their foreman, encamped in a garret ! Humorous anecdotes, especially when associated with broad mimicry; repartees, with the same accompaniment, exposing the blunder or weakness of an adversary, are burlesque. In literary composition, however, the burlesque is most commonly couched in verse, in which class the Italian language is the most abounding; but almost every language has its burlesque poems, the prevailing character being constantly allied to satire, but of a good-natured cast: for although (as in farce composition) no burlesque is devoid of satire, every satire is not a burlesque-as may be instanced in the eminent satirical writings in Roman, Italian, French, and English literature. I conceive that the "Gargantua" of Rabelais is the most perfect combination of extravagant burlesque and pungent satire with unvarying good temper that is upon record. In the sister art of painting, or drawing, burlesque is displayed with eminent success. I believe that the matter-of-fact, mercantile, shopkeeping English (as we have been designated) have never been surpassed—perhaps not even equalled-by the most mercurial of their European brethren, for the abundance, as well as the wit and humour, of their caricatures. To refer to one instance of a thousand that might be quoted from the illustrious Mr. Punch alone, I might name the welcome ridicule with which he received the insane attempt to revive the antique in art, with its tortuosities of limb and scorn of rule and order in perspective, and by his signal burlesque of a romantic invasion with which we were threatened by the French— drawing a ludicrous parody upon the famous old Bayeux tapestry -which is a pictorial record of the Norman conquest. political satirists in art, however, ought never to be mentioned without including the excessively clever illustrator of the "Slap at Slop," and of those caustic rebukes to a selfish injustice which had nearly thrown the whole country into a social and moral revolution. Many of the caricatures of that particular event in our history were perfect specimens of burlesque, being ludicrous parodies upon the grandiose in art. But the most orthodox caricaturists-sheer, bonâ fide caricaturists-that our country has produced; men whose genius for exaggeration was displayed both in design and character; were, I think, the celebrated Bunbury, Gilray, and Rowlandson. The force of broad, unmitigated delirium of burlesque, as seen in Our some of their subjects, can scarcely be surpassed. Such an accumulation of catastrophe was surely never brought together in one compass as in Gilray's caricature of "A company alarmed upon a lady rising to ring the bell." The rush of anticipation on the part of all the gentlemen present, with the accruing misfortunes to their persons and dresses, are prodigious! It is the Ultima Thule of "confusion worse confounded"-the macrocosm of disorder and calamity. Hogarth was pre-eminent in burlesque humour; only surpassed, perhaps, by his keenness in satire. His series of electioneering subjects; his "March to Finchley," which used to hang in the dining-hall of the Foundling Hospital; his "Morning," "Noon," and "Night;" his "Enraged Musician;" his "Midnight Conversation," where the parson (who is chairman) has floored the whole company; and with serene triumph is ladling out the punch. But his purest example of the burlesque is to be seen in that curious and clever print wherein he has combined circumstances and groupings for the purpose of producing the effect of false perspective in art: the bird on the distant mountain being brought as near to the eye as the man in the foreground, who is lighting his pipe from a candle on the hill; and the angler on one side of the river is dropping his line into the porter-pot of the gentleman who is regaling himself on the other side. These, with a host of other subjects that might be quoted, have constituted their author the greatest pictorial wit and moralist that has yet existed. One of our writers upon the characteristic distinctions of burlesque has included in the category, "Sketches of low life, and merrymaking, exhibited by many of the Dutch and Flemish painters: and also in the representations of deformed and uncouth figures, such as are found among ancient and modern sculpture." To this opinion it may be objected that the Dutch pictures of scenes in low life are faithful representations of human nature-not exaggerations of realities; and, therefore, they do not range under the head of burlesque painting; while the representations of deformity and uncouthness in ancient sculpture (such as may be seen in the ornamental portions of Gothic architecture) should be designated as examples of the grotesque rather than the bur-lesque in art. The Arabesque, also, is a variety of the grotesque, inasmuch as it exhibits an uncouth and fantastic departure from the reality of nature —not, however, associated with a sense of humour, and therefore is not burlesque. In the sister art of music the burlesque feature can be employed only to a limited extent. Music is incapable of expressing satire. Its phraseology can suggest emotions of tenderness, of hilarity, of gravity, and even of awe; and it is greatly convertible in heroic and martial sentiments: but beyond these broad and distinctive classes of passions, music must rely for true utterance upon the illustrative glossary of language. Without this key to the composer's meaning, he cannot express even the mock-heroic; for music is incapable of irony. An irony in musical phraseology, when divested of the accompanying dialect, becomes an earnest truism in expression. Music requires the same literary explanation which in the infancy of pictorial art was wont to accompany the representations of animated and still life-as, "This is a horse;" "This is a house:" it was requisite to name the subjects represented-that they be not mistaken. A greatly descriptive tone-poet, like Beethoven, may convey in musical language, divested of the accompaniment of words, his ideas of a subject, a scene, or a story, as may be instanced in those sublime compositions of his, the "Sinfonia Eroica," and the "Pastoral Symphony;" but even in these his design must be previously promulgated, or his auditors will not be able accurately to appreciate his intention. The musician's language is necessarily mystical and equivocal; for the same combinations of tones which he might intend to express an emotion of filial tenderness, the hearer might interpret into the demonstration of a lover's appeal to his mistress : and this, or indeed any other musical phraseology, when employed to convey an idea of burlesque, must be "married to immortal verse," to give it a "local habitation "- -a veritable identity. Music will suggest, as well as illustrate, the most divine thoughts; and he is indeed of a rude and unenviable nature who can recognise no touch of its sweet quality; but in universality of appeal to the senses of imagination and judgment, it must, I think, be pronounced an ineffective art, when compared with those of poetry and painting. The earliest composition in burlesque, I take to be Homer's celebrated "Battle of the Frogs and the Mice." The spirit of grave, broad humour has in this remarkable mock-heroic poem been carried at once to an undeniable climax of perfection. The elevation of the minute and contemptible into the grand and terrible, by the means of sonorous and swelling language, as well as of the legitimate epic machinery, is so accurate, and indeed it is so complete an anticipation of the modern style in burlesque humour, that one almost hesitates to credit the tradition as to the antiquity of the poem. I know not, however, why the genius of the old Greek should |