The frogs heroically prepare to defend their kingdom, and devise stratagems. "Then dress'd for war, they take th' appointed height, Poise the long arms, and urge the promis'd fight." At this point Jove calls a council of all the gods, "And asks what heavenly guardians take the list Or who the mice, or who the frogs assist? " But Pallas is unwilling to take sides, the mice rob the lamps of her shrine of their oil, the frogs have kept her awake at night. She advises that the gods refrain from the war, and her words carry persuasion. Soon the battle is joined and great deeds of arms in single combat are done. Hypsiboas (The Far-Croaker) slays with a javelin Lychenor (The Licker); Artophagus (The Bread-Eater) strikes down Polyphonus (The Babler); Tyroglyphus (The Cheese-Scooper), "Prince of the mice that haunt the flowery vales," meets death at the hands of Lymnisius (The Lake-Dweller). Not javelins and spears alone the combatants employ, but one hero distinguishes himself as does Ajax in Homer. "A stone immense of size the warrior bore, A load for labouring earth, whose bulk to raise, The frog, supportless, writhes upon the ground." So valiant are the mice that it seems as if the whole frog tribe will be exterminated, and Jove determines to interfere. First he casts a thunderbolt "Then earth's inhabitants, the nibblers, shake, But still the mice advance, and the King of Heaven at length sends forth a legion of crabs. Before this new and terrible enemy the mice give way "O'er the wild waste with headlong flight they go, Or creep conceal'd in vaulted holes below. And a whole war (so Jove ordain'd) begun, The Battle of the Frogs and Mice is a simple parody, designed to amuse by the application of the full machinery and apparatus of epic to a subject entirely without dignity. But clearly a wider application of the method-contrast between the trivial theme and the heroic style-was possible. It was obviously suited to the purposes of general satire. To the ironical humour of Italy it appealed with special force, and Italian literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is rich in types of serio-comic poetry. The most brilliant travesty of the epic style, employed with the double purpose of avenging a personal slight and satirising the poets of his own day, was Tassoni's La Secchia Rapita, "The Rape of the Bucket," founded upon an incident in the wars between Modena and Bologna. A bucket carried off by some Modenese soldiers was subsequently exhibited as a trophy in the cathedral of their city, where it is said still to hang, and became, in Symonds' phrase, “The 'Helen' of Tassoni's 'Iliad.'" 1 Boileau's Lutrin, "The Lectern "-the most celebrated of French burlesque epics-has for its subject an ecclesiastical quarrel over a reading-deskJe chante les combats, et ce prélat terrible, 66 Qui, par ses longs travaux et sa force invincible, The classical Battle of the Frogs and Mice and the more famous stories which went by the name of Æsop had their mediæval counterpart in the Roman de Renart, a popular cycle of animal tales with the Fox, the Wolf, and the Lion as leading characters. Originating in the tenth century these edifying stories developed by the twelfth into something like a parody of the romantic epic. The attractiveness of the fable-according to Addison the earliest type of humour-appears in its currency both in the East and West, in the literature of the advanced and the folklore of the most primitive communities. The old Reynard faith, in the words of Carlyle, " rising like some river in the remote distance, gathered strength out of every valley, out of every country, as it rolled on. It is European in two senses; for as all Europe contributed to it, so all Europe has enjoyed it. Among the Germans, Reinecke Fuchs was long a house-book and universal Best-companion: it has been lectured on in universities, quoted in Imperial council-halls; it lay on the toilette of 1 The Renaissance in Italy, vol. vii., p. 177. R princesses; and was thumbed to pieces on the bench of the artisan; we hear of grave men ranking it only next to the Bible." 1 No English Ysopet, or narrative in which animals take the place of men, can compare for humour and brilliance with Chaucer's Nonne Preestes Tale, or "The Cock and the Fox," derived from a French version by Marie de France,2 which may be classed either among the animal romances of the Middle Ages or assigned a place among the mock-heroics. Spenser, in his Mother Hubbard's Tale, followed Chaucer's lead with the story of the Fox and the Ape, who determined to seek their fortunes abroad, and turns it to satirical use, as, for example, in the famous passage which reflects his personal experiences as a courtier "Full little knowest thou, that hast not tride, A claim might well be made for Chaucer as the first writer of mock-heroic verse in English, a far better claim than for Waller with his Battle of the Summer Isles, and better too than for Dryden with his Mac Flecknoe, or Garth with his Dispensary, a better claim, indeed, than for Philips' Splendid Shilling or his Cider. But everything here depends upon definition. Is Waller's poem to be classed among mock-heroics because it has for its subject the attempt to capture two whales caught by the falling tide in a pool among the rocks at Bermuda, and deals with the incident in elaborate language? "Aid me, Bellona! while the dreadful fight "It is not easy to say," as Johnson remarked, "whether it is intended to raise terrour or merriment. The beginning is too splendid for jest, and the conclusion too light for seriousness." Or again is Philips' Splendid Shilling 3 a mock-heroic, though it 1 Carlyle's Early German Literature. 2 See Skeat's Chaucer, vol. iii., p. 431. 3 Imitated in Bramston's Crooked Sixpence and Miss Pennington's Copper Farthing. is in no sense a narrative, simply because it employs Miltonic upon unheroic matters in this style?— diction "With looks demure, and silent pace, a Dun, With vocal heel thrice thundering at my gate, Of wood-hole; straight my bristling hairs erect Cider, a better poem than the Splendid Shilling, though an excellent and pleasing piece of work, is surely, though the claim is sometimes made for it, only mock-heroic in the sense that it applies humour and unusually dignified language, as does Virgil in his Georgics, to the affairs of the farmer and gardener. "The prudent will observe, what passions reign In various plants (for not to man alone, But all the wide creation, Nature gave Love and aversion): everlasting hate The Vine to Ivy bears, nor less abhors The Colewort's rankness; but with amorous twine Garth's Dispensary, a satire on men and doings now forgotten, which "Rose like a paper kite and charm'd the town," has a better right to the title, since a professional quarrel among the London physicians is at least treated in the epic fashion, and involves heroes, personal combats, battles, and councils. But though the verse is highly wrought and in places almost distinguished, the interest of the Dispensary has become antiquarian beyond recovery. In his Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry, Swift discusses with examples "the Magnifying and Diminishing Figures." Of the first, Blackmore's lines on a "Bull-baiting" serve as an instance— 66 Up to the stars the sprawling mastiffs fly, For the second he quotes the anonymous, "And thou, Dalhousy, the great god of war, In poetry intentionally humorous, if we omit the playful— such verses as Cowper's Retired Cat, or Carey's Sally in our Alley-what remains might be classified as (a) formal or direct satire, like Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, or (b) informal or indirect satire, of which the types are numerous. Apart from drama or fabliau such as Jonson's Poetaster or Chaucer's Reeve's Tale, it may be either, in Swift's phrase, of the "Magnifying" or "Diminishing" type. In the former the poet attempts to elevate a trifling subject to absurdity by the adoption of a lofty tone or heroic manner, as does Pope in the Rape of the Lock; in the latter a dignified subject is reduced to ridicule, as in Cotton's Scarronides, or the First Book of Virgil Travestie. Pope's poem illustrates the true mock-heroic, Cotton's the burlesque.1 Chaucer's Sir Thopas, too, may be classed with the burlesques, though the romances at which he smiles are hardly travestied-a slight exaggeration of their common features is sufficient. But there exist poems less easy to classify, in which both methods are combined. In Hudibras the Parliamentary Party is the object of the satire. Yet the subject is not without dignity nor in itself trivial. "Experience had sufficiently shown," in Johnson's words, "that their swords were not to be despised." The victors at Marston Moor and Worcester were in many respects above ridicule. How then was their cause to be made ludicrous by heroic treatment? Before applying it Butler burlesqued his persons and actions. That is to say he first drew his caricatures and then provided them with an epic frame. The satirist may or may not adopt 1 In parody, a form of the burlesque, the notion of ridicule is not necessarily included. The form of a dignified work may be borrowed, as in the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, not to make the original ridiculous, but to amuse by the contrast between the subject and the form. |