BOOKS.
BON GATJLTIER.* '
IT is not given to many authors to do what Sir Theodore Martin has done in the preface to the Bon Gaultier Ballads,— act as commentator on a set of jeual d'esprit in which he collaborated sixty years previously. With his prejudice against unnecessary prefaces we have every sympathy, but here at least no harm could be done by gratifying the legiti- mate curiosity of those who have long wished to know the circumstances which led to the production of a classic that has delighted three generations of readers by its high spirits, its wit, and its fine literary flavour. It is one of the peculiar merits of the Bon Gaultier Ballads that a good many of them can be read and enjoyed—as they were read and enjoyed by the present reviewer some five-and-thirty years ago—without any appreciation of the literary or political criticism or social satire which they embody, but simply because of the spirit of the narrative, the swing and lilt of the verse, and those sudden and triumphant appeals to the sense of the ludicrous—the deliberate resort to the art of sinking—in which Bon Gaultier forestalled the "beloved Cambridge rhymer," "C. S. C." In other words, though crowded with allusions to the events and movements and personages of the hour, these ballads have an intrinsic excellence which has exempted them from the fate of most topical effusions. Their literary quality is not academic, and much of their satire is singularly applicable to the excesses and extravagances of the present day. Still, the introduction and notes were emphatically needed ; and no one could have supplied them so well as Sir Theodore Martin, who is to be cordially congratulated on the admirable manner in which he has achieved his task. Bon Gaultier in his new version constitutes a most valuable addition to the belles-lettres which really illuminate the social, political, and literary history of the early decades of the Victorian age.
The brief but fruitful association of which the Bon Gaultier Ballads were the outcome had its origin in Sir Theodore Martin's unaided light-horse contributions to Tail's and Eraser's magazines circ ann. 1840. (The nom de guerre was taken from the prologue to Rabelais's first volume : A moy n'est que honneur et gloire d'estre diet et reputk Bon Gaultier et bon Conipaignon ; en as nom, Buis hien venue en toutes bonnes compaignees de rantagruelistes.") In one of these Sir Theo- dore had applied the reductio ad absurdum method to the then prevalent craze for glorifying ruffiandom, of which the novels of Ainsworth and some of those of Bulwer were the most prominent literary illustration. This "Thieves' Anthology," • The Book of Ballads. Edited by Bon Gaultier. With an Introduction and Notes. Illustrated by Doyle, Leech, and CrowiltilL New Edition. London: W. Blackwood and Sons. (be.
containing songs, sonnets, and ballads in which the lingo of the thieves' kitchen was imported into parodies of Milton, Wordsworth, and Shelley, with a suitable commentary, attracted the attention of Aytoun, already a successful contributor to Blackwood. An introduction followed.
Aytoun's proposal of further collaboration on the same lines was welcomed by Martin, and thus "a kind of Beaumont and Fletcher partnership was formed which commenced in a series of humorous papers that were pub- lished in Tail's and Fraser's magazines during the years 184'2, 1843, and 184.4." The poems and parodies which they con- tained were set off by burlesque introductions, commentaries, and criticisms—excellent high-spirited fooling, to judge by the extracts given on pp. xviii.-xx. of the preface—and a selection of the verses first appeared in book form in 1845 with illustrations by Alfred Crowquill (Alfred Henry Forrester).
Those of Richard Doyle—which constitute the chief pictorial attraction of the volume—and of Leech were added to later
editions, and the book was launched on a tide of popu- larity which has never ebbed. The present edition is the six- teenth, but we can well believe Sir Theodore Martin when he says that the most gratifying proof of his success was the fact
that Bon Gaultier was nowhere more in demand than in the trenches before Sebastopol in 1854.
In apportioning the exact shares of Aytoun and himself, and deciding which poems were written separately and which in partnership, Sir Theodore Martin frankly owns to an inability to speak with positive certainty. But he credits Aytoun with the exclusive authorship of "The Broken Pitcher," "The Massacre of the Macpherson," "The Rhyme of Sir Launcelot Bogle," "Little John and the Red Friar," "A Midnight Meditation" ; that really wonderful imitation of a Scots ballad, "The Queen in France"; "The Lay of the Levite," " Tarquin and the Augur," "La Mort d'Arthur," "The Husband's Petition," and the "Sonnet to Britain." To Aytoun also he assigns the conception and the beat part of the inimitable "Don Fernando Gomersalez," destined to an immortality for which Lock-hart's ballads, on which it was modelled, can hardly hope, and the lines which formed the nucleus and inspiration of the famous parody of " Locksley Hall." The rest were either wholly Sir Theodore's or written in partner- ship, the exact proportions of which cannot now be determined. We have vety little doubt that if the genial Aytoun, to whose gifts of intellect and character Sir Theodore pays so affectionate a tribute, were not beyond the reach of an appeal, he would have revised the apportionment in favour of the surviving collaborator. The conditions in which the collaboration was carried out are charmingly sketched by Sir Theodore Martin in his preface :—
"Luckily for us, not a few poets were then living whose style and manner of thought were sufficiently marked to make imita- tion easy, and sufficiently popular for a parody of their character- istics to be readily recognised. Lockhart's Spanish Ballads' were as familiar in the drawing-room as in the study. Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome' and his two other fine ballads were still in the freshness of their fame. Tennyson and Mrs. Browning were opening up new veins. These, with Moore, Leigh Hunt, Uhland, and others of minor note, lay ready to our hands, as Scott, Byron, Crabbe, Coleridge, Moore, Wordsworth, and Southey had done to James and Horace Smith in 1812, when writing the
• Rejected Addresses.' Never, probably, were verses thrown off with a keener sense of enjoyment, and assuredly the poets parodied had no warmer admirers than ourselves. Very pleasant were the hours when we met, and now Aytoun and now myself would suggest the subjects for each successive article and the verses with which they were to be illustrated. Most commonly this was done in our rambles to favourite spots in the suburbs of our own romantic town,' or by the shores of the Forth, and at other times as we sat together of an evening, when the duties of the day were over, and joined in putting line after line together until the poem was completed. In writing thus for our own amusement we never dreamed that these nugae literariae would live beyond the hour. It was, therefore, a pleasant surprise when we found to what an extent they became popular, not only in England, but also in America, which had come in for no small share of severe but well-meant ridicule."
The notes which Sir Theodore Martin has appended to the poems are concise but illuminating, and the only criticism we have to pass on the appearance of the book, which faithfully reproduces all the familiar illustrations and Doyle's fantastic marginal designs, is that the cover is rather commonplace. But we bare no hesitation in saying that no more enjoyable or attractive literary gift-book is likely to be available this Christmas.
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