Once a year, the subaltern sacrificer, or more properly the holy butcher, when on the point of immolating9 an ox, fled as if struck with horror, to put men in mind that in wiser and happier times only flowers and fruits were offered to the gods, and that the barbarity of immolating innocent and useful animals was not introduced until there were priests desirous of fattening10 on their blood and living at the expense of the people. In this idea there is no buffoonery.
This word “buffoon” has long been received among the Italians and the Spaniards, signifying mimus, scurra, joculator — a mimic11, a jester, a player of tricks. Ménage, after Salmasius, derives12 it from bocca infiata — a bloated face; and it is true that a round face and swollen13 cheeks are requisite14 in a buffoon. The Italians say bufo magro — a meagre buffoon, to express a poor jester who cannot make you laugh.
Buffoon and buffoonery appertain to low comedy, to mountebanking, to all that can amuse the populace. In this it was — to the shame of the human mind be it spoken — that tragedy had its beginning: Thespis was a buffoon before Sophocles was a great man.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish and English tragedies were all degraded by disgusting buffooneries. The courts were still more disgraced by buffoons16 than the stage. So strong was the rust17 of barbarism, that men had no taste for more refined pleasures. Boileau says of Molière:
C’est par-là que Molière, illustrant ses écrits,
Peut-être de son art e?t emporté le prix,
Si, moins ami du peuple en ses doctes peintures,
Il n’e?t fait quelquefois, grimacer20 ses figures,
Quitté pour le bouffon l’agréable et fin18,
Et sans honte à Terence allié Tabarin.
Dans ce sac ridicule21 où Scapin s’enveloppe,
Je ne reconnais plus l’auteur du Misanthrope22.
Molière in comic genius had excelled,
And might, perhaps, have stood unparalleled,
Had he his faithful portraits ne’er allowed
To gape23 and grin to gratify the crowd;
Deserting wit for low grimace19 and jest,
And showing Terence in a motley vest.
Who in the sack, where Scapin plays the fool,
Will find the genius of the comic school?
But it must be considered that Raphael condescended24 to paint grotesque27 figures. Molière would not have descended25 so low, if all his spectators had been such men as Louis XIV., Condé, Turenne, La Rochefoucauld, Montausier, Beauvilliers, and such women as Montespan and Thianges; but he had also to please the whole people of Paris, who were yet quite unpolished. The citizen liked broad farce, and he paid for it. Scarron’s “Jodelets” were all the rage. We are obliged to place ourselves on the level of our age, before we can rise above it; and, after all, we like to laugh now and then. What is Homer’s “Battle of the Frogs and Mice,” but a piece of buffoonery — a burlesque28 poem?
Works of this kind give no reputation, but they may take from that which we already enjoy.
Buffoonery is not always in the burlesque style. “The Physician in Spite of Himself,” and the “Rogueries of Scapin,” are not in the style of Scarron’s “Jodelets.” Molière does not, like Scarron, go in search of slang terms; his lowest characters do not play the mountebank15. Buffoonery is in the thing, not in the expression.
Boileau’s “Lutrin” was at first called a burlesque poem, but it was the subject that was burlesque; the style was pleasing and refined, and sometimes even heroic.
The Italians had another kind of burlesque, much superior to ours — that of Aretin, of Archbishop La Caza, of Berni, Mauro, and Dolce. It often sacrifices decorum to pleasantry, but obscene words are wholly banished29 from it. The subject of Archbishop La Caza’s “Capitolo del Forno” is, indeed, that which sends the Desfontaines to the Bicêtre, and the Deschaufours to the Place de Grève: but there is not one word offensive to the ear of chastity; you have to divine the meaning.
Three or four Englishmen have excelled in this way: Butler, in his “Hudibras,” which was the civil war excited by the Puritans turned into ridicule; Dr. Garth, in his “Dispensary”; Prior, in his “Alma,” in which he very pleasantly makes a jest of his subject; and Phillips, in his “Splendid Shilling.”
Butler is as much above Scarron as a man accustomed to good company is above a singer at a pothouse. The hero of “Hudibras” was a real personage, one Sir Samuel Luke, who had been a captain in the armies of Fairfax and Cromwell. See the commencement of the poem, in the article “Prior,” “Butler,” and “Swift.”
Garth’s poem on the physicians and apothecaries30 is not so much in the burlesque style as Boileau’s “Lutrin”: it has more imagination, variety, and na?veté than the “Lutrin”; and, which is rather astonishing, it displays profound erudition, embellished31 with all the graces of refinement32. It begins thus:
Speak, Goddess, since ’tis thou that best canst tell
How ancient leagues to modern discord33 fell;
And why physicians were so cautious grown
Of others’ lives, and lavish34 of their own.
Prior, whom we have seen a plenipotentiary in France before the Peace of Utrecht, assumed the office of mediator35 between the philosophers who dispute about the soul. This poem is in the style of “Hudibras,” called doggerel36 rhyme, which is the stilo Berniesco of the Italians.
The great first question is, whether the soul is all in all, or is lodged37 behind the nose and eyes in a corner which it never quits. According to the latter system, Prior compares it to the pope, who constantly remains38 at Rome, whence he sends his nuncios and spies to learn all that is doing in Christendom.
Prior, after making a jest of several systems, proposes his own. He remarks that the two-legged animal, new-born, throws its feet about as much as possible, when its nurse is so stupid as to swaddle it: thence he judges that the soul enters it by the feet; that about fifteen it reaches the middle; then it ascends39 to the heart; then to the head, which it quits altogether when the animal ceases to live.
At the end of this singular poem, full of ingenious versification, and of ideas alike subtle and pleasing, we find this charming line of Fontenelle: “Il est des hochets pour tout40 age.” Prior begs of fortune to “Give us play-things for old age.”
Yet it is quite certain that Fontenelle did not take this line from Prior, nor Prior from Fontenelle. Prior’s work is twenty years anterior41, and Fontenelle did not understand English. The poem terminates with this conclusion:
For Plato’s fancies what care I?
I hope you would not have me die
Like simple Cato in the play,
For anything that he can say:
E’en let him of ideas speak
To heathens, in his native Greek.
If to be sad is to be wise,
I do most heartily42 despise
Whatever Socrates has said,
Or Tully writ43, or Wanley read.
Dear Drift, to set our matters right,
Remove these papers from my sight;
Burn Mat’s Descartes and Aristotle —
Here, Jonathan — your master’s bottle.
In all these poems, let us distinguish the pleasant, the lively, the natural, the familiar — from the grotesque, the farcical, the low, and, above all, the stiff and forced. These various shades are discriminated44 by the connoisseurs45, who alone, in the end, decide the fate of every work.
La Fontaine would sometimes descend26 to the burlesque style — Ph?drus never; but the latter has not the grace and unaffected softness of La Fontaine, though he has greater precision and purity.
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1
buffoon
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| n.演出时的丑角 | |
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absconded
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| v.（尤指逃避逮捕）潜逃，逃跑( abscond的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hatchet
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| n.短柄小斧；v.扼杀 | |
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farce
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| n.闹剧，笑剧，滑稽戏；胡闹 | |
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immolator
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| n.供奉牲礼的人 | |
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frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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immolating
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| v.宰杀…作祭品( immolate的现在分词 ) | |
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fattening
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| adj.（食物）要使人发胖的v.喂肥( fatten的现在分词 )；养肥（牲畜）；使（钱）增多；使（公司）升值 | |
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mimic
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| v.模仿，戏弄；n.模仿他人言行的人 | |
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derives
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| v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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requisite
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| adj.需要的，必不可少的；n.必需品 | |
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mountebank
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| n.江湖郎中；骗子 | |
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buffoons
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| n.愚蠢的人( buffoon的名词复数 )；傻瓜；逗乐小丑；滑稽的人 | |
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rust
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| n.锈；v.生锈；(脑子)衰退 | |
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fin
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| n.鳍；(飞机的)安定翼 | |
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grimace
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| v.做鬼脸，面部歪扭 | |
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grimacer
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| n.作怪相的人 | |
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ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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22
misanthrope
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| n.恨人类的人；厌世者 | |
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23
gape
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| v.张口，打呵欠，目瞪口呆地凝视 | |
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24
condescended
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| 屈尊，俯就( condescend的过去式和过去分词 )； 故意表示和蔼可亲 | |
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25
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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26
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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burlesque
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| v.嘲弄，戏仿；n.嘲弄，取笑，滑稽模仿 | |
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banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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30
apothecaries
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| n.药剂师，药店( apothecary的名词复数 ) | |
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31
embellished
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| v.美化( embellish的过去式和过去分词 )；装饰；修饰；润色 | |
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32
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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33
discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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34
lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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mediator
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| n.调解人，中介人 | |
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doggerel
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| n.拙劣的诗，打油诗 | |
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37
lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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38
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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ascends
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的第三人称单数 ) | |
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40
tout
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| v.推销，招徕；兜售；吹捧，劝诱 | |
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41
anterior
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| adj.较早的；在前的 | |
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42
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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43
writ
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| n.命令状，书面命令 | |
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44
discriminated
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| 分别，辨别，区分( discriminate的过去式和过去分词 )； 歧视，有差别地对待 | |
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45
connoisseurs
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| n.鉴赏家，鉴定家，行家( connoisseur的名词复数 ) | |
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