e of the marvelous things of literature. It did
not need the free random movement of the majority of the tales, where
the lines may be anything from one foot to six, from spondaic to
dactylic: in some of them he tied himself down to the most rigid and
inflexible metrical forms, and moved as lightly and freely in those
fetters as if they were non-existent. As to the astonishing rhymes which
meet us at every step, they form in themselves a poignant kind of wit;
often double and even treble, one word rhyming with an entire phrase or
one phrase with another,--not only of the oddest kind, but as nicely
adapted to the necessities of expression and meaning as if intended or
invented for that purpose alone,--they produce on us the effect of the
richest humor.

One of his most diverting "properties" is the set of "morals" he draws
to everything, of nonsensical literalness and infantile gravity, the
perfection of solemn fooling. Thus in the 'Lay of St. Cuthbert,' where
the Devil has captured the heir of the house,

"Whom the nurse had forgot and left there in his chair,
Alternately sucking his thumb and his pear,"

the moral is drawn, among others,--

"Perhaps it's as well to keep children from plums,
And pears in their season--and sucking their thumbs."

And part of the moral to the 'Lay of St. Medard' is--

"Don't give people nicknames! don't, even in fun,
Call any one 'snuff-colored son of a gun'!"

And they generally wind up with some slyly shrewd piece of worldly
wisdom and wit. Thus, the closing moral to 'The Blasphemer's
Warning' is:--

"To married men this--For the rest of your lives,
Think how your misconduct may act on your wives!
Don't swear then before them, lest haply they faint,
Or--what sometimes occurs--run away with a Saint!"

Often they are broader yet, and intended for the club rather than the
family. Indeed, the tales as a whole are club tales, with an audience of
club-men always in mind; not, be it remembered, bestialities like their
French counterparts, or the later English and American improvements on
the French, not even objectionable for general reading, but full of
exclusively masculine joking, allusions, and winks, unintelligible to
the other sex, and not welcome if they were intelligible.

He has plenty of melody, but it is hardly recognized because of the
doggerel meaning, which swamps the music in the farce. And this applies
to more impor