Nonsense Books | Page 5

making a brief quotation, though in this, as in every case, the
inability to quote the drawings also is a sad drawback:--
"So they both went slowly down, And walked about the town, With a
cheerful bumpy sound, As they toddled round and round. And
everybody cried, As they hastened to their side, 'See, the Table and the
Chair Have come out to take the air!'
"But in going down an alley To a castle in a valley, They completely
lost their way, And wandered all the day, Till, to see them safely back,
They paid a Ducky-Quack, And a Beetle and a Mouse, Who took them
to their house.
"Then they whispered to each other, 'O delightful little brother, What a
lovely walk we've taken! Let us dine on Beans and Bacon!' So the
Ducky and the leetle Browny-Mousy, and the Beetle Dined, and danced
upon their heads, Till they toddled to their beds."
"The Story of the Four little Children who went Round the World"

follows next, and the account of the manner in which they occupied
themselves while on shipboard may be transcribed for the benefit of
those unfortunate persons who have not perused the original: "During
the day-time Violet chiefly occupied herself in putting salt-water into a
churn, while her three brothers churned it violently in the hope it would
turn into butter, which it seldom if ever did." After journeying for a
time, they saw some land at a distance, "and when they came to it they
found it was an island made of water quite surrounded by earth.
Besides that it was bordered by evanescent isthmuses with a great
Gulf-Stream running about all over it, so that it was perfectly beautiful,
and contained only a single tree, five hundred and three feet high." In a
later passage, we read how "by-and-by the children came to a country
where there were no houses, but only an incredibly innumerable
number of large bottles without corks, and of a dazzling and sweetly
susceptible blue color. Each of these blue bottles contained a
bluebottlefly, and all these interesting animals live continually together
in the most copious and rural harmony, nor perhaps in many parts of
the world is such perfect and abject happiness to be found." Our last
quotation from this inimitable recital shall be from the description of
their adventure on a great plain where they espied an object which "on
a nearer approach and on an accurately cutaneous inspection, seemed to
be somebody in a large white wig sitting on an arm-chair made of
sponge-cake and oyster-shells." This turned out to be the "Co-operative
Cauliflower," who, "while the whole party from the boat was gazing at
him with mingled affection and disgust ... suddenly arose, and in a
somewhat plumdomphious manner hurried off towards the setting sun,
his steps supported by two superincumbent confidential cucumbers ...
till he finally disappeared on the brink of the western sky in a crystal
cloud of sudorific sand. So remarkable a sight of course impressed the
four children very deeply; and they returned immediately to their boat
with a strong sense of undeveloped asthma and a great appetite."
In his third book, Mr. Lear takes occasion in an entertaining preface to
repudiate the charge of harboring any ulterior motive beyond that of
"Nonsense pure and absolute" in any of his verses or pictures, and tells
a delightful anecdote illustrative of the "persistently absurd report" that
the Earl of Derby was the author of the first book of "Nonsense." In this
volume he reverts once more to the familiar form adopted in his

original efforts, and with little falling off. It is to be remarked that the
third division is styled "Twenty-Six Nonsense Rhymes and Pictures,"
although there is no more rhyme than reason in any of the set. Our
favorite illustrations are those of the "Scroobious Snake who always
wore a Hat on his Head, for fear he should bite anybody," and the
"Visibly Vicious Vulture who wrote some Verses to a Veal-cutlet in a
Volume bound in Vellum." In the fourth and last of Mr. Lear's books,
we meet not only with familiar words, but personages and places,--old
friends like the Jumblies, the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo, the Quangle Wangle,
the hills of the Chankly Bore, and the great Gromboolian plain, as well
as new creations, such as the Dong with a luminous Nose, whose story
is a sort of nonsense version of the love of Nausicaa for Ulysses, only
that the sexes are inverted. In these verses, graceful fancy is so subtly
interwoven with nonsense as almost to beguile us into feeling a real
interest in Mr. Lear's absurd creations. So again in the Pelican chorus
there are some charming lines:--
"By day we fish, and at eve we stand On long bare