The Sun.
London, England, 1855-02-19 00:00:00

RAILWAY RUBBISEE-BOOKS.

Something to Laugh At. Piper, Stephenson, and
Spence.
Who's Your Friend ? By A. W. Cole. James
Blackwood.
Several seasons back a liotftletivieoluc
rathera
Twelve Inside and One Out. By J. H. Friswell.
James Blackwood.
was issued
from the press by some omiaetributors to
Wortn of Nonsense."
more disingenuously,
candidly. entitled by
whole half-crown's worth
Punch—the which volume was
publications above
intserwe,riters
however,"A iSnhoilitliengo'fs
we
public
uhbalvi
ce the
—if we mistake not, by someof the contributors
foisted
up
contributors to
Diogenes. Everything in the book; from the firsii
page to the hundred and" twelfth, breathes of particularised,hav-
ont
ing been produced with malice prepense and afore-
thought, for the expresspurpo,eof
being rididulous.
Artists and writers are evidently that
f
ogenus the
Members of which are funny to d
or er—wags em-
ployed for the public as certain jesters were of
yore, by the more empty-headed of our ancient
sovereigns. Shall 'we call them by their right
as they are
names—,Buffeons? or designate them ley are
designated by Shakspere and the eld dra-
matists ? namely, by a very -
precise and
accurately descriptive monosyllable. Whatever
they may be termed Fools, Jesters, or
Buffoons—as the Clown says in the Pantomime,
—Here they are ! They have donned the motley
and duly painted their visages of the becoming pie.
bald, and, in a trice, for the small sum of half-a-
crown, are tumbling before her Majesty's lieges—
grinning through horse-collars and Performing all
manner of absurdities. Always, remember, to
order ! Always like that meanest of parasites
—the rich man's joker—invited to the
feast to set the worthier guests a-laughing.
Honestly we have a horror of these deliberate, and
at best but lukewarm, hashes of utterly inane
facetiousness these gandily-coloured and gro-
tesquely illustrated volumes of vapid and shallow
fun—to our mind no fun at all, but sheer stark-
staring folly. " Something to Laugh At," for-
sooth I Something rather fora higher intelligence to
lament as wholly frivolous, Mid, if not actually
drivelling, entirely preposterous and extravagant.
Scarcely anything out of all this mass of twaddling
letterpress and ill-drawn embellishment rises above
the dead level of the mere nonsensical. If
wo except, perhaps, for their ultra absur-
dity, two or three sketches of a certain obese
aright pursued by a mad bull through the
meadows. As where—his enemy charging after
him in the distance—you are shown the unfortu-
nate struggling to escape through a small aperture
in the garden wall—an aperture so ridiculously
small as to admit only of his head and shoulders.
Or, more absurdly- still, where--on the
other side of the same wall—you are shown
the horror-stricken expression of the wretch's
countenance—suggestive, in the midst of wriggling
and dismay, of what may be happening all the
while to his unseen moiety ! With minute excep-
tions of the merely ludicrous, such as in these in-
stances of the very coarsest caricaturing—
productions like those here spread out be-
fore us are only distinguished by their inanity
awl their eorteeiese extremigeitGee
,6! s9l2letbitig to