Literature had a grave and pedantic
character, for where there was any mental activity, instruction was
sought almost to the exclusion of gaiety. It required a greater spread
of education and experience to create a source of superior humour, or to
awaken any considerable demand for it. Hence, although the taste was so
increased that several periodicals of a professedly humorous nature were
started, they disappeared soon after their commencement. To record their
brief existence is like writing the epitaphs of the departed. Towards
the termination of the previous century, comic literature was
represented by an occasional fly-sheet, shot off to satirize some
absurdity of the day. The first humorous periodical which has come to
our knowledge, partakes, as might have been expected, of an
ecclesiastical character and betokens the severity of the times. It
appeared in 1670, under the title of "Jesuita Vapulans, or a Whip for
the Fool's Back, and a Gad for his Foul Mouth." The next seems to have
been a small weekly paper called "Heraclitus Ridens," published in 1681.
It was mostly directed against Dissenters and Republicans; and in No. 9,
we have a kind of Litany commencing:--
"From Commonwealth, Cobblers and zealous State Tinkers,
From Speeches and Expedients of Politick Blinkers,
From Rebellion, Taps, and Tapsters, and Skinkers,
Libera Nos.
Pages:
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50