Highways of Canadian LiteratureLogan, J. D. (John Daniel)
History
Highways of Canadian Literature
Logan, J. D. (John Daniel)
Canadian literature -- History and criticism
typification by humorous classification is found in _The Clockmaker_,
(third series, chapter 13). There he classifies patriots into ‘rebel
patriots, mahogany patriots, spooney patriots, place patriots, and raal
genu_ine_ patriots.’
General popular character types which are familiar in American humor
indubitably had their prototypes in Haliburton’s characters. Sam Slick,
as a horse trader, is the prototype of David Harum; and, as an aphorist
and practical philosopher, is the prototype of Mr. Dooley. Mrs. Figg in
Haliburton’s _Letter-Bag_ is the prototype of Shillaber’s Mrs.
Partington. In the same work Haliburton has an ‘enfant terrible’ who is
the prototype of Peck’s ‘Bad Boy’ and of later examples of ‘awful
children,’ down to Tarkington’s Penrod.
Haliburton was an egregious punster, and he even indulged in _double
entendres_ which were coarse and sometimes obscene, but which may be
excused on account of their humorous point or satiric wit. As an
anecdotist, ‘spinner of yarns,’ ‘tall stories,’ ‘stretchers,’ with a
decided tendency to employ the coarse and irreverent, Haliburton
anticipated similar traits in Mark Twain, as in Twain’s _Roughing It_
and _Innocents Abroad_. Haliburton’s occasional coarseness and
irreverence are to be explained by his hatred of sham and insincerity,
of conventionalized prudery, of concealed indecency of thought, of the
real evil caused by men and women who are outwardly ‘whited sepulchres.’
It must, however, be admitted that, traceable to his Border Scots
ancestry, there was in him a love of plebeian or coarse fun for its own
sake. But it must also be said that his coarseness of wit was never
based on impurity of heart, and that he had the highest respect for the
moral beauty and dignity of womanhood. He did remark playfully the
engaging vanities and foibles of women, but for pure love and motherhood
and all the sweet charities of woman he had the finest and tenderest
respect. Unsurpassed in world literature is Haliburton’s tender and holy
sublimation of woman’s spiritual winsomeness and dignity, as in this
immortal metaphor:—
A woman has two smiles which an angel might envy; the smile that
accepts a lover before the words are uttered, and the smile that
lights on the first-born baby and assures him of a mother’s
love.
As to the original humor of Haliburton’s ingenious metaphors, similes,
outlandish coinage of expressive word morphology (such as
‘absquotulate,’ ‘spiflicate,’ ‘conflustigation,’ ‘conniption fit,’
reechoed in Artemus Ward and Josh Billings), and of his wealth of
aphoristic wit and wisdom, so much are they in the permanent warp and
woof of the popular literature of humor and of common speech that they
need not here be specially remarked and illustrated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account