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 DAILY
MEDITATIONS
DENG MlNG-DAO
365 TAO
Other books by Deng Ming-Dao

The Chronicles of Tao trilogy:

The Wandering Taoist

Seven Bamboo Tablets of the Cloudy Satchel

Gateway to a Vast World

Scholar Warrior: An Introduction to the Tao in Everyday Life

365 TAO
DAILY MEDITATIONS

Deng Ming-Dao

HarperSanFrancisco
A Division of HarperCoMmsPublisbers
 —

Harper San Francisco and the author, in association with the Rainforest Action
Network, will facilitate the planting of two trees for every one tree used in the
manufacture of this book.

365 TAO: Daily Meditations. Copyright ©1992 by Deng Ming-Dao. All rights re-

served. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used
or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information
address HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Deng, Ming-Dao
365 Tao : daily meditations / Deng Ming-Dao. — 1st ed.

p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-250223-9 (acid-free paper)

1. Taoist meditations. 2. Taoism —Prayer-books and devotions

English. I. Title. II. Title: Three hundred sixty-five Tao.
BL1942.8.D46 1992
299'.51443— dc20 91-55332
CIP

92 93 94 95 96 MART 10 98765432
This edition is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Stan-
dards Institute Z39.48 Standard.
To Zhu Yuling
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Mike and Doris Chen for translating the

titles into Chinese and for the calligraphy that appears with
each entry. Manuscript preparation was greatly expedited
through the assistance of Cherrie Yu.
As always, I am grateful to Betty Gee for her comments
and support.
 INTRODUCTION

There is tremendous interest in Taoism today. References to it

appear in everything from art books to philosophy classes.

Qigong (chi kung) and Tai Chi are taught at community col-
leges, and spiritually inclined people are investigating Taoist
meditations. Scholars credit Taoism with having had a signifi-

cant influence on Zen Buddhism (thereby accounting for its

difference from Indian Buddhism), Chinese classical poets such

as Li Po and Tu Fu are widely acknowledged to have con-
sciously included Taoist themes, and every major building in
China —even today— is constructed according to Taoist prin-
ciples of geomancy.
But if the English-language reader wanted to investigate
more about Taoism, they might well be forgiven for thinking
that nothing significant had been written since 300 B.C. After
all, the Tao Te Ching, I Ching, and Chuang Tzu, so widely
translated and popular that they are found in almost every
bookstore, were all written in the Zhou dynasty. Other books
available are translations of abstruse alchemical texts, scholarly

histories, or manuals dealing with narrow subjects such as sex-

ology, exercise, or legends.
Readers interested in Taoism have undoubtedly seen most
of these books, and yet articles written in magazines, questions
asked at lectures, and the confusion many people profess about
Taoist principles show that the current body of literature is in-

sufficient support for applying Taoism to daily life. This is not

surprising. Translators usually have not had long training as

Taoists, so their perspective is academic rather than practical. If

readerswant to go a step further after reading the popular books

on Taoism, they have very few alternatives.
What is missing is a book written for people who are try-
ing to live the Taoist life today. Such a book would have to
capture traditional Taoism's sense of lyrical mysticism while
still making its concepts clear in English. Taoism's strength in
Chinese culture — to the point that it permeates daily life even
in the Asia of today — lies in its myriad ties to the culture at
large. When Taoism is translated into English, these points of
reference seem quaint, foreign, exotic, and esoteric. What
sounds complicated in English is simple in Chinese. Is it possi-
ble to see Tao in everyday life, regardless of place or culture?
365 Tao is an attempt to do just that. This is quite clearly not a
book of traditional Taoism. Rather, this is a book that searches
for Tao in the immediate.

In order to avoid any hint of esoteric wording, Taoism,

Taoist, yin and yang, wu wei, and numerous other Chinese terms
are not used at all. The only concession has been the word Tao,
but even here, it is not written as the Tao, but simply Tao. Oc-
casionally, for the sake of variety, its translation as Way or Path
has also been used. Tao should not be viewed exclusively as
scholarly metaphysics.
Traditional Taoism was often elitist and obscure, and
translations have been infected with that arm's-length attitude.
The message of 365 Tao is that one can actually apply the open
and accessible ideas of Tao directly to one's life.

365 Tao encourages you to explore on your own. That's where

true experience lies. That is why the book constantly empha-
sizes meditation. It is far better to turn away from dead scrip-
tures and tap directly into Tao as it exists now. We need to
open ourselves to what is unique about contemporary times,
throw off the shackles of outmoded forms and instead adapt
them to our current needs.
Tao fundamentally assumes that an inner cultivation of
character can lead to an outer resonance. This is an important
distinction. When confronted with the mysteries of the uni-
verse and the adversities of life, those who follow Tao think
first to secure their own inner characters. This is directly at

variance with a great deal of modern thinking. Currently, if we

are faced with a river too broad, we build a bridge to span it. If

someone attacks us, we immediately assume it to be that per-

son's fault and loudly call for someone to expel the intruder. If
we want to ponder something far away, we quickly fly the dis-
tance to explore it.

The assumption of those who follow Tao is much differ-

ent. Itis not that they would never build the bridge, fight an

aggressor, or explore the distant, but they would also consider

other aspects. When confronted with the river, they might ask
why a bridge was needed. Was there some reason that they

were not content with what they had? Would an imbalance of

nature, society, economics, or even aesthetics be created along
with the bridge?

XI
 In the case of personal attack, those who follow Tao
would ask if they did anything to provoke the attack. If so,
could they have prevented it? Of course, they would defend
themselves, but even then, their self-defense would most likely
come from long solitary training and not from frantic, outer-
directed violence.
Before they went to explore the faraway, those who follow
Tao would first think to know themselves well. They believe
that the outside world is only known in relation to an inner
point of view. They would therefore establish self-knowledge
before they tried to know others.

Self-cultivation is the basis for knowing Tao. Although Tao

may be glimpsed in the outer world, individuals must sharpen
their sensibilities in order to observe the workings of the great.

In the Western world today, there are thousands of people

exploring Taoism for answers they cannot find in their own
culture. In this worthy search, many of them lack a companion
for their spiritual quests. 365 Tao can be such a companion. It
addresses the awe and devotion of spiritual life, while recog-
nizing that there are times when meditation doesn't appear to
succeed and life is discouraging.
365 Tao is an invitation to enter Tao every day. If you suc-
ceed in that, books and companions fade away, and the won-
der of Tao is everything.
365 TAO
 1

Beginning

This is the moment of embarking.

All auspicious signs are in place.

In the beginning, all things are hopeful. We prepare ourselves

to start anew. Though we may be intent on the magnificent
journey ahead, all things are contained in this first moment:
our optimism, our faith, our resolution, our innocence.
In order to start, we must make a decision. This decision is

a commitment to daily self-cultivation. We must make a strong

connection to our inner selves. Outside matters are superfluous.
Alone and naked, we negotiate all of life's travails. Therefore,
we alone must make something of ourselves, transforming our-
selves into the instruments for experiencing the deepest spiritual

essence of life.
Once we make our decision, all things will come to us.

Auspicious signs are not a superstition, but a confirmation.

They are a response. It is said that if one chooses to pray to a
rock with enough devotion, even that rock will come alive. In
the same way, once we choose to commit ourselves to spiritual

practice, even the mountains and valleys will reverberate to the

sound of our purpose.

 2
Ablution

Washing at dawn:
Rinse away dreams.
Protect the gods within,

*
Purification starts
And

all
clarify the

practice. First
inner spirit.

comes cleansing of the

body —not to deny the body, but so that it is refined. Once
cleansed, it can help us sense the divine.
Rinsing away dreams is a way of saying that we must not
only dispel the illusions and anxieties of our sleeping moments
but those of our waking ones as well. All life is a dream, not
because it isn't there, but because we all project different
meanings upon it. We must cleanse away this habit.
While cleansing, we naturally look within. It is believed
that there are 36,000 gods and goddesses in the body. If we
continually eat bad foods, intoxicate ourselves, allow filth to

accumulate anywhere outside or inside of ourselves, then these

gods abandon us in disgust.
Yet our concerns must ultimately go beyond these deities

in the temples of our bodies to the universal One. After we

clear away the obscuring layers of dirt, bodily problems, and
delusions,we must be prepared even to clear away the gods
themselves so that we can reach the inner One.
Another random document with
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The good knight himself, however, was part of a world less verbally
or outwardly prudish than ours. He had only to dip into the written
literature of his time to find plenty of such anecdotes as he
introduced into his book, and as have become familiar to us through
the collections of fabliaux, where numerous examples offer
themselves to our view of the identical conditions of ancient
domestic life. I shall not attempt to decide whether the moral
atmosphere of France in the thirteenth century was better or worse
than that which we breathe; but the knight and his family were
surrounded by it, and knew no other.
Of the other jest-books falling within the biographical category, the
Jests of George Peele and the Conceits of Hobson are palpable
réchauffés—warmed-up dishes of stale viands. The same is to be
predicated of Dobson’s Dry Bobs, which claims on the title-page to
be a kind of sequel to Scogin.
Tarlton’s Jests present the aspect of a tolerably contemporary, if not
homogeneous and individual, assortment of witticisms and exploits.
They are chiefly redolent of the court and the theatre, the two
scenes of his activity and triumphs; and if all the things which they
make him say or do were not said or done by him, it is not easy to
point out the sources to which the editor of the original book went.
Tarlton was undoubtedly a man of rare powers, and his celebrity
must have long outlived him. He died in the plague-year 1588,
before Shakespear came to settle in London, yet not before the
great dramatist might have seen him and spoken to him; and for
some time I have entertained a suspicion that he may be the Yorick
of Hamlet.
The Jest of the Widow Edith, the lying Widow which still liveth, is an
early Tudor book (1525), which, though not dissimilar in its nature
from Skelton and Scogin and the German Eulenspiegel, varies
distinctly from them all in being a history in doggerel rhyme,
composed by one of the dupes of a licentious and unprincipled
adventuress, named Edith, whose stratagems and impostures are
rehearsed in this quaint metrical record with graphic minuteness.
The date of the tract—the first quarter of the sixteenth century—its
popular tenor, and its uniqueness of type, may together do
something to disarm our anger at its literary poverty and its
occasional latitude,—although, were not a lady in the question, it is
not so offensive as the low buffoonery of Scogin, or as some of the
items which found their way into the Tarlton volume.
The relations of Skelton with his parishioners in Norfolk form a
curious chapter in the ecclesiastical annals of the reign of Henry
VIII. His eminence as a writer and celebrity as a humourist have
doubtless contributed to preserve for our edification a tolerable
salvage of his sayings and doings while he held preferment in the
Church; but it is the circumstance that he was something more than
a loose parson which has given such prominence to his irregularities,
just as there were, in the time of Shakespear, deer-poachers whose
names we have not been enabled to recollect.
The so-called Merry Tales of Skelton amount, in reality, to a slight
biographical sketch strung together in sectional form. There even
appears a sort of attempt at chronological propriety, as they begin
prior to his instalment at Diss and close at a point in his life when he
was under the displeasure of Wolsey—not for his profligacy of
behaviour, but for his vituperative writings against that powerful
minister.
As a picture of the manners of the time, without a study and
knowledge of which it is obviously futile to try or presume to judge
Skelton or anybody else belonging to it, the narrative of the mistress
whom the poet kept at his living, his reprehension by the bishop,
and the scene in Diss church when (according to the jest-book) he
rated his congregation for complaining of him and openly exhibited
the child, baffles competition, when one takes into account the
relations of the pastor to his flock, the severity of ecclesiastical
discipline, and the rebuke which Skelton had suffered immediately
before at the hands of his spiritual chief. It is when we contemplate
such social phenomena that we become more and more forcibly
convinced that the Reformation was not a crusade against
immorality, but a political fight between the Church and State. In the
case of Skelton himself, his licentiousness would probably have
never involved him in serious trouble had he not chosen to attack
Wolsey.
But the entire texture of this small miscellany of humour, scandal
and libertinism is cross-woven; and its serious value is, to my
apprehension, greater than its comic. For it not only sheds light on
certain points in the career of the singular man with whose name
the tales are directly associated, but on the whole surrounding
atmosphere.
 CHAPTER XVI.
Analecta.
T was not till the Greeks and Romans had arrived at an
advanced stage of civilisation that scope was afforded to
the class of writers of whom we are accustomed to
regard Athenæus and Aulus Gellius as typical examples;
and somewhat on a similar principle the development of
the jest in the more modern acceptation is traceable back only to a
certain stage of social order, when a perception of the ridiculous or
eccentric was quickened into life by the establishment of an artificial
standard among us of politeness and opinion.
Another and distinct section of jest-books consists of what may be
treated as the pioneers of the English Ana—collections made by
editors from other books and from hearsay among their friends or in
company; and of these I shall content myself with adducing as
specimens—
1. Wits, Fits, and Fancies, by Anthony Copley, 1595.
2. Certain Conceits and Jests, 1614.
3. Wit and Mirth, by John Taylor the Water Poet, 1629.
4. Conceits, Clinches, Flashes, and Whimzies, by Robert
Chamberlain, 1639.
5. Joe Miller’s Jest-Book, 1739.
A century and ten years elapsed between the publications of Taylor
and Miller; but the earliest edition of the latter was barely more than
a pamphlet, and would not be at first sight recognised by those who
are only familiar with the more recent issues, in which the original
text has been amplified and overlaid, till the slender proportions of
the shilling book of 1739 are completely effaced.
The copious title of Taylor’s performance speaks for itself: “Wit and
Mirth, chargeably collected out of Taverns, Ordinaries, Inns, Bowling
Greens and Alleys, Alehouses, Tobacco-shops, Highways, and Water-
passages, made up and fashioned into Clinches, Bulls, Quirks, Yerks,
Quips, and Jerks.” The arrangement closely follows that of Tarlton’s
Jests and the Conceits and Jests; but the plan is widely dissimilar,
since Taylor has comparatively little to say about himself, and the
work, such as it is, is his own; whereas Tarlton stood to the book
which carries his name merely in the relation of sponsor, and the
whole is devoted by the actual editor to him and his real or putative
extravagances.
The self-evident truth is, that Master Taylor jotted down every smart
saying or racy passage which fell in his way by road or river, or
wherever his professional and private engagements happened to
take him. He was rather indiscriminate and not very squeamish; and
his budget exhibits wares of all sorts as well as of all shades of
quality and every variety of character, new and old, original and
borrowed, prose and verse. Yet, taken as a whole, the farrago has
very great general merit; and we must be content to set what is dull
and dirty, clumsy sophistications or inferior variants, against the
moderate residue of valuable permanent matter, where we get
unique touches of contemporary persons or little insights into the
thought and habits of the age. The whole, if the author is to be
believed, underwent at his ingenious and experienced hands a sort
of churning process; and, altogether, it is a book which we lay down,
as we do all others of the kind, with an uncertain and dissatisfied
sensation.
If I transcribe three samples from the Wit and Mirth, it must be with
the proviso that no one shall blame me if, on resorting to the work,
they do not meet with much more of equal excellence:—
“Master Thomas Coriat (on a time) complained against me
to King James, desiring his Majesty that he would cause
some heavy punishment to be inflicted upon me for
abusing him in writing (as he said I had); to whom the
 King replied, that when the lords of his honourable privy
council had leisure, and nothing else to do, then they
should hear and determine the differences betwixt Master
Coriat the scholar and John Taylor the sculler; which
answer of the King was very acceptable to Master Coriat.”
“A soldier upon his march found a horse-shoe and stuck it
at his girdle, when, passing through a wood, some of the
enemy lay in ambush, and one of them discharged his
musket; and the shot by chance lighted against the
fellow’s horse-shoe. ‘Ha! Ha!’ quoth he, ‘I perceive that
little armour will serve a man’s turn, if it be put on in the
right place!’”
“A chorister, or singing-man, at service in a cathedral
church, was asleep when all his fellows were singing;
which the Dean espying, sent a boy to him to waken him,
and asked him why he did not sing. He, being suddenly
awaked, prayed the boy to thank Master Dean for his kind
remembrance, and to tell him that he was as merry as
those that did sing.”
There is a story about Barkstead, the poet and actor, which is hardly
suitable for repetition, although it reminds us of one narrated of St.
Louis of France; and there is a second of Field the dramatist, which
is not worth quoting. The account of the drowsy chorister really
refers to Richard Woolner, who belonged in the early years of
Elizabeth to the choir at Windsor, and whose propensity for
somnolence was doubtless occasioned or aggravated by his
voracious appetite. This Richard Woolner was a pleasant fellow in his
intervals of consciousness; and in 1567 an account of him and his
oddities, no longer known, appears to have been printed. Sir John
Harington mentions him in his Brief View of the State of the Church.
 CHAPTER XVII.
The Subject continued.
HE taste for these Analecta grew with the supply. They
proved popular and easy reading, and did not exact
much reflection on the part of the peruser or a large
amount of literary skill in the compiler. No operation is
perhaps simpler than the construction of a book out of a
series of paragraphs found at intervals and strung together at
random. Tarlton’s Jests seems to have led the way and set the
fashion, and the press has been busy with such olla podrida ever
since.
Judgment in selection is, of course, the grand postulate in this as in
every department of art, and it is precisely there that the workman
in all times has fallen short of success; so that the whole mass of
pirated matter, from first to last, is capable of yielding scarcely more
than sufficient to fill a volume of fair compass.
For instance, I discern only a single scrap in the Certain Conceits and
Jests, 1614:—
“There was a certain fool that always, when the sun
shone, would weep, and when the rain rained would
laugh; and his reason was, that sunshine followed rain,
but rain sunshine.”
So, again, in the Conceits, Clinches, Flashes, and Whimzies, of 1639,
where the arrangement is similarly in paragraphs, but where at the
same time the contents answer better to the title than to the Ana,
there are 287 heads, and to discover half a dozen passable
illustrations is a task of difficulty. These bijoux, which the author, a
Lancashire man, carefully garnered up as they struck his own fancy,
or fell from the society which he kept, are after the following style:—
 “An antiquary,” says one, “loves everything (as Dutchmen
do cheese) for being mouldy and worm-eaten.”
“A simple fellow in gay clothes is like a cinnamon-tree; the
bark is of more worth than the body.”
“Another said, a woman was like a piece of old grogram,
always fretting.”
A few more might be added, not for their wit, but for their casual
elucidation of some obsolete word or custom; but we must not deny
the writer the credit of introducing the Pun. Better have been made
since; but, after all, we are here in the days of Charles I. No. 145
inquires why few women loved to eat eggs? Answer: Because they
cannot endure to bear the yoke. A far from brilliant effort spoiled in
the wording!
“Why are tailors like woodcocks? A. Because they live by
their long bills.”
Perchance, the best in this indifferent medley is No. 177, which
depends on the different meanings of liber and libra:—
“A rich bookseller wished himself a scholar, and one said
to him: ‘You are one already, being doctus in libris.’ ‘Nay,’
replied the other, ‘I am but dives in libris.’”
These classical essays do not suit our climate very well, yet nothing
is to be objected to them where, as in the one just cited, they are
pure. But I strongly dislike hybrids, by which I intend such a retort
as the Oxford Don is alleged to have made to the youths who hissed
him as he passed—Laudatur ab his; and the quotation of a line from
the Eclogue of Virgil, where a lady’s dress is torn by a fiddle, is
barely more than a verbal conceit, though incomparably preferable
to the aggravating all-us jelly-us of Brother Crug, which is a mere
phonetic abortion.
Whatever verdict may be pronounced on their successors, as they
approach our own period, it must be said of the assemblages of
facetiæ, made public by former generations down to the last
century, that they leave us no alternative but this conclusion—that,
with exceedingly few exceptions, considering the space of time
involved, the genuine, enjoyable, laughable, recallable jest was
unknown to antiquity, and is the offspring of modern thought and
conditions.
Of the jeux d’esprit and humour of the olden days the archaic cast is
not merely in the spelling or in the matter, but it is in the bone and
blood; and just as it would be idle to imagine that an Englishman of
the Tudor epoch could be converted into a modern Englishman by
arraying his person in modern clothes, so it is futile to attempt to
draw the jocular literature of passed centuries into harmony with our
own by adapting the orthography and language to the prevailing
mode.
Save in a few rare cases, where the life of the subject is
indestructible, the entire body of old-fashioned wit and wisdom is as
exotic as a tropical plant within the Arctic circle.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
“Joe Miller’s Jests”—History, Character,
and Success of the Publication—John
Mottley The Editor.
OSSIBLY it might be more correct to regard Joe Miller’s
Jests as marking a new era in this branch of literature
and department of ingenuity than as a work possessing
pretensions to rank as a model to succeeding editors of
similar collections. I am speaking of the little shilling
volume originally issued under the care of John Mottley in 1739, and
not of the modern publication which bears the same name, and has
little beyond the name in common with it.
Mottley’s book appeared just when the stage and the literary world
were beginning to assume an importance and to exhibit a
development favourable to the formation of coteries and centres;
and as the conditions and spirit of contemporary life govern so
completely the facetious and satirical speech of an age or a century,
the social and political changes which accompanied the accession of
the Hanoverian dynasty introduced a new school of wit among the
frequenters of the theatres, clubs and coffee-houses. In fact, the
popularity and success of Joe Miller’s Jests at the commencement
mainly arose from their association with a defunct actor and their
share, such as it was, of dramatic flavour. There had been, and was,
an abundance of books dedicated to a similar object, in the market;
but this particular one was supposed in some special and mysterious
manner to depict, in the first place, the hitherto unknown and
unsuspected humorous side of Joe’s character, and, secondly, to
embody master-strokes of other great wits of the day and brother
comedians of Drury. The new Court and Government of the Georges
were to have their own fresh appointments and effects throughout,
authors and actors included; and the light literature of the time
shared the universal influence. The merriments and drolleries of the
Stuart era were discarded to make room for a different style of
production, of which Joe Miller happened to be the first in the field,
though by no means so in order of excellence.
Yet, in spite of the shortcomings of this famous volume, there
remains the important consideration, that it contained a certain
enduring element in its cast and tone, and that substantially all
those books which have poured incessantly from the press since that
day follow the same lines and general principle. The older collections
are archæological and pre-historic; the precedent Ana and Facetiæ
are as saurians to the ordinary reader; and Miller and his humble
imitators—the Sheridans, the Footes, and the Sydney Smiths—shut
out from observation, so far as the community at large goes, the
jocular treasures and triumphs of ante-Millerian Britain.
In the last century, among Dr. Johnson and his friends, the
Elizabethan and Jacobean literature of all kinds met with limited
acceptance and lukewarm admiration; its principal utility and interest
were from the point of view of the adapter or plagiarist; and
innumerable appeals to public favour presented themselves in forms
with which the reader and the buyer had more immediate touch and
sympathy. The rarest and most precious editions of Shakespear and
other writers of his epoch were to be had for a smaller sum than the
Life of Joe Hains, the Jests of Polly Peachum, or any other fugitive
performance damp from the printers. Malone tells us that Dr.
Johnson could not admire the Duke of Buckingham’s Rehearsal, and
thought that “it had not wit enough to keep it sweet, nor sufficient
vitality to preserve it from putrefaction”—a truly Johnsonian
pleonasm, but also a key to the sentiment of the generation to
which Johnson belonged, and of which he was decidedly a more
than average representative. But here we have a case where the
writer could hardly have been viewed as obsolete or illegible in the
same manner and sense as the older playwrights; but Johnson
nevertheless—and thousands would have concurred with him—did
not relish the humour of a piece produced only some twenty years
before he was born. The context and atmosphere were wanting; and
if such was the feeling about the Rehearsal—of which the merit has
recommended it, by-the-bye, to a recent editor—what prospect of
survival could exist for the swarm of popular cates with which the
English press had teemed from the reign of Henry VIII. to the
Revolution?
Malone preserves an anecdote which helps to illustrate the
difference between the old and modern schools tolerably well:
“Mr. Lock, of Norbury Park, well known for his collection of
pictures, statues, etc., was a natural son. On his marriage
with the daughter of Lady Schaub, who had been very
gallant, Horace Walpole said very happily, ‘Then
everybody’s daughter is married to nobody’s son.’”
The jeu d’esprit was reserved for Walpole, though the circumstance
on which it was founded had happened often enough before; but in
point of fact it was a saying strictly characteristic of the period, and
in the author of it we recognise a signally representative type of the
latter-day, as contrasted with the old-world, wit.
Walpole, indeed, belonged to the modern school of humourists,
which may be said to date back to the era of the Restoration, but
which did not, so to speak, attain adult growth till the fuller
development of the club and the coffee-house as aids to the theatre
in the establishment of new jocular canons and doctrines.
The book called Joe Miller’s Jests was, both in its inception and its
progress, an emanation from the altered state of feeling in regard to
such matters. The early editions were, in a literary aspect, wretched
enough, and destitute alike of judgment and taste on the part of the
compiler. But if the sponsorship of Miller was originally of a nominal
and shadowy character, it must be said that, as the volume received
from time to time additions, which doubled and trebled its bulk, from
an endless variety of fresh sources, the fatherhood of the worthy
actor became by degrees absolutely fictitious—a mere nom de
plume; and it is not too much to allow that, with all its weaknesses,
the work in its augmented shape, as the ordinary reader is
accustomed to come across it, is a creditable sample of its kind, and
will probably yield a better insight into the particular field of inquiry
than any other single publication in our language.
Of course, the first impression of 1739 and the current text are so
distinct from each other as to have practically little in common
between them beyond the name and the tradition. It started by
being a strange tissue of deceptive pretences; but it hit the nail on
the head; the notion tickled the public fancy; and the title is almost
part of the British constitution. The ancient lines have long been
obliterated; the pamphlet of seventy pages has swollen into a
volume of five hundred; and the editor and publisher are recollected
only by the curious; while in all literary centres and among nearly all
classes of readers the man whose name was affixed to the venture
without his consent or knowledge, and whose personal capabilities in
the joking way were below zero, remains a household word from
century to century, like the superscription over a venerable house of
business of partners who have been dead and buried these hundred
years, and survive above the door and on the bill-heads from
considerations of expediency.
John Mottley, who strang together the editio princeps of Joe Miller in
1739 for a bookseller, cannot be commended for the skill and care
with which he executed his task. It is a singular jumble of anecdotes
of all complexions about persons in various walks of life. The
seventy-two pages were reckoned, no doubt, dog-cheap at a shilling,
under all the imposing circumstances and seeing the choice nature
of the miscellany, and the highly distinguished personages to whose
memorabilia it strictly limited its cognisance—videlicet and to wit,
King Charles II., Mr. Gun Jones, Sir Richard Steele, the Duchess of
Portsmouth, a country clergyman, Ben Jonson, Mrs. C——m, Sir
William Davenant, two free-thinking Authors, a very modest young
gentleman of the County of Tipperary, Tom Barrett, Lord R., Henry
IV. of France, the Emperor Tiberius, and others. A richer bill of fare
was barely possible, and it is difficult to understand why Mottley
should not have been proud to associate himself with such company
and with such a feast of delights, instead of employing the
pseudonymy of Jenkins. This playful piece of supercherie, however,
was outdone by the courageous declaration that the contents were
mostly “transcribed from the mouth” of Joe himself, and the
remainder collected in his society; for, as a serious matter of truth,
the sole item in the thin octavo, which the collection makes, really
attributable to the then recently deceased comedian, is of a nature
calculated to inspire us with satisfaction that the title-page is less
veracious than it ought to have been, and almost as much a truant
in an opposite direction as was perhaps practicable. The material
gathered by Mottley in the first instance was indifferent enough
surely; but the solitary specimen which he actually furnishes of the
facetious vein of his hero must induce everybody to feel thankful
that he stopped short there:—
“Joe Miller sitting one day in the window of the Sun
Tavern, in Clare Street, a fishwoman and her maid passing
by, the woman said, ‘Buy my soles, buy my maids!’ ‘Ah,
you wicked old creature!’ said honest Joe. ‘What! Are you
not content to sell your own soul, but you would sell your
maid’s too?’”
The benevolent forbearance of Mottley was advantageous to the sale
of the book confided to his editorship; and the best jest of all was
the title and conception. To put forward as the author of all good
things a poor fellow who could not make a joke, or even see it when
it was made by a friend, was an idea as happy as if some speculative
genius were to announce a jest-book by Mr. Spurgeon or the
philanthropic Earl of Shaftesbury. But the most popular of preachers
or philanthropists would not have answered the purpose so well at
the moment as a defunct theatrical performer, equally impervious to
humour, but to the play-going public infinitely more familiar, not as a
wit, nor even as the cause of it in others, but on purely negative
grounds. A notable piece of triumphant charlatanry, as this Joe Miller
in the first beginning was, has happened, from a singular caprice of
fortune, to overshoot the original design and proportions, to change
its fugitive and perishable nature, and to accommodate itself from
time to time to enlarged and different requirements.
The circumstance must be treated as accidental; for, looking at the
question on every side, the book has had from the commencement a
host of competitors, possessing at least equal merit, at least equally
inviting forefronts, and even the superstitious prestige of the green-
room. But these, one and all, unaccountably disappeared from the
public view; and Miller proved the only phœnix, the only sterling
coin, the only lasting trademark.
Spiller’s Jests, Penkethman’s, Quin’s, nay, Garrick’s, were things of a
season, the nugæ canoræ of their day. Joe witnessed their coming
and going; and he is with us yet! He will endure as long as the
earth’s crust—as long as Shakespear, and longer, perchance, than
Milton.
One of the consequences of this huge and matchless renown is that,
in the amplified Vade Mecum for Wits of Joe the Great, a
considerable assortment of comic incidents is enrolled under that
talismanic name an age or twain after the date, when all that was
soluble of the Miller of Millers had been lifted across from the
purlieus of Clare Market to the hospitable shelter of St. Clement’s
opposite.
 CHAPTER XIX.
Jest-books considered as Historical and
Literary Material—The Twofold Point
Illustrated—Localisation of Stories.
AVING now dealt at reasonable length with those points
of view which have reference to the sophistication and
affiliation of Jests, let us proceed to regard this highly
fruitful topic from one or two other aspects; and firstly I
propose to invite attention to the valuable material
which the writer on old English manners and institutions may find
here ready to his hand. There is barely a custom or an idea
prevalent among our forefathers which the vast body of printed Ana,
and especially the Shakespear Jest-Books, 1864, do not afford the
means of illustrating and facilities for more clearly comprehending.
The stories embraced within the entire range of jocular literature are
so multifarious in their origin and drift, while they so largely partake
of a popular character, that they richly reimburse our examination of
them, even when, as so frequently happens, their literary and artistic
claims are slender to excess.
In the Hundred Merry Tales, 1526, there is the story of the lad who
took his shoes to be mended, whence comes the information to us
that the charge for this kind of work was at that period threepence.
Then, in another item of the series, which in its totality is decidedly
unconventional, we perceive how young fellows just emerging from
boyhood wore the hair on the upper lip as well as the beard. The
story Of the Courtier and the Carter aptly serves to throw light on a
point which does not appear to be sufficiently understood—the
application of the terms cart and carter to ordinary vehicles for the
conveyance of travellers of all degrees,—so much so that the rough,
old-fashioned lawyer, desirous of an audience with Queen Elizabeth,
while she was on a journey, cried out to her coachman, “Stop thy
cart, good fellow, stop thy cart!” and the ancient French hunting
chariots were merely an evolution from the primitive agricultural
model.
It is difficult to resist the temptation to smile at the whimsical
suggestion of the curate “who preached the articles of the Creed,”
that such as were not satisfied about them from his communication
had better go to Coventry and see them on the stage at the Corpus
Christi play. What a vivid glimpse rises before us of the feeling and
costume of three or four centuries ago, when we read the account
given in another of the Tales, “of the man that desired to be set on
the pillory,” in order that, while he was there, his confederates in the
crowd might pick the honest folks’ pockets and empty the butchers’
aprons, as they gaped at the spectacle!
The expedients for swindling which formerly throve, enter not a little
into these miscellanies; and the drollery of the incidents of a fraud
naturally outlive the temporary elements. The narrative of a sharper,
who is, by the way, described as “a merry man,” and who distributed
bills announcing the performance of a play, belongs to the earlier
years of Elizabeth; but it was a trick repeated, doubtless, more than
once. The particular story is laid somewhere about 1567, and it
establishes several curious details respecting the theatrical
exhibitions of that date. The scene was Northumberland Place, in the
city of London, and the proceedings were to commence at two in the
afternoon. Two men were stationed at the gate with a box to take
the money—a penny or a halfpenny at least—and as soon as the
fellow conceived that there was no likelihood of collecting more, he
sent the two box-keepers in to “keep the room,” mounted a horse
which waited for him at an adjoining inn, and rode off to Barnet.
This episode is additionally curious and interesting, because it
anticipates by almost forty years a precisely similar adventure placed
on record by Chamberlain the letter-writer as having occurred within
his knowledge in 1602. In both cases the actors were advertised to
be amateurs, which, as the piece was to be presented on a scaffold
in the market-place, was a novel attraction and a happy stroke.
The epigram of Sir Thomas More on one who took the fly out of a
glass of water, and replaced it when he had done drinking, has been
made the basis for a jest; but was itself founded on the common
superstition that such an act was lucky.
The current pronunciation of an early West of England name
underlies the pleasantry that Master You having wedded Mistress
You, he was ever afterwards known as Master W. The old
Devonshire Yeos were probably called Yous by their provincial
neighbours.
There is an abundance of historical sayings with a facetious vein or
tag; and some of them are highly interesting little traits and
sidelights. During the Wars of the Roses, an unfortunate man met in
succession with two parties, of whom one was for Edward IV. and
the other for Henry VI. To the inquiry of the first he replied that he
was Henry’s man, wherefore they beat him; and to the second that
he was Edward’s, which brought him the same luck. So the next
time, to be quite safe, he declared himself to be the Devil’s man;
and when they said, “Then the Devil go with thee!” “Amen!” quoth
he: “he is the best master I’ve served to-day.”
There are two survivals about a priest just at the epoch of the
Reformation; they are evidently little touches from life. This learned
clerk is made to preach a sermon on Charity, and in it to avouch that
no man can get to heaven without charity, except only the King’s
Grace, God save him! Then, when the royal visitors came down to
his parts to make their report, he was interrogated as to what he did
and how he passed his time. “I occupy myself in reading the New
Testament,” says he. “That is very well,” say the Commissioners;
“but prythee, Sir, who made the New Testament?” “That did King
Henry the Eighth,” replies the priest, “Lord have mercy on his soul!”
There is a strong air of verisimilitude in the salutation of Richard III.,
as he was collecting his forces in Thicket’s field, by the Northern
man: “Diccon, Diccon, by the mis, I’se blith that thaust king”; and
there are in the same tract (Merry Tales and Quick Answers) a
couple of characteristic scraps, the only remaining footprints, as it
were, of the Canon of Hereford, whose deficiency in intelligence and
scholarship they celebrate.
Gossip and satire concerning the priesthood seem, from a very
remote period, to have been received with relish and tolerance; but
tales exposing the rapacity, ignorance and licentiousness of the cloth
were circulated from political motives with even greater eagerness
and immunity just prior to that grand climax which abrogated the
papal supremacy in England for ever.
It is necessary, and not difficult, to distinguish between narrated
incidents, which veritably belong to a specific vicinity, and such
fictitious variants as are merely localised for the nonce. Of the latter
the jest-books, which contributed so largely to the activity of the
press from the accession of the Stuarts to their restoration, are rich
in examples, as I have already pointed out. Pasquil’s Jests is one of
the worst offenders in this way. “How a merchant lost his purse
between Waltham and London” is nothing more than a new-birth of
the account in Merry Tales and Quick Answers, where Ware is the
place specified; and “How mad Coomes of Stapforth, when his wife
was drowned, sought her against the stream,” reproduces No. 55 of
the same older miscellany, which is itself copied and varied from a
Latin fabliau. Manchester, Hertfordshire, Kingston, Lincolnshire, and
other neighbourhoods are fixed as the theatres of adventures in
these books, without the slightest eye to topographical fitness. The
anterior publications had perhaps set the fashion to some extent,
and notably so the Gothamite Tales; but the resuscitation of used
matter with some superficial investiture of novelty became a sort of
necessity, when the popular demand for these wares increased out
of proportion to the supply.
In certain of the collections, on the contrary, and most especially and
largely in the two Tudor ones so often quoted, we meet with little
dramatic scenes, laid here or there, with a fair accompaniment of
probability in support of the attribution. I shall take the course of
referring those who may care to follow this part of the argument to
the Hundred Merry Tales,—
No. 29. Of the Welshman, who said that he could get but
a little mail.
No. 33. Of the priest, who said Our Lady was not so
curious a woman.
No. 40. Of Master Skelton, who brought the Bishop of
Norwich two pheasants.
No. 71. Of the priest that would say two gospels for a
groat.
No. 87. Of Master Whittington’s dream.
And to Merry Tales and Quick Answers,—
No. 54. Of Master Vavasor and Turpin his man.
No. 94. Of the Cheshire man called Evelyn.
No. 132. Of him that sold two loads of hay.
No. 134. How the image of the Devil was lost and sought.
I think that all the articles which I have just indicated manifest a
realism of portraiture and complexion which should commend and
endear them to the studiers and lovers of the old English life; in the
edition of the Hundred Merry Tales which the Royal Library at
Göttingen owns, and which I have lately reprinted in facsimile, there
is a further item falling within the same category—the highly
amusing and doubtless veracious tale of the Maltman of Colebrook,
which may be appropriately bracketed with the one “of him that sold
two loads of hay.”
Both are, in fact, relations of actual events thrown into a readable
shape with a modicum of colouring.
 CHAPTER XX.
The so-called “Tales of Skelton”—Specimens
of them—Sir Thomas More and the Lunatic—
The Foolish Duke of Newcastle—Pennant the
Antiquary—The “Gothamite Tales”—Stories
connected with Wales and Scotland.

ESIDES these two repertories, the Merry Tales of Skelton

contain a racy and diverting account of a trick played by
the poet on a Kendal man, with whom he was riding
from Oxford to London. They baited at Uxbridge, and
while his companion was out of the room, Skelton took
his cap, which he had left behind on the table, inserted some butter
inside the lining, and put it back in its place. When the owner
returned, he placed it on his head, of which the warmth soon had
the anticipated effect. The butter ran down the fellow’s face and
neck, and Skelton assured him that he had the sweating sickness.
The Kendal man was in great terror of his life, and Skelton advised
him to go to bed at once. A little hot water applied to the cap and its
proprietor set matters right; the joke was explained and forgiven,
and the two rode on to town the next morning. Such practical
hoaxes were doubtless frequent enough; and the laureated parson
of Diss was never, one is apt to apprehend, so thoroughly at home
as when he had something of the kind in hand.
The modern works offer in a similar manner, and perhaps, on the
whole, to a greater extent, authentic examples of local occurrences.
There is the celebrated adventure of Sir Thomas More with the
lunatic on the flat roof of his house at Chelsea, which runs
somewhat parallel to one which the Duke of Wellington had with a
crazy fellow at Apsley House:—
 “When Sir Thomas More was one day on the flat-leaded
roof of his house at Chelsea, a lunatic succeeded
somehow in getting to him, and tried to throw him down,
crying, ‘Leap, Tom, leap!’ The Chancellor was in his
dressing-gown, and, besides, was too old a man to have
any chance against the madman. Sir Thomas had a little
dog with him. ‘Let’s throw him down first,’ said he, ‘and
see what good fun that will be’; so the fellow took up the
animal, and threw him down. ‘Now,’ said More, ‘run and
fetch him back, and let us try again, for I think it is good
sport.’ The madman went, and as soon as he had
disappeared, More rose and secured the door.”
As representatives of the same class, belonging to different periods,
the subjoined must serve:—
“A gentleman, who possessed a small estate in
Gloucestershire, was allured to town by the promises of
the Duke of Newcastle, who, for many months, kept him
in constant attendance, until, the poor man’s patience
being quite exhausted, he one morning called upon his
patron, and told him that he had at length got a place.
The Duke very cordially shook him by the hand, and
congratulated him on his good fortune, telling him that in
a few days a good thing would have been in his gift; ‘but
pray, sir,’ added he, ‘where is your place?’ ‘In the
Gloucester coach,’ replied he: ‘I secured it last night.’”
“Pennant, the antiquary, had an unaccountable antipathy
to wigs. Dining at Chester with an officer who wore this
covering for the head, when they had drunk pretty freely,
after many wistful looks, Pennant started up, seized the
caxon, and threw it into the fire. The wig was in a
moment in flames, and so was the officer, who
immediately drew his sword. Downstairs flies Pennant,
and the officer after him, through all the streets of
 Chester; but the former escaped through superior local
knowledge.”
“A quack-doctor, haranguing the populace at
Hammersmith, said, ‘To this village I owe my birth and
education; I dearly love it and its inhabitants, and will
cheerfully give a present of a crown to every one who will
accept it.’ The audience received this notice with infinite
satisfaction. ‘Here, ladies and gentlemen,’ added he,
putting his hand into a bag, and taking out a parcel of
packets, ‘these inestimable medicines I usually sell for five
and sixpence each, but in favour, of this, my native village,
I will take sixpence apiece.’”
Where the profusion of illustrative matter is inexhaustible, a survey
of a subject is bound to limit itself to suggestion and sample. But the
remarks and indications which have been afforded, must testify at
any rate to the residence in these vast stores, on which I have been
drawing, of a utility and dignity in numerous cases beyond their
value as mere temporary vehicles for distraction and mirth, and to
their claim to a subsidiary place among historical and social
monuments.
The localisation of interest in an adventure or incident does not
seem at first to have struck those who laboured for the public
entertainment as a commercial expedient deserving of study and
trial. But as the volume of jocular and anecdotal literature swelled,
and the competition for favour and novelty grew keener in
proportion, the resort to new devices for imparting a relish and edge
to old properties comprised the association of jests which had
weathered numberless seasons, with some fresh person or
neighbourhood. Hence arises the multitude of collections and
headings identifying books of the present class or portions of their
contents with particular places and particular individuals, such as the
Cobbler of Canterbury, the Footpost of Dover, and the Gravesend
Tilt-Boat, or, in the case of personality, the numerous entries in
Pasquil’s Jests of stories of Merry Andrew of Manchester, Coomes of
Stapforth, and so on, all of which are resuscitations of stale and
bygone material.
The work which led the way and set the mode in this direction was
perhaps The Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham, by Andrew
Borde. It was a dexterous and attractive method of substituting for
the vague generalisations of anterior compilers “a local habitation
and a name.” It fixed the geography of the event, and established its
authenticity beyond dispute; for, as the phrase is in the narratives of
early murders and other phenomena, any gentleman, who doubted
the veracity of the writer, might go and inquire for himself on the
spot.
The idea of lending a local colouring and flavour to anecdotes
originated, however, probably among the early Italian collectors of
burle and facetie, of which some are transferred to our own
miscellanies; and the practice dates back to a period when the
literary life was bounded by the walls of capitals, or did not at most
overstep their outskirts.
The stories, which present themselves in this class of book about the
inhabitants of Scotland and Wales, generally bear on the pilfering
propensities occasioned by poverty, facilitated by geographical
position, and justified by the sense of wrong. Their habits of
parsimony were acquired by the Scots during centuries of miserable
and oppressive misgovernment, and survived the stern necessity out
of which they arose. The Welsh borderer, if one judges from the
tales current about him in the old facetiæ, and from what history
itself reveals, combined with an addiction to “lifting” and
drunkenness a certain pusillanimity of spirit, which may be less
injurious to the community, but is more to be contemned in the
individual. He was too often, besides being a thief and a sot, a
sneaking rascal. The nursery rhyme about Taffy is a piece of
veracious tradition, an accurate reflex of the state of society in the
lower grades in the Principality down to the last century, or even
until Wales was brought within the operation of more stringent laws
and a more efficient police. The humorous side of the numberless
legendary anecdotes about the Cambro-Britons has been rendered
abundantly visible by the gatherers of Ana; but when we regard this
material in the aggregate, and explore a little beneath the surface,
we arrive at the interesting discovery that in this, as in every other
group of similar relics, there is a good deal deserving of careful
study and collation, and that the whole body of such literature ought
henceforth to be, much more than it has, I think, hitherto been,
treated as a branch of the national Folk-lore.
The merriments at the expense of Taffy, if they do not turn on his
dishonesty, are pretty sure to deal with his passion for liquor and
toasted cheese. Congruity and fitness are seldom respected in this
line of literary work; and in one of the Hundred Merry Tales, St.
Peter, upon the representation of God that the Welshmen in heaven,
with their noisy ways, were a nuisance to all the rest, engages to get
rid of them. He goes to the entrance-gates and shouts Cause bobe!
and forthwith every Cambro-Briton rushes out to see where his
favourite delicacy is to be had. The sly apostle, the moment they are
all outside, closes the door, and the Christian Elysium is its old self
again.
This whimsical piece of invention may be bracketed with a second
narrated in the so-called Tales of Skelton, in which the other
gastronomic failing of the Principality is amiably depicted; although
the two stories are of different types, the one being a pleasant
extravagance, while the other, which I now give, may have been an
actual incident.
It professes to be an account “how the Welshman did desire Skelton
to aid him in his suit to the king for a patent to sell drink.”
“Skelton, when he was in London, went to the King’s
Court, where there did come to him a Welshman, saying,
‘Sir, it is so, that many do come up out of my country to
the King’s Court, and some get of the King by patent a
castle, and some a park, and some a forest, and some
one fee and some another, and they live like honest men;
and I should live as honestly as the best, if I might have a