Note 70 — SUSPENDED ANIMATION.

Many fail to see a joke when it is gravely propounded in print, who would at once recognise it as such, were it uttered verbally, with however serious a countenance. Possibly this is due to the necessary absence in the printed account of the indications by which we recognise that a speaker is jesting—as a certain expression of countenance, or a certain intonation of voice, by which the grave utterer of a spoken jest conveys his real meaning. In a paper which recently appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, Mr. Foster (Thomas of that ilk) propounded very gravely the theory that our Nursery Rhymes have in reality had their origin in Nature Myths. He explained, for instance, that the rhymes relating to Little Jack Horner were originally descriptive of sunrise in winter: Little Jack is the sun in winter, the Christmas pie is the cloud-covered sky; the thumb represents the sun's first ray piercing through the clouds; and Jack's rejoicing means the brightness of full sunlight. So also the rhymes beginning Hey Diddle Diddle are shown to be of deep and solemn import, all in manifest burlesque of some recent extravagant interpretations of certain ancient stories by Goldziher, Steinthal, and others. Yet this fun was seriously criticized by more than half the critics, by some approvingly, by some otherwise.