One of the earliest efforts of the kind in the language is a certain passage in Udall's 'Ralph Roister Doister,' where Dame Christian receives from the hero a letter which seems, on the face of it, insulting:
'Sweete mistresse, where as I love you nothing at all, Regarding your substance and richesse chief of all, To your personage, beauty, demeanour, and wit, I commend me unto you never a whit,'
and so on--the joke lying, of course, in the incorrectness of the punctuation adopted. In general, the Elizabethans were too much in earnest to write absolute nonsense. Nonsense is to be found in Shakespeare, but usually in parody of the euphemists of his time. Some of the _personæ_ are made to talk sad stuff, but it has not the merit of being 'precious' in the Lady Saphir's sense. It is very tedious indeed, and one likes to think that Shakespeare, perhaps, did not write it, after all. Drummond, in his 'Polemo-Middinia,' gave an early example of a kind of _jeu d'esprit_ which has since been frequently imitated--a species of dog-Latin _in extremis_:
'Hic aderunt Geordy Akinhedius and little Johnus, Et Jamy Richæus, et stout Michel Hendersonus, Qui jolly tryppas ante alios dansare solebat, Et bobbare bene, et lassas kissare boneas.'
But though this is not wholly unamusing, it is hardly, as nonsense, up to the standard instituted for us by Mr. Lear.
The real thing is more nearly visible in Swift's macaronic lines about Molly--'Mollis abuti, Hasan acuti,' etc.--another vein of fun which has been exceedingly well worked out by successive writers. But such inspirations as these have too much method in them to be quite admissible. Much better was Swift's 'Love Song in the Modern Taste,' beginning:
'Fluttering spread thy purple pinions, Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart.'
Even this, however, has too much sense for it to pass muster. Nor can one receive Johnson's
'If a man who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies,'
and so on, as sufficiently nonsensical. It is simply a _jeu de mots_, and no more, though funny enough as it stands. One is better satisfied when one comes to the 'Tom Thumb' of Henry Fielding and the 'Chrononhotonthologos' of Henry Carey, though even in those diverting squibs it is rarely that the versifier surrenders himself wholly to 'Divine Nonsensia.' That charming goddess was saluted to more purpose in 'The Anti-Jacobin,' where she was invoked to make charming fun of 'The Loves of the Plants.' In 'The Progress of Man' (in the same delectable collection) occurs the inspired passage: