The 'Ingoldsby Legends' have been called an English naturalization of
the French metrical _contes;_ but Barham owes nothing to his French
models save the suggestion of method and form. Not only is his matter
all his own, but he has _Anglified_ the whole being of the metrical form
itself. His facility of versification, the way in which the whole
language seems to be liquid in his hands and ready to pour into any
channel of verse, was one of the marvelous things of literature. It did
not need the free random movement of the majority of the tales, where
the lines may be anything from one foot to six, from spondaic to
dactylic: in some of them he tied himself down to the most rigid and
inflexible metrical forms, and moved as lightly and freely in those
fetters as if they were non-existent. As to the astonishing rhymes which
meet us at every step, they form in themselves a poignant kind of wit;
often double and even treble, one word rhyming with an entire phrase or
one phrase with another,--not only of the oddest kind, but as nicely
adapted to the necessities of expression and meaning as if intended or
invented for that purpose alone,--they produce on us the effect of the
richest humor.

One of his most diverting "properties" is the set of "morals" he draws
to everything, of nonsensical literalness and infantile gravity, the
perfection of solemn fooling. Thus in the 'Lay of St. Cuthbert,' where
the Devil has captured the heir of the house,

"Whom the nurse had forgot and left there in his chair,
Alternately sucking his thumb and his pear,"

the moral is drawn, among others,--

"Perhaps it's as well to keep children from plums,