assurance. An instance of Gilbert's appreciation of other people's
nonsense is his parody of Lear's verse:

There was an old man in a tree
Who was horribly bored by a bee;
When they said, "Does it buzz?"
He replied, "Yes, it does!
It's a regular brute of a bee!"

The parody attributed to Gilbert is called "A Nonsense Rhyme in
Blank Verse":

There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp;
When they asked, "Does it hurt?"
He replied, "No, it doesn't,
But I thought all the while 'twas a Hornet!"

Thackeray wrote spirited nonsense, but much of it had an
under-meaning, political or otherwise, which bars it from the field
of sheer nonsense.

The sense of nonsense is no respecter of persons; even staid old
Dr. Johnson possessed it, though his nonsense verses are marked by
credible fact and irrefutable logic. Witness these two examples:

As with my hat upon my head
I walked along the Strand,
I there did meet another man
With his hat in his hand.