devil,' said he. 'So do I,' said the pale-faced lady, with unwonted animation." Well-nigh every one of the names bestowed by Thackeray on his burlesque characters is an absurdly suggestive pun. By the way, how infinitely humorous is Thackeray's description of the Margrave's first joke! ""My boy, my Otto-my Otto of roses!' said the fond father, making the first play upon words he had ever attempted in his life. But what will not paternal love effect?"

Of the first-rate punsters in the latter part of Mid-Victorian time, among those who permitted themselves to be "punsters first," but could be a great deal more afterwards, Henry J. Byron was the foremost. He was a clever, versatile dramatist, first-rate writer of burlesques, and an amusingly unconventional actor. Not only was he an admirable utterer of original puns, inspired by some passing incident, but he was also a most ready appreciator of any good witticism, and was most generous in giving publicity to any spark of wit that had struck his own rare sense of genuine humor. Well do I remember how on one occasion, as I was coming out of the Strand Theatre, about midday, I caught sight of Harry Byron on the opposite side of the road laughing heartily as he bade good-bye to Frank Talfourd (with whom I was not intimately acquainted) and then crossed over, evidently, judging by his signals, on purpose to tell me something amusing which he was enjoying immensely. What was the cause of his merriment? "Well," he said, making an attempt at restraining his exuberant mirth, “you saw Talfourd just now, didn't you?" "Yes," I answered, eager to hear the joke, "he seemed to me to be rather an invalid, as he was wrapped up in a great-coat."

"He has been ill," returned Byron; "I had forgotten the fact, and so I

said to him, 'Hallo, old man, I see you wear a great-coat!' 'No,' Talfourd said quite seriously, 'never was.' It sent me off in a fit. It's one of the neatest things," said Byron, wiping his eyes, for he frequently laughed till he cried, "one of the very neatest I've ever heard!" and off he went again into another chuckling convulsion.

Now I venture to record this-I have never forgotten the time, place, and persons, though 'tis over forty years since I heard it-as one of the readiest witted, most humorous "puns"-for what other description is there for it? -I have ever had the real pleasure of hearing. It is so neat, so ready, so perfectly simple:

"Hallo! You wear a coat!"

"No, never was."

The play being simply on the two verbs "wear" and "was." To me this impromptu pun (and the "unconsidered" pun is, generally, the best) is perfect.

Here occurs to me another specially Harry-Byronic pun. Being an invalid, Byron came to Ramsgate to recuperate. At this period he was alternately in exuberant spirits or in the depths of melancholy. George Rose, known as "Arthur Sketchley," was staying with me at the time, and one morning we called upon Byron at his lodgings. We found him crying-with laughter, I am glad to say, waving in one hand an open letter that he had just been reading to his wife, while in the other he was holding a pockethandkerchief with which, as Hood I think has described the action, "he was damming his eyes."

"Look here!" he cried to us. "I am so glad you've come in. This," he went on, extending the letter towards me, "is from my coachman. He writes to tell me that my favorite mare is in a bad way, and he wants to know whether, before calling in a 'vet,' he shall 'give her a ball'?" Here he

indulged in a chuckle anticipatory of the coming joke, and then explained: "I shall write and say 'yes, give her a ball, but don't ask too many people.'"

The idea had tickled him immensely, and the joke gained considerably by his impulsive way of telling it to so sympathetic an audience as were George Rose and myself.

But if he had written this message, imagine, for a moment, its reception by the coachman. How utterly puzzled he would have been! Much in the same humorous spirit that Charles Lamb dramatically considers the place, persons, time, and opportuneness of that feeble old joke concerning “Is that your own hare or a wig," so, on consideration, I am inclined to regard the ideal possibility of the scene following upon the coachman's reception of his master's reply by post, as largely contributing to the humor of the absurd jest, which was simply a play on the word "ball.”

Another jeu de mot; this time by W. S. Gilbert. He was standing in the entrance-hall of the club-no need to particularize-and being about to descend the steps, he had paused to speak to some one who at that moment was entering. Just then a member, not remarkable for personal beauty, hurriedly taking for granted that anybody on the club steps so near the porter's box must be the porter, called out brusquely to Gilbert: "I say, call me a hansom."

Gilbert turned towards him at once and with a whimsical expression of countenance, most politely replied,"I can't."

Immediately the member recognized Gilbert and at the same time his own mistake. The ready wit of the reply -which would have sounded decidedly rude had not the tone of the member's order thoroughly deserved it-may have escaped him, or may have tickled his sense of humor. At all events he

quickly apologized for his mistake, and laughed as heartily as, considering the circumstances, could have been expected of him. It was very neat, and highly appreciated by the limited audience of two.

An instance of an exhaustive play on words occurs to me. It was in a burlesque on Byron's Corsair entitled Conrad and Medora, written, I think, by William Brough. It was a line uttered by the pirate Birbantio, most amusingly played by the late John Lawrence Toole, who scowlingly declares, "Whate'er I sees upon the seas I seize upon!" It appears to me that no scheme of "permutations and combinations" can fairly produce another pun out of this one word "seize."

In another burlesque, The Enchanted Isle, capitally written by "the Brothers Brough" as a comic version of The Tempest, and excellently acted at the Adelphi, with Miss Woolgar as Prince Ferdinand, who, on board ship, in the storm, feels very unwell, staggers, becomes faint, clutches at two sailors, and faintly murmurs,

Take me below, at once, I will to bed, I feel so heavy that I must be lead.

With what point the couplet was spoken, and how dramatically the idea was illustrated in action by Miss Woolgar, as Ferdinand suffering from mal de mer! Of Miss Woolgar, equally good in comedy, domestic drama, farce or burlesque, it could be truly said. "nihil tetigit quod non ornavit."

The following punning quatrain, which appeared very many years ago in an early number of Fun, is characterized by a certain touch of serious humor that, had it been written some twenty years earlier, might possibly have been placed to the credit of Thomas Hood. It runs thus:

"All flesh is grass." Need I explain? That "flesh" means "life" is known.

As "life" is ever toil and pain, So "grass" is grown and mown. The quotation is not in the least "musty"; the lines carry with them, as it were, the scent of a late eighthas eenth-century "keepsake," that

been laid up in lavender.

The Rev. Thomas Barham, whose fame is in the "Ingoldsby Legends," says: "In the art of punning, whatever be its merits or demerits, Theodore Hook has few rivals, and but one superior-if indeed one-we mean Mr. Thomas Hood." Had judgment to be pronounced concerning the literary merits of Thomas Hood only on the evidence of his puns, the palm might have

been bestowed on Theodore Hook. But, puns apart, Hood was what Hook was not-that is, a real poet. As the sands of Hood's brief life ran out, he was compelled to "make puns," to become a "professional punster," simply because the Not even public insisted upon it. "The Song of the Shirt" sufficed to establish his reputation as a genuine poet. His authorship of this masterpiece was doubted, nay, it was actually claimed by an impostor, and it was only when Hood felt himself compelled to flatly contradict this piece of impertinent lying, that Mark Lemon, as editor of Punch, in which "The Song" had appeared, considered it essential for him to protest, and to break the seal of editorial secrecy by publishing his own attestation to Thomas Hood's plain, straightforward claim to the authorship of the inimitable "Song of the Shirt."

Puns may be, and not infrequently are, as the froth of excellent chamIt seems pagne in perfect condition. to me that our old friend Dr. Samuel Johnson never could have made a genWhat he could not uinely good pun. do, even passably, he ought to have considered undignified to attempt. He should have benignly allowed, and even

...

patronized, punning, as an occasional relaxation. He was too self-conscious. Nor was he capable of making an irresistibly absurd pun. His wit was, on occasion, brilliant. "No talk," says Mr. Birrell, "was ever freer from pedantry, nor can it be said that profundity was one of its notes. It is indeed full of good feeling, and a melancholy as well as an obstreperous humor. Boswell was quite right; his record of Johnson's talk is entertaining and lively and amusing" (p. 48, vol. i., "Birrell's Johnson"). But without Boswell to assist in them first, and to edit them afterwards, how ponderous, how hopelessly wearisome, if set out at length for our benefit, would have been the conversations in which Dr. Johnson took a leading part! As Peter Pindar, quoted in his delightful "Gossip" by Edmund Gosse, says of Dr. Johnson, he was too apt to

Set wheels on wheels in motion-such a clatter!

To force up one poor nipperkin of

water,

Bid ocean labor with tremendous roar To heave a cockle-shell upon the shore.

The pun, spoken or written, may be the root of an epigram; and an epigram may include more than one pun. An epigram should, of course, be written; still its composer might deliver it impromptu, on the inspiration of the moment, as Theodore Hook was wont to do. The oft-quoted one about Mr. Winter, the collector of taxes

I advise you to pay him whatever he

axes

Excuses won't do; he stands no sort of flummery, Though Winter's his name, his process is summary.

-was, as is asserted, an inspiration which came to Hook, while improvising a song to his own accompaniment on the piano, when Mr. Winter was

"I

Apropos of Frank Talfourd and his puns, I remember that after the comparative failure of one of his extravaganzas a friend was attributing it to the utter dulness of the audience. thought they were dreadfully dull," observed Talfourd, "I used a joke in it that has 'told' well, in every burlesque I have written. But this time it went";-here he paused for a second, his listener brightened up, then Talfourd continued, "oh yes, it wentwithout a hand."

The following I came across in a novel dated 1901, and, acting on the practical advice of Cap'en Cuttle"when found, make a note of"-I made a "mem" of it in my pocket-book at the time, but the pencilling is almost illegible. I fancy the novel was by "B. M. Croker," and in it is recorded a dialogue taking place between two of the charcters concerning the questionable conduct of a certain married lady whose husband was a confirmed invalid, and one of the speakers says, "She is not a widow yet, she soon will be. He (the husband) is going very fast." "So is she,' I exclaimed."

Now this is simply a jeu de mot: yet it is not, strictly speaking, a pun. It is the ready-witted adaptation of an ordinary phrase to a particular circumstance.

I may be permitted to quote from a certain comedy of mine entitled The Colonel. An elderly puritanically severe dame, Lady Tompkins, is horrified at the idea of a ball being given in her son-in-law's house, where she is

staying. It is got up impromptu, in the course of the afternoon, but the domestic conspirators have obtained the services of a small band, have ordered in a supper, and at short notice a few most intimate friends are coming to assist. Strains of dance music catch the mother-in-law's ear. The fiddlers are tuning up, and indulging in a brief practice. Her son-in-law, her daughter, her niece, Colonel Woottwell W. Woodd, U.S., and others, meet her as she enters the drawing-room. are all in evening dress. The severe lady starts back, horrified. She had never in her life allowed her child to dance. Somehow, her child had acquired the art. The band starts a waltz. Somebody would persuade Lady Tompkins to join them "in the light fantastic."

They

"A waltz!" she exclaims severely to her daughter. "Rebellion!"

"No ma'am," interrupts the Colonel pleasantly, "a Revolution."

If this may not be strictly classed with puns, it is certainly playing on a word and "paltering with us in a double sense," but I can swear to its being an appropriate inspiration, or, to use a less lofty expression, it was, simply, an uncommonly "Happy Thought."

So too was a pun by Charles Mathews on the name of a well-known and most excellent comedian named Howe. He was in the Haymarket company, under Blackstone's management, and was cast for a principal rôle in A Scrap of Paper, with Charles Mathews in the leading part. Mathews was alone on the stage, puzzling over the best way of dealing with a difficulty. He decides that he ought to take an important step immediately. His soliloquy finishes by his saying to himself, and the audience, with a puzzled expression of countenance, "Yes, that's what I ought to do, and it is what I will do. But how?"

At that very moment Howe ap

Mathews, pointing with his thumb to the character who had just entered, said to the audience in a tremendously confidential whisper, audible all over the house, "That's Howe."

It took immensely. The audience was convulsed with laughter. That was a pun-it was said offhand at rehearsal and repeated every nightsimply a bonâ-fide pun.

It is evident that the proverb as to "Satan reproving sin" may possibly be quoted against myself by those who have done me the honor of reading the present article up to this point. But, permit me, the proverb will be misapplied. There is a legitimate use, as well as a grossly stupid abuse, of a faculty for a certain play of humor. The attempt at an imitation of it, never intended for the "sincerest flattery," is only an exhibition of utter self-conceit on the part of the dense imitator. It is the latter who, unable to produce

Some fairer trace Of wit than puns,

has brought punster and punning generally into disrepute, and for this result I am bound to admit that he has "done the State some service."

Who has not met the ordinary specimen of the genus Punster, of all-round accomplishments, and imperfect in every one of the parts for which he has cast himself? He may be of any profession, or of none. He is to be found frequently among soldiers, less frequently among sailors; he crops up plentifully among medical men, occasionally among surgeons, and is not unknown among family solicitors, who, according to their age and responsibility, have come to be regarded, apart from business, as "licensed jesters." The punster is also to be encountered among middle-class artists whose work has not achieved for them

celebrity. The type is somewhat rare among working Members of Parliament and among public school boys. It is not unknown among Metropolitan magistrates, and flourishes on the provincial bench. Judges, also, are "li censed jesters" in their own courts, but their puns, good or stupid, are rare. Specially does the punster flourish, as the green bay tree, among the English clergy of all denominations; and than the clerical punster, of whatever rank or order, wherever he may be found, I am unable to imagine a more intolerable bore. He is of special English growth, and is rarely to be found in Ireland.

"The punster," the self-licensed jester of private life, is simply an intolerable nuisance. If he be capable of one serious thought, he gives no sign of it. At his approach you are on your guard, at once dropping the interesting conversation, or discussion, in which you were engaged.

The punster, semi-professional or simply amateur, can perhaps do a little of everything, passably up to a certain point. He may be "jack of all trades," but assuredly he is "master of none." Should he happen to have had what is termed "the advantage of a good education," and should he, early in life, have shown some sort of artistic faculty together with a parrotlike quickness for picking up languages, then his capacity for intruding his nonsense upon you will be multiplied according to the scope of such linguistic accomplishments as he may have acquired. In proportion to the extent of his artistic inclinations, so is he the more to be dreaded. He will write a little, compose a little, sing a little, act, draw, and paint a little; and he will be ready to instruct everybody as though he were a perfect master in all the arts, of some of which he possesses only the slightest smattering.

Such apparent talents will render