this laugh-provoking practice may be collected from the 440th number of the Spectator, wherein he describes a society who had established among themselves an infirmary for the cure of all defects of temper and infractions of good manners. "After dinner a very honest fellow chancing to let a pun fall from him, his neighbour cried out, To the infirmary!' at the same time pretending to be sick at it, as having the same natural antipathy to a pun which some have to a cat. This produced a long debate. Upon the whole, the punster was acquitted, and his neighbour sent off."-Pope's authority we have already cited. Gay was probably the author of the play upon his own name, when he observed that the great success of his Beggar's Opera, whilst Rich was proprietor of the theatre, had made Gay rich, and Rich gay. But what shall we say of Swift, the punster's Vade-mecum, the Hierarch, the Pontifex, the Magnus Apollo of the tribe; the Alpha and Omega, the first and last of the professors of equivocation; whose mind was an ever-springing fountain of quiddets, and the thread of whose life was an unbroken string of puns from his first to his second childhood? Impossible as it is to do justice to the memory of so great a man, I feel the eulogomania swelling within me; and that I may effectually check its yearnings, I leap athwart a measureless hiatus, and revert to that lugubrious, somnolent, single-sensed, and no-witted Anti-punster, whom I apostrophised in the outset. And now, thou word-measurer, thou line-and-rule mechanic, thou reasoning but not ruminating animal, now that I have produced these authorities, limited to a narrow list from the want of room, not of materials, wilt thou have the ridiculous arrogance to affect contempt for a pun? That genuine wit which thou pretendest to worship, (as the Athenians built an altar to the unknown Deity,) has been defined to be an assimilation of distant ideas; and what is a pun but an eliciter of remote meanings? which, though they may not always amount to a definite idea, are at all events the materials of one, and therefore ingredients in the composition of real wit. These Protean combinations are the stimulants of fancy, the titillators of the imagination, the awakeners of the risible faculties; and to condemn them because the same happy results may be produced by a more rare and difficult process, is either an exemplification of the fox and the sour grapes, or the pride of mental luxury, which would quarrel with all gratifications that are cheap and accessible. The sterling commodity is scarce-let us prize it the more when we encounter it; but in the mean time let us not reject a good substitute when it is presented. Gooseberry wine is no very lofty succedaneum for sparkling Champagne, but it is better than fasting. Some may not like the flavour of the beverage, but none would think of abusing the caterer who puts upon the table the best liquor that his cellar affords. These sullen stupidities are reserved for an Anti-punster. H. SPORTING WITHOUT A LICENCE. THERE's a charm when Spring is young, When morn is fair, and the sunny air And listen to their singing. The sportsman finds a zest, Which all others can outvie, With his lightning to arrest Pheasants whirring through the sky; The hunter loves to dash Through the horn-resounding woods, Or plunge with fearless splash O'er gap and gate he leaps elate, And at the death has scarcely breath To give the hoop and hollo! By the river's margin dank, With the reeds and rushes mix'd, Like a statue on the bank, See the patient angler fix'd, And if the fish should baulk his wish, In air let pheasants range, 'Tis to me a glorious sight, And yet no sportsman keen With more ecstasy than I; That does not fill my heart, and thrill O clouds that paint the air! O fountains, fields, and groves! Sights, sounds, and odours rare, Which my yearning spirit loves, Thus I feel, and only steal From visions so enchanting, In tuneful lays to sing your praise- H. GRIMM'S GHOST. LETTER XI. Uncle and Nephew. EVERY one who is conversant with Richmond and its environs (and what man, since the Diana steam-vessel first started from Queenhithe to Eel-pie Island, can plead ignorance?) must know that passengers are conveyed across the Thames, from Ham to Twickenham, by a ferry-boat that there is a footpath through a field which leads from the river to Ham: and that, to attain that footpath, it is necessary to cross a stile. Upon this stile, one fine afternoon in July last, sat, astride, Mr. Robert Robertson and his nephew Tom Osborne, awaiting the return of Platt the ferryman, that they might solace themselves with a view of the tombs in Twickenham church-yard. “Tom,” said the uncle to the nephew," I have long wished to give you something." The eyes of the nephew brightened; he mechanically took off his kidskin glove, and protruded his right hand. "I mean, some little advice." Tom replaced the glove upon his hand, with a look that seemed to say "The less the better." "I take," continued Mr. Robert Robertson, "an avuncular interest in all that concerns you; and I cannot but enter my protest against the grotesque garb in which you have enveloped your person. Dress, nephew, was originally intended to guard us against the inclemencies of the weather: but, in your case, I am sorry to say that it deviates into downright ornament. But, lest you should think that I am inclined to too sweeping a censure-spargere voces ambiguas' (1 hope you keep up your Latin) I will, with your permission, analyse your apparel from head to foot-ab ovo usque ad mala.' The latter quotation is from Horace. To begin, then, with your hat : I am sorry to find it white: Sir Barnaby Botolph, the Blackwell-hall factor in Cateaton-street, has a very sage apophthegm upon that head, Shew me a man with a white hat, and I'll shew you a fool.' Now, i should be sorry, nephew, to stultify you without a hearing, (stultify is a legal verb much in favour with the late Lord Ellenborough): so, prithee tax that bulbous excrescence, (the expression occurs in George Alexander Stevens,) that fills up the hollow of the article that I am criticising, and tell me whether you mean to suffer judgment to go by default, or to plead the general issue with a justification." 66 I plead a justification," said Tom, briskly. "Good, answered the professional Mr. Robertson; "bold, too, but hazardous. In what does your justification consist?" "Your example." “Mine !” “Yes, un cle, yours. My aunt Sally has a picture of you painted by Hoppner thirty years ago. It exhibits you patting a favourite filly. The scene is a stable: you wear your hat, and that hat has a crown like Mother Shipton's, surrounded by three silk bands with a rosette to each. Just like the smooth-complexioned clergyman's that one so often meets in Saint Paul's Church-yard." "I wonder your aunt Sally keeps that absurd picture," said Mr. Robertson; "but, at all events, the hat is a black one; you have therefore failed in your justification. And, now, nephew, to continue my analysis. The next article to which I am anxious to draw your attention is your cravat. In the good old times a cambric stock, with a Bristol-stone buckle behind, was universally The full-length engraved portrait of General Washington will worn. shew you what I mean. I would not captiously confine you to that: no, a white muslin cravat, like that which I now wear, may well be worn by you. But Waterloo-blue silk appears to me to be altogether inadmissible. An eye of heavenly blue is a pretty adjunct to a pretty woman; but a cravat of that hue is no necessary appendage to a lordling of the creation. I call you lordling, nephew, because you have barely attained sixteen: you cannot take up your patent of peerage to dub yourself a lord of that orbit, until you have attained twenty-one. I suspect you will hardly be bold enough to plead a justification to my second count." 66 Indeed, uncle, but I shall," retorted Mr. Thomas Osborne. "My uncle Charles's dressing-room, you know, is hung round with caricatures." "Well." "Well, uncle, one of them is a portrait of you, drawn by Rawlinson just thirty years ago. It shews you with a thing round your neck more like a poultice than a cravat, with two ends hanging down to your middle like Mr. Endless, the lawyer, in 'No Song no Supper,' and underneath it is printed "My name's Tippy Bob, With a watch in each fob." "Raw "Tippy Devil!" petulantly exclaimed Mr. Robert Robertson; linson was a libeller: an etcher of extremes: a painter of pasquinades: your uncle Charles might be better employed than in gibbeting his relations after that fashion.-But to resume the subject of our discourse. We will now, Tom, diverge a little downward. Your coat, Master Osborne, is absolutely bobtailed. Were you spurred for a setto at the Royal Cockpit, you would be docked in character. Then its collar what a preposterous length! It hangs down from either shoulder, like Doctor Longsermon's black-silk scarf." "Nay, now, upon your third count,-my coat, uncle, I justify most valiantly," retorted the stripling: "I don't stand up for its positive propriety; but I do for its comparative." "Comparative with what?" "With one of yours, uncle, which you wore about thirty years ago. Last night I overheard Mrs. Thislewood tell Captain Paterson that she accompanied you, in the year 1792, to Ranelagh; she said that you made your previous appearance in her drawing-room (I quote her very words), in a salmon-coloured coat with a light-blue velvet collar and cuffs: that she was sitting behind the screen, which made you think that you were alone in the room; and that under that impression, and, as she states it, dreaming of future glories in the Chelsea Rotunda, you walked up to the looking-glass, and, after surveying yourself for a half a minute, exclaimed- Well, Bob, if they stand this, they 'll stand any thing!" " "Mrs. Thislewood is a lying old coquette," exclaimed Mr. Robert Robertson; "I make it a rule never to insinuate any thing to the prejudice of any body's character; otherwise I could tell something that happened to her about thirty yeas ago, which the public would not hold to be barred by the statute of limitations.-But to proceed. The mention of coat, nephew, naturally leads the mind to waistcoat-yours, I see, is striped. Mr. Polito might doubt whether you were an ass or a zebra; but we will pass that by: it is wondrous short: and 'de minimis non curat lex. Pray keep up your Latin. I never should have prospered if I had lost mine.-Proceed we, therefore, to your trowsers. They too, I see, are striped. To stripes in that part your inattention to your Latin may authorize you to lay some claim. But, Heavens! how capacious is their size! The tailor, indeed, seems to have repented of his extravagance, by puckering up a part of them. But what means that broad strap under the foot? Is it to prevent their slipping off over your head? or are you possessed of the prospective policy of Sam Scribble, who suffered at the Old Bailey for signing a wrong name on a banker's cheque; and who artfully passed two leather thongs under his feet, that he might, by annexing them to a hook, and the hook to the hangman's noose, enable himself to vibrate his half-hour without strangulation. Upon this count. I defy you to plead a set-off." "My reverend uncle," answered the pertinacious nephew: "far be it from me to tax you with laxity either of principles or pantaloons. But I hope you will permit me again to call your recollection to the portrait painted by Hoppner. You are there exhibited in"-"Not loose trowsers, I'll be sworn. 99 "No, uncle, not loose trowsers, but tight leather breeches. No sooner had Mrs. Thislewood told her story about your coat than Captain Paterson matched it with another, about your leather breeches." "Indeed!" cried Mr. Robertson, drawing himself up, and looking out for Platt's ferry-boat, "and, pray, what might the nautical gentleman say?" "Why, he said, uncle, that he once called upon you, when you were trying on a new pair of doeskins. The maker of them stood by to comfort and assist you. You were suspended, he said, in mid air like Mahomet's coffin: when you had, by dint of struggling and kicking, got tolerably well into them, the operator drew from his pocket two iron hooks, to button them at the knees. He also told Mrs. Thislewood that you stood the agonizing process with the patience of a primitive martyr, until the third button of the right knee burst its cerements, and went off like the cork of a ginger-beer bottle." "Well, sir, and pray what happened then?" "Why, then, uncle, he says, that you said something very like 'Oh, damn it!' After which, Captain Paterson added that he does not know what happened, as he turned very sick, and left the room: and so was prevented from beholding the conclusion of the operation." Mr. Robert Robertson, in deep displeasure, now summoned all his syllogistic powers. He was upon the eve of flatly denying the truth of the captain's assertion; of proving that folly and foppery were weeds of modern growth; that his uncle never had occasion to lecture him upon his extravagance or coxcombry, thirty years ago; and, finally, that propriety of exterior and soundness of intellect had quitted this country on or about the commencement of the French Revolution. Unfortunately, however, this chain of demonstrations was sundered, never to re-unite. Platt hove in sight; uncle and nephew entered the boat; and the presence of two market-gardeners and a footman in livery prevented Mr. Robert Robertson from establishing the superiority of the human race-thirty years ago! |