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A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
SYDNEY SMITH 
 
 FROM THE PAINTING BY HENRY P. BRIGGS IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 
 
A BOOK OF 
 FAMOUS WITS 
 
 BY 
 
 WALTER JERROLD 
 
 WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 
 
 1912 
 
 .^ ' 'r, 
 
 '^'M. 
 
 ( 
 
 I.. 
 
X 
 
PREFACE 
 
 MAN has been variously defined as an animal who 
 wears clothes, an animal who cooks, an animal 
 who smokes, and so on ; he might be described 
 also as an anecdote-loving animal. Everybody tells stories 
 or listens to them, and in this I do not mean stories which 
 have grown into psychological treatises under the name of 
 novels, but brief anecdotes of real or imaginary people 
 in imusual circumstances. The circimistance may be 
 ridiculous, as of a portly and pompous person sitting down 
 " hard and sudden " on a muddy pavement — from which 
 we get the elementary or basic humour of incongruity — or 
 it may pass through varying grades to the refinements of 
 wit which are purely intellectuaJ — where the suggested 
 ideas are seemingly incongruous untD brought into sudden 
 juxtaposition. From enjoying the amusement of the 
 incongruity as spectator or original hearer, it is but a 
 step to enjoying it as history, and in that lies no doubt 
 the reason for the existence of a very considerable library 
 of anecdotal literature. 
 
 Amusement is as necessary to a healthy mind as salt 
 is to a healthy body, and that amusement attends us less 
 naturally the further we remove from savagery and child- 
 hood is one of the penalties we pay for civilization and for 
 growing up. Therefore the demand for it is great, and 
 
vi A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 that feast of reason is best remembered which is savoured 
 with the salt of amusement ; " the best after-dinner 
 speaker of the day " is always a man who can amuse, who 
 can bring to the subject on which he is speaking fresh 
 anecdotes — ^however inapposite they may chance to be. 
 "Good stories" are, indeed, more necessary to after-dinner 
 talk than any single item in the menu of the meal. 
 
 It is not pretended that the present volume is a collec- 
 tion of new witticisms — Sheridan, Sydney Smith, Curran 
 and others may be regarded as classics in the realm of 
 ana, and to omit them would be as inexcusable as seek- 
 ing to give novelty to an edition of Hamlet by leaving 
 out all of the " familiar quotations " in the play. What is 
 here offered is a survey of the development of wit as a pro- 
 duct of modern social conditions — a presentation of the 
 whole in an approximately chronological order, but only 
 approximately chronological, because it seems well to 
 classify to a certain extent the wits associated with special 
 professions. Such an arrangement, it is hoped, may in 
 part lessen that scrappiness which pertains to a mere 
 higgledy-piggledy collection of ana. Another matter 
 that may be mentioned is that it has been sought to limit 
 this collection to witticisms associated with individual 
 wits — that multiple personahty which has been described 
 as Benjamin Trovato, Esquire, being kept as much as 
 possible out of the company. 
 
 To earlier collectors, from " Joe Miller " to Mark 
 Lemon, to Captain Cuttles innumerable, and to the 
 biographers and writers of obituary notices of many 
 men who have been witty themselves, or the cause that 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Vll 
 
 wit was in other men, I am greatly indebted, and have 
 sought, in the case of recent wits, to particularize any 
 special source of indebtedness in the text. 
 
 Twenty years ago, when I edited a set of little books 
 known as the Bon-Mot Series, I was taken to task by some 
 critics for using the plural bon-mots instead of following 
 the French original. The error, if error it be, is repeated in 
 this book; my contention being that the word is anglicized 
 as bon-mots, — ^its use in that form by Horace Walpole, 
 Smollett and Cowper overriding any objection that it has 
 not duly taken out letters of naturalization under the 
 authority of the dictionary makers. Should any future 
 lexicographer care for the references, here they are. Wal- 
 pole, writing to a friend on 5th AprU 1765, said : " Though 
 I have little to say, it is worth while to write, only to tell 
 you two bon-mots of Quin, to that turncoat, hypocrite 
 infidel. Bishop Warburton." Smollett in one of the early 
 letters of " Humphrey Clinker " says (also of Quin, by the 
 way) : " His bon-mots are in every witling's mouth." 
 Cowper, in " Truth " (11. 307-308) has : 
 
 "The Scripture was his jest-book, whence he drew 
 Bon mots to gall the Christian and the Jew." 
 
 W.J. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Of Wit and Humour generally ... i 
 
 II. The Spacious Days i6 
 
 III. The Restoration 34 
 
 IV. The Augustan Period 45 
 
 V. Joe Miller ....... 58 
 
 VI. A Walk down Fleet Street ... 70 
 
 VII. Wit and Humour of the Theatres . . 85 
 
 VIII. QuiN, Foote, Bannister, Colman . . . 100 
 
 IX. Wit in Politics 120 
 
 X. Sheridan 140 
 
 XI. Wits in Society 163 
 
 XII. A Social Miscellany i8o 
 
 XIII. Wits on the Press and in Literature . 198 
 
 XIV. Theodore Hook 215 
 
 XV. Wit in the Pulpit 232 
 
 XVI. Sydney Smith 252 
 
 XVII. Wit in Wigs 270 
 
 XVIII. Curran 286 
 
 XIX. Some Recent Wits: 1 303 
 
 XX. Some Recent Wits: II 3^7 
 
 Index 323 
 
 ix 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Sydney Smith Frontispiece 
 
 From the Painting by Henry P. Briggs in the National Portrait 
 Gallery 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Ben Jonson 28 
 
 From the Painting by Gerard Honthorst in the National 
 Portrait Gallery 
 
 Jonathan Swift 50 
 
 From the Bust in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin 
 
 Joe Miller (in the character of Teague in The 
 
 Committee) ........ 60 
 
 From an Engraving by A. Miller after the Painting by 
 C. Stofpelaer 
 
 Samuel Foote 108 
 
 From an Engraving by T. Blackmere after the Painting by 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 
 Richard Brinsley Sheridan 140 
 
 From the Painting by J. Russell, R.A., in the National 
 Portrait Gallery 
 
 George Selwyn 164 
 
 From a Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, in the possession of the 
 Earl of Rosebery 
 
 Samuel Rogers 194 
 
 From the Painting by Thomas Phillips in the National Gallery 
 
 Charles Lamb 200 
 
 From the Drawing by Robert Hancock in the National Portrait 
 Gallery 
 
 X 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Theodore Hook 224 
 
 From an Engraving 
 
 John Philpot Curran 286 
 
 From the Painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence in the National 
 Gallery of Ireland, Dublin 
 
 Sir William Schwenck Gilbert 308 
 
 By permission of George Newnes Ltd. 
 (Photo by Elliott &■ Fry) 
 
" Under the spreading chestnut tree " 
 
 Longfellow 
 
A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OF WIT AND HUMOUR GENERALLY 
 
 " As in smooth oil the razor best is whet 
 So wit is by politeness sharpest set ; 
 Their want of edge from their offence is seen 
 Both pain us least when exquisitely keen." 
 
 I 
 
 MANY wits have been exercised in the effort to 
 hght upon satisfactory definitions of the words 
 so often twinned as wit and humour. Epigrammatists 
 have sought to illustrate wit by exhibiting it in couplets 
 or quatrains — more elaborate searchers after exactitude 
 have even essayed treatises on the subject. Perhaps old 
 Isaac Barrow got as near it, in a vague sentence in one of 
 his sermons on Evil Speaking, as have any of those who 
 have tried to pen the significance within the enclosure of a 
 brief definition ; he says of wit, and the words may be 
 applied as well to humour, " often it consisteth in one 
 knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how." 
 This vague description is perhaps especially applicable to 
 those manifestations of wit and humour with which we are 
 here concerned, and though I do not propose to seek any 
 new collocation of words pretending to define the exact 
 significance of the two words, wit and humour, I may point 
 
2 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 out the particular kinds of wit and humour examples of 
 which it is proposed to bring together here. Our literature 
 is particularly rich in both these qualities, from the days 
 when Chaucer's kindly humour was finding expression in 
 " The Canterbury Tales " to the present, when the wit of 
 Mr Bernard Shaw has become something of a new genre. 
 With such I am not concerned. The " sampling " even of 
 the wit and humour of our litera,ture would need more than 
 a single volume for its exhibition. Here I am concerned 
 with wit and humour, not as invented or recorded in the 
 author's study, but as expressed in society; not as it 
 grows in secret like a flower the blooming of which all 
 admire, but as it is flashed forth like sparks from flint, and 
 steel in social interplay. It is, in a word, with the things 
 said rather than with the things written that I am con- 
 cerned ; with " the oil and wine of a merry meeting," as 
 Washington Irving put it, rather than with the more solid 
 sustenance afforded by formal Uterature. 
 
 II 
 
 It is inevitable that the writer of a book such as this 
 should lay himself open to the charge of producing a work 
 that is not suitable for straightforward reading, to the 
 objection that wit delights by its infrequency, that a con- 
 stant succession of happy sayings and neat retorts defeat 
 their own ends, that as it is possible to have too much of a 
 good thing, so it is possible to have too many good things. 
 Well, it may be answered that though some books are made 
 for the reader to devour straight away, others are for the 
 entertainment of odd moments. Jests and witticisms are, 
 as it were, but the hors-d' ceuvres at the feast of literature — 
 and whoso will can pass them, and wait for the more solid 
 
OF WIT AND HUMOUR GENERALLY 3 
 
 faxe in which some of them may haply reappear as flavour- 
 ing. 
 
 It is not necessary to seek far in our Uterary history to 
 find that for centuries each successive generation has had 
 its collections of jests and " good stories," and the constant 
 supply, it may be supposed, indicates a certain constancy of 
 demand. From "AC. Mery Talys ' ' of nearly four hundred 
 years ago there have been innumerable collections of face- 
 tiae. Within a centiury of that publication came such 
 others as " Mery Tales, Wittie Questions and Quick An- 
 swers " ; " Merie Tales of Skelton " ; " Jests of Scogin " ; 
 " Sackful of News " ; " Tarleton's Jests " ; " Merrie Con- 
 ceited Jests of George Peele " ; to name but a few. 
 Many of these were rather collections of anecdotes than 
 witticisms, mere stories of quaint happenings, the humour 
 of mishaps and horseplay, and were often just compilations 
 of current tales to which was attached the name of a 
 man popular at the moment. Later came " Foundling 
 Hospitals," " Repositories," and other collections innumer- 
 able, now in tiny chap-book form and now in series of 
 volumes, until the rise of the comic press diminished but 
 did not stop the demand for collections of jests old and 
 new. The history of such collections provides matter for 
 a treatise rather than a paragraph, and the subject is only 
 referred to by way of explanation of the undertaking of a 
 new work of this character in a somewhat novel form. 
 
 in 
 
 When Shakespeare wrote that a jest's prosperity lies in 
 the ears of those who hear it he indicated that wit needs 
 society for its production, and many other writers have 
 in varied fashion accentuated the same truth. Samuel 
 Johnson, for example, in true Johnsonian style, said " wit 
 
4 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 like every other power has its boundaries. Its success 
 depends on the aptitude of others to receive impressions ; 
 and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the 
 furnace and crucible at defiance there are minds upon which 
 the rays of fancy may be pointed without effect, and which 
 no fire of sentiment can agitate or exalt." Which is a very 
 lexicographical way of bombasting Shakespeare's short 
 sentence out into a long one. Bacon says that " reading 
 maketh a full man ; conference a ready man," and in proof 
 of his statement we find that by its very nature wit can only 
 occur in company. One may make a witty remark, but all 
 have contributed to its birth.' It is essential that there 
 shall be those who, like FalstaffTare the cause that wit is in 
 other men. It is not possible to think of a solitary wit 
 dwelling in the didactic poet's " lodge in some vast wilder- 
 ness " and uttering his witticisms for his own delectation. 
 The seed may be there, but it needs the warmth of society 
 to bring it forth. 
 
 John Taylor the Water Poet has a tale which illustrates 
 the way in which wit is essentially the product of gregar- 
 iousness : " Two learned good fellows were drinking a 
 pipe of tobacco. It being almost out, so that he that 
 drunk last did partly feel the ashes come hot to his lips, 
 giving the pipe to his friend said — ' Ashes to ashes.' The 
 other, taking the pipe and being of a quick apprehension, 
 threw it out to the dunghill saying, ' Earth to earth.' 
 
 " Thus wit with wit agrees hke cake and cheese. 
 Both sides are gainers, neither side doth leese ; 
 Conceit begets conceit — ^jest jest doth father. 
 And butter fall'n to the ground doth something gather."- 
 
 In this we are shown wit as the product in an interplay 
 of wit ; but causes for wit, as Falstaff recognized, are needed, 
 and also an audience, as Steele suggested when he described 
 
OF WIT AND HUMOUR GENERALLY 5 
 
 " honest old Dick Reptile . . . a good-natured indolent man, 
 who speaks little himself but laughs at our jokes." Appre- 
 ciation of the thing said is necessary to the production of 
 its successors, and thus it is that in social gatherings — at 
 the old coffee-houses and taverns, in club coteries, across 
 the dinner-table, and wherever people were brought to- 
 gether in small but congenial companies, were uttered the 
 sayings which have taken their places in the successive 
 compilations of good things flashed forth by men of ready 
 wit. Such good things as Mr W. Carew Hazlitt has neatly 
 said " are to be taken not as indices to the habitual un- 
 broken mood of the man, but rather as samples of felicity 
 of phrase or thought to be gotten, like mineral ore, under 
 auspicious conditions from a wealthy soil." Those 
 auspicious conditions, where the ore is wit, are provided 
 by company, whether it be only that of two, that of five 
 persons, which is said by Steele to form the " best 
 company," or that of a crowd. 
 
 Frequent illustration of this fact will be found through- 
 out these pages, so many witticisms and jests being trace- 
 able to such gatherings as have been indicated. Not only 
 is society necessary to the production of wit, but it is also 
 necessary to its remembrance, and even so, how many good 
 things must have been uttered, perhaps repeated for a time, 
 and then fallen into oblivion from no one having troubled 
 to record them ? It is true that many acknowledged wits 
 have had fathered on them sayings of others, but it is 
 probable that, of the happy sayings of such men as Curran, 
 Sydney Smith, Foote, Lamb and others, far more passed 
 almost at once into the limbo of the forgotten than have 
 been recorded, so that if carelessness has credited them 
 with some things they did not say it has robbed them of 
 many more that they did. 
 
A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 IV 
 
 In his interesting little volume of " Studies in Jocular 
 Literature " Mr W. Carew Hazlitt has recorded that the 
 manor of Walworth was given by an Anglo-Saxon king 
 to his jester, and that St Bartholomew's Hospital was 
 founded by Rahere, joculator to a later monarch. Much 
 has been written about the old jesters or fools who were 
 retained at kings' and noblemen's courts to enliven their 
 masters with quips and cranks. In all countries such 
 functionaries were to be found — even it is said at the court 
 of Montezuma — and they continued up to the seventeenth 
 century in England, though it may be that the position of 
 the jester diminished in importance as the use of the 
 printing press increased. The place of the court jester, it 
 has been said, was an assured one, as it was from him alone 
 the truth could be heard without fear. He was licensed 
 to give utterance to the unpalatable, and while entertaining 
 his master could remind him of the fact of his mere man- 
 hood in a way impossible to the ordinary run of courtiers. 
 The truths that he was licensed to utter in the form of 
 jesting may be regarded as reminders to the monarch of 
 the fact that he was only a man, even as grim remnants of 
 humanity were utilized to remind feasters of their mortality. 
 Maybe the tragedy of 30th January 1649 did away with the 
 necessity of kings retaining jesters for this purpose. The 
 growth of the printing press had perhaps more to do with 
 it. Anyway the decline and disappearance of jesters as 
 recognized officials in society synchronized more or less 
 closely with the gathering into books of such stories as 
 they may well have told and such witty retorts as they 
 were expected to make. What the jester was to the 
 monarch and powerful noble of the Middle Ages, the comic 
 
OF WIT AND HUMOUR GENERALLY 7 
 
 and satiric press may be said to have become for the people 
 in the nineteenth century. The wit of the past was uttered 
 from beneath a fool's cap, and when that headgear went out 
 of fashion for professional humorists it was on paper of 
 the same name that they wrote down their fun or satire. 
 The thing said that might tickle the ears of the court circle 
 became the thing printed to be appreciated by all who 
 could read. 
 
 Definitions, it has been said, are dangerous, for the definer 
 has at once set the limitations in which he may employ the 
 term defined. Definitions of the words wit and humour, as 
 it has been noted, are difi&cult, but a few words may be said 
 as to the comprehensiveness with which they are here 
 employed. A dictionary definition tells us that wit (in 
 its seventh significance) is : " The faculty of associating 
 ideas ki a new and ingenious, and at the same time pleasing 
 way, exhibited in apt language and felicitous combination 
 of words and thoughts, by which unexpected resemblances 
 between things apparently unlike are vividly set before the 
 mind, so as to produce a shock of pleasant surprise ; face- 
 tiousness." Facetiousness is surely more allied to humour 
 than to wit, and it is not necessary that the shock of 
 surprise should be pleasant for the wit of a thing to be 
 recognized. When a duU man had been stung to a sharp 
 retort only to receive the crushing rejoinder : " You're like 
 lead, sir : only bright when you're cut," he might well 
 have recognized the wit but perceived nothing pleasant 
 about it. It is to wit itself that we must turn for its 
 own definition. The great Lord Chatham had asked 
 Dr Henneker to define the word, and received the 
 happy reply : " Wit is what a pension would be if given 
 
8 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 by your lordship to your humble servant — a good thing 
 well applied." 
 
 The same dictionary in defining our particular aspect of 
 humour contrasts it not very satisfactorily with its twin, 
 describing it as " a mental faculty which tends to discover 
 incongruous resemblances between things which essentially 
 differ, or essential differences between things put forth as 
 the same ; the result being internal mirth or an outburst 
 of laughter. Wit does so likewise, but the two are different. 
 Himiour has deep human sympathy, and loves men while 
 raising a laugh against their weaknesses. Wit is deficient 
 in S3mipathy, and there is often a sting in its ridicule. 
 Somewhat contemptuous of mankind, it has not the 
 patience to study them thoroughly, but must content it- 
 self with noting superficial resemblances or differences. 
 Humour is patient and keenly observant, and penetrates 
 beneath the surface ; whilst, therefore, the sallies of wit 
 are often one-sided and unfair, those of humour are, as a 
 rule, just and wise." Here we have at any rate an approxi- 
 mation to a definition, but nothing more, for if it were 
 exact — if for example wit were always somewhat con- 
 temptuous of mankind, and humour always possessed of 
 deep human sympathy — the two qualities could scarcely 
 be found, as so often they are, in the same individual. 
 There is the difference that humour is more often merely 
 plajrful, while wit is frequently weighted with intent either 
 to wound or convey a reproach, or snub, or criticism- Two 
 dinner-table anecdotes from an old collection will illustrate 
 the difference. At a dinner of artists and literary men it is 
 said that a poet proposed the toast of " The painters and 
 glaziers of Great Britain ! " coupling with it the name of a 
 famous artist. The toast having been duly honoured, the 
 artist returned thanks, and neatly retaliated on the poet 
 by coupling his name with a further toast " The British 
 
OF WIT AND HUMOUR GENERALLY 9 
 
 paper stainers ! " This was the give-and-take of hiunour. 
 The second story is of an affected young man who was 
 dining with a Yorkshire family and when the hostess 
 ordered the servant to remove " the fool," meaning the 
 fowl, corrected her saying : " I presume you mean the fowl, 
 madam." " Very well," responded the annoyed York- 
 shirewoman, " take away the fowl, and let the fool 
 remain." This may have been blunt, but it was wit. It 
 was humour again when Lord Chesterfield said of two 
 people dancing a minuet " they looked as if they were 
 hired to do it — and were doubtful of being paid." It was 
 wit when the same nobleman, on being told that a noted 
 gamester had married a notorious termagant, remarked 
 that cards and brimstone made the best matches. 
 
 The pun of that closing word suggests that a few words 
 should be said on a manifestation of wit and humour which 
 is widely decried — chiefly it may be believed by those who 
 have not the faculty of instantly perceiving similarities 
 in things seemingly remote. People who condemn pun- 
 ning ofQiand do so with insufficient consideration. There 
 are the old pantomime puns — ^responsible probably for 
 bringing the whole family into contempt — which were 
 nothing but wresting and twisting words to give them 
 a mere similarity of sound. I recall a couple of instances 
 from a pantomime of about thirty years ago ; the subject 
 of which was presumably Robinson Crusoe : 
 
 " This, then, is ail my knack you see, 
 An almanack I've here " ; 
 
 and 
 
 " The lack of sheets I hardly count a pain." 
 
 Such word-tortviring is of course indefensible ; it has 
 neither wit nor humour, though its very far-fetchedness 
 has in it something of the ludicrous. The true pun needs 
 
10 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 defence no more than any other work of art ; it is its own 
 justification. It is of course not the product of word 
 twisting : it consists in the ready appreciation of the 
 diverse significances of words, and may often be the 
 feather of the arrow on which is carried the point of wit. 
 Here is an instance. Henry Erskine was engaged in a case 
 concerning a breach of warranty. A horse had been taken 
 on trial and had become dead lame, and in his evidence a 
 witness said that the animal had a cataract in the eye. 
 " A singular proof of lameness," remarked the opposition 
 counsel sarcastically. " It is cause and effect," instantly 
 retorted Erskine, " for what is a cataract but a fall ? " It is 
 to Erskine, by the way, that we owe the happiest defence 
 of the pun — a defence that would win the verdict of any 
 intelligent jury. A friend had declared that punning was 
 the lowest form of wit ; " it is," answered the lawyer, in 
 ready agreement, " and therefore the foundation of all 
 wit." 
 
 Many years ago I perpetrated — with apologies to the 
 shade of Wordsworth — the following defence of the pun 
 for a small circle of anti-punsters, the adaptation of a fine 
 sonnet was perhaps indefensible, but it may be claimed 
 that the lines at least show that those who unthinkingly 
 condemn a pun merely because it is a pun oppose them- 
 selves to a formidable company : — 
 
 " Scorn not the pun ; non-punster, you have frowned. 
 Mindless of its just honours ; with this key 
 Shakespeare turned many locks ; the pleasantry 
 Of this small jest gives ease to many a wound ; 
 A thousand times this pipe did Hood resound ; 
 With it did Cicero soothe an exile's grief ; 
 The Pun has glittered, a gay myrtle leaf. 
 Amid the bays with which Eliza crowned 
 Her spacious days ; a glow-worm lamp. 
 It cheered mild Goldsmith, called from Ireland 
 
OF WIT AND HUMOUR GENERALLY ii 
 
 To struggle through dark ways ; and when a damp 
 Fell round the path of Eha, in his hand 
 The Pun became a pipe from which he blew 
 Laugh-animating strains — alas, too few ! " 
 
 In the prefatory jingle of verses to an old collection of 
 jests it is declared that 
 
 " Punning has been in every clime 
 Recorded in the rolls of time,'' 
 
 which may be regarded as somewhat of an exaggeration. 
 It may, however, be pointed out that at the present time, 
 when the pun is most severely reprehended by those in- 
 capable of apprehending it, in its worst form it seems to 
 flourish in the field of advertisement. I imagine the 
 typical anti-punster as walking about with a " Wauken- 
 phast " boot on one foot, a " Phiteesi " on the other, 
 smoking a " Uneeda " cigar, and peering about through 
 " Eusebius " spectacles for anything like a pun at which 
 he can sneer. 
 
 In a recent newspaper article Mr G. K. Chesterton has 
 neatly indicated the way in which a pun may present that 
 which could only otherwise be expressed in a roundabout 
 fashion, " may briefly embody the chief essence of art, 
 that completeness of form should confirm completeness of 
 idea." Among his illustrations he gives the following : — 
 " When we come to the great puns of Hood or of any 
 other writer, we note first of all this use of the pun in 
 sharpening and clinching a thought. Suppose that Hood, 
 writing a journalistic report of one of the last duels, had 
 written : ' Both principals fired in the air ; and we 
 cannot too strongly express our hope that those who 
 think it incumbent on them to use this old form of self- 
 vindication may imitate such a sensible and humane 
 interpretation of it.' That is sound enough ; but it 
 
12 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 is a little laborious, and does not express either the 
 detachment or the decision of such a critic of duelling. 
 Hood, as a fact, did write : 
 
 " ' So each one upwards in the air 
 His shot he did expend. 
 And may all other duels have 
 That upshot at the end.' 
 
 " Here the verbal jest, falling so ridiculously right, does 
 express not merely the humanity of the critic, but also 
 his humorous impartiality and unruffled readiness of 
 intellect." 
 
 VI 
 
 In concluding this discursive prefatory chapter a few 
 words must be said on a subject that cannot fail to strike 
 anyone who seeks to trace a bon mot to its original utter- 
 ance by the wit with whose name it has become associated. 
 Such tracing is in the majority of cases impossible. Most 
 wits, it may well be believed, would give but a bad time 
 to those who sought to boswellize them. Sententiousness 
 may have its Boswell, and keep him fairly well occupied, 
 but wit is a less reliable companion, ^nd the Boswell who 
 sought ever to be at its elbow, note-book in hand, would 
 either hear things about himself which even a Boswell 
 would prefer to leave unrecorded or else would reduce wit 
 to silence. Only in such unthinkable conditions could we 
 have a reliable record of the good things uttered by the 
 ready-witted man. As it is, we have to rely partly on 
 contemporary evidence, and partly on tradition — and 
 neither of these authorities is in the present connexion 
 to be accepted unquestioningly. Only recently, when 
 Sir William Schwenck Gilbert died, and his well-deserved 
 reputation as master of a ready tongue made it necessary 
 
OF WIT AND HUMOUR GENERALLY 13 
 
 that the papers should give instances of his wit, I saw a 
 saying attributed to him which had already been fathered 
 on several other men. If contemporary evidence can be 
 thus unreliable, how much less can we depend upon the 
 certain accuracy of tradition ? An old story is, indeed, 
 often repeated and attached to the name of a recent wit 
 as though to impart to it a freshness of atmosphere, so 
 that the collection of witticisms can scarcely be regarded 
 as one of the exact sciences. At times, it is true, the mots 
 are recorded at once in letters and diaries, and so can be 
 credited to their rightful owners with some confidence, but 
 more often they have been repeated again and again, until 
 by the time that they get written down they have become 
 attributed to the wrong parentage. We all know the 
 parlour game of whispering a sentence from one person on 
 to another round a large circle until it comes back, often 
 wonderfully transmogrified, to the original speaker. In 
 that game we get an illustration of the growth of scandal — 
 and a damning indictment of oral tradition. It is, then, 
 only approximately possible to father conversational wit 
 and humour rightly ; the matter being further complicated 
 owing to the not uncommon propensity of one who has 
 thought of a good thing that might be said repeating it or 
 recording it as a thing actually uttered by some acknow- 
 ledged wit of the moment. To those who have shall be 
 given. There must be many small holders in the realm 
 of wit, but many of these owners cheerfully make over 
 their titles to established magnates. Thus it is that we 
 have far fewer " single joke HamUtons " than might 
 reasonably be expected. This is not to suggest that the 
 reputations of Sheridan, Lamb, Sydney Smith, Curran, 
 Douglas Jerrold, W. S. Gilbert and others have been 
 undijJy swelled by accretions — for probably not a tithe 
 of the good things which made their reputations were ever 
 
14 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 put on paper ; innumerable sayings of theirs must have 
 made their hearers laugh (perhaps their victims squirm) 
 and then been forgotten. 
 
 It might, perhaps, be possible to approximate towards a 
 proper allotment of witty things said if all the collections 
 of jests and ana could be collated, duplicates cut out 
 (there would be a fearful slaughter) and a compendium 
 made of the remainder ! The task would need the staff 
 of an encyclopsedia — and not be worth the doing, for 
 after all the wit is the thing, and though it would be more 
 satisfactory to know that a remark attributed, say, to 
 Curran was really uttered by Curran it would be no less 
 impressive if it were established as the property of 
 Whately. Where a jest is associated with a known name 
 the reader gets something of the sense of suddenness, of 
 unexpectedness, felt by its first hearers ; if it be given to 
 some nameless person it suggests rather the witticism 
 that is made, not bom, and moves us to the admiration 
 of ingenuity rather than to amazement at the quickness 
 of wit. 
 
 In presenting anew something of the lives of the wits and 
 humorists with examples of their things said, it cannot 
 be pretended that any close collation of our anecdotal 
 literature has been attempted, but I have sought so far 
 as is possible to take the things said from the places where 
 they were earliest recorded, and in cases of disputed 
 paternity to father the bon mot upon the wit at whose door 
 it was first laid. 
 
 Old Aubrey tells us of one Thomas Archer (1554-1630), 
 who was rector of Houghton Conquest, that he had " two 
 thick quarto MSS. of his own collection ; one joci and 
 tales, etc., and discourses at dinner. ... No doubt 
 there are delicate things to be found there." Aubrey 
 himself could get no sight of the books, but if they should 
 
OF WIT AND HUMOUR GENERALLY 15 
 
 still remain buried in some neglected muniment chest how 
 pleasant for the finder to search through a collection that 
 might even include some of the things said " at the 
 Mermaid." 
 
 One of the earliest puns has found its way into the 
 history books in the record of Pope Gregory and the 
 English slaves at Rome. " Non Angli sed angeli " — " Not 
 Angles but angels " ; one of the earliest witticisms found 
 in many of the collections, and often attributed to men 
 of later date, is given in William of Malmesbury's 
 Chronicle of the ninth-century philosopher, John the 
 Scot, or Johannes Erigena. Erigena was at the French 
 king's court a personage of considerable importance. 
 The monarch asked him at dinner : " What separates 
 a Scot from a sot ? " and received the prompt reply : 
 " Only the table ! " 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SPACIOUS DAYS 
 
 " What things have we seen 
 Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
 So nimble and so full of subtle flame, 
 As if that every one from whence they came 
 Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest.'' 
 
 Beaumont 
 
 THE words which Master Francis Beaumont addressed 
 to Ben Jonson may be hackneyed by frequent re- 
 petition, but it is inevitable that they should stand in the 
 forefront of any consideration of the wit of " the spacious 
 days of great Elizabeth." It is perhaps in no small 
 measure thanks to them that we first think of gatherings 
 of the wits as taking place then, though we have no 
 recorded echoes of the wit combats and though it is more 
 than probable that such gatherings had taken place for 
 generations earlier. It is true that Mr W. Carew Hazlitt, 
 to whom we owe the reprinting of rare jest-books of the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and who has made 
 special studies of early jocular literature, says that it was 
 the age immediately succeeding that of Shakespeare 
 that saw the rise of the quip and crank, and the retort 
 courteous, " conceits, clinches, flashes and whimzies," 
 and all the rest of the merry motley company. If that 
 were strictly true the stories told of More and others would 
 
 i6 
 
THE SPACIOUS DAYS 17 
 
 be merely later jests fathered on them, and the play of 
 dialogue in Shakespeare's and other dramatic works 
 would have to be regarded as the forecasting of a 
 fashion instead of the heightened reflection of one. The 
 use of quip and crank and the retort courteous by the 
 dramatists may be taken as a sure illustration of the fact 
 that such were already in vogue. It does not follow that 
 all the reported Elizabethan jests date from the time of 
 the Virgin Queen. Her Majesty's supposed remark — 
 " Ye be burly, my Lord of Biirleigh, but ye make less stir 
 than the Earl of Leicester " — smacks rather of a nineteenth- 
 century pun manufacturer than of the Tudor Queen. 
 
 Bacon has recorded a happy jest addressed to her 
 Majesty, a jest the point of which remains unblunted 
 by time. Mr Popham, when he was Speaker, and the 
 Lower House had sat long, and done in effect nothing, 
 coming one day to Queen Elizabeth, she said to him : " Now, 
 Mr Speaker, what has passed in the Lower House ? " 
 He answered : " If it please your Majesty, seven weeks." 
 
 It was not until towards the close of the sixteenth 
 century that jest-books began to be added to our literature, 
 and these were mainly collections of brief anecdotes with 
 only occasional examples of what we here understand as 
 wit. There are but few recoverable examples of such 
 wit of an earlier date. A couple of happy answers of Sir 
 Thomas More may, however, be given. Thomas Manners, 
 who had himself been made Earl of Rutland in 1525, 
 reproached More with being overmuch elated with his 
 preferment and thus verifying the old proverb " Honores 
 mutant mores." " No, my lord," retorted Sir Thomas ; 
 " the pun will do much better in English, ' Honours 
 change Manners.' " The other story of the Tudor 
 statesman concerns not his rise but his fall, showing that 
 he coxJd treat of the one with as ready a turn of wit as the 
 
i8 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 other- Sir Thomas More being brought a prisoner to the 
 Tower, the Ueutenant offered his good will and such poor 
 cheer as he had, to which the deposed Lord Chancellor 
 replied : "I verily believe as you say, so are you my 
 good friend indeed, and would, as you say, with yoiur best 
 cheer entertain me, for the which I most heartily thank 
 you ; and assure yourself. Master Lieutenant, I do not 
 mislike my cheer, but whensoever I so do, then thrust me 
 out of your doors." This last is one of the stories of the 
 state-murdered statesman recorded in his son-in-law's 
 tender biography, and may therefore be accepted as 
 genuine and as one of the rare exceptions to the rule that 
 Mr Carew Hazlitt has enunciated that " the entire body 
 of old-fashioned wit and wisdom is as exotic as a tropical 
 plant within the Arctic Circle." We are here only con- 
 cerned with wit, but to apply the same rule to wisdom is 
 surely quite unwarranted. 
 
 Another story of a Tudor judge is told of Sir Nicholas 
 Bacon, who in the time of Elizabeth was importuned by a 
 criminal to spare his life on account of kinship. 
 
 " How so ? " demanded the judge. 
 
 " Because my name is Hog and yours is Bacon ; and 
 hog and bacon are so near akin that they cannot be 
 separated." 
 
 " Ay," responded the judge dryly, " but you and I 
 cannot yet be kindred — for hog is not bacon until it be 
 well hanged." 
 
 II 
 
 The name that stands out as the representative 
 humorist of the latter part of the sixteenth century is 
 that of Richard Tarlton, although by far the greater 
 number of the " Jests " associated with his name had 
 
THE SPACIOUS DAYS 19 
 
 probably no real connexion with him — other than being 
 labelled with it by the compiler of the book in which they 
 were given to the world, in, as it is supposed, 1592. Some 
 of them are, however, believed to embody real biographical 
 details, and therefore " Tarlton's Jests " is a work that 
 calls for more extended mention than do other of the 
 " Shakespeare Jest Books." 
 
 Richard Tarlton was a comic actor who died in 1588, 
 and of whose life-story but little that is authentic, and a 
 good deal that is contradictory, is known. According to 
 Fuller he was bom at Condover in Shropshire, and was 
 presumably the son of a farmer, the story running that 
 while tending swine he was accosted by a servant of the 
 Eaxl of Leicester, and his " happy unhappy answers " 
 were such that in the sequel he was taken to court and 
 became jester to Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 Another account makes him a water carrier in London, 
 and yet others describe him variously as an innkeeper in 
 London and in Colchester, and as keeper of an ordinary, 
 or eating-house, with the sign of the Castle, in Paternoster 
 Row. Whatever his origin and early occupation may 
 have been, it was as an actor that he became known, and 
 vddely popular, so popular indeed, according to a con- 
 temporary, that " the people began exceedingly to laugh 
 when Tarlton first peep't out his head," and over thirty 
 years after his death he was so well remembered that the 
 same idea was re-rendered in verse : 
 
 " Tarlton, when his head was only seene 
 The Tire-house doore and Tapistrie betweene. 
 Set all the multitude in such a laughter 
 They could not hold for scarce an hour after."- 
 
 As a clowning comedian Tarlton seems to have been 
 the most notable actor of his age, and few performers of 
 his time were honoured with so many references by con- 
 
20 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 temporary writers ; then, too, as jester he is said to have 
 had a happy faculty for improvizing, so that he may not 
 unfairly be regarded as the Samuel Foote or Theodore 
 Hook of his time. Nearly a century after his death he 
 was given an extended notice as a " worthy " by Fuller, 
 who said : " Our Tarlton was master of his faculty. 
 When Queen Elizabeth was serious, I dare not say sullen, 
 and out of good humour, he could undumpish her at his 
 pleasure. Her highest favourites would, in some cases, 
 go to Tarlton before they would go to the queen, and he 
 was their usher to prepare their advantageous access unto 
 her. In a word, he told the queen more of her faults than 
 most of her chaplains and cured her melancholy better 
 than all of her physicians. Much of his merriment lay in 
 his very looks and actions, according to the Epitaph 
 written upon him : — 
 
 " • Hie situs est cujus poterat vox, actio, vultus. 
 Ex Heraclito reddere Democritum.' 
 
 Indeed, the self-same words spoken by another, would 
 hardly move a merry man to smile ; which uttered by 
 him, would force a sad soul to laughter." 
 
 The high tribute of those closing words to Tarlton's vis 
 comica may well remind us that it has been conjectured 
 that Hamlet's words addressed to the skull of Yorick 
 were Shakespeare's tribute to the memory of Richard 
 Tarlton, though the poet is only supposed to have come 
 to London a couple of years before Tarlton died ; and 
 there is no record of their meeting. In the Harleian MS. 
 is an early portrait of Tarlton with memorial verses by one 
 John How of Norwich : 
 
 " When he in pleasant wise 
 The counterfeit expreste 
 Of Clowne, with cote of russet hew 
 And sturtups, with the teste. 
 
THE SPACIOUS DAYS 21 
 
 What merry many made 
 
 When he appeared in sight ; 
 The grave and wise as well as rude, 
 
 At him did take delight. 
 The partie nowe is gone, 
 
 And closlie clad in claye ; 
 Of all the jesters in the lande 
 
 He bare the praise awaie." 
 
 It is with many jests as with some of the daintiest fruit 
 — they will not keep. And even as some fruit should be 
 eaten as soon as it is ripe so some jests only retain their 
 savour as it were their original speaking-while. We find 
 this especially in the wit and humour that is enshrined 
 in the thing said, and in the anedcote. A jest's prosperity 
 lies not only in the ear that hears it but in the fact that 
 it belongs to its time. We are perhaps further from the 
 Elizabethan in this than in any other respect. Poetry, 
 philosophy and drama of the best make a lasting appeal, 
 but many manifestations of the humorous are of a 
 fugacity that renders them stale after the lapse of one 
 generation, and as it were mtmimified after a few genera- 
 tions. This, as has been indicated in the earlier chapter, 
 is nowhere more conclusively seen than in the collections 
 of " good things " which presumably set sixteenth and 
 seventeenth century tables in a roar, and it is particularly 
 notable in the case of Richard Tarlton. Many of the 
 " Jests " associated with his name are coarsenesses which 
 changing taste has made merely objectionable. One or 
 two of his sayings will suffice to indicate that which is now 
 the best. In Bohim's " Character of Queen Elizabeth," 
 written nearly a century after her death, we are shown 
 Tarlton using rather the freedom of the court fool than 
 any very rich form of wit : 
 
 " At supper she [Queen Elizabeth] would divert herself 
 with her friends and attendants ; and if they made no 
 
22 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 answer, she would put them upon mirth and pleasant 
 discourse with great civility. She would then also admit 
 Tarlton, a famous comedian and a pleasant talker, and 
 other such like men, to divert her with stories of the town, 
 and the common jests or accidents ; but so that they kept 
 within the bounds of modesty and chastity. In the 
 winter-time, after supper, she would some time hear a song, 
 or a lesson or two played upon the lute ; but she would 
 be much offended if there was any rudeness to any person, 
 any reproach or licentious reflection used. Tarlton, who 
 was then the best comedian in England, had made a 
 pleasant play, and when it was acting before the Queen, 
 he pointed at Sir Walter Rawleigh and said : ' See, the 
 Knave commands the Queen.' For which he was 
 corrected by a frown from the Queen ; yet he had the 
 confidence to add that he was of too much and too 
 intolerable a power ; and going on with the same liberty, 
 he reflected on the overgreat power and riches of the Earl 
 of Leicester, which was so universally applauded by all 
 that were present, that she thought fit for the present to 
 bear these reflections with a seeming unconcernedness. 
 But yet she was so offended, that she forbad Tarlton 
 and all her jesters from coming near her table, being 
 inwardly displeased with this impudent and unreasonable 
 liberty." 
 
 One of the anecdotes of Tarlton suggests some of the 
 pranks recorded of Theodore Hook. It tells " how 
 Tarlton bade himself to dinner to my Lord Mayor's." 
 
 "A jest came in Tarlton's head where to dine, and 
 thought he : in all that a man does, let him aim at the 
 fairest, for sure, if I bid myself anjTwhere this day, it shall 
 be to my Lord Mayors, and upon this goes to the Counter, 
 and entered his action against my Lord Mayor, who was 
 presently told of it, and sends for him. Tarlton waits 
 
THE SPACIOUS DAYS 23 
 
 dinner-time, and then comes : who was admitted pre- 
 sently. ' Master Tarlton/ says my Lord Mayor, ' have 
 you entered an action against me in the Poultry 
 Counter ? ' ' My Lord,' says Tarlton, ' have you entered 
 an action against me in the Wood Street Counter ? ' 
 ' Not I, in troth,' says my Lord. ' No ! ' says Tarlton, ' he 
 was a villain that told me so then ; but if it be not so, 
 forgive me this fault, my Lord, and I wiU never offend in 
 the next.' But in the end he begins to swear how he will 
 be revenged on him that mocked him. But my Lord said : 
 ' Stay, Mr Tarlton, dine with me, and no doubt after 
 dinner you will be better minded.' ' I will try that, my 
 Lord,' says Tarlton, ' and, if it alter mine anger, both mine 
 enemy and I will thank you together for the courtesy.' " 
 
 As one of the things for which Tarlton was famous was 
 his readiness in extemporizing replies in verse to " themes " 
 propounded, an example of this form of his humour may 
 be given. This is " Tarlton's answer in defence of his flat 
 nose " : 
 
 " I remember I was once at a play in the country where, 
 as Tarlton's use was, the play being done, every one [who 
 was] so pleased [was] wont to throw up his theme ; amongst 
 all the rest, one was read to this effect, word by word — 
 
 " ' Tarlton, I am one of thy friends, and none of thy foes. 
 Then I prithee tell how earnest thy flat nose : 
 Had I been present at that time on those banks, 
 I would have laid my short sword over his long shanks.' 
 
 " Tarlton, mad at this question, as it was his property to 
 take such a matter ill than well, very suddenly returned 
 him this answer — 
 
 " ' Friend or foe, if thou wilt needs know, 
 Marke me well. 
 With parting dogs and bears, then, by the ears. 
 This chance feD : 
 
34 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 But what of that ? 
 
 Though my nose be flat. 
 My credit to save. 
 
 Yet very well I can by the smell 
 Scent an honest man from a knave.' " 
 
 Tarlton's readiness in extemporizing such replies in the 
 very false gallop of verses was such that the trick of ex- 
 temporizing came to be named " tarltonizing." In this 
 regard too we find a similarity between Tarlton and Hook, 
 who owed no small measure of his social reputation as a 
 htimorist to his knack of impromptu versifying. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Although there may be something of truth in the state- 
 ment that " men of wit are not as a rule men of letters, or 
 even persons of literary training or experience," yet the 
 annals of our men of wit serve to show that many of them 
 are to be found in the literary circles of their time. The 
 first association of wits in such gatherings is to be had in 
 that epistle from Francis Beaumont to Ben Jonson a few 
 lines from which stand at the head of this chapter. Tradi- 
 tion says that the famous company formed a club, founded 
 about 1603 by Sir Walter Ralegh, and that it included 
 Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher — ^the great 
 twin brethren of our dramatic literature — and others. The 
 tradition as to the origin of the " club " does not appear 
 traceable beyond the end of the eighteenth century, but 
 whether formally known as " clubbers " or not, there can 
 be no doubt of the gatherings of the giants of those days ; 
 and a more extended extract from the epistle seems to bring 
 it before us better than could any mere chronicler of the 
 
THE SPACIOUS DAYS 25 
 
 things said — supposing that there had been a chiel among 
 them taking notes : 
 
 '■ Methinks the little wit I had is lost 
 Since I saw you ; for wit is like a rest 
 Held up at tennis, which men do the best 
 With the best gamesters : what things have we seen 
 Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
 So nimble, and so full of subtile flame. 
 As if that every one from whence they came 
 Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest. 
 And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
 Of his dull life ; then when there hath been thrown 
 Wit able enough to justify the town 
 For three days past, wit that might warrant be 
 For the whole city to talk foolishly 
 TiU that were cancelled ; and when that was gone 
 We left an air behind us, which alone 
 Was able to make the two next companies 
 Right witty, though but downright fools, mere wise." 
 
 Of the things said there we have no record, but thanks to 
 the poet the Mermaid stands as classic type of gathering 
 places of the wits. Scarcely less famous is another place 
 also associated with Ben Jonson, who appears to have 
 dominated the literary circle of his prime as Samuel Johnson 
 did a century and a half later. We know more of the 
 Apollo Club which met at the Devil Tavern than we do of 
 the Mermaid. The DevU stood between Temple Bar and 
 Middle Temple Gate,^ and was a popular resort in the days 
 of James the First, when it was kept by one Simon Wadloe 
 — the " brave Duke Wadloe " of Jonson's Staple of 
 News. The ApoUo Club used to meet in an upper room 
 
 * Possibly it was a haunt of unbusy gentlemen of the law, where 
 a much-occupied barrister could when necessary secure a deputy 
 to do some of his work — and thus may have arisen the term 
 '' devil " for a barrister undertaking work on behalf of another ! 
 
26 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 of the tavern — presumably one of the earliest instances of 
 a club having special premises. 
 
 " Ben Jonson's Sociable Rules for the Apollo," translated 
 as follows by Alexander Brome, may well be given as having 
 their point for later gatherings of wits and humorists : — 
 
 " Let none but guests, or clubbers, hither come. 
 Let dunces, fools, sad sordid men keep home. 
 Let learned, civil, merry men, b'invited. 
 And modest too ; nor be choice ladies slighted. 
 Let nothing in the treat offend the guest ; 
 More for delight than cost, prepare the feast. 
 The cook and purvey'r must our palates know ; 
 And none contend who shall sit high or low. 
 Our waiters must quick-sighted be, and dumb. 
 And let the drawers quickly hear and come. 
 Let not our wine be mixed, but brisk and neat, 
 Or else the drinkers may the vintners beat. 
 And let our only emulation be 
 Not dnnking much, but talking wittily. 
 Let it be voted lawful to stir up 
 Each other with a moderate chirping cup ; 
 Let not our company be or talk too much ; 
 On serious things, or sacred, let's not touch 
 With sated heads and bellies. Neither may 
 Fiddlers unasked obtrude themselves to play. 
 With laughing, leaping, dancing jests and songs. 
 And whate'er else to grateful mirth belongs. 
 Let's celebrate our feasts ; and let us see 
 That all our jests without reflection be. 
 Insipid poems let iro man rehearse. 
 Nor any be compelled to write a verse. 
 All noise of vain disputes must be forborne. 
 And let no lover in a corner mourn. 
 To fight and brawl, like hectors, let none dare. 
 Glasses or windows break, or hangings tear. 
 Who'er shall publish what's here done or said 
 From our society must be banished ; 
 Let none by drinking do or suffer harm. 
 And, while we stay, let us be always warm.'- 
 
THE SPACIOUS DAYS 27 
 
 " To fight or brawl like hectors let none dare" reads 
 curiously from " Rare Ben," who in 1598 had only saved 
 his life from the hangman by pleading benefit of clergy 
 after killing a fellow-player in a fight. Not only did 
 Jonson thus draw up " Rules " for the fellowship of the 
 Apollo but he also wrote a " Welcome," which was duly 
 painted up on a board and placed, some say, over the 
 chimne3T)iece, others say over the entrance into the room. 
 
 " Welcome all, who lead or follow, 
 To the Oracle of Apollo — 
 Here he speaks out of his pottle. 
 Or the Tripos, his Tower bottle ; 
 All his answers are divine. 
 Truth itself doth flow in wine. 
 Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers. 
 Cries old Sim the king of skinkers ; 
 He that half of hfe abuses. 
 That sits watering with the Muses. 
 Those dull girls no good can mean us ; 
 Wine it is the milk of Venus, 
 And the Poet's horse accounted : 
 Ply it and you all are mounted. 
 'Tis the true Phoebeian Uquor, 
 Cheers the brain, makes wit the quicker, 
 Pajrs all debts, cures all diseases. 
 And at once three senses pleases. 
 Welcome all, who lead or follow 
 To the Oracle of Apollo."- 
 
 One story that is told of the merry gatherings here 
 seems to have a certain verisimilitude. It is said that 
 among the company one evening was a country squire who 
 began boasting of his lands and his tenants when he was 
 interrupted by Jonson with : 
 
 " What signify to us your dirt and yovs clods ? Where 
 you have an acre of land I have ten acres of wit ! " 
 
28 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " Have you so, good Mr Wise-Acre ? " retorted the 
 countryman. 
 
 " Why, how now, Ben," said one of the party, " you 
 seem to be stung." 
 
 " I was never so pricked by a hobnail before," replied he. 
 
 Another story concerning the Apollo Club records the 
 manner of Thomas Randolph's inclusion in the company : 
 
 " Mr Randolph having been at London so long as that 
 he might truly have had a parley with his Empty Purse, 
 was resolved to see Ben Jonson with his associates, which, 
 as he heard, at a set time kept a Club together at the 
 Devil Tavern near Temple Bar ; accordingly at the time 
 appointed, he went thither, but being unknown to them, 
 and wanting money, which to an ingenious spirit is the 
 most daunting thing in the world, he peeped in the room 
 where they were, which being espied by Ben Jonson, and 
 seeing him in a scholar's threadbare habit. ' John 
 Bopeep,' says he, ' come in,' which accordingly he did ; 
 when immediately he began to rh3mie upon the meanness 
 of his clothes, asking him if he could not make a verse ? 
 and without to call for a quart of sack. There being four 
 of them he immediately thus replied : 
 
 " ' I, John Bopeep, to you four sheep, — 
 With each one his good fleece ; 
 If that you are willing to give me five shilling, 
 'Tis fifteen-pence a-piece.' 
 
 " ' By Jesus ! ' quoth Ben Jonson (his usual oath), ' I 
 believe this is my son Randolph,' which being made known 
 to them, he was kindly entertained into their company, 
 and Ben Jonson ever after called him son." 
 
 If we have no record of the things uttered in the wit 
 combats at the Mermaid, we have a contemporary story 
 which shows Shakespeare as one of the wits. The recorder 
 
BEN JONSON 
 
 FROM THE PAINTING BY GERARD HONTHORST IN" THE NATIONAL I'OKTRAIT GALLERY 
 
THE SPACIOUS DAYS 29 
 
 of this story was Sir Nicholas 1' Estrange, who was a youth 
 at the time that Shakespeare died, and was probably 
 personally known to Ben Jonson. The story, which has 
 somewhat lost its point by lapse of time, runs thus : Shake- 
 speare was godfather to one of Ben Jonson's children, and 
 after the christening, being in a deep study, Jonson came 
 to cheer him up, and asked him why he was so melancholy. 
 " No, faith, Ben," says he, " not I ; but I have been 
 considering a great while what should be the fittest gift for 
 me to bestow upon my godchild, and I have resolved at 
 last." " I prithee, what ? " said Jonson. " I'faith, Ben, 
 I'll e'en give him a dozen good Lattin spoons — -and thou 
 shalt translate them." Latten it should be added was the 
 name of a mixed metal. 
 
 Joe Miller — stepfather of every thrice-repeated jest — 
 has the following anecdote about Ben Jonson : — ^My Lord 
 Craven, in the reign of King James the First, was very de- 
 sirous to see Ben Jonson, which being told to Ben, he went 
 to my lord's house ; but being in a very tattered condition, 
 as poets sometimes are, the porter refused him admittance, 
 with some saucy language, which the other did not faU to 
 return. My lord, happening to come out while they were 
 wrangling, asked the occasion of it. Ben, who stood in 
 need of nobody to speak for him, said, he understood his 
 lordship desired to see him. " You, friend," said my lord ; 
 " who are you ? " " Ben Jonson," replied the other. 
 " No, no," quoth my lord, " you cannot be Ben Jonson, 
 who wrote ' The Silent Woman,' you look as if you could 
 not say Bo to a goose." " Bo ! " cried Ben. " Very 
 well," said my lord, who was better pleased at the joke 
 than offended at the affront ; " I am now convinced by 
 your wit you are Ben Jonson." 
 
30 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 IV 
 
 John Taylor the " Water Poet "—one of the eccentrics 
 of our literary history — deserves mention here for a double 
 reason ; firstly, as a collector of witticisms and secondly, as 
 utterer of witty things or as one on whom such have been 
 fathered. Somewhere about 1630 Taylor published a 
 small collection — one of the best of the kind ever published, 
 it has been termed — to which he gave the large title " Wit 
 and Mirth, chargeably collected out of Taverns, Ordin- 
 aries, Inns, Bowling Greens and Alleys, Alehouses, Tobacco- 
 shops, Highways and Waterpassages. Made up and 
 fashioned into Clinches, Bulls, Quirkes, Yerkes, Quips and 
 Jerkes, Apothegmically bundled up and garbled at the 
 request of old John Garrett's Ghost." John Garrett 
 appears to have been a jester of the early seventeenth 
 century, of whom nothing is now recoverable. 
 
 Upwards of a hundred and twenty books and pamphlets 
 of all kinds were published by the Water Poet, who must 
 have rivalled Daniel Defoe of a century later in assiduity, 
 though not in genius. Few of Taylor's writings are now 
 read, except by students of his period, but they form, as it 
 were, a library of eccentricities in prose and verse. Born 
 of humble parentage, at Gloucester, in 1580, Taylor had a 
 varied career, first as sailor, then as waterman on the 
 Thames, and afterwards as eccentric traveller and inn- 
 keeper in Oxford, and later in London. His tavern was 
 the Crown in Long Acre, and after the execution of Charles 
 the First he had the temerity to alter the sign to the 
 Mourning Crown, a change which was not long permitted, 
 so he altered it again to the Poet's Head, putting up his 
 own portrait with the words : 
 
 " There's many a head stands for a sign. 
 Then, gentle reader, why not mine ? "- 
 
THE SPACIOUS DAYS 31 
 
 On the other side was a frank inscription which tnight 
 be adopted as motto by the whole race of poetasters : 
 
 " Though I deserve not, I desire 
 The laurel wreath, the poet's hire." 
 
 One of the stories told of the " King's Majesties' Water 
 Poet ' ' is that on hearing sorneone ask who invented the game 
 of bowls he readily said : " No doubt the philosopher Bias." 
 Taylor shows his own appreciation of humour and the lack 
 of that saving quality in another travelling eccentric of 
 the time, Coryat, the author of " Crudities, hastily gobbled 
 up in Five months' travel," in a story told in his " Wit and 
 Mirth." In pamphlet after pamphlet the Water Poet had 
 assailed the Odcombian and he records that : " Master 
 Thomas Coryat (on a time) complained against me to King 
 James, desiring His Majesty that he would cause some 
 heavy punishment to be inflicted upon me for abusing him 
 in writing (as he said I had) ; to whom the King replied, 
 that when the Lords of his honourable Privy Council had 
 leisure, and nothing else to do, then they should hear and 
 determine the difference betwixt Master Coryat, the scholar, 
 and John Taylor, the sculler ; which answer of the King's 
 was very acceptable to Master Coryat." 
 
 There is a pleasantry often repeated, that has become as 
 it were the common property which is traceable back to 
 the Water Poet, for he tells us of a certain jackdaw that 
 " if he doe not speake, yet I am in good hope that he thinks 
 the more." 
 
 A couple of stories which Taylor tells of himself show him 
 possessed at once of something of the readiness which is 
 of the essence of wit and of that appreciation of the 
 ridiculous which is one aspect of humour. 
 
 " An hostess of mine at Oxford roasted a shotilder of a 
 ram, which, in the eating was as tough as a buff jerkin. 
 
32 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 I asked her why the mutton was so tough. She said ' she 
 knew not, unless the butcher deceived her in the age of it.' 
 Nay, quoth I, there is I think another fault in it, which 
 will excuse the butcher ; for, perhaps you roasted it with 
 old wood. ' In truth,' replied she, ' that is likely enough, 
 for my husband buys nothing but old stumps and knots 
 which makes aU the meat we roast or boil so exceedingly 
 tough that nobody can eat it.' " 
 
 The second story shows how the Water Poet " had the 
 merit of interrupting the servile etiquette of kneeling to 
 the King." " I myself," says he, " gave a book to King 
 James once, in the great chamber at Whitehall, as his 
 Majesty canie from the Chapel. The Duke of Richmond 
 said merrily to me, ' Taylor, where did you learn the 
 manners to give the King a book and not kneel ? ' ' My 
 Lord,' said I, ' if it please your Grace I do give now ; but 
 when I beg anything then I will kneel.' " 
 
 When Taylor the Water Poet died, a great change had 
 come over the spirit of things in London, compared with 
 the time when he was a rollicking pamphleteer ready to 
 engage in any eccentric enterprise that would give him 
 an excuse for writing a pajnphlet that would tickle the 
 groundlings. The struggle between King and Parliament 
 had dragged on to its tragic close at Whitehall, and though 
 doubtless men met together and jested as of old, there were 
 probably fewer gatherings of convivial " clubbers " in 
 taverns, and there was no dominating master of such, as 
 Ben Jonson had been earlier. It was a wonderful interlude 
 that of the Commonwealth, too brief to be anything more 
 than an experiment, and an experiment doomed to brevity 
 
THE SPACIOUS DAYS 33 
 
 from the fact that though to Amurath an Amurath may 
 succeed to an Oliver there is little likely to be an Oliver. 
 Much has been written about that mid part of the seven- 
 teenth century, but in it there is little that is to our immed- 
 iate purpose ; it was too strenuous, too full of portent for 
 the chroniclers to trouble about recording the witty sayings 
 of their fellows. A story that is told of Andrew Marvell 
 seems to belong to the time when matters were still only 
 strained between Charles the First and the Parliament. 
 Heydock's Ordinary, which was situated just without 
 Temple Bar, was much frequented by the Parliament men 
 and gaUaJits, and here Marvell, having eaten heartily of 
 boiled beef, roasted pigeons and asparagus, drank his pint 
 of port, and on having the reckoning brought to him took 
 a piece of money out of his pocket.held it up, and addressing 
 his companions — certain Members known to be in the pay 
 of the Crown — said, " Gentlemen, who would let himself 
 out for dumer when he can have such a dinner for half- 
 a-crown ? " 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE RESTORATION 
 
 " You that delight in wit and mirth 
 And love to hear such news 
 That come from aJl parts of the earth, 
 Turks, Dutch, and Danes, and Jews ; 
 I'll send you to the rendezvous 
 
 Where it is smoaking new ; 
 Go hear it at a coffee-house. 
 It cannot but be true.'* 
 
 Jordan's " Triumph of London -' (1675) 
 
 WHEN the mediocre Richard Cromwell proved 
 unequal to the task of acting as his father's 
 successor — ^the son of a Daedalus has often proved in- 
 capable of flight — ^the long-exUed son of Charles the First 
 returned, and was hailed with every manifestation of joy. 
 Even those who had been some of the great admirers of the 
 Protector were among the readiest to acclaim the restored 
 King. Edmund Waller had written a lengthy " Panegy- 
 rick " to Oliver in which he said : 
 
 '- Hither th' oppressed shall henceforth resort. 
 Justice to crave, and succour at your Court ; 
 And then your Highness, not for ours alone. 
 But for the world's Protector shall be known. . . . 
 Still as you rise, the state, exalted too. 
 Finds no distemper while 'tis changed by you ; 
 Chang'd Uke the world's great scene ! when, without Noise, 
 The rising sun night's vulgar Ught destroys.?'- 
 
 34 
 
THE RESTORATION 35 
 
 Despite these brave words to the Protector, when the 
 JRestoration came about, Waller was not long in singing the 
 " Happy Return " of Charles, and did not disdain to open 
 with the very image which he had used near the close of 
 the Panegyric : 
 
 " The rising sun complies with our weak sight, 
 First gilds the clouds, then shews Ms globe of light 
 At such a distance from our sight, as tho' 
 He knew what harm his hasty beams would do. 
 But your full majesty at once breaks forth 
 In the meridian of your reign."- 
 
 When King Charles read the poem addressed to himself 
 he told the poet that it was reported that he had written 
 better verses to Oliver Cromwell. " Please your Majesty," 
 said the ready Waller, " we poets always excel in fiction." 
 The neat way of getting out of a difficulty doubtless tickled 
 the Merry Monarch, and Waller's conversation, says Aubrey, 
 came to be better appreciated than that of any other man. 
 Aubrey did not, however, gather many things said in his 
 biographical disjecta membra, but he tells us that on hear- 
 ing some bitter satirical verses repeated " Mr Waller 
 replyed sur le champ ' that men write ill things well and 
 good things ill ; that satyricall writing was downehUl, most 
 easie and naturall ; that at Billingsgate one might hear 
 great heights of such witt ; that the cursed earth naturally 
 produces briars and thornes and weeds, but roses and fine 
 flowers require cultivation.' " 
 
 King Charles the Second is not only said to have been a 
 ready appreciator of wit, but to have been no bad master 
 of it himself ; he had, said Macaulay, " some talent for 
 lively conversation." One story runs that Gilbert Burnet, 
 Bishop of Rochester, preaching before the King, and having 
 vehemently enunciated some truth, struck his fist on the 
 desk before him saying : " Who dare deny this ? " 
 
36 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " Faith," said Charles, in audible reply, " nobody that is 
 within reach of that fist of yours." Happier was his 
 pointed definition of a courtier when he described Sidney 
 Godolphin as " never in the way and never out of the way." 
 
 Charles having been prevailed upon by one of his 
 courtiers to confer knighthood upon a worthless fellow, 
 when he was about to dub him on the shoulder the man 
 drew back, and then hung his head as if put out of counten- 
 ance. " Don't be ashamed," said the King ; " it is I who 
 have the greatest reason to be so." Another story of the 
 Merry Monarch runs that a few days after the discovery of 
 the Rye House Plot he was walking in St James's Park 
 without guards or attendants ; the Duke of York after- 
 wards remonstrated with him on his imprudence. " Take 
 care of yourself, brother James," replied Charles ; " don't 
 make yourself uneasy about me ; for no man will kill me, 
 to make you king." 
 
 His dour brother, afterwards James the Second, was 
 presumably neither so ready of tongue himself nor so 
 appreciative of it in others ; a story is told against him to 
 the effect that James having asserted that he never knew 
 a modest man make his way at Court, received the reply 
 from a hearer, " Please, your Majesty, whose fault is 
 that ? " The King was silenced. 
 
 The somewhat free-and-easy court of the Restoration 
 was of a kind to form as it were a forcing house of wit — out 
 of it, or born of its influence, came the whole range of the 
 witty Restoration drama, witty with a freedom which has 
 long passed out of fashion but which reflects in no uncertain 
 way the spirit of the time. 
 
 When the Prince of Orange came to England to become 
 William the Third, five of the Seven Bishops who were 
 sent to the Tower declared in his favour, but the other two 
 refused. Dryden very happily said that " the seven golden 
 
THE RESTORATION 37 
 
 candlesticks were sent to be assayed in the Tower, and five 
 of them proved prince's metal." ^ 
 
 II 
 
 One very notable feature of the life of the Restoration 
 period — using that term as covering the closing thirty or 
 forty years of the seventeenth century — ^was the growth of 
 the coffee-house as a social centre. The Londoner of the 
 period was largely moulded, says Macaulay, by the gre- 
 garious habits formed, or rather fostered, by these estabhsh- 
 ments, which sprang up all over the town. Where the 
 few had frequented the taverns the many gathered in the 
 coffee-houses.. The historian has a lengthy passage on 
 the part played by these resorts in the days of Charles the 
 Second and his successor. Every man of the upper and 
 middle class, he declares, went to his coffee-house daily to 
 hear the news and to discuss it. Every coffee-house soon 
 came to have its special orators to whom the habitues 
 listened with admiration " and who soon became what 
 the journalists of our time have been called, a Fourth 
 Estate of the realm." The court sought to put the coffee- 
 houses down as centres of dangerous discussion, but sought 
 in vain. " Foreigners remarked that the coffee-house was 
 that which especially distinguished London from all other 
 cities ; that the coffee-house was the Londoner's home, 
 and that those who wished to find a gentleman commonly 
 asked, not whether he lived in Fleet Street or Chancery 
 Lane, but whether he frequented the Grecian or the 
 Rainbow. Nobody was excluded from these places who 
 laid down his peimy at the bar. Yet every rank and 
 
 ' Prince's metal, an admixture of copper and zinc, was so called 
 from Prince Rupert, its supposed inventor. 
 
38 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 profession, and every shade of religious and political 
 opinion, had its own headquarters. There were houses 
 near St James's Park where fops congregated, their heads 
 and shoulders covered with black or flaxen wigs not less 
 ample than those which are now worn by the Chancellor 
 and by the Speaker of the House of Commons. The wig 
 came from Paris, and so did the rest of the fine gentleman's 
 ornaments, his embroidered coat, his fringed gloves, and 
 the tassel which upheld his pantaloons. The conversation 
 was in that dialect which, long after it had ceased to be 
 spoken in fashionable circles, continued in the mouth of 
 Lord Foppington to excite the mirth of theatres. The 
 atmosphere was like that of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco 
 in any other form than that of richly scented snuff was 
 held in abomination. If any clown, ignorant of the usages 
 of the house, called for a pipe, the sneers of the whole 
 assembly and the short answers of the waiters soon con- 
 vinced him that he had better go somewhere else. Nor, 
 indeed, would he have had far to go, For, in general, the 
 coffee-rooms reeked with tobacco like a guard-room ; and 
 strangers sometimes expressed their surprise that so many 
 people should leave their own firesides to sit in the midst 
 of eternal fog and stench. Nowhere was the smoking 
 more constant than at WUl's. That celebrated house, 
 situated between Covent Garden and Bow Street, was 
 sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about poetical 
 justice and the unities of place and time. There was a 
 faction for Perrault and the modems, a faction for Boileau 
 and the ancients. One group debated whether ' Paradise 
 Lost ' ought not to have been in rhjmie. To another an 
 envious poetaster demonstrated that Venice Preserved 
 ought to have been hooted from the stage. Under no 
 roof was a greater variety of figures to be seen. There 
 were earls in stars and garters, clergymen in cassocks and 
 
V THE RESTORATION 39 
 
 bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from the universities, 
 translators and index-makers in ragged coats of frieze. 
 The great press was to get near the chair where John 
 Dryden sate. In winter that chair was always in the 
 warmest nook by the fire, in summer it stood in the bal- 
 cony. To bow to the Laureate, and to hear his opinion 
 of Racine's last tragedy or of Bossu's treatise on epic 
 poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch from his snuff- 
 box was an honour sufficient to turn the head of a young 
 enthusiast. There were coffee-houses where the first 
 medical men might be consulted. Doctor John Radcliffe, 
 who in the year 1685 rose to the largest practice in 
 London, came daily, at the hour when the Exchange was 
 full, from his house in Bow Street, then a fashionable part 
 of the capital, to Garraway's, and was to be found sur- 
 rounded by surgeons and apothecaries, at a particular 
 table. There were Puritan coffee-houses where no oath 
 was heard, and whdre lank-haired men discussed election 
 and reprobation through their noses; Jew coffee-houses 
 where dark-eyed moneychangers from Venice and from 
 Amsterdam greeted each other ; Popish coffee-houses 
 where, as good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned over 
 their cups another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot 
 the King." ^ 
 
 Such is the historian's summary of the importance of 
 these gathering places, the first of which had been started, 
 before the Commonwealth came to an end, by a Turkey 
 merchant who had acquired in the Orient a taste for 
 " Mocha's berry brown." The essajrists of a few years 
 later, Addison, Steele and their colleagues, had much to 
 say about coffee-house gatherings ; and we know more, 
 thanks to the growth of the habit of gossiping on paper, 
 of the coffee-houses of the early part of the eighteenth 
 
 '^ Macaulay's -- History of England,'' chap. iii. 
 
40 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 century than we do of those of the closing decades of the 
 seventeenth. Pepys tells us how on 3rd February 1663- 
 1664, " in Covent Gardens to-night going to fetch home my 
 wife, I stopped at the great Coffee house there, where I 
 never was before : where Dryden, the poet, I knew at 
 Cambridge and all the wits of the town, and Harris the 
 player, and Mr Hoole of our College," and, again, of " very 
 witty and pleasant discourse " at Will's. This, one of the 
 best known of the coffee-houses, which took its name from 
 William Urwick the landlord, stood on the west side of 
 Bow Street at the comer of Russell Street. 
 
 in 
 
 A good coffee-house story is told of a Dr Busby, pre- 
 sumably the headmaster of Westminster School, though 
 the hero of it may have been the later Dr Busby noted as 
 a composer. Busby, a very small man, was accosted by 
 a very tall Irish baronet with : 
 
 " May I pass to my seat, O giant ! " 
 
 " Pass, O Pigmy ! " said the doctor, making way for him. 
 
 " Oh, sir," said the baronet, " my expression alluded 
 to the size of your intellect." 
 
 " And my expression, sir," retorted the doctor, " to 
 the size of yours." 
 
 Another coffee-house story suggests that the keepers 
 of such occasionally caught the trick of wit from their 
 customers. A celebrated resort of this kind, Lockit's 
 Coffee-house, was frequented by Sir George Etherege, 
 the dramatist, who having run up a score which he found 
 himself unable to pay absented himself for a time. In 
 consequence of this, Mrs Lockit sent to dun him and to 
 threaten him with an action. Etherege told the messenger 
 
THE RESTORATION 41 
 
 that if Mrs Lockit came he shotdd certainly kiss her. On 
 hearing this message she called for her hood and scarf, 
 telling her husband when he remonstrated " that she would 
 see if there was any fellow alive who had the impudence ! " 
 " Prithee, my dear, don't be so rash," said Lockit ; " you 
 don't know what a man may do in a passion." 
 
 Of Congreve, who, as Thackeray puts it, splendidly 
 frequented the coffee-houses, we have a story which shows 
 that the dramatist did not keep all his wit for his plays ; 
 possibly, like a later playwright, having hit off a good thing 
 in the give-and-take of talk he remembered it later and put 
 it in the mouth of one of his characters. Congreve is said 
 to have been disputing a point of fact with a sententious 
 but not singularly sensible man, when the latter said, with 
 as he doubtless thought clinching emphasis : "I'll wager 
 my head that the fact is as I have stated it." " I accept 
 it," said Congreve, " for even trifles show respect." 
 
 A niunber of coffee-house stories will be found in other 
 chapters, dealing with later periods than that of the 
 present one. 
 
 Though it was in the latter part of the seventeenth 
 century that the coffee-house became known as a resort of 
 the wits, shortly after its establishment as an institution, it 
 continued to provide a place where men of the most diverse 
 professions and ideas could meet and talk all through the 
 eighteenth century and on into the early part of the 
 nineteenth. At the Chapter Coffee-house in Paternoster 
 Row there used to be a regular gathering of men known as 
 the " Wittinagemot " which lasted certainly up to 1805. 
 Here, too, we are told used to meet a " Wet Paper Club," 
 the members of which gathered to read and discuss the 
 newspapers while they were still wet from the press — a dry 
 paper being regarded as already a stale commodity. 
 The members of the " Wittinagemot " are said to have 
 
42 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 been a merry party — including many doctors and book- 
 sellers — but none of their sajings seem to have been 
 recorded. 
 
 IV 
 
 Tom Brown, " of facetious memory " to use the label 
 which Addison attached to him so firmly that he is scarcely 
 ever mentioned without it, is a writer perhaps even less 
 known outside the ranks of students than Taylor the Water 
 Poet ; yet he occupied in the latter part of the seventeenth 
 century much the same position as that of Taylor in the 
 earlier. Born in 1663, the son of a Shropshire farmer, 
 he went at the age of fifteen to Christ Church, Oxford. 
 Still in his teens his irregularities were such that Dr Fell, 
 the dean of his college, threatened to expel him, but on 
 receiving a submissive letter promised to forgive him if 
 he would extemporize a translation of Martial's epigram 
 beginning " Non amo te, Sabidi." Brown responded with 
 lines that have become familiar in our mouths as house- 
 hold words, though probably few of those who repeat 
 them are aware of their authorship : 
 
 " I do not love thee, Dr Fell, 
 The reason why I cannot tell ; 
 But this I know, and know full well, 
 I cannot love thee, Dr FeU.'' 
 
 The witty readiness not only won forgiveness for the earlier 
 faults but also for its own impertinence, and we are told 
 that when Dr Fell died it was Tom Brown who wrote the 
 epitaph on his tomb in Christ Church. After leaving the 
 university, without a degree, Tom Brown sought to set 
 up as author, but not successfully, and at the age of twenty- 
 two he wrote to a friend : " The prodigal son when he was 
 
THE RESTORATION 43 
 
 pressed by hunger and thirst, joined himself to a swine- 
 herd ; and I have been driven by the same stimuH to join 
 myself to a swine, an ignorant pedagogue about twelve 
 miles out of town." This was at Kingston-on-Thames, 
 where he was afterwards appointed headmaster of the 
 grammar school, presumably a very young headmaster, 
 for he was only at Kingston for three years before giving 
 up the apparently uncongenial labour of teaching and 
 joining himself finally to " the adventurous rovers of the 
 pen." He wrote satires, pamphlets and translations, and 
 that he established a reputation with his contemporaries 
 is shown by the fact that he was buried in Westminster 
 Abbey and by the Addisonian label affixed to his name ten 
 years after his death. It was as a witty and humorous 
 writer that he was chiefly known, the low haunts which he 
 frequented, the kind of company he kept, militating against 
 his conversational humour being recorded. His out- 
 spokenness as pamphleteer more than once got him into 
 trouble, a " Sat}^: upon the French King on the Peace of 
 Reswick " leading to imprisonment. Tradition says that 
 he owed his release to the boldly addressing to the Lords 
 in Council a pindaric ode, concluding pointedly : 
 
 " The pulpit alone 
 
 Can never preach down 
 
 The fops of the town. 
 
 Then pardon Tom Brown 
 
 And let him write on. 
 But if you had rather convert the poor sinner. 
 His fast writing mouth may be stopped with a dinner. 
 Give him clothes to his back, some meat and much drink. 
 Then clap him close prisoner without pen and ink 
 And your petitioner shall neither pray, write, nor think." 
 
 Tom Brown, says Addison, has the distinction of being 
 the first satirist who made himself a " sjoicopist," writing 
 
46 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 houses grew the clubs, and the early part of the 
 eighteenth century has been described as the golden 
 period of clubs. 
 
 One of the places of fashionable resort — the Cocoa Tree 
 in St James's Street which afterwards became a club of the 
 same name — shared with Will's the title of the Wits' 
 Coffee-house from the gatherings that took place there. 
 Samuel Garth, the doctor poet, was an habitue and one 
 morning when he was conversing with a couple of friends 
 there, Nicholas Rowe, scarcely remembered to-day as 
 one-time Poet Laureate, entered. Rowe is described as 
 having been particularly vain of being noticed by persons 
 of consequence, and seeking to be introduced to Garth's 
 companions took a seat in a box nearly opposite that in 
 which the trio sat. After repeatedly seeking unsuccess- 
 fully to catch Garth's eye, he requested the waiter to ask 
 him for his snuff-box. After taking a pinch he returned it, 
 but asked again for it so repeatedly that Garth, perceiving 
 his drift and determined not to humour him, took out a 
 pencil and wrote on the lid the two Greek characters (p P 
 (phi, rho = Fie! Rowe!). On perceiving this the neatly 
 snubbed poet retired chagrined. 
 
 Another story of Sir Samuel Garth — who has the 
 distinction of being a pre-Popeian smoother of the heroic 
 couplet — is that one evening at the Kit Cat Club, of which 
 he was a member, he said that he had fifteen professional 
 visits to pay, so could not stay for long. Some good wine 
 was produced and the company was so entertaining that 
 he forgot his engagements and stayed on ; when Steele re- 
 minded him of his patients. " It's no great matter," said 
 Garth, " whether I see them to-night or not, for nine of 
 them have such bad constitutions that all the physicians 
 in the world can't save them ; and the other six have such 
 good constitutions that all the physicians in the world 
 
THE AUGUSTAN PERIOD 47 
 
 can't kill them." Which suggests that doctors do not 
 mind uttering jestsjagainst their own profession such as 
 they would be likely to resent from mere laymen. 
 
 A kindred doctor must have been Radcliff, who, a rash 
 speculator at the South Sea Bubble time, came into 
 Garraway's Coffee-house only to be told that a venture in 
 which he had put five thousand guineas had gone and his 
 money was lost. " Well," said he, " 'tis but going up five 
 thousand pairs of stairs the more ! " This anecdote is 
 sometimes quoted with the additional comment that Tom 
 Brown said the answer deserved a statue ; somebody may 
 have made the remark, but Tom Brown " of facetious 
 memory " had been dead for sixteen years when the 
 South Sea Bubble burst. 
 
 It was at Button's Coffee-house that Pope, whose wit 
 made him a poet, uttered one of the few conversational 
 witticisms associated with his name when he declared of 
 Samuel Patrick that he was an illustration of the fact 
 that " a dictionary maker might know the meaning of one 
 word, but not of two put together." At Button's, too, 
 according to another story. Pope had the tables turned 
 upon him when a stranger resented the airs which the poet 
 put on. Pope and some friends are described as poring 
 over a Latin manuscript in which there was a passage for 
 which none of them could find a satisfactory translation. 
 A young officer who had heard the discussion asked if he 
 might be permitted to look at the passage. " Oh ! " said 
 Pope sarcastically, "by all means ; pray let the young 
 gentleman look at it." Upon which the officer took up the 
 manuscript, and after examining it for a while pointed out 
 that it only wanted a note of interrogation to make the 
 whole intelligible. " And pray, master," said Pope 
 sneeringly, " what is a note of interrogation ? " "A 
 note of interrogation," replied the young officer, with a 
 
48 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 significant look at the poet, and justifiable cruelty, " is a 
 little crooked thing that asks questions." 
 
 Sir Godfrey Kneller is credited with making a similarly 
 unkind jest on the poet's physical appearance. There had 
 been a lively discussion in which the artist had been laying 
 down the law when Pope sarcastically broke in with : " If 
 Sir Godfrey had been consulted in the creation of the world, 
 it would have been more perfect than it is." KneUer neatly 
 but cruelly retaliated with : " There are some little things 
 in it I think I could have mended" — ^with a significant 
 glance at his diminutive adversary. 
 
 Will's, too, was known as the Wits' Coffee-house 
 though Swift has left us no flattering account of it, for he 
 said that the worst conversation he ever heard in his life 
 was at Will's, where the wits (as they were called) used 
 formerly to assemble — that is to say, five or six men, who 
 had writ plays, or at least prologues, or had a share in a 
 miscellany, came thither and entertained one another with 
 their trifling composures, with as important an air as if 
 they had been the noblest efforts of human nature, or that 
 the fate of kingdoms depended upon them. 
 
 A coffee-house story of the author of " Tristram 
 Shandy " deserves recording here as a neat example of 
 carefully elaborated wit — ^wit in action as much as in 
 words. Sterne entered one of these places of resort and 
 shortly after heard a spruce well-powdered young fellow 
 who wajs seated near the fire speaking of the clergy as a 
 body of disciplined impostors and systematic hypocrites. 
 Sterne got up from the place he had first taken and, while 
 the young man was stUl holding forth, approached the 
 fire, patting and coaxing on the way a favourite little dog. 
 Coming near the speaker Sterne took up the dog, still 
 continuing to pat him, and addressed the young feUow 
 thus : " Sir, this would be the prettiest little animal in the 
 
THE AUGUSTAN PERIOD 49 
 
 world, had he not one disorder." " What disorder is 
 that ? " came the inevitable question. " Why, sir," 
 replied Sterne, " one that always makes him bark when 
 he sees a gentleman in black." " That is a singular 
 disorder," said the young man, " pray, how long has he 
 had it ? " " Sir," answered Sterne pointedly, but looking 
 at him with affected gentleness, " ever since he was a 
 puppy." 
 
 II 
 
 Jonathan Swift was described by a lady who knew him 
 as " a very odd companion (if that expression is not too 
 familiar for so extraordinary a genius) ; he talks a great 
 deal and does not require many answers, he has infinite 
 spirits, and says abundance of good things in his common 
 way of discourse." Yet he declared in writing to Pope 
 that the chief end he proposed in all his work was " to 
 vex the world rather than divert it." He thus appears as 
 one who, while prepared to " vex " the many, could not 
 help deUghting the few. He is said to have been the chief 
 spirit of " the witty club " that gathered weekly at Dr 
 Delany's house in Dublin, and a number of his happy mots 
 are recorded, for he had in a strong degree the faculty of 
 bringing the apparently remote into instant contact with 
 matter of the moment, the result of which is wit as sure 
 as the clashing of clouds in a thunderstorm results in 
 lightning. As we are startled by the one phenomenon so 
 may we well be by the other. Take for example the story 
 that is told of a lady's mantua having caught in a violin 
 and dragged it to the ground, and Swift's instant applica- 
 tion of a line from Virgil : 
 
 " Mantua, vae miserae nimium vicinae Cremonse.-' 
 
 The story is given by Joe Miller, but not ascribed 
 
50 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 to Swift, the speaker being merely given as " a 
 gentleman." 
 
 More laboured, perhaps, was another classical applica- 
 tion, when to an old gentleman who had lost his spectacles 
 Swift offered the seemingly ridiculous consolation that if it 
 rained all night he would surely get them back in the 
 morning for 
 
 " Nocte pluit tota ; redeunt spectacula mane." 
 
 Many diverse kinds of retort are recorded of Swift. 
 When a forward young man had taken iU some remark 
 addressed to him and said : " I would have you know, sir, 
 that I set up for a wit," the Dean bluntly replied : " Do 
 you, indeed, then take my advice and sit down again." 
 There is an unwonted kindliness in his answer to Lord 
 Wharton, the profligate son of a profligate father, who 
 had been boasting of several wild frolics in which he had 
 been engaged : " My Lord, let me recommend one more 
 frolic to you — take a frolic to be good ; rely upon it you 
 will find it the pleasantest frolic you ever were engaged in." 
 
 When the Prince of Orange landed — soon to be ac- 
 claimed as King William the Third — ^he was reported to 
 have harangued a mob (Swift would have termed it a 
 rabble, for he objected to the other word) saying : " We are 
 come for your good — for all your goods." On hearing this 
 Swift sarcastically commented : " A universal principle 
 of all governments ; but, like most other truths, only 
 half told — ^he should have said goods and chattels." 
 
 When William the Third placed under the Royal Arms 
 the motto Non rapui sed recipi, Swift's comment was : 
 " The receiver is as bad as the thief." 
 
 Hearing Lady Carteret, wife of the Lord Lieutenant, say: 
 " The air of Ireland is very good," Swift is said to have 
 fallen on his knees and said : " For God's sake, madam, don't 
 
JONATHAN SWIFT 
 
 FROM THE BUST IN ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, DUBLIN 
 
THE AUGUSTAN PERIOD 51 
 
 say so in England, for if you do they will certainly tax it." 
 A lawyer asked the Dean if the parsons and the devil were 
 opposed in a suit which side would be likely to gain it. 
 " The devil, no doubt," was the unexpected answer, " as 
 he would have all the lawyers on his side." 
 
 Another dig at the lawyers is told of Swift. Having 
 preached an assize sermon in Ireland he was invited to 
 dinner by one of the judges. As the preacher had been 
 very severe on all concerned in the law, a young barrister, 
 thinking to be smart at his expense, inquired : " Doctor, if 
 it were possible for the devil to die, don't you think that 
 a clergyman might be found to preach his funeral sermon ?" 
 " Very likely," rephed Swift, " and were I the man pitched 
 upon I should do as I have just done by his disciples — I 
 should give him his due." 
 
 Some jests appear and reappear in the chronicles of wit 
 in almost endless variety and are ascribed to many utterers. 
 One variant of a familiar story is put down to Swift in the 
 following. A gentleman at whose house the Dean was 
 dining after dinner introduced remarkably small hock 
 glasses, and turning to his guest said : " Mr Dean, I shall be 
 happy to take a glass of hie, haec, hoc, with you." " Sir," 
 replied Swift pointedly : " I shall be happy to comply, but 
 it must be out of a hujus glass." 
 
 Swift wrote a savage lampoon on Sergeant Bettesworth, 
 in the course of which occurred the conciliatory lines : 
 
 ■'■ Thus at the bar the booby Bettesworth, 
 Though half a crown o'erpays his sweat's worth ; 
 Who knows in law nor text nor margent. 
 Calls Singleton his brother sergeant."- 
 
 Bettesworth called upon the Dean to disavow the offen- 
 sive lines or else be prepared to take the consequence. 
 Swift with greater regard for wit than veracity replied : 
 
52 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " Sir, when I was a young man I had the honour of being 
 intimate with some great legal characters, particularly 
 Lord Somers, who, knowing my propensity to satire, advised 
 me when I lampooned a knave or a fool never to own it. 
 Conformably to that advice,! tell you I am not the author." 
 
 At a Dublin civil feast one of the dignitaries, raising his 
 glass, said : " Mr Dean, the Trade of Ireland." " Sir," 
 replied Swift, with great quickness, ' I drink to no 
 memories." At his own dinner-table on one occasion he 
 gravely told his cook to remove a joint of meat and do it 
 less, and on her alleging that it was impossible he said that 
 he hoped in future when she chose to commit a fault she 
 would choose one which might be mended. 
 
 The dinner-table talk turning one day on family antiqui- 
 ties the hostess enlarged overmuch upon her own descent, 
 declaring that her ancestors' names began with " De " and 
 of course they were of ancient French origin. " And now, 
 madam," said Swift, when she had concluded, " wUl you be 
 so good as to help me to some of that D-umpling ? " 
 
 Yet another story is told of the Dean in this connexion. 
 A gentleman seeking to persuade him to accept an invita- 
 tion to dinner said : " I'll send you my bill of fare." " Send 
 me rather your bill of company," answered Swift, showing 
 his appreciation of the truth that not that which is eaten 
 but those who eat form the more important part of a good 
 dinner. When he started the Brothers' Club about 1713 he 
 said : " We take in none but men of wit or men of interest." 
 
 In the " Journal to Stella " Swift says that at the 
 Brothers' Club Colonel Disney said of Miss Kingdown, a 
 maid of honour who was " a little old," " that since she 
 could not get a husband the Queen should give her a 
 brevet to act as a married woman." 
 
 In a story that is told of a conversation in which Con- 
 greve, Swift, Ambrose Philips, and others took part, the 
 
THE AUGUSTAN PERIOD 53 
 
 Dean gives a description of himself. The talk had been 
 running for some time on Julius Caesar, when Philips 
 inquired what sort of a person the Roman conqueror was 
 supposed to have been. He was told that from medals it 
 appeared that Julius was a thin-faced, small man. " Now 
 for my part," said Philips, a very vain man and a bit of a 
 dandy, giving an exact description of himself : " I should 
 take him to have been of a lean make, pale complexion, 
 extremely neat in his dress and five feet seven inches high." 
 Swift allowed him to go on, and when he had finished said : 
 " And I, too. Philips, should take him to have been a 
 plump man, just five feet five inches high ; not very neatly 
 dressed, in — a black gown with pudding sleeves ! " 
 
 III 
 
 There is a story (it has been fathered upon Daniel 
 Defoe) sometimes unthinkingly repeated to the effect that 
 when Sir Richard Steele entered Parliament, and did not 
 distinguish himself as an orator, someone said that he 
 " had better have remained ' spectator ' than started 
 ' tatler.' " The mot would have had more force in it if 
 Steele had not been the second before he became the first — 
 if The Tatler had not preceded The Spectator. To generalize 
 it has been said in a horrible pun is generally to lie, yet it 
 may, generally speaking, be said that in the titles of Steele's 
 and Addison's essay-periodicals we have a rough and ready 
 differentiation of the wit and the humorist. The wit is a 
 " Tatler," one who says the ready thing that springs to his 
 tongue, the humorist is a " Spectator," one who, observing, 
 sees the broader fun of things. Both Sir Richard Steele 
 and Joseph Addison, the men primarily responsible for 
 these delightful essay-miscellanies, were humorists, as 
 
54 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 their writings abundantly prove ; of their wit and humour 
 as social companions we have but little definite evidence. 
 Indeed one story of Addison, though it shows him hitting 
 off a happy phrase, chiefly strikes one as remarkable evi- 
 dence, if accurate, of his inability to enjoy the wonderful 
 humour of another. The story runs that after reading the 
 essays of Montaigne he threw the volume aside so impa- 
 tiently that a friend present asked what he thought of the 
 famous French author. " Think," replied Addison, " why, 
 that a dark dungeon and fetters would probably have been 
 of some service in restoring his infirmities." " How, sir," 
 said the other, " imprison a man for singularity in writing." 
 " Why not ? " came the retort ; " had he been a horse he 
 would have been pounded for straying out of his bounds ; 
 and why, as a man, he ought to be more favoured I really 
 do not understand." 
 
 Steele had probably more of the liveliness of talk, more 
 of that true clubbability out of which wit so often springs, 
 than his severer friend, though the days of boswellizing had 
 not begun when he was frequenting the taverns and coffee- 
 houses, and sending tender notes explaining his absence to 
 " dear Prue " at the Hampton Court " Hovel," or wher- 
 ever his home happened to be. Possibly there were in hirn 
 some of the characteristics which he noted in his tribute to 
 Dick Estcourt, the actor, and leader of the original Beef 
 Steak Club, in which he has given us a lively note of a 
 clubbable man, a man of the kind who may not be witty 
 in himself but who is of those who make the human atmos- 
 phere which produces wit. " The best man that I know for 
 heightening the real gaiety of a company is Estcourt, 
 whose jovial humour diffuses itself from the highest person 
 at an entertainment to the meanest waiter. Merry tales, 
 accompanied with apt gestures and lively representations 
 of circumstances and persons, beguile the gravest mind 
 
THE AUGUSTAN PERIOD 55 
 
 into a consent to be as humorous as himself. Add to this, 
 that when a man is in his good graces, he has a mimicry 
 that does not debase the person he represents, but which, 
 taken from the gravity of the character, adds to the agree- 
 ableness of it." 
 
 Of Steele himself one story may be given, illustrating at 
 once the monetary difficulties in which he so often found 
 himself and the dry humour with which he could treat the 
 subject. The story dates back to Joe Miller, and thus to a 
 period within ten years of the subject's death. " When 
 Sir Richard Steele was fitting up his great room in York 
 Buildings, for public orations, that very room which is now 
 so worthily occupied by the learned and eximious Mr 
 Professor Lacy. He happened at one time to be pretty 
 much behindhand with his workmen, and coming one day 
 among them to see how they went forward, he ordered one 
 of them to go into the rostrmn and make a speech, that he 
 might observe how it could be heard, the fellow mounting, 
 and scratching his pate, told him he knew not what to say, 
 for in truth, he was no orator. ' Oh ! ' said the knight, 
 ' no matter for that ; speak anything that comes upper- 
 most.' ' Why, here. Sir Richard,' said the fellow, ' we have 
 been working for you these six weeks, and cannot get one 
 penny of money, pray, sir, when do you design to pay 
 us ? ' ' Very well, very well,' said Sir Richard, ' pray come 
 down, I have heard enough, I cannot but own you speak 
 very distinctly, tho' I don't admire your subject.' " 
 
 According to Joe Miller, Steele was made the umpire in 
 an amusing difference between two uimamed disputants. 
 These two were talking about religion in Button's Coffee- 
 house, when one of them said : " I wonder, sir, you should 
 talk of religion, when I'll hold you five guineas you can't 
 say the Lord's Prayer." " Done," said the other, " and 
 Sir Richard Steele shall hold the stakes." The money being 
 
56 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 deposited, the gentleman began with : " I beheve in God " 
 and so went right through the Creed ! " Well," said the 
 other ; " I did not think he cotdd have done it ! " ^ 
 
 William Warburton (1698-1779), best remembered as the 
 friend of Alexander Pope and annotator of his works, who 
 became Bishop of Gloucester some years after the poet's 
 death, was a strong controversialist. His readiness to 
 plunge into controversy with book, pamphlet or " notes " 
 was eminently characteristic of the time when not only 
 were the political parties of the country becoming more 
 sharply differentiated but when in the Church, in letters 
 and other departments of thought, men had a way of rang- 
 ing themselves in opposing rank. At first an anti-Popeite, 
 Warburton came to be the poet's friend and ardent cham- 
 pion. Eventually he became better known as a scholar 
 and writer than as a churchman, thus inspiring Churchill's 
 not very severe satire : 
 
 " A curate first, he read and read. 
 And laid in — while he should have fed 
 The souls of his neglected flock — 
 Of reading such a mighty stock 
 That he o'ercharged the weary brain 
 With more than she could weU contain."- 
 
 The best of the sajnngs attributed to Warburton is one 
 that is also frequently fathered on other wits — ^that is, the 
 
 * I have known a not dissimilar thing occur in a London club. It 
 was at the time when Mr Thomas Hardy's " Jude the Obscure " was 
 setting tongues wagging, and a know-all barrister was inveighing 
 with great emphasis against Mr Hardy's novels. One or two were 
 mentioned by a distinguished artist as worthy of praise, but the 
 barrister would have none of them. " But surely,"- said the artist, 
 with a sly glance at the other men present, " you do not include 
 - The Amazing Marriage '- in your condemnation ? " " That,'' 
 answered the barrister, falling headlong into the trap, "is an awful 
 book, one of the worst that Hardy has given us " ! 
 
THE AUGUSTAN PERIOD 57 
 
 answer to the question what is orthodoxy : " Orthodoxy 
 is my doxy, heterodoxy is another man's doxy." The 
 saying is sometimes attributed to Sydney Smith, and some- 
 times to Rowland Hill ; the flavour of it seems to belong to 
 an earlier century than the nineteenth, by which time the 
 term doxy for a mistress had at least fallen into infrequent 
 use. 
 
 Warburton showed neat sarcasm when he said of Mallet's 
 projected " Life of Marlborough," the same author having 
 already published a " Life of Bacon," that he would prob- 
 ably forget in doing it that Marlborough was a soldier 
 as he had forgotten that Bacon was a philosopher." Not 
 unlike that was his comment on DowdesweU being 
 appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in succession to 
 Lord Ljrttelton who had proved his incapacity — " The one 
 could never in his life learn that two and two make four, 
 while the other knew nothing else." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 JOE MILLER 
 
 " He is the jocular laureate of the new Hanoverian time and of 
 all time to come. . . . He wiU endure as long as the earth's crust 
 — as long as Shakespeare, and longer, perchance, than MUton."- 
 
 W. Carew Hazlitt 
 
 IN a recently published book of reminiscences ^ I came 
 across the following passage : — " A very favourite book 
 of mine and one that I recommend to my readers if they 
 can get it, which is doubtful, is ' Joe Miller's Jest Book.' 
 Do not be put off with anything but the first edition, or 
 any spurious versions like the very dull one by Mark 
 Lemon. If you are fortunate enough to get the first 
 edition your fortune as a raconteur is made, for it is 
 crammed with good things ; and though there are some 
 chestnuts among them, with judicious warming they will 
 come out as good as new, and even if your hearers have 
 heard them before in the dim and distant past they 
 will open long disused cells of association and recollection 
 in the brain, just as those old-world smells of pot- 
 pourri or of antiquated scents often bring back such 
 floods of memory." 
 
 Dr Farquharson's advice to his readers to get the first 
 edition of " Joe Miller " may be sound, though but few of 
 
 1 " In and Out of Parliament.'' By the Rt. Hon. Robert 
 Farquharson. 
 
 58 
 
JOE MILLER 59 
 
 them axe likely to be able to follow his prescription, for 
 that same first edition does not often appear " on the 
 market " and when it does do so commands a goodly price. 
 His reference to Mark Lemon's " Jest Book " is neither 
 kind nor just, for that little volume is by no means a " dull " 
 example among such compilations, and the fact that it was 
 reprinted about ten times in the thirty years that followed 
 upon its publication, in 1864, suggests it has had many 
 readers who would not endorse Dr Farquharson's verdict. 
 But to return to Joe Miller, whose name may be regarded 
 as of classic standing in the department of anecdotal 
 literature. In case anyone should wish to search for a 
 copy of the desired first edition, I may quote the lengthy 
 title-page. It runs as follows : — 
 
 " Joe Miller's Jests ; or, the Wit's Vade-Mecum ; being 
 a collection of the most brUliant Jests ; the politest Re- 
 partees ; the most elegant Bon Mots and most pleasant 
 Short Stories in the English language. First carefully 
 collected in the company, and many of them transcribed 
 from the mouth of the Facetious Gentleman whose name 
 they bear ; and now set forth and published by his lament- 
 able friend and former companion, Elijah Jenkins, Esq. 
 Most humbly inscribed to those Choice Spirits of the Age, 
 Captain Bodens, Mr Alexander Pope, Mr Professor Lacy, 
 Mr Orator Henley, and Job Baker, the Kettle-Drummer. 
 London : Printed and sold by T. Read, in Dogwell Court, 
 White's Fryars. Fleet Street. MDCCXXXIX." 
 
 The Elijah Jenkins of the title-page was a pseudonym, 
 that of John Mottley (1692-1750), a dramatist and bio- 
 grapher of the period whose plays and lives are forgotten, 
 the books being buried — ^without any fear of the literary 
 restirrection-man — ^in the oblivion of great libraries, 
 though their titles are to be found embalmed in biographi- 
 cal dictionaries. How far Mottley was justified in placing 
 
6o A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Joe Miller's name upon the title-page of his collection of 
 jests cannot now be determined. It may be that as the 
 names of Scogin, Tarlton and others had been used so the 
 compiler used the name of Miller for its topical value, the 
 actor having recently died. It may be also that Mottley 
 knew Miller, had heard him as a teller of stories and was 
 pajraig a debt of gratitude to the deceased raconteur. All 
 this, however, is merest speculation. Sir Sidney Lee, in 
 his account of Miller in The Dictionary of National 
 Biography, is unduly severe on John Mottley, for it may 
 be conjectured that but for the " Jests " Miller would 
 scarcely have been regarded as deserving two whole pages 
 of the Dictionary. If Mottley made a misuse of the 
 actor's name then grievously hath Mottley answered for it, 
 as in conferring immortality upon Joe Miller he lost his 
 own opportunity of fame. 
 
 11 
 
 When first Joe Miller — ^his name though given according 
 to different authorities as Joseph and Josias was unques- 
 tionably Josias, but we may keep to the familiar abbrevia- 
 tion — is to be heard of is when in 1709, at the age of twenty- 
 five, he joined the Drury Lane company, being described 
 on his appearance in the part of Teague on the production 
 of .Sir Robert Howard's The Committee as one " who 
 never appeared on the stage before." For nearly thirty 
 years he continued at Drury Lane, with one of two brief 
 gaps, as when owing to " some mean economies of the 
 managers," he left that theatre in 1731 and appeared for 
 a time at Goodman's Fields. It was probably only for a 
 brief time that he left Drury Lane, for m pamphlet protests 
 against certain proposed legislation he is referred to as one 
 of the eight lessees and one of the comedians of the 
 
JOP: miller (IN the character of TEAGUE in "THE COMMITTEE") 
 
 FROM AN ENGRAVING BY A. MILLER AFTER THE PAINTING BV C. STOl'i'ELAER 
 
JOE MILLER 6i 
 
 theatre and his Christian name is invariably given as 
 Josias. 
 
 That he was a popular actor may be gathered from his 
 long stay at Drury Lane and from the fact that, a " full 
 proof of the force of his abilities," he long enjoyed a good 
 salary. His last appearance was as Abel Drugger in The 
 Alchemist on 27th June 1738. On 15th August following 
 he died, presumably at his residence in Clare Market. 
 He was buried in the Upper Ground (in Portugal Street) 
 of St Clement's Church, a graveyard that was cleared away 
 half-a-century ago to make the grounds of King's College 
 Hospital. On Miller's gravestone was inscribed the follow- 
 ing epitaph, written by Stephen Duck, the " Thresher- 
 poet " on whom Swift wrote a severe epigram : — 
 
 " Here lie the remains of honest Joe Miller, who was a 
 tender husband, a sincere friend, a facetious companion, 
 and an excellent comedian. He departed this life the 15th 
 day of August, 1738, aged 54 years. 
 
 If humour, wit, and honesty could save 
 The humorous, witty, honest from the grave, 
 This grave had not so soon its tenant found, 
 With honesty and wit and humour crown'd. 
 Or could esteem and love preserve our health 
 And guard us longer from the stroke of Death, 
 The stroke of death on him had later fell 
 Whom all mankind esteemed and loved so well.'' 
 
 "May you ever have the luck," said Swift, in his rhapsody 
 " On Poetry," " To rhjone almost as ill as Duck," and the 
 severity seems justified of one who could rhyme, even in an 
 epitaph, such ill-accorded words as health and death. The 
 epitaph is interesting, however, for its triple insistence 
 upon the wit and humour of one who " is vaguely reported 
 to have been of convivicd disposition." 
 
 It has been said that Joe Miller lived in Clare Market, 
 
62 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 and there, according to "very doubtful evidence," he was 
 at one time keeper of a tavern. Other stories say that he 
 was in the habit of frequenting the Bull's Head in Spring 
 Gardens, Gharing Cross, and the Black Jack in Portsmouth 
 Street, Clare Market. It is stated that he was unable to 
 read, and that he married chiefly that he might have some- 
 body always at hand to read his parts to him ! This seems 
 scarcely credible of an actor who evidently won to no 
 mean position in his profession, though it is stated without 
 question in his latest biography.^ Others stories suggest 
 that the collection of " Jests " was associated with his 
 name by way of further jest, for it is said that he was 
 really taciturn and saturnine — ^he, the " lively comic 
 actor " of one critic, the " natural spirited comedian " of 
 another — and " was in the habit of spending his afternoons 
 at the Black Jack, a well-known public-house in Ports- 
 mouth Street, Clare Market, which was at the time 
 frequented by most of the respectable tradesmen of the 
 neighbourhood, who, from Joe's imperturbable gravity, 
 whenever any risible saying was recounted, derisively 
 ascribed it to him. After his death, having left his famUy 
 unprovided for, advantage was taken of this badinage. 
 A Mr Motley, a well-known dramatist of the day, was em- 
 ployed to collect all the stray jests then current on town. 
 Joe Miller's name was prefixed on them, and from that day 
 to this, the man who never uttered a jest, has been the 
 reputed author of every jest, past, present and to come." 
 The whole of this reads like the invention of a nineteenth- 
 century scribe, as he would doubtless have termed himself. 
 Firstly, if the " Jests " had been published for the benefit 
 of Joe Miller's family, how much could those concerned 
 have expected to raise for such a purpose with a slender 
 volume sold at one shilling ? Secondly, if the title was a 
 
 * In The Dictionary of National Biography. 
 
JOE MILLER 63 
 
 jest the point of which was to be understood only by the 
 worthy tradesmen of the neighbourhood who frequented 
 the Black Jack, how could it be expected that it should 
 be appreciated by that wider public whose contributions 
 were desired ? And, yet again, how could Joe Miller have 
 won his imdoubted reputation as comedian, how could 
 even an epitaph have harped upon his wit and humour, had 
 he been taciturn and saturnine ? No ; the story quoted 
 bears the impress of mere invention, or at the least of the 
 result of a little bit invented and a little bit inferred, with 
 which, where facts are skimpy, writers have been known 
 to piece them out. 
 
 Mr W. Carew Hazlitt, who, in the lines quoted at the 
 head of this chapter foretells a fair modicum of immortality 
 for Joe Miller, seems to agree in the idea that the man 
 whose name becomes attached to every good story that has 
 passed current for nine days was the very reverse of a 
 fellow of infinite jest. Speaking of the " Jest Book " he 
 says, " the man whose name was affixed to the venture 
 without his consent or knowledge " — Joe Miller died a year 
 before the book was published ! — " and whose personal 
 capabilities in the joking way were below zero, remains a 
 household word from century to century, like the super- 
 scription over a venerable house of business of partners 
 who have been dead and buried these hundred years, and 
 survive above the door and on the billheads from considera- 
 tions of expediency." Once more, this view cannot be 
 reconciled with the contemporary evidence. 
 
 On the other hand, if we accept the opinion that " the 
 lively comic actor " was the appreciator, and probably the 
 raconteur, possibly even the utterer himself of witticisms, 
 it does not follow that the collection made by " Elijah 
 Jenkins " had any more connexion with him than that 
 of suppljdng posthumously a name which should be of 
 
64 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 advertising value in 1739 as that of a " natural spirited 
 comedian " who had passed away the year before, and 
 whose name was fresh in men's memories. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Let us turn from the vexed question of responsibility 
 to the little book itself which John Mottley gave to the 
 world as Elijah Jenkins, and fathered upon Joe Miller ; the 
 book which, according to Mr Hazlitt, marks " an English 
 Hegira," " the beginning of witty modernity " — beside 
 which " the older collections are archaeological and pre- 
 historic." 
 
 It is a thin volume of seventy pages, containing jests and 
 anecdotes to the number of two hundred and forty-seven. 
 These jests are greatly varied in kind and quality, and 
 range from the baldest puns to real wit, and include many 
 stories of a character better suited to the early eighteenth 
 century than to the twentieth. Here are the first two 
 entries in the famous collection : 
 
 " I. The Duke of A — U, who says more good Things than 
 any Body, being behind the Scenes the First Night of the 
 'Beggar's Opera,' and meeting Cibber there, 'Well, Gibber,' 
 said he, ' how d'you like the " Beggar's Opera " 7 ' ' Why, 
 it makes one laugh, my Lord,' answered he, ' on the Stage ; 
 but how wUl it do in print ? ' ' O ! very well, I'll answer 
 for it,' said the Duke, ' if you don't write a Preface to it.' " 
 
 " 2. There being a very great Disturbance one Evening 
 at Drury Lane Play-House, Mr WUks, coming upon the 
 Stage to say something to pacify the Audience, had an 
 Orange thrown full at him, which he having took up, 
 making a low Bow, ' This is no Civil Orange, I think,' said 
 he." 
 
JOE MILLER 65 
 
 With the third jest Joe Miller himself is brought upon 
 the scene, and represented as but an indifferent joker : 
 
 " Joe Miller sitting one Day in the Window at the Sun- 
 Tavern in Clare Street, a Fish Woman and her Maid passing 
 by, the Woman cry'd, ' Buy my Soals ; buy my Maid's.' 
 ' Ah, you wicked old Creature,' cry'd honest Joe, ' What 
 are you not content to sell your own Soul, but you must 
 sell your Maid's too ? ' " 
 
 Another story told of Joe Miller will not bear repetition, 
 while in another he is merely mentioned as being in the 
 company of the chronicler on a certain occasion. Those 
 three references are all that we have of the actor's con- 
 nexion with the series of stories associated with his name. 
 
 A few of the jests may be given here as indications of 
 the Joe Miller quality, and also as showing how — in some 
 instances — mots ascribed to later wits are veritable 
 " Joe MUlers." Here are three stories about one punster 
 —the third one of the trio having been allotted to several 
 wits of later date than Joe : 
 
 " Daniel Purcel, the famous Punster, and a friend of his, 
 having a desire to drink a glass of wine together, upon the 
 30th of January, they went to the Salutation Tavern upon 
 Holbom HUl, and finding the door shut they knocked at it, 
 but it was not opened to them, only one of the Drawers 
 looked through a little wicket, and asked what they 
 would please to have. ' Why, open your door,' said 
 Daniel, ' and draw us a pint of Wine.' The Drawer said 
 his master would not allow of it that day, it was a fast. 
 ' Damn your master,' cried he, ' for a precise coxcomb, is he 
 not content to fast himself, but he must make his doors 
 fast, too ? " 
 
 " The same gentleman calling for some pipes in a tavern, 
 complained they were too short. The Drawer said, they 
 had no other, and those were but just come in. ' Ay ! ' 
 
66 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 said Daniel, ' I see you have not bought them very 
 long.' " 
 
 " The same gentleman as he had the character of a great 
 punster was desired one night in company, by a gentleman, 
 to make a pun extempore. ' Upon what subject ? ' said 
 Daniel. ' The King,' said the other. ' The King, sir,' said 
 he, • is no subject.' " 
 
 As ready pla37ings upon the double significance of 
 words, these examples are good. The excdlence of the 
 third one has been so generally recognized that each 
 successive generation has freshly allotted it to the most 
 prominent wit of the time. It has been credited to 
 George Colman, to Theodore Hook, to Douglas Jerrold, but 
 I have come across no earlier appearance of the jest than 
 this attribution to Daniel Piircell " the famous punster." 
 
 We are introduced to another " famous punster " in the 
 following somewhat simple play upon a word that has 
 proved tempting to many. " Swan, the famous punster 
 of Cambridge, being a non- juror, upon which account he 
 had lost his Fellowship, as he was going along the Strand, 
 in the beginning of King William's reign, on a very wet 
 day, a hackney-coachman called to him, ' Sir, won't you 
 please to take a coach ? it rains hard.' ' Ay, friend,' 
 said he, ' but this is no reign for me to take coach in.' " 
 
 A good story to which no name is attached, possibly 
 an invention of the compilers, runs as follows : — When 
 Oliver first coined his money, an old Cavalier looking upon 
 one of the new pieces read the inscription. On one side 
 was, " God with us," and on the other, " The Common- 
 wealth of England." " I see," said he, " God and the 
 Commonwealth are on different sides." 
 
 The following is an example of the pun-simple which 
 needs the explanation that " cole " was a cant word — a 
 Scotticism, say the dictionaries — for money and that 
 
JOE MILLER 67 
 
 " burning " signified " roasting " or chaffing : " The late 
 facetious Mr Spiller, being at the rehearsal, on a Saturday 
 morning, the time when the actors are usually paid, was 
 asking another whether Mr Wood, the treasurer of the 
 house, had anything to say to them that morning. ' No, 
 faith. Jemmy,' replied the other ; ' I'm afraid there's no 
 cole.' ' Then,' said Spiller, ' if there's no cole we must 
 burn wood.' " 
 
 Neater is the pun which he gives us in the following : — 
 In the beginning of Queen Anne's reign, three or four 
 drunken Tories, reeling home from the Fountain Tavern 
 in the Strand, on a Sunday morning, cried out : " We are 
 the pillars of the Church." " No," said a Whig, that 
 happened to be in their company, " you can be but the 
 buttresses, for you never come on the inside of it." 
 
 The following has probably done duty many times, it 
 is one of those obvious things which the veriest tyro in 
 the art and mystery of punning would feel shy of using : 
 Of Dr Lloyd, Bishop of Worcester, so eminent for his 
 prophecies, when, by his solicitations and compliance at 
 court, he got removed from a poor Welsh bishopric to a 
 rich English one, a reverend dean of the Church said, that 
 he found his brother Lloyd spelt prophet with an " f." 
 
 Here is a story of a notorious judge, in the days before 
 he had earned und5nng obloquy : When the Lord 
 Jeffreys, before he was a judge, was pleading at the bar 
 once, a country fellow giving evidence against his client 
 pushed the matter very home on the side he swore of. 
 Jeffreys, after his usual way, called out to the fellow : 
 " Hark you, you fellow in the leather doublet, what have 
 you for swearing ? " To which the countryman smartly 
 replied : " Faith, sir, if you have no more for lying than 
 I have for swearing, you may go in a leather doublet too." 
 
 The following, which is also in the original Joe Miller 
 
68 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 collection, is not infrequently repeated as a new jest — I 
 have seen it given even within the present year as a fresh 
 story : A dog coming open-mouthed at a serjeant on the 
 march, he ran the spear of his halbert into his throat and 
 killed him. The owner coming out, raved extremely that 
 his dog was killed, and asked the serjeant why he could 
 not as well have struck at him with the blunt end of the 
 halbert. " So I would," said he, " if he had ran at me 
 with his tail." 
 
 Here is another Joe Millerism which may be cited as 
 an example of the humour which seems to have enjoyed 
 some degree of popularity in the past : A learned Ser- 
 jeant being lame of one leg, and pleading before Judge 
 Fortescue, who had little or no nose, the Judge told him 
 he was afraid he had but a lame cause of it. " Ob, my 
 Lord," said the Serjeant, " have but a little patience, and 
 I'll warrant I prove everything as plain as the nose on 
 your face." 
 
 IV 
 
 Another aspect of Joe Miller may be represented in the 
 following anecdote, which reads like a traditional folk-tale 
 and probably had its origin long before the time of 
 Miller : — " Three or four roguish scholars walking out one 
 day from the University of Oxford, spied a poor fellow 
 near Abingdon asleep in a ditch, with an ass by him, 
 loaded with earthenware, holding the bridle in his hand. 
 Says one of the scholars to the rest, ' If you wiH assist me, 
 I'll help you to a little money, for you know we are bare 
 at present.' No doubt of it they were not long consenting. 
 ' Why, then,' said he, ' we'll go and sell this old fellow's ass 
 at Abingdon ; for you know the fair is to-morrow, and 
 we shall meet with chapmen enough ; therefore do you 
 
JOE MILLER 69 
 
 take the panniers off, and put them upon my back, and 
 that bridle over my head, and then lead you the ass to 
 market, and let me alone with the old man.' This being 
 done accordingly, in a little time after, the poor man 
 awaking, was strangely surprised to see his ass thus 
 metamorphosed. ' Oh, for mercy's sake,' said the 
 scholar, ' take this bridle out of my mouth, and this load 
 from my back.' ' Zoons ! how came you here ? ' cried 
 the old man. ' Why,' said he, ' my father, who is a 
 necromancer, upon an idle thing I did to disoblige him, 
 transformed me into an ass ; but now his heart has 
 relented, and I am come to my own shape again, I beg 
 you will let me go home and thank him.' ' By all means,' 
 said the crockery merchant, ' I do not desire to have any- 
 thing to do with conjurations,' and so set the scholar at 
 liberty, who went directly to his comrades, that by this 
 time were making merry with the money they had sold 
 the ass for. But the old fellow was forced to go the next 
 day to seek for a new one in the fair ; and after having 
 looked on several, his own was shown him for a good one. 
 ' What,' said he, ' have he and his father quarrelled again 
 already? No, no ; I'll have nothing to say to him.' " 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 A WALK DOWN FLEET STREET 
 
 ' Once more, Democritus, arise on earth. 
 With cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth. 
 See motley life in modem trappings dressed 
 And feed with varied fools the eternal jest.'' 
 
 Samuel Johnson 
 
 " T ET us take a walk down Fleet Street " is a saying 
 J—* that most people would unhesitatingly father on 
 Dr Johnson. But for its ascription to him, indeed, the 
 sentence would never have had its lasting vogue, never 
 have become one of the sayings that everybody knows. 
 It was an ingenious invention of George Augustus Sala, 
 but though there is no contemporary record of Johnson's 
 having actually used the words it may safely be assumed 
 that he did. It is easy to realize that, finding himself at 
 tavern or coffee-house in uncongenial company, he should 
 have said to the companion of the moment, Bennet 
 Langton, or Burke, Goldsmith or another, or his particular 
 limpet, James Boswell : " Come, sir, let us take a walk 
 down Fleet Street," with the intention of attending some 
 more attractive gathering. Though the sentence is used 
 here it is not intended to confine the chapter to wit and 
 humour uttered between Temple Bar and Ludgate Circus, 
 but to make it cover the latter half of the eighteenth 
 century, when the great Cham of letters dominated the 
 
 70 
 
A WALK DOWN FLEET STREET 71 
 
 literary world. Another reason that may justify the 
 use of the words in this connexion is that in the annals 
 of wit the work of James Boswell marks an era that is 
 perhaps in some ways more important than the publica- 
 tion of " Joe Miller's Jests." Boswell, who might be 
 regarded as the very prototype of Bums' " chiel amang ye 
 takin' notes," ever on the lookout for some saying wise, 
 witty, or bluntly rude that his great man might utter, 
 started the gentle art of boswellizing. Since his great 
 book was published and achieved success, men have been 
 readier to remember and record the good things that they 
 have heard and the task of the compiler of such becomes 
 that of a selector rather than of a collector. 
 
 In the Johnsonian era such social gatherings as afford 
 the atmospheric conditions in which the lightning of wit 
 plays seem to have increased. The coffee-houses were 
 still flourishing, the clubs were becoming more firmly 
 established as institutions and there was a return to the 
 formal and informal gatherings at the taverns such as had 
 marked the time of " rare Ben." 
 
 II 
 
 Though this chapter is written as it were under the 
 shadow of Johnson's burly figure, the Doctor himself 
 cannot be regarded as one of the great wits. There 
 are many of his sayings on record but often the only 
 surprise about them is that which we feel at their blunt- 
 ness ; his weapon was far oftener the cudgel than the 
 rapier. At times, however, hei could wield the finer 
 implement, and could even turn a| witty compliment when 
 in the right vein, as for example when Mrs Siddons called 
 on him in Bolt Court and the serv^t did not readily bring 
 
72 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 her a chair, Johnson said : " You see, madam, wherever 
 you go, there are no seats to be had." A compliment the 
 more notable in that Johnson generally professed a 
 contempt for actors. 
 
 Mrs Piozzi, indeed, declared that when Johnson had a 
 mind to compliment anybody he did it with more dignity 
 to himself, and better effect upon the company, than any 
 man, instancing his remark to Mrs Montague, who had 
 shown him some plates that had once belonged to Queen 
 Elizabeth : " They had no reason to be ashamed of their 
 present possessor, who was so little inferior to the first." 
 
 There was more of witticism than of criticism in a happy 
 reply of Johnson's to Goldsmith on the latter complaining 
 of the success of Seattle's " Essay on Truth " : " here's 
 such a stir about a fellow who has written one book, and 
 I have written many." " Ah ! " said Johnson, " there go 
 two and forty sixpences to one guinea you know. Doctor." 
 
 The diligent Boswell did not escape some hard knocks 
 from his friend. On one occasion the Scotsman com- 
 plained of the noise of the company the day before, saying 
 that it had made his head ache. " No, sir," said Johnson, 
 " it was not the noise that made your head ache ; it was 
 the sense we put into it." " Has sense that effect on the 
 head ? " Boswell asked, with inconceivable naivete, to have 
 the inevitable answer thundered at him : " Yes, sir, on 
 heads not used to it." Again Boswell ventured to ask if 
 Johnson did not consider that a good cook was more 
 essential to the community than a good poet, to receive 
 the prompt reply : " I don't suppose there's a dog in the 
 town but thinks so." 
 
 There was criticism as well as wit in his reply to a request 
 for his opinion of the pompous title of an insignificant 
 volimie "that it was similar to placing an eight-and- 
 forty pounder at the door of a pigsty." 
 
A WALK DOWN FLEET STREET 73 
 
 A pretentious person, seeking to ingratiate himself in 
 Johnson's favour, took the foolish course of laughing 
 immoderately at everything that he said. The Doctor 
 bore it for some time, but at length finding the impertinent 
 guffaw intolerable broke out with : " Pray, sir, what is the 
 matter ? I hope I have not said anything which you can 
 comprehend." 
 
 To a dyspeptic friend, overfond of discussing his own 
 health, and enlarging upon his symptoms, Johnson offered 
 the snub direct in " Do not be like the spider, man, and 
 spin conversation thus incessantly out of your own 
 bowels." 
 
 There was similar wit in his retort on Garrick when 
 the actor, referring to Johnson's well-known dislike of the 
 Whigs, asked him : " Why did you not make me a Tory 
 when we lived so much together ? You love to make 
 people Tories." " Why," asked Johnson, in an effective 
 reply by interrogation, as he pulled a number of half- 
 pennies out of his pocket, " Why did not the King make 
 these guineas ? " There was stinging double-barbed wit in 
 his remark : " My Lord Chesterfield may be a wit among 
 lords, but I fancy he is no more than a lord among wits." 
 
 It is, I fancy, to Johnson that we may trace the fashion 
 of making Scotland and the Scotch a butt at which to fire 
 the shafts of wit. WTaether Johnson was moved to it by 
 the train of Scots that came south on the rise of Bute to 
 power, or whether he began it by way of playing upon 
 Boswell it would not be easy to decide. The habit, as 
 habits will, grew upon him and many are the amusing 
 exaggerations, now witty, now humorous, inspired by the 
 theme. When someone mentioned that some Scots had 
 taken possession of a barren part of North America, and 
 expressed surprise that they should have chosen it, " Why, 
 sir," said Johnson, " all barrenness is comparative. The 
 
74 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Scots would not know it to be barren." And again when 
 he and Boswell were at Bristol, says the latter : " We 
 were by no means pleased with our inn. ' Let us see now,' 
 said I, 'how we should describe.it.' 'Describe it, sir? 
 Why, it was so bad that — Boswell wished to be in 
 Scotland.' " 
 
 After Boswell had taken Johnson on his personally 
 conducted tour in the north he had the temerity to say : 
 " You have now been in Scotland, sir, and say if you did 
 not see meat and drink enough there." " Why, yes, sir," 
 retorted Johnson, "meat and driak enough to give the 
 inhabitants sufficient strength to run away." He had 
 said something of a similar nature on first meeting with 
 Boswell. The self-important young Scot said : " I find 
 that I am come to London at a bad time, when great 
 popular prejudice has gone forth against us North 
 Britons ; but when I am talking to you I am talking to a 
 large and liberal mind, and you know that I cannot help 
 coming from Scotland." " Sir," said Johnson, " neither 
 can the rest of your countrymen." Then, too, when 
 another Scot in a gathering at the Mitre was defending his 
 country against Johnsonian gibes, insisting that Scotland 
 had a great many noble wild prospects, Johnson retorted : 
 " I believe, sir, you have a great many. Norway, too, 
 has noble wild prospects ; and Lapland is remarkable 
 for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, sir, let me tell 
 you, the noblest prospect which a Scotsman ever sees is 
 the highroad which leads him to England." 
 
 There must have been a spirit of mischief in Johnson 
 which made him harp upon this theme, though it was the 
 very pertinacity of the Scots in trying to make him say 
 something complimentary of their country whichfgave 
 him his|opportunity again and again for further" hits. 
 After his return from his tour in the north he was for 
 
A WALK DOWN FLEET STREET 75 
 
 instance asked by a Scot if he had not acquired a better 
 opinion of Scotland. What did he now think of it ? " That 
 it is a very vile country to be stire," answered the Doctor. 
 " Well, sir," retorted the nettled Scot, " God made it ! " 
 " Certainly He did," came the instant acknowledgment ; 
 " but we must always remember that He made it for 
 Scotsmen and — comparisons are odious, but God made 
 Hell ! " 
 
 In a volume of miscellaneous anecdotes published in 
 1789, five years after Johnson's death, a story is given 
 which shows that even the great Cham at times found a 
 wit able to score off him. The story is given as related 
 by Dr Rutherford — ^who receives no mention as one of 
 Johnson's companions in Boswell's book. 
 
 " It was an aimual custom with Dr Johnson's bookseller 
 (whose name I have forgot) to invite his authors to dine 
 with him ; and it was upon this occasion that Dr Johnson 
 and Dr Rose of Chiswick met, when the following dispute 
 happened between them on the pre-eminency of the Scotch 
 and English writers. In the course of conversation Dr 
 Warburton's name was mentioned, when Dr Rose 
 observed what a proud imperious person he was. Dr 
 Johnson answered, ' Sir, so he was ; but he possessed 
 more learning than has been imported from Scotland since 
 the days of Buchanan.' Dr Rose, after enumerating a 
 great many Scotch authors (which Johnson treated with 
 contempt), said, ' What think you of David Hume, 
 sir ? ' ' Ha ! a deistical, scribbling fellow.' Rose : 
 ' WeU, be it so ; but what say you to Lord Bute ? ' 
 Johnson (with a surly wow, wow) : "I did not know 
 that he ever wrote anything.' Rose : ' No ! I think that 
 he has written one line that has outdone anything that 
 Shakespeare, or Milton, or anyone else ever wrote.' 
 Johnson : ' Pray, what was that, sir ? ' Rose : ' It was 
 
76 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 when he wrote an order for your pension, sir.' Johnson, 
 quite confounded, replied, ' Why, that was a very fine 
 line, to be sure, sir.' " Upon which the contemporary 
 chronicler declares the rest of the company got up and 
 laughed and hallooed, till the whole room was in a roar. 
 
 On another occasion it was Macklin who scored off 
 Johnson. They were discussing some literary subject 
 when the latter quoted a Greek passage. "I do not 
 understand Greek," said the actor. " A man who argues 
 should understand every language, ' ' said Johnson. " Very 
 well," said Macklin, and at once gave a quotation in Irish. 
 
 A slender butcher well known for his pretension to taste 
 which he did not possess took up a volume of Churchill's 
 poems in a bookseller's shop and reading out the line 
 " Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free," then 
 turned to Dr Johnson, who was standing by, and said, 
 " What think you of that, sir ? " " Rank nonsense ! " 
 bluntly replied Johnson ; "it is an assertion without a 
 proof. You might as well say ' Who drives fat oxen, 
 should himself be fat.' " 
 
 Not many of the recorded witticisms bear out the 
 description of them given by Edmund Burke. Someone 
 had observed that Johnson's jokes were the rebukes of 
 the righteous, described in the Scriptures as being like 
 excellent oil. " Yes," said Burke, " oil of vitriol ! " 
 
 III 
 
 Lord Chesterfield — whom Johnson, as we have seen, 
 dubbed a wit among lords and but a lord among wits — is 
 credited with a number of happy retorts. It is true that 
 Malone declares that his lordship's bon-mots were all 
 carefully studied and apparently husbanded with care so 
 
A WALK DOWN FLEET STREET ^^ 
 
 that his listeners should not have to complain of having 
 too much of a good thing. " Dr Warren, who attended 
 him for some months before his death," said Malone, " told 
 me that he had always one ready for him on each visit, 
 but never gave him a second one the same day." The 
 doctor did not apparently make a note of his patient's 
 daily mots, which is a pity as, during an attendance of 
 some months, they would have formed a goodly budget. 
 Several of Chesterfield's sayings are, however, available 
 showing that while he was master of quiet sarcasm he did 
 not disdain to use the lowly pun — the pun-obvious as it 
 might almost be termed in the following example. When 
 it was being debated whether the piers of Westminster 
 bridge should be of stone or wood, Chesterfield is reported 
 to have said : "Of stone to be sure, for we have too 
 many wooden peers at Westminster already." Which 
 suggests that about 1750 Lord Chesterfield had recognized 
 that the House of Lords was, to put it euphemistically, 
 capable of improvement. 
 
 When one of the Spiritual Peers was commending 
 Dryden's translation of Virgil, Lord Chesterfield expressed 
 but qualified agreement, adding, " the original is indeed 
 excellent, but everything suffers by translation — except 
 a bishop ! " On learning of the marriage of a well- 
 known termagant with a notorious gamester he quietly 
 remarked that cards and brimstone made the best matches. 
 It is only fitting that the man whose name is immortally 
 linked with advice — set forth in his famous letters — 
 should himself have been a restrained unexcitable person 
 such as we get indicated in his reply to an agitated official 
 who came rushing into his room exclaiming, " My lord, 
 they're rising in Connaught." " Well, sir," said Chester- 
 field coolly, looking at his watch, " it's nine o'clock, and 
 they ought to be." 
 
78 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Chesterfield having proposed someone as a fitting person 
 to occupy a place of great trust that had fallen vacant 
 found that the King wished to appoint someone else. The 
 Council however resolved not to accept his Majesty's 
 choice and it became the duty of Chesterfield to present 
 the grant of the office for signature. Not to notify this 
 too abruptly he diplomatically begged to know with 
 whose name the King would be pleased to have the blanks 
 filled. " With the Devil's," said his Majesty, in a rage. 
 " And," said the Earl imperturbably, " shall the 
 instrument run as usual — Our trusty and well-beloved 
 cousin and counsellor ? ' ' The King is said to have laughed 
 heartily at the courtier's wit, and at once gave way. 
 
 " Long " Sir Thomas Robinson, nicknamed thus to 
 distinguish him from another baronet of the same name, 
 having asked Chesterfield for some verses, immediately 
 received the following neat epigram : — 
 
 " Unlike my subject now shall be my song ; 
 It shall be witty and it sha'n't be long."- 
 
 When Chesterfield called upon the Duke of Newcastle 
 the Earl was asked to take a seat in an ante-room as his 
 Grace was engaged. The only book at hand was " Garnet 
 upon Job," a volume dedicated to the Duke. On entering 
 the room Newcastle found his visitor so busy reading that 
 he asked him what he thought of the work. " In any other 
 place I should not think much of it," replied Chesterfield ; 
 " but there is so much propriety in putting a volume upon 
 patience in the room where every visitor has to wait for 
 your Grace, that here it must be considered one of the best 
 books in the world." 
 
 Colley Cibber had expressed a wish that he might be 
 succeeded as Poet Laureate by Henry Jones, a bricklayer, 
 who as poet and dramatist gained the patronage of Lord 
 
A WALK DOWN FLEET STREET 79 
 
 Chesterfield. Walpole hearing him mentioned as possible 
 successor to the Laureateship asked as to his qualifications, 
 and Chesterfield replied that a better poet would not take 
 the post — and a worse ought not to have it. 
 
 Johnson's sneer at Lord Chesterfield's capacity for wit 
 is justified rather by its own wit and its utterer's pique 
 than by the fact. 
 
 IV 
 
 A pun according to one version of the inception of Gold- 
 smith's " Retaliation " was indirectly responsible for the 
 addition of a delightful satire to our literature. For 
 Cumberland teUs us that Oliver Goldsmith putting in a 
 belated appearance at a gathering at the St James's Coffee- 
 house was haUed by someone — ^how many punsters have 
 echoed the conceit ! — as " the late Dr Goldsmith." From 
 this came the suggestion of writing the poet's epitaph, and 
 Garrick's impromptu contribution to the series : 
 
 " Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness call'd Noll, 
 Who wrote like an angel, and talk'd like Poor Poll ! " 
 
 Tellingly did Goldsmith retaliate with his poem a few 
 days later. He was greater as a literary than as a conver- 
 sational wit, though it may be that the shy self-conscious- 
 ness of the poet was such that he reserved for his pen things 
 that he had not the sang-froid to say with his tongue. Still 
 there are not wanting some evidences that he took his part 
 in the give-and-take of talk. " Who is this Scots cur 
 at Johnson's heels ? " asked someone, surprised at the 
 Doctor's sudden intimacy with Boswell. " He is not a 
 cur," said Goldsmith, " you are too severe. He is only a 
 bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he 
 has the faculty for sticking." 
 
8o A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 A story of Goldsmith's readiness as a boy has been 
 repeated many times and in varied forms. Here it may be 
 given as it finds its place in Forster's biography of him. 
 There was company one day to a little dance, and the 
 fiddler who happened to be engaged on the occasion, being 
 a fiddler who reckoned himself a wit, received suddenly an 
 Oliver for his Roland for which he had not come prepared. 
 During a pause between two country dances the party had 
 been greatly surprised by little Noll quickly jumping up 
 and dancing a fas seul impromptu about the room, where- 
 upon, seizing the opporttmity of the lad's ungainly look 
 and grotesque figure, the jocose fiddler promptly exclaimed 
 " ^sop ! " A burst of laughter rewarded him, which, 
 however, was rapidly turned the other way by NoU stop- 
 ping his hornpipe, looking round at his assailant, and giving 
 forth in audible voice and without hesitation the couplet 
 which was thought worth preserving as the first formal 
 effort of his genius by Percy, Malone, Campbell, and the 
 rest who compiled the biographical preface to the " Mis- 
 cellaneous Works " on which the subsequent biographies 
 have been founded, but who nevertheless appear to have 
 missed the correct version of what they thought so clever — 
 
 " Heralds, proclaim aloud ! all saying, 
 See iEsop dancing — and his Monkey playing ! " 
 
 Samuel Parr, who is better remembered as a pedagogue 
 than as a clergyman, had a shrewd tongue. Sir Leslie 
 Stephen summed him up as having " Johnson's pomposity 
 without his force of mind, Johnson's love of antithesis 
 without his logical acuteness, and Johnson's roughness 
 without his humour," but added that his personal remarks 
 
A WALK DOWN FLEET STREET 8i 
 
 were pointed though laboured. In many of them the 
 point is assuredly more obvious that the labour. As, for 
 example, when a young clergyman whom he had called a 
 fool said that he should complain to the Bishop. " Do 
 so, by all means," said Parr, " and my Lord Bishop will 
 confirm you." 
 
 Pointed, also, was his reply to a man who had observed 
 that he would not believe anything that he could not 
 understand, " Then, young man, your creed wiU be the 
 shortest of any man's I know." To an antagonist of whom 
 he had but a poor opinion, however, he used the bludgeon 
 rather than the rapier : " You have read a great deal, you 
 have thought very little, and you know nothing." 
 
 The cumulative manner of the last saying was used by 
 Parr more effectively of James O'Quigley who had been 
 executed for high treason : " He was an Irishman — and 
 he might have been a Scotsman ; he was priest — and he 
 might have been a lawyer ; he was a rebel — and he might 
 have been an apostate." The saying is the more pointed 
 when it is known that it was addressed to Sir James 
 Mackintosh, a Scotchman and a lawyer. 
 
 Another story associating Parr with Mackintosh is of 
 the knight taking Parr for a drive when the horse became 
 restive and the scholar became nervous. " Gently, 
 Jemmy," said Parr, " don't irritate him ; always soothe 
 your horse, Jemmy. You'll do better without me. Let 
 me down. Jemmy." The horse was stopped enough for the 
 purpose, and no sooner had Parr safely descended than his 
 advice changed, " Now, Jemmy, touch him up. Never let 
 a horse get the better of you. Touch him up, conquer him, 
 don't spare him. And now I'll leave you to manage him — 
 I'll walk home." 
 
 One of those boring people who will discuss their health 
 had been enlarging upon various sjnnptoms, and came to a 
 
82 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 pause after sajring that he could not go out without catch- 
 ing a cold in the head. " No wonder," commented Parr ; 
 " you always go out without anything in it." 
 
 Dining at a friend's, Parr met a Mr Cumberland who 
 spoke disparagingly of Dr Priestly. The next day Parr 
 met another friend and exclaimed indignantly : " Only 
 think of Mr Cumberland that he should have presumed to 
 talk before me — before me, sir — in such terms of my friend 
 Priestly ! Pray, sir, let Mr DUly know my opinion of Mr 
 Cumberland — ^that his ignorance is equalled only by his 
 impertinence, and that both are exceeded by his malice." 
 
 In a clerical company the conversation had turned upon 
 the then head of the Church. Dr Parr having listened for 
 some time to the strictures of his companions called in apt 
 alliteration's artful aid and broke in with : " Sir, he is a 
 poor paltry prelate, proud of petty popularity, and 
 perpetually preaching to petticoats." 
 
 Dr Parr was very fond of whist, and very impatient of 
 any want of skill on the part of those with whom he was 
 playing. Taking a hand with three poor players he was 
 asked by a friend how he was getting on and replied with 
 cutting sarcasm, " Pretty well, considering that I have 
 three adversaries." 
 
 VI 
 
 Several good things are recorded of some of the lesser 
 men of the Johnsonian time. One of these, Topham 
 Beauclerk, in a retort on Goldsmith utUized a jest which 
 is as old as the Greek anthology where it is written. 
 " Pheidon nor dosed nor touched me ; but, being ill of a 
 fever, I remembered his name, and died." Oliver Gold- 
 smith, in his capacity of doctor, attended a lady of his 
 acquaintance and his opinion differed from that of the 
 
A WALK DOWN FLEET STREET 83 
 
 apothecary already in attendance. The patient preferred 
 the advice of the apothecary, and Goldsmith went off in 
 dudgeon. He would leave off prescribing for his friends. 
 " Do so, my dear Doctor," said Beauclerk ; " whenever 
 you undertake to kill let it be only your enemies." 
 
 On another occasion Topham Beauclerk and Boswell had 
 a passEige-at-arms. " Now that gentleman," averred the 
 Scot, " against whom you are so violent is, I know, a man 
 of good principles." " Then he does not wear them out 
 in practice," retorted Beauclerk. 
 
 Edward Young, the author of the widely known but 
 probably little read " Night Thoughts," would be thought 
 of but by few as deserving of a place among the wits, 
 yet the following story shows him to have had a happy 
 readiness : As the poet was walking in his garden at 
 Welwyn, in company with two ladies, one of whom he 
 afterwards married, the servant came to tell him that a 
 gentleman wished to speak with him. " Tell him," said 
 Young, " I am too happily engaged to change my situa- 
 tion." The ladies insisted that he should go, as his visitor 
 was a man of rank, his patron and his friend. As persua- 
 sion however had no effect, one took him by the right arm, 
 the other by the left, and led him to the garden gate ; 
 when, finding resistaiice was in vain, he bowed, laid his 
 hand upon his heart, and in that expressive manner for 
 which he was so remarkable spoke the following lines : — 
 
 " Thus Adam looked when from the Garden driven, 
 And thus disputed orders sent from Heaven. 
 Like him, I go ; but yet to go am loth ; 
 Like him I go, for angels drive us both : 
 Hard was his fate ; but mine stUl more unkind ; 
 His Eve went with him ; but mine stay behind."- 
 
 The King's Head in Pall Mall was the meeting-place of 
 a club known as the World, and at one of the gatherings it 
 
84 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 was proposed that those present should write epigrams on 
 the glasses. Young begged to be excused as he had no 
 diamond, but on Lord Stanhope promptly offering to lend 
 his the poet took it and wrote : 
 
 " Accept a miracle instead of wit — 
 See two dull lines with Stanhope's pencil writ." 
 
 By so doing Young apparently outdid aU the diamond 
 owners, for his is the only one of the epigrams — a perfect 
 example of wit in compliment — that has come down to us. 
 
 There is a story told of Chatterton which suggests that 
 the " marvellous boy " had in him not only the genius of a 
 poet but the instinct for wit. An old gentleman who had 
 met the youth more than once at the Cyder Cellars had a 
 fancy to play the part of patron cheaply, and invited the 
 young poet to his house to dinner. After the meal some 
 very indifferent wine was put on the table. This, as he 
 filled Chatterton's glass that they might drink to the 
 memory of Shakespeare, he praised extravagantly. The 
 toast was honoured, and tears stood in the poet's eyes. 
 " God bless me ! " said the old gentleman, " you are in 
 tears, Mr Chatterton." " Yes, sir," responded the poet, 
 " this dead wine of yours compels me to shed tears, but by 
 heaven ! they are not the tears of veneration." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 WIT AND HUMOUR OF THE THEATRES 
 -- What they have they give." 
 
 Churchill 
 
 IT has been said by Mr Carew Hazlitt that if the sayings 
 reported of or by actors and authors were subtracted 
 from the grand total of our jests, the residuum would 
 assuredly display a very deplorable shrinkage. Roughly 
 speaking the two professions indicated are responsible for 
 half the witticisms recorded. It may be that the very 
 business in which the energies of actors and authors are 
 mostly engaged is responsible for this result ; both are 
 concerned with the arrangement of words — ^their own or 
 others — and thus are more likely to have the facility 
 fostered for clothing their thought with instantly appro- 
 priate language. It has been said that every man has it in 
 him to tell one story, and so it may be said that everybody 
 has it in him to utter one individual jest. In some the 
 capacity seems early atrophied, in others occasion is kindly 
 and the first successfiil exercise of wit leads to further trials 
 until the faculty is not only strengthened, but comes to 
 work with the readiness of instinct — and the utterer of the 
 witticism scarcely appreciates the point he has made before 
 he has fired it. " Sow an act and you reap a habit, sow a 
 habit and you reap a character," says a philosopher, and 
 
 85 
 
86 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 the truth applies in the world of wit no less than in that of 
 morals. In this we may perhaps recognize the operative 
 cause of so much of our anecdotal accumulation centring 
 in the stage. The theatre forms just such a social atmos- 
 phere as should foster the production of wit and humour, 
 and it is there that we find, since the middle of the eigh- 
 teenth century more especially, the interplay of wits giving 
 birth to wit. A goodly volume of theatrical anecdotes and 
 mots might readily be compiled — indeed such a collection 
 was made more than a century ago— but here I can 
 only give representative witticisms connected with the 
 stage. 
 
 George Meredith has said that a capacity for laughter 
 is a promise of wit to come in a people, and as in their 
 profession actors are accustomed to that part of our litera- 
 ture in which wit in a large measure finds its literary 
 expression, so it may be believed they come to exercise 
 that perception wihch produces fresh wit. There is 
 scarcely an actor of note of whom some stories are not 
 current. This is not to say that there are no such people 
 as dull actors, or that every actor is a wit who should be 
 accompanied by a boswellizing friend; it is merely an 
 attempt to indicate the reason for the truth stated at the 
 beginning of this chapter. Wit needs company for its 
 inception no less surely than for its expression and appre- 
 ciation, and the conditions of theatrical life seem peculiarly 
 beneficial to its development. 
 
 II 
 
 It is not as I have suggested intended to attempt any 
 complete collection of witticisms uttered by actors and 
 other habitues of the theatre, but only to present some 
 
WIT AND HUMOUR OF THE THEATRES 87 
 
 representative mots chiefly from the time of Garrick 
 onwards. 
 
 To Joe Miller himself we owe the preservation of a neat 
 saying of CoUey Gibber, who, as Joe not too kindly put it, 
 " notwithstanding his odes, has now and then said a good 
 thing." The notorious Duke of Wharton said indignantly 
 to the actor that he fully expected to see him hanged or 
 beggared very soon. " If I had your Grace's politics or 
 morals," said the actor-dramatist Poet Laureate, " you 
 might expect both." 
 
 Another theatrical story preserved in the Miller collection 
 is told as follows, with that syncopizing of names which 
 does not disguise them, and may be here altered : The 
 Lord North and Grey, being once at the Theatre Royal in 
 the Ha5miarket, was pleased to tell Mr Heidegger, he would 
 make him a present of one hundred pounds if he could 
 produce an uglier face than his, the said Heidegger's, within 
 a year and a day. Mr Heidegger went instantly and 
 fetched a looking-glass, and presented it to his Lordship 
 saying, he did not doubt his Lordship had honour enough 
 to keep his promise ! 
 
 That Garrick himself had a shrewd tongue there are 
 several tales to testify. When he and Quin were perform- 
 ing at the same theatre and in the same play they left the 
 theatre together. It was a dark and stormy night and each 
 ordered a chair. To the annoyance of Quin, Garrick's 
 chair arrived first. " Let me get into the chair," he said, 
 " and put little Davy in the lantern." " By all means," 
 retorted Garrick " I shall ever be happy to enlighten Mr 
 Quin in anything." Quin so often scored off others that this 
 may be regarded as a hit, a palpable hit. Garrick is also 
 reported as having neatly turned the tables more than once 
 on the author of " Tristram Shandy." Sterne, who could 
 scarcely be regarded as a pattern of conjugal behaviour, 
 
88 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 was one day uttering fine sentiments on marital love 
 and fidelity. " The husband," said he, " who behaves 
 unkindly to his wife deserves to have his house bunft over 
 his head." " If you think so," said Garrick, " I hope 
 that your house is insured \" On another occasion 
 Sterne — of all people ! — said that those authors whose 
 works are marked by indelicate allusions ought, as a warn- 
 ing to others, to be hanged up before their own houses. 
 " It is well for you," dryly returned the actor, " if such is 
 to be the law, that you live in lodgings." 
 
 John Palmer, a popular Dnnry Lane actor, was the son 
 of a man who had been a theatrical billsticker. When he 
 became successful it was noticed that he was very fond of 
 wearing a great display of jewels. This being commented 
 on, " Ah ! " said Garrick " I can remember the time when 
 he carried nothing but paste." 
 
 Garrick was regarded, and probably with reason, as being 
 near to the point of penuriousness, but he had a sense of 
 humour which allowed him to jest at his own failing. A 
 doctor, accustomed to high fees, had been attending the 
 actor for some time and even from this close-fisted patient 
 secured two guineas a visit. Garrick began to grudge this 
 sum and at length decided to halve it and on the termina- 
 tion of a visit handed the doctor the fee which he had 
 resolved was sufficient. The physician began looking 
 about him as though in search of something. Garrick 
 inquired if he had lost anything. " Sir," replied the 
 doctor, " I believe I have dropped a guinea." " No, 
 doctor," said the actor, with quiet significance, "it is I 
 that have dropped a guinea." 
 
 When Garrick and a friend were walking in the country 
 they noticed on a house the inscription : " A goes koored 
 hear ! " " How is it possible," said the friend, " that 
 people such as these can cure agues ? " "I do not know 
 
WIT AND HUMOUR OF THE THEATRES 89 
 
 what their prescription is," replied the actor, " but it is 
 not by a spell." The story is similar to that of Hook and 
 a friend who saw over a country alehouse : " Bear sold 
 here." Hook paused, drew his friend's attention to the 
 words and added : " Evidently their own bruin ! " 
 
 Of nearly every man of whom stories are told in illustra- 
 tion of a readiness to say sharp or amusing things there is 
 to be found recorded a case in which he was the victim of 
 retaliatory wit. That Garrick is no exception to the rule 
 is shown by the following, which I find in an old-time 
 collection of ana : — David Garrick was once on a visit 
 at Mr Rigby's seat, Mistley HaU, Essex, when Dr Gough 
 formed one of the party. Observing the potent appetite 
 of the learned dotcor, Garrick indulged in some coarse 
 jests on the occasion, to the great amusement of those 
 present, the doctor excepted ; who, when the laugh had 
 subsided, thus addressed the company : " Gentlemen, you 
 must doubtless suppose from the extreme familiarity with 
 which Mr Garrick has thought fit to treat me, that I am an 
 acquaintance of his ; but I can assure you that, till I met 
 him here, I never saw him but once before — and then I 
 paid five shillings for the sight." 
 
 Ill 
 
 That Mrs Siddons — the Muse of Tragedy — could on 
 occasion borrow the style of Melpomene's sister Thalia is 
 shown by one or two spirited answers, as for example when 
 hearing someone remark that applause was necessary to 
 actors, to give them confidence, she added : " More, it gives 
 us breath." The father of the actress had always forbidden 
 her to marry an actor, yet she secretly wedded a member 
 of the old gentleman's company. Roger Kemble was 
 
90 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 furious. " Have I not," he thundered, " dared you to 
 marry an actor ? " The daughter replied that she had not 
 disobeyed. " What, madam, have you not allied yourself 
 to the worst performer in ray company ? " " Exactly," 
 she answered, " nobody can call him an actor." Another 
 member of the same family made his first appearance on 
 the operatic stage. His voice however was so bad that the 
 conductor of the orchestra called out to him at rehearsal : 
 " Mr Kemble, Mr Kemble, you are murdering the music." 
 " My dear sir," came the quiet retort, " it is far better to 
 murder it outright than to keep on beating it as you do." 
 Mrs Abington, an actress whom Horace Walpole regarded 
 as superior to Garrick, and by whom Johnson was pleased 
 to be noticed, is said to have been renowned for her wit, 
 though I have found but one anecdote by way of evidence. 
 Stopping at an inn on the Chester road she found that 
 someone had scratched the sentimental words, " Lord 
 M — has the softest lips in the universe, Phillis." At once 
 she scratched beneath it : 
 
 " Then as like as two chips 
 Are his head and his lips. Amarillis." 
 
 When the veteran Macklin was rehearsing Macbeth — 
 which he performed, for the first time since the Restoration, 
 in Scotch costume — he detained the players unusually 
 long at the theatre owing to his want of memory. After 
 the rehearsal was over one of them asked Ned Shuter if he 
 did not think it remarkable that a man so old — Macklin 
 was about seventy-five — should attempt such a character. 
 Shuter replied dryly by lines from the play itself : 
 
 " The time has been 
 That when the brains were out the man would die. 
 And there an end ; but now '•' 
 
 Nearly twenty years before that performance Macklin 
 
WIT AND HUMOUR OF THE THEATRES 91 
 
 had taken a farewell benefit on quitting the stage ; nearly 
 seventeen years after it, at the age of ninety-two, he 
 appeared, really for the last time, as Shylock, but only got 
 through a few lines of his part. It is said that on that 
 final benefit, seeing the actress who was cast for the chief 
 r81e he asked if she was playing, and she answered that she 
 was dressed for Portia. " Ah, very true," said the old man; 
 " but who is to play Shylock ? " Macklin seems more often 
 to have been the butt of other wits than a wit himself, 
 though one story told of him suggests that he possessed 
 a sarcastic humour. He was seated with a friend at the 
 theatre when someone in front of them kept standing up 
 and obscuring their view of the stage. Macklin touched 
 him gently on the arm, and with much seeming civility 
 requested that when he saw or heard anj^hing that was 
 entertaining on the stage to let him and the gentleman 
 with him know of it, "as at present we must totally depend 
 on yotir kindness." The sarcasm, it is said, had the desired 
 effect. Macklin's method might be recommended to those 
 who find their views eclipsed by the headgear monstrosities, 
 often bird-bedecked barbarities, which give point to Mere- 
 dith's statement that woman will be the last thing civilized 
 by man. 
 
 That Nen Shuter, whose application of the lines from 
 Macbeth to Macklin was cruel wit, was gifted also with 
 humour is seen in his ingenious apology for holes in his 
 stockings — " a hole may be the accident of a day, and will 
 pass upon the best gentleman, but a darn is premeditated 
 poverty." 
 
 If the pun is the lowest form of wit, the practical joke 
 may be described even more assuredly as the lowest form 
 of humour, but we may include in this theatrical chapter 
 an anecdote that is told of the thriftless and shiftless 
 Theophilus Gibber, son of the better-known Colley. In 
 
92 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 company with three boon companions, Cibber made an 
 excursion into the country. He had a false set of teeth, 
 one of the friends had a glass eye, another had a cork leg, 
 while the fourth member of the party had a trick of shaking 
 his head. They travelled in a post-coach, and while at the 
 first stage, after each had made merry over his neighbour's 
 infirmity, they agreed that at every halting-place they 
 would ail affect the same singularity. When they stopped 
 for breakfast they were all to squint, and as the countrymen 
 stood gaping round when they alighted — " Od rot it ! " 
 cried one, " how that man squints ! " " Why, dom thee," 
 said a second, " here be another squinting fellow ! " The 
 third was thought to be a better squinter than the other 
 two, and the fourth better than all the rest. At dinner all 
 appeared to have artificial legs, and their stumping about 
 made more diversion than they had done at breakfast. At 
 tea they were all stone deaf ; but at supper, which was at 
 the Ship at Dover, each man resumed his own character 
 the better to play his part in the farce they had arranged. 
 When they were ready to go to bed Cibber called out to 
 the waiter : " Here, fellow, take out my teeth." " Teeth, 
 sir," said the man. " Ay, teeth, sir, unscrew that wire 
 and they'll all come out together." After some hesitation 
 the man did as he was ordered. This was no sooner per- 
 formed than another of the quartet called out: " Here, you, 
 take out my eye ! " " Lord, sir," said the waiter, " your 
 eye ! " " Yes, my eye ; come here, you stupid fellow, 
 pull up that eyelid and it will come out as easy as possible." 
 This done the third called out : " Here, you rascal, take off 
 my leg." This was done with less reluctance, the waiter 
 having already noticed that it was of cork, and believing 
 that it would be the last job. He was, however, mistaken ; 
 the fourth of the party was waiting for his opportunity, and 
 when the waiter was looking at the teeth, the eye, and the 
 
WIT AND HUMOUR OF THE THEATRES 93 
 
 leg laid on the table, cried out in a solemn voice : " Come 
 here, sir, and take off my head ! " Turning round and 
 seeing the speaker's head shaking as though it was loose, 
 the waiter darted out of the room and went headlong down 
 the stairs, declaring that the gentlemen in the room above 
 were all certainly devils. 
 
 IV 
 
 When we reach the nineteenth century, with its vast 
 increase of newspapers, its growing habit of recording 
 things said and done in biographies, reminiscences, recol- 
 lections and memoirs, and also with its further progress 
 of the actor from the ranks of the vagabonds to those of the 
 titled gentry, we find a great body of theatrical ana. And 
 always, from Barrister and Colman to Mathews, from 
 Mathews to Toole, there is some dominant humorist whose 
 sayings are specially remembered and repeated, a humorist 
 who, responsible for many good things, is sometimes 
 credited with those of other men whose names are less 
 familiar, and who has at times veritable " Joe Millers " 
 attached to him by chroniclers who either do not know or 
 wish to give an ancient jest fresh currency by newly stamp- 
 ing it. 
 
 John Poole, the author of " Paul Pry," made happy 
 punning use of the name of an actor. Priest, who was play- 
 ing at one of the principal theatres. A fellow-clubman 
 having expressed surprise at there being so many men in 
 the pit, " Oh," said Poole, " they ajre probably clerks 
 who have taken Priest's orders." 
 
 Of Charles Mathews many stories are told. He went 
 to Wakefield at a time of commercial depression. It was 
 to no pm-pose that his well-known entertaiimient was 
 advertised, the audience was ever scanty. Moving on to 
 
94 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Edinburgh he was asked by a friend if he had not done well 
 in Wakefield. He replied that he had not made a shilling. 
 " Not a shilling ! " echoed the other, " why, did you not 
 go there to star ? " " Yes," said Mathews significantly, 
 " but they spell it with z.vem Wakefield." When asked 
 what profession his son was designed to follow, Mathews 
 said : " Oh, he is going to draw houses — like his father." 
 Meaning, however, that he was to be an architect, not an 
 actor. Another of his puns is recorded in an account of 
 his sitting on a coach on a frosty morning waiting for the 
 driver, and saying when that worthy at last appeared : 
 " If you stand here much longer, Mr Coachman, your 
 horses wUl be like Captain Parry's ships." " How's that, 
 sir ? " inquired Jehu. " Why, frozen at the pole." 
 Another story recorded of Mathews' illustrates the ruling 
 passion strong in death, though it must be added the same 
 story is sometimes told of Sydney Smith, sometimes of 
 Thomas Hood ; it is said that during his last illness the 
 attendant gave him by mistake some ink instead of medi- 
 cine, and discovering his error just too late said : " Good 
 heavens ! I've given you the ink ! " " Never mind, my 
 boy, never mind," came the quiet answer, " I'll swallow 
 a bit of blotting paper." 
 
 The following green-room conversation is said to have 
 taken place on the announcement of the marriage of 
 Madame Vestris with Charles Mathews : " They say," 
 said Mrs Humby, with her air of assumed simplicity, 
 " that before accepting him Vestris made a full confession 
 to him of all her lovers ! What touching confidence ! " 
 she added archly. " What needless trouble ! " said Mrs 
 Orger dryly. " What a wonderful memory ! " wound up 
 Mrs Glover triumphantly. 
 
WIT AND HUMOUR OF THE THEATRES 95 
 
 The latest actor to be associated with innumerable 
 anecdotes was John Laurence Toole, an inimitable come- 
 dian, the hero of many practical jokes and the utterer of 
 numerous amusing and whimsical things. The fun of the 
 thing lay so much in his capacity for acting his jokes that 
 they probably lose much of their savour in mere narration. 
 He was travelling once in a slow train, and a prolonged 
 stay being made at a certain station Toole quietly asked 
 a porter to summon the stationmaster. That official 
 hurried to the carriage where Toole sat as solemn as a 
 judge, " What is it, sir ? " inquired the stationmaster. 
 " At what time is the funeral to take place ? " inquired the 
 actor. " Funeral, sir ! Whose funeral ? " came the be- 
 wildered question. " Whose funeral ? " echoed Toole, 
 pointing to the name of the station, " why, have we not 
 come to Bury St Edmunds ? " 
 
 When he had been appearing in what is now known as 
 a triple bUl, Toole was told by a friend that it was a curious 
 thing, but he was never cut up by the press. " Never cut 
 up ! " said he, " why I often appear in three pieces." 
 
 Making a speech to a gathering of artists at Glasgow, he 
 suggested that " the best thing that an artist could do to 
 improve his taste was — to clean his palette ! " 
 
 Discussing what he regarded as the quackery of the 
 memory- teaching business, Toole suggested as an admirable 
 illustration of the effect of a course of mnemonics the case 
 of a man who paid a couple of guineas for lessons, 
 and at the end of them returned to the place where he 
 had received them, rang the bell, and on being asked what 
 he wanted, said : " I have forgotten my umbrella." 
 
 That Toole was a humorist rather than a wit most of 
 
96 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 the stories told of him go to show, and he was a humorist 
 with just such a taste for the exaggerated humour of the 
 elaborate practical joke as that of Theodore Hook. The 
 following characteristic instance of his love for solemn 
 fooling may be quoted from the entertaining " Reminis- 
 cences of J. L. Toole, related by himself, and chronicled 
 by Joseph Hatton." The scene was York station. 
 
 " We had bought aU the newspapers, and tipped all the 
 porters. Our carriage door was locked. We were to have 
 no companions. Every moment we were expecting the 
 train to start, and every moment it did nothing of the kind. 
 ' Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.' We 
 made several inquiries about the delay of the train ; it was 
 quite a remarkable delay ; it lasted nearly half-an-hour. 
 At last Toole, always bent on amusing me or studying 
 character, said we must ' do something.' They were 
 painting the railway station, and doing the work with much 
 elegance of design and detail. The company is proud of 
 its station at York, as well it might be, and they had 
 evidently resolved that the art spirit of the age shotdd not 
 be neglected in its decoration. The pillars supporting the 
 magnificent roof were of a greyish tint of light blue, with a 
 band of magenta at the base, and here and there at given 
 points of the pillars themselves a similar band breaking 
 into light filigree ornamentation. The armorial bearings 
 of the company were emblazoned on pillars and columns, 
 and altogether the work was of a very artistic character. 
 A painter with a small brush, almost like a camel-hair 
 pencil, was finishing the more delicate details of the most 
 important of the decorations ; he was earnestly engaged 
 upon a piece of foliated work that ran round one of the 
 pillars. 
 
 " Toole called a boy, gave him some coppers, requested 
 him to jog the painter's elbow and ask him — ^referring to 
 
WIT AND HUMOUR OF THE THEATRES 97 
 
 the decorative scroll — ' if he was going to tip it with 
 green.' 
 
 " We were too far away, of course, to hear anything, but 
 we could see the painter offering some kind of explanation 
 to the boy, the boy pointing to our carriage. 
 
 " The boy returned, and said the painter had ' no orders 
 to tip it with green.' 
 
 " Thereupon Toole appealed to the guard, who was an 
 exceptionally anxious-looking person. 
 
 " ' It is always a difficult thing,' Toole said to him, with 
 a grave face, ' to make alterations when you settle the 
 colour of a particular style of decoration ; but the directors 
 have come to the conclusion that the scrollwork round the 
 pillars is too plain — ^wants variety ; and they have decided 
 to have it tipped with green. I wish you would tell the 
 painter there to tip it with green.' 
 
 " ' Well,' said the guard, ' I've no time to spare, sir, but 
 I'll just speak to the stationmaster.' Before Toole could 
 interpose, the guard rushed to the other end of the platform 
 and sent the stationmaster, a courteous and imposing- 
 looking official, to our carriage. 
 
 " I was beginning to laugh, and to wonder how my friend 
 would get out of this unexpected difficulty. 
 
 " ' Keep your countenance,' he said, ' it's all right.' 
 
 " The statioimiaster came up. 
 
 " ' Oh, about the painting of the station ? ' said 
 Toole. 
 
 " ' Yes, sir ; what is it ? ' 
 
 " ' Well, we had a meeting yesterday, and we think it 
 would be wise to relieve the decoration with a little green. 
 You see it's rather monotonous, that blue and magenta ; 
 and although the contract has been given out, and actually 
 begun, we reconsidered it yesterday on good advice — I was 
 speaking to the inspector — and we have had a good deal 
 
g8 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 of — of — of talk about it. A little thing makes such a 
 difference, doesn't it ? ' 
 
 " ' Well, it does,' said the stationmaster. 
 
 " ' And we thought that if a little orange or green were 
 introduced into the filigree work on the pillars — it would 
 be an improvement. Of course you can never quite tell 
 what the effect will be imtU you see a thing, but I am quite 
 sure it would be better if it was tipped with green. Will 
 you be good enough to tell the man there who is at work — 
 an excellent man, knows his business, I'm sure — will you 
 just tell him to tip it with green ? ' 
 
 " ' Certainly,' said the stationmaster, going off with an 
 official stride to the painter. We watched the encounter, 
 noting the action of the stationmaster, who was evidently 
 explaining Toole's views. 
 
 " The painter paused for a moment or two in his work 
 and made some response to the stationmaster, who returned 
 to us. 
 
 " ' Well,' said Toole, " what does he say ? ' 
 
 " ' He says the foreman of the works is away just now, 
 gone to his dinner, and he has no orders to introduce any 
 other colour ; but he wUl speak to the foreman about it.' 
 
 " ' Ah,' said Toole, ' thank you very much. Shall you 
 see the foreman of the works this afternoon ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes, sir, I shall.' 
 
 " ' Well, now, will you be good enough to jog his memory 
 about it ; and tell him we wish it to be tipped with green ? ' 
 
 " ' I will, sir, certainly,' said the stationmaster. 
 
 " The train moved quietly out of the station and brought 
 us alongside the painter. As we passed him, Toole, with 
 a broad grin on his face, called out : ' Hi ! you there ! 
 painter ! ' 
 
 " The man turned round a little angrily. 
 
 " ' Tip it with green ! ' said Toole. 
 
WIT AND HUMOUR OF THE THEATRES 99 
 
 " The painter laid down his brush, looked a trifle savage, 
 then gradually relapsed into a broad grim, and waved his 
 brush at us, as he realized the situation and caught on the 
 artificial breeze created by the passing train Toole's 
 parting words — ' Tip it with green ! ' " 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 QUIN, FOOTE, BANNISTER, COLMAN 
 
 ' Constant to none, Foote laughs, cries, struts and scrapes. . : 
 
 Real worth of every growth shall bear 
 Due praise, nor must we, Quin, forget thee there.'' 
 
 Churchill 
 
 OF the four men who may be taken as representative 
 wits associated with the theatre, wits whose sayings 
 were so many and so pointed that they have perhaps been 
 credited with some things which they never said, the 
 earUest is James Quin, whose bon-mots were much repeated 
 in the eighteenth century. Horace Walpole, by no means 
 a critic given to the overpraising of his contemporaries, 
 wrote to a friend in 1765 : " Though I have httle to say, it 
 is worth while to write, only to tell you two bon-mots of 
 Quin, to that tmrncoat, hypocrite, infidel, bishop Warbur- 
 ton. That saucy priest was haranguing at Bath in behalf 
 of prerogative. Quin said, ' Pray, my lord, spare me, you 
 are not acquainted with my principles, I am a republican ; 
 and perhaps I even think that the execution of Charles the 
 First might be justified.' ' Aye ! ' said Warburton, ' by 
 what law ? ' Quin replied : ' By all the laws he had left 
 them.' The bishop would have got off upon judgments, 
 and bade the player remember that all the regicides came 
 to violent ends ; a lie, but no matter. ' / would not 
 advise your lordship,' said Quin, ' to make use of that infer- 
 
 100 
 
QUIN, FOOTE, BANNISTER, COLMAN loi 
 
 ence, for if I am not mistaken, that was the case of the twelve 
 apostles.' There was great wit ad hominem in the latter 
 reply, but I think the former equal to anything I ever 
 heard. It is the sum of the whole controversy in eight 
 monosyllables, and comprehends at once the King's guilt 
 and the justice of punishing it. The more one examines 
 it, the finer it proves. One can say nothing after it, so 
 good night." 
 
 In continuation of that story it may also be said that it 
 was Quin who declared that on the 30th of January " every 
 King in Europe must rise with a crick in his neck." 
 
 Quin, who is described in The Dictionary of National 
 Biography as " almost a great actor," was assuredly a 
 great wit. The illegitimate son of an Irish barrister, 
 James Quin was born in King Street, Covent Garden, on 
 24th February 1683. He was educated in Dublin, and was, 
 it is believed, for a short time at Trinity College. When 
 he was about seventeen his father died, leaving him unpro- 
 vided for, and he at once took to the stage. By the time 
 he was one and twenty he removed to London, and in 1715 
 was acting at Drury Lane, and the following year, having 
 on an emergency to take the part of Bajazet in Tamer- 
 lane, at once won popularity. Thenceforward, at Drury 
 Lane, Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden he was 
 an established favourite. In 1721 at the second-named 
 theatre he was one of the principals in a " scene " which 
 was the cause of a guard of soldiers being sent to the 
 Lincoln's Inn house as well as to Drury Lane. " A drunken 
 nobleman forced his way on the stage, and, in answer to 
 Rich's remonstrance, slapped the manager's face. The 
 blow was returned with interest, and a fracas ensued, in 
 which Rich's life was only saved by the promptitude of 
 Quin, who came to Rich's rescue with his drawn sword in 
 his hand." That he would not have hesitated to use the 
 
102 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 sword may be gathered from the fact that he had twice 
 before been principal in duels with other actors and in each 
 case had killed his opponent. He was adjudged guilty of 
 manslaughter after one of these encounters, but escaped 
 with a light penalty. 
 
 During part of Quin's stage career he and Garrick were 
 rivals, and though at Covent Garden they appeared for a 
 time together, there seems to have been some degree of 
 jealousy between them. For a time there was estrange- 
 ment, but Quin became reconciled to the younger actor, 
 and often visited him at his villa at Hampton. In 1751 
 Quin retired, and in 1766 he died at Bath. Though prob- 
 ably vain of his success, and certainly quarrelsome, he 
 seems to have been a kindly and generous man. Twice 
 having talien part after his retirement in benefits for a 
 fellow-actor, he was solicited to do so a third time, but 
 replied : " I would play for you if I could, but will not 
 whistle Falstaff for you. I have willed you ;fiooo ; 
 if you want money you may have it, and save 
 my executors trouble." Churchill, in the " Rosciad " is 
 somewhat severe upon Quin, especially enlarging upon a 
 fault which has been charged against some actors of more 
 recent date : 
 
 " In fancied scenes, as in life's real plan. 
 He could not for a moment sink the man. 
 In whate'er cast his character was laid. 
 Self stiU, like oil, upon the surface played. 
 Nature, in spite of all his skill, crept in : 
 Horatio, Dorax, Falstaff — still 'twas Quin." 
 
 In one of the early letters of " Humphrey Clinker " 
 SmoUett bears testimony to the character of Quin in a way 
 which suggests that, as the late Joseph Knight bluntly 
 put it, many of the things said of the actor are mere lies. 
 " So far as I am able to judge," writes Jerry Melford to a 
 
QUIN, FOOTE, BANNISTER, COLMAN 103 
 
 friend, " Quin's character is rather more respectable than 
 it has been generally represented. His bon-mots are in 
 every witling's mouth ... he is certainly one of the best- 
 bred men in the kingdom. He is not only a most agree- 
 able companion, but, as I am credibly informed, a very 
 honest man ; highly susceptible of friendship, warm, 
 steady, and even generous in his attachments, disdaining 
 flattery, and incapable of meanness and dissimulation." 
 It may be added that he was a bon vivant, and that he is 
 credited with first having introduced the John Dory " to 
 the tables of the delicate." 
 
 II 
 
 Before giving some of Quin's witty or humorous 
 sayings, an anecdote of the rivalry between him and 
 Garrick may be repeated. When the younger actor first 
 took the town Quin found himself more or less forsaken, 
 and on learning that the theatre in Goodman Fields was 
 nightly crowded he said : " Garrick is a new religion. 
 Whitfield was followed for a time, but they will all come 
 to Church again." The words were of course repeated to 
 Garrick, who replied with the following epigram : — 
 
 " Pope Quin, who damns all churches but his own. 
 Complains that heresy corrupts the town : 
 Schism, he cries, has turned the nation's brain, 
 But eyes will open and to church again. 
 Thou great infallible, forbear to roar ; 
 Thy bulls and errors are revered no more ; 
 When doctrines meet with general approbation 
 It is not heresy, but reformation." 
 
 When Quin was lamenting one day that he grew old, an 
 impertinent young man asked : " What would you give to 
 
104 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 be as young as I am ? " "I would even submit," re- 
 torted the veteran, " to be almost as foolish." 
 
 Quin was at a Southampton assembly where the tem- 
 porary master of the ceremonies was one of the masters 
 of the mint. A lady having taken up a position in what 
 the master of the ceremonies thotight an unfitting place 
 he desired her to move. Quin, who was standing by, 
 interfered, saying that she should not stir : he would be 
 her defence. On this the master of the ceremonies flew 
 into a rage, saying, " Quin was nothing but a stroller and 
 a vagabond, and if it was not for his patent, he would be 
 sent to the House of Correction." " Ay," said Quin 
 dryly, " t'hat may be, and if it were not for your patent 
 you would be hanged." 
 
 On his removal to Bath after his retirement the actor 
 found himself extravagantly charged for everything, 
 and at the end of the week complained of this to Beau 
 Nash, saying that he had invited him to Bath as being the 
 cheapest place in England for a man of taste and a bon 
 vivant. Nash, himself no mean utterer of wit, replied 
 sa3dng that his townsmen had acted upon truly Christian 
 principles. " How so ? " demanded Quin. " Why," 
 concluded the Beau, " you was a stranger and they took 
 you in." " Ay," retorted Quin, " that is so, but they 
 have fleeced me instead of clothing me." 
 
 It was at Bath, too, that after Quin had set the table in 
 a roar by some sally, a nobleman not distinguished for 
 brilliancy said : " What a pity it is, Quin, that a clever 
 fellow like you should be only a player." " Why," retorted 
 the wit, " what would you have me be — only a lord ? " 
 
 Quin does not seem to have been wanting in that coolness 
 which remained undaunted at a difficult moment. A 
 gentleman whom he had offended met him in a great rage 
 and exclaimed : " Mr Quin, I understand, sir, you have been 
 
QUIN, FOOTE, BANNISTER, COLMAN 105 
 
 taking away my name." " What have I said, sir ? " 
 asked the actor. " You, you called me a scoimdrel ! " 
 " Well, sir, keep your name," said Quin, and walked on. 
 
 A would-be actor had been displaying his talents before 
 Quin with the object of enlisting his help, and had delivered 
 one or two speeches in a vile manner when Quin asked if 
 he had done anything in comedy. " Yes," answered he 
 eagerly " Abel in The Alchemist." " You mistake, boy," 
 commented the wit, " it must have been the part of Cain 
 you acted — for I'm sure you murdered Abel." 
 
 The wit effectively satirized the Ministry, on being asked 
 what it was doing, by telling a brief story which he said 
 was exactly applicable to the situation — a story which 
 might well serve the purposes of Opposition critics again 
 and again. The story runs : " The master of a vessel 
 calls down the hatchway, ' Who is there ? ' A boy 
 answered : ' Will, sir ! ' ' What are you doing ? ' ' No- 
 thing, sir ! ' 'Is Tom there ? ' ' Yes, sir,' says Tom. 
 ' What are you doing ? ' ' Helping Will, sir ! ' " 
 
 Like other of the wits Quin could turn his quickness of 
 apprehension to neat compliment, as when a lady having 
 asked why it was that there were more women than men 
 in the world, he replied : " Madam, it is in conformity with 
 the other arrangements of nature ; we always see more of 
 heaven than of earth." 
 
 Some of the stories of Quin's humour suggest the drollery 
 of Sydney Smith, as, for instance, that of his being asked 
 why he objected to angling, and replying : " Suppose some 
 superior being should bait a hook with venison, and go 
 a-Quinning, I should certainly bite ; and what a sight 
 should I be dangling in the air ! " 
 
 A popular pleasantry with regard to the weather — one 
 that does duty again and again — seems traceable back to 
 Quin. He was asked one wet and cold July whether he 
 
io6 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 ever remembered such a summer. " Yes," said he, in all 
 seriousness, " last winter." 
 
 If Quin showed a keen wit, and a lively humour, he was 
 also not above indulging in practical joking if we are to 
 accept the following as a true anecdote. It was published 
 in a collection a few years after the actor's death. As Quia 
 and another gentleman were passing one evening through 
 St Paul's Churchyard their attention was attracted by a 
 mob of people who were assembled to hear a man relate, 
 " That there had been a chimney on fire in the Borough ; 
 that he had seen, with his own eyes, the engines go, in 
 order to extinguish it ; but that it was quite got under 
 before they arrived." Upon seeing the attention of such 
 a concourse of people attracted by so very unentertaining 
 a detail, Mr Quin and his friend could not help reflecting 
 upon the natural curiosity of Englishmen, which was 
 excited by the most trifling circumstances, and very 
 frequently by no circumstance at all. " Let us try," said 
 Quin, " an experiment upon our countrjmien's curiosity." 
 This was immediately agreed to ; and they accordingly 
 repaired to the other side of the churchyard, where, having 
 taken a convenient stand, and staring up to the stone 
 gallery, Quin gravely said : " This is about the time." 
 " Yes," replied the other, taking out his watch and looking 
 at it under a lamp, " this was precisely the time when it 
 made its appearance last night." They had now collected 
 at least a dozen inquisitive spectators, who, fixing their 
 eyes upon the building, asked " what was to be seen." 
 To this Mr Quin replied " that the ghost of a lady who had 
 been murdered had been seen to walk round the rails of 
 the stone gallery for some evenings, and she was expected 
 to walk again to-night." This information was presently 
 spread through the multitude, which by this time was 
 augmented to at least a hundred. All eyes were fixed upon 
 
QUIN, FOOTE, BANNISTER, COLMAN 107 
 
 the stone gallery, and imagination frequently supplied 
 the place of reality in making them believe that they saw 
 something move on the top of the balustrade. The joke 
 having thus taken, Quin and his companion withdrew, 
 went and passed the evening at the Half-Moon Tavern, in 
 Cheapside, and upon their return, between twelve and one, 
 the crowd stUl remained in eager expectation of the ghost's 
 arrival. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Samuel Foote, who was both actor and dramatist, was 
 born in 1720, when Quin was in the early years of his 
 popularity, and outlived him by eleven years, dying at 
 Dover in 1777, and being buried in Westminster Abbey. 
 Bom of well-to-do parents at Truro, young Foote went to 
 Oxford, where he was soon conspicuous for his gallantry 
 and extravagant way of living. Leaving the university 
 without permission, he forfeited his scholarship, and passed 
 on to London and the Temple with less desire of studying 
 law, it may be believed, than of living a fashionable life. 
 When he was one and twenty, one of his uncles murdered 
 the other, and Foote coolly told the full, true and particular 
 account of the tragedy in a pamphlet, either to make a few 
 pounds or else from sheer love of notoriety. He went on 
 the stage as a " gentleman " — that is to say, as an amateur 
 — but without any success, and then journeyed to Paris, 
 where he stayed for a time. On his return to London he 
 began work as a playwright, and soon took seriously to 
 the stage. His powers of mimicry, his drollery, his wit and 
 irrepressible good spirits won him attention not only in the 
 theatre, but also in social circles. In 1766 — the victim of 
 a practical joke — he lost a leg, and not only made a jest of 
 the misfortune but insisted upon continuing his career as 
 
io8 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 actor, securing a patent which rendered it no longer 
 necessary to give his performances, as he had been doing, 
 as mere accompaniments to " tea " or " chocolate " 
 because of the monopolies of Drury Lane and Covent 
 Garden. As playwright, Foote met with considerable 
 success, and some of his pieces continued to be enacted on 
 into the nineteenth century. The detailed story of his 
 life need not here be told ; he was one of the gayest, most 
 irresponsible, most conscienceless and entertaining men of 
 his time ; a fearless satirist, an entirely unselfconscious 
 buffoon, he is chiefly interesting to us as the central 
 figure of a number of stories. Even Samuel Johnson 
 could not long withstand the fun of Samuel Foote, for 
 as he said : " The first time I was in company with 
 Foote was at Fitzherbert's. Having no good opinion 
 of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased ; and it is 
 very difficult to please a man against his wiU. I went on 
 eating my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him. 
 But the dog was so very comical that I was obliged to lay 
 down my knife and fork, throw myself back upon my 
 chair, and fairly laugh it out. No, sir, he was irresistible." 
 
 IV 
 
 The stories of Foote's readiness of repartee, of the appli- 
 cation of things seemingly remote to the matter in hand, 
 of his drollery and almost uproarious humour are almost 
 innumerable ; more are to be found of him than of any 
 half-dozen of his contemporaries and successors, said 
 Joseph Knight. A few of them are here given. A success- 
 ful doctor being about to set up his carriage was 
 considering what motto he should adopt, when Foote 
 said that that surely depended upon his arms. The 
 
FROM AN E\'<;RA\-[NG liV T. 
 
 SAMUEL FOOTE 
 
 BLACKMORE AFTER THE PAINTING BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 
 
QUIN, FOOTE, BANNISTER, COLMAN 109 
 
 doctor replied that his arms consisted of " three mallards." 
 " Very good," said Foote, " then the motto I would recom- 
 mend you is : ' Quack, Quack, Quack.' " Similar is the 
 story of Davenport, a tailor, who having made a fortune 
 was also in search of a motto for his coach. " Latin or 
 English ? " inquired Foote. " English to be sure, I don't 
 want to set up for a scholar." " Then I've got one from 
 Hamlet that will suit you to a buttonhole — ' List ! 
 List ! oh, List ! ' " 
 
 We have seen that Quin regarded the Ministry as a party 
 of men helping each other to do nothing. Foote regarded 
 them as in a measure active, for on a friend in a coffee- 
 house taking up a paper, " to see what the Ministry were 
 about," he promptly advised him to " look among the 
 robberies." On another occasion, being asked how it 
 happened that the highest places, the more notable appoint- 
 ments were not given to persons who excelled in knowledge 
 and judgment, but mostly to those deficient in such 
 qualities, he dryly replied : " It is an established custom, 
 which promises never to be forgotten, to lay the heaviest 
 loads on asses, not men." 
 
 Foote had many digs at Garrick in consequence of the 
 great actor's reputation , for penuriousness, and some on 
 more general matters. One night in very hot weather 
 he announced The Lying Valet as an afterpiece to The 
 Devil upon Two Sticks, when Garrick meeting him 
 called out, " Well, Sam, I see after aU you are glad to take 
 up with one of my farces." " Why, yes, David," answered 
 Foote, " what could I do better ? I must have some 
 ventilator for this hot weather." 
 
 The actor was one day taken into White's Club by a 
 friend who wished to write a note. Lord Carmarthen 
 approached, but feeling somewhat shy merely said : " Mr 
 Foote, your handkerchief is hanging out of your pocket." 
 
no A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Foote looked suspiciously round, and hurriedly thrusting 
 the handkerchief back into his pocket replied : " Thank you, 
 my lord ; you know the company much better than I do." 
 
 Perhaps the happiest hit at Gaxrick's meanness was 
 made when that actor had been satirizing someone rather 
 unmercifully, and then stopped abruptly saying : " Well, 
 well, perhaps before I condemn another I should pull the 
 beam out of my own eye." " And so you would," com- 
 mented Foote, " if you could sell the timber." 
 
 A piece by an author named St John having been 
 damned on the night of its production, a Frenchman asked 
 Foote for the name of the author, and on learning it said : 
 "5^ Jean, St Jean, quel St Jean?" "Oh, Monsieur," 
 said Foote, " le gentilhomme sans la tete." 
 
 Having listened for some time to the scolding of a warm- 
 tempered lady, Foote said : "I have heard of tartar, and 
 I've heard of brimstone — and by Jove ! madam, you are 
 the cream of the one and the flower of the other." 
 
 Another of Foote's humorous embroiderings is reminis- 
 cent of some of the stories of Sydney Smith. A farmer 
 who had recently buried a rich relation, an attorney, was 
 complaining of the great expense of funerals in the country. 
 " Why," said Foote, as though greatly surprised, " do you 
 bury your attorneys here ? " " Yes, to be sure we do. 
 What else should we do with 'em ? " said the farmer. " Oh, 
 we never do that in London," responded Foote. " No ? " 
 said the countrjnnan ; " how do you manage then ? " 
 " Why, when the patient happens to die," explained the 
 actor, " we lay him out in a room overnight by himself, 
 lock the door, throw open the window, and in the morning 
 he is gone ! " " Indeed," exclaimed the aniazed farmer ; 
 " what becomes of him ? " " Why, that we cannot exactly 
 tell," came the reply ; " all we know is there's a strong 
 smell of brimstone in the room the next morning ! " 
 
QUIN, FOOTE, BANNISTER, COLMAN in 
 
 Foote came one night into the Bedford, where Garrick 
 was seated, and began giving an account of a most wonder- 
 ful actor whom he had just seen. Garrick was on tenter- 
 hooks of suspense, and there Foote is said to have kept him 
 for an hour. At last, compassionating his suffering listener, 
 Foote brought the attack to a close by asking Garrick 
 what he thought of Mr Pitt's histrionic talents, and Garrick, 
 glad of the release, declared that if Pitt had chosen the 
 stage he might have been the first actor upon it. In this 
 the low comedian played upon the tragedian's professional 
 jealousy, and on another occasion, at the same place, he 
 made a happy jest at Garrick's nearness in money matters. 
 The two were about to leave the Bedford together, when 
 Foote, in paying the bill, dropped a guinea, and not finding 
 it at once said : 
 
 " Where on earth can it be gone to ? " 
 
 " Gone to the devil, I think," replied Garrick, who had 
 been assisting in the search. 
 
 " Well said, David ! " was Foote's reply ; "let you alone 
 for making a guinea go further than anybody else." 
 
 One Dr Barrowby, who was regarded as the news- 
 monger of the Bedford Coffee-house, has left a sketch of 
 Samuel Foote as he appeared when he first began to 
 make the Bedford one of his chief haunts : 
 
 " One evening he saw a young man extravagantly 
 dressed out in a frock suit of green and silver lace, bag- 
 wig, sword, bouquet, and point ruffles, enter the room 
 and immediately join the critical circle at the upper end. 
 Nobody recognized him, but such was the ease of his bear- 
 ing, and the point of humour and remark with which he 
 at once took up the conversation, that his presence seemed 
 to disconcert no one, and a sort of pleased buzz of ' Who 
 is he ? ' was still going round the room unanswered, when 
 a handsome carriage stopped at the door ; he rose and 
 
112 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 quitted the room, and the servants announced that his 
 name was Foote, that he was a young gentleman of family 
 and fortune, a student of the Inner Temple, and that the 
 carriage had called for him on its way to the assembly of 
 a lady of fashion." 
 
 The same doctor later raised the laugh against the new 
 patron of the Bedford, for when Foote was ostentatiously 
 showing a gold repeater with the remark, " Why, my 
 watch doesn't go ! " he quietly observed : " It soon will 
 go." 
 
 Two other anecdotes of Samuel Foote may be given, 
 as both illustrate his humour if not his wit. He was ob- 
 served one day by his brother the parson and some friends 
 standing in a pensive attitude in the kitchen garden of 
 Carlton House. " What the devil is Sam doing yonder 
 among the cabbages ? " asked a gentleman of Parson 
 Foote. " Let's go and see," said the parson. Accord- 
 ingly these two with some ladies went out to the garden 
 where the actor stood. " What are you doing there, Mr 
 Foote ? " asked one of the ladies. " Why, madam," 
 replied he, " I'm in raptures." " In raptures ! " said the 
 lady. " With what ? " " With a cabbage stalk," re- 
 sponded Foote, and immediately began the following 
 dissertation upon it : — 
 
 " A cabbage stalk, ladies and gentlemen, what shall 
 I say of a cabbage stalk ? The first part of it to be con- 
 sidered is the root, for without the root, nothing can be 
 said on the matter. Well, then the root ! — observe the 
 root, ladies. See the numerous filaments by which it 
 receives its nurture. Were ye, ladies, but as deeply rooted 
 in love, your fruits might be as answerable. But, to speak 
 
QUIN, FOOTE, BANNISTER, COLMAN 113 
 
 in general terms, were we but as deeply rooted in mutual 
 friendship, our fruits would be as estimable. But, on 
 the contrary, we had rather vegetate in a vicious soil, and 
 on avarice, which is the root of all evil, and graft the whole 
 fraternity of vices. 
 
 " There is another reason, ladies and gentlemen, why I 
 begin with the root of this cabbage ; because it represents 
 the exordium of a discourse ; the stalk is the ratiocination 
 or argumentative part, and the head is the conclusion. 
 
 " The root of this cabbage I shaU compare to the King 
 — ^because, you see, as all power and honour are derived 
 ultimately from his Majesty, so the stalk and head of this 
 same cabbage derive as idtimately their existence from the 
 root. And, d'ye see, as this stalk and this head are recipro- 
 cally an honour to the root, so his Majesty is indebted to 
 his subjects for his wealth, his power, and his magnificence. 
 
 " The root, I say, is the King ; and the stalk, then, shall 
 be the nobUity and gentry. And, let me see, what shall 
 be the head of the cabbage ? — Why, the common people ; 
 — ay, the common people are the head of the nation. 
 
 " Hey ? — ^What ? — ^Ay ! — I'm right in my logic, surely. 
 This cabbage stalk is hollow ; and how many human 
 cabbage stalks are there in this vast garden the world — 
 Hey ? How many hj^ocrites ? — ^This stalk was once of a 
 lovely green, full of sap, but now dried and withered. 
 And what is the fate of man but that of a cabbage stalk ? 
 Nay, my little preaching puppy of a brother here, who 
 stands by me, must, if he wishes to display his oratorial 
 powers, actually imagine that his hearers are all cabbage 
 stalks ! It will be then that soft persuasion, like Hyblsean 
 honey, will flow from his lips ; then that the blaze of 
 eloquence will warm his audience ; — ^then — ^but, by Jupiter, 
 'tis dinner-time — ^my reflections are over — so there is an 
 end of my dissertation on a cabbage stalk." 
 
114 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 The other story is generally credited to Foote, though 
 Mr Percy Fitzgerald in his recent biography of the actor- 
 wit casts doubt upon its being his, and points out that it is 
 also sometimes fathered on Quin, andthatitsfirst-knownap- 
 pearance in print was in one of Maria Edgeworth's stories 
 in 1825. It has also, I may mention, been ascribed to 
 Curran, but untU further evidence is forthcoming it is 
 likely to remain attached to the name of Foote, and there- 
 fore is included here. When Macklin was giving mis- 
 cellaneous lectures at the coffee-house which he had set 
 up after his first retirement from the stage, Foote is said 
 to have been a frequent attendant, and an invariable 
 quizzer. On one occasion when speaking of memory 
 Macklin claimed for himself that on one reading he could 
 learn anything by rote. Foote waited untU the close of 
 the lecture and then gravely handed up the following 
 famous piece of nonsense, asking that the lecturer would 
 be good enough to read the words once and then repeat 
 them from memory : — 
 
 " So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf, to 
 make an apple pie ; and at the same time a great she-bear 
 coming up the street pops its head into the shop. ' What ! 
 No soap ? ' So he died, and she very imprudently married 
 the barber ; and there were present the Picaninnies, and 
 the JoblUlies, and the Garyulies, and the grand Panjan- 
 drum himself, with the little round button at top ; and 
 they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can, till 
 the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots." 
 
 VI 
 
 Another eighteenth-century actor to whom many of the 
 anecdotes of the time were attributed was Charles Ban- 
 
QUIN, FOOTE, BANNISTER, COLMAN 115 
 
 nister, father of John Bannister, who won greater fame on 
 the stage as one of the brightest stars in " the galaxy of 
 comic actors which marked the close of the last and the 
 beginning of the present [nineteenth] century." Born in 
 Gloucestershire about 1738, Charles Bannister's boyhood 
 was passed at Deptford, where his father held an official 
 position. There he early had the run of the theatre and 
 there, it is said, before he was eighteen he performed as 
 a gentleman amateur not only Romeo but Richard the 
 Third. Having sought an engagement with Garrick un- 
 successfully he joined the Norwich circuit, afterwards 
 reaching London as an assistant to Foote. Later he was 
 at Drury Lane and other of the leading theatres, and came 
 to be known not only as a capable actor but as one of the 
 notable social figures of his time, owing to his good nature, 
 his easy-going habits and his readiness in rejoinder. 
 
 Meeting in Covent Garden a couple of stage friends arm- 
 in-arm — Dignum and Moses Kean, both of whom had been 
 tailors — " I never see these men together," said Baimister, 
 " but they put me in mind of Shakespeare's comedy 
 Measure for Measure." 
 
 The author of a farce entitled Fire and Water was 
 nervous as to the reception of his piece. " Oh ! " said 
 Bannister confidently, " its fate is assured." " What 
 fate?" inquired the anxious author. " What fate!" 
 echoed Bannister, " why, what can fire and water produce 
 but a hiss ? " 
 
 A celebrated singer noted almost as much for his awk- 
 ward manners as for his melodious voice was explaining 
 to Bannister that he attributed that voice to the fact that 
 as a boy of fifteen he had swallowed by accident some 
 train oil. " Did you so ? " retorted Bannister, " well, I 
 don't think it would have done you any harm if, at the 
 same time, you had swallowed a dancing master." 
 
ii6 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 A physician observing Bannister about to drink a glass 
 of brandy said : " Don't drink that filthy stuff ; brandy is 
 the worst enemy you have." " I know that," replied the 
 actor, " but you know we are commanded by Scripture to 
 love owe enemies." 
 
 Bannister flourished in days when the pun was still in 
 vogue, despite Johnson's ludicrous assertion that the man 
 who would make a pun would pick a pocket, and several 
 stories are told of his use of this most obvious manifesta- 
 tion of wit. A friend is said to have been complaining 
 that some malicious person had cut off his horse's tail, 
 which, as he wished to sell it, must prove a great draw- 
 back. " Not at all," said the actor, " you must now 
 sell him wholesale." " Wholesale ! " exclaimed the other. 
 " How so ? " " Because you cannot re-tail him." 
 
 Someone inquiring after a man who had been hanged, 
 and on being told simply that he was dead, asked further, 
 " Did he continue in the grocery line ? " " Oh no," said 
 Bannister, with emphasis, " he was in quite a different 
 line when he died." 
 
 The younger Bannister seems to have inherited some- 
 thing of his father's readiness of speech, for a story is told 
 of Barrymore's arriving late at the theatre and having to 
 dress for his part, being driven to desperation because he 
 could not find the key of his drawer. " Damn it ! " he 
 exclaimed, " I must have swallowed it." " Never mind," 
 said John, " it wUl serve to open your chest." 
 
 VII 
 
 George Colman, the younger, was another of the men 
 who, recognized as humorists by their contemporaries, 
 come to be the centripetal force attracting to them any 
 
QUIN, FOOTE, BANNISTER, COLMAN 117 
 
 good stories that are ensured a hearing and given a vrai- 
 semblance by being attached to a known name. It is not, 
 of course, possible to say which are the genuine sayings 
 of such a man and which are those that have been given 
 him by fame. The son of a successful plajnvright, yoimg 
 Colnlan was born in 1762, and was educated first at West- 
 minster and then at Oxford. At the university his 
 record was much the same as that of Foote — gaiety, 
 irresponsibility and withdrawal. He was then sent to 
 complete his education at King's College, Aberdeen. While 
 still a student he began plajrwriting, and on returning to 
 London continued the work and at the age of twenty-five 
 succeeded his father in the management of the Haymarket 
 Theatre. Quarrelsome and extravagant, he was in con- 
 tinuous trouble, and at one time was compelled to reside 
 in the King's Bench Prison for debt. He seems, however, 
 to have had frequent liberty privileges, on one occasion 
 being released that he might accept an invitation to dine 
 with the Duke of York to meet the Prince Regent ! When 
 that prince became George the Fourth he appointed Col- 
 man Lieutenant of the Yeomen of the Guard — an appoint- 
 ment which Colman turned into hard cash by selling it. 
 In 1824 he was made Examiner of Plays, and held the of&ce 
 for a dozen years, until his death in 1836 — held it against 
 all the objurgations of his fellow-dramatists who resented 
 the puerile squeamishness with which he, " the author of 
 some of the least decent publications of the day," used, or 
 abused, the duties of his office. 
 
 Colman is the first instance of one of otir wits and 
 humorists publishing non-theatrical works of amusement. 
 His " Broad Grins " marked an era in this kind of litera- 
 ture, and remained in circulation for nearly a century. 
 It is, however, not with his published pleasantries that we 
 are here concerned but with the utterances of a witty or 
 
ii8 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 humorous character with which he is credited. Many oi 
 these show Colman as a happy master of the pun, though 
 in some the significance suggests rather the subtlety of wit 
 than the superficiaUty of the mere play upon words. 
 When he was in his last illness — in the case of humorists 
 tradition is very strong in insisting upon the ruling passion 
 being strong in death — the doctor who was attending him 
 arrived late one day and apologized saying that he had 
 been called to see a man who had fallen down a well. 
 " Did he kick the bucket, doctor ? " inquired Colman. A 
 sentimental young man being overheard to say : " I live 
 in Jiilia's eyes," Colman broke in with : " I don't wonder at 
 it since I observed she had a sty in them when I saw her 
 last." Another young man being pressed to sing after 
 he declared that he could not, said impatiently that the 
 company were wanting to make a butt of him. " Not at 
 all, my good sir," said Colman, " we merely want to get 
 a stave out of you." 
 
 In each of these cases the perfect applicability of the 
 second meaning makes the pun a good one. More forced 
 was his remark to an apothecary, by whom he considered 
 himself to be overcharged, when he said as for the visits 
 he could return them and as for the medicine he could 
 dispense -with it. Neater was his remark on being told 
 that a man of no high character had grossly abused him : 
 " The scandal and ill-report of some persons that might 
 be mentioned was like fuller's earth ; it daubs your coat 
 a little for a time, but when it is rubbed off your coat is 
 so much the cleaner." An often repeated mot that has 
 been allotted to various wits, but most frequently to 
 Colman, is that the humorist on being asked if he knew 
 Theodore Hook replied, " Yes, hook and eye are old 
 acquaintances." 
 
 Boswell records a pleasantry of the elder George Colman 
 
QUIN, FOOTE, BANNISTER, COLMAN 119 
 
 which shows that the father had something of the ready 
 humour more often associated with the son. At the 
 Literary Club Boswell was talking of Johnson having 
 returned from the tour in Scotland " willing to believe in 
 second sight." " I was then so impressed with many of 
 the stories which I had been told, that I avowed my 
 conviction saying : ' He is only willing to believe — I do 
 believe ; the evidence is enough for me though not for his 
 great mind. What will not fill a great bottle will fill a 
 a pint bottle ; I am filled with belief." " Are you ? " said 
 George Colman, " then cork it up." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 WIT IN POLITICS 
 
 -■ Ye wondrous men 
 Of wit and wisdom.'' 
 
 Thomas Moore 
 
 AS with the stage so with the arena of pohtics, it woiild 
 not be difficult to compile a volume of the good 
 thiags that have been said within it. It is only possible 
 in a short chapter to indicate the range and variety of 
 the witticisms recorded by or of men in the Houses of 
 Parliament or on their way to them. It may be that the 
 atmosphere of the Houses, like that of the courts of law, 
 is of a kind which distorts and enlarges the thing said so 
 that a passable pleasantry looms for the moment with 
 the largeness of wit. It is not in these cases from any 
 rarefied atmosphere such as makes the shadow of one 
 upon a peak gigantic, but rather it may be imagined the 
 density such as that of the " London particular " which 
 imparts to the famUiar a suggestion of greatness un- 
 familiar. The late Mr Gladstone declared that the witty 
 things said in the House of Commons — and his long attend- 
 ance there should have constituted him an authority 
 — were few. Something far short of wit may, however, 
 readily receive the meed of laughter, and the interpolation 
 of that word in reports is by no means always preceded 
 by anything which wUl stand the test of time — otherwise 
 
WIT IN POLITICS 121 
 
 Hansard would be a formidable rival to Punch, and the 
 task of selection of representative political witticisms be 
 rendered yet more difficult. It is indeed manifest that 
 in the very nature of things the witticisms should occur 
 less in the formal speeches addressed to the whole House 
 (and the reporters) than in the personal " asides " of 
 members, in the Lobbies, smoking-rooms and places where 
 the reporter's pencil ceases from scratching and the 
 " Parliamentary sketch " writer does not penetrate. 
 
 II 
 
 Before proceeding to some examples of politicians' wit 
 the following story may be given in illustration of the 
 humour of a mid-eighteenth-century election — although 
 it is of humour closing in the tragic. Dr William Barrow- 
 by, a noted physician of the time, had much interested 
 himself in the cause of Sir George Vandeput who was 
 opposed to Lord Trentham, the nominee of the court 
 party. Barrowby was at the time attending Joe 
 Weatherby, who kept the Ben Jonson's Head in Russell 
 Street, Covent Garden. During the doctor's visits the 
 patient's wife — ^not knowing Barrowby's particular poli- 
 tical bias — frequently expressed the hope that her Joey 
 would be weU enough to record a vote for her good friend 
 Lord Trentham before the poll closed. Calling on his 
 patient one day at the close of the election, the doctor 
 was astonished to find him up and almost dressed by 
 the nurse and her assistants. 
 
 " Heyday ! what's the cause of this ? " exclaimed 
 Barrowby, " why should you get out of bed without my 
 directions ? " 
 
 " Dear doctor," said poor old Weatherby, in broken 
 accents, " I am going to poll." 
 
122 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " To poll," replied the doctor, with great warmth — 
 supposing that he took the same side as his wife — " going 
 to the devil, you mean, ; why, do you not know that the 
 cold air must destroy you ? Get to bed, man ; get to bed 
 as fast as you can, or immediate death may ensue ! " 
 
 " Oh, sir, if that be the case," said the patient, " to be 
 sure I must act as you advise ; but I love my country, 
 sir, and thought, whUe my wife was out, to seize this oppor- 
 tunity to go to Covent Garden church, and vote for Sir 
 George." 
 
 " How, Joey, for Sir George ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, I wish him heartily well." 
 
 " Do you ? " says Barrowby, the politician getting the 
 better of the doctor. " Hold ! nurse, don't pull off his 
 stockings again ; let me feel his pulse. Hey ! very well, 
 a good firm stroke ; this will do. You took the pills I 
 ordered last night ? " 
 
 " Yes, doctor, but they made me very sick." 
 
 " Ay, so much the better. How did your master sleep, 
 nurse ? " 
 
 " Oh, charmingly, sir," answered the nurse. 
 
 " Did he ? Well, if his mind be uneasy about this 
 election he must be indulged, for diseases of the mind 
 greatly affect those of the body. Come, come, throw a 
 great-coat or blanket about him ; it is a fine day, but the 
 sooner he goes the better. Here, here, lift him up ; a 
 ride will do him good ; he shall go to the hustings in my 
 chariot." 
 
 The doctor was directly obeyed, and poor Weatherby 
 was carried to the poU and dtily gave his vote. Two hours 
 after his doctor had left him at his own house he died, 
 loaded with the reproaches of his wife and her friends. 
 
WIT IN POLITICS 123 
 
 III 
 
 Passing from the tactics of those wishing to get a certain 
 man in we may glance at some of the things said in the 
 House itself or elsewhere by politicians. Sleep out of 
 place seems irresistible to the risible faculties of most 
 people — especially audible sleep — and the snorer shares 
 with the mother-in-law popularity as a fun-maker. In a 
 laugh-provoking brochure of a few years ago repeated fun 
 was made of the supposed readiness with which a member 
 of the House of Lords could emulate the " Fat Boy." In- 
 deed somnolence in the House of Commons seems in each 
 successive generation to have afforded matter out of which 
 in the opposing attitudes of the non-humorous and the 
 humorous has come fun. Of Lord North several stories 
 are told in this connexion, as when an indignant speaker 
 reproved him for sleeping in the House and he replied : 
 " The physician should never quarrel with the effect of his 
 own medicine." The earliest incident is probably the 
 following, recorded by Aubrey, about Henry Martin in the 
 Commonwealth Parliament — a man whose speeches " were 
 not long, but wondrous poignant, pertinent and witty." 
 " He was wont to sleep much in the House (at least dog- 
 sleepe) ; Alderman Atkins made a motion that such 
 scandalous members as slept and minded not the business 
 of the House, should be putt out. Henry Martin starts 
 up, ' Mr Speaker, a motion has been to turn out the 
 N adders ; I desire the Noddies may also be turned out.' " 
 
 Martin was, Aubrey further tells us, " of an incomparable 
 wit for repartees." " Making an invective speech one 
 time against old Sir Harry Vane, when he had done with 
 him, he said, But for young Sir Harry Vane — and so sate 
 him downe. Severall cried out — ' What have you to say 
 
124 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 to young Sir Harry ? ' He rises up : Why, if young Sir 
 Harry lives to be old, he will be old Sir Harry ! and so sate 
 down, and set the House a laughing, as he oftentimes did." 
 
 " Oliver Cromwell once in the House called him Sir 
 Harry Martin ! Henry Martin rises and bowes, ' I thanke 
 your Majestie, I always thought when you were King that 
 I should be knighted." 
 
 " A godly member made a motion to have all profane 
 and unsanctified persons expelled the Houses. Henry 
 Martin stood up and moved that all the fooles might be putt 
 out likewise — and then there would be a thin House." 
 
 If not wit there was certainly wisdom in his statement 
 that " if his Majesty should take advice of his gunsmiths 
 and powder men he would never have peace." 
 
 A little later than Martin we have the third Lord Falk- 
 land, chiefly remembered as author of a play entitled 
 The Marriage Night, who, on .being chosen for Parlia- 
 ment at an unusually early age, had his admission to the 
 House opposed by some members on the ground that, 
 being so young, he had not yet sown his wild oats. " Then," 
 said he, " it will be the best way to sow them in the House 
 where there are so many geese to pick them up." 
 
 At the Restoration Henry Martin, though nearly eighty 
 years of age, was in danger of his life, having been one of 
 the judges at the trial of Charles the First, but he was saved 
 by the readiness of Lord Falkland, who said " Gentleman," 
 ye talke here of makeing a sacrifice ; it was the old lawe, 
 all sacrifices were to be without spot or blemish ; and now 
 you are going to make an old rotten rascal a sacrifice.' 
 This witt tooke in the House, and saved his life." Aubrey 
 tells us further that " this very jest " had been used many 
 years earlier by Henry Martin himself, when Sir William 
 Davenant was in danger of his life as a Royalist. 
 
WIT IN POLITICS 125 
 
 IV 
 
 With the development of Party — the diverging of men 
 along two more or less parallel lines, those who followed 
 one ever looking forward, whUe those who followed the 
 other ever looked behind — the opportunities for the exercise 
 of wit in politics became greatly increased, and the popular- 
 izing of politics, which was an inevitable corollary of the 
 development of the newspaper press, led to the recording 
 of more examples. But even so, it is in the very nature 
 of things political that they should largely be of temporary 
 interest, and that the mots to which they give birth should 
 lose their pungency the further they are removed from the 
 circumstances which inspired them. Many of the sayings, 
 however, are based on essential matters, and their point 
 remains unblunted by the passage of years ; though the 
 course of time has modified those inspired by a taste for 
 personalities. It is scarcely possible to think of a present- 
 day party leader retaliating on an opponent as did the Earl 
 of Chatham, who, when plain WUliam Pitt, had allowed 
 himself to refer in the House of Commons to an opponent's 
 personal appearance. The member referred to complained 
 bitterly of the abuse, declaring that he could not help his 
 looks and ending, as he thought triumphantly, with " the 
 honourable gentleman finds fault with my features ; how 
 would he have me look ? " Pitt at once started to his feet. 
 " The honourable gentleman asks me how I would have 
 him look. I would have him look as he ought, if he could ; 
 I would have him look as he cannot, if he would ; I would 
 have him look like an honest man." 
 
 Among political wits of the eighteenth century. Lord 
 North, Prime Minister — though he refused to recognize 
 the title — at the time of the " Boston Tea Party " and the 
 
126 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 subsequent struggle by which the North American Colonies 
 became the United States of America, occupies a high 
 position, though not many of his sayings have come down 
 to us. Burke described him as a man " of infinite wit and 
 pleasantry," and some of his retorts illustrate the sweetness 
 of his temper no less than the readiness of his mind. The 
 most diverse men testify to his possession of two qualities 
 but rarely found in conjunction. Horace Walpole who 
 visited him in 1787, after he had gone blind, said : " Lord 
 North's spirits, good humour, wit, sense, drollery, are as 
 perfect as ever — the unremitting attention of Lady North 
 and his children most touching. ... If ever loss of sight 
 could be compensated, it is by so affectionate a family." 
 Gibbon too spoke of " the lively vigour of his mind, and 
 the felicity of his incomparable temper." 
 
 His wit is said to have been of that rare rich kind which 
 never gives offence, but is as provocative of laughter in its 
 object as in others. One night the House of Commons was 
 in ill humour, and North deprecated the too great readiness 
 to take offence which seemed to possess the members. 
 " One member," he said, " who spoke of me, called me 
 ' that thing of a minister.' To be sure," he added, patting 
 his portly form, " I am a thing ; the member, therefore, 
 when he called me a thing, said what was true, and I could 
 not be angry with him ; but when he added, ' that thing 
 called a minister,' he called me that thing which, of all 
 things, he himself wished to be, and therefore I took it as a 
 compliment." A remark intended offensively could not 
 have been turned more good-naturedly. 
 
 As with a late statesman of our time, many stories were 
 told of Lord North's somnolence in the House and else- 
 where ; once an opponent who had been bitterly declaiming 
 against the minister wound up by saying that he was 
 capable of sleeping while he ruined his country. North 
 
WIT IN POLITICS 127 
 
 said that it was hard to be denied the solace which other 
 criminals so often enjoyed — ^that of having a night's rest 
 before their fate. On another occasion another member 
 of the Opposition, a poor and long-winded speaker, made a 
 like complaint, but North contented himself with saying 
 that it was cruel that a man should be grudged so natural 
 a release from considerable suffering, adding that it was 
 somewhat unjust to complain of him for taking the remedy 
 which the speaker had himself been considerate enough to 
 administer. 
 
 When a member suggested having a starling placed near 
 the chair, and taught to repeat the cry of " Infamous 
 coalition ! " Lord North suggested that as long as the 
 honourable member proposing it was preserved to them, it 
 would be a needless waste of public money, since the 
 starling might so well perform his office by deputy. 
 
 The King having asked who a certain gentleman impor- 
 tunate for places was Lord North said : " He is the Secretary 
 of State for Ireland ; a man on whom if your Majesty was 
 pleased to bestow the United Kingdom, he would ask for 
 the Isle of Man as a potato garden ! " 
 
 When Lord North was in particular disfavour with the 
 Opposition an excited orator said : " We must have the 
 noble lord's head ! " North quietly observed : " If he only 
 knew how httle I want to have his ! " 
 
 Lord North was not incapable of making a jest of the 
 terrible affliction of his later years ; being visited by 
 Colonel Barre, who was nearly as blind as himself, he met 
 him with " Colonel Barre, nobody will suspect us of insin- 
 cerity if we say that we should always be overjoyed to see 
 each other." 
 
 Fox having said that he would like to devise a tax which 
 should not fall upon himself. Lord North promptly sug- 
 gested : " Tax receipts, for you never see them." 
 
128 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Lord North's daughter — Lady Charlotte Lindsay — 
 seems to have inherited something of her father's readiness 
 of wit, for it is said that, arriving late for dinner at HoUand 
 House, she apologized to her hostess saying, " I am exceed- 
 ingly sorry, but reaUy the roads are so macadamnable ! " 
 
 It has been suggested in an earlier chapter that Samuel 
 Johnson's ponderous delight in jesting at the expense of 
 the Scots is in part responsible for the long-continued 
 gibing at those who belong north of the Tweed, but it is 
 possible that the fashion owes something also to the un- 
 popularity of Lord Bute and the many countrymen of his 
 for whom he found places ; if indeed it was not even then 
 a revival of an earlier fashion set in the days when some 
 of those who attended James the Sixth of Scotland on his 
 journey south remained with him after he had become 
 James the First of England. Certainly Bute did not make 
 his people poptilar when he became the chief counsellor of 
 George the Third. Horace Walpole records that in 1762 
 Bute had a crowded levee and as the visitors were arriving 
 in great numbers, George Brudenel, who was passing, was 
 asked by a bystander what was going on. " Why," 
 answered he, " there is a Scotchman got into the Treasury, 
 and they can't get him out." 
 
 That one of the Scots ministers of the time seems him- 
 self to have been possessed of a readiness of wit is shown 
 by the following. When George the Third was driving to 
 the House of Lords in 1797 — at a moment when democratic 
 feeling ran high — ^his coach was attacked by the mob. A 
 gigantic Irishman attracted the attention of the King as 
 being conspicuously energetic in keeping off the attackers. 
 Not long after the Irishman received a message asking him 
 to call and see Henry Dundas. He went and met with a 
 gracious reception at the hands of the statesman, who 
 praised his loyalty and courage, and requested him to point 
 
WIT IN POLITICS 129 
 
 out in what way his interests could be advanced, as the 
 King wished to reward him. The Irishman hesitated, and 
 then said slyly : " I'll tell you what, mister, make a Scotch- 
 man of me." The minister was somewhat taken aback by 
 this tactless pleasantry, but only for a moment, then he 
 replied : " Make a Scotchman of you, sir ? That's im- 
 possible, for I cannot give you prudence." 
 
 The elder Pitt has been shown as capable of using a 
 telling personality, his son the " heaven-sent minister " is 
 credited with the neat application of another man's remark 
 which is essentially witty. When preparing his Additional 
 Force Bill of 1805 he held a meeting of country gentlemen, 
 chiefly militia ofiicers, to consider the measTore. One of 
 these officers objected to a clause for calling out the force, 
 which he insisted should not be done " except in case of 
 actual invasion." Pitt replied : " That would be too late." 
 But the gentleman insisted upon his point. By-and-by 
 they came to another clause, devised to render the force 
 more disposable. The same gentleman objected again, 
 and insisted very warmly that he would never consent to 
 its being sent out of England. " Except, I suppose," 
 rejoined Pitt pointedly, " in case of actual invasion." 
 
 Of the great rivals, Edmund Burke and Charles James 
 Fox, the anecdote-mongers recorded many stories, of the 
 latter largely those concerning his friendship with the 
 Prince of Wales and Sheridan, or about his eternal want of 
 pence. Though Edmund Burke was an Irishman, and one 
 of the most brilliant of our orators, he does not appear to 
 have been gifted with the peculiar aptitude of bringing 
 opposites together to produce the flash of wit. The 
 
130 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 retorts of his which have been remembered are rather witty 
 illustrations than essential wit, though some of them have 
 the rarer quality. When someone described a certain 
 biography as being a successful imitation of Johnson's 
 style, Burke emphatically demurred : " No, no, it is not 
 a good imitation of Johnson. It has all his pomp without 
 his force ; it has all the nodosities of the oak without its 
 strength " — ^then after a pause — " it has all the contortions 
 of the Sibyl, without the inspiration." 
 
 The oak provided Burke with another illustration when 
 he summed up Lord Thurlow — of whom Charles James 
 Fox wondered whether anybody could be as wise as he 
 looked — as " a stiurdy oak when at Westminster, and a 
 willow at St James's." 
 
 David Hartley, member for Hull during the Coalition 
 Ministry, was remarkable for speeches not only lengthy 
 but duU. On one occasion, having prosed on until three- 
 quarters of the members had left the chamber, just as the 
 remnant hoped he was about to conclude he moved, to 
 prove some assertion that he had made, that the Riot Act 
 should be read. Burke at once rose exclaiming : " The 
 Riot Act ! my dear sir ! the Riot Act ! to what purpose ? 
 Don't you see that the mob is already completely dis- 
 persed ? " Everyone present roared with laughter — ^with 
 the exception of Hartley, who, ignoring the interruption, 
 still insisted that the Riot Act should be read by the clerk. 
 
 When the attachment of Fox to France was mentioned 
 Burke commented : " Yes, his attachment has been great 
 and long ; for, like a cat, he has continued faithful to the 
 house after the family has left it." 
 
 It being remarked that persons calling themselves 
 democrats did not hold long together, Burke said that 
 such a result was to be anticipated, as " birds of prey are 
 not gregarious." 
 
WIT IN POLITICS 131 
 
 Two of Burke's sayings are connected with the impeach- 
 ment of Warren Hastings. When he was speaking he was 
 interrupted by a Major Scott, and broke the thread of his 
 oratory to ask : " Am I to be teased by the barking of this 
 jackal when I am attacking the royal tiger of Bengal ? " 
 On someone repeating to him Erskine's opinion of the 
 impeachment he exclaimed indignantly : " What ! a nisi- 
 prius lawyer give an opinion on an impeachment ! as well 
 might a rabbit that breeds fifty times in the year, pretend 
 to understand the gestation of an elephant." 
 
 Burke's great rival, Charles James Fox, was no mean 
 master of the retort. When Lord North was exulting over 
 the news that had been received that New York was con- 
 quered, " It is a mistake, my lord," said Fox, " New York 
 is not conquered ; it is only like the Ministry — abandoned." 
 
 Fox having applied to a Westminster voter for his 
 interest at an election, the free and independent one said 
 that he would be very glad to oblige him with a halter. Fox 
 was equal to the occasion and courteously thanked him for 
 the kind offer, but said he would not by any means deprive 
 the man of it, as the thing was obviously an heirloom in his 
 family. 
 
 Asked by a friend to explain the meaning of the passage 
 in the Psalms, " He clothed himself with cursing, like as 
 with a garment," Fox answered with an excellent example 
 of the pun, " The meaning I think is clear enough — the man 
 had a habit of swearing." 
 
 Fox propounded a neat conundrum in, "I would not 
 be my first for all of my second that is contained in 
 my whole." The answer is " Scotland." 
 
 Fox was a younger son of the first Lord Holland, a 
 statesman for whom few historians have a good word, a 
 minister who was described in a petition from the city of 
 London as " the public defaulter of unaccounted millions." 
 
132 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 When Lord Holland's iniquities as Paymaster-General were 
 the topic of the town he was driving with his son Charles 
 and had the temerity to ask the young man what the world 
 was thinking of him. Fox excused himsfelf, saying that 
 his father might be angry if he told the truth, but the latter 
 said he would hear the truth whatever it may be. " Why, 
 then, sir," said his son, " they say that there is not a greater 
 rogue unhanged." " And pray, sir," said Lord Holland, 
 " where is your spirit not to resent such an injiu'y ? " 
 " My lord," replied the son, " I should by no means 
 want spirit to resent any injury offered to my father, 
 as I look upon it the same as to myself ; nor should 
 any single person dare to mention it with impunity. 
 But, surely, my lord, you would not have me fight 
 everybody." 
 
 At Brookes' s, Fox had made some remark about the 
 government gimpowder which Adams considered a reflec- 
 tion, and at once challenged him. They duly met, and the 
 burly Fox stood full front towards his opponent, and on 
 being told that he must stand sideways said : " Why, I am 
 as thick one way as the other." When the signal was 
 given, Adams fired but Fox refrained from doing so, and 
 when the seconds said that he must do so, emphatically 
 said : " I'll be damned if I do, I've no quarrel." When the 
 principals shook hands after the encounter, Fox, who had 
 been wounded, though not severely, said : " Adams, you'd 
 have killed me if it had not been government powder." 
 
 VI 
 
 When Richard Brinsley Sheridan was the wit of the 
 Whigs, the Tories had no unworthy rival to him in George 
 Canning, one of the very ablest of William Pitt's lieu- 
 
WIT IN POLITICS 133 
 
 tenants. (" A pert London joker," Peter Plymley was 
 made to term him.) Born in 1770, Canning lost his father 
 the following year, was taken up by an uncle, sent to Eton 
 (where he edited The Microcosm) and to Oxford, and in 
 1793 entered Parliament as a supporter of Pitt, was soon 
 placed in a minor office and in a somewhat politically 
 chequered career rose to be Foreign Minister and Leader 
 of the House of Commons on the death of Castlereagh in 
 1822, and Prime Minister on the death of Lord Liverpool 
 early in 1827. In the following August he died. It is not 
 necessary here, where it is with his wit that we are con- 
 cerned, to enlarge upon the life and work of a statesman 
 who laid down those broad lines of our foreign policy 
 which have been followed more or less closely for nearly a 
 hundred years. Nor need we here do more than mention 
 the humours of The Microcosm or the famous contributions 
 to The Anti- Jacobin. 
 
 It is the Canning whom B5nron described as one " who 
 bred a statesman yet was bom a wit," and whom Thomas 
 Moore summed up as " cracking out jokes at every 
 motion," that calls for inclusion in this company of con- 
 versational wits, and even three or four of his mots will 
 suffice to show that he is to be regarded as one of the 
 leaders. Very neat was his reply to Bishop Legge, who 
 had inquired what the statesman thought of his sermon. 
 " Why, it was a short sermon," " Oh yes," said the 
 preacher, " you know I avoid being tedious." " But you 
 were tedious," replied Canning. 
 
 He was occasionally as happy in his House of Commons' 
 humour as was Sheridan himself. " Gentlemen opposite," 
 he said once, " are always talking of the people as dis- 
 tinguished from the rest of the nation. But strip the 
 nation of its aristocracy ; strip it of its magistrates ; strip 
 it of its clergy, of its merchants, of its gentry, and I no 
 
134 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 more recognize a people than I recognize in the bird of 
 Diogenes the man of Plato." 
 
 When the " hoarse Fitzgerald " of Byron's " English 
 Baxds and Scotch Reviewers " had recited one of his own 
 poems at a dinner, Canning quietly remarked : " Poeta 
 nascitur, non fitz." 
 
 Upon a very tall and very stout Oxford friend he ex- 
 temporized the following epigram : — 
 
 " That the stones of our chapel are both black and white 
 Is most undeniably true ; 
 But as Douglas walks o'er them both morning and night, 
 It's a wonder they're not black and blue." 
 
 According to Moore the person who cannot relish the 
 following reply of Canning's " can have no perception of 
 real wit." A lady having asked the silly question : 
 " Why have they made the spaces in the iron gate at 
 Spring Gardens so narrow ? " Canning answered : " Oh, 
 madam, because such very fat people used to go through." 
 Which is certainly a happy illustration of answering a fool 
 according to his folly. 
 
 At the Clifford Street Club (at the corner of Old Bond 
 Street) in a debate on the French Revolution, Canning was 
 inveighing against Mirabeau. The president had called 
 for a pot of porter, and on its being put on the table 
 Canning at once made use 'of it as an illustration : " Sir, 
 much has been said about the gigantic powers of Mirabeau. 
 Let us not be carried away by the false jargon of his phil- 
 osophy, or imagine that deep political wisdom resides in 
 trained and decorated diction. To the steady eye of a 
 sagacious criticism, the eloquence of Mirabeau will appear 
 to be as empty and as vapid as his patriotism. It is like 
 the beverage that stands so invitingly before you — ^foam 
 and froth at the top, heavy and muddy within ! " 
 
WIT IN POLITICS 135 
 
 One version of a pun-obvious — ^repeated it may be 
 believed in varying form by every generation of pun- 
 makers — is said by Coleridge to have been made by 
 Canning. They were at dinner at Hookham Frere's, 
 where a loquacious ambassador bored everybody by 
 monopolizing the talk. A poem on the Flood having been 
 
 mentioned. Lord resumed and spoke in raptures 
 
 of a picture that he had lately seen of Noah's ark, saying 
 that the animals were all marching two and two, the little 
 ones first, and the elephants coming last in great majesty, 
 filling up the foreground. " Ah, no doubt, my lord," 
 interrupted Canning, " your elephants, wise fellows, stayed 
 behind to pack up their trunks." 
 
 When a boyat Eton Canning had started The Microcosm, 
 which the Westminster boys imitated with The Trifler, 
 wherein they depicted Justice weighing their merits 
 against those of the Etonians — the scale of the former 
 being low, the other high. On seeing this, young Canning 
 impromptued : 
 
 " What mean ye, by this print so rare. 
 Ye wits — of Eton jealous — 
 But that we soar aloft in air 
 And ye are heavy fellows." 
 
 VII 
 
 Gladstone, having said that the witty things uttered 
 in the House of Commons were but few, was asked if he 
 could recall any of them, and replied that the best one 
 he had ever heard was a reply made by Lord John Russell 
 to Sir Francis Burdett. Having been at one time a 
 Radical, Burdett changed and became an extreme Tory. 
 In the course of a speech in the House he declared that 
 
136 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 there was nothing more odious than the cant of patriotism. 
 Lord John replied that " the cant of patriotism was no 
 doubt very odious, but there was one thing even more 
 odious — ^that was the re-cant of patriotism ! " 
 
 A story that Lord John Russell himself used to tell 
 was of having Sat at a city banquet next to a civic dig- 
 nitary who taking a very beautiful snuff box from his 
 pocket said : " This was given to my father by the first 
 Napoleon ; there is a hen on the top of it." " Surely," 
 said RusseU, " it cannot be a hen, it must be an eagle. 
 " No, no," said the owner, " it's a hen " — pointing as he 
 spoke to the " N " on the lid ! 
 
 In matters of wit it may perhaps be admissible to differ 
 from Gladstone, but another story which he told is surely 
 a better thing than the pun of Lord John Russell, though 
 the pun had the intention of wit and the wit of the follow- 
 ing lies entirely in its application by the hearers and not at 
 all in the consciousness of the speaker. The way in 
 which that which issued from the lips of a speaker 
 as a matter-of-fact statement may become wit on 
 reaching the ears of the hearers is well exemplified 
 in a story told by Gladstone of a speech of Cobden's 
 in the House of Commons. The great Free Trader 
 was replsmig to Disraeli in an admirable speech. Sir 
 Robert Peel, sitting between the speaker and Gladstone, 
 turned to the latter and said : " What a consummate 
 speech he is making ! " Presently, in order to explain 
 more fully some point, Cobden said : " Now, I will give 
 an illustration of what I mean. Here is my honourable 
 friend the member for Durham sitting by me. He is a 
 spinner of long yarns of a low quality." The House, of 
 course, screamed with laughter, while Cobden is said to 
 have stood for some moments absolutely unable to con- 
 ceive what had occasioned the outbreak. 
 
WIT IN POLITICS 137 
 
 A lady was telling Lord Palmerston that her maid 
 objected to going to the Isle of Wight again, as the 
 climate " was not embracing enough," and added, 
 " What am I to do with such a woman ? " The 
 statesman replied, " You had better take her to the 
 Isle of Man next time." 
 
 A story that has been told of the Earl of Beaconsfield 
 was, it has been stated, invented by Sir Henry W. 
 Lucy, and fathered on the great Conservative leader, 
 but I am not at all sure that it was not an old story 
 revived with up-to-date " colour." It refers to a rich 
 old philanthropist who was a Member of Parliament, 
 though so deaf that he had to use an ear-trumpet, 
 and it runs that Dizzy from the Peers' Gallery seeing 
 the poor man straining his hearing to follow the de- 
 bate remarked that " he never saw a man so little 
 appreciative of his natural advantages." ^ 
 
 Cardwell being in temporary charge of the House had 
 occasion to reply to some member's question about a 
 matter of taste. The member asked : " Why on earth did 
 you answer me ? What do you know about art ? " 
 " Nothing at aU," said Cardwell — " that's just why I was 
 the right person to answer you." 
 
 VIII 
 
 If we come down to recent times it appears that some 
 of our politicians of to-day, if they have not established 
 reputations as wits in the old fashion, have yet no mean 
 mastery of the knack of retort. Though I have made it 
 a rule to exclude unattached bon-mots from this miscellany 
 
 ^ The same story is ascribed to Robert Lowe in Mr William 
 Jean's recent "Parliamentary Reminiscences." 
 
138 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 the description of the taciturn Duke of Devonshire, when 
 as Marquis of Hartington he was Leader of his party in 
 the House of Commons, as a " Lieder ohne Worte," is too 
 happy to be omitted. I have not been able to learn who 
 hit upon the happy polyglot pun. No one who had only 
 heard the late Lord Goschen as a platform speaker would 
 associate him with punning, yet it is recorded that some 
 years ago, when Sir Charles Wyndham returned from a 
 successful engagement in Germany, Goschen, then Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer, took the chair at a welcoming 
 dinner at the Criterion, and began his speech with : 
 " Gentlemen, our friend has been on the Spree in 
 Berlin, and although he got an excellent reception there, 
 that's no Criterion." It was, indeed, but a poor thing, 
 if his own. 
 
 A later Chancellor of the Exchequer is credited with 
 several happy retorts. 
 
 Mr Lloyd George has the Celtic quickness of dual per- 
 ception which is essential to wit. On one occasion he 
 
 began a speech by sa3nng, " I am here " and before he 
 
 could say further an unmannerly interrupter shouted, 
 " And so am I ! " " Yes," was the ready reply, " but 
 you are not all there." Again, when he was talking about 
 Home Rule, and saying that he wanted to see it not only 
 for Ireland, but for Scotland and for Wales — " And for 
 hell, too ! " exclaimed a would-be humorist. " Certainly, 
 my friend," came Mr Lloyd George's unexpected retort, 
 " I always like to hear a man stand up for his country." 
 
 Recently, in the debate on the Insurance BO, the Chan- 
 cellor was speaking on a point of order in the House of 
 Commons when a member said he cotild not hear the 
 right hon. gentleman, who, as he was facing the Chair, had 
 his back to the majority of members. " There is my 
 difficulty," replied Mr Lloyd George. " I have been told 
 
WIT IN POLITICS 139 
 
 to address the Chair." " Address the Chair," came the 
 reply, " but speak in this direction." " That," said 
 Mr Lloyd George, " would involve something that I 
 never do — facing both ways." 
 
 Mr John Burns is also known to be the wielder of 
 forcible if not pointed reply. When some superior 
 person asked him, " At what University were you edu- 
 cated ? " he answered readily, " The University of the 
 World." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 SHERIDAN 
 
 " The flash of Wit, the bright intelligence, 
 The beam of Song, the blaze of Eloquence, 
 Set with their Sun, but still have left behind 
 The enduring produce of immortal Mind ; 
 Fruits of a genial mom, and glorious noon, 
 A deathless part of him that died too soon. 
 
 Byron 
 
 THE place of Richard Brinsley Sheridan is not easily 
 decided upon among the wits when we come to 
 classify them according to occupation. He was an Irish- 
 man with more than an average share of the mental alert- 
 ness of the race ; he was a dramatist whose comedies 
 established a new era in our literary history, and he was 
 a noted political and social figure of his time. Yet he 
 stands out so much as an individual wit that he cannot 
 fairly be allotted to any one of these categories, but 
 demands something of separate treatment. Though he 
 discounted the readiness of his wit by saying that " a true- 
 trained wit lays his plan like a general — foresees the cir- 
 cumstance of the conversation — surveys the ground and 
 contingencies — and detaches a question to draw you into 
 the palpable ambuscade of his ready-made joke," yet that 
 amusing account must not be taken too literally as imply- 
 ing such was always his own method. Many of his witti- 
 
 140 
 
RICHARD IIRINSLEV SHERIDAN 
 
 FROM THE I'AINTINf; \:\ J. RUS>^ELI., K.A., IN THli KA'IKiiNAI. 
 
 iRTKAIT (.AI.LERV 
 
SHERIDAN 141 
 
 cisms were obviously inspired by the moment, though 
 others may have been carefully elaborated. Strangely 
 different was the impression he made upon different 
 listeners — Lord Byron said that " Sheridan's humour, or 
 rather wit, was always saturnine, and sometimes savage. 
 He never laughed, at least that I saw, and I watched him. 
 In society I have met him frequently ; he was superb." 
 Savage some of his sayings may have been, but saturnine 
 he did not appear to others ; his suavity indeed struck 
 one observer, while another said of him that " he some- 
 times displayed a kind of serious and elegant playfulness, 
 not apparently rising to wit, but unobservedly saturated 
 with it, which was unspeakably pleasing." In the home 
 as in society he was noted for his plaj^ul fancy and ready 
 wit 
 
 11 
 
 Grandson of Dr Sheridan, the friend and confidant of 
 Jonathan Swift, author of a whimsical treatise on " The 
 Art of Punning," " iU-starred, good-natured and improvi- 
 dent, a punster, a quibbler, a fiddler and a wit " ; son of 
 Thomas Sheridan, actor, theatrical manager, and "orator "; 
 — Richard Brinsley Sheridan may be said to have raised 
 to the nth some of the qualities for which his immediate 
 forebears were distinguished. Good-nature and improvid- 
 ence — the two so often twinned in the same character — 
 the capacity for wit, from its lowest form of punning to 
 its sharpest, dramatist, theatrical manager and orator, 
 young Sheridan would have formed a good example for the 
 student of eugenics had the science been invented in his 
 day. He was bom on 30th October 1751 in Dublin, and 
 at the age of eleven was sent to Harrow School, where he 
 remained for five or six years. 
 
142 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 A couple of anecdotes are told of him at this time. A 
 gentleman having a remarkably long visage was one day 
 riding by the school when he heard young Sheridan say : 
 " That gentleman's face is longer than his life." Struck 
 by the strangeness of the remark, he turned his horse, 
 and requested the boy's meaning. " Sir," replied he, 
 " I meant no offence in the world, but I have read in the 
 Bible at school, that a man's life is but a span, and I am 
 sure your face is double that length." The other is more 
 of a retort which shows the child as father to the man, 
 for it is quite in the character of many of Sheridan's later 
 sajrings. The boy is said to have been made the butt of 
 some of his schoolfellows, especially those who held the 
 long traditional scorn of theatrical folks. One of the 
 most troublesome and impertinent of these youths was 
 the son of an eminent London physician. As he was once 
 exercising his wit at the expense of Sheridan as being the 
 son of a player, Sheridan promptly retorted : " 'Tis true 
 my father lives by pleasing people ; but yours lives by 
 killing them." 
 
 in 
 
 It was but natural, with his peculiar gifts and his im- 
 mediate famUy associations, that Sheridan should turn his 
 youthful attention to literature and the stage. A play 
 foreshadowing The Critic was written by him in collabora- 
 tion with a school friend while yet in his teens, and still 
 remains in manuscript, and he wrote, with the fervour of 
 the born liUeraieur imping his wings, many poems, 
 sketches, letters and drafts of plays immediately after 
 leaving Harrow. When he was about twenty his family 
 removed to Bath and there he met the beautiful and much- 
 wooed Elizabeth Ann Linley, a singer of sweet sixteen. 
 
SHERIDAN 143 
 
 Among Miss Linley's suitors was a pertinacious Major 
 Mathews, to save her from whom Sheridan escorted her 
 from Bath to a nunnery in France — going through the 
 ceremony of marriage with her en route. On his return — 
 the marriage was of course kept a profound secret — ^the 
 young husband fought two duels with Major Mathews ; 
 one in an ill-lighted room at the Bedford Coffee-house, 
 and the other in the coimtry near Bath, on both occasions 
 the weapons being swords. The second time Sheridan was 
 badly wounded by his infuriated opponent. In 1773 he 
 was openly married to Miss Linley. 
 
 His wife had a few thousand pounds and with this 
 Sheridan set i^p house in Orchard Street in a costly style 
 and started life as a man of fashion, trusting to his genius 
 to justify the daring step. A friend remonstrating with 
 him on the instability of his means for supporting such an 
 establishment he replied : " My dear friend, it is my 
 means." And his future life showed that he was justified. 
 He was but four and twenty when in 1775 his comedy of 
 The Rivals was produced and almost at once won success. 
 Eighteen months later, with his father-in-law and another, 
 he bought half of Garrick's share in Drury Lane Theatre, 
 and henceforward a large part of his life was bound up 
 with the stage. 
 
 Sheridan's share of the purchase money was ten thous- 
 and pounds, and his friends and acquaintances were curious 
 to know how he had succeeded in raising the sum. One 
 of them went so far as to ask point-blank where the money 
 came from, and the subsequent dialogue shows the drama- 
 tist's appreciation of a humorous situation, and also how 
 capital an actor he was in the jokes of his own devising. 
 When the question was thus put bluntly by curiosity : 
 " Your importunities have prevailed," at length replied 
 Sheridan, with a convulsive effort, assuming an extra- 
 
144 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 ordinary gravity of manner, and with a tremulous, sub- 
 dued, half-suppressed voice, expressive of the greatest 
 agitation ; " and your curiosity must be gratified, but I 
 had hoped to have kept the secret confined within my 
 own breast, and to have borne with its consuming fires 
 even to the grave." 
 
 " Mr Sheridan, I — I reaUy do not wish," exclaimed 
 the other, but he was interrupted ere the sentence could 
 be concluded by the stem theatrical air and gesture of 
 Sheridan, as he advanced towards him. 
 
 " Ay, sir, to the grave, where we might both have 
 mouldered, and been forgotten." 
 
 " Really, and seriously, Mr Sheridan, I have no desire 
 to inquire into your secrets." 
 
 " But you have forced it from me, and involved your- 
 self in inextricable danger. Be the peril, therefore, on 
 your own head, since you have obtained from me a con- 
 fession which no tongue shotild utter or ear should hear, 
 and which must necessarily involve yourself, by the 
 keeping of my secret, in my guUt." 
 
 " Mr Sheridan, this is really too serious a matter — I 
 beg your pardon — I really must beg your pardon, and — 
 good morning." 
 
 " Stay, stay ; yet hold — ^let us see that we are not ob- 
 served, that no eavesdropper catch the sound of our voices, 
 or carry away the startling evidence of our daring." 
 
 " What in the name of heaven, Mr Sheridan, doTyou 
 allude to ? " 
 
 " Heaven has nothing to do with the damning 
 deed ! " 
 
 The friend, paralysed, sank almost fainting in his chair, 
 with the smell of brimstone in his nostrils and the con- 
 figuration of Friar Bacon floating before his eyes. Sheri- 
 dan approached the door of the apartment with slow 
 
SHERIDAN 145 
 
 and measured step, and, holding the handle, turned sud- 
 denly round upon his bewildered friend. 
 
 " Swear ! swear ! " he cried, " never to reveal my 
 secret ! " 
 
 " Oh, I never wiU, positively — ^upon my honour, 
 never." 
 
 < " I am satisfied. Well, then — " pausing for a moment, 
 and assuming great anguish, with remorse depicted on his 
 countenance, he continued, " since it must be so — I have 
 discovered " — and elevating his voice to the highest 
 pitch he roared out — " the philosopher's stone ! " saying 
 which he darted out of the room, banging the door after 
 him, and leaving his bewildered auditor to revolve the 
 matter in his own mind, and digest it as he could. 
 
 The cold facts of biography say that Sheridan con- 
 tributed thirteen hundred pounds in cash towards his share 
 of the purchase money and raised the rest on mortgage. 
 Though his assumption of position by setting up a costly 
 establishment without any assured income for its upkeep 
 served no doubt to make him an important figure, it also 
 served to make him always in monetary difficulties. He 
 had something of his own Charles Surface's airy irrespon- 
 sibility where money was concerned, and a number of 
 stories are recorded of him in this connexion. 
 
 IV 
 
 It is not possible to give here more than a selection from 
 the many anecdotes of Sheridan connected with the theatre. 
 During his management of Drury Lane, Thomas Holcroft, 
 author of The Road to Ruin, had produced a play 
 which, he had said, on offering it to Covent Garden, would 
 reduce old Drury to nothing but " a splendid ruin." 
 
146 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Later he had occasion to offer a play to Sheridan for Drury 
 Lane, when the manager said : " Come, come, Holcroft, it 
 would be rather too bad to make me the instrument of 
 accomplishing your own prediction." Two other play- 
 wrights came off no better. One of them, a gentleman 
 of fashion, having written a tragedy sent it in all con- 
 fidence to Drury Lane. Sheridan looked at it and put it 
 on one side. In a few days the author called. " Well, 
 now, my dear Sheridan," said he, " what do you think of 
 it ? My friend Cumberland has promised me a prologue ; 
 and I dare say, for the interest of the theatre, you wiU have 
 no objection to supply me with an epilogue." " Trust me, 
 my dear sir," replied Sheridan significantly, " it wUl never 
 come to that, depend on't." " Monk " Lewis, an author 
 somewhat vain of his vogue, having produced a play called 
 The Castle Spectre, said, apropos of some friendly 
 dispute : " Sheridan, I will make you a large bet." " What 
 is it ? " asked the other eagerly, being one who was ever 
 ready for the excitement of a wager. " AU the profits of 
 The Castle Spectre," said, Lewis. " I wUl tell you what," 
 retorted Sheridan, " I will make you a very small one— 
 what it is worth." When it was suggested by an ^miring 
 friend that he should try his hand at a comedy Sheridan 
 replied that there were already plenty of " comedies of that 
 class " and he did not propose adding to their number. 
 
 When Lord Thurlow, attending a performance of 
 Pizarro, was observed to be fast asleep during RoUa's 
 celebrated address to the Peruvians, " Poor fellow," said 
 Sheridan, " I suppose that he fancies he's on the Bench." 
 
 Michael Kelly, in his " Reminiscences," tells how when 
 Kemble and Sheridan were drinking together one evening 
 the former complained of the want of novelty at Drury 
 Lane, and said that he felt uneasy as to the future of the 
 theatre. " My dear Kemble," said Sheridan, " don't talk 
 
SHERIDAN 147 
 
 of grievances now." But Kemble still kept on, saying : 
 " Jndeed, we must seek for novelty, or the theatre will sink 
 — ^novelty, and novelty alone, can prop it." " Then," 
 said Sheridan, with a smUe, " if you want novelty, act 
 Hamlet — and have music played between your pauses." 
 
 The same anecdotist describes his own appearance in 
 the character of an Irishman in an opera at Drury Lane. 
 " My friend Johnstone took great pains to instruct me in 
 the brogue, but I did not feel quite up to the mark ; and, 
 after all, it seems my vernacular phraseology was not the 
 most perfect ; for when the opera was over, Sheridan came 
 into the green-room and said, " Bravo ! Kelly ; very well, 
 indeed ; upon my honour I never before heard you speak 
 such good English in all my life." 
 
 Describing the cavern scene of Coleridge's Remorse as it 
 was produced at Drury Lane, Sheridan declared it was 
 " drip, drip, drip — ^nothing but dripping." More cutting 
 was his immediate reply when asked which performer he 
 liked best in a certain piece, " The prompter, for I saw less 
 and heard riiore of him than anyone else." 
 
 When Drury Lane Theatre was destroyed by fire in 
 February 1809 Sheridan heard of the outbreak when in the 
 House of Commons. He hastened to the scene and, it is 
 said, showed great fortitude at witnessing the destruction 
 of his property. He sat at the Piazza Coffee-house taking 
 some refreshment ; and on a friend remarking how calmly 
 he bore the blow, Sheridan quietly replied that surely a 
 man might be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own 
 fireside ! 
 
 Twice did Sheridan make a point over a Drury Lane 
 afterpiece called The Caravan, in which a performing dog 
 carried off the chief honours. After the first successful 
 performance he suddenly entered the green-room, as it was 
 supposed, to congratulate the author. " Where is he ? 
 
148 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Where is my guardian angel ? " he anxiously inquired. 
 " Here I am," answered the gratified author. " Pooh ! " 
 exclaimed Sheridan, " I don't mean you, I mean the dog." 
 Later on, when he reached the theatre, Dignum, who 
 played in the piece, met him with a woeful countenance, 
 saying : " Sir, there is no guarding against illness ; it is 
 truly lamentable to stop the run of a successful piece like 
 
 this, but really " " Really what ? " cried Sheridan. 
 
 " I am so unwell that I cannot go on longer than to-night." 
 " You ! " exclaimed Sheridan, " my good feUow, you terri- 
 fied me. I thought you were going to say that the dog 
 was taken ill." 
 
 Summing up the life of a theatrical manager Sheridan 
 indulged in that extravagant exaggeration which is a 
 characteristic of his humour, as exemplified in many stories. 
 Like Sydney Smith he could concentrate wit into the 
 brevity of a sentence, or could indulge in a kind of humor- 
 ous verbosity which gained in effect from its mere flow 
 of words. " The life of a manager of a theatre," he said, 
 " was like the life of the ordinary at Newgate — a constant 
 superintendence of executions. The number of authors 
 whom he was forced to extinguish was a perpetual literary 
 massacre that made St Bartholomew's altogether shrink 
 in comparison. Play-writing, singly, accounted for the 
 employment of that immense multitude who drain away 
 obscure years beside the inkstand, and haunt the streets 
 with iron-moulded visages, and study-coloured clothes. 
 It singly accounted for the rise of paper, which had ex- 
 hausted the rags of England and Scotland, and had almost 
 stripped off the last covering of Ireland. He had counted 
 plays untU calculation sank under the number ; and every 
 rejected play of them all seemed like the clothes of a 
 Spanish beggar, to turn into a living, restless, merciless, 
 indefatigable progeny." 
 
SHERIDAN 149 
 
 When Sheridan was visiting Brighton, Fox, the manager 
 of the theatre there, was showing him over the building. 
 " There, Mr Sheridan," said he — a jack of all trades and 
 master of none — " I built and painted all these boxes, and 
 I painted all these scenes." " Did you, indeed ? " said 
 Sheridan, looking around him, " well, I should not, I am 
 sure, have known that you were a fox by your brush." 
 
 Sheridan was not only a master of verbal play, but was 
 apparently sometimes the inspirer of such, for Michael 
 Angelo Taylor records : " My best pun was that which 
 I made to Sheridan, who married a Miss Ogle. We were 
 supping together at the Shakespeare, when, the conversation 
 turning on Garrick, I asked him which of his performances 
 he thought the best. ' Oh,' said he, ' the Lear, the 
 Lear.' ' No wonder,' said I, ' you were fond of a leer when 
 you married an Ogle.' " 
 
 It was in 1780 — The Rivals of 1775 and The School for 
 Scandal of 1777 had established his dramatic fame — ^that 
 Sheridan entered upon political life, becoming Member of 
 Parliament for Stafford as a staunch supporter of Charles 
 James Fox, and therefore of the Prince of Wales' party. 
 His first speech in the House is said to have been to defend 
 himself against a charge of bribery — ^no easy matter if the 
 chroniclers are true who say that he paid the burgesses of 
 the town five guineas a-piece, and dinners and ale to the 
 non-voters for the purpose of securing their applause. 
 He soon shone in debate owing to the irresistibly humorous 
 way he had of putting things, and despite his supreme gift 
 of ridicule he had the distinction of being one of the few 
 political leaders who never challenged to a duel. He early 
 filled minor posts in the Ministry, and in 1787 added greatly 
 
150 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 to his fame by his wonderfxil oratory at the impeachment 
 of Warren Hastings. In an age of oratory, he was indeed 
 by some regarded as the greatest orator. 
 
 The secession of Burke to a certain extent broke up the 
 Whig party, and the death of Fox in 1806 left Sheridan 
 a more or less independent figure. He succeeded Fox in 
 the representation of Westminster — ^that liveliest of the 
 constituencies a century ago — but was defeated in the 
 following year and sat for Ilchester, his expenses, it is 
 said, being paid by the Prince Regait, whose mouthpiece 
 he was supposed to be in the Commons. 
 
 Innumerable are the stories told of Sheridan as a politi- 
 cian, stories illustrating both his wit and his humour, his 
 readiness in the flash of the one, or the irradiation of the 
 other. On being asked how it was that he so soon estab- 
 lished himself as an orator in the House, Sheridan said : 
 " Why, sir, it was easily effected. After I had been in St 
 Stephen's Chapel a few days I found that four-fifths of the 
 House were composed of country squires and great fools ; 
 my first effort, therefore, was by a lively sally or an ironical 
 remark to make them laugh ; that laugh effaced the recol- 
 lection of what had been lurged in opposition to my view of 
 the subject from their stupid pates, and then I whipped 
 in an argument, and had all the way clear before me." 
 
 During the Westminster election contest one of the 
 voters, annoyed at the tactics of some of Sheridan's sup- 
 porters, called out to the candidate that he should with- 
 draw his countenance from him. " Take it away at once, 
 take it away at once ! " cried Sheridan, " it is the most 
 villainous-looking countenance I ever beheld." Towards 
 the close of the struggle, when it was seen that all the efforts 
 of his friends would fail to secure his return, Sheridan bore 
 the defeat with good humour. A sailor, anxious to view 
 the proceedings, had climbed one of the supports in front 
 
SHERIDAN 151 
 
 of the hustings. As Sheridan began his speech his eye fell 
 upon the tar aloft, and he at once turned the incident to 
 ludicrous account by saying that had he had but five 
 hundred voters as upright as the perpendicular gentleman 
 before him, they would yet place him where he was — at 
 the head of the pole ! When the election was over and 
 Lord Cochrane duly returned, that nobleman sent a 
 message saying that he hoped his opponent would drown 
 the memory of differences in a friendly bottle. " With all 
 my heart," said Sheridan, " and will thank his Lordship 
 to make it a Scotch pint." 
 
 At one of the earlier contests for Westminster, when 
 PauU was his opponent, Sheridan won a vote by strange 
 means. He was journeying to town in a public coach that 
 he might start upon his canvass, when he found that his 
 two companions were Westminster electors. In the 
 course of conversation one of them asked the other for 
 whom he intended to vote. " For Paull certainly," came the 
 unhesitating reply, " for though I think him but a shabby 
 sort of a feUow, I would vote for anyone rather than for 
 that rascal Sheridan ! " "Do you know Sheridan ? " 
 asked the other. " Not I, sir ; nor should I wish to know 
 him." The conversation dropped here, but when the 
 party alighted for breakfast Sheridan called the other 
 gentleman aside, and said : " Pray, who is that very 
 agreeable friend of yours ? He is one of the pleasantest 
 fellows I ever met with, and should be glad to know his 
 name." " His name is Mr Richard Wilson ; he is an 
 eminent lawyer, and resides in Lincoln's Inn Fields." 
 Breakfast over, the party resumed their seats in the coach. 
 Sheridan soon turned the talk to law. " It is," he said, " a 
 fine profession. Men may rise from it to the highest 
 eminence in the State ; and it gives vast scope to the 
 display of talent ; many of the most virtuous and noble 
 
152 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 characters recorded in our history have been lawyers ; I 
 am sorry, however, to add, that some of the greatest 
 rascals have also been lawyers ; but of all the 
 rascals of lawyers I ever heard of, the greatest is one 
 Wilson, who lives in Lincoln's Inn Fields." " I am Mr 
 Wilson, sir ! " said that gentleman. " And I am Mr 
 Sheridan," was the reply. The jest was instantly seen ; 
 they shook hands, and instead of voting against the 
 facetious orator the lawyer exerted himself warmly in 
 promoting his election. 
 
 One or two of Sheridan's things said in the House of 
 Commons, of which he remained a member for over thirty 
 years, must be given. Very happy was his crushing reply 
 to Dundas, " The right honourable gentleman is indebted 
 to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his 
 facts." 
 
 A long-winded member having paused in the midst of 
 a tedious harangue to take a glass of water, Sheridan 
 immediately rose to a point of order. Everybody won- 
 dered what the point of order could be. " What is it ? " 
 asked the Speaker. " I think, sir," said Sheridan, with 
 great seriousness, " that it is out of order for a windmill to 
 go by water." 
 
 On another occasion he cleverly trapped a noisy member 
 who had got into the habit of interrupting every speaker 
 with cries of " Hear ! Hear ! " Sheridan took an oppor- 
 tunity to allude to a weU-known political character of the 
 times, whom he represented as a person who wished to play 
 the rogue but had only sense enough to play the fool. 
 " Where," he exclaimed, in emphatic continuation, " where 
 shall we find a more foolish knave or a more knavish fool 
 than this ? " " Hear ! hear ! " was instantly shouted 
 from the usual seat. The wit bowed, thanked the gentle- 
 man for his ready reply to the question, and sat down 
 
SHERIDAN 153 
 
 amidst convulsions of laughter, in which it may be believed 
 the unfortunate victim did not join. 
 
 Lord Belgrave having concluded a speech, and as he 
 thought clinched his argumentwith a longGreek quotation, 
 Sheridan when he rose to reply admitted the force of the 
 quotation so far as it went ; " but," said he, " had the 
 noble lord proceeded a little further, and completed the 
 passage, he would have seen that it applied the other way." 
 He {hen delivered ore rotunda something which had all the 
 ais, ois, ous, kon and kos that give the world assurance 
 of a Greek quotation ; upon which Lord Belgrave very 
 promptly and handsomely complimented the honourable 
 member on his readiness of recollection, and frankly 
 admitted that the continuation of the passage had the 
 tendency ascribed to it by Mr Sheridan, and that he had 
 overlooked it at the moment when he gave his quotation. 
 On the adjournment of the House, Fox, who rather piqued 
 himself upon his knowledge of Greek, went up to Sheridan 
 saymg, " Sheridan, how came you to be so ready with that 
 passage ? It certainly was as you say, but I was not 
 aware of it before you spoke." Sheridan had indeed 
 succeeded in hoaxing the House, for his " quotation " 
 was quite impromptu — and entirely innocent of Greek.^ 
 
 1 An earlier amusing instance of the use of the classics in the 
 House of Commons may be given. In a debate on the motion for 
 the impeachment of Sir Robert Walpole in 1741 that minister 
 quoted a verse from Horace. His great rival, Pulteney (after- 
 wards Earl of Batb), rose and remarked that the right honourable 
 gentleman's Latin and logic were aUke inaccurate. Walpole denied 
 it — hurt perhaps rather by the slur on his Latin than on his logic — 
 and a bet of a guinea was made across the floor of the House. The 
 matter was referred to the clerk at the table, a noted scholar, and 
 he decided against Walpole. The guinea was handed to Pulteney 
 and finally found its way to the British Museum with the following 
 inscription by the triumphant winner : — ' ■ This guinea I desire 
 
154 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 When Sheridan's colleagues had brought in an extremely 
 unpopular measure, and been defeated on it, he said that 
 he had often heard of people knocking out their brains 
 against a wall, but never before knew of anyone building 
 a wall expressly for the purpose. 
 
 When new^ possibilities of taxation were being discussed, 
 someone suggested a tax on milestones ! Sheridan dis- 
 missed the proposal as unconstitutional — as they were a 
 race that could not meet to remonstrate. Such a sugges- 
 tion was, of course, not meant to be taken seriously, but a 
 member actually proposed in the House that a tax might 
 well be levied upon tombstones, and in doing so declared it 
 to be a tax that could meet with no objection. He had 
 reckoned without Sheridan, who replied " that the only 
 reason why the proposed tax could not be objected to was, 
 because those out of whose property it was to be paid 
 would know nothing of the matter, as they must be dead 
 before the demand could be made ; but then, after all, 
 who knows but that it may not be rendered unpopular in 
 being represented as a tax upon persons who, having paid 
 the debt of nature, must prove that they have done so by 
 having the receipt engraved upon their tombs." 
 
 Burke's melodramatic flinging of the dagger on the floor 
 of the House of Commons was a farcical event that pro- 
 duced nothing but a smothered laugh and a joke from 
 Sheridan, " the gentleman has brought us the knife, but 
 where is the fork ? " 
 
 may be kept as an heirloom. It was won of Sir Robert Walpole in 
 the House ; he asserting the verse in Horace to be ' Nulh pallescere 
 Culpae ' whereas I laid the wager of a guinea that it was ' NuUi 
 pallescere culpa.' I told him I could take the money without blush 
 on my side, but believed it was the only money he ever gave in the 
 House of Commons where the giver and receiver ought not equally 
 to blush. This guinea I hope will prove to my posterity the use of 
 knowing Latin, and encourage them in their learning." 
 
SHERIDAN 155 
 
 During the trial of Warren Hastings, Sheridan was 
 making one of his speeches when, having observed Gibbon 
 among the audience, he took occasion to refer to " the 
 luminous author of the ' Decline and Fall.' " A friend 
 afterwards reproached him for flattering the historian. 
 " Why, what did I say of him ? " asked Sheridan. " You 
 called him the luminous author of the ' Decline and Fall.' " 
 " Luminous ! " repeated Sheridan, " oh ! of course I meant 
 voluminous." 
 
 Lord Henry Petty having projected a tax on iron, some- 
 one at Brookes's was sajdng that there was so much 
 opposition to it that it would be better to raise the necessary 
 sum from a tax on coals." " Hold ! my dear fellow," 
 broke in Sheridan, " that would be going from the frying 
 pan to the fire with a vengeance." 
 
 When it was suggested that Sheridan's son should enter 
 Parliament he was asked which side he would take. The 
 young man replied that he would vote with those who had 
 the most to offer him, that he should wear on his forehead 
 a label " To let." " Do, Tom," commented his father, 
 " and write underneath those words' unfurnished.' " 
 
 VI 
 
 The gift of humour which took the form of bantering 
 exaggeration was peculiarly Sheridan's, and was not 
 infrequently used by him in Parliament with considerable 
 effect. Thus, he happily illustrated the defects of a bill 
 to remedy the defects of bills already in being, by com- 
 paring it to the plan of a simple but very ingeniousjmoral 
 tale, that had often afforded him amusement in his early 
 days, under the|title of " The House that Jack Built." 
 First, then, comes in a bill, imposing a tax, and then 
 
156 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 comes in a bill to amend that bill for imposing a tax ; 
 next a biU to remedy the defects of a bill for explaining 
 the bill that amended the bill for imposing a tax ; and so 
 on ad, infinitum." 
 
 I, On the same theme he compared a tax bill to a ship 
 built in a dockyard, which was found to be defective 
 every voyage, and consequently was obliged to undergo a 
 new repair ; first it was to be caulked, then to be new 
 planked, then to be new ribbed, then again to be covered ; 
 then, after all these expensive alterations, the vessel was 
 obliged to be broken up and rebuilt. 
 
 A delightful instance of this humour is to be seen 
 in Sheridan's whimsical account of his boon-companion 
 Joseph Richardson's visit to Bognor with hmi. Richard- 
 son, who had set his mind upon the trip especially because 
 Lord Thurlow was staying at Bognor, said " nothing can 
 be more delightful, what with my favourite diversion of 
 sailing — ^my enjojmient of walking on the sand — the 
 pleasure of arguing with Lord Thurlow, and taking my 
 snuff by the seaside I shall be in my glory." Such was the 
 anticipation, now for Sheridan's account of realization : 
 " Well, down he went, full of anticipated joys. The first 
 day, in stepping into the boat to go sailing, he tumbled 
 down, and sprained his ankle, and was obliged to be carried 
 into his lodgings, which had no view of the sea ; the 
 following morning he sent for a barber to shave him, but 
 there being no professional barber nearer than Chichester, 
 he was forced to put up with a fisherman, who volunteered 
 to officiate and cut him severely just under the nose, 
 which entirely prevented his taking snuff, and the same 
 day at breakfast, eating prawns too hastily, he swallowed 
 the head of one, horns and all, which stuck in his throat, 
 and produced such pain and inflammation, that his medical 
 advisers would not allow him to speak for three days. So 
 
SHERIDAN 157 
 
 thus ended in four and twenty hours, his walking — ^his 
 sailing — ^his snuff-taking — ^and his arguments." 
 
 VII 
 
 In 1812 Sheridan had quarrelled with the Prince Regent 
 and failed to secure election for Stafford — ^he had not the 
 necessary money to buy the seat, nor was he able to raise 
 it. This was the beginning of the pitiable end. As a 
 member of Parliament he had been more or less secure 
 from his creditors, but the last four years of his life, broken 
 in fortune and in health, was a sad climax to a brilliant 
 career. The ostentatious display, the hard drinking, the 
 rash betting of the time were too much for the dramatist's 
 fortune and physique. His death, accelerated by distress, 
 took place on 7th July 1816. A few weeks earlier a writer 
 in one of the papers had drawn attention to Sheridan's 
 state and called for " Life and Succour against Westminster 
 Abbey and a Funeral." Succour came too late, and the 
 man who died with the bailiffs at his door was accorded 
 " a funeral of unsurpassed ostentation," and buried in the 
 Abbey. 
 
 Of the character of Sheridan as a man, of his political 
 position, his treatment as " the scapegoat of the Whigs," 
 of his achievements in dramatic literature, of the richness 
 of his oratory, the charm of his personality it is not neces- 
 sary here to speak. The story has been newly told at 
 length in two capital volumes by Mr Walter Sichel, who 
 gives an admirable summing-up of his witty conversation, 
 with which we are here chiefly concerned. 
 
 " In his youth it detained Lady Cork for two months 
 at Chatsworth from a house awaiting her at Bath. In his 
 age it held Rogers and Bjrron spellbound from six in the 
 evening till one in the morning. It brought up Thackeray' s 
 
158 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 witty and beautiful grandmother night after ni^ht to the 
 Westminster house of her uncle, Peter Moore, for the mere 
 pleasure of hearing him. It disarmed his opponents, it 
 propitiated men so opposed to each other as Dundas and 
 WUberforce. It softened Sheridan's breach with the 
 fastidious Windham. It conciliated the commonplace 
 George Rose who once boasted that he had christened a 
 son William in honour of Pitt, and was told by Sheridan 
 that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. For 
 a long space (to use Burke's word) it ' dulcified ' Biurke's 
 righteous asperity." ^ 
 
 Some of his remarks, if rightly attributed to him, must 
 have called for quick appreciation of their wit to avoid 
 their being taken as offence. Meeting two of the royal 
 dukes in St James's Street, one of them hailed him, " I say, 
 Sherry, we have just been discussing whether you are a 
 greater fool or rogue. What is your own opinion, my 
 boy ? " Sheridan, having bowed and smiled at the com- 
 pliment, took each of them by an arm, and instantly re- 
 plied : " Why, 'faith, your Royal Highness, I believe I am 
 between both." 
 
 The Prince Regent was regarded as taking great credit to 
 himself for various public occurrences, as if they had been 
 directed by his skill or foreseen by his sagacity. After 
 expatiating on this trait of his royal friend's character 
 Sheridan added, " but what his Royal Highness more par- 
 ticularly prides himself upon, is the late excellent harvest." 
 On the Prince entering the Thatched House Club and 
 calling for a drink, Sheridan at once gave this impromptu : 
 
 " The Prince came in, and said 'twas cold. 
 Then took a mighty rummer, 
 When swallow after swallow came. 
 And then he swore 'twas summer." 
 
 '"Sheridan." By Walter Sichel. 1909. i.87. 
 
SHERIDAN 159 
 
 It was, as has been seen, in happy ridicule that Sheridan's 
 humour was frequently manifested. The Prince having ex- 
 patiated on the beauty of the opinion that the reason why 
 the bosom of a beautiful woman possesses such a fascinating 
 effect on man is because he derived from that source the 
 first pleasurable sensations of his infancy Sheridan readily 
 reduced the argument to absurdity with : " Such chil- 
 dren, then, as are brought up by hand must needs be 
 indebted for similar sensations to a very different object ; 
 and yet, I believe, no man has ever felt any intense emo- 
 tions of amatory delight at beholding a faf-spoon ! " 
 
 When Law (afterwards Lord EUenborough) had to 
 cross-examine Sheridan he began- : " Pray, Mr Sheridan, do 
 answer my questions without point or epigram." " You 
 say true, Mr Law," retorted he. " Your questions are 
 without point or epigram." 
 
 Meeting Sheridan Beau BrummeU said : " My brain 
 is swimming, Sherry, with being up all night ; how can 
 I cure it ? " " You have mistaken your complaint," 
 retorted Sheridan, " there can be no swimming in a caput 
 moriuum." 
 
 On another occasion, too, he scored off the Beau, but 
 rather with bluntness than the sharpness of wit. He had 
 met BrummeU in Fleet Street and the Beau expressed his 
 horror at being found east of Temple Bar. Sheridan 
 professed, too, that meeting him there was almost incred- 
 ible. " You ! come from the east ! " he exclaimed, " im- 
 possible ! " " Why, my de-ar sa-ar ? " drawled BrummeU. 
 ' ' Because the wise men came from the East, ' ' was Sheridan' s 
 reply. " So then, sa-ar," demanded the other, " you 
 think me a fool ? " " By no means," said Sheridan ; " I 
 know you to be one." 
 
 Very happy was this epigram in reply to Lord Erskine 
 who, in a crowded company, had declared that " a wife 
 
i6o A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 was only a tin canister tied to one's tail." Sheridan, 
 appropriately handed the lines to Lady Erskine : 
 
 " Lord Erskine J at women presuming to raU, 
 Calls a wife ' a tin canister tied to one's tail 1 ' 
 And the fair Lady Anne while the subject he carries on, 
 Seems htirt at his Lordship's degrading comparison : 
 But wherefore degrading ? Considered aright — 
 A canister's polished, and useful, and bright. 
 And should dirt its original purity hide, 
 That's the fault of the puppy to whom it is tied."- 
 
 Lord Lauderdale saying he had just heard an excellent 
 joke, which he would repeat, Sheridan stopped him with : 
 " Pray don't, my dear Lauderdale ; in your mouth a joke 
 is no laughing matter." Of an unscrupulous opponent he 
 said, " I can laugh at his malice — but not at his wit." 
 
 A certain doctor notorious for his niggardliness was 
 prevailed upon to attend a charity sermon in Westminster 
 Abbey. After the sermon the plate was handed round. 
 Said Fox, who was present with Sheridan : " The doctor 
 has absolutely given his pound." " Then," said Sheridan, 
 " he must think that he is going to die." " Pooh ! " 
 replied Fox, " even Judas threw away twice the money." 
 " Yes — ^but how long was it before he was hanged ? " 
 added Sheridan. 
 
 Many of the stories remembered about Sheridan, or that 
 have been fastened upon him, have to do with his continuous 
 state of indebtedness. He is reported to have said : " I 
 pay my debts chronologically, and the first debt I mean to 
 pay is the debt of nature." He was a public man for ever 
 vexed by the eternal want of pence. MTaen told that 
 somebody had traced the lost tribes of Israel he said that 
 he was glad to hear it, as he had nearly exhausted all the 
 others. He appears to have been ready to jest again and 
 again over his monetary difficulties. At one time a man 
 
SHERIDAN i6i 
 
 named Hanson was a rather heavy creditor, and so was 
 Gunter the confectioner, for a smaller amount. The 
 latter had sent in his bill demanding immediate payment 
 on the very morning that Hanson called for the settlement 
 of his account. Gunter's bill lay upon the table. Hanson 
 was pressing. Sheridan was apologetic. " I must have my 
 account settled," said the tradesman ; " promises are not 
 payment, and I cannot wait any longer." " Well, my dear 
 sir," came the quiet reply, " if you can show me how to 
 settle it I shall most cheerfully comply with your wishes." 
 " Me show you ! " retorted Hanson, " how am I to know 
 your resources?" "You know Gunter?" said Sheridan; 
 " perhaps you wiU have no objection to take his bill ? " 
 " Not at aJl ; I know Gunter to be a good safe man." 
 " Well then," handing over the paper as he spoke, " there's 
 his bin — ^take it, make what use you can of it, and when 
 you have done with it, I must beg of you to return it — 
 receipted," and bowing politely he left the bewildered 
 Hanson to the acceptance or rejection of the joke as might 
 best suit him. 
 
 One day a creditor came into Sheridan's room for a bill, 
 and found him seated before a table on which were two or 
 three himdred pounds in gold and notes. " It's no use 
 looking at that, my good fellow," said Sheridan, " that is 
 all bespoken for debts of honour." " Very well," replied 
 the tradesman, tearing up his security and throwing it in 
 the fire, " now mine is a debt of honour." " So it is, and 
 must be paid at once," said Sheridan, handing over the 
 money. 
 
 Two or three anecdotes show how bravely he jested up 
 to the end. Seated at the window of his room not long be- 
 fore his death, on seeing a hearse go by he remarked, " Ah, 
 that is the carriage — after all ! " When he lay upon his 
 death-bed the doctor thought that, as a forlorn hope, a 
 
i62 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS \ 
 
 certain operation might be performed and inquired of 
 the patient, " Have you ever undergone an operation, Mr 
 Sheridan ? " " Yes," replied the patient, his drollery un- 
 repressed by sickness, " when sitting for my portrait — or 
 to have my hair cut." 
 
 One night Sheridan was found in the street by a watch- 
 man, fuddled, bewildered and almost insensible. " Who 
 are you, sir ? " demanded the watchman. No reply. 
 " What's your name ? " A hiccough the only response. 
 " What's your name ? " In a slow, deliberate and impas- 
 sive tone came the answer : " Wilber force ! " Byron com- 
 ments on this : " Is not that Sherry all over ? — and, to my 
 mind, excellent. Poor fellow ! his very dregs are better 
 than the first sprightly runnings of others." 
 
 That Sheridan's son inherited something of his father's 
 humour several stories testify. When his father recom- 
 mended him to take a wife he bluntly answered : ' ' Whose ? ' ' 
 Sheridan was anxious that Tom should marry a woman of 
 fortune, but Tom had set his affections elsewhere and would 
 not listen to his father's expostulations. Sheridan at 
 length said : " Tom, if you marry Caroline Callander, I'll 
 cut you off with a shilling." " Then, sir, you must borrow 
 it," came the answer. 
 
 Even Sheridan had at times the tables turned on him. 
 When he had taken a new house he happened to meet Lord 
 Guildford, to whom he mentioned his change of residence, 
 and also announced a change in his own habits, " Now, 
 my lord, everything is carried on in my house with the 
 greatest regularity — everything in short goes like clock- 
 work." " Ah ! " replied Lord Guildford meaningly, 
 " tick, tick, tick, I suppose." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 WITS IN SOCIETY 
 
 " Social wit which, never kindling strife, 
 Blazed in the small sweet courtesies of life." 
 
 PERHAPS the first recognized " Society Wit "—the 
 man welcomed everywhere for his readiness in con- 
 versation, his capacity as an anecdotist — was George 
 Augustus Selwyn. Though for many years a member of 
 ParUament, and holder of various sinecure offices, it is only 
 as society wit that his memory survives, and that perhaps 
 largely because of the extent to which he is mentioned 
 and quoted in the correspondence of Horace Walpole. 
 
 Born in 1719 Selwyn was educated, with Walpole and 
 Gray, at Eton and went thence to Oxford, where, to avoid 
 being expelled, he removed his name from the college books. 
 He was accused of having insulted the Christian religion 
 by using a chalice at a wine-party, his explanation being 
 that it was merely done as a satire on the doctrines taught 
 by the Church of Rome. At the age of twenty-eight he 
 entered Parliament, and though he remained a member for 
 upwards of thirty years it was a silent one, indeed it is 
 recorded that when he was in the House " he was nearly 
 always asleep, except when taking part in a division." He 
 was a popular member of the fashionable clubs, and a game- 
 ster on whom Fortune seems to have smiled. One of the 
 163 
 
i64 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 best-remembered traits of his character is said to have 
 been his fondness for attending executions, though this 
 was declared by some of his friends to be greatly exagger- 
 ated. 
 
 Selwjm seems to have been one of those utterers of good 
 things who cotild remain impassive while making the re- 
 marks that set the table in a roar. Walpole says that the 
 demureness of the speaker gave an added zest to the 
 witticism. The writer of the life of Selw57n in The Dic- 
 tionary of National Biography says that " the savour of 
 such of his jests as survive has long been lost," which is 
 rather an illustration of the fact that a jest's prosperity 
 depends upon someone else as well as its utterer. When 
 the Scotch lords were tried after the 1745 Stuart rising, 
 Selwyn said, on seeing " the hatchet-faced " Mr Bethel 
 looking wistfully at the prisoners : " What a shame it is to 
 turn his face to the prisoners till they are condemned " 
 — the allusion being to the custom of carrying the axe with 
 its edge towards men condemned for treason, instead of 
 from them as before condemnation. 
 
 When Lord North was married in the summer of 175 1 
 somebody said that it was very hot weather in which to 
 marry so fat a bride. " Oh ! " said Selwyn, " she was 
 kept in ice for three days before." 
 
 Selwyn was blamed by some ladies for going to see Lord 
 Lovat's execution, and asked how he could be such a 
 barbarian as to see the head cut off. " Nay," said he, " if 
 that was such a crime, I am sure that I have made amends, 
 for I went to see it sewn on again." 
 
 When George the Third came to the throne, Walpole 
 and Selwyn were discussing the state of affairs when the 
 former remarked : " There is nothing new under the sun." 
 " No," added Selwyn, " nor under the grandson." 
 
 Selwyn and Charles Townsend had been having a wit 
 
GEORGE SELWYN 
 
 FROM A PORTRAIT BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, IN THE POSSESSION OF THE EARL OF KOSEBtRY 
 
WITS IN SOCIETY 165 
 
 combat all evening in which the former came off victor. 
 Townsend took his friend in his carriage as far as White's, 
 where he dropped him. " Remember, Charles," said 
 Selwyn, as he descended, " this is the first set-down you 
 have given me to-day." 
 
 Someone of the same name as Charles James Fox having 
 been hanged at Tyburn, Fox asked Selw}^ if he had 
 attended the execution. " No," replied he dryly, " I make 
 a point of never attending rehearsals." 
 
 This widely accepted view of Selwyn's morbidity gave 
 his friends opportunities of being pleasant at his expense. 
 When Lord Holland was ill he was told that the wit 
 had called to inquire after him. " If Mr Selwyn calls 
 again," said the sick man, " show him into my room. 
 If I am alive I shall be glad to see him ; if I am dead I am 
 sure he will be glad to see me." 
 
 On there being a proposal to get up a subscription for 
 the benefit of Fox someone said that as it was a matter 
 of delicacy, " how would Fox take it." " Take it ! " 
 exclaimed Selwyn, " why, quarterly, to be sure." 
 
 Selwyn, as befitted a society wit, was a member of 
 the leading clubs, and in the licence permitted so popular 
 a person was by no means always careful to eliminate 
 rudeness from his wit. Some of the clubs were not over- 
 exclusive, and at Brookes's there was a Sir Robert Mack- 
 reth, who had been for several years a waiter at the Cocoa 
 Tree, had obtained a considerable fortune by marriage and 
 had gained great notoriety as a moneylender and by duping 
 a young nobleman out of some thousands of pounds. One 
 evening at Brookes's someone referred to the Cocoa Tree 
 being in the market, on which Mackreth jestingly an- 
 nounced his intention of buying it and changing its name 
 to Bob's Coffee-house. " Right," said Selwyn, " it will 
 be Bob without and Robbin' within." 
 
i66 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 To the lady of a knight — her father having been a 
 pawnbroker and usurer — he was yet more severe. She 
 had shown him through a number of gaudy apartments, 
 decorated with still more gaudy pictures, and at last con- 
 ducted him to a still more gorgeous apartment where there 
 were none. " Here," said she, " I intend to hang up my 
 family." " I thought," commented Selwyn, " they had 
 been hanged long since." 
 
 Much pestered for money by merry-making chimney- 
 sweepers on May Day, Selwjm made a low bow to the sooty 
 company, saying : " Gentlemen, I have often heard of the 
 majesty of the people, I presume your highnesses are in 
 Court mourning." Thus runs the version of Lord Pem- 
 broke, who was apparently an ear-witness. Horace 
 Walpole gives Selwyn's words as " We have heard so much 
 lately of the majesty of the people, that I suppose they are 
 taken for the princes of the people, and this is Collar-day," 
 in allusion to the May Day decorations of the sweeps. 
 
 " George," says Walpole, " never thinks but d la tete 
 trancMe. He came to town t'other day to have a tooth 
 drawn ; and told the man that he would drop his handker- 
 chief for the signal," in accordance with the time-honoured 
 habit of stage executions. 
 
 Selwyn had readiness of humour as well as wit, and is 
 said to have been fond of it in its lowest form of hoaxing. He 
 was dining with the Mayor and Corporation of Gloucester, 
 in 1758, when news arrived of the failure of the British 
 expedition to take Rochfort. The Mayor turning to their 
 guest said : " You, sir, who are in the ministerial secrets, 
 can no doubt inform us of the cause of this misfortune ? " 
 SelwjTn, who was of course quite ignorant of the matter, 
 instantly said, " I will tell you, in confidence, the reason, 
 Mr Mayor. The fact is, that the scaling ladders prepared 
 for the occasion were found on trial to be too short ! " 
 
WITS IN SOCIETY 167 
 
 Meeting a pretentious personage, the son of a stable- 
 keeper, who had been appointed a Commissioner of Taxes 
 by the influence of the famous Duke of Queensberry, and 
 who was giving himself ridiculous airs at Brookes's, " So, 
 Mr Commissioner, you have been installed, have you ? " 
 said Selwyn. " Yes, sir," replied the other, " and without 
 taking a single step in the matter." " I believe you, 
 sir," rejoined Selwyn ; " reptiles can neither walk nor take 
 steps ; nature ordained them to creep." 
 
 Watching the play at White's, Selwyn observed the 
 Postmaster-General (Sir L. Fawkener) losing heavily at 
 piquet, and pointing to his successful opponent said, " See 
 how he is robbing the mail." Seeing Ponsonby, the Speaker, 
 at the hazard-table at Newmarket tossing about the bank 
 bills he said to a companion : " Look how easily the Speaker 
 passes the money bills." 
 
 A friend meeting Selwyn asked : " How does your new 
 horse answer ? " "I really don't know," said he, " for I 
 . have never asked him a question." 
 
 When a man of fashion who had borrowed large sums of 
 money fled to the Continent to avoid his creditors Selwyn 
 said : " It is a pass-over that will not be much relished by 
 the Jews." 
 
 When Burke first entered the House of Commons, his 
 speaking served so regularly to empty the chamber that he 
 got nicknamed " the dinner-bell." A nobleman meeting 
 Selwyn as he was quitting the Commons said : " What, is 
 the House up ? " " No," replied the other wearily, " but 
 Burke is." 
 
 Much amusement having been caused by the report that 
 Sir Joshua Rejmolds was to stand for Parliament, Selw}^! 
 said : " He is not to be laughed at ; he may very well be 
 elected, for Sir Joshua is the ablest man I know on a 
 canvas." 
 
i68 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 A humorous story that has been presented in many 
 shapes is said to have been told by Selwyn in the following 
 form. It is, however, probably much older : — 
 
 Two friends, who had not seen each other for a long 
 time, met one day by accident. 
 
 " How do you do ? " says one. 
 
 " So, so," rephes the other, " and yet I was married 
 since you and I were together." 
 
 " Tliat is very good news." 
 
 " Not very good — for it was my lot to choose a terma- 
 gant." 
 
 "It is a pity." 
 
 " I hardly think so, for she brought me two thousand 
 poimds." 
 
 " Well, there is comfort." 
 
 " Not so much — for with her fortune I bought a number 
 of sheep, and they are all dead of the rot." 
 
 " That is indeed distressing." 
 
 " Not so distressing as you may imagine — ^for by the 
 sale of their skins I got more than the sheep cost me." 
 
 " In that case you are indemnified." 
 
 " By no means — ^for my house and all my money has 
 been destroyed by fire." 
 
 " Alas ! this was a dreadful misforttme." 
 
 " Faith, not so dreadful — for my termagant wife and 
 my house were burnt together." 
 
 II 
 
 Joseph Jekyll, who was bom about 1753, became as 
 well known in his time as Selwyn as diner-out and wit. 
 He was contributor of epigrams and verses to the journals, 
 a Member of Parliament for Calne from 1787 until 1816, 
 
WITS IN SOCIETY 169 
 
 solicitor to the Prince of Wales in 1805 and later a Com- 
 missioner in Lunacy and Master in Chancery. There was 
 considerable objection to the final appointment, in 181 5, 
 but the story runs that the Prince Regent was determined 
 upon it and at length overcame Lord Eldon's objections by 
 forcing his way into the Lord Chancellor's bedroom and 
 exclaiming : " How I do pity Lady Eldon — she will never 
 see you again, for here I remain until you promise to make 
 Jekyll a Master in Chancery ! " 
 
 Jekyll made such a reputation by his jeux d'esprits that 
 the authors of " The Rolliad " did not spare him in their 
 attacks on all who favoured Pitt : 
 
 " Ranging with fell virtu his poisonous tribes 
 Of embryo sneers and animalcule gibes. 
 Here insect puns their feeble wings expand. 
 To speed in httle flights their lord's commands, 
 There in their paper chrysahs he sees 
 Specks of bon mots and eggs of repartees."' 
 
 Political antipathy of course dictated these terms, for 
 Jekyll's wit was by no means the little thing it was here 
 made out to be. Some of his retorts and remarks were 
 admirable. Some have lost their savour owing to the lapse 
 of time and call for such annotation as would make them 
 now seem laboured, others, it must be admitted, are but 
 indifferent puns. The following, noted in Crabb Robinson's 
 " Diary " in 1818, would now come in the second category : 
 — " this year there were great changes in the law courts. 
 Of the judicial promotions Jekyll said that they came by 
 titles very different — C. J. Abbott by descent, J. Best by 
 intrusion, and Richardson by the operation of law. The 
 wit of the first two is pungent ; the last a deserved com- 
 pliment." 
 
 Seeing a squirrel in a revolving cage in a barrister's 
 
170 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 chambers he said : " Ah ! poor devil, he's going the Home 
 Circuit." 
 
 Being asked why he no longer spoke to a lawyer of the 
 name of Peat he answered : " Because I choose to give up 
 his acquaintance ; I have common of Turbary, and have a 
 right to cut Peat." Once more he played neatly on a man's 
 name. An attorney named Else approached him sa57ing 
 indignantly : " Sir, I hear you have called me a pettifogging 
 scoundrel. Have you done so, sir ? " " No, sir," replied 
 Jekyll imperturbably ; " I never said you were a petti- 
 fogger or a scoundrel, but I did say you were little Else." 
 
 Describing Lady Cork as she appeared at a party wearing 
 an enormous plume he said : " She was exactly like a 
 shuttlecock — all Cork and feathers." 
 
 The inhospitality of the Duke of Richmond — ^the only 
 cool place in his house was said to be the kitchen — ^was a 
 frequent subject for his wits, and inspired Jekyll with two 
 good mots. A friend who had visited the Duke said that 
 he had been in the kitchen, where he saw the spit shining 
 as brightly as though it had never been used. " Why do 
 you mention his spit ? " commented Jekyll ; " you must 
 know that nothing turns upon that." Referring to the 
 same trait of the same nobleman on another occasion 
 Jekyll said : " It is Lent all the year round in his kitchen, 
 emd Passion week in the parlour." He appears to have had 
 a similar idea of Lord Eldon's kitchen, judging by the neat 
 epigram which he made on hearing the word lien pro- 
 nounced as " lion " by Eldon and as " lean " by Sir Arthur 
 Pigot : 
 
 " Sir Arthur, Sir Arthur, why, what do you mean 
 By saying the Chancellor's lion is lean ? 
 Do you think that his kitchen's so bad as all that. 
 That nothing within it will ever get fat." 
 
 The impromptu epigram seems to have been one of the 
 
WITS IN SOCIETY 171 
 
 most characteristic expressions of Jekyll's wit. On 
 observing a bustling, prosy serjeant come into court he 
 at once wrote : 
 
 " Behold the serjeant, full of fire, 
 Long shaU his hearers rue it 
 His purple garments came from Tyre, 
 His arguments go to it." 
 
 No less happy was his pun on an old lady who was 
 brought forward as a witness to prove a certain tender 
 having been made. 
 
 " Garrow, forbear 1 that tough old jade 
 Can never prove a tender maid."- 
 
 Neatly, too, did he vary an old jest against the medical 
 profession : 
 
 " One doctor single like the scuUer plies. 
 The patient struggles and by inches dies ; 
 But two physicians, like a pair of oars. 
 Waft him right smoothly to the Stygian shores." 
 
 When it was reported in the House of Commons that the 
 Emperor of China had given a fairly direct hint to Lord 
 Macartney that he had better hasten his departure, as the 
 rainy season was coming on, Jekyll wrote the following 
 impromptu : — 
 
 " The sage Chian-ti 
 Has looked in the sky. 
 
 And he says we shall soon have wet weather ; 
 So I think, my good fellows. 
 As you've no umbrellas 
 You'd better go home dry together." 
 
 These lines passed from hand to hand and a message was 
 sent across from the Government benches begging Jekyll 
 — one of the Opposition — for the rest of the verses, but he 
 
172 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 wittily answered : " Tell them if they want papers they 
 must move for them — we find it very hard to get them 
 even so." 
 
 During the debate on the Swedish treaty in 1814, Ward 
 (afterwards Lord Dudley) left the House saying that he 
 could not bear to hear Lord Castlereagh abuse his Master, 
 upon which JekyU asked : " Pray, Ward, did your last 
 Master give you a character, or did this one take you 
 without." 
 
 Sir William Scott, afterwards Baron Stowell, the judge 
 to whom we owe the phrase about " the elegant simplicity 
 of the three per cents," married in his sixty-eighth year the 
 widow of the Marquis of Sligo. On the door of their house 
 in Grafton Street, which had been her residence before the 
 marriage, was a brass plate displaying her name, beneath 
 which Sir William placed another bearing his own. " Why, 
 Sir William," said JekyU, " I am sorry to see you knock 
 under." Scott made no reply at the time but had the 
 plates transposed. When next they met he said : " Now, 
 Jekyll, you see I no longer knock under." " No, Sir 
 William," said the uiu-elenting wit, "I see you knock up 
 now." 
 
 Ill 
 
 " The best sayer of good things and the most epigram- 
 matic conversationist I ever met." Such was Lord 
 B5nron's judgment of Henry Luttrell, who was almost the 
 immediate contemporary of Jekyll, being bom in 1765, 
 twelve years later, and d3nng in 1851, fourteen years after 
 JekyU. Though he made something of a reputation as 
 writer of society verse it is mainly as a society wit that 
 he is remembered. A dozen years after his death it was 
 written of him that : " Few men were better known, 
 
WITS IN SOCIETY 173 
 
 thirty years ago in the world of fashion, than Henry 
 Luttrell. The best man to make the table pleasant, to 
 bring smiles to hostesses' lips, to restore the lost thread of 
 conversation, to say good things as no other man could 
 attempt, and to render mediocre stories to better style 
 than anybody else." 
 
 Henry Luttrell was the illegitimate son of Colonel 
 LuttreU (afterwards Earl of Carhampton), who was Wilkes' 
 opponent in the famous Middlesex election of 1769. At 
 the age of twenty-three Luttrell was elected a member of 
 the last Irish parliament ; in 1802 he went out to the West 
 Indies to look after his father's estates there, but did not 
 remain long. On his return he appears to have delighted 
 the Duchess of Devonshire by his talk, and was by her 
 introduced into society, where his wit was not long in 
 winning him popularity. He soon came to be recognized 
 as a social figure, becoming in course of time especially 
 familiar at the gatherings at Holland House, and at 
 Samuel Rogers' breakfast-parties — indeed, as a wit his 
 name came to be always bracketed with that of Rogers, 
 the two, it is said, being " seldom apart, and always hating, 
 abusing and ridiculing each other." Luttrell is one 
 of the several persons who have been credited with 
 saying of Rogers' sumptuously illustrated " Italy " that 
 the work would have been dished but for the plates. His 
 " Letters to Julia in Rhyme " (first published as " Advice 
 to Julia ") had quite a vogue in the twenties, and served 
 no doubt to carry the name of the wit wider than the 
 circles in which he moved. When Sir Walter Scott met 
 him it was to recognize him as " the great London wit." 
 Yet Luttrell was not a mere jester at the dinner-tables 
 of the great; he was a talker, said Lady Blessington, 
 who always made her think, and one who, as it has been 
 said, was not devoid of occasional Thackerayan wrath 
 
174 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 against the shams and snobberies of society, as in those 
 lines: 
 
 " O that there might in England be 
 A duty on Hypocrisy, 
 A tax on humbug, an excise 
 On solemn plausibilities.'' 
 
 It has been said by Lord John Russell that most of 
 Luttrell's jests are mere puns, but though he could use the 
 pun effectively the generalization is not true. When it 
 was remarked that some people were opposed to the 
 building of Waterloo Bridge because it would spoil the 
 river, " Gad, sir ! " exclaimed he, " if a very few sensible 
 persons had been attended to, we should still be champing 
 acorns." 
 
 It was Luttrdl who struck out something fresh on the 
 weather when he said of the English climate : " On a fine 
 day it is like looking up a chimney ; on a rainy day like 
 looking down." 
 
 " I am told that you eat three eggs every day at break- 
 fast," someone said to Sir F. Gould. " No," answered 
 he, " on the contrary." " What is the contrary of eating 
 three ? " asked a bystander. " Laying three eggs, I 
 suppose," at once volunteered Luttrell. 
 
 At Holland House, where most of Luttrell's mots are said 
 to have been uttered, there was a crowded dinner-party, 
 when Lady Holland bade her company " make room " for 
 a late arrival. " It must certainly be made," said Luttrell, 
 " for it does not exist." 
 
 Thomas Moore having mentioned that someone had 
 said of a retired hat-maker's very dark complexion that he 
 looked as if the dye of his old trade had got engrained into 
 his face. " Yes," said Luttrell, " darkness that may be 
 felt." 
 
WITS IN SOCIETY 175 
 
 After listening to Ellen Tree, the celebrated singer, 
 Luttrell extemporized this pretty compliment : 
 
 '- On this Tree if a nightingale settles and sings 
 This Tree will return her as good as she brings.'' 
 
 A traveller was describing the lasso as being useful for 
 catching men as well as animals when Luttrell interposed 
 with, " Why, the first syllable alone has caught many a 
 man." 
 
 Of a distinguished diner-out it was remarked that there 
 would be on his tomb : " He dined late " — " and died 
 early," added Luttrell. 
 
 The wit in speaking of Daniel O'Connell, happily applied 
 the lines : 
 
 ' ' Through all the compass of the notes he ran. 
 The diapason closing full in Dan." 
 
 IV 
 
 William Arden, second Baron Alvanley, like Luttrell, is 
 chiefly remembered as a wit. He was the son of the first 
 baron, was born in 1789, succeeded to the title in 1804, 
 entered the army, from which he retired as lieutenant- 
 colonel, and died in 1849. His story might be dismissed 
 with the brevity of an epigram if it were not for his 
 appearances in the letters and memoirs of the early part 
 of the nineteenth century as one of the fashionable wits. 
 In 1835, however, his lordship became prominent in the 
 public eye owing to a passage-at-arms with Daniel O'Con- 
 nell. The incident is amusingly summarized in a contem- 
 porary journal under the heading of " Hear Both Sides." 
 
 " House of Lords 
 
 " Lord Alvanley. Have you anything to do with that 
 rascal O'Connell ? 
 
176 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 "Lord Melbourne. {Bothered.) I don't know him — I 
 never heard of him — ^never had anything to do with him — 
 don't wish to see him — we can do without him. 
 
 " Lord Londonderry. I am glad to hear it — ^the villain, 
 the Irish bully, the Papist blackguard. 
 
 " House of Commons 
 
 "Mr O'Connell. The bloated bufEoon — the unmarket- 
 able Lord Alvanley— the degraded, the too-bad-stamped 
 bully, Londonderry. 
 
 " Such is the present state of the legislation market. 
 What a fortunate thing it is for these gentlemen and noble- 
 men that the reporters are ever on the watch to write down 
 their polite speeches, so that nothing is lost." 
 
 The words given seem actually to have been used, for 
 Thomas Creevey wrote to a friend on April 29 : " We have 
 an affair going on between Alvanley and O'Connell. Alvan- 
 ley challenged him directly when he called him a ' bloated 
 buffoon.' Damer Dawson is Alvanley's bottle holder, and 
 as Dan had returned no answer to the demand upon him 
 yesterday, which was supposed ample time, Dawson fired 
 a second shot into him. / think Alvanley quite wrong in 
 this, but Sefton is quite of a contrary opinion." 
 
 Daniel O'Connell did not accept the challenge, but his 
 son Morgan did, and shots were duly exchanged on 
 Wimbledon Common, but neither opponent seems to have 
 been " one penny the worse." The meeting led to much 
 newspaper comment, and many jests at the expense of the 
 contestants. Here is a running fire of comment from one 
 journal : 
 
 " Mr Morgan O'Connell's slight mistake in having a shot 
 too much, is said to have been occasioned by loading with 
 an Irish Bull-et. 
 
WITS IN SOCIETY 177 
 
 " In consequence of the lucky termination of the fracas 
 between Lord Alvanley and Mr Morgan O'Connell, we are 
 authorized to say, that there was no duel — only the report 
 of one. 
 
 " The Clubs consider the late duel not at all fair. His 
 Lordship, though not a great man, being a hig man — 
 whereas Morgan O'Connell has nothing large about him 
 hut his mustachioes. 
 
 " It is suggested that Mr M. O'Connell and Lord Alvanley 
 have made themselves liable to the powder tax. 
 
 " The proprietor of the battle-field has applied for a 
 search warrant — as to the bullets. 
 
 " It is matter of doubt in the clubs, whether the 
 belligerent parties in the late duel, can be said to have 
 exchanged shots. 
 
 " The locality of the recent fierce contest was wrongly 
 chosen ; such bad shots should have gone to Shooter's 
 {H)ill. 
 
 " The proprietor of the battle-field has put up a notice — 
 Rubbish may not be shot here. 
 
 " Lord Alvanley 's name denotes his nature — All-vain-lie. 
 
 " Looking at the result of the duel, the thickness of 
 young O'Connell, and the bloated circumference of the 
 ' buffoon,' the little event may be said to have been not a 
 fatal but a fat-all duel. 
 
 " Lord Alvanley declares his belief that Mr Morgan 
 O'ConneU's challenge to fight a duel was not an invitation 
 to a ball. 
 
 " The Tories declare that it is very hard, very cruel, and 
 very Irish, that the Irish members should first kick them 
 out and then call them out. 
 
 " Lord Alvanley declares that he has had a very narrow 
 escape. This is rather surprising, considering his Lord- 
 ship's size." 
 
178 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 The nine days' wonder of the duel seems to have brought 
 Lord Alvanley into unusual prominence. It certainly was 
 hard that one who was regarded as a leading society wit 
 should be dubbed a " bloated buffoon," but according to 
 Creevey he had been the first offender. The duel took 
 place on 4th May 1835, and the next day Creevey wrote : 
 " About this nonsense of Alvanley's, I consider every part 
 of Alvanley's conduct as faulty. His first movement 
 against O'Connell was political ; it was to create disunion 
 between O'Connell and his tail and the Whigs. Then I 
 know that this arose from spite, Alvanley having been lately 
 refused a place in the Household which he asked for. Then 
 the publicity he has given to his challenge of O'Connell 
 is against all rule. However, he has been at last accom- 
 modated by one of the O'Connell family, who had three 
 shots at him last night in a duel, and no harm done to 
 either party." 
 
 Two of Alvanley's mots appear to be connected with 
 this rencontre. When proceeding to the rendezvous the 
 friend who accompanied him — more S5mipathetic than 
 Creevy — said : " Let what wUl come of it, Alvanley, the 
 world is extremely indebted to you for calling out this 
 fellow as you have done." " The world indebted to me, 
 my dear fellow," responded Alvanley, " I am devilishly 
 glad to hear it, for then the world and I are quits." Re- 
 turning from the bloodless fight he gave a guinea to the 
 man who had driven him to and from the meeting place. 
 Surprised at the sum the driver said : " My lord, I only 
 
 took you to ." " My friend," interrupted Alvanley, 
 
 " the guinea is not for taiing me there — ^but for bringing 
 me back." 
 
 Scenes from " Ivanhoe " were among the selections for 
 a series of tableaux vivants at a fete at Hatfield House and 
 Lady Salisbury having some difficulty in finding a man 
 
WITS IN SOCIETY 179 
 
 who would pose as Isaac of York, begged Lord Alvanley 
 " to make the set complete by doing the Jew." " Any- 
 thing within my power your ladyship may command," 
 replied Alvanley, " but, though no man in England has 
 tried oftener, I never could do a Jew in my life." 
 
 Of a rich friend who had become poor Alvanley said 
 that he was a man who " muddled away his fortune in 
 paying his tradesmen's bills ! " 
 
 Seeing a hearse standing at the door of a notorious 
 gambling " hell " in St James's Street he went up to the 
 mutes, took off his hat, and with a polite bow asked : " Is 
 the devU really dead, gentlemen ? " 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 A SOCIAL MISCELLANY '' 
 
 " What a dull, plodding.tramping, clanking would the ordinary 
 intercourse of Society be, without Wit to enliven and brighten it !" 
 
 Anon 
 
 THE four wits whose sayings are represented in the 
 preceding chapter are perhaps those whose names 
 most readily occur to mind if we think of wits in society — 
 wits that is, who, for the purposes of history, are wits and 
 wits alone, men who were in Parliament, were lawyers or 
 soldiers, but whose reputation depends not upon any 
 professional achievement but upon the quickness of their 
 wits as conversationists. Other wits have been in society, 
 but their fame is generally associated primarily with other 
 achievements than the utterance of witty words. Classi- 
 fication, as has before been pointed out, has necessarily 
 to be of the roughest. A Sheridan belongs at once to 
 the realms of the theatre, of politics and of society, 
 and so it is with many others. Here, however, we may 
 group together a number of witticisms that are associated 
 with Society, using that term in a somewhat elastic 
 sense, so that the society may range from the court to a 
 civic feast, from Rogers' breakfast-table to the kitchen ; 
 wherever that wit may have been uttered which, as Arch- 
 bishop Tillotson put it, is properly used " to season conver- 
 sation, to represent what is praiseworthy to the greatest 
 
 i8o 
 
A SOCIAL MISCELLANY i8i 
 
 advantage, and to expose the vices and follies of men, such 
 things as are in themselves truly ridiculous." 
 
 In a social miscellany we may fittingly recall that, if our 
 monarchs have not been born witty, they have at least had 
 wit thrust upon them. Possibly close research, if the 
 matter were worth it, would reveaJ sayings that might pass 
 for wit ascribed to the whole succession of our sovereigns — 
 though it is a little difficult to think of any but a bitter jest 
 from the thin lips of Tudor Mary — ^but we may be content 
 with specimens from more recent reigns. The following 
 must surely have been invented — or else history is unkind 
 to the memory of George the Second. That monarch, we 
 are told, was expressing high admiration of James Wolfe 
 when someone remarked that the distinguished officer was 
 mad. " Oh, mad is he ? " commented the King, " then I 
 wish he would bite some other of my generals." 
 
 King George the Third is also credited with some mUd 
 pleasantries, as when he refused to take the pedigree of a 
 horse that he had bought, telling the dealer that it would 
 do very well for the next horse he had to dispose of. When 
 riding near Richmond he inquired who it was that lived in 
 a beautiful residence, and on being told that it was the 
 property of a retired cardmaker he said : " Upon my word, 
 one would imagine that all this man's cards turned up 
 trumps " — ^which suggests the trained wit rather than the 
 Farmer King. The following anecdote related of his 
 Majesty may well be founded in fact. As told in the days 
 in which folk seem to have delighted in that " syncopistic " 
 fashion started by Tom Brown it runs : " George the 
 Third ordered Mr S — , a tradesman of some eminence in 
 London, to wait upon him at Windsor Castle, at eight 
 o'clock in the morning of the day appointed. Mr S — was 
 half an hour behind the time, and, upon being announced, 
 his Majesty said, ' Desire him to come at eight o'clock 
 
i82 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 to-morrow morning.' Mr S — appeared the next day 
 again after the time, and received the same command. 
 The third day he contrived to be punctual. Upon his 
 entrance, the King said, ' Oh ! the great Mr S — ! What 
 sleep do you take, Mr S — ? ' ' Why, please your Majesty, 
 I am a man of regular habits ; I usually take eight hours.' 
 ' Too much, too much,' said the King, ' six hours' sleep is 
 enough for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool 
 — eight for a fool, Mr S — .' " 
 
 One of the stories told of George the Fourth suggests the 
 manufactured jest fastened upon a prominent personage 
 to give it currency. Discussing Moore's biography of 
 Sheridan, the King is credited with having said : " I won't 
 say that Mr Moore has murdered Sheridan, but he has 
 certainly attempted his life." There is more of verisimili- 
 tude, and a suggestion of a real sense of humoin-, in the story 
 of his receiving, when Prince of Wales, a letter from a 
 waiter named Samuel Spring beginning, " Sam, the waiter 
 at the Cocoa Tree, presents his compliments to the Prince 
 of Wales," and on meeting the waiter next day sapng, 
 " Sam, this may be very well between you and me, but it 
 won't do with the Norfolks and Arundels." 
 
 A story told of William the Fourth, if genuine, shows 
 that king possessed on occasion of a ready tact which is so 
 happy as to be wit. The story runs that when dining with 
 several officers he ordered a waiter to " take away that 
 marine," pointing to an empty bottle. " Your Majesty ! " 
 exclaimed one of the ofi&cers, " do you compare an empty 
 bottle to a member of our branch of the service ? " " Yes," 
 answered the King, " I mean to say that it has done its duty 
 once, and is ready to do it again." 
 
 If our Hanoverian kings did occasionally deviate into 
 wit it is not surprising seeing that it was in their times that 
 the wit of satire and of repartee and the play upon words 
 
A SOCIAL MISCELLANY 183 
 
 which is now damned as mere punning were perhaps at 
 their highest ; that there were prominent among their 
 subjects, sometimes in their own immediate social circles, 
 men whose chief claim to consideration was their allied 
 nimbleness of thought and tongue. Sometimes indeed 
 they were themselves the targets at which the shafts of 
 those others' wit were directed, though more of course in 
 the satirical press than in the give-and-take of talk, where 
 their position even in the convivial days of the Georges 
 formed a certain protection, through which it needed the 
 cool effrontery of a Beau Brummell to penetrate. 
 
 A good story of the late portly Duchess of Teck was told 
 by Canon Teignmouth Shore. Her Royal Highness was 
 seated at dinner between Shore and another canon when 
 the former said that she must find herself in rather an 
 alarming position — 
 
 " Canon to right of you, 
 Canon to left of you 
 Volleys and thunders." 
 
 " Well," replied the Duchess, " this is the very first time 
 I have been connected with the Light Brigade." 
 
 II 
 
 It is indeed largely owing to the anecdotes in which they 
 figure that the beaux axe remembered at all, and but for 
 the fact that they were possessed of some measure of wit 
 and humour both Beau Nash, the " King of Bath," and 
 Beau Brummell, the chum of the Prince Regent, would 
 be little more than names to us now. It is the things they 
 said rather than the things they did which serve to make 
 them of interest to us. Nash may have been a benevolent 
 despot who regenerated and established Bath as a social 
 
i84 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 centre, but when the city he served became once more 
 provincial he would be but a shadowy figure if it were not 
 for the stories of his ready humour, for only occasionally 
 do his recorded remarks reach the point of wit. 
 
 A gentleman calling upon him found the Beau just 
 coming forth gorgeously arrayed, and asked him where 
 he was going. " Going ! " echoed Nash, " why, I'm going 
 to advertise." " What ? " came the surprised question. 
 " Why, myself, for that's the only use of a fine coat." In 
 which the sartorial philosophy of beaudom is summed up 
 in a sentence. 
 
 An extravagant visitor at Bath having squandered away 
 most of his fortune suddenly absented himself from the 
 Pump Room. The Beau on being asked what had become 
 of him said briefly that " he kept his bed." The in- 
 quirers forthwith called on the absentee, only to find him 
 in excellent health. When they told of Nash's words he 
 was indignant, and sought out the Beau to find what he 
 meant by spreadiug such a report. " Why in such a heat?" 
 said Nash imperturbably. " I sincerely hope that I have 
 said nothing but the truth. I ventured to tell these 
 gentlemen, indeed, that you kept your bed, and if you 
 have, I rejoice at it : it is the only thing you have 
 kept, and I knew it would be the last you would part 
 with." 
 
 Nash had a way of thus using his humoirr to censure 
 his subjects. Another instance was, when proposing a 
 charity subscription he noticed a notoriously mean man 
 among those present. Having made his general appeal 
 for funds the Beau turned and shouted his words at the 
 niggardly one, who protested, asking what he did that for. 
 " Because," said Nash coolly, " on these occasions you are 
 generally deaf." 
 
 He could also apply a pun happily, as when meeting a 
 
A SOCIAL MISCELLANY 185 
 
 Mend walking somewhat unsteadily, and on asking where 
 he had been and being told that he had been all night at a 
 concert, " very likely," he commented, " for I perceive 
 you have drunk to some tune." 
 
 Another amusing story describes the way in which, 
 when engaged in collecting subscriptions for the Bath 
 Hospital, he succeeded in getting handsome assistance 
 from an unwilling subscriber. While he was announcing 
 the object for which the funds were wanted, a duchess 
 more notable for her wit than her charity entered the room, 
 and not being able to pass him unobserved tapped him 
 playfully with her fan and said : " You must put down a 
 trifle for me, Nash, for I have no money in my pocket." 
 
 " Yes, madam," said he, " that I will, with pleasure, if 
 your Grace will tell me when to stop." Taking a handful 
 of guineas out of his pocket, he began counting them into 
 his white hat, " one, two, three, four, five " 
 
 " Hold ! hold ! " exclaimed the Duchess, " consider 
 what you are about.'' 
 
 " Consider your rank and fortune, madam," answered 
 Nash, and continued : " six, seven, eight, nine, ten " 
 
 Here the Duchess again broke in angrily, but, " Pray 
 jcompose yourself, madam," cried the Beau coolly, " and 
 don't interrupt the work of charity ; eleven, twelve, 
 thirteen, fourteen, fifteen " 
 
 The Duchess began to storm, and caught hold of his hand. 
 " Peace, madam," said the relentless autocrat of the Pump 
 Room, " you shall have your name written in letters of 
 gold, madam ; seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty " 
 
 " I won't pay a farthing more," broke in the unwilling 
 charitable Duchess. 
 
 " Charity hides a multitude of sins," quietly observed 
 her tormentor ; " twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, 
 twenty-four, twenty-five " 
 
i86 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " Nash," said she, " I protest, you frighten me out of 
 my wits. Lord ! I shall die ! " 
 
 " Madam, you will never die with doing good ; and if 
 you do it will be the better for you," and he proceeded 
 counting, and only after some altercation agreed to hold 
 his hand when he had made his victim responsible for 
 thirty guineas. 
 
 Another beau who had made something of a reputation 
 as a sayer of smart things was Beau Brummell, who 
 attached himself to the Prince Regent as Nash had done to 
 Bath, and who found the Prince a less loyal friend than 
 Nash found his city. One of the best known of Brummell's 
 sayings is that arising out of a quarrel with the Prince. 
 When speaking to someone within the hearing of the portly 
 Prince, whom he affected not to know, the Beau asked in 
 off-hand fashion : " Who's our fat friend ? " There are 
 many versions of the story, some stamping it as mere chag- 
 rined impertinence and others as a not undeserved snub. 
 
 " Shoes ? I thought they were slippers," he said of a 
 companion's footwear ; and " Coat ! do you call that 
 thing a coat ? " of a friend's habit — but these are examples 
 rather of humorous impertinence than of true wit or 
 humour. 
 
 Perhaps one of the best things said by Brummell was his 
 emphatic answer to a friend who had described someone as 
 " so well dressed that people turned to look at him," 
 " Then he was not well dressed." 
 
 Brummell once got the worst of a tongue encounter with 
 a " cit." When high play was the rule at Brookes's club it 
 was said that a certain Alderman Combe made as much 
 money at the gaming-tables there as by his brewery. One 
 evening when he was Lord Mayor he was at the hazard- 
 table at Brookes's when Brummell was of the party. "Come, 
 Mashtub," said the Beau, who was the caster, " what do 
 
A SOCIAL MISCELLANY 187 
 
 you set ? " " Twenty-five guineas," answered Combe, 
 ignoring the rudeness. " Well, then," returned Brummell, 
 " have at the Mayor's pony," and he continued to throw 
 until he had secured a dozen of the brewer's " ponies " 
 (£300), and then getting up and making him a low bow, 
 while pocketing the cash, said, " Thank you ; for the future 
 I shall never drink any porter but yours." " I wish, sir," 
 retorted Combe, " that every other blackguard in London 
 would tell me the same." 
 
 Another civic dignitary came off less well at another 
 club when at a dinner of the " Beefsteaks " an alderman 
 presided, and James Cobb (1756-1818), secretary of the 
 East India Company, and a dramatist more prolific than 
 popular, was in the vice-chair. Cobb seems to have chaffed 
 the chairman unmercifully until the alderman exclaimed : 
 " Would to Heaven that I had another vice-president, so 
 that I had a gentleman opposite to me ! " " Why should 
 you wish any such thing ? " retorted Cobb, equal to the 
 occasion ; " you cannot be more opposite to a gentleman 
 than you are at present." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Horace Walpole who, in his correspondence and journals, 
 reveals to us the social life of his portion of the eighteenth 
 century, as Pepys and Eveljm reveal that of an earlier 
 period, and who has preserved much of the ana of his time, 
 was himself possessed of a share of that humour of which 
 he had so ready an appreciation. He it was who wittily 
 defined timber as " an excrescence on the face of the earth, 
 placed there for the pajonents of debts." Charles Town- 
 send also made his jest on the same theme. He was 
 accosted one day by a peer whose hard-drinking son was 
 then engaged in selling timber off his estates. " Well, 
 
i88 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Chaxles, how does my graceless dog of a son go on ? " 
 " Why, I should suppose," answered Townsend, " on the 
 recovery, as I left him drinking the woods." 
 
 Walpole could use a pointed pun, as when to Lady 
 Barr3miore's remark, " I wonder why people say as poor 
 as Job, and never as rich, for in one part of his life he had 
 great riches," he replied, " Yes, madam, but then they 
 pronounce his name differently, and call him Jobb." 
 
 The readiness with which wit can apply a word may 
 perhaps best be shown in such a rare case as that when 
 we find the same word happily utilized on widely different 
 occasions. Such an example we have in the word " per- 
 fection." One day when Sir Isaac Heard was with George 
 the Third it was aimounced that the King's horse was ready. 
 "Sir Isaac," said his Majesty, "are you a judge of horses? " 
 " In my younger days, please your Majesty," was the 
 reply, " I was a great deal among them." " What do you 
 think of this then ? " said the King, preparing to mount, 
 and without waiting for an answer he added : " We call 
 him ' Perfection.' " " A most appropriate name," replied 
 Heard, as his Majesty reached the saddle, " for he bears the 
 best of characters," 
 
 In this case there was courtliness and wit. In the next 
 instance the compliment was so happy as to be little 
 removed from wit. A lady showing Sydney Smith round 
 her garden pointed out some plant sa3dng, " Isn't it a pity 
 I cannot bring this flower to perfection ? " " Let me, 
 then," said the ready canon, taking her hand, " bring 
 perfection to the flower," 
 
 The following story of a young officer and his bootmaker 
 is a pleasant instance of the humour of irony. A certain 
 Ensign Smith (history has probably masked him under 
 this familiar patronymic) stalked in a passion into the shop 
 of Hoby the St James's Street bootmaker. The master of 
 
A SOCIAL MISCELLANY 189 
 
 the establishment appeared and the Ensign at once began 
 his attack : "Mr Hoby, sir, I desire to know, I wish to 
 understand — ^tell me, sir, directly, why my pumps were 
 not sent home, or I will withdraw my custom — I will ; by 
 heaven, I will." The astonished Hoby said he would 
 inquire, and begged the gentleman to be pacified. " Paci- 
 fied, sir ! " replied the Ensign, " I'll be hanged if I do. 
 Bring me my bill ; I'll never deal with you any more. I 
 withdraw my custom this moment — ^this very moment." 
 The disconsolate bootmaker withdrew two steps, and 
 called his foreman. " Mr Jones," said he, " dose the 
 shutters, shut up the shop, discharge the workmen, and 
 lock the door — I am ruined, ruined irretrievably — Ensign 
 Smith has withdrawn his custom I " 
 
 One of the stories that have been repeated with various 
 heroes — ^it was told to me first of one of the Mayhew 
 brothers, and an eminent firm of stationers — seems to have 
 been earliest recorded of a Mr Sutton, son of Lord Canter- 
 bury. Calling one day at Saunders & Otley's library he 
 was very angry because certain books that he had ordered 
 had not been sent. He was so heated in his indignation 
 that one of the partners could stand it no longer, and told 
 him so. 
 
 " I don't know who you are," was Sutton's retort, " and 
 I don't want to annoy you personally, as you may not be 
 the one in fault ; it's your confounded house I blame. 
 You may be Otley, or you may be Saunders ; if you are 
 Saunders, damn Otley ! if you are Otley, damn Saunders ! 
 I mean nothing personal to you." 
 
 IV 
 
 That last story has already brought us to the nineteenth 
 century, the social witticisms of which, scattered about 
 
igo A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 memoirs and correspondence, would alone form a goodly 
 collection. Leaving for the most part those, such as 
 Sydney Smith and Theodore Hook, whose sayings call for 
 separate presentation we may recall a few good things of 
 men less lavish perhaps of their amusing sayings but not 
 less excellent. Both James and Horace Smith — the 
 brothers twiimed in fame as authors of " The Rejected 
 Addresses " — ^were possessed of a pretty wit ; of the former 
 especially, " one of the best talkers of his age," many 
 impromptu epigrams and neat retorts are remembered. 
 His readiness at turning a witty thought into verse seems 
 indeed to have been a greater gift than that of Theodore 
 Hook, in that he so often had a better point to make. 
 Never, perhaps, did happy epigram call forth instant 
 retort happier than the following. James Smith at a 
 dinner-party, where Sir George Rose was also present, on 
 being asked something about the street in which he lived. 
 Craven Street, Strand, fired off : 
 
 " At the top of the street ten attorneys find place 
 And ten dark coal barges are moored at its base : 
 Fly, Honesty, fly to some safer retreat 
 For there's craft m the river, and craft in the street." 
 
 Rose at once improvized a retort : 
 
 '' Why should Honesty fly to some safer retreat, 
 From attorneys, and barges, 'od rot 'em ? 
 For the lawyers are just at the top of the street 
 And the barges are just at the bottom." 
 
 At one of Lady Blessington's social gatherings at Gore 
 House, James Smith, on being told that William Wilber- 
 force had once resided there, at once improvized for his 
 hostess the lines : 
 
 " Mild Wilberforce by all beloved. 
 Once owned this hallowed spot ; 
 Wiose zealous eloquence improved 
 The fettered negro's lot; 
 
A SOCIAL MISCELLANY 191 
 
 Yet here still Slavery attacks 
 
 Whom Blessington invites ; 
 The chains from which he freed the Blacks 
 
 She fastens on the Whites." 
 
 To a wealthy vinegar merchant he addressed the follow- 
 ing:— 
 
 " Let Hannibal boast of his conquering sway. 
 
 Thy Uquid achievements spread wider and quicker, 
 By vinegar he through the Alps made his way. 
 
 But thou through the world by the very same Uquor."- 
 
 It being noted in company where James Smith was 
 present that the confectioners had found a chemical 
 method of discharging the ink from old parchments and 
 then using them in the manufacture of isinglass, " I see," 
 said he, " nowadays a man may eat his deeds as well as 
 his words." 
 
 In a talk on the lengths to which those will go who are 
 improper in their regard for propriety, Lord Lyndhurst 
 mentioned an old lady who went to the length of keeping 
 her books classified, the male authors in one detached case 
 and the female in another. " I suppose," said James 
 Smith instantly, " that she did not wish to add to her 
 library." 
 
 A gentleman possessing the same names as the elder 
 of the brothers Smith happened to take lodgings in the 
 same house, with unpleasant consequences, for the letters 
 intended for one reached the other. Said the author to 
 the new-comer : " This is intolerable, sir, and you must 
 quit." " Why am I to quit more than you ? " came the 
 not tmnatural reply. " Because, sir," was the retort, 
 " you are James the Second — and must abdicate." 
 
 Smith maintained that the name of Mademoiselle Mars, 
 the celebrated actress, was nothing but an assumed one. 
 
192 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 and when pressed to say why replied that it was obviously 
 a nom de guerre. 
 
 James Smith died in 1839 when the railway was some- 
 thing of a novelty, and in his last jest we have the first of 
 many that have been made on a word that successive 
 generations of punsters find irresistible. 
 
 " Though a railroad, learned Rector, 
 
 Passes near your parish spire ; 
 Think not, sir, your Sunday lecture 
 
 E'er will overwhelmed expire. 
 Put not then your hopes in weepers, 
 
 Sohd work my road secures ; 
 Preach whate'er you will — ^my sleepers 
 
 Never wUl awaken yours."- 
 
 Horace Smith — ^who outlived his brother by ten years — 
 was less notable as a talker, but is remembered as the 
 sayer of some neat things. At the christening of one of his 
 daughters the clergyman on hearing that the child's name 
 was to be Rosalind said : " Rosalind ! Rosalind ! I 
 never heard of such a name. How do you speU it ? " 
 " Oh," answered Smith, " As You Like It ! " 
 
 Horace Smith, too, succeeded in introducing humour 
 into the conundrum when he puzzled a company by 
 suddenly asking for a solution of the following : — " My 
 first is a dropper, my second is a propper, and my whole 
 is a whopper ! " No answer was forthcoming, when the 
 delighted propounder triumphantly said, " Falstaff." 
 
 When he lay dying someone asked, " Will you have 
 some more ice ? " " No," he answered, " no more ice for 
 me — except Paradise ! " — a play of words that in the 
 circumstances would have appealed to Charles Lamb, who 
 wished that his last breath might be inhaled through a pipe 
 and exhaled in a pun. 
 
A SOCIAL MISCELLANY 193 
 
 In the mid part of the nineteenth century — connecting 
 as it were the world of yesterday with that of over a 
 century ago — one of the most notable social centres of 
 " the wits " was the breakfast-table of the banker-poet, 
 Samuel Rogers. There met men of the past and of the 
 future, men of established fame and men who had 
 already given earnest of fame to be. 
 
 Samuel Rogers, who as a wizened old man was the butt 
 of many wits, was no mean wit himself. His poetry was 
 perhaps accorded more attention than it merited owing 
 to his being a rich banker, but his breakfast-parties occupy 
 a very important place in the social and intellectual history 
 of his time. Some of his own utterances at those gather- 
 ings were not less notable than those of such guests as 
 Sydney Smith or Luttrell, and some of them were marked 
 by a severity which those wits but rarely employed. As 
 for example, when he said that " When Croker wrote his 
 review in The Quarterly of Macaulay's ' History,' he in- 
 tended miorder — ^but committed suicide." 
 
 On its being remarked that someone was becoming very 
 deaf, Rogers said : " 'Tis from want of practice — ^he is the 
 worst listener I know." 
 
 The autocratic Lady Holland induced Rogers to ask Sir 
 Philip Francis if he was Junius. The poet put the ques- 
 tion, and Francis stormed : " Ask that again, sir, at your 
 peril." Next time Rogers met Lady Holland she said : 
 " What success ? Is Francis Junius ? " "I don't know 
 whether he is Junius," replied Rogers, " but I know he is 
 Brutus." 
 
 One of Rogers' best-remembered mots is the couplet 
 which he made on Ward (afterwards Lord Dudley) by 
 
194 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 way of retaliation. Arriviiig late at a dinner, Rogers 
 apologized, saying that his carriage had broken down and 
 he had been obliged to come in a hackney coach — " In a 
 hearse, I should think," said Ward, in a stage whisper. 
 Rogers' retaliatory epigram took some days in the making 
 but was then set in circulation to be repeated again and 
 again: 
 
 " They say Ward has no heart, but I deny it. 
 He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it." 
 
 When it was announced that George the Fourth intended 
 holding a " Drawing Room," Rogers said that if he did 
 so his Majesty would then, in the parlance of the card- 
 room, be a sequence in himself — King, Queen and Knave. 
 
 To a young poet he said : " Don't you be so hard on Pope 
 and Dryden — you don't know what you may come to." 
 
 He had humour as well as wit, for in a conversation on 
 the game laws he said : " If a partridge on arriving in this 
 country were to ask. What are the Game Laws ? and some- 
 body were to tell him they are laws for the protection of 
 game, ' What an excellent country to live in,' the part- 
 ridge would say, ' where there are so many laws for our 
 protection.' " There was humour, too, in his contribution 
 to a conversation about Lady Parke, " She is so good 
 that when she goes to heaven she will find no difference — 
 except that her ankles will be thinner and her head better 
 dressed." When old Lady Cork complained to him, 
 " You never take me anywhere," Rogers replied, " Oh, I 
 will take you everywhere, and " — ^he added after a pause — 
 " never bring you back again." 
 
 One of Rogers' favourite stories, though perhaps not 
 invented by him, is delightfully droll. It was of an 
 Englishman and a Frenchman who agreed to fight a duel 
 in a darkened room. The Englishman, unwilling to kill his 
 
SAMUEL R0(;ERS 
 
 FUOM THE I'AINIING EV THOMAS I'Hll.T.Trs IN" THK .\A'IT(:>NAL GALLKRV 
 
A SOCIAL MISCELLANY 195 
 
 antagonist, fired up the chimney, and — brought down the 
 Frenchman ! " When I tell this story in France," he was 
 wont to add, " I make the Englishman go up the chimney." 
 
 For some of the things said at Rogers' breakfast-table 
 it is necessary to turn to the recorded mots of Luttrell, 
 Sydney Smith and others, who attended those notable 
 gatherings, where it will be seen that the host himself, 
 unlike in physique to Falstaff as one man could well be 
 from another, was like the fat knight in that he was not 
 infrequently the cause that wit was in other men. One of 
 Lord Dudley's jests at his expense has already been given ; 
 on another occasion he asked the cadaverous poet why, 
 being so rich, he did not " set up a hearse." And again 
 meeting Rogers when he was supposed to be at Spa the 
 poet said he had left because the place was full, " he 
 could not find a bed." " Dear me," said his tormentor, 
 " was there not room in the churchyard ? " Then, too, 
 when someone remarked of a portrait of Rogers that it 
 was " done to the life," " To the death, you mean," said 
 Dudley. 
 
 Dudley, too, made a neat reply to an Austrian lady who 
 complained that such wretchedly bad French was spoken 
 in London. " It is true, madam," said he, " but then we 
 have not enjoyed the advantage of having the French 
 twice in our capital." 
 
 VI 
 
 Richard Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton — 
 a notable figure in politics, literature and society — con- 
 tinued such social breakfast-parties as Rogers had made 
 famous, and like the older host had himself no mean power 
 of wit, and a reputation which he recognized in an answer 
 — a delightful blending of egotism and courtliness — which 
 
196 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 he made to the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward). 
 The Prince had asked Houghton who was the best after- 
 dinner speaker of the time then in England, and received 
 for reply, " It rests with you and myself, sir." 
 
 He it was who defined good conversation as being to 
 ordinary talk what whist is to playing cards, and who said 
 that " trust in leaders has the same relation to politics 
 that credit has to commerce. " He described an unsuccess- 
 ful speech of Disraeli's as being " like the Hebrew language 
 — ^without the points." Some of his remarks had rather 
 the quaintness of drollery than the significance of wit, as 
 when he found an unanswerable argument in favour of 
 legalizing marriage with a deceased wife's sister — " if you 
 marry two sisters you have only one mother-in-law ! " 
 When he had visited Germany he declared that the solitude 
 of Hanover was such that Zimmermann himself could not 
 stand it — and died there." 
 
 The day after the announcement that Milnes had been 
 elevated to the peerage, an old friend, a commoner of high 
 social distinction, asked jokingly what it felt like to be a 
 lord. The new peer's eyes twinkled with irresistible 
 humour as he made answer : "I never knew until to-day 
 how immeasurable is the gulf which divides the humblest / 
 member of the peerage from the most exalted commoner 
 in England." Houghton's biographer says that he ven- 
 tured to give this story in spite of the warning given to him 
 by one of the earliest and greatest of MUnes' friends. " If 
 you tell that," said Lord Tennyson, " every fool will think 
 that Milnes meant it." Which looks as though Tennyson 
 thought that it mattered what every fool thinks. 
 
 When G. F. Watts had painted a huge picture of " Theo- 
 dora and Honoria " someone asked what it represented. 
 " Oh," said Milnes, " you have heard of Watts' hymns — 
 these are Watts' hers." 
 
A SOCIAL MISCELLANY 197 
 
 Monckton Milnes' character was amusingly indicated 
 by Thomas Carlyle when there was a suggestion that the 
 poet-politician should be given a position in Peel's 
 Cabinet. Turning to the possible Cabinet minister the Sage 
 said : " There is only one post that is fit for you, and that 
 is perpetual president of the Heaven and Hell Amalgama- 
 tion Society." 
 
 Sir Francis Doyle was dining at the Duke of Devon- 
 shire's when the conversation turned upon the oddity of 
 American names. " Fancy such a name as Birdseye ! " 
 remarked someone at the table. " Birdseye," said Doyle, 
 " is surely as good as ' Cavendish ' any day." " Not a 
 creature smiled," he said, in repeating his jest. " They all 
 thought I meant to insult them ! " 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 WITS ON THE PRESS AND IN LITERATURE 
 
 " The man of humour sees common life, even mean hfe, under 
 the new light of sportfulness and love." — Thomas Carlyle 
 
 IT was, perhaps, in the social interplay of wits that the 
 first idea of comic journalism arose. The quips and 
 cranks of club and tavern gatherings first found their way 
 into the newspapers, and from that it was but a natural 
 step to the providing a special paper for the publication of 
 such, and so to the production of such for the special pur- 
 pose of publication. Here, however, we are not concerned 
 with the comic press — ^that is another story that may be 
 told at another time — but with the men who were con^ 
 nected with the press generally and who are remembered 
 also as the sayers of good things ; with, in other words, the 
 journalist as wit rather than with the wit as journahst. 
 Except in one or two cases where the fame of the wit has 
 outlived the fame of the joiimalist — as in the cases of 
 Theodore Hook and Douglas Jerrold — there appear to be 
 but scattered mots recoverable, for journalists are not good 
 boswellizers. Possibly they unconsciously take as their 
 motto the lines which used to be inscribed over the 
 chimneypiece of the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks : 
 
 " Ne fides inter animos 
 Sit, qui dicta foras eliminat.'' 
 
 198 
 
ON THE PRESS AND IN LITERATURE 199 
 
 When William Jerdan, long the editor of The Literary 
 Gazette, was dining with the " Steaks " he was detected 
 making a note of a repartee which had just been uttered. 
 The president, pointing to the Latin inscription, said : 
 " Jerdan, do you understand those words ? " "I under- 
 stand one of them," was the reply, " sit, and I mean to do 
 it." 
 
 Jerdan was a journalist of long standing and, though 
 so zealous in making a note of^a good thing overheard, 
 he does not seem to have been much given to wit himself. 
 Probably had be been more of a wit he would have been 
 less of a note-maker. Indeed, though it is not inappro- 
 priate that the press should have a chapter in this work, 
 it woTild not be easy to find any outstanding journalists 
 who were only journalists to fill it. Possibly the most 
 notable of the journalistic utterers of witticisms was 
 Theodore Hook, whose sayings will be found in the next 
 chapter, and he was as notable as man about town, as a 
 social wit and a playwright, as he was journalist. Charles 
 Lamb, as contributor of jeux d'esfrits to the newspapers, 
 though mainly a man of letters ; Douglas Jerrold, who, 
 though notable as journalist, was also dramatist, essayist 
 and novelist ; Gilbert k Beckett, who was a police magis- 
 trate as well as .a journalist, are representative figures ; 
 the last two belonging to the time when the comic press 
 had come into existence and each plajdng his part in its 
 establishment. 
 
 II 
 
 Charles Lamb — the immortal Elia, one of the most 
 engagingly delightfid of our humorists, one of the most 
 individual and companionable of our men of letters — was 
 only a journalist for a brief period and then only as con- 
 
200 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 tributor of " sixpenny jokes " and brief criticisms to some 
 of the daily journals. His happy puns, his ready retorts 
 and other conversational good things have been repeated 
 again and again, but a representative few may be given 
 here, for to omit him from such a work would be unthink- 
 able, it would be like an edition of Hamlet with all the 
 familiar quotations left out. Some of his sajdngs may 
 be unfamiliar to some of my readers, and even readers 
 who know them all wiU readily admit that they bear 
 repetition. It is not necessary to repeat the happy un- 
 happy story of Lamb's life — happy in the circle of friend- 
 ship of which it was the centre, unhappy in the tragic 
 cloud of memory and ever-present threatening that lay 
 over it. 
 
 Here we are not concerned with the clerk whose writings 
 were bound up in many volimies in the offices of the East 
 India Company, nor with the essaj^ist, letter-writer, poet 
 and critic, who was won for literature out of that clerk's 
 spare time. It is the man who, as one of his friends put it, 
 in a congenial company could always be depended upon to 
 make " the best pun and the best remark in the course of 
 the evening," the man who, " of the genuine line of 
 Yorick," " stammered out wisdom in cap and beUs," that 
 is here to be recalled. Lamb, it may be said at once, was 
 of those who not only did not despise, but who even 
 glorified, the pun, it was to him a thing of true art, and he 
 in its use was something of a true artist. His bon-mots, 
 however, are by no means all puns, though he could in- 
 dulge in veritable word-twisters of this kind, as when of a 
 grammar by Hazlitt bound up with a treatise on language 
 by Godwin, he said : " The grey mare is the better horse." 
 He was, however, a wit as well as a punster ; there is wit 
 in the retort which he himself appears to have regarded as 
 one of his best : " If you will quote any of my jokes," he 
 
CHARLES LAMB 
 
 FROM THE DRAWING BY ROBERT HANCOCK IN 1798, NOW IN THE 
 NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 
 
ON THE PRESS AND IN LITERATURE 201 
 
 said to Crabb Robinson, " quote this, which is really a 
 good one. Hume and his wife and several of his chil<h:en 
 were with me when Hume repeated the old saying, ' One 
 fool makes many.' ' Ay, Mr Hume,' said I, pointing to the 
 company, ' you have a fine family.' " 
 
 When Wordsworth was discussing the extent to which 
 Shakespeare borrowed from earlier writers he went so far 
 as to hint that other poets might, with the " History of 
 Hamlet " before them, have been equally successful in 
 making a great tragedy. Lamb neatly exclaimed : " Oh, 
 here's Wordsworth says he could have written Hamlet — 
 if he'd had the mind." 
 
 There was wit in his retaliation on a boring lauder of 
 some man of the moment. " What a fine style X. has," 
 said the enthusiast, " don't you think so, Mr Lamb ? " 
 " I'm no judge of styles," was the reply ; " I only know 
 what pleases m37self." " But, surely, Mr Lamb, you must 
 think it fine. For my part, the word fine doesn't half 
 express what I think of it. It doesn't at aU come up to 
 my ideas." " Perhaps," observed Lamb, " the word su- 
 sa-sufer&n.Q wiU do better." 
 
 " May my last breath," said Lamb, " be drawn in 
 through a pipe and exhaled in a pun " — indicating at once 
 his love of tobacco (when asked why he was so constant a 
 smoker he averred that he toiled after it as some people 
 do after virtue) and his appreciation of the much-abused 
 play upon words. His own puns are of varying character, 
 sometimes veritable inspirations, as when to someone 
 earnestly explaining that there were three acids he said 
 that there was a fourth, the most important of all, " assi- 
 duity" ; and sometimes merely laughable verbicide (to use 
 Holmes' word), as when in a conversation hearing the 
 Manchu Tartars and Chinese Celtes referred to he took 
 occasion to speak of them as the Cannibal or Man-chew 
 
202 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Tartars and Sell-Teas. It may be that for many people 
 there is nothing notable in such verbicide, and it may be 
 admitted that such pleasantries need the right atmosphere 
 for their success, if not for their justification. They do, 
 however, help us to realize the delightful unaffected whim- 
 sicality of a remarkably strong and tender personality. 
 
 Being told that eight people had dined together at the 
 top of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, Lamb quietly 
 remarked that they must have been very sharp set. 
 
 The large room in the accountants' office at the East 
 India House was divided into compartments, known as 
 compounds, in each of which sat six clerks. The meaning 
 of the word compound being asked one day, Lamb said 
 that it was " a collection of simples." 
 
 When Crabb Robinson was speaking of his first brief as 
 a barrister, Lamb asked : " Did you not exclaim ' Thou 
 first great cause — ^least understood.' " 
 
 On two Prussians of the same name being accused of the 
 same crime, it was remarked as a curious thing that they 
 were not in any way related. This, said Lamb, was cer- 
 tainly a mistake, as they were obviously cozens German. 
 
 Many stories are known illustrative of Charles Lamb's 
 quaint and — to use his own word — arriding humour, his 
 ready sense of fun. There is the oft-repeated account of 
 his being reproached by the head of his office at the East 
 India House. " Really, Mr Lamb, you come very late ! " 
 said official dignity. " Yes," replied Lamb, with ready 
 acquiescence, stammering the droll addition, " b-but 
 consi-sider how ea-early I go ! " 
 
 Diverting, too, was his stammered remark to a shopman 
 who was about to wrap up a ripe bit of cheese. " If 
 you'll g-g-give me a string I'll 1-1-lead it h-home." 
 
 " Ah, sir," said an old beggar woman, stopping Lamb, 
 " I have seen better days." " So have I, good woman," 
 
ON THE PRESS AND IN LITERATURE 203 
 
 said he, glancing at the clouds, which were raining hard at 
 the time. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Douglas Jerrold, it was said by one of his friends, would 
 have played no second part even in the famous wit combats 
 of the Mermaid Tavern, and despite the manysidedness 
 of his work in drama, essay, journalism and fiction it is as 
 a conversational wit that the world chooses to remember 
 him — " the subtlest wit of the century." Again it is only 
 possible to give a representative selection of his good 
 things that were jotted down by contemporaries. It was 
 especially during the last fifteen years of his life that his 
 reputation as the utterer of witticisms grew, but he had 
 a dozen years earlier established himself as a playwright, 
 and was known to an immediate circle of friends for the 
 sparkle of his conversation. The success of Punch, in the 
 bringing about of which his pen did no mean service, led 
 perhaps to the interest in the sayings of men known to 
 be associated with the jester-journal. Anyway Jerrold's 
 sayings came to be noted and repeated until now it is 
 mainly by the reputation which he has as a wit that he 
 is known to most people ; and his wit, it may be added, is 
 remembered largely for its " bitterness," its biting qualities, 
 and so has served to fasten upon the man himself a char- 
 acter for bitterness and undue severity on his generation. 
 The fact is, however, that he was the very reverse of a 
 bitter man, and he emphatically declared that he never in 
 his life said a bitter thing of anyone who did not deserve 
 it. As he put it on another occasion, " having acquired a 
 name for ill nature, or, in reality, having acquired a fatal 
 reputation for using your eyes, it is in vain to deal 
 in praise of anything. The people who profess to 
 
204 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 know you will, like witches, even read your prayers 
 backwards." 
 
 Bom in 1803, Douglas Jerrold became a midshipman in 
 the navy in his tenth year. After the peace that followed 
 on Waterloo his ship was paid off, and at the age of thirteen, 
 when most boj^ are still at school, he made his second 
 start in the world as apprentice to a London printer. While 
 yet in his 'teens he began writing for various periodicals 
 and for the stage, and in 1829 he achieved popularity with 
 Black-Eyed Susan. Before then he had given up the com- 
 posing stick to rely entirely on the pen, and was hence- 
 forward one of the most active writers of his time. In 
 1841 came Punch, and later, rising perhaps out of his work 
 on the comic journal, came excursions into political journal- 
 ism, and m 1852 he became editor of Lloyds' Weekly News- 
 paper and continued such until his death in 1857. 
 
 In every way a clubbable man Douglas Jerrold was re- 
 garded by his contemporaries as having no equal in the 
 " faculty of instant, pungent, flashing, blasting retort." 
 The most diverse of his friends agreed in thus paying tribute 
 to the quickness of his wit and hearty conversational 
 talents. " Jerrold in his little study, with a cigar, a flask 
 of Rhine wine on the table, a cedar log on the fire, and half- 
 a-dozen literary youngsters round the boai'd listening to his 
 bright wit, and his wisdom that was brighter even than his 
 wit — ^that is, we think, the image of the good friend and 
 singular humorist that will live most brightly and per- 
 manently in the minds of those who know him." 
 
 IV 
 
 Most of Douglas Jerrold's mots have become familiar, 
 but a few of them must be given here, for he certainly 
 
ON THE PRESS AND IN LITERATURE 205 
 
 occupies one of the leading positions among the wits who 
 were journalists and men of letters. Perhaps the best 
 known of them all is his retort to a friend — Albert Smith, 
 I think it was — who had said " we row in the same boat, 
 you know." " True, my good fellow," said Jerrold, " we 
 do row in the same boat — but with very different skulls." 
 
 Though it has been affirmed that there is no pun to be 
 found in his writings he could certainly use the pun to good 
 purpose in the give-and-take of talk. Being told that 
 Henry HoU had left the stage and set up as a wine merchant 
 he commented, " Oh yes, and I'm told that his wine off 
 the stage is better than his whine on it." 
 
 It being said of a then recently produced, but by no 
 means successful, play, that it had been done to order, 
 Jerrold commented : " Ah ! and it strikes me it wUl still be 
 done to a good many orders." 
 
 On the success of his Thomas d Becket at the Surrey 
 Theatre, a friend congratulated Jerrold sa5dng : " You'll be 
 the Surrey Shakespeare." " The sorry Shakespeare, you 
 mean," retorted he. 
 
 A friend, well knoAvn as a jovial spendthrift, was driving 
 Jerrold in his new turn-out and asked : " Well, what do 
 you think of my greys ? " "To tell you the truth," came 
 the unexpected reply, " I was just thinkingjsf your duns." 
 
 To a very thin man who had been boring him with 
 very thin talk Jerrold said: " Sir, you are like a pin — but 
 without either its head or its point." 
 
 Forster, apologizing for arriving late at a party, ex- 
 plained that he had just stood as godfather to a friend's 
 little boy. " I hope," said Jerrold, " you did not give the 
 child your own mug." 
 
 Challenged by a friend to make a pun on any given sub- 
 ject, Jerrold engaged to do so. The friend considered a 
 moment and then said : " Well, I'm sure you can't pun 
 
2o6 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 on the Zodiac." " By Gemini, I Can-cer," came the 
 reply. 
 
 Dining with a friend, Douglas Jerrold was asked how he 
 liked the port. " Not much," he replied. " Not much ! " 
 echoed his host. " Why, my dear fellow, it's Hedges & 
 Butler's best." " Possibly,'"' said Jerrold, " but to my 
 taste it partakes more of the hedges than the butler." 
 
 An actor named Tilbury was complaining of the poor 
 part allotted to him in the cast of Macbeth which Macready 
 was about to produce ; he was to be the Physician, having 
 previously been entrusted with the part of Witch. " Made 
 you the Physician ! " exclaimed Jerrold, " Humph — 
 that is throwing physic to the dogs with a vengeance." 
 
 Somebody having said of John Forster's companionship 
 that " he is to Dickens what Boswell was to Johnson." 
 " With this difference," said Jerrold, " that Forster doesn't 
 do the Boz well." 
 
 Many of the stories of Jerrold's sayings are associated 
 with the various clubs to which he belonged, clubs which, 
 formed by small coteries of congenial spirits, enjoyed their 
 brief term and gave way to others. One of the earliest was 
 the Mulberry Club, formed of a number of Shakespearean 
 devotees, at one of the gatherings of which it was suggested 
 that the members' knowledge of Shakespeare should be 
 tested in a novel manner. A word was to be given to each 
 person by his immediate neighbour, and he was to supply 
 an appropriate quotation. When it became Jerrold's 
 turn his neighbour gave him the seemingly hopeless word 
 "treadmill," but the wit instantly and happily replied 
 with Lear's words : " Down — ^thou climbing sorrow." 
 
 Several of his sajdngs at the Museum Club were recorded 
 by fellow-members. A member upbraided for arriving 
 there late to dinner said that he had set out in time but his 
 shoes being thin and the road damp he had returned to his 
 
ON THE PRESS AND IN LITERATURE 207 
 
 lodgings in Lincoln's Inn Fields to put on stouter ones. 
 This gave rise to a discussion as to why the pavement was 
 nearly always damp on the south side of the Fields. After 
 various suggestions had been put forward Jerrold was 
 appealed to. " Always damp, is it ? " he answered, 
 " why, you must expect that — ^it is on account of the heavy 
 dues in the neighbourhood." 
 
 At a club supper when sheeps' heads had provided the 
 chief dish, one enthusiast exclaimed : " Well, sheeps' heads 
 for ever, say I ! " " There's egotism ! " quietly remarked 
 Jerrold. 
 
 On another occasion, food being the topic of talk, one man 
 present said : " Nobody can guess what I had for dinner 
 to-day." The company declined to speculate, whereupon 
 he added : " Why, calf's taU soup ! " " Extremes meet ! " 
 came Jerrold's comment. 
 
 An actor who had gone to seek his fortune abroad, 
 leaving his wife without any money, wrote glowing accounts 
 of his success, but sent no supplies. One of his letters 
 was read aloud in the green-room at the Haymarket. 
 " What kindness ! " exclaimed Jerrold emphatically. 
 " Kindness ! " said one of the actresses indignantly, 
 " when he never sends the poor woman a penny." 
 " Yes," replied Jerrold, " uiuremitting kindness." 
 
 A lady expatiating about the beauty of an infant said : 
 " ReaUy, I cannot find words to convey to you even a 
 faint idea of its pretty ways." " I see," Jerrold rephed ; 
 " it is a child more easily conceived than described." 
 
 During a meeting of the Rational Club, Edward Fitzball, 
 a minor dramatist of the time, begged of someone near him 
 who would keep on shouting " Waiter ! " at the top of his 
 voice to have pity on his ears, saying : " Please bear in 
 mind, old boy, I've got a head on my shoulders." " For 
 my part, Fitz," Douglas Jerrold cried across the table, " I 
 
2o8 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 think you've only got a pimple on your shoulders — which 
 will never come to a head." 
 
 Many writers who have not established reputations as 
 masters of wit are represented in the anecdote and reminis- 
 cence literature by occasional happy retorts or neat con- 
 versational remarks that have the stamp of wit, and from 
 among such few examples may be given. 
 
 Charles Dickens, who put most of his humour into his 
 wonderful books, is credited with a happy reply to a young 
 poet who offered " Orient Pearls at Random Strung," for 
 one of his magazines. Handing the manuscript back the 
 novelist is said to have quietly remarked : " Too much 
 string." 
 
 It is inevitable, owing to the kind of rivalry in which 
 their contemporaries insisted on putting them, that after 
 Dickens we should think at once of Thackeray. One or 
 two stories are told illustrating the kindly nature of the 
 man whom sinners have dubbed C5mic, but his sayings are 
 more of the nature of drollery than of wit, as when speaking 
 of a clever but noisy tragedian he summed him up as 
 " Macready and onions." 
 
 Thackeray was walking with a friend along one of the 
 streets leading into the Strand when they saw up over 
 some offices, " Mutual Loan Fund Association." " I 
 wonder," said the friend, " what that means." " Oh, it 
 means," said Thackeray, " that they have got no money 
 and that they lend it to one another." 
 
 Someone praising Goethe over-extravagantly, Thack- 
 eray observed, " If Goethe is a god I'm sure I'd rather go 
 to the other place." During his stay in Weimar, the novelist 
 had met the great German poet, and many years after. 
 
ON THE PRESS AND IN LITERATURE 209 
 
 when Richard Monckton Milnes said, " Was not your 
 audience with Goethe very awful ? " he rephed, " Yes, 
 Hke a visit to a dentist." 
 
 One of the happiest of Thackeray's mats was addressed 
 to Henry Silver at one of the weekly Punch dinners. 
 Sonaeone had brought for dessert a magnificent pineapple. 
 " What a beauty ! " exclaimed the novelist, and then, 
 turning to his friend, " Silver, aren't you proud, Pinus 
 silvoe, filia nobilis." 
 
 A story that is told of Leigh Hunt suggests the humour 
 of Lamb. Being asked by a lady at dessert if he would not 
 venture upon an orange, he replied that he woiild be very 
 glad to do so, but was afraid that he would tumble off.^ 
 
 Leigh Hunt's wife, if we may judge from a single saying 
 {ex pede HerculemI), was possessed of a neat wit. She is 
 said to have had " little toleration for Bjron drunk or 
 sober," and was given by him a happy chance for retort. 
 " Trelawny here," said the poet one day, " has been speak- 
 ing against my morals." " It is the first time I ever heard 
 of them," quietly remarked Mrs Leigh Hunt. 
 
 It is a curious fact that but few conversational witticisms 
 are recorded of Thomas Hood, seeing that he stands 
 alone as master of the puni in our literature — the pun 
 frequently employed to merely ludicrous ends but not in- 
 frequently with a significance that lifted it to the sphere 
 of wit or charged it with a tender pathos. His health and 
 circumstances did not, after his early manhood, allow of 
 his mixing much in the club and other social gatherings of 
 his peers, and so the irrepressible fun of his talk irradiated 
 the home, shone in his letters, but did not get repeated or 
 jotted down by club Cuttles ever ready when hearing a 
 
 ' I have heard a similar remark made at the dinner-table when 
 someone asked if he would not venture upon the ice replied that 
 he would do so — but he hadn't brought his skates. 
 
210 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 good thing to make a note of it. It is difficult to believe 
 that the spontaneous wit of " The Ode to Rae Wilson," 
 and of some other of his " Odes " only attended him at the 
 desk, , Most of his recorded happy sayings that I have 
 come across are puns far poorer than those in his verse, 
 but the following shows a ready capacity for seizing upon 
 the droll in a situation. He was in the pit at a theatre 
 when a near neighbour, a tall man, persisted in standing up 
 to the annoyance of those about him, and took no notice 
 of their repeated calls of " Sit down ! " " Let him alone," 
 said Hood, in a tone intended to reach the offender's ears. 
 " Let him alone, he is a tailor, and resting himself." 
 
 Of successive Punch men there have always been current 
 a number of stories, possibly fastened upon them owing 
 to their position, for it is not always that the fun that will 
 rim off the pen will trip off the tonigue. Gilbert a Beckett, 
 one of the first of Punch men, was a humorous journalist 
 of long experience, the writer of " Comic Histories " of a 
 fugacious comicality, and a police magistrate. His 
 humour was largely that of extravagance and punning, 
 and though he is described as more than holding his own 
 in the " wit combats " at the weekly Punch dinners, but 
 few of his mots have been recorded. His son repeats one 
 that as a snub to pomposity woiild be amusing, but some- 
 what loses its fun when we are told that the remark was 
 made as a matter of fact and not with any arriere pensee. 
 A Beckett was dining with a somewhat pompous personage 
 who said proudly of his wine, " You are drinking some of 
 my best '24 port." " Indeed," said A Beckett consider- 
 atively, " that works out at two shillings a bottle." 
 
 Shirley Brooks has been described as having been " as 
 witty as Jerrold without the sting." Some of his sayings 
 are decidedly happy, especially when it came to turning 
 a neat compliment, or applying instantly an apropos 
 
ON THE PRESS AND IN LITERATURE 211 
 
 quotation from a richly stored memory, but at times he 
 could revel in the degenerated pun, the use of which 
 led to the condemnation of all puns, which is foolish, 
 and the falling into desuetude, which is a thing to 
 be grateful for, of mere verbicide, mere wordy nothings 
 signifying sound. Of the last kind of humour the following 
 is told : — Thackeray arrived unexpectedly at the Punch 
 weekly dinner. He had given up another dinner engage- 
 ment to dine with Lord John Russell and then that states- 
 man had failed him. " So I come," said he, " as a peas- 
 aller to Mr P. to eat my peas in peace." " But you must 
 mind your Q's as well, and you must take your cues from 
 me," said Shirley Brooks, " or I shall not excuse you." 
 Such punning may at the moment gain the meed of laughter 
 by the mere nimbleness shown, but much of it would bore 
 as surely as watching an acrobat turn perpetual somersaults. 
 
 Brooks had far better claims to inclusion among the wits. 
 He was sta3dng with Mark Lemon, when the talk at the 
 breakfast-table happened upon noses. Glancing at one 
 of his host's daughters who had a nose " tip tilted like 
 the petal of a flower," he said : " When they were looking 
 about for a nose for you, my dear, they chose the first 
 that turned up." 
 
 Another and a better Punch table story of Thackeray 
 and Shirley Brooks is of the former's arriving late and 
 explaining that he had barked his shin in stepping from a 
 carriage. " You'd better see a doctor," said Mark Lemon, 
 " I've heard that the old fellow who used to drive ' The 
 Age,' the Brighton coach, you know, barked his shin and 
 died from it." " Yes, so I've heard," commented Shirley 
 Brooks, " but you see with Thackeray it's different. He 
 doesn't drive the Age, he leads it." 
 
 Someone had been recounting a legendary story of a 
 German baron who, expecting a visit from certain creditors. 
 
212 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 suspended an immense millstone inlthe entrance to his 
 haH, and when they had arrived let it fall and crush them. 
 " A perfectly legal action," said Shirley Brooks ; " he was 
 well within his rights. He was merely making a composi- 
 tion with his creditors." ^ 
 
 The Punch men have, not unnaturally, had some jests 
 fired off at their expense. It was at a dinner where several 
 of them were present that, the talk turning on things 
 wanted in the world of books, Sydney Blanchard exclaimed 
 that he had hit upon a felt want — " a comic Punch \" It 
 was the editor of Punch, too, who was trapped by W. S. 
 Gilbert into acknowledging that he received many good 
 things for his journals, to be brought up with : " Why don't 
 you put them in then ? " 
 
 VI 
 
 William Maginn (1793-1842) was one of the most brilliant 
 journalists and magazine-writers of his time. He is credited 
 with having originated the famous Nodes Amhrosiana of 
 Blackwood's, to which he was a constant contributor, he 
 helped to found Fraser's, he was at one time joint editor 
 of The Standard — and he is drawn (with all his weakness) 
 as Captain Shandon in " Pendennis." He was perhaps the 
 last of the wits to make a habit of the classics, and many 
 of his sayings show his readiness in the application of apt 
 quotations from the ancients. Dining at a friend's house 
 off ham and chicken he thus addressed his hostess : " You 
 know what old Ovid says in his ' Art of Love ' ; I give you 
 the same wish : 
 
 " ' Semper tibi pendeat hamus.' 
 {' May you always have a ham hanging in your kitchen ')•" 
 
 ' It should have been an £ s. d. composition, not merely decom- 
 position. 
 
ON THE PRESS AND IN LITERATURE 213 
 From Ovid also he cited a eulogy on hock : 
 
 '■' Hoc turn seevus paulatim mitigat iras. 
 Hoc minuit luctus messtaque corda levat.'' 
 
 Yet another of his jests concerns the table, for he insisted 
 that tea must have been a favourite beverage with Roman 
 ladies of Plautus' time, in proof of which he quoted : 
 
 " Amant ie omnes mulieres.'' 
 
 That he could turn his jest no less readily in English 
 may be seen in his words to Comte d'Orsay who had 
 presumably flattered himself — as people will — that he 
 looked " as young as ever " when met after a considerable 
 interval — 
 
 "<Believe me, dear Comte, that twelve years do not pass. 
 And leave not some signs as they go. 
 They may fly with the wings of the hawk, but alas ! 
 They are marked by the feet of the crow I -' 
 
 Dr Maginn had for some time been contributing lively 
 papers to Blackwood's Magazine without being known; 
 except by correspondence, to the editor, when he chose a 
 characteristically humorous method of making himself 
 personally known. Blackwood had received several 
 indignant communications demanding the name of his 
 Irish correspondent and Maginn journeyed to Edinburgh, 
 and appeared in the publisher's shop : 
 
 " You are Mr Blackwood, I presume ? " 
 1 am. 
 
 " I have rather an unpleasant business, then, with you 
 regarding some things which appeared in your magazine," 
 which he proceeded to specify ; " would you be so kind 
 as to give me the name of the author ? " 
 
 " lliat requires consideration, and I must first be 
 satisfied that " 
 
214 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " Your correspondent resides in Cork, doesn't he ? You 
 need not make any mystery about that." 
 
 " I decline at present giving any information on that 
 head, before I know more of your business — of your 
 purpose — and who you are." 
 
 " You are very shy, sir. I thought you corresponded 
 with Mr Scott of Cork " — the assumed name which Maginn 
 had used. 
 
 " I beg to decline giving any information on that 
 subject." 
 
 " If you don't know him, then, perhaps you could know 
 yoiu: own handwriting " — drawing a bundle of letters 
 from his pocket ; " you need not deny yotir correspondence 
 with that gentleman — I am that gentleman." 
 
 Maginn's friend, John Gibson Lockhart, summed up his 
 life in an epitaph which half hides and half reveals tragedy 
 under the mask of flippancy : 
 
 " Here, early to bed, lies kind WiUiam Maginn, 
 Who, with genius, wit, learning, life's trophies to win. 
 Had neither great lord nor rich cit of his kin. 
 Nor discretion to set himself up as to tin ; 
 So, his portion soon spent, like the poor heir of Lynn — 
 He turned author ere yet there was beard on his chin. 
 And, whoever was out, or whoever was in. 
 For your Tories his fine Irish brains he would spin ; 
 Who received prose and rhjnme with a promising grin — 
 ' Go ahead, you queer fish, and more power to your fin,' 
 But to save from starvation stirred never a pin. 
 Light for long was his heart, though his breeches were thin. 
 Else his acting, for certain, was equal to Quia ; 
 But at last he was beat, and sought help of the bin 
 (All the same to the doctor, from claret to gin,) 
 Which led swiftly to jail, and consumption therein. 
 It was much when the bones rattled loose in the skin. 
 He got leave to die here out of Babylon's din. 
 Barring drink and the girls, I ne'er heard a sin ; 
 Many worse, better few, than bright, broken Maginn." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THEODORE HOOK 
 
 ' He is as true a genius as Dante."' 
 
 S. T. Coleridge 
 
 THEODORE HOOK was a journalist and a play- 
 wright, but he was also a man about town, a social 
 figure welcomed in all company for his lively spirits, his 
 irrepressible good humour, his ready wit and his extra- 
 ordinary talents as an improviser at the piano. Entirely 
 different in genius from Sheridan, there is yet something 
 similar in their stories. Both were wits who sacrificed 
 much to society, who in an age of conviviality were 
 markedly convivial, both were men with a kind of large 
 irresponsibility in their monetary relations with their 
 fellows. Hook, who even as a youth astonished the older 
 wit with his gifts, was more of a humorist and a punster 
 than a wit, but his verbal readiness was such that it struck 
 all associated with him, and thus many of his sayings (as 
 well as his doings) came to be recorded. His dual gifts 
 were inherited, for his father was a successful composer, 
 his mother the author of several novels. 
 
 Bom in London in 1788, the same year as Byron, Theo- 
 dore Hook was educated at first at private schools and 
 later for a short time was at Harrow and for a couple of 
 terms at Oxford. Two or three stories attach to his brief 
 stay at the university. He appears to have proceeded 
 
 215 
 
2i6 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 thither under the charge of his brother (eighteen years his 
 senior), but on arrival gave that brother the slip and joined 
 a party of old schoolfellows at a tavern. The proceedings 
 were getting lively when the proctor made his appearance, 
 and advancing to the table at which young Hook presided 
 put the usual question : " Pray, sir, are you a member of 
 this university ? " " No, sir," replied Hook, rising and 
 bowing politely ; " pray, sir, are you ? " A little discon- 
 certed, but still doubtful, the proctor held out his ample 
 sleeve, " You see this, sir ? " " Ah ! " returned Hook, 
 after seemingly earnest examination for a few seconds. 
 " Yes ; I perceive — ^Manchester velvet — and may I take 
 the liberty, sir, of inquiring how much you might have 
 paid per yard for the article ? ' ' The gravity of the speaker 
 was too much for the proctor, who muttering something 
 about supposing it was a mistake, withdrew, amid shouts 
 of laughter from Hook's companions. 
 
 When Hook was duly presented to the Vice-Chancellor 
 for matriculation, the ceremony was nearly stopped in 
 consequence of an ill-timed levity on the part of the 
 candidate, who on being asked if he was prepared to sub- 
 scribe to the Thirty-nine Articles, readily answered : " Oh, 
 certainly, sir, forty, if you please." 
 ' Inspired by his Oxford experiences no doubt was his 
 description of a college examination in which he said the 
 problem given, C A B to find Q, was to be solved in a 
 twinkling. Take your CAB through Hammersmith, 
 turn to the left just before you come to Brentford, and 
 Kew is right before you ! Hammersmith seems to be 
 conveniently placed for the jokers, for it was another who, 
 on hearing a hostess at the dinner-table apologize for the 
 bad colour of the peas, said that they should be taken 
 through Hammersmith — as that was the way to Turnham 
 Green ! 
 
THEODORE HOOK 217 
 
 Reminiscent of his Oxford days, too, was his sketch of 
 the " Cockney University " of the future which should 
 " set all journejnnen learning " until 
 
 " Hackney coachmen from Swift shall reply, and you feel 
 
 Annoyed at being ruthlessly shaken ; 
 And butchers, of course, be flippant from Steele, 
 
 And pigdrivers well versed in Bacon — 
 From Locke shall the blacksmiths authority crave. 
 
 And gasmen cite Coke at discretion — 
 Undertakers talk Gay as they go to the grave, 
 
 And watermen Rome by profession." 
 
 II 
 
 At the age of seventeen Hook tasted the fruits of success 
 when he received fifty pounds for his first farce. A year 
 later, in 1806, he had trouble with the licensor of plays over 
 another farce. Killing No Murder. In 1809 he seems to 
 have celebrated his coming of age with one of the most 
 famous hoaxes ever perpetrated — it is true that the hoax 
 was only local instead of being general, like that of Edgar 
 Allan Poe with his circumstantial — and perhaps, it may 
 now be said, only prophetic — account of an aerial journey 
 across the Atlantic. This hoax of Hook's, the Bemers 
 Street Hoax, may call for description here as being an 
 illustration of his humour. He made the most elaborate 
 preparations. Six weeks were spent, with a couple of 
 confederates, in busily arranging for the grand coup, and 
 during that time about a thousand letters were despatched, 
 all under various pretences, inviting the several recipients 
 to call on a certain day at the house of a Mrs Tottenham, 
 a lady of property, residing at 54 Bemers Street, who had, 
 according to one account, for some reason fallen under the 
 displeasure of this formidable foe. Another account says 
 
2i8 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 that Hook was one day walking down Berners Street with 
 a friend, who called his attention to a particularly neat 
 and modest house, the residence, as it seemed from the 
 doorplate, of some decent shopkeeper's widow. " I'll lay 
 you a guinea," said Hook, " that in one week that nice 
 modest dwelling shall be the most famous in all London." 
 The bet was taken — ^in the course of four or five days Hook 
 and his helpers had written and despatched a thousand 
 letters, conveying orders to tradesmen of every sort, all to 
 be executed on one particular day, and as nearly as possible 
 at one fixed hour. From waggons of coal and potatoes to 
 books, prints, feathers, ices, jellies and cranberry tarts — 
 nothing in any way whatever available to any human 
 being but was commanded from scores of rival dealers 
 scattered over London from Wapping and Whitechapel 
 to Lambeth and Paddington. In 1809 Oxford Street — or 
 Oxford Road as it then was — was not approachable either 
 from Westminster or Mayfair, or from the city, otherwise 
 than through a complicated series of lanes. It may be 
 guessed what the crash, jam and tumult of the appointed 
 day was. Hook had provided himself with a lodging/ 
 nearly opposite to No. 54, and there, with a couple of 
 trusty alhes, he watched the development of his plot. 
 But some of the dramatis personae were seldom if ever 
 alluded to in later times. He had no objection to bodjang 
 forth the arrival of the Lord Mayor and his chaplain, 
 invited to take the death-bed confession of a peculating 
 common convict man ; but he would rather have buried 
 in oblivion that precisely the same sort of liberty was taken 
 with the Governor of the Bank, the Chairman of the East 
 India Company, the Lord Chief Justice, a Cabinet minister 
 — above all, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his 
 Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief. They all 
 obeyed the summons — every pious and patriotic feeling 
 
THEODORE HOOK 219 
 
 had been most movingly appealed to ; we are not sure that 
 they all reached Bemers Street : but the Duke of York's 
 military punctuality and crimson liveries brought him to 
 the point of attack before the poor widow's astonishment 
 had risen to terror and despair. Perhaps no assassination, 
 no conspiracy, no royal demise or ministerial revolution 
 of recent times was a greater godsend to the news- 
 papers than his audacious piece of mischief. In Hook's 
 own theatrical world he was instantly suspected, but no 
 sign escaped either him or his confidants. The affair was 
 beyond that circle a serious one. Fierce were the growl- 
 ings of the doctors and surgeons, scores of whom had been 
 cheated of valuable hours. Attorneys, teachers of all 
 kinds, male and female, hairdressers, tailors, popular 
 preachers, and parhamentary philanthropists had been 
 victimized in person, and were in their various notes voci- 
 ferous. But the tangible material damage done was itself 
 no joking matter. There had been an awful smashing 
 of glass, china, harpsichords and coach panels. Many a 
 horse had fallen never to rise again. Beer barrels and 
 wine barrels had been overturned and exhausted with im- 
 punity amidst the press of countless multitudes. It had 
 been a fine field day for the pickpockets. There arose a 
 fervent hue and cry for the detection of the wholesale 
 deceiver and destroyer. Hook, it is said, found it con- 
 venient to be laid up for a week or two by a severe fit of 
 illness, and then promoted re-convalescence by a country 
 tour. He is said on this occasion to have revisited Oxford 
 and professed an intention of again taking up his residence 
 as a student. But the intention was not fulfilled and, the 
 nine days' wonder of the hoax being forgotten, he returned 
 to London and the Ufe of theatre and society into which 
 he had been early initiated. 
 This foolish bit of practical joking is said to have been 
 
220 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 copied subsequently in various places, and, in his story of 
 " Gilbert Gurney," Hook utilized the hoax and made fun 
 of his plagiarists. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Apparently Hook's share in the sensation did not get 
 widely known, for he succeeded four years later in getting 
 an important appointment, one for which he was whoUy 
 unsuited, and one which was to prove the means of his ruin. 
 He became friend of a convivial clergjmaan of the Prince 
 Regent's circle, Edward Cannon, and through him may 
 have met the Prince himself. It was probably only thus 
 that he could have received, as he did, the appointment 
 of Accountant-General and Treasurer of the Island of 
 Mauritius ! An Accountant-General who had no know- 
 ledge of arithmetic, says one biographer, a Treasurer who 
 had more capacity for spending than for safeguarding. 
 Edward Cannon, the boon companion to whom Hook 
 is supposed to have owed this unhappy stroke of good 
 fortune, was himself something of a humorist, with a 
 tongue that could deliver shrewd blows on occasions. At 
 an annual dinner of the Chapel Royal a guest pertina- 
 ciously plagued Cannon with a long harangue on fencing. 
 The witty cleric put up with it for a time with some sem- 
 blance of patience. At length the bore remarked that a 
 
 certain Sir George D was a great fencer. " I don't 
 
 know, sir," burst out Cannon, " whether Sir George is a 
 great fencer, but I do know that Sir George is a great 
 fool ! " " Possibly he is," said the other, a bit surprised, 
 " but then, you know, a man may be both." " So I see, 
 sir," said the clergyman, with marked emphasis. 
 
 In October 1813 Hook reached Mauritius ; in 1818 he 
 was on his way back to England practically under arrest. 
 
THEODORE HOOK 221 
 
 It is not necessary here to go into the full story, but it had 
 been found necessary by the acting Governor of Mauritius 
 to appoint a commission to inquire into the Treasurer's 
 accounts, and the result was the discovery of such ir- 
 regularities, omissions and discrepancies as led to Hook's 
 being arrested and sent back to England. He appears 
 to have been treated very harshly, all his property in the 
 island was confiscated and sold, and the amount placed 
 to the public credit, though the unhappy young man had 
 not been tried. After a nine months' voyage he reached 
 England, and the upshot of the investigations was that 
 though there was no ground for criminal action, the civil 
 responsibihty for the deficiency was fixed upon Hook, his 
 remaining property was seized, and he was imprisoned for 
 a couple of years. Finally the claim was allowed to be 
 dormant, but Hook, who seems to have had an airy irre- 
 sponsibility in money matters even when he was making a 
 good income, took not the slightest steps towards lessening 
 the liability, towards wiping off the slur on his name. 
 When he (^ed in 1841 the claim was revived against his 
 representatives. 
 
 IV 
 
 Though he was but five and twenty when he left for 
 Mauritius, Hook had already a reputation as a humorist 
 in the theatrical and convivial circles to which he be- 
 longed, and two or three characteristic stories are told of 
 him while in that distant island — stories that illustrate 
 his masterly impudence and his love of practical joking. 
 While he was there he had been forced into a quarrel with 
 one of his associates, and a duel, without bloodshed, was 
 the consequence. On the matter becoming known the 
 Governor sent for Hook and having commented upon the 
 
222 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 offence in terms which the latter regarded as unduly 
 severe, went on to say that a repetition of the offence 
 would be followed by instant dismissal and the infliction 
 of such other penalties as the law provided ; " for," added 
 the Governor, " I am determined at all cost to put down 
 duelling." " But, sir," pleaded Hook, " constituted as 
 society is, there are occasions when the vindication of 
 one's character renders the ' Gothic appeal to arms ' as 
 necessary as defence of the person would do." " Such 
 occasions must be avoided," was the reply. " But," 
 continued Hook pertinaciously, " it is not always in a 
 man's power to avoid insult. Suppose, for example, a 
 person were to address you yourself publicly, and say that 
 he thought you were a meddling, impertinent upstart — 
 what course would be left for you to pursue ? " "I can't 
 conceive such a case possible, sir." " Can't you, indeed ? " 
 commented Hook ; " I can — very. I wish you good- 
 morning." 
 
 The practical joke was played on a couple of recent 
 arrivals in the island, after Hook had become a seasoned 
 resident. He invited the gentlemen to a dinner a la 
 Mauritius. The first course comprised nearly every 
 species of wweatable that could be got together. An 
 enormous gourd was placed in the middle of the table, 
 surrounded by all sorts of strange dishes. They took their 
 seats, the guests a little doubtful of the outlook. " Allow 
 me," said Hook, " to offer you a little cat curry. There is 
 an absurd prejudice against these things in Europe, I 
 know, but this I can really recommend — or perhaps you 
 would prefer a little devilled monkey ; that is, I believe, 
 a dish of fried snakes opposite you, Mr J." The guests 
 started back in horror. " Hand those lizards round," 
 went on Hook ; " they seem particularly fine." Nasti- 
 ness after nastiness was offered and declined, the guests. 
 
THEODORE HOOK 323 
 
 struggling hard to maintain their politeness, thought it 
 was the custom of the country and their host was so 
 evidently distressed at their want of appreciation that 
 one of the visitors at length bravely said he thought that 
 he would just try a lizard. " Pray do so," said Hook ; 
 " you will find the flavour a little peculiar at first, I dare- 
 say ; but it is astonishing how soon it becomes pleasant 
 to the palate." The daring visitor was helping himself to 
 one of the reptiles when its tail fell off and he pushed the 
 plate away from him with a murmured excuse. A second 
 and more orthodox course was soon forthcoming and the 
 host laughed merrily at the hoax he had played. 
 
 When first told that his accounts were considerably out 
 of order. Hook flippantly replied that " If they wanted 
 the balance regular, they should have looked out for a man 
 of more weight." 
 
 On his way back to England the vessel called at St 
 Helena, and there Hook met Lord Charles Somerset, 
 whom he had known earlier in London. " I hope," said 
 his lordship, " that you are not going home for your 
 health, Mr Hook ? " " Why," answered he, " I am sorry 
 to say they think there is something wrong with the chest." 
 
 After his imprisonment over the Mauritius affair Hook 
 was, on his release from the King's Bench Prison, invited 
 by the sheriff's ofiicer to a dinner, when he startled the 
 company by making sport out of his own disgrace, singing 
 an improvized song every verse of which closed with the 
 refrain : 
 
 '-' Let him hang, with a curse, this atrocious, pernicious 
 Scoundrel that emptied the till at Mauritius." 
 
 Meeting a friend, just after leaving prison. Hook was 
 told that he was getting stouter. " Yes," said he, " I 
 was enlarged to-day." 
 
224 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Shortly after his return from Mauritius, Theodore Hook 
 took again to writing; he pubHshed satires on Queen 
 Carohne and Alderman Wood, and in 1820 became the 
 editor of John Bull, in which his rollicking humour and 
 his coarse satire had full play. In 1826 he pubhshed the 
 first volume of " Sayings and Doings," and began a suc- 
 cessful career as novelist, following it some years later with 
 " Gilbert Gurney," and " Jack Brag," In 1836 he be- 
 came editor of The New Monthly Magazine, and in 1841 
 he died. Though the shadow of the Mauritius affair was 
 ever over him, Hook does not seem to have been much 
 troubled by it, and to have remained to the end a lively — 
 boisterously lively — companion, ever ready to exercise 
 his talents for the delight of the company in which he 
 chanced to be, and ever seeking company. As his wonder- 
 ful facility of improvizing is one of the most marked 
 characteristics of his humour, a few of the recorded 
 instances on which he exercised this gift may be given 
 here. He would sit down to the piano and rattle away 
 an accompaniment to impromptu lines concerning 
 different members of the company present. On one 
 occasion when he had done so, a friend thought that he 
 shirked one name, that of a Mr Rosenhagen, and men- 
 tioned it, when Hook immediately turned to the piano 
 again and went on : 
 
 " Yet more of my Muse is required, 
 Alas I I fear she is done ; 
 But no I like a fiddler that's tired, 
 I'll Rosen-agen and go on." 
 
 Once on being asked to extemporize he was given the 
 
THEODORE HOOK 
 
 FROM AN ENGKAVIKG 
 
THEODORE HOOK 225 
 
 subject of " the Jews," and sat down and rattled off all 
 sorts of humorous nonsense, winding up cleverly with : 
 
 " I dare say you think there's little wit 
 In this, but you've all forgot 
 That instead of being a Jew d' esprit 
 -Tis only a Jew de mot. 
 
 One of the best remembered of Hook's efforts of this 
 kind is that recorded of his improvizing at a party when 
 a Mr Winter was announced, a well-known inspector 
 of taxes. Without a moment's break in his performance 
 Hook went on : 
 
 " Here comes Mr Winter, inspector of taxes, 
 I'd advise ye to give him whatever he axes, 
 I'd advise ye to give him without any flummery — 
 For though his name's Winter his actions are summary.'' 
 
 At a large party at Brighton he was given the name of 
 the reigning belle of the place, a Miss Cox, and for about 
 twenty stanzas he went on ringing the changes with ready 
 ingenuity in rhymes upon her name. Words the most 
 remote were made to serve : 
 
 " I'm shy, and I'm pale, and I'm thin 
 
 And I wear fleecy hosiery socks. 
 Fleecy hosiery next to my skin. 
 
 Which perhaps might not please sweet Miss Cox. 
 My hair is perhaps getting gray ; 
 
 I'm pitted a bit with small-pox. 
 My limbs, too, are wasting away — 
 
 Oh, would I were pitied by Cox ! " 
 
 Once while Hook was at the piano at a friend's house 
 Sir David Wilkie came in quietly, saluting his hostess in 
 a whisper that he might not disturb the singer. Hook, 
 
226 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 however, was so far from being disconcerted that he im- 
 mediately introduced the new-comer to the company as— 
 
 -- My worthy friend, douce Davy Wilkie, 
 Who needn't speak so soft and silky." 
 
 A minute or two later a particle of candle wick fell upon 
 the arm of a young lady, and Hook at once seized upon 
 the incident. Addressing his verses to her he declared 
 that it excited in him no surprise whatever, 
 
 '- Since he knew very well by his former remarks 
 That wherever she went she attracted the sparks." 
 
 An emissary from John Bull waited upon Hook, sa5mig 
 that he had not sent any squibs for a few days. " Well, 
 what's the news ? " asked Hook. " The King and Queen 
 of the Sandwich Islands are dead, and we want something 
 about them for the paper." " Instantly you shall have 
 it," ssdd he. 
 
 " ' Waiter, two Sandwiches,' cried Death, 
 And their wild Majesties resigned their breath." 
 
 After one of Hook's improvizing displays a young 
 fellow anxious to shine in the same way tried his' hand 
 at it but soon broke down. While he was floundering in 
 the middle of a verse Hook gave him the coup de grace 
 with the following, robbing the words of offence with an 
 accompanying smile : — 
 
 " I see, sir, I see, sir, what 'tis that you're hatching ; 
 But mocking, you see, sir, is not always catching." 
 
 On passing a chapel with wine-cellars beneath. Hook at 
 once impromptued : 
 
 " There's a spirit above and a spirit below ; 
 A spirit of joy, and a spirit of woe : 
 The spirit above is a spirit divine ; 
 But the spirit below is the spirit of — wine.'' 
 
THEODORE HOOK 227 
 
 Hook's epigrams do not rightly belong to the same class 
 as his improvizings and impromptus, but the following lines 
 are said to have been written instanter on observing over 
 a shop door " Mr , Pen and Quill Manufacturer " : — 
 
 " You put above your door, and in your bills, 
 You're manufacturer of pens and quills ; 
 And for the first you well may feel a pride. 
 Your pens are better far than most I've tried ; 
 But for the quills your words are somewhat loose. 
 Who manufactures quills must be a Goose ! " 
 
 Two of Hook's best-known epigrams are those on Twin- 
 ing's tea shop and on the Latin gerunds. 
 
 " It seems as if Nature had curiously plann'd 
 That men's names with their trades should agree, 
 There's Twining, the Teaman, who lives in the Strand 
 Would be whining if robbed of his T." 
 
 '- When Dido's spouse to Dido would not come, 
 She mourned in silence and was Di Do Dumb." 
 
 VI 
 
 Though humorous improvizings and puns form a goodly 
 part of Hook's sayings, and hoaxes and practical jokings 
 part of his doings, he could give shrewd verbal hits. Meeting 
 a certain nobleman, whose brother had been notorious for 
 false play at cards, on the river when he was fishing, Hook, 
 in place of the usual courteous greeting, received only a 
 stiff ceremonious bow. Determined not to notice it, Hook 
 called out cheerily : " What, my lord, following the family 
 occupation, eh ! — ^punting, I see — punting." 
 
 When Crockford's was first established as a gaming 
 place the proprietor enticed players to his faro bank by 
 gratuitous suppers of a recherche kind, on hearing which. 
 
228 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Hook at once suggested as a motto for the place : " He 
 fiUeth the hungry with good things— and the rich he hath 
 sent empty away." Crockford's seems to have been an 
 inviting place to the wits. Some years later, after the 
 building had been renovated and painted white, Douglas 
 Jerrold was passing with a friend who said that the place 
 looked white as a swan. " Yes," agreed Jerrold, " but 
 you don't see the blacklegs working underneath." 
 
 Tom Hill, the reputed original of " Paul Pry," was an 
 old man of whom the wits made frequent fun. All his 
 friends pretended to regard him as a Methuselah, for 
 no one knew his real age. James Smith averred that 
 his age never could be ascertained, for the parish register 
 in which it had been entered had been destroyed in the 
 Great Fire of London. " Pooh ! pooh ! " broke in Hook, 
 " he is one of the little Hills that are spoken of as skipping 
 in the Psalms." 
 
 Tom Hill was also provocative of another of Hook's 
 puns. An ingenious gentleman had been showing at a 
 dinner-table how he could cut a pig out of orange peel. 
 HiU tried again and again to do the same, but after strew- 
 ing the table about him with the peel of a dozen oranges 
 exclaimed, " Hang the pig ! I can't make him." " Why, 
 Hill," said Hook, "you have done more — instead of one 
 pig you've made a litter." 
 
 Hook on being asked if he had been present at the 
 funeral of a friend said : " Yes, I met him in his private 
 box, going to the pit." 
 
 When, at a somewhat solemn dinner-party, the conversa- 
 tion turned upon Shakespeare, someone present said that 
 - the only person he knew who thought the great poet over- 
 rated was Perry of TJie Morning Chronicle. " That," 
 said Hook, " excites no surprise in me ; you must recollect 
 that the bard has gone out of his way and substituted one 
 
THEODORE HOOK 229 
 
 beverage for another, for the express purpose of passing 
 Perry by, and showing him a shght." " Beverage ! 
 Shght ! What can you mean ? " came from several parts 
 of the table. " Why, in that well-known line ' to suckle 
 fools and chronicle small beer,' is it not manifest that he 
 should have written Chronicle Perry ? " 
 
 Walking one day with a friend, in the days when 
 " Warren's Blacking " was advertised on all sides. Hook's 
 attention was drawn to an annoimcement that merely 
 ran, " Warren's B — ." " I see," he quietly observed, 
 " the rest is lacking." 
 
 There was a grand entertainment at Belvoir Castle on 
 the coming of age of the Marquis of Granby. When the 
 company were going out to see the fireworks Hook 
 approached the Duke of Rutland and said : " Isn't it 
 provoking ? I've lost my hat— what can I do ? " " Why 
 the devil," returned his Grace, " did you part with your 
 hat ? I never do." " Ah ! " rejoined Hook, " but you 
 have especially good reasons for sticking to your Beaver." 
 
 VII 
 
 Many of these mots of Hook are essentially puns — ^but 
 for Hood he might be justly regarded as our greatest 
 master of the pun, yet Hood is so far supreme in the use of 
 words with a double meaning that, in this respect, good as 
 Hook may be, there is a long gap between first and second. 
 Here may be given some of his puns that are little more 
 than puns, though often there is at the back of them that 
 significance which informs them with wit. When Richard 
 Bentley started his " Miscellany " Hook said it was " an 
 ominous title — Miss-sell-any. ' ' Far wittier was the reply of 
 someone else to Bentley, who said that he had first thought 
 of calling it " The Wit's Miscellany," and after changed it to 
 
230 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " Bentley's Miscellany " — " you needn't have gone to the 
 other extreme." 
 
 One of the best-knovm, and one of the happiest, of 
 Hook's puns was uttered to a visitor to his house at Fulham. 
 This visitor, looking at Putney Bridge, 'said that- he had 
 heard that it was a good investment, and turning to his 
 host asked if that was really so. " I really don't know," 
 was the answer, " but you have only to cross it and you 
 are sure to be tolled." 
 
 As a strong Tory, Hook could scarcely have been 
 expected to be an admirer of Shelley's work and therefore 
 his impromptu on the pubhcation of " Prometheus Un- 
 bound " may be regarded as a neat hit, if somewhat 
 ridiculous in its implicit criticism : 
 
 " Shelley styles his poem ' Prometheus Unbound,'- 
 And 'tis like to remain so while time circles round ; 
 For surely an age would be spent in the finding 
 A reader so weak as to pay for the binding." 
 
 Another punning impromptu was occasioned by seeing 
 the name of Milton over a livery stable : 
 
 " Two Miltons in separate ages were bom ; 
 The cleverer Milton 'tis clear we have got : 
 Though the other had talents the world to adorn, 
 This lives by his mews, which the other could not." 
 
 Still a further example of Hook's readiness in devising 
 a punning impromptu is to be seen in the following 
 lines, inspired by seeing the result of a law case, Gaynor 
 V. Sharp — 
 
 " Poor Gaynor's a loser I — 
 That such a good bruiser 
 In time will astonish us, nothing is plainer. 
 Though Sharp is no flat 
 Yet, no matter for that 
 Had Gaynor been sharp. Sharp had not been gainer." 
 
THEODORE HOOK 231 
 
 VIII 
 
 One or two illustrations of Hook's humorous things may 
 also be given. He is said to have dubbed Lord John 
 Russell " The Widow's Mite " after that physically diminu- 
 tive statesman had married a widow — and the nickname 
 " stuck." 
 
 Hook having called to see an old lady friend, she insisted 
 upon his stajdng to diimer. On sitting down, the servant 
 uncovered a dish which contained two mutton chops, and 
 the hostess said: "Mr Hook, you see your dinner." "Thank 
 you, ma'am," said he, " but where's yours ? " 
 
 When Hook was one day walking with a friend down 
 the Strand, his attention was called to a very pompous 
 gentleman who strutted along as if the street were his own. 
 Instantly leaving his friend. Hook went up to the stranger 
 and said : " I beg your pardon, sir, but pray may I ask — 
 Are you anybody in particular ? " Before astonished pom- 
 posity could reply, Hook had joined his friend and passed 
 laughingly on his way. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 WIT IN THE PULPIT 
 
 '- Our priest was cheerful, and in season gay." 
 
 George Crabbe 
 
 WIT being essentially a product of company, it is not 
 surprising that the churches have a goodly show 
 of representatives in any gathering of the wits. Sydney 
 Smith has been described as " humour's pink Primate," 
 but though he would have perhaps the highest place in 
 any company of clerical men of mots, he would be accorded 
 this position on account of the quantity as well as the 
 quality of his wit. He would be attended by many other 
 Churchmen — and even some of those Dissenters at whom 
 he was never tired of aiming his shafts — who would be well 
 able to hold their own in a play of words, and the thoughts 
 they carry. It is of course impossible to do more than 
 give a representative selection of the good things uttered 
 by way of jest or repartee by the various pulpiteers. 
 
 One of the happiest pieces of wit I find in an old collec- 
 tion of anecdotes attributed to " a famous preacher of 
 these times, who, according to the fashion of the times, 
 was very witty in his sermons, and peculiarly happy in his 
 choice of texts." The times thus doubly insisted upon 
 were those of James the First of England and Sixth of 
 Scotland. The royal pedant requested the famous preacher 
 to preach before him, and the cleric chose a happy way of 
 
 232 
 
WIT IN THE PULPIT 233 
 
 showing the monarch how his instability of character was 
 recognized, for mounting the pulpit he began : " James 
 I. and VI., in the latter part of the verse — ' He that 
 wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind 
 and tossed.' " " God's chicken ! " murmured his Majesty, 
 " he's at me already." It would be pleasant to know the 
 name of the preacher who thus happily and prophetically 
 summed up the character of a dynasty in its first repre- 
 sentative. 
 
 There are indeed several instances of the use of wit 
 in the selection of a text for a sermon. To give a later 
 example. A curate named Joseph preached at Dublin 
 Cathedral, by permission of Dean Swift, before Butler, 
 Duke of Ormonde, a man whose promises were not always 
 remembered, arid boldly took as his text : " Yet did not the 
 chief butler remember Joseph, but forgot him." Swift's 
 friend, Dr Sheridan, preached on the aimiversary of the 
 accession of the House of Hanover from the text : " Suffi- 
 cient unto the day is the evil thereof." 
 
 Robert South, of whom Charles the Second declared 
 that he " must have a bishopric," but who never attained 
 that preferment, was notable for his pulpit humour. He 
 had something of the capacity of the legendary Vicar 
 of Bray for adapting himself to circumstances, allowing 
 common-sense to govern him in passing from preaching 
 imder Cromwell to preaching under Charles and James, 
 and then to preaching under William, Anne and 
 George the First. It is, however, said that under 
 WiUiam he declined to accept a bishopric vacated by a 
 non-juror. Preaching before Charles the Second and his 
 court. South noticed that not only the monarch but many 
 of those about him were audibly sleeping. Lord Lauder- 
 dale seemed to be snoring the loudest, and the preacher, 
 more in loyal consideration than in displeasure, it is said, 
 
234 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 broke off his sermon and exclaimed : " My dear Lord 
 Lauderdale, let me implore you not to snore so loud — 
 you'll wake the King." 
 
 II 
 
 Swift's wit has already been represented in an earlier 
 chapter, and though Sterne is better remembered as a 
 master of fiction than as a clergyman, one or two of his 
 sayings may be given here as representing the clerical 
 wit of the eighteenth century. The Duke of New- 
 castle having declared that men of genius were unfit 
 for ordinary employment, being generally incapable of 
 business, Sterne readily and wisely replied, " They are 
 not incapable, your Grace, but above it. A sprightly, 
 generous horse is able to carry a packsaddle as well as 
 an ass, but he is too good to be put to the drudgery." 
 
 It having been remarked that apothecaries bore the 
 same relation to physicians as attorneys do to barristers, 
 Sterne said, " So they do, but yet apothecaries and 
 attorneys are not alike, for the latter do not deal in 
 scruples." 
 
 When Sterne was in Paris a French gentleman asked 
 him if he found in France no original characters that he 
 could make use of in " Tristram Shandy." " No," rephed 
 the author ; " the French resemble old pieces of coin, 
 whose impressions are worn off with rubbing." 
 
 There was excellent sarcasm in his saying that " the 
 most accomplished way of using books is to serve them 
 as some people do lords : learn their titles, and then brag 
 of their acquaintance." 
 
 The Rev. Robert Henry, at one time well known as 
 author of a history of England now forgotten, is worth 
 remembering for the following story. A colleague who was 
 
WIT IN THE PULPIT 335 
 
 to preach for him, having been caught in a heavy shower, 
 entered the vestry dripping, and as the time for the service 
 drew near kept sajdng : " Oh ! I wish that I was dry ! 
 Do you think I'm dry ? Do you think I'm dry enough 
 now ? " " Bide a wee," said Henry ; " bide a wee, and 
 you'll be dry enough when you go into the pulpit." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Of William Paley, Archdeacon of Carlisle, and author of 
 the famous " Evidences of Christianity," several stories 
 are told showing that the celebrated scholar, despite his 
 " want of refinement," was a man of ready humotir. So 
 much so that some of his sayings obviously uttered humor- 
 ously have been discredited by his biographers because not 
 seeming to fit in with the notion of a Church dignitary. 
 When he took up his living at Monkwearmouth he made an 
 arrangement by granting leases to avoid any trouble about 
 tithes. Having completed it he is reported to have said 
 that now he didn't care about bad harvests. A very 
 simple joke which anyone might have made, but which the 
 Archdeacon's son thought it worth while to deny. Paley 
 was bom in Yorkshire in 1743, was educated at Cambridge, 
 in 1782 became archdeacon, and in 1785 Chancellor of 
 Carlisle, and died in 1805. 
 
 When WUHam Pitt visited Cambridge University as 
 Prime Minister in 1784 Paley is said to have suggested that 
 the sermon preached before him should be from the per- 
 tinent text : " There is a lad here which hath five barley 
 loaves and two small fishes — but what are they among so 
 many." 
 
 When a Cambridge petition was being got up by the 
 Fellows in favour of a relaxation of the terms of subscription 
 
236 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 to the Articles of Faith as practised by the Church of 
 England, he excused himself sa5dng that he " could not 
 afford to keep a conscience." 
 
 Having listened for some time to a number of young 
 men loftily discussing the summum bonum of human life 
 he broke in with : " I differ from you all. The true summum 
 bonum consists in reading ' Tristram Shandy,' in blowing 
 with a pair of bellows into your shoes in hot weather, and 
 in roasting potatoes in the ashes under the grate in cold." 
 
 On receiving his first preferment he is said to have been 
 in high spirits and on attending a visitation dinner just 
 after the event he called out humorously during the 
 repast : " Waiter, shut down that window at my back, 
 and open another behind some curate." 
 
 IV 
 
 Possibly Rowland Hill comes nearest to Sydney Smith 
 among the pulpiteer wits if we are to judge by the number 
 of stories attached to his name — though close run by Father 
 Healy, of whom more anon. This eccentric preacher, the 
 sixth son of Sir Rowland Hill, the first baronet, was bom 
 in 1744. He is not to be confused with Sir Rowland Hill, 
 the originator of the penny post, their famiUes being 
 apparently wholly unconnected — the Knight of the Penny 
 Stamp, it may however be mentioned, received his Christian 
 name owing to his father's admiration for the preacher. 
 Young Hill, who was educated at Shrewsbury, Eton and 
 Cambridge, was early influenced by his eldest brother, the 
 champion of evangelical preachers ; at Cambridge as a 
 student his earnest efforts to do good to those around him, 
 and his preaching in the neighbourhood, exposed him to 
 much scorn on the part of his fellows, and insults from the 
 
WIT IN THE PULPIT 237 
 
 mob. It is curious that owing to his religious zeal he 
 applied in vain to six bishops for ordination, but as he 
 would not discontinue his irregular preaching each in turn 
 refused him. In 1773 he was successful in being ordained 
 by the Bishop of Bath and Wells to a Somersetshire 
 curacy. On applying for priest's orders he was again met 
 with refusal, and remained always an independent preacher, 
 having a chapel erected for him at Wotton, in Gloucester- 
 shire, and in 1783 the Surrey Chapel in London, afterwards 
 for half-a-century associated with him. The Established 
 Church lost a man of remarkable gifts, a preacher of great 
 force and individuahty. He died in 1833. 
 
 Rowland Hill may indeed be said to be a peculiarly fit 
 subject for a chapter on wit in the pulpit, as many of his 
 notable sayings were delivered from that coign of vantage. 
 One day, for instance, when the attendance was scantier 
 than usual, a sudden shower of rain came on and the 
 building at once rapidly filled. The preacher did not allow 
 this to pass unnoted, saying : " I have often heard of 
 religion being used as a cloak, but never before as an 
 umbrella." Then, too, when preaching at Wapping he is 
 reported to have said : " There are among you some great 
 sinners, some large sinners — and I may say some Whop- 
 ping sinners." 
 
 When he was preaching once on behalf of a public 
 charity, a note was handed up to him asking if it would be 
 right for a bankrupt to contribute in response to his appeal. 
 Hill referred to this in the course of his sermon, and said 
 decidedly that such a person could not do so in Christian 
 honesty. " But, my friends," he added, " I would advise 
 you who are not insolvent not to pass the plate this 
 evening, as if you do the people will be sure to say : ' There 
 goes the bankrupt ! ' " 
 
 When preaching to one of his most crowded congrega- 
 
238 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 tions, Rowland Hill was annoyed in the middle of his 
 sermon by a great commotion in the gallery. For a time 
 he took no notice of it, but on finding it increase he paused 
 in his sermon, and looking in the direction in which the 
 confusion prevailed exclaimed : " What's the matter 
 there ? The devil seems to have got among you ! " A 
 plain countrjTman immediately started to his feet and 
 said : " No, sir, it ar'n't the devil as is a-doing on it ; it's a 
 lady wot's fainted ; and she's a fat 'un, sir, as don't seem 
 likely to come to in a hurry." " Oh, that's it, is it ? " 
 observed the preacher, drawing his hand across his chin, 
 " then I beg the lady's pardon — and the devil's too." 
 
 No wonder a member of his congregation said, " Oh, Mr 
 Hill, how is it that you say such out-of-the-way things in 
 your sermons ? " to receive the reply, " Why, some of you 
 are such out-of-the-way sinners." 
 
 One of his " out-of-the-way things " was when announc- 
 ing from the pulpit the amount of a liberal collection he 
 said : " You have behaved so well on this occasion that we 
 mean to have another collection next Sunday. I have 
 heard it said of a good cow, that the more you milk her the 
 more she will give." 
 
 A member of his congregation wrote a letter of remon- 
 strance to Rowland HUl — ^who was then over eighty — 
 about his journeying to chapel in his brougham, asking 
 triumphantly : " Is this the way our Lord used to attend 
 Divine Worship ? " The preacher read out this letter 
 from the pulpit on the following Sunday, admitting with 
 an air of ingenuous penitence that Our Saviour had not 
 been in the habit of using a brougham ; " but, to atone for 
 my indiscretion," he added, " if the writer of this letter 
 will come into the vestry after service next Sunday, 
 bringing along with him a saddle and bridle, I will ride 
 him home ! " 
 
WIT IN THE PULPIT 239 
 
 Hill, who preserved excellent health to a great age, always 
 rode a great deal, and when a medical friend inquired who 
 attended him he replied : " My physician has always been 
 a horse, and my apothecary an ass." 
 
 Said a lady who led but a gay and worldly life, " Oh ! 
 I am afraid lest, after all, I should not be saved ! " " I am 
 glad to hear you say so," commented Hill, " for I have long 
 been afraid for you, I assure you." 
 
 The story that is sometimes told of Rowland Hill, on 
 his cook and housemaid disputing as to who should go and 
 buy a penn'orth of milk, ordering round the brougham and 
 sending them both for it in state may be true of the 
 eccentric preacher, but it is nothing but a re-rendering of 
 one of " The Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson." 
 
 Of Bishop Blomfield (1786-1857) one or two good sayings 
 are told. To him we are said to owe the wordy definition 
 of an archdeacon not infrequently attributed to Sydney 
 Smith. The story of its occasion runs as follows : — When 
 Lord Althorp was Chancellor of the Exchequer, having to 
 propose in the House of Commons a sum for the salary of 
 the Archdeacon of Bengal, he was puzzled by a member's 
 asking, " What are the duties of an archdeacon ? " So he 
 sent one of the subordinate occupants of the Treasury 
 Bench to the other House to obtain an answer to the 
 question from one of the bishops. The messenger first 
 met with Archbishop Vernon Harcourt, who described an 
 Archdeacon as " aide-de-camp to the bishop " ; and then 
 with Bishop Copleston of Llandaff, who said : " The arch- 
 deacon is oculus Episcopi." Lord Althorp, however, 
 declared that neither of these explanations would satisfy 
 
240 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 the House. " Go," said he, " and ask the Bishop of 
 London ; he is a straightforward man, and will give you 
 a plain answer." To the Bishop of London accordingly 
 the messenger went, and repeated the question, " What is 
 an archdeacon ? " " An archdeacon," replied the Bishop, 
 in his quick way ; "an archdeacon is an ecclesiastical 
 officer who performs archidiaconal functions." And with 
 this reply Althorp and the House were perfectly satisfied. 
 So, at least, we are told, but it may well be doubted 
 whether the amusing definition was ever put before the 
 House. 
 
 At the consecration of a church the choral parts of the 
 service had been a failure, but, nothing daunted, the 
 clergyman in charge of the arrangements asked the Bishop 
 what he thought of the music. " Well," replied Blomfield, 
 " at least it was according to Scriptural precedent — ' the 
 singers went before, the players on instruments followed 
 after.' " 
 
 A friend interceded with the Bishop on behalf of a 
 clergyman, a man of talents and an eloquent preacher, 
 who was constantly in debt. After putting the man's 
 case the friend added, " in fact, my Lord, he is quite a St 
 Paul." " Yes," agreed the Bishop dryly, " in prisons oft." 
 
 During his last illness Bishop Blomfield inquired as to 
 what had been the subject of his archdeacon's last two 
 charges and was told that one was on the art of making 
 sermons, and the other on churchyards. " I see," said the 
 Bishop, " composition and de-composition." 
 
 VI 
 
 Richard Whately occupies a place second only to that 
 of Sydney Smith among pulpit wits attached to the 
 
WIT IN THE PULPIT 241 
 
 Established Church. As Archbishop of DubUn from 1831 
 until his death in 1863 he had a difficult position to fill, 
 during the troubles attending the Oxford Movement. 
 Born in Surrey, in 1787, he had a distinguished career 
 at Oxford, and passed from a professorship of political 
 economy there to the Archbishopric of Dublin. A strong 
 Protestant, the secession of Newman, Manning and others 
 touched him nearly, but here we are concerned with the 
 wit, not with the Churchman, and of his many good things 
 that have been recorded can but have a representative 
 selection. 
 
 He was one of the wittiest of divines, but a wit who 
 revelled not only in that basal form the pun but also in that 
 form of humour which in these days does not last much 
 beyond the earlier school forms. Indeed, one of the most 
 famous, as it is one of the most ingenious, of all conund- 
 rums is said to have been devised by him. " Why can a 
 man never starve in the Great Desert ? Because he can 
 eat the sand which is there. But what brought the sand- 
 wiches there ? Noah sent Ham, and his descendants 
 mustered and bred." He was, too, a dangerous man on 
 whom to try the retaliatory conundrum, as a young aide- 
 de-camp found when, observing at a levee at Dublin 
 Castle a Roman Catholic dignitary wearing a large cross, he 
 asked Whately what was the difference between the Roman 
 bishop and a jackass, and answered his own question, 
 " One wears a crown upon his breast and the other on his 
 back." " Do you," said the Archbishop, " know the 
 difference between an aide-de-camp and a donkey ? " 
 " No ? " was the interrogative reply. " Nor I either." 
 
 Whately was fond, too, of asking hoaxing questions ; as 
 when he mystified a gathering of clergymen by asking 
 why it was that white sheep ate more than black sheep. 
 Various answers were proposed, at all of which the Arch- 
 
242 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 bishop gravely shook his head and at length proceeded to 
 explain with much solemnity that " white sheep eat more 
 than black sheep because — ^there are more of them ! " 
 Again he surprised a medical man by asking, with an air 
 of great seriousness, " Why does the operation of hanging 
 kill a man ? " " Because," began the explanation, " in- 
 spiration is checked, circulation is stopped, and blood 
 suffuses and congests the brain " " Bosh ! " _ inter- 
 rupted the Archbishop, " it is because the rope is not long 
 enough to let his feet touch the ground." 
 
 The Archbishop was fond of inventing anecdotes with 
 which to enforce a given point, as for example, the follow- 
 ing, apropos of miracles : — An Irish parson of the old 
 school, in whom a perception of the ridiculous was de- 
 veloped with a Rabelaisian breadth of appreciation, was 
 asked by a clodhopper to explain the meaning of a 
 miracle. " Walk on a few paces before me," said his 
 Reverence, which having done, the peasant was surprised 
 to feel in the rear a kick, administered with decided 
 energy. " What did you do that for ? " demanded the 
 young man angrily. " Simply to illustrate my meaning," 
 replied the cleric blandly ; "if you had not felt me, it 
 would have been a miracle." 
 
 When he was examining a young clergjrman the Arch- 
 bishop posed him by asking, " What is the difference 
 between a form and a ceremony. The meaning seems 
 nearly the same, yet there is a very nice distinction." 
 The candidate essayed a number of answers, when Whately 
 explained the true difference as being, " You sit upon a 
 form, but you stand upon ceremony." 
 
 A man directing Whately's attention to a powerful 
 draught horse expatiated on its great strength saying, 
 " There is nothing which he cannot draw." " H'm ! " 
 said Whately musingly ; " can he draw an inference ? " 
 
WIT IN THE PULPIT 243 
 
 He is credited with having finely described a proverb as 
 " the wisdom of many and the wit of one." 
 
 In his age Whately kept all his alertness of mind and 
 needed but the occasion to utilize it. Daily as long as he 
 was able he would take the air on College Green leaning 
 on the arm of his chaplain, and on one such occasion an 
 old friend meeting him said, " I hope your Grace is very 
 much better to-day." " Oh, I am very well, indeed, if I 
 could only persuade some strong fellow like you to lend me 
 a pair of legs." " I shall be only too happy to lend you 
 my legs, if your Grace has no objection to give me your 
 head in exchange." " What ! you don't mean to say that 
 you are willing to exchange two understandings for one ! " 
 
 To someone who on being asked a puzzling question 
 always closed his eyes while concentrating his mind on the 
 solutions Whately said, " Sir, you resemble an ignorant 
 pedagogue, one who keeps his pupils in darkness." 
 
 A clerical valetudinarian having consulted him as to 
 whether it would be advisable to take a voyage to New 
 Zealand for his health, received the answer, " By all 
 means go — ^you are so lean no Maori could eat you 
 without loathing." 
 
 When Lord Gough returned to Ireland honoured for his 
 subjugation of Runjeet Singh and the Sikhs, the Arch- 
 bishop inquired as to the relative strengths of the opposing 
 armies, and the soldier was beginning to reply when 
 Whately broke in with his excellent — but evidently pre- 
 meditated — pun, saying that he already knew : " They 
 were Sikhs — ^and we won." 
 
 VII 
 
 Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of London (1805-1873), 
 earned a lasting nickname owing to the description which 
 
244 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Lord Westbury in the House of Lords applied to one of 
 his judgments : " a well-lubricated set of words, a sentence 
 so oily and saponaceous that no one can grasp it." 
 " Soapy Sam " was thought happily to hit off some of his 
 characteristics, but he made a ready reference to the nick- 
 name when he said that he owed it to the fact that, 
 " though often in hot water, he always came out with 
 clean hands." 
 
 Perhaps one of the best of WUberforce's mots was said 
 when driving in the city with Miss Burdett Coutts., Pass- 
 ing one of the halls of the City Companies, her talk feU on 
 the origin of those companies. " I daresay," said Miss 
 Coutts, " you don't know the meaning of a drysalter ? " 
 " Oh yes, I do," responded Wilberforce, " Tate 6- Brady." 
 
 Towards the close of a meeting at Exeter HaU at which 
 Bishop Wilberforce had made an eloquent speech the 
 audience began to go away. A gentleman whose name 
 was on the programme said to the Bishop, " I need not 
 speak; I hardly think they expect me." " To be sure they 
 do," said Wilberforce, " don't you see they are all going ? " 
 
 On the formation of the famous political " Cave of 
 AduUam " over the Disestablishment of the Irish Church 
 question Bishop Wilberforce described Gladstone as the 
 framer of a new commandment — " Thou shalt not commit 
 AduUamy." 
 
 When Bishop Wilberforce and Lord Palmerston were 
 sta3dng together in the country the Prime Minister 
 offered to take the Bishop in his carriage to church, but 
 Wilberforce said that he preferred to walk. Just as the 
 carriage overtook the pedestrian a heavy shower had 
 come on. Palmerston popped his head out of the window 
 and said : 
 
 " How blest is he who ne'er consents 
 By ill-advice to walk I " 
 
WIT IN THE PULPIT 245 
 
 The Bishop was equal to the occasion and con- 
 tinued, 
 
 " Nor stands in sinners' ways, nor sits 
 Where men profanely talk.'-' 
 
 A lady having asked Wilberforce, " Why do girls like 
 to go to church ? " " Oh," he rephed, " I suppose from 
 the best of motives." " No," she rejoined, " they go to 
 look at the Hints." " Nay," he answered, " they don't 
 go to church for that — they go to the chapel of He's." 
 
 John Bright meeting Wilberforce at some reception 
 pointed to the Bishop's attire and said, " Purple and fine 
 linen, my lord ! purple and fine linen ! " " When I am 
 likely to meet Mr Bright," retorted Wilberforce with an 
 excusably bad pun, " my first thought is that the Church 
 should be in violet." 
 
 Of one of his colleagues, Dr Jacobson, Wilberforce said, 
 " I have often heard of the milk of human kindness, but 
 never before did I see its cow." 
 
 VIII 
 
 One of the most recent of our clerical wits was Canon 
 Ainger, who was not only an admirable raconteur, and a 
 happy exponent of the art of apropos quotation, but also 
 gifted with a ready power of repartee. Mostly perhaps 
 his sayings belonged rather to humour than to wit ; he 
 never, says his biographer,^ spoke to woimd, and the 
 most impressive wit is necessarily that which conveys the 
 shrewdest hit. There is a story of a headsman so expert 
 with the sword that it severed the head so swiftly and 
 so neatly that it needed a pinch of snuff at the victim's 
 nose to complete the severance to the spectator's eye ! 
 Thus, perhaps, it is with the best things of wit. But 
 
 » The " Life and Letters of Alfred Ainger."- By Edith Sichel. 
 
246 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Ainger was rather a humorist, a punster of the Lamb and 
 Hood school, one whose fancy played over the good things 
 he said, the impromptus he penned, rather than one who 
 uttered a witticism with intent to wound. One of his best 
 things, as wit, he declared to be unintentional and was 
 meant as a compliment. Seated next to a friend at a 
 public dinner he said : " I see you have got a toast to 
 speak to." " Yes," was the reply, " I shall have a lot of 
 nonsense to talk after dinner." " No one," rejoined Ainger, 
 " is more capable of doing so." This story was illustrated 
 by Du Maurier and duly appeared in Punch. 
 
 Having spilt some wine upon the table at dinner on one 
 occasion he turned to the hostess and said apologetically : 
 " You would never have expected me to show such dis- 
 respect for the cloth." Another dinner-table contretemps 
 was turned by him to witty account when a jar of Crosse 
 & Blackwell's pickles was upset over a lady's black dress, 
 and he instantly said : 
 
 " They've spilt all her pickles — 
 How great is her loss I 
 They don't suit her Black well 
 And so she is Cross.'' 
 
 Very happy, too, was his impromptu on being told that 
 a dressmaker lived next to the celebrated surgeon, Spencer 
 Wells : 
 
 " Next to Mr Spencer Wells, 
 Madame White the modiste dwells. 
 The reason why, are you a guesser ? 
 Next to the surgeon comes the dresser.'' 
 
 Excellent was his remark when a party of visitors were 
 returning from an excursion and had most of them to take 
 the journey in a hired barouche and one on a scraggy 
 hired horse. As the equestrian mounted, Ainger said : 
 
WIT IN THE PULPIT 247 
 
 " Mr ^^^lite will accompany the party on the bones." 
 Neat was his epigram on a friend : 
 
 " When William sings his best we view 
 At once a Bill and in-voice too ! " 
 
 Canon Ainger's biographer credits him with finding the 
 classic rhyme for " porringer " in lines which are but a 
 misquotation of a nursery rhyme to be found in all the 
 collections — a rhyme probably dating back to the close of 
 the seventeenth century. 
 
 " What do you feel about this marriage," he was asked 
 at the wedding of a very short couple. " A fortuitous 
 concurrence of atoms," he instantly replied. Of a gentle- 
 man who had married a lady of colour merely on account 
 of her wealth, and who did not get on with her, he said : 
 " It seems a pity that he should quarrel with his bread and 
 butter — even though it is brown." 
 
 At the university Ainger was told that it was discovered 
 that the classical lecturer used a translation in class. 
 " Ah," said he, " the ass knoweth its master's crib." 
 
 When after the election of 1892 the Liberal party was 
 returned to power with a majority of forty-two he said : 
 " The G.O.M. will try to bear his moderate majority with 
 forty-twod." ^ 
 
 One or two good stories are told of the late Bishop 
 Stubbs. Arriving at the end of a railway journey a 
 porter began collecting his luggage, and said : " How 
 many articles are there, sir ? " " Thirty-nine," replied the 
 Bishop imperturbably. The porter hunted round and 
 then said in despair : " There are only fourteen here, sir." 
 
 1 Edward Lear, author of " The Book of Nonsense," had many 
 years earlier used the same somewhat obvious pun in a letter to a 
 friend : " As for me 1 am 40 — and some months ; by the time 
 I am 42 I shall regard the matter with 42de I hope." 
 
248 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " Ah," said Stubbs, smiling, " you are evidently a dis- 
 senter." 
 
 Shortly after Stubbs had become Bishop of Oxford, 
 Archdeacon Palmer remonstrated with him for not 
 attending various pubUc gatherings in the way that his 
 predecessor had done. " Bishop Mackamess," said 
 Stubbs, " had his views about the duties of his office and I 
 have mine." On which the Archdeacon referred to the 
 practice of Bishop Wilberforce. " Ah ! now," said 
 Stubbs, " you are coming the Witch of Endor over me ! " 
 " The Witch of Endor ! What can your lordship mean ?" 
 " Yes, the Witch of Endor. You are trying to frighten 
 me with the ghost of Samuel ! " 
 
 Arriving at a clerical meeting one day. Bishop Stubbs 
 said : " This is a Diocesan Board, is it not ? " " Yes, my 
 lord," was the answer. " I am sure it is also a Bored 
 Diocesan," he retorted, as he took his seat. 
 
 Bishop Creighton used to tell a story of the ready wit 
 of Magee, his predecessor in the see of Peterborough. 
 Magee had been staying at some country place, and on his 
 leaving, the innkeeper had presented an extortionate bill, at 
 the same time expressing the hope that his visitor had had 
 change and rest. " No, indeed," was Magee's reply, " the 
 waiter has got the change, and you have got the rest." 
 
 Bishop Magee seems to have been a good hand at that 
 wit which may be embodied in a riddle, as when he asked, 
 " What is the temperature of an Irish Home Ruler ? " and 
 answered his own question with, " Ninety-eight in the 
 shade." 
 
 A clergyman having been mentioned as allowing his 
 pony regularly to eat hay the property of a neighbouring 
 farm. Dean Mansel remarked : " That must have been 
 in the days when men wore cope and stole." At a city 
 banquet someone asked if the word " reforme " should not 
 
WIT IN THE PULPIT 249 
 
 have an e at the end of it in a French menu. " Yes," said 
 Mansel, with great readiness, " reform in France is always 
 followed by an e mute." 
 
 IX 
 
 Father James Healy, the parish priest of Little Bray, 
 Co. Wicklow, for many years, who died at the age of 
 seventy in 1894, was perhaps one of the most unfailingly 
 ebullient of recent wits. The volume of " Memories of 
 Father Healy of Little Bray," by Mr W. J. Fitzpatrick, 
 pubUshed a couple of years after the priest's death, is one 
 of the most dehghtful collections of good things, and what 
 is more it reveals a pecuUarly attractive and delightful 
 personality. Father Healy's unfailing humour, his 
 bubbling wit can be scarcely more than hinted at here 
 where they have to form but an incident in a chapter on 
 pulpit wits ; it may be said, however, that he appears to 
 have been the very personification of the traditional idea 
 of Irish wittiness. 
 
 Everyone who knew him seems to have been struck 
 by his readiness of thought and tongue, and many friends 
 bore witness to the fact that his witticisms were never of 
 a kind to hurt. One given by his biographer seems to 
 get very near the border of unkindness, though anyone 
 but the victim would readily forgive the seeming unkind- 
 ness for the happiness of the wit : " The late Sir William 
 Wnde was rather slovenly in his person. When he offered 
 his hand to a distinguished actress, still living, he received 
 for reply, ' Go, and wash it first.' Judge Barry, dining 
 with Lord O'Hagan shortly after Wilde had been knighted, 
 observed : ' I left Holyhead in a gale and came across 
 the dirtiest night.' 'It must have been Wilde,' said 
 Father Healy." 
 
250 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " Sir," said a priest from another diocese, in discussing 
 the possible appointment of a bishop, " we have no 
 vacancy for a fool in our diocese." " Are you, then, so 
 full ? " quietly asked Healy. 
 
 Of a certain unpopular Lord Mayor of Dublin an alder- 
 man said : " Durdin would eat a jackass in a basket of 
 greens," and shortly afterwards he added : " I saw him 
 dining at the Imperial Hotel yesterday, but he didn't 
 seem to notice me." " I daresay that all his attention 
 was directed to the greens," quietly commented Healy. 
 
 At Corless's Restaurant Father Healy's attention was 
 drawn by the proprietor to the fact that Miss Corless 
 had gained some great distinction at the Milan Conser- 
 vatoire of Music. " And what are you going to do with 
 your daughter after all this ? " asked the priest. " Oh, 
 I shall hope to see her on the operatic stage soon," replied 
 her father, the owner of the most extensive oyster beds 
 on the Irish coast. " You'll want to turn her into an 
 oyster-Patti, then," said Father Healy, without a moment's 
 hesitation. 
 
 Father Healy was talking to a friend in the street when 
 a youth came up begging alms ; having received a penny 
 he scampered off, revealing in his retreat a very tattered 
 apparel. " That is a nice cut of an Irish landlord," said 
 the priest. " How so ? " asked the friend. " Because he 
 has rents in a rear." 
 
 Very neat was Father Healy's remark when a canon 
 visitor said to him at table, " I hear your Scotch whisky 
 has a great reputation." Pushing the bottle across to his 
 companion Healy said : " Go, seek the bubble reputation in 
 the Canon's mouth." 
 
 A lady was telling Father Healy that she had been to 
 Monte Carlo, and that there was a point from which you 
 could see both the church and the casino equally well. 
 
WIT IN THE PULPIT 251 
 
 His ready comment was : " They resemble each other 
 not a little. At the one you are preyed on, and at the other 
 you are prayed for." 
 
 Someone drawing his attention to the lanky legs of some 
 girls bathing in the sea, Father Healy said : " You couldn't 
 expect those heifers to have calves." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 SYDNEY SMITH 
 
 " Had England a hierarchy formed of all wits 
 Whom but Sydney would England proclaim as its Primate." 
 
 Thomas Moore 
 
 IT is a curious coincidence that poets as diverse as Thomas 
 Moore and Walter Savage Landor should have agreed 
 in affixing the same title upon one whom the latter de- 
 scribed as " humour's pink Primate, Sydney Smith." His 
 wit as talker and writer was so spontaneous and so con- 
 tinuous that it is little wonder that he impressed his 
 generation, but its fame has not lessened, and when in 
 doubt as to the paternity of a bon-mot more people would 
 be likely to father it upon the witty canon of St Paul's 
 than upon anyone else. The diarists and letter writers 
 of his day vied with each other in saying complimentary 
 things about his readiness of wit and his incessant good 
 humour. Crabb Robinson said that " his faun-like face 
 was a sort of promise of good things to come when he 
 did but open his lips." Another friend declared his intelr 
 lect to be like an electric coil which flashed out sparkling 
 coruscations at a touch, while a further one paid a rare 
 compliment in describing him as " possessing as much wit 
 as a man without a grain of his sense, he had as much 
 sense as a man without a spark of his wit." Another 
 admirable compliment was that which described his wit 
 
 25a 
 
SYDNEY SMITH 253 
 
 as merely the flower of his wisdom. That he was not one 
 who saved his good things for society but scattered them as 
 lavishly at home we have the testimony of Macaulay who 
 said that it seemed to be his greatest luxury to keep his 
 wife and daughters laughing for two or three hours every 
 day. This " cascading " of wit and humour showed Smith 
 to be a wit of a very different character from Sheridan — 
 indeed their attitude towards the quality of which they 
 were both brilliant possessors was antipodean. To Sheri- 
 dan, as we have seen, the true trained wit was one who, 
 having his ready-made joke, drew his listeners into an 
 ambuscade that he might fire it off at them. The best wit 
 is born not trained, and Sydney Smith himself recognized 
 this when he described it " in midwife's phrase, as a quick 
 conception and an easy delivery." 
 
 II 
 
 Of Sydney Smith's life story it is not necessary here to 
 say much, for several biographies of him have been written 
 — the latest Mr G. W. E. Russell's capital monograph in 
 the EngHsh Men of Letters Series. He was born in 1771 at 
 Woodford in Essex. His father was the son of a London 
 man of business. He himself said " he always let it be 
 inferred that he was the son of Adam Smith," and he 
 gravely told a lady who asked who was his grandfather 
 that " he disappeared about the time of the Assizes and — 
 we asked no questions." When he was at his rectory at 
 Combe Florey, a pompous visitor arrived and said that he 
 was compiling a history of distinguished Somersetshire 
 families, and had called to obtain the Smith arms. " I 
 regret, sir," responded Smith, in all seriousness, " not to be 
 able to contribute to so valuable a work, but the Smiths 
 
254 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 never had any arms and have invariably sealed their letters 
 with their thumbs." 
 
 Sydney Smith was educated at Winchester — of which 
 he always retained the most unpleasant recollections — and 
 Oxford, where in 1791 he was elected a Fellow of New 
 College. In 1794 he left the university and entered the 
 Church, becoming curate of Nether Avon, near Salisbury — 
 " a pretty feature in a flain face," he termed it. In 1798 
 he went to Edinburgh as tutor and remained there for five 
 years, during which time he married and, with Brougham, 
 Jeffrey and others, started The Edinburgh Review. The 
 inception of the great quarterly he described thus : " I 
 proposed that we should set up a Review. This was ac- 
 ceded to with acclamation. I was appointed editor, and 
 remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit thefirst number 
 of the Review. The motto I proposed for the Review was 
 
 " 'Tenui Musam, mediiamur avena.' 
 (" We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal.") 
 
 But this was too near the truth to be admitted ; so we 
 took our present grave motto from Publius Syxus, of whom 
 none of us had, I am sure, read a single line." 
 
 His stay in Scotland — which he described as " only the 
 knuckle end of England — gave Sydney Smith the oppor- 
 tunity of firing off many jests at Scotland and the Scots, 
 of following in his own particular fashion the already time- 
 honoured custom of making fun of the north. And here 
 may be given at the outset that which is one of the most 
 frequently referred to, and certainly the most often mis- 
 quoted of sayings at the expense of the Scot. It is unneces- 
 sary to give the current perversion of the story. William 
 Chambers in conversation with Sydney Smith very justly 
 claimed for the Scotch that they had after all a considerable 
 fund of humour. " Oh, by all means," agreed the witty 
 
SYDNEY SMITH 255 
 
 clergyman ; " you are an immensely funny people, but 
 you need a little operating upon to let the fun out. I 
 know no instrument so effectual for the purpose as the 
 corkscrew." 
 
 Discussing Scotch scholarship Smith declared that 
 " Greek was a witch and as such could not cross running 
 water, nor ever get beyond the Tweed." Palmerston's 
 manner of speaking he described as being like a man 
 washing his hands — adding, " the Scotch members don't 
 know what he is doing." 
 
 Of Francis Horner, one of his Review colleagues, he said 
 that he had the Ten Commandments written on his face, 
 and looked so virtuous that he might commit any crime 
 with impunity. 
 
 Leslie, the Scotch philosopher, had called upon Jeffrey 
 just as the latter was going out riding, to ask him to explain 
 some point concerning the North Pole. Jeffrey, who was 
 in a hurry, exclaimed as he rode off : " Oh ! damn the North 
 Pole ! " This hurt Leshe's feelings, and he complained of 
 it to Sydney Smith, who entered gravely into the matter, 
 and told him, in confidence, that he himself had once heard 
 Jeffrey speak disrespectfully of the Equator ! 
 
 When preaching in Edinburgh, noticing that the con- 
 gregations were almost exclusively women he took as his 
 text the verse from the Psalms, " Oh, that men would 
 therefore praise the Lord ! " 
 
 in 
 
 In 1803 Sydney Smith left Edinburgh — ^hating the place 
 and loving its inhabitants — for London, where he became 
 preacher at the Foundhng Hospital and where he dehvered 
 a brilliant series of lectures on Moral Philosophy at the 
 Royal Institution. He became known to many people 
 
256 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 and some};hing of a personage in society. In 1807 he 
 received the living of Foston-le-Clay in Yorkshire, which 
 he continued to hold for over twenty years, exchanging it 
 for that of Combe Florey in Somerset in 1829, after he had 
 been appointed Prebendary of Bristol. In 1831 he be- 
 came canon residentiary at St Paul's Cathedral. During 
 all these years of active work as a clergyman he continued 
 a frequent contributor to the review which he had helped 
 to found, while shortly after his removal to London he had 
 written, in " Peter Plymley's Letters," on the subject of 
 CathoUc Emancipation, one of " the most instructive 
 pieces of wisdom in the form of irony ever written. 
 
 From his Yorkshire parsonage — the building of which 
 he had superintended— Sydney Smith regarded somewhat 
 wistfully the attractions of the distant metropolis. But 
 though he was never tired of jesting against the country 
 he must have been a delightful clergymen to sit under, 
 a deUghtful neighbour to have. He said that " life is a 
 difi&cult thing in the country, I assure you ; and it requires 
 a good deal of forethought to steer the ship when you Hve 
 twelve miles from a lemon." The charm of London he 
 declared was that in it you are never glad or sorry for ten 
 minutes together, " in the country you are one and the 
 other for weeks." He should have approved of that 
 writer whom he described as making "all the country 
 smell Hke Piccadilly." To some who insisted upon the 
 charms of living in the country he said " country life is 
 very good ; in fact the best — for cattle." His genius 
 called for such company as he did not find about him in 
 Yorkshire ; the quiet routine seems to have bored him so 
 much that he declared he always feared that creation 
 would expire before tea-time. 
 
 To a country squire who, having been worsted in an 
 argument by his rector, remarked, " If I had a son who was 
 
SYDNEY SMITH 257 
 
 an idiot, by Jove ! I'd make him a parson," Sydney Smith 
 quietly replied, " I see that your father was of a different 
 mind." 
 
 Of Harrogate he declared that it seemed to be " the 
 most heaven-forgotten country under the sun. When I 
 saw it there were only nine mangy fir-trees there — ^and 
 even they all leant away from it." 
 
 On one of his visits to London he met Young the actor 
 at HoUand House, and after the actor had been mono- 
 poUzing the talk for some time Smith turned to him and 
 said with much fun : " Do you know, Mr Young, I had 
 much rather be listening to you than to the lowing of 
 oxen or the bleating of sheep." 
 
 In the country the witty clergyman hsfd to complain 
 that a single joke went a long way. " I have known one 
 last pretty weU for seven years. I remember making a 
 joke after a meeting of the clergy in Yorkshire, where 
 there was a Reverend Mr Buckle who never spoke, when 
 I gave his health saying that he was a buckle without a 
 tongue. Most persons within hearing laughed, but my 
 next neighbour sat unmoved and sunk in thought. At 
 last, a quarter of an hour after we had all done, he suddenly 
 nudged me, exclaiming : ' I see now what you meant, Mr 
 Smith ; you meant a joke.' ' Yes, sir,' I said, ' I 
 believe I did,' upon which he began laughing so heartily 
 that I thought he would choke and was obliged to pat him 
 on the back." ^ 
 
 When he removed to Combe Florey, Sydney Smith was 
 less isolated ; first his prebendal stall at Bristol, and later 
 
 1 1 have known a somewhat similar thing to happen. A tea-table 
 jest having been received with hearty laughter, one of the longest of 
 the laughers being a young lady, who, when she had discovered 
 her speaking voice, set everyone else oS anew by naively remark- 
 ing : '' I don't see it yet."- 
 
 R 
 
258 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 his canonry at St Paul's bringing him in touch with the 
 company in which he dehghted. Of his new living he said : 
 " There I am, sir, the priest of the Flowery Valley, in a 
 delightful parsonage) about which I care a good deal, and 
 a delightful country, about which I do not care a straw." 
 When he was at breakfast at Combe Florey one day a poor 
 woman came begging him to christen an infant without 
 delay as she thought it was djdng. He hurried off with her, 
 and on his return his family inquired after the poor babe. 
 " Why," said he, " I just gave it a doze of castor oil, and 
 then I christened it ; so now the poor child is ready for 
 either world." 
 
 IV 
 
 It was in London, in society, at the dinner or breakfast 
 table, where he met kindred company, that Sydney Smith 
 was at his best ; though wit and humour are to be found 
 also irradiating his writings, whether it is his private 
 correspondence or articles in the Edinburgh — indeed 
 Monckton Milnes averred : " Smith always exercises his 
 jokes in society before he runs them upon paper." A 
 selection of his dinner-table mots may be given together. 
 
 Describing a dinner at which he had been present 
 Smith said : " Puns are frequently provocative. One day, 
 after diimer with a Nabob, he was giving us Madeira — 
 ' London — East India — picked — particular ' — then a second 
 thought struck him and he remembered that he had a 
 few flasks of Constantia in the house, and he produced one. 
 He gave us just a glass apiece. We became clamorous for 
 another, but the old qui-hi was firm in his refusal. ' Well, 
 weU,' said I, ' since we can't double the Cape, we must 
 e'en go back to Madeira.' We all laughed, our host most 
 of all, and he, too, luckily, had his joke. ' Be of Good 
 
SYDNEY SMITH 259 
 
 Hope, you shall double it,' at which we all laughed still 
 more immoderately, and drank the second flask." ^ 
 
 At another dinner he allowed his humorous exaggeration 
 full play, much to the disquiet of a certain gentleman who 
 had not only a total absence of humour in himself but of 
 perception of it in others. The conversation at the table 
 took a liberal turn. Sydney Smith in the full career of his 
 spirits said that though he was not generally considered 
 an illiberal man, yet he must confess he had a little weak- 
 ness, one secret wish — ^he would Uke to roast a Quaker, 
 " Good heavens, Mr Smith ! " said Mr B., full of horror, 
 " roast a Quaker ? But do you consider, Mr Smith, the 
 torture ? " " Yes, sir," replied Smith, " I have considered 
 everything. It may be wrong, as you say ; the Quaker 
 would undoubtedly suffer acutely, but everyone has his 
 tastes — mine would be, to roast a Quaker. One would 
 satisfy me, only one. It is one of these peculiarities I have 
 striven against in vain, and I hope you will pardon my 
 weakness." Mr B.'s honest simplicity could stand this no 
 longer, and he seemed hardly able to sit at table with him. 
 The whole company were in roars of laughter at the scene ; 
 but neither this, nor the mirth and mischief sparkhng in 
 Sydney's eyes, enlightened him in the least, for a joke was 
 a thing of which he had no conception. At last Smith, 
 seeing that he was giving real pain, said : " Come, Mr B., 
 -since you think I am so very illiberal, I must be wrong, 
 and will give up my roasted Quaker, rather than your 
 esteem ; let us drink wine together." Peace was made, 
 but it was regarded as doubtful whether time or explanation 
 even made B. comprehend that it was a joke. 
 
 Dining at Mrs Kinglake's (the mother of the historian), 
 
 * Sydney Smith thus definitely gives us this jest as his own, but 
 a garbled version of it in '- Sheridiana " attributes it to Sheridan 
 at the table of Lord Chancellor Thurlow. 
 
26o A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Sydney Smith had another of his frequent digs at the 
 Nonconformists. Being asked if he would behave as a 
 neighbouring clergyman had done, and refuse to bury a 
 Dissenter, he replied : " On the contrary, I should be only 
 too glad to bury them all." 
 
 A lady being about to have a dinner in honour of two 
 noted entomologists Sydney Smith suggested that her 
 menu should include " flea fates, earthworms on toast, 
 caterpillars crawling in cream — and removing themselves, 
 etc." 
 
 On seeing a lady at a dinner-table seated between two 
 bishops he said : " Her name is Susanna, I assume." 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce describing three days spent at Eton at 
 the time of Bishop Selwjm's farewell writes : " I preached 
 once, and he once. He is just setting out, and my friend 
 Whitehead with him as chaplain. Sydney Smith says it 
 wUl make quite a revolution in the dinners of New Zealand 
 — tete d'Eveque will be the most recherche dish, and your 
 man will add that there is cold clergyman on the side table." 
 It was on the same occasion that Smith also said to Selwyn, 
 " And as for myself, my lord, all I can say is, that when 
 your new parishioners do eat you, I sincerely hope you may 
 disagree with them." 
 
 V 
 
 Some of the most amusing of Sydney Smith's sayings 
 were those in which he dealt with the characters or foibles 
 of his notable contemporaries. Macaulay and Hallam espe- 
 cially called forth witticism after witticism — ^particularly 
 the loquacity of the one and the love of contradiction of 
 the other. At one of Rogers' breakfast-parties Smith said : 
 " I wish I could write poetry like you, Rogers ; I would 
 write an ' Inferno,' and I would put Macaulay among a 
 
SYDNEY SMITH 261 
 
 lot of disputants — and gag him." " I wish," he said, 
 another time, ' ' that Macaulay would see the difference 
 between colloquy and soliloquy." Another time it was : 
 " Oh yes, we both talk a good deal ; but I don't believe 
 Macaulay ever did hear my voice. Sometimes when I 
 have told a good story I have thought to myself — Poor 
 Macaulay ! he will be very sorry some day to have missed 
 hearing that." Once when he had been thus overtalked 
 by the historian he said that Macaulay not only overflowed 
 with learning, but stood in the slops ; and another time it 
 was " there is no limit to Macaulay's knowledge on small 
 subjects as well as great — ^he is like a book in breeches." 
 On another occasion he startled the company with, 
 " Macaulay is improved ! Macaulay improves ! I have 
 observed in him of late — brilliant flashes of silence ! " 
 Smith could, however, pay his great rival talker a great 
 compUment, as when he said : " To take Macaulay out of 
 literature and society, and put him in the House of 
 Commons, is like taking the chief physician out of London 
 during a pestilence." 
 
 Someone having begun, " I think I may assert without 
 fear of contradiction, " Sydney Smith broke in with : 
 " Stop, sir ; are you acquainted with Mr Hallam ? " In 
 describing his own late arrival at a dinner he said : " There 
 was Hallam with his mouth full of cabbage and contradic- 
 tion." He declared that Dante in his " Purgatorio " 
 would have assigned five hundred years of assenting to 
 Hallam, and as many to Rogers of praising his fellow- 
 creatures ; and that if Euclid were to enter the room and 
 were to say, " Gentlemen, I suppose no one present doubts 
 the truth of the Forty-fifth Proposition of my first Book of 
 Elements," Hallam would immediately say, " Yes, / have 
 my doubts." 
 
 When Sydney Smith was first told of the possibilities of 
 
262 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 the electric telegraph he said : " Oh, I see what the use of 
 that will be. It will enable Hallam in London to contra- 
 dict a man in Birmingham." 
 
 Perhaps his most amusing jest at Hallam's expense 
 was when he was droUy describing his friends daring an 
 influenza epidemic : " Poor Hallam was tossing and tum- 
 bling in his bed when the watchman came by and called 
 ' Twelve o'clock and a starlight night.' Here was an 
 opportunity of controversy when it seemed most out of 
 the question ! Up Hallam jumped, ' I question that ! 
 Starhght ! I see a star, I admit ; but I doubt whether that 
 constitutes starlight.' Hours more of tossing and tumbling 
 and then comes the watchman again : ' Past two o'clock, 
 and a cloudy morning.' ' I question that, — I question that,' 
 says Hallam, and he rushes to the window and throws up 
 the sash — ^influenza notwithstanding. ' Watchman ! do 
 you mean to call this a cloudy morning ? I see a star. 
 And I question it's being past two o'clock — I question it, 
 I question it.' " 
 
 The cadaverous appearance of Samuel Rogers, the 
 banker poet, seems to have been a favourite subject on 
 which the friends who enjoyed his breakfast-parties 
 founded their jests. On a rumour that Rogers was to be 
 married. Smith suggested the sexton as best man, and the 
 two Misses Berry as bridesmaids, that the Rev. Mr Coffin 
 (a London clergyman of the time) should officiate and the 
 ceremony take place in the Church of St Sepulchre. 
 Rogers, being about to sit for his portrait, asked Sydney 
 Smith what attitude he recommended him to be taken in. 
 " There is a very expressive one," said his friend gravely, 
 "we of the clergy use in first getting up into the pulpit 
 which might suit you very well " (covering his face with 
 his hands by way of illustration). A friend inquiring after 
 the health of Rogers, Smith said, " He is not very well." 
 
SYDNEY SMITH 263 
 
 " Why, what is the matter ? " " Oh, don't you know, 
 he has produced a couplet. When our friend is deUvered 
 of a couplet, he takes to his bed, has straw laid down, the 
 knocker tied up, and expects his friends to call and make 
 inquiries, and the answer at the door is invariably, ' Mr 
 Rogers and his little couplet are as well as can be ex- 
 pected.' When he produces an Alexandrine he keeps his 
 bed a day longer." 
 
 Someone having said of Whewell that his forte was 
 science, " Yes," assented Smith, " and his foible is omni- 
 science." 
 
 Of Lord Brougham's carriage, with B. surmounted by 
 a coronet on the panel, Smith remarked, " There goes a 
 carriage with a B. outside and a wasp within." 
 
 The following story was attributed to Sydney Smith 
 when first current in the thirties, but it has since been 
 claimed for John Gibson Lockhart. It is certainly in the 
 manner of Smith, and at his best. Sir Edwin Landseer 
 having somewhat patronizingly offered to paint his 
 portrait received the quick reply, " Is thy servant a dog, 
 that he should do this thing ? " 
 
 VI 
 
 Some of Sydney Smith's many professional jests may 
 be given. Admirable was his remark about a preacher 
 noted for dull sermons — ^that he evidently thought that 
 sin was to be taken from men as Eve was from Adam — ^by 
 casting them into a deep sleep. Neat, too, was his reply 
 to a young clergyman who had asked how the witty Canon 
 liked his preaching, " Well, if you must know, I like you 
 better in the bottle than in the wood." 
 
 Being asked the meaning of Puseyism he replied : 
 
264 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " Puseyism, sir, is inflection and genuflexion ; posture 
 and imposture; bowing to the east and curtsying to 
 the west." 
 
 During a charity sermon Sydney Smith frequently 
 stated that of all nations the EngHsh were the most dis- 
 tinguished for generosity and the love of their species. 
 The subsequent collection being much less than he had 
 expected he said that he must admit that he had made 
 a mistake, his expression should have been that they were 
 distinguished for the love of their specie. 
 
 Dining at Holland House, the Canon met a French 
 savant who annoyed some of those present by a number 
 of free-thinking speculations. " Very good soup this ! " 
 slyly struck in Smith. " Oui, monsieur, c'est excellente ! " 
 " Pray, sir, do you believe in a cook ? " 
 
 Smith's propensity for having digs at the Nonconform- 
 ists has already been referred to. He said that if ever he 
 did go to a fancy-dress baU he should go as a Dissenter. 
 When suffering from illness — during which his playfulness 
 never left him — ^he said that he felt so weak that he verily 
 believed, if the knife were put into his hand, that he should 
 not have strength or energy enough to stick it in a Dis- 
 senter ! Still he admitted that " the same passion which 
 peoples the parsonage with chubby children, animates the 
 Arminian and bums in the breast of the Baptist." 
 
 Another story long associated with .Sydney Smith, is that 
 of asking a child why she stroked the shell of a tortoise, and 
 on being told, " Oh, to please the tortoise," replying, 
 " Why, child, you might as well stroke the dome of St 
 Paul's to please the Dean and Chapter." Sir Mountstuart 
 Grant Duff tells us in one of his fascinating volumes of 
 ana, " Notes from a Diary," that this was said by Sir 
 Frederick Pollock. 
 
SYDNEY SMITH 265 
 
 VII 
 
 The many mots of Sydney Smith that have been re- 
 corded might be made to fill two or three chapters of this 
 book instead of one. Some of them have all the pointed- 
 ness of true wit, others are mere puns, and others but the 
 expression of an almost riotous drollery. A certain noble- 
 man having been accused of cheating at cards, a young 
 man of fashion, seeking to defend him, thought to clinch 
 his argument by adding, " Well, I don't care what they 
 say ; I've just left a card upon him." " Did you mark it, 
 then ? " inquired Sydney Smith, " otherwise he will not 
 take it as an honour." 
 
 On a discussion as to the relative importance of two 
 well-known men Smith wittily remarked : " There is the 
 same difference between their tongues as between the hour 
 and the minute hand. The one goes twelve times as fast, 
 and the other signifies twelve times as much." 
 
 Good, too, was his reply to a politician who said, " I 
 have just been with Brougham, whom I sought out for 
 the purpose of making an important communication, but, 
 upon my word, he treated me as if I were a fool." " Never 
 mind, my dear fellow," said Smith ssonpathetically, 
 " never mind, he thought you knew it ! " 
 
 Walking with the Bishop of Exeter, Sydney Smith saw 
 written up over a shop : " Tongues Cured Here." " Shall 
 we go in, my lord ? " he asked. 
 
 He once happily described his house as being fuU of 
 cousins, adding that they were all first cousins — and he 
 wished them once removed. 
 
 Talking about art, Sydney Smith said : " I like pictures, 
 without knowing anything about them ; but I hate cox- 
 combry in the fine arts, as weU as in anjrthing else. I got 
 into dreadful disgrace Avith Sir George Beaumont once. 
 
266 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 who, standing before a picture at Bowood, exclaimed, 
 turning to me, ' Immense breadth of light and shade ! ' 
 I innocently said, ' Yes, about an inch and a half.' He 
 gave a look that ought to have killed me." 
 
 When advised by a physician to " take a walk upon an 
 empty stomach," he quietly asked, " Whose ? " Using 
 with fresh effect the same reply that Tom Sheridan had 
 given when his father told him to take a wife. 
 
 A man who had expressed a very strong opinion pro- 
 ceeded to justify it by saying that he was a plain man, to 
 which Smith retorted " that he was not aware that the 
 gentleman's personal appearance had anything to do with 
 the question." 
 
 Sydney Smith seems to have had an imperfect sym- 
 pathy with dogs. As he said once : " No, I don't hke 
 dogs ; I always expect them to go mad. A lady once 
 asked me for a motto for her dog Spot. I proposed, ' Out, 
 damned Spot,' but she did not think it sentimental 
 enough." During a dinner at Spencer House the conversa- 
 tion turning upon dogs he explained his anti-dog tactics 
 at Foston-le-Clay. " One of the greatest difficulties I 
 have had with my parishioners has been on the subject 
 of dogs." " How so ? " inquired Lord Spencer. " Why, 
 when I first went down into Yorkshire there hadn't been 
 a resident clergyman in my parish for a hundred and fifty 
 years. Each farmer kept a huge mastiff dog, ranging at 
 large, and ready to make his morning meal on clergy or 
 laity as best suited his particular taste ; I never could 
 approach a cottage in pursuit of my calhng but I rushed 
 into the jaws of one of these shaggy monsters. I scolded, 
 preached and prayed without avail, so I determined to try 
 what fears for their pockets might do. Forthwith ap- 
 peared in the county papers a minute account of a trial of 
 a farmer at the Northampton Sessions for keeping dogs 
 
SYDNEY SMITH 267 
 
 unconfined ; where said farmer was not only fined five 
 pounds, and reprimanded by the magistrates, but sen- 
 tenced to three months' imprisonment. The effect was 
 wonderful, and the reign of Cerberus ceased in the land." 
 " That accounts," said Lord Spencer, " for what has 
 puzzled me and Althorp for many years. We never failed 
 to attend the Northampton Sessions, and we could never 
 understand how we had missed this remarkable dog case." 
 
 VIII 
 
 In wild humorous conversational exaggeration Sydney 
 Smith was unequalled.^ It having been mentioned that 
 a young Scotsman was going to marry an Irish widow 
 twice his age, and of huge size, Sydney Smith exclaimed : 
 " Going to marry her ! Impossible ! You mean a part 
 of her. He could not marry all of her himself. It would 
 not be a case of bigamy, but of trigamy. The neighbour- 
 hood or the magistrate should interfere, There is enough 
 of her to furnish wives for the whole parish. One man 
 marry her : it is monstrous ! you might people a colony 
 with her, or, perhaps, take your morning's walk round her, 
 always providing that there were frequent resting-places, 
 and you were in rude health.^ I once was rash enough to 
 
 * Rogers said of him that " whenever the conversation is getting 
 dull, he throws in some touch which makes it rebound, and rise again 
 as light as ever. There is this difference between Luttrell and Smith — 
 after Luttrell you remembered what good things he said, after Smith 
 you merely remembered how much you laughed." 
 
 ' This idea is also to be found in a story given in one of the old 
 anecdote books : There were two very fat noblemen at the court 
 of Louis XV., the Duke de L — and the Duke de N — . They were 
 both one day at the levee, when the King began to rally the former 
 on his corpulence. " You take no exercise, I suppose ? " said his 
 Majesty. " Pardon me, Sire," said de L — , " I walk twice a day 
 round my cousin, de N — ." 
 
268 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 walk round her before breakfast, but only got halfway, 
 and gave it up, exhausted. Or, you might read the Riot 
 Act, and disperse her, in short, you might do anything but 
 marry her ! " " Oh," said a young lady present, after 
 recovering from laughter, " did you make that all up 
 yourself ? " " Yes, Lucy, all myself, child ; all my own 
 thunder. Do you think when I am about to make a joke, 
 I send for my neighbours, or consult the clerk and church- 
 wardens upon it ? " 
 
 At one of Rogers' breakfast-parties the talk turned on 
 spontaneous combustion and of the tales of dram drinkers 
 catching fire. Smith seized the subject and pursued it 
 in every possible direction. The inconvenience of a man 
 coming too near the candle when he was speaking. " Sir. 
 your observation has caught fire ! " He then went on to 
 imagine a parson breaking into a blaze in the pulpit ; the 
 engines called to put him out — ^no water to be had, the 
 man at the waterworks being an Unitarian or an atheist. 
 
 He said that nothing amused him more than to observe 
 the utter want of perception of a joke in some minds. 
 " Mrs Jackson called one day and spoke of the oppressive 
 heat. ' Heat, ma'am ! ' I said, ' it was so dreadful here 
 that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off 
 my flesh and sit in my bones.' ' Take off your flesh and 
 sit in your bones, sir ! Oh, Mr Smith, how could you do 
 that ? ' she exclaimed, with the utmost gravity. * Nothing 
 more easy, ma'am ; come and see next time.' But she 
 ordered her carriage and evidently thought it a very un- 
 orthodox proceeding." 
 
 Some of his sayings were witty presentations of wisdom, 
 as when he described a man as having spent all his life 
 in letting down empty buckets into empty wells, and 
 frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again. 
 That has now become a familiar illustration ; so, too, has 
 
SYDNEY SMITH 369 
 
 his saying that you will generally see in human life round 
 men and the angular men planted in the wrong hole — 
 
 " but the Bishop of being a round man has fallen 
 
 into a triangular hole, and is far better off than many 
 triangular men who have fallen into round holes." No 
 less well known is his description of marriage as resembling 
 a pair of shears, " so joined that they cannot be separated ; 
 often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing 
 anyone who comes between them." 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 WIT IN WIGS 
 
 ■' There is no place in which the very smallest joke goes so far as 
 in the Courts of Justice. There a farthing's worth of wit is often 
 taken as though it were an ingot.'' 
 
 THE Law Courts afford a peculiarly favourable 
 atmosphere for the growth of wit, and also, it may 
 be said, a distorting atmosphere in which the pleasantries 
 uttered from the Bench loom frequently larger than they 
 inherently are. Apart, however, from the mild pleas- 
 antries which owing to the dominating position of their 
 utterers cause more merriment than they should there are 
 many good things said in the courts of law. The con- 
 ditions are indeed of the best, for, in the gregarious assem- 
 blage brought together to gain or defeat certain ends 
 purely by the exercise of the wits, it would be strange if wit 
 were not the result. The utterances of judges, counsel — 
 and occasionally of witnesses — ^have been repeated, remem- 
 bered and recorded, for unlike the mot that may be fired 
 across a dinner-table, in that small company which is its 
 best provocation, the witticism uttered in a crowded court 
 is heard by many, and has therefore the greater chance of 
 being remembered. Yet it must not be imagined that 
 verbal scintillation is the mark of every court and every 
 sitting — were that so our newspaper law reports would 
 
 270 
 
WIT IN WIGS 271 
 
 form the most entertaining part of our daily journalistic 
 fare. 
 
 Though there are certain judges who have estabhshed 
 a reputation for sajdng good things, and so seem ever 
 ready to seize an opportunity — frequently with a result 
 that receives the meed of laughter only because of the 
 position of the speaker — ^there have also been men of real 
 wit who have sat in the seats of the legally mighty. It is 
 not possible within the scope of a single chapter to do 
 more than give some representative good things uttered 
 by judges, counsel and others concerned as deputies in 
 doing the work of the bUndfold goddess. 
 
 The following story of Queen Anne's Lord Chief Justice 
 has passed, admittedly as doubtful history, from the 
 collection of Joe Miller to the severer pages of The Dic- 
 tionary of National Biography : My Lord Chief Justice 
 Holt had sent John Atkins, by his warrant, one of the 
 " French Prophets," a fooUsh sect that started up in his 
 time, to prison, upon which John Lacy, one of their 
 followers, came one day to my lord's house, and desired 
 to speak with him ; the servant told him he was not well, 
 and saw no company that day. " But tell him," said 
 Lacy, " that I must see him ; for I come to him from the 
 Lord." This being told the Chief Justice, he ordered him 
 to come in, and asked his business. " I come," said he, 
 " from the Lord, who has sent me to thee, and would have 
 thee grant a nolle prosequi for John Atkins whom thou 
 hast cast into prison." " Thou art a false prophet," 
 answered Holt, " and a Ijdng knave. If the Lord had 
 sent thee, it would have been to the Attorney-General, for 
 the Lord knows it is not in my power to grant a nolle prose- 
 qui." 
 
 Lord Mansfield (1705-1793), "the father of modern 
 Toryism," as Macaulay dubbed him, was a judge and. 
 
272 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 though a Scotsman, is remembered for the witty turn 
 which he could give to things. A Jew, for example, had 
 brought an action for the recovery of a debt from a 
 Christian, and the defendant, while admitting liability, 
 pleaded that the Jew had no right by the laws of England 
 to bring an action. " Well," said the judge, " have you 
 no other plea ? " " No, my lord, I insist upon this plea." 
 " Do you so ? " said Mansfield ; " then let me tell you 
 that you are the greater Jew of the two." 
 
 In the days when the theft of an5^hing beyond the 
 value of a few pence was punishable with death Lord 
 Mansfield, wishing to save a man who had stolen a watch, 
 directed the jury to value it at tenpence. " Tenpence, 
 my lord ! " exclaimed the indignant prosecutor, " why 
 the very fashion of it cost me five pounds ! " " Oh," said 
 the judge, unmoved, " but we must not hang a man for 
 fashion's sake." 
 
 Nor did the Lord Chief Justice despise the simple pun. 
 When Sir Fletcher Norton, a barrister not conspicuous for 
 his tact, was pleading a question of manorial right he said : 
 " My lord, I can illustrate the point in an instant in my 
 own person ; I myself have two little manors." " We all 
 know it. Sir Fletcher," Mansfield smilingly interposed. 
 
 II 
 
 Perhaps Lord Chief Justice Norbury, " the most inveterate 
 punster that ever sat upon the Bench," is one of the best 
 known of the wits in wigs, and some of his sayings show 
 him possessed of a very quick wit, and to be no mean 
 master of the pun. It is impossible to decry the use of 
 this much-abused vehicle when exercised with such clever- 
 ness as in the following instance : — ^A sporting barrister on 
 
WIT IN WIGS 273 
 
 circuit, who was enlarging upon his exploits, declared that 
 he had shot thirty-three hares before breakfast. " Thirty- 
 three hairs," exclaimed Norbury ; " zounds, sir ! then 
 you must have been firing at a wig ! " 
 
 The words about the beef which " would be hung, my 
 lord, if you tried it," have sometimes been said to have 
 been addressed to Norbury by Curran. 
 
 Norbury once impatiently wanted to know what was the 
 delay in trjdng a certain case, and was told that Mr 
 Serjeant Joy, who was to lead, was absent, but that the 
 solicitor, Mr Hope, had said that he would be back im- 
 mediately. The judge very happily applied a quotation 
 and thus restored himself to good humour : 
 
 " Hope told a flattering tale 
 That Joy would soon return." 
 
 Comparing ages with Judge Bailey, Norbury said that 
 his friend looked particularly young for his years, adding, 
 " You certainly have as little of the Old Bailey about you 
 as any judge I know." 
 
 When Norbury had been closely interrogating a witness 
 of more than doubtful integrity the witness said in a 
 whisper, not intended for the judge's ears, that he " didn't 
 come there to be queered by the rum old 'un." " I'm old, 
 it is true," said the judge instantly, " and I'm rum some- 
 times, and for once I'll be queer and send you to quod." 
 
 Riding in company with a barrister friend. Lord Nor- 
 bury, seeing, a beautiful woman pass, asked, " Who is 
 that lovely girl ? " " Miss Glass," replied his friend. 
 " Glass," repeated the judge, " by the love which man 
 bears to woman, I should often become intoxicated could 
 I press such a glass to my lips." 
 
 One of the warmest supporters of the Tithe Corporation 
 Act was Lord Plunkett, who had a son in the Church, 
 
274 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " How is it," said someone, " that so sensible a man as 
 Plunkett cannot see the imperfections in the Act ? " 
 " Pooh ! the reason's plain enough," said Norbury; " he 
 has the son in his eye." 
 
 Being told that a shilling subscription was being raised 
 to pay for the funeral of a poor attorney Norbury ex- 
 clainaed : " Only a shilling to bury an attorney ! here's a 
 guinea — go and bury one and twenty of them." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Many are the stories recorded of the ready wit of Henry 
 Erskine — ^he who admitted that puiming was the lowest 
 form of wit and therefore the foundation of all wit — 
 though in the inevitable confusion of names some of them 
 are indiscriminately attributed to him and to his younger 
 brother, Lord Chancellor Erskine. The following story, for 
 instance, is given now to the one and now to the other. 
 At a seaside pleasure resort Erskine met a friend named 
 Malem, who observed that his doctor had ordered him 
 not to bathe. " Oh," came the reply, " then you are 
 Malum prohibitum." " My wife, however," added the 
 other, " does bathe." " Oh, then she is Malum in se," 
 came the second happy pun. 
 
 When the Coalition ministry was formed in 1783 Henry 
 Erskine was made Lord Advocate in place of Dundas 
 (afterwards Lord Melville). The morning after the 
 appointment the two met, and after chatting for a time 
 Erskine said : " I must leave off talking to go and order my 
 silk gown." " It is hardly worth while for the time you 
 will want it," said Dundas, " you had better borrow 
 mine." " From the readiness with which you make the 
 offer, Mr Dundas," retorted Erskine, " I have no doubt 
 
WIT IN WIGS 275 
 
 the gown is a gown made to fit any party ; but, however 
 short my time in office may be, it shall never be said of 
 Henry Erskine that he put on the abandoned habits of his 
 predecessor." 
 
 Opposed in some case to a Counsellor Lamb, Erskine 
 listened patiently to the nervous old man's deprecatory 
 pleading, until he said " he felt himself growing more and 
 more timid as he grew older," then his witty opponent 
 broke in with, " No wonder ; everyone knows that the 
 older a lamb grows the more sheepish it becomes." 
 
 Erskine was defending a Mr Bolt whose character 
 had been strongly aspersed by plaintiff's counsel, and 
 addressing the jury he said : " Gentlemen, the plaintiff's 
 counsel has taken unwarrantable liberties with my client's 
 good name, representing him as being litigious and unjust. 
 So far, however, from this being his character, he goes 
 among those who know him by the name of Bolt-upright." 
 
 When on circuit, Erskine was asked by the landlord of 
 the inn at which he had put up how he had slept, " Well," 
 he replied, " union is strength — a fact of which your inmates 
 seem to be unaware ; for, had the fleas been unanimous 
 last night they might have pushed me out of bed." 
 " Fleas ! " said the landlord, in astonishment, " I was not 
 aware that I had a single one in the house." " I don't 
 believe you have," retorted Erskine, " they are all married, 
 and have uncommonly large families." 
 
 Asked if she was never to be seen in Edinburgh again, 
 the Duchess of Gordon said, " Oh, Edinburgh is a vile, 
 dull place — I hate it." " Madam," said the barrister, with 
 a compliment essentially wit, " the sun might as well say 
 there's a vile dark morning — I won't rise to-day." 
 
 Hastening out of the House of Commons one night 
 Erskine was stopped by a member going in. " Who's 
 up ? " " Windham." " What's he on ? " " His legs." 
 
376 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Erskine met a verbose friend, and perceiving that his 
 ankle was tied up with a silk handkerchief asked what had 
 happened. " Why, my dear sir," came the answer, " I 
 was taking a romantic ramble in my brother's grounds, 
 when, coming to a gate, I had to climb over it, by which I 
 came in contact with the first bar, and have grazed the 
 epidermis on my skin, attended with a sUght extravasation 
 of blood." " You may thank your lucky stars," com- 
 mented Erskine, "that your brother's gate was not as lofty 
 as your style, or you must have broken your neck." 
 
 The following story of Lord Erskine's practical applica- 
 tion of a joke is recorded in the " Life of Eldon." In the 
 neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath a ruffianly driver 
 was belabouring a miserable bare-boned horse when Er- 
 skine's sjraipathy provoked him to a sharp remonstrance. 
 " Why," said the foUew, " it's my own; mayn't I use it as 
 I please ? " and as he spoke he discharged a fresh shower 
 of blows on the luckless beast. Erskine, excessively 
 irritated, laid his walking-stick sharply over the shoulders 
 of the offender, who, crouching and grumbling, asked what 
 business he had to touch him with his stick. " Why," 
 replied Erskine, " it's my own ; mayn't I use it as I 
 please ? " 
 
 IV 
 
 Sir William Maule was a judge, and master of an ironic 
 humour which he did not object to using in his judicial 
 capacity. His best-remembered utterance in this vein was 
 addressed to a man charged with bigamy, who, on being 
 asked what he had to say why judgment should not be 
 passed upon him replied : " Well, my lord, my wife took 
 up with a hawker, and ran away five years ago, and I have 
 never seen her since, and I married this other woman last 
 
WIT IN WIGS 277 
 
 winter." The judge said, with appropriate severity of 
 demeanour : " I will tell you what you ought to have 
 done, and if you say you did not know I must, tell you 
 the law conclusively presumes that you did. You ought to 
 have instructed your attorney to bring an action against 
 the hawker for criminal conversation with your wife. That 
 would have cost you about one hundred pounds. When 
 you had recovered substantial damages against the hawker, 
 you would have instructed your proctor to sue in the 
 ecclesiastical courts for a divorce a mensa aique thoro. 
 That would have cost you two or three hundred pounds 
 more. When you had obtained a divorce a mensa atque 
 thoro, you would have had to appear by counsel before 
 the House of Lords for a divorce a vinculo matrimonii. 
 The Bill might have been opposed in all its stages in both 
 Houses of Parliament ; and altogether you would have had 
 to spend about one thousand or twelve hundred pounds. 
 You will probably tell me that you never had a thousand 
 farthings in the world ; but, prisoner, that makes no 
 difference. Sitting here as a British judge, it is my duty 
 to tell you that this is not a country in which there is one law 
 for the rich and another for the poor." 
 
 Another instance of Judge Maule's irony may be given 
 in the following address to a jury : — " Gentlemen, the 
 learned counsel is perfectly right in his law, there is some 
 evidence upon that point ; but he is a lawyer, and you are 
 not, and you don't know what he means by some evidence, 
 so I'll tell you. Suppose there was an action on a bill of 
 exchange, and six people swore they saw the defendant 
 accept it, and six others swore they heard him say he should 
 have to pay it, and six others knew him intimately, and 
 swore to his handwriting ; and suppose, on the other side, 
 they called a poor old man, who had been at school with the 
 defendant forty years before, and had not seen him since, 
 
278 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 and he said he rather thought the acceptance was not his 
 writing, why there would be some evidence that it was not, 
 and that's what counsel means in this case." 
 
 Judge Maule could also be sarcastic in his remarks to 
 counsel appearing before him. A barrister who had been 
 presenting his case in a very haphazard fashion was inter- 
 rupted with, " Mr Barker, could you not state your facts 
 in some kind of order ? Chronological is the best, but if 
 you cannot manage that try some other — alphabetical, 
 if you please." 
 
 A city policeman being examined as a witness described 
 himself as of the " Hen " (N) Division. " Do you mean 
 the Poultry ? " inquired Maule. 
 
 Severe, too, was his reference in a summing-up on a case 
 of libel : " One of these defendants is, it seems, a minister 
 of religion — of what religion does not appear, but, to judge 
 by his conduct, it cannot be any form of Christianity." 
 
 A few of the stories current of Baron Alderson may be 
 given, for if not always marked by the sharpness of wit 
 they are by its readiness of application. Counsel having 
 slipped into a false quantity ^ in nuUe prosequi the judge 
 stopped him, dryly observing : " Consider, sir, that this is 
 the last day of term, and don't make things unnecessarily 
 long." Another counsel he neatly censured by telling him 
 that he seemed to think that the art of cross-examination 
 was to examine crossly. 
 
 When a jury was being sworn in, one of the men was 
 
 • A lady having asked Sydney Smith the meaning of this phrase 
 he said that a false quantity at the outset of a young man's career 
 was the same as a faux pas in the case of a young woman. 
 
WIT IN WIGS 279 
 
 asked by the clerk of the court to " speak up." " Stop," 
 said Alderson, " are you deaf ? " " Yes, my lord, of one 
 ear." " Then you may leave the box, for it is necessary 
 that jurymen should hear both sides." 
 
 VI 
 
 Lord EUenborough — Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's 
 Bench from 1802 to 1818 — ^was one of the wittiest of our 
 judges. Many are the stories of the wit, humour, irony 
 and severe sarcasm uttered by him from the Bench. A dull 
 barrister who was in the habit of using mere legal common- 
 places in his arguments began a case on a question of real 
 property with the elementary statement, " an estate in fee 
 simple is the highest estate loiown to the law of England." 
 " Stay," interrupted the Chief Justice gravely, " let me 
 write that down." He did so, and read the note out with 
 slow deliberation, adding " the court, sir, is indebted to 
 you for this information," before asking counsel to proceed. 
 Counsel, it may be said, was the only person present who 
 did not perceive the irony, but continued imperturbably to 
 go through familiar matters leading up to his case. On and 
 on he went before the drowsy court until the clock struck 
 four, when he paused and asked when it would be their 
 pleasure to hear the remainder of his argument. " We are 
 bound," said Lord EUenborough, " to hear you, and shall 
 do so on Friday ; but 'pleasure has long been out of the 
 question." 
 
 Another tiresome barrister received a similar snub ; he 
 was arguing at unnecessary length a question as to the 
 rating of certain lime quarries, and contended that " like 
 lead and copper mines, they were not rateable, because 
 the limestone in them could only be reached by deep boring 
 
28o A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 which was matter of science. " You will hardly succeed 
 in convincing us," said the judge, with emphasis, "that 
 every species of boring is matter of science." 
 
 In a case before Lord Ellenborough a figure-loving 
 barrister said : " My lord, I appear before you in the 
 character of an advocate from the City of London ; my 
 lord, the City of London herself appears before you as a 
 suppliant for justice. My lord, it is written in the book 
 of nature " " What book ? " interrupted Ellen- 
 borough. " The book of nature, my lord." " Name the 
 page," said the judge, with pen uplifted as if to make a 
 note of the information. 
 
 When a fellow-judge observed that in a certain case 
 he had ruled in a given manner, Ellenborough remarked : 
 " You rule ! you were never fit to rule anything but a 
 copybook." To a dull witness he said : " Why, you are 
 an industrious fellow ; you must have taken great pains 
 with yourself, for no man was ever naturally so stupid." 
 To another witness he was equally rude. This was a 
 Quaker, who, though he came somewhat smartly dressed 
 instead of in the garb of his co-reUgionists, refused to take 
 the oath, but wished to give his evidence under an affirma- 
 tion. Lord Ellenborough asked if he really was a Quaker, 
 and on being answered in the affirmative said : " Do you 
 really mean to impose upon the court by appearing here 
 in the disguise of a reasonable being ? " 
 
 A nervous barrister, pleading before Ellenborough, 
 began with several references to his " unfortimate client." 
 " Go on, sir," said the judge, " so far the court is with 
 you." 
 
 When a noble orator in the House of Lords was seen to 
 yawn during one of his own speeches Lord Ellenborough 
 remarked: " The fellow does show some symptoms of taste 
 — ^but this is encroaching on our province." Severe, too; 
 
WIT IN WIGS 281 
 
 was his remark on leaving the House when a certain Peer 
 was speaking. On being asked, " What, are you going ? " 
 he answered, " Why, yes ; I am accountable to God 
 Almighty for the use of my time." To a pretentious man 
 who said, " I sometimes employ myself as a doctor," he 
 said, " Very Ukely, but is anyone else fool enough to 
 employ you in that capacity ? " 
 
 Even a witty Lord Chief Justice — despite his seemingly 
 impregnable position — ^may find himself the victim of a 
 retort. A bricklayer having been called as a witness was 
 taken to task by Ellenborough, " Really, witness, when 
 you have to appear before this court, it is your bounden 
 duty to be more clean and decent in your appearance. 
 " Upon my hfe," said the bricklayer, " if your lordship 
 comes to that, I'm every bit, as well dressed as your lord- 
 ship." " How do you mean, sir ? " asked the judge 
 angrily. " Why, faith," replied the other, " you come 
 here in your working clothes, and I'm come in niine." 
 
 vu 
 
 Of Lord Plunket — Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1830 
 to 1841 — ^there are some good stories told. In the days 
 when he was practising at the bar he had to argue a case 
 before Lord Redesdale in which the plaintiff prayed that 
 the defendant should be restrained from suing him on 
 certain bills of exchange, as they were nothing but 
 " kites." " Kites ! " exclaimed Lord Redesdale, " Kites ! 
 Mr Plunket ? Kites could never amount to the value 
 of these securities. I don't understand the statement at 
 all." " It is not to be expected that you should, my lord," 
 answered Plunket, " in England and in Ireland kites are 
 quite different things. In England the winds raise the 
 kite, and in Ireland the kites raise the wind." 
 
282 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Said a friend to Plunket : " Well, you see my predic- 
 tions have come true." Said Plunket to his friend : 
 " Indeed ! I always knew you were a bore, but I did not 
 know you were an augur." 
 
 Plunket declared that " if a cause were tried before Day 
 [the Justice] it would be tried in the dark." 
 
 Lord Plunket did not at all relish his forced resignation 
 of the Lord Chancellorship of Ireland and being super- 
 seded by Lord Campbell. When his successor was ex- 
 pected in Dublin a great storm was raging, and a friend 
 suggested that the passage was likely to make him sick of 
 his promotion. " Yes," said Plunket, " but it won't make 
 him throw up the Seals." 
 
 LordBrougham — Lord Chancellorof England in thereign 
 of William the Fourth — ^was, like his contemporary holder 
 of the Great Seal in Ireland, a man of quick, frequently 
 sarcastic, wit and ready tongue. The Duke of Gloucester 
 conversing on the burning topic of Reform grew so warm 
 against the Chancellor, as upholder of the Bill, that at 
 length turning on Brougham he said he " was very near 
 a fool." Brougham quietly said that he could not think 
 of contradicting that statement, as he quite recognized the 
 position of his Royal Highness. 
 
 One of Brougham's rivals was Pollock, and when they 
 were opposed in the same case there was frequent sparring. 
 On one occasion in connexion with a lead mine suit Pollock 
 for the proprietors complained of encroachments made by 
 the other side on his cUents' valuable property. Brougham 
 said that the estimate which his learned friend had formed 
 of the property was vastly exaggerated, but that it was no 
 wonder that a person who found it so easy to get gold for 
 his lead should appreciate the latter metal so highly. 
 Another time, Pollock having dogmatically laid down a 
 point of law. Brougham with considerable sarcasm said. 
 
WIT IN WIGS 283 
 
 " Mr Pollock, perhaps, before you rule the point, you will 
 suffer his lordship to submit a few observations on it to 
 your consideration." 
 
 VIII 
 
 The wittiest of recent occupants of the Bench was 
 probably Lord Bowen, many of whose remarks may be said 
 to have taken a classic place among bon-mots.^ As, for 
 example, his comment when told of a wealthy publisher — 
 with the not uncommon reputation of being something of 
 an author-driver — Shaving built a church : " Ah ! the old 
 story, ' Sanguis martyrum semen ecclesise ! ' " 
 
 When Edward the Seventh was at Homburg as Prince 
 of Wales he had with him a little dog which would not 
 follow its master as closely as it should. Bowen declared 
 that it was the only person in the place who did not run 
 after his Royal Highness. 
 
 The works of some modern noveUsts of the " fleshly " 
 school were under discussion when Bowen said that 
 the writers seemed to forget that " Paradise consisted 
 in the presence of innocence, not • in the absence of 
 clothing." Somebody having referred to a defence of the 
 Thirty-Nine Articles by a beneficed clergyman, " Ah ! " 
 said Bowen, " a defence by a bona-fide holder for value." 
 
 In an address which the judges were making to Queen 
 Victoria occurred the words " Conscious as we are of our 
 own unworthiness." Bowen suggested that this should be 
 " Conscious as we each are of the other's unworthiness." 
 
 When at Oxford the future judge devised a humorous 
 answer to a conundrum : " Why is a certain famous 
 cricketer rightly called a good bat ? " " Because a bat is a 
 
 » In " Lord Bowen,"- by Sir Henry S. Cunningham, are recorded 
 many of the judge's witticisms. 
 
284 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 little creature which goes in very early in the morning and 
 does not come out till very late in the evening." 
 
 Bowen, who was in America with Lord Houghton, at- 
 tended a grand party at Richmond, when the Governor of 
 Virginia, who had been a Confederate general in the Civil 
 War, and had been wounded, apologized for retiring early 
 because he had a ball in his back. Bowen readily re- 
 marked that such an aniere pensee was a sufficient excuse. 
 
 On Bowen's becoming a member of the House of Lords 
 a friend said that he need do nothing but assent to the 
 judgments of his colleagues. " In that case," said the 
 judge, " I had better take the title of Concurry." 
 
 A jurist was defined by Bowen as " A person who 
 knows a little about the laws of every country except 
 his own." 
 
 One of the judges complained to Bowen that a colleague 
 had slept peacefully through the afternoon, wakened up at 
 half-past three and at once adjourned the court. " It is 
 as it should be," said Bowen ; " he obeyed the hymn, 
 ' Shake off duU sloth, and early rise.' " 
 
 A certain great statesman was being discussed when 
 Bowen declared : " Opinion with him is a zymotic disease." 
 
 Among living " wits in wigs " Mr Timothy Healy has 
 the reputation of being facile princeps, and, though this 
 volume does not pretend to present the sapngs of men of 
 the day, one of his witticisms may appropriately close this 
 chapter. Mr Healy was engaged in a marital case tried at 
 Dublin, being counsel for the husband, the defendant. 
 The plaintiff's counsel made an impassioned address on his 
 client's behalf, an address which moved the members of 
 the jury, one after the other, to tears, and caused the judge, 
 red-eyed, to send for a fresh supply of handkerchiefs ; at 
 length, himself overcome, the counsel sat down and buried 
 his face in his hands. It was a trying moment for the next 
 
WIT IN WIGS 285 
 
 speaker, and Mr Healy rose. He looked significantly at 
 the judge, at the jury, and at the counsel who had just sat 
 down, and again he let his gaze rest momentarily on the 
 judge, the jury and the opposing barrister, and then began : 
 " My lord, never since Moses struck the rock has there 
 been such a miracle." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 CURRAN 
 
 " Neither his wit nor his eloquence can receive anything Uke 
 justice from even the most gifted narrator. It would be quite as 
 easy to paint the waving of a wand — the spell consisted in the very 
 magic of the movement ; and until the charm of manner can be 
 conveyed in words, the reader must fancy in vain the almost super- 
 natural effect of Curran." — Charles Phillips. 
 
 IT is probably John Philpot Curran who would be 
 regarded by most people as the most representative 
 at once of Irish conversational wits and of the wits -who 
 have worn legal wigs. It is quite possible that sayings 
 are attributed to him which he never uttered, but the 
 testimony of all who knew him bears witness to his wit, 
 and his recorded speeches reinforce that reputation. His 
 good things were looked for and noted by his friends and 
 thus we have a fairly large collection of them. 
 
 Born at Newmarket, Co. Cork, on 24th July 1750, 
 Curran was descended from one of Cromwell's settlers. 
 After being educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he was 
 called to the Irish Bar and soon estabhshed a reputation, 
 despite the fact that he was a very diminutive person with 
 a thin shrill voice. His mental endowments and quick 
 wit were such as to triumph over these physical draw- 
 backs. In 1783 he was appointed a King's Counsel and 
 was presented with a seat in the Irish Pariiament. Later 
 
 286 
 
JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 
 
 FRf)M THE I'AINTING BY SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND, 
 
 DUBLIN 
 
CURRAN 287 
 
 on, finding his political opinions diverging from those of 
 his patron, he spent fifteen hundred pounds to secure 
 another seat rather than continue in what he regarded 
 as a false position. His attacks upon the Government 
 party led him into two duels, and when the troubles of 
 the closing decade of the eighteenth century brought in 
 their train a long series of state trials, Curran established 
 his fame securely by the speeches which he made on be- 
 half of many of the accused, including Lord Edward Fitz- 
 gerald and Wolfe Tone. When the Fox ministry was 
 formed in 1806, after the death of Pitt, he was made 
 Master of the Rolls, from which position he retired eight 
 years later, and on 14th October 1817 he died in London. 
 
 " There never was so honest an Irishman," was Daniel 
 O'Connell's tribute to Curran. His sturdy defence of the 
 prisoners at the various state trials made him something 
 of a popular hero, his unceasing championship of the cause 
 of CathoUc emancipation and his strong opposition to the 
 Union further endeared him to his countrymen. But his 
 statesmanship, his oratory, his work in the courts are all 
 more or less overshadowed now by the fame of his wit. A 
 friend who was with him in Paris declared that " for five 
 weeks there were not five consecutive minutes in which he 
 could not make me both laugh and cry." Byron, Moore 
 and others all bore like testimony. 
 
 II 
 
 Curran, who was described as " the wildest, wittiest, 
 dreamiest " of the students of old Trinity, maintained 
 these characteristics to the end of his life. His biographer, 
 who only knew him during his later years, wrote : " I had 
 often seen Curran, often heard him, often read him ; but 
 
288 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 no man ever knew anything about him who did not see 
 him at his own table with the few whom he selected. He 
 was a Uttle convivial deity, he soared in every region, and 
 was at home in all ; he touched everything, and seemed 
 as if he had created it ; he mastered the human heart, and 
 with the same ease that he did his violin. You wept, and 
 you laughed, and you wondered ; and the wonderful 
 creature who made you do all at will never let it appear 
 that he was more than your equal, and was quite willing, 
 if you chose, to become your auditor. It is said of Swift 
 that his rule was to allow a minute's pause after he had 
 concluded, and then, if no person took up the conversation, 
 to recommence himself. Curran had no conversational 
 rule whatever ; he spoke from impulse, and he had the art 
 so to draw you into a participation that, though you felt 
 an inferiority, it was quite a contented one. Indeed, 
 nothing could excel the urbanity of his demeanour. At 
 the time of which I speak he was turned sixty, yet he was 
 as playful as a child. The extremes of youth and age 
 were met in him : he had the experience of the one and 
 the simphcity of the other." 
 
 As a large proportion of the witticisms of Curran that 
 have come down to us are from among those uttered during 
 his practice as an advocate a summary of his methods by 
 one who had heard him is not without interest : " There 
 was no cause in the Irish metropoUs of any interest in 
 which he was not concerned, nor was there a county in 
 the provinces which at some time or other he did not visit 
 on a special retainer. It was an object almost with every 
 one to preoccupy so successful and so dangerous an advo- 
 cate ; for, if he failed in inducing a jury to sympathize 
 with his cUent, he at all events left a picture of his adver- 
 sary behind him which survived and embittered the ad- 
 vantages of victory. Nor was his eloquence his only 
 
CURRAN 289 
 
 weapon ; at cross-examination, the most dif&cult and by 
 far the most hazardous part of a barrister's profession, he 
 was quite inimitable. There was no plan which he did 
 not detect — ^no web which he did not disentangle — and 
 the unfortunate wretch who commenced with all the con- 
 fidence of preconcerted perjury, never failed to retreat 
 before him in all the confusion of exposure. Indeed it was 
 almost impossible for the guilty to offer a successful 
 resistance. He argued — ^he cajoled — ^he ridiculed — ^he 
 mimicked — ^he played off the various artillery of his talents 
 upon the witness — ^he would affect earnestness upon 
 trifles, and levity upon the subjects of the most serious 
 import, until at length he succeeded in creating a security 
 that was fatal, or a suHenness that produced all the con- 
 sequences of prevarication. No matter how unfair the 
 topic, he never failed to avail himself of it ; acting upon 
 the principle, that in law, as well as in war, every stratagem 
 was admissible. If he was hard pressed, there was no 
 peculiarity of person — ^no singularity of name — ^no eccen- 
 tricity of profession at which he would not grasp, tr5dng 
 to confound the self-possession of the witness in the, no 
 matter how excited, ridicule of the audience." 
 
 in 
 
 Soon after he had been called to the bar Curran had a 
 passage of arms with a judge before whom he was appear- 
 ing. This was Judge Robinson, of whom Lord Brougham 
 said that he was the author of many stupid, slavish and 
 scurrilous political pamphlets, " and, by his demerits, was 
 raised to the eminence which he thus disgraced." The 
 judge having made some statement, the daring young 
 counsel observed that " he had never met the law as laid 
 down by his lordship, in any book in his library." 
 
290 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " That may be, sir," said the judge ; " but I suspect that 
 your library is very small." 
 
 Curran retorted with, " I find it more instructive, my 
 lord, to study good works than to compose bad ones. My 
 books may be few, but the title-pages give me the writers' 
 names, and my shelf is not disgraced by any such rank 
 absurdities that their very authors are ashamed to own 
 them." 
 
 " Sir ! " said the judge, " you are forgetting the respect 
 which you owe to the dignity of the judicial character." 
 
 " Dignity ! " exclaimed Curran ; " my lord, upon that 
 point I shall cite you a case from a book of some authority, 
 with which you are, perhaps, not unacquainted." 
 
 He then briefly recited the story of Strap, in " Roderick 
 Random," who having stripped off his coat to fight, en- 
 trusted it to a bystander. When the battle was over, and 
 he was well beaten, he turned to resume it, but the man 
 had carried it off. Curran proceeded to apply the tale : 
 
 " So, my lord, when the person entrusted with the 
 dignity of the judgment seat lays it aside for a moment to 
 enter into a disgraceful personal contest, it is in vain when 
 he has been worsted in the encounter that he seeks to 
 resume it — it is in vain that he tries to shelter himself 
 behind an authority which he has abandoned." 
 
 " If you say another word, I'll commit you," replied the 
 angry judge. 
 
 " If your lordship shall do so," retorted Curran, " we 
 shall both of us have the consolation of reflecting that I am 
 not the worst thing your lordship has committed." 
 
 Though it is said that on his first appearance as a 
 barrister he was so nervous that he dropped his notes and 
 a colleague had to complete the motion thkt Curran had 
 risen to make, it was not long before he found himself, and 
 thus directed the shafts of his wit against the bench as well 
 
CURRAN 291 
 
 as against his opponents and their witnesses. For example, 
 when, on one of the state trials, he was addressing the jury 
 with his usual animation, the judge shook his head at one 
 of the advocate's arguments. Curran instantly made 
 oratorical capital out of the action. " I see, gentlemen," 
 he said, " I see the motion of his lordship's head ; com- 
 mon observers might imagine that implied a difference of 
 opinion, but they would be mistaken, it is merely acci- 
 dental ; believe me, gentlemen, if you remain here many 
 days, you will yourselves perceive that when his lordship 
 shakes his head — ^there's nothing in it ! " 
 
 It was when Curran was defending some of the state 
 prisoners that Lord Carleton told him that if he was not 
 careful he would lose his gown as a King's Counsel. 
 " Well," my lord," replied Curran, " his Majesty may take 
 the silk, but he must leave the stuff behind." 
 
 Another judge whose wig had become awry having 
 realized that laughter in the court was caused by him said, 
 " Mr Curran, do you see anything ridiculous in this wig ? " 
 " Nothing but the head, my lord," instantly retorted the 
 wit. 
 
 On another occasion Curran having made frequent use 
 of the word nothing in an address was interrupted by the 
 judge, who, jokingly drawing attention to this fact, asked 
 for a definition of nothing. " Nothing, my lord," in- 
 stantly repUed Curran, " in my opinion, defines it better 
 than a footless boot without a leg, or a bodiless shirt with- 
 out neck or sleeves." 
 
 A foreman of a jury having inquired of the judge how 
 they were to ignore a bill, Curran broke in with, " Write 
 ' Ignoramus for self and fellows ' on the back of it." 
 
 Examining a defendant who disputed a bill for goods 
 alleged to be deHvered Curran inquired, " Did he not give 
 you the coals, friend?" "He did, but " "But 
 
292 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 what ? On your oath, witness, wasn't your payment 
 slack ? " 
 
 In an argument as to the construction of a will a judge 
 somewhat ineptly remarked that it appeared to him that 
 the testator meant to keep a life interest in the estate to 
 himself. " Very true, my lord," said Curran, with becom- 
 ing gravity, " but in this case I rather think your lordship 
 takes the will for the deed." 
 
 The judge who sought to make merry at Curran's ex- 
 pense was likely to receive a tit for his tat. Counsel was 
 once making his address to the jury when an ass was heard 
 to bray. " One at a time, Mr Curran, if you please," said 
 the judge. Later on when the judge was charging the 
 jury the animal outside again uttered a loud " Hee- 
 haw-w-w ! " " Does not your lordship hear a remarkable 
 echo in the court ? " quietly inquired Curran. 
 
 Cross-examining the chief witness for the plaintiff in an 
 action for assault, Curran obliged him to acknowledge 
 that the plaintiff had put his arm round the lady in the 
 case, and that that had provoked the defendant to strike 
 him. Having won the admission, Curran added : " Then, 
 sir, I presume he took that waist for common ? " 
 
 On another occasion a witness, as soon as Curran rose 
 to commence the cross-examination, began laughing. 
 " What are you laughing at, friend ? " asked Curran ; 
 " Let me tell you that a laugh without a joke is like — ^is 
 
 like " " Like what, Mr Curran ? " asked the judge. 
 
 " Just exactly, my lord, like a contingent remainder with- 
 out any particular estate to support it." 
 
 A burly counsellor who was opposed to the physically 
 insignificant wit said : " If you go on so, Mr Curran, I'll 
 put you in my pocket." " Egad ! if you do," retorted he, 
 " you'll have more law in your pocket than ever you had in 
 your head." 
 
CURRAN 293 
 
 The following story is attributed to Curran and also to 
 other witty barristers. It is said that Toler (afterwards 
 Lord Norbury), the "hanging judge," sitting opposite 
 Curran at dinner, asked : " Is that hung-beef before you ? " 
 " You try it, my lord," came the answer, " and then it 
 wiU be." 
 
 Between Lord Clare, Lord High Chancellor of Ireland 
 (before his elevation Judge Fitzgibbon), and Curran there 
 was a lasting " imperfect sympathy." The Chancellor's 
 opposition to the witty counsel was such that Curran lost 
 most of his Chancery business, and had to confine himself 
 mainly to nisi prius ; as he put it himself, " I had been 
 under full sail to fortune ; but the tempest came and 
 nearly wrecked me, and ever since I have only been bear- 
 ing up under /Mry-masts." 
 
 Once or twice, however, Curran had the opportunity of 
 making stinging retorts to his powerful enemy. Having 
 made a certain statement in support of his case he was 
 interrupted by Lord Clare with : " Oh, if that be law, Mr 
 Curran, I may bum my law-books." " Better read them, 
 my lord," was the sarcastic retort. 
 
 On another occasion, when it was known that Curran 
 was to make an elaborate argument in Chancery, Lord 
 Clare brought a large Newfoundland dog upon the bench 
 with him, and during the progress of the argument he lent 
 his ear much more to the dog than to the barrister. This 
 was observed at length by all present ; in time the Chan- 
 cellor lost all regard for decency and in the most material 
 part of the case turned himself quite aside and began to 
 fondle the animal. Curran stopped at once. " Go on, go 
 on, Mr Curran," said Lord Clare. " Oh, I beg a thousand 
 pardons, my lord," replied the wit, " I really took it for 
 granted that your lordship was employed in consultation." 
 
294 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 IV 
 
 Curran's wit, and his fearlessness as advocate and 
 politician, brought him no fewer than four times into a 
 duel, and to several of these encounters a story is at- 
 tached. The most famous of these refers to his duel with 
 a fellow-barrister, John Egan. Curran and his great 
 friend. Lord Avonmore, had quarrelled, and Egan so 
 warmly espoused the cause of the latter that a duel 
 became inevitable. Now Curran, as has been said, was a 
 very diminutive man, while " Bully " Egan was very large. 
 When they met on the ground Egan said it was not a fair 
 meeting. " I might as well fire at a razor's edge as at him, 
 and he may hit me as easily as a turf stack." " I'll tell 
 you what, Mr Egan," said Curran, in the most conciliatory 
 fashion, " I wish to take no advantage of you whatever — 
 let my size be chalked out upon your side, and I am quite 
 content that every shot which hits outside that mark 
 should go for nothing." Shots were duly exchanged, but 
 no harm was done. 
 
 Another story runs that Egan " was an immense-sized 
 man, as brawny and almost as black as a coal-porter." 
 " Did you ever see," said he, striking his bosom triumph- 
 antly, " such a chest as that ? " "A trunk, you mean, 
 my dear Egan," Curran answered good-humouredly. 
 
 Having been engaged at Cork to prosecute an officer 
 named Sellinger, or St Leger, Curran found that he had 
 afterwards to fight a duel owing to the licence the counsel 
 had used. They met, but Curran did not return his 
 opponent's fire. " It was not necessary," he said after- 
 wards, " for me to fire at him ; he died in three weeks 
 after the duel — of the report of his own pistol." 
 
 When Lord Clare was plain Mr Fitzgibbon, Attorney- 
 
CURRAN 295 
 
 General, Curran delivered such an attack upon him that a 
 meeting for the satisfaction of outraged honour had to 
 take place, it being arranged that the parties were to fire 
 when they chose. " I never," said Curran, when describ- 
 ing the encounter, " saw anyone whose determination 
 seemed more mahgnant than Fitzgibbon's — after I had 
 fired, he took aim at me for at least half-a-minute, and on 
 its proving ineffectual I could not help exclaiming to him, 
 ' It was not your fault, Mr Attorney ; you were dehberate 
 enough.' " 
 
 His fourth and last duel was in 1790, with Major Hobart, 
 afterwards Earl of Buckinghamshire, the sponsor of 
 Hobart Town.^ 
 
 Of Curran's miscellaneous, as of his legal, mots but a 
 representative selection can be given if his wit is to be 
 kept within the confines of a single chapter. 
 
 Referring to Byron's poem " Fare thee well, and if for 
 ever," Curran very happily said that " his lordship first 
 weeps over his wife and then wipes his eye with the news- 
 paper " — words that might be applied to many people 
 who " love to make parade of pain." 
 
 Hearing that a stingy and slovenly barrister had started 
 for the Continent with a shirt and a guinea, Curran re- 
 marked, " He'll not change either till he comes back." 
 
 Lundy Foot, the celebrated Dublin tobacconist, having 
 prospered much in business, set up his carriage, and 
 applied to Curran for a motto : " Give me one, my dear 
 
 ^ His biographer friend, Charles Phillips, only refers to these four 
 encounters, but The Dictionary of National Biography makes 
 them five, apparently by confusing Major Hobart and Lord Buck- 
 ingham. 
 
296 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Curran, of a serious cast, because I am afraid the people 
 will laugh at a tobacconist setting up a carriage, an4, for 
 the scholarship's sake, let it be in Latin." " I have just 
 hit on it," said Curran, " it is only two words, and it will 
 at once explain your profession, your elevation, and your 
 contempt for their ridicule, and it has the advantage of 
 being in two languages, Latin or English, just as the reader 
 chooses — put up ' Quid rides ' upon your carriage." 
 
 To the same worthy tobacconist on his getting the worst 
 of an argument Curran said : " Lundy, Lundy, that's a 
 poser — a devil of a pinch." 
 
 Curran had been having a violent discussion with a 
 country schoolmaster on some classical subject when the 
 latter having come off second best said in great heat 
 that he could afford to lose no more time, but must 
 get back to his pupils. " Do," said Curran, " but, my 
 dear doctor, don't endorse my sins upon their backs." 
 
 A mean actor, who had sufficiently betrayed his char- 
 acteristic during a stay in Dublin, referred to it as a very 
 expensive city, when he met Curran later in London, and 
 asked the wit what he supposed he had spent in the Irish 
 capital. " I'm sure I don't know," said Curran, " but 
 probably a fortnight." 
 
 Walking with a punctilious friend, Curran met an 
 acquaintance who happened to use the word " curosity." 
 When he had passed on the friend said indignantly : 
 " How that man murders the English language." " Not 
 so bad as murder," said Curran ; " he only knocked an i 
 out." 
 
 Curran, as has been said earHer, was a strong opponent 
 of the Union, and the carrying of it was a great bitterness 
 to him. He was one day shortly after the momentotis 
 debate opposite the late Parhament House in Dublin, 
 when a noble member of the House of Lords, who had 
 
CURRAN 297 
 
 voted for the Union, said to him with unblushing jocularity : 
 " Curran, what do they mean to do with that useless 
 building ? For my part, I am sure I hate even the sight 
 of it." " I do not wonder at it, my lord," rephed Curran 
 contemptuously ; "I never yet heard of a murderer who 
 was not afraid of a ghost." 
 
 The wit reached Cheltenham on the night that the news 
 of the victory at Algiers arrived, and a lady expatiating on 
 the barbarities of the pirates expressed a regret that the 
 place had not been entirely demohshed. " Ah, my dear 
 madam," said Curran, ." they have had enough of it, 
 sufficient unto the Dey has been the evil thereof." 
 
 An Irish attorney, who had the misfortune to be very 
 lame, was moved during the time of trouble in Ireland to 
 take part in the military preparations, and learning that 
 among the various volunteer corps being raised was one 
 of lawyers decided that he would join it. Meeting Curran 
 he exclaimed : " My dear friend, these are not times for a 
 man to be idle ; I am determined to join the lawyers' 
 corps and follow the camp." " You follow the camp, my 
 httle hmb of the law ? " said Curran ; " tut ! tut ! re- 
 nounce the idea ; you never can be a disciplinarian." 
 " And why not, Mr Curran ? " " For this reason ; the 
 moment you were ordered to march, you would halt ! " 
 
 VI 
 
 Curran was fond of a form of humorous mystification 
 which he could utilize most successfully owing to his 
 admirable powers of acting. His friend Lord Avonmore, 
 who presided over the Court of Exchequer, had a habit of 
 interrupting a speaker by forestalling his conclusion, and 
 Curran's biographer gives an amusingly elaborate account 
 
298 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 of the way in which the wit played upon this foible 
 of the judge's. They were to dine together at the house 
 of a friend, and a large party was assembled. Curran, 
 contrary to his usual habit, was late for dinner, and at 
 length arrived in the most admirably affected agitation. 
 
 " Why, Mr Curran, you have kept us a full hour waiting 
 dinner for you," grumbled out Lord Avonmore. 
 
 " Oh, my dear lord, I regret it very much — ^you must 
 know it is not my custom, but — I've just been witness to a 
 most melancholy occurrence ! " 
 
 " My God ! — ^you seem terribly moved by it — take a 
 glass of wine — what was it ? — what was it ? " 
 
 " I will tell you, my lord, the moment I can collect 
 myself — I had been detained at Court — in the Court of 
 Chancery — ^your lordship knows the Chancellor sits late." 
 
 " I do— I do— but go on." 
 
 " Well, my lord, I was hurrying here as fast as ever I 
 could — I did not even change my dress — I hope I shall be 
 excused for coming in my boots ? " 
 
 . " Poh, poh — never mind your boots — the point- — come 
 at once to the point of the story." 
 
 " Oh, I will, my good lord, in a moment — I walked here 
 — I would not even wait to get the carriage ready — it 
 would have taken time, you know — now there is a market 
 exactly in the road by which I had to pass — ^your lordship 
 may perhaps recollect the market — do you ? " 
 
 "To be sure I do — go on, Curran — go on with the story." 
 
 " I am very glad your lordship remembers the market, 
 for I totally forget the name of it — the name — the name." 
 
 " What the devil signifies the name of it, sir ? It's the 
 Castle Market." 
 
 " Your lordship is perfectly right, it is called the Castle 
 Market. I was passing through that very identical 
 Castle Market, when I observed a butcher preparing to kill 
 
CURRAN 299 
 
 a calf — ^he had a huge knife in his hand — it was as sharp 
 as a razor — the calf was standing beside him — ^he drew the 
 knife to plunge it into the animal — just as he was in the 
 act of doing so a little boy about four years old — ^his only 
 son — ^the loveliest little baby I ever saw, ran suddenly across 
 his path — and he killed ! O ! my God, he killed " 
 
 "The child!— the child !— the child!" vociferated 
 Lord Avonmore. 
 
 " No, my lord, the calf," continued Curran very coolly — 
 " he killed the calf — but — your lordship is in the habit of 
 anticipating." 
 
 The laugh was thus raised against his lordship, and 
 Curran declared that often afterwards a first impression 
 was removed more easily from the Court of Exchequer by 
 the recollection of the calf in the Castle Market than by all 
 the eloquence of the entire profession. 
 
 Nor did Curran refrain from seeking to " wage war 
 against the gravity of the judgment seat," as in the follow- 
 ing ludicrous discussion. Lord Avonmore plumed himself 
 somewhat on his classical knowledge, and appearing 
 before him Curran thus addressed himself to a jury of 
 Dublin shopkeepers : 
 
 " I remember, gentlemen, I remember the ridicule with 
 which my learned friend has been pleased so unworthily 
 to visit the poverty of my client ; and remembering it, 
 neither of us can forget the fine sentiment of a great Greek 
 historian upon the subject, which I shall take the liberty 
 of quoting in the original, as no doubt it must be most 
 familiar to all of you. It is to be found in the celebrated 
 work of Hesiod, called the ' Phantasmagoria.' 
 
 " After expatiating upon the sad effects of poverty, you 
 may remember he pathetically remarks — 
 
 " ' Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se 
 Quam quod ridiculos homines facit.' "■ 
 
300 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Lord Avonmore bristled up at once. " Why, Mr 
 Curran, Hesiod was not an historian — ^he was a poet, and 
 for ipy part I never heard before of any such poem as 
 the ' Phantasmagoria.' " 
 
 " Oh, my good lord, I assure you he wrote it." 
 
 " Well, well, it may be so — I'll not dispute it, as you 
 seem to be so very serious about it, but at all events, the 
 lines you quoted are Latin — they are undoubtedly 
 Juvenal's." 
 
 " Perhaps, my lord, he quotes them from the ' Phantas- 
 magoria.' " 
 
 " Tut, tut, man ; I tell you they're Latin — they are just 
 as familiar to me as my Blackstone." 
 
 " Indeed, my good lord, they're Greek." 
 
 " Why, Mr Curran, do you want to persuade me out of 
 my senses ? — I tell you they're Latin — can it be possible 
 that your memory so fails you ? " 
 
 " Well, my lord — I see plainly enough we never can 
 agree upon the subject — ^but, I'll tell you how it can be 
 easily determined — ^if it was a legal question, I should of 
 course bow at once to the decision of your lordship, but it 
 is not — it's a mere matter of fact, and there's only one way 
 I know of deciding it. Send it up as a collateral issue to 
 that jury, and I'll be bound they'll — find it Greek." 
 
 An elaborate bit of fooling illustrative rather of CurraA's 
 humorous liveliness of spirits than of his wit. 
 
 In the biography of " Ingoldsby " Barham occurs the 
 following story of Curran and Lord Thurlow. A Mr 
 Sneyd, a tall, thin man, nicknamed by George the Fourth 
 " the devil's darning needle," was much about Lord 
 Thurlow during his last years, and had a sort of roving 
 commission from him to pick up any stray genius he could 
 lay hold of, and bring him to the old nobleman's table. 
 Coming in the stage coach one day to Brighton, Mr Sneyd 
 
CURRAN 301 
 
 Scraped an acquaintance with a fellow-traveller, who turned 
 out to be the celebrated Mr Curran, and he eagerly invited 
 his new friend to dine with Lord Thurlow, who had heard 
 much of Curran. When the cloth was removed he led the 
 conversation to the state of the Irish bar, which Curran, 
 who at that time was red-hot against the Union, abused in 
 the lump with great vehemence. 
 
 " Timidity, my lord, and venality," said he, " are the 
 bane of the Irish courts, and pervade them from the lowest 
 to the highest." 
 
 " Indeed," said Thurlow ; " pray what is the character 
 of Lord — ? " (naming a particular friend of his own, then 
 on the Irish bench) . 
 
 " Oh," replied Currto, " never was man less fitted for 
 his position ; if he has any honesty in him, which is problem- 
 atical, he is infinitely too great a poltroon to let it appear." 
 
 " Humph ! " quoth the Chancellor ; " a bad account of 
 him, indeed, Mr Curran. And pray what do you think 
 then of Lord — ? " (naming another old crony, also in the 
 same rank). 
 
 " As to him," said the barrister, " he is ten thousand 
 times worse than the other. The venaUty of that man is 
 such that no person, howeyer just and clear his case may 
 be, can hope for a verdict where he presides unless he has 
 contrived to bribe his judges into justice. In fact, these 
 two form an admirable sample of Irish jurisprudence as it 
 exists now — aU venality and cowardice ! " 
 
 " In other words," said the Chancellor, " all the Irish 
 lawyers are rascals." 
 
 " Pretty much so, indeed, my lord." 
 
 Here the conversation stopped. The next day Lord 
 Thurlow attacked Mr Sneyd for sending such a flippant 
 fellow to his table, adding that he saw nothing whatever 
 in him. 
 
302 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " Ah, my lord," suggested Sneyd, " that might be 
 because there was no one present to draw the trigger." 
 
 " Sir," rephed the old nobleman, with one of his inveter- 
 ate frowns, " ask him to dine here again to-morrow, and 
 be sure you are present — and draw it yourself ! " 
 
 Wits are occasionally countered by the unanswerable 
 retorts of the unwitty. Samuel Rogers describes how he 
 was dining with Curran at Greenwich, when the Irishman 
 exclaimed, with the humorous exaggeration of the Celt, of 
 something he would not do, "I had rather be hanged on 
 twenty gibbets." " Don't you think, sir, that one would 
 be enough for you ? " said a girl sitting at the next table. 
 Rogers declared that Curran was absolutely confounded 
 — struck dumb. 
 
 William Godwin is also credited with having scored off 
 the wit. Curran after winning a case, in which however 
 he had not done justice to his abihty, teased Godwin into 
 giving a judgment of his speech, " Since you will have my 
 opinion," said Godwin, after various protests, " I never 
 really did hear anything so bad as your prose, my dear 
 Curran — except your poetry." 
 
 Curran and Father O'Leary were dining with Michael 
 Kelly when the barrister said : " Reverend Father, I wish 
 you were St Peter." " And why, Counsellor, would you 
 wish I were St Peter ? " asked O'Leary. " Because, 
 Reverend Father, in that case you would have the keys of 
 heaven, and could let me in." " By my honour and 
 conscience. Counsellor," answered O'Leary, " it would 
 be better for you if I had the keys of the other place, for 
 then I could let you out." 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 SOME RECENT WITS : I. — BYRON, GILBERT, WHISTLER 
 
 " Men who have a great deal of wit." 
 
 John Locke 
 
 EVERY successive generation has its own particular 
 wits, the men to whom it becomes as it were a habit 
 to credit any happy retort that is current and worth 
 repeating and re-repeating. Such wits are best known 
 during their lifetime to a comparatively small circle ; it is 
 only later, by the publication of reminiscences, the draw- 
 ing upon diaries and letters, that their sa^dngs become 
 famiUar to the pubUc. Occasionally, however, even during 
 his lifetime a man gets known beyond the circle that 
 echoes his sa5dngs, even to readers of the newspapers, as 
 an utterer of good things. The late Sir W. S. Gilbert, for 
 example, must have been regarded as a wit by a very wide 
 circle owing to the way in which his mots were repeated, and 
 the same may be said of H. J Byron, of Oscar Wilde and 
 of Whistler. As a rule the jests of contemporaries may be 
 regarded as reported within but a comparatively small 
 radius, and even so, perhaps, less notably than in the past. 
 Here of course, I am not going to attempt the presentation 
 of any witticisms of present-day wits, only some of those 
 of two or three recent possessors of the power of quick 
 retort or happy comment. Other " recent wits " are 
 alluded to in some of the earlier chapters. 
 
 303 
 
304 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 II 
 
 Henry James Byron (1834-1884) was an actor and 
 dramatist who, if he did not achieve greatness, certainly 
 did achieve the widest popularity. His three-act drama. 
 Our Boys, established a remarkable record, having a pheno- 
 menal run from i6th January 1875 until i8th April 1879, 
 but he was also the author of innumerable plays, mostly 
 of a comic character. As the late Joseph Knight put it, 
 Bjnron's work suffered from the fact that in it " character 
 and probabihty were continually sacrificed to the strain 
 after a laugh." He revelled, we are further told, in pun and 
 verbal pleasantry, and in a certain Cockney smartness of 
 repartee ; indeed, it has been said that his over-use of the 
 pun led to its passing into disfavour — ^which no doubt 
 some people would regard as his abundant justification . 
 
 The use of the pun is also a marked characteristic of 
 many of the sayings by which he became known as a ready 
 master of repartee. One neat use of this form of pleasantry 
 is generally credited to him, though I have seen it given as 
 the sa3dng of other wits. It is a turning of the onus of the 
 pun, as it were, on to the innocent. " You never wear an 
 overcoat, Byron," said a friend. " No, I never was," came 
 the surprising answer. The unexpectedness of the answer, 
 a seemingly matter-of-fact endorsement of a statement, is 
 the justification of the jest. The more painful use of the 
 pun is seen in the story which tells how a man who went 
 through stage antics as a turtle, having struck someone as 
 being very clever, they asked Byron who the performer was, 
 " There's no name in the bill," he replied, " but it's a 
 soup-er of course." 
 
 When Poole, the celebrated fashionable tailor, died, 
 H. J. Byron was calling on a friend who asked him if he had 
 
SOME RECENT WITS 305 
 
 heard the news. He had not, and inquired : " What was 
 the cause of death ? " " Apoplexy," was the reply. " Ah," 
 said he, " just like a tailor to go off in a fit." 
 
 At a club of which the playwright was a member an 
 actor was discussing with an artist a theatrical poster 
 which he wished designed. Taking up a pencil, he tried 
 to supplement his verbal instructions, but soon threw it 
 down again saying : " But there, you know, I can't draw." 
 Byron, who was standing by, remarked : " That's what all 
 the managers say, old man." 
 
 Dining at the Savage Club, where an erudite member 
 had as guest at a neighbouring table an Oriental stranger, 
 Bjrron was asked what language it was that the foreigner 
 was talking in mumbling tones as though he had no teeth. 
 Byron paused for a moment, as though listening carefully 
 to the mumbling one, and then answered : " It's too much 
 for me, dear boy, unless its gum arable." 
 
 Not long before his death, H. J. Bjnron attended the 
 wedding of a friend of his named Day, who was marrpng 
 a Miss Alice Weeks. The wit gave the newly wed couple 
 the following impromptu by way of send-off : — 
 
 '-'■ A Week is lost, a Day is gained — 
 But let us not complain, 
 There'U soon be little days enough. 
 To make a week again.'-' 
 
 The following notes, made by a Captain Cuttle present, 
 of an attempt to test H. J. Byron's readiness in repartee 
 appeared many years ago in one of the newspapers. The 
 scene was a friend's house, and the interlocutor was a 
 young actor now known to fame as Sir Charles Wjmdham. 
 
 " What is an actor's ambition nowadays— to play 
 Hamlet ? " 
 
 " No. That was once the case, but now it is to get on 
 
3o6 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 the variety stage, and do ' three turns ' a night at a salary 
 of one hundred pounds a week." 
 
 " Have you ever known managers of a suicidal 
 tendency ? " 
 
 " If you desire me to say that a manager has ere this 
 been known to cut his throat with a curtain raiser I won't 
 do it. Ask me another." 
 
 " Was the old-fashioned actor a man who lived by 
 shifts ? " 
 
 " Yes, and so is the modern actor — ^by scene shifts." 
 
 " What is a limelight man ? " 
 
 " Well, he is sometimes the attentive husband of the 
 serpentine dancer." 
 
 " Are actors ever killed by over-study ? " 
 
 " I never heard of such a case, but I am informed that 
 popular favourites are now and then killed by under-study 
 — ^when the under-study gets the chance to appear." 
 
 " Define a star actor." 
 
 "He is frequently an ordinary actor who happens to 
 have his head in the clouds." 
 
 " Inferior actors, it is asserted, can't stand plainspoken 
 criticism. Do you know of anything they can stand ? " 
 
 "Yes, drinks." 
 
 " When may an actress be said to be on the highroad to 
 fame and fortune ? " 
 
 " When she begins to have her diamonds or valuables 
 stolen by hotel thieves." 
 
 " Apropos of actresses, is it native worth which makes 
 society actresses popular on the stage ? " 
 
 " No, foreign Worth — ^his address is Paris." 
 
 " Thanks, Mr Byron ; your examination is fairly, satis- 
 factory, and you prove your qualifications to write for the 
 stage. One final question. A bad tragedian of the dismal 
 order, who is egged on by ambition, may be — what ? " 
 
SOME RECENT WITS 307 
 
 " Egged off by the audience." 
 
 It is said that Byron had no idea of the questions that 
 were to be put, but the questioner must have himself had 
 as much wit as the answerer, and must have reaUzed in 
 many instances the inevitability of the replies to his queries. 
 
 III 
 
 Contemporary with H. J. Byron, though he outlived 
 him by more than quarter of a century. Sir William 
 Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) may be regarded as the most 
 notable wit of his generation. In his " Bab Ballads " he 
 invented something new in Uterature, and again in those 
 operas in which his name as author is for ever twinned with 
 that of the composer. Sir Arthur Sullivan, he gave some- 
 thing new to the theatre. One of the most successful 
 writers for the stage of his time, he was a master of social 
 satire and irony, a consummate master of the rare art of 
 nonsense, and possessor of a keen and delightful wit. 
 Many are the stories told of his neat retorts and happy 
 sa5dngs. One of the best is perhaps the following — 
 which is already growing old fashioned, thanks to the 
 triumph of the " taxi." After a dinner-party Gilbert was 
 standing in the hall waiting for a friend to join him when 
 a shortsighted old gentleman, mistaking him for one of 
 the servants, said : " Call me a cab ! " The wit looked him 
 up and down, and then quietly observed : " You're a four- 
 wheeler." The old gentleman turned on him wrathfully, 
 " How dare you, sir ? What do you mean ? " " Well," 
 retorted Gilbert, " you asked me to call you a cab — and I 
 couldn't call you ' hansom.' " 
 
 Not very dissimilar is the following story. Gilbert was 
 standing outside his club one day when a stranger ap- 
 proached him saying : " I beg your pardon, sir, but do you 
 
3o8 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 happen to know a gentleman, a member of this club, with 
 one eye called Matthew ? " After pausing for 'a moment 
 Gilbert replied : " I can't say I do " ; then, after a further 
 pause, " What is his other eye called ? " 
 
 When the famous collaborators visited America they 
 were of course considerably feted. At one big gathering 
 Gilbert had to take down to dinner a somewhat pretentious 
 lady of the newly rich who, knowing nothing of music, 
 posed as one of its patrons. " Oh, Mr Gilbert," said she, 
 " your friend Sullivan's music is really too delightful. It 
 always reminds me of dear Batch" (meaning Bach). 
 " Do tell me, what is Batch doing just now ? Is he com- 
 posing anything ? " " Well, no," replied Gilbert, in serious 
 tone ; " just now, as a matter of fact, Batch is by way of 
 decomposing." 
 
 At the rehearsals of his plays Gilbert had the reputation 
 of being a great martinet, and many are the stories told of 
 his ready witticisms at trying moments. At a rehearsal 
 of the Mikado he was critically watching the performance 
 from the stalls, when he suddenly called out : " There is 
 a gentleman in the left group not holding his fan correctly." 
 The stage manager explained : " There is one gentleman 
 absent through illness." " Ah," said Gilbert sympatheti- 
 cally and dryly, " that is not the gentleman I am referring 
 to." 
 
 When another of his pieces was in rehearsal one of the 
 actresses annoyed him by persistently changing a line 
 which she had to speak. Making a hurried entrance she 
 should have addressed those already on the stage with : 
 " Stay ! let me speak," but again and again, despite 
 correction, she would say : " Stay ! stay ! let me speak ! " 
 Gilbert cured her with a jest. After the repeated redun- 
 dance he stopped her with : " You are wrong again. It 
 isn't 'stay, stay' ; it's 'stay' — one stay, not a pair of stays." 
 
SIR WILI.IAM SCHWENCK GILBERT 
 
SOME RECENT WITS 309 
 
 Another time, when the stage was full, a messenger with 
 a parcel was seen displaying considerable activity in 
 dodging the performers as he crossed from one wing to the 
 other. " Look at that agile creature, Mr Gilbert," said 
 one of the leading actresses. " One would think he was 
 dancing a pas seul." " Yes," was Gilbert's instant reply, 
 " a brown-paper pas-seul obviously." 
 
 Once when Gilbert was drilUng the ladies of the ballet at 
 the Savoy he observed that one of the girls, though making 
 ineffectual efforts to restrain her emotion, was in tears. 
 " What's the matter, my dear ? " inquired he. " Oh, 
 Mr Gilbert," sobbed she, " the ballet mistress says that I'm 
 no better than I ought to be ! " " Well, but you're not, 
 my dear, are you ? " said Gilbert. 
 
 When H.M.S. Pinafore was being rehearsed, Gilbert 
 said to Mr Rutland Barrington, as is recorded in the actor's 
 entertaining reminiscences : " Cross left on that speech 
 I think, Barrington, and sit on the skyhght over the saloon 
 pensively." The actor did so, but the skylight collapsed 
 completely, upon which Gilbert said : "That's expensively." 
 
 Gilbert was impatient of added " business " and in 
 rehearsing the same piece Grossmith arranged that on one 
 of the actresses giving him a violent push he should roll 
 completely over. When the point was reached Grossmith 
 expected smiling approval from the author, but got instead 
 the chilling comment : " Would you mind omitting that ? " 
 " Oh, certainly, if you wish it," said the comedian ; " but 
 I am sure I should get a big laugh out of it." " And so 
 you would," said Gilbert caustically, " if you sat down on 
 a pork pie." 
 
 Gilbert had on one occasion gone behind to see Sir 
 Herbert Tree between the acts of one of his Shakespearean 
 performances, and Tree came perspiring from the stage 
 and asked Gilbert what he thought of the performance. 
 
310 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " I see your skin acts well," was the wit's sympathetic 
 reply. 
 
 Worried by a lady interviewer, who after many attempts 
 had at length succeeded in gaining admission to him. Sir 
 William brought the interview to a close as speedily as 
 possible, and was about to bow out his unwelcome guest — 
 a lady, be it said, of large proportions — when in rushed 
 several of his favourite dogs and began fawning on the 
 stranger. " Dear, sweet, delightful creatures," she gushed, 
 " it is really wonderful how all dogs take to me." " Not at 
 all," said Gilbert,in his most cutting manner, "it is not often 
 that they get a bone to pick with so much meat upon it." 
 
 IV 
 
 Among the later wits of the. nineteenth century whose 
 sayings were widely repeated — ^he was described as " the 
 world's jester " — was James Abbott McNeill Whistler 
 (1834-1903), an artist who has been described as a master 
 among masters of the art of etching, a painter of several 
 masterpieces, and a man who from his independence of 
 character gained a dominating position in art circles. 
 He waged a long war with his critics, and was the hero 
 of two causes celebres. Though his position was to come 
 to be acknowledged as supreme, the daringness of his 
 innovations, the readiness with which he quarrelled, gave 
 him a peculiar position in the pubhc regard. What ap- 
 peared to be mere eccentric vagaries received perhaps the 
 less serious consideration from his intolerance and wilful- 
 ness. Here, however, I am not concerned with his work 
 as an artist or with his wittily entertaining turning of the 
 tables on the critics in his pubUshed books, but only with 
 some of the things said by him which are marked by his 
 mastery of ready expression, of witty severity of retort. 
 
SOME RECENT WITS 311 
 
 Born at Lowell, in Massachusetts, on loth January 1834, 
 he first sought to become a soldier, and duly entered West 
 Point Academy with a view to joining the army. He 
 remained there for about three years, but did not shine in 
 the studies most in request, though he was generally first 
 in the class for drawing. He was finally discharged, owing 
 to his deficiency in chemistry, in the summer of 1854. On 
 being asked years later why he had left West Point he 
 replied : " If siUcon had been a gas, madam, I should have 
 been a soldier." He went to Paris and studied art, and 
 spent most of the rest of his life in Paris and London, and 
 though he duly won no small measure of recognition he 
 was not in his lifetime recognized as so great an artist as 
 Fame is Ukely to regard him. 
 
 The way in which the sajangs and doings of Whistler 
 interested people during his hfetime is amusingly illus- 
 trated in a story told by a compatriot in an American 
 journal. If is of the time when Whistler was in Venice, 
 engaged on his series of etchings of that place of many 
 fascinations. " We were often invited to dine with 
 Whistler, whose apartment was on the next flight above. 
 He came to our rooms one day and said : ' Adams, I 
 would hke you and B. to dine with me to-day. You have 
 such a supply of newspapers, please bring several with 
 you, as I have neither papers nor tablecloth, and they 
 will answer the purpose qtiite well.' I did as he requested, 
 and surprised and amused was our host when I called his 
 attention to a column and a half of ' Whistler stories ' in 
 one of the Boston papers which was serving as our table- 
 cloth." 
 
 All who have described Whistler have mentioned how 
 
312 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 his sayings were emphasized by the action of his hands, 
 how he would startle his companions with an exclamatory 
 laugh " Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! " His wit, say his biographers,! 
 was quick and spontaneous, " met Uke a flash the word 
 or the challenge he could not have anticipated." Another 
 writer has said : " It is as natural for stories to cluster 
 about Whistler as for barnacles to cling to a ship." 
 
 Sir Rennell Rodd has told an amusing story of Whistler's 
 power of putting a man in his place : "I remember a 
 breakfast which Waldo Story gave at Dieudonn6's. 
 Everyone there was by the way of having painted a 
 picture, or written a book, or in some way or another 
 having outraged the Philistine, with the exception of one 
 young gentleman, whose raison d'itre there was not so 
 apparent as was the height of his collars and the glory of 
 his attire. He nevertheless ventured to lay down the law 
 on certain matters which seemed beyond his province and 
 even went so far as to combat some dictum of the master's, 
 who, readjusting his eyeglass, looked pleasantly at him, 
 and said, ' And whose son are you ? ' " 
 
 Several stories are attached to Whistler's period of 
 presidency of the Royal Society of British Artists. The 
 Prince of Wales (afterwards Edward the Seventh) once 
 visited the Society's exhibition, and Whistler thus re- 
 corded the visit : " I went downstairs to meet the Prince. 
 As we were walking up, I a little in front with the Princess, 
 the Prince, who always liked to be well informed in these 
 matters, asked what the Society was ? — ^was it an old 
 institution ? What was its history ? ' Sir, it has none, 
 its history begins to-day.' " Surely a most courtly reply, 
 which showed that Whistler could adapt his ready tongue 
 to compliment as effectively as he could to sarcasm. 
 When someone said to the artist : " The Prince of Wales 
 
 ' "The Life of James McNeill Whistler." ByE^R. and ]-. Pennell. 
 
SOME RECENT WITS 313 
 
 says he knows you." " That's only his side," replied 
 Whistler. 
 
 One or two other of the stories connected with the Royal 
 Society of British Artists may be given. At a smoking 
 concert given by the members a critic went up to Whistler 
 and said : " Your picture is not up to the mark ; it is not 
 good this time." " You should not say it isn't good," 
 quietly replied the artist ; " you should say that you 
 don't Uke it, and then, you know, you're perfectly safe ; 
 now come and have something you do like : have some 
 whisky." 
 
 J. C. Horsley, R.A., having read a paper before the 
 Church Congress, and animadverted in it upon studies 
 of the nude as being out of harmony with Christianity, 
 Whistler attached to one of his own pictures in the Society's 
 exhibition a label with the words, " Horsley soit qui mal 
 y pense." ^ 
 
 When there was trouble in the Society over Whistler's 
 autocratic presidentship, and his resignation was followed 
 by the election as his successor of Wyke Baylis, Whistler 
 said : " Now, at last you must be satisfied. You can no 
 longer say you have the right man in the wrong place." 
 When his retirement was followed by the secession of 
 Alfred Stevens, Charles Keene and others, Whistler re- 
 marked : " The artists have come out — and the British 
 remains." 
 
 Whistler, whose regard for his appearance might have 
 won for him a place among the dandies, was one day in a 
 shop trying on a hat when a dissatisfied customer came 
 in, and mistaking him for someone in charge exclaimed : 
 
 1 The Garter motto had earlier been adapted by punsters. Some 
 years ago I remember hearing the version '- On his walks he madly 
 puns " ascribed to H. J. Byron and to Henry S. Leigh ; another 
 adaptation made the final word " pawns."' 
 
314 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 " I say, this 'at doesn't fit." Eyeing him critically for a 
 moment the artist coolly remarked : " Neither does your 
 coat." 
 
 A group of society women were engaged in chorusing 
 the accomplishments of Sir Frederick Leighton. " So 
 handsome ! " " Plays divinely." " Perfectly charm- 
 ing." " Sings." " And is so great a sculptor." Where- 
 upon Whistler, who was standing by, interpolated : 
 " Paints a little, too, does he not ? " 
 
 Whistler had been engaged in painting the portrait of 
 a distinguished novelist, who though extremely clever was 
 not blessed with beauty. When the portrait was finished 
 the sitter did not appear to be satisfied with the result. 
 " Don't you like it ? " asked the artist. " No ; I can't say 
 that I do ; but you must admit that it is a bad work of 
 art." " Yes," Whistler said, as though in cordial agree- 
 ment, " and I think you must admit that you are a bad 
 work of nature." 
 
 " Oh, Mr Whistler," exclaimed a lady visitor, " I have 
 just been up the river, and it reminded me so much of 
 your pictures." " Indeed ! " replied he. " Then Nature 
 is looking up." It has been explained that it was not 
 vanity on Whistler's part that made him say this, but 
 no explanation was necessary in the case of what is 
 obviously nothing but the sajdng of a man possessed of 
 the gift of humour. 
 
 Whistler made something of a cult of being late in 
 keeping an engagement. On one occasion when he had 
 arrived an hour after the time appointed for dinner his 
 host met him with a pathetic : " We are so hungry, Mr 
 Whistler ! " " What a good sign," said he imperturbably. 
 
 Bored by a wealthy collector who had wasted much of 
 his time and bought nothing. Whistler grew impatient. 
 At length the visitor said in offhand fashion : " How 
 
SOME RECENT WITS 315 
 
 much for the lot ? " " Five millions." "What!" "My 
 posthumous prices. Good-morning." 
 
 Ruskin's statement with reference to one of Whistler's 
 pictures that " he never expected to hear a coxcomb ask 
 two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the 
 pubhc's face " led to a famous libel action and the awarding 
 of one farthing damages to the aggrieved artist. Whistler 
 by no means spared Ruskin, whose high-sounding empty 
 things were given forth in a " flow of language that would, 
 could he hear it, give Titian the same shock of surprise that 
 was Balaam's when the first great critic proffered his 
 opinion." Some very literal person having quoted the 
 Bible to show that " the ass was right," Whistler acknow- 
 ledged the truth of it, adding : " But I fancy you wiU admit 
 that this is the,only ass on record that ever was right, and 
 the age of miracles is past." 
 
 A friend wrote the following amusing episode to show 
 how Whistler refused to be interrupted at his work : — 
 " An acquaintance had brought, without invitation, a dis- 
 tinguished and clever woman to the studio in the Rue 
 Notre Dame des Champs. They reached the door, both 
 out of breath from their long climb. ' Ah, my dear 
 Whistler,' drawled C, ' I have taken the hberty of bringing 
 Lady D. to see you. I knew you would be delighted.' 
 ' Dehghted, I'm sure, quite beyond expectation, but ' — 
 mysteriously holding the door to bar their entrance — ' my 
 dear Lady D., I would never forgive our friend for bringing 
 you up six fhghts of stairs on so hot a day to visit a studio 
 at one of these — eh — pagan moments when ' — and he 
 glanced furtively behind him and still further closed the 
 door — ' it is absolutely impossible for a lady to be received. 
 Upon my soul, I should never forgive him.' And Whistler 
 bowed them down the six flights and returned to the 
 portrait of a very sedate old gentleman who had taken 
 
3i6 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 advantage of the interruption to break for a moment the 
 rigour of his pose." 
 
 When Oscar Wilde come to London after leaving Oxford 
 he was for a while much in the company of Whistler, but 
 their intimate friendship was broken after a time. The 
 witty artist by no means spared his young friend, who was 
 soon regarded as the apostle of the ^Esthetic Movement. 
 Meeting Wilde in a Polish cap and green befrogged and 
 befurred overcoat Whistler told him to " restore those 
 things to Nathan's, and never again let me find you mas- 
 querading the streets of my Chelsea in the combined 
 costumes of Kossuth and Mr Mantalini." 
 
 After the friends had parted. Whistler talking of Wilde 
 in Paris summed him up as " Oscar, bourgeois malgre'lui." 
 
 One of the most frequently repeated, as it is one of the 
 neatest, of Whistler's mots was addressed to Wilde. The 
 artist having made some happy remark, Wilde showed his 
 appreciation by remarking, " I wish I had said that. 
 Whistler." " You will, Oscar ; you will," said Whistler 
 dryly. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 SOME RECENT WITS : II. — OSCAR WILDE AND OTHERS 
 
 WHISTLER and Oscar Wilde were, as has been said, 
 at one time — when Wilde first came down from 
 Oxford — close friends, and in the wit of the poet and 
 dramatist we see something of the same character as in the 
 wit of the painter and etcher. Each in some stories reveal 
 something of the attitude of the super-egotist, just as each 
 had in him much of the genius which justifies egotism. 
 The similarity of their wit is perhaps responsible for the 
 hint that Wilde was not above utilizing the witticisms of 
 his friend, the hint which was no doubt in Whistler's mind 
 when he made the retort given in the preceding chapter. 
 One of Wilde's retaliations may perhaps be recognized in 
 his remark that " Whistler, with all his faults, was never 
 guilty of writing a line of poetry." 
 
 Oscar O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1856-1900) was the son 
 of a celebrated Irish surgeon, Sir WiUiam Wilde ; after a 
 distinguished career at Trinity College, Dublin, he went 
 to Oxford, where he gained the Newdigate Prize with a 
 poem on " Ravenna," and where he became known as a 
 leader of the " aesthetic craze," so deUghtfully ridiculed 
 by Gilbert in Patience. Later he became known to a 
 small circle as poet, and to a wider public as a dramatist, 
 thanks to the success of his Lady Windermere's Fan and 
 other plays. Upon the tragedy of his later Ufe it is here 
 
 317 
 
3i8 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 not necessary to touch. He died in Paris on 30th Novem- 
 ber 1900. It was as the leader of the aesthetes, the " in- 
 tense," " utterly too too " folk who " lived up " to a blue 
 vase, or a sunflower, that Wilde first won notoriety, but 
 this had given way before true fame for his undoubted 
 gifts when the tragedy of his life was revealed, and echpsed 
 for a period the best of his work. With the lapse of time 
 the value of his work as dramatist and poet will be more 
 fully appreciated. 
 
 II 
 
 One anecdote may be given illustrating the ridiculous 
 form which aesthetic culture was made to take by its 
 extreme exponents. A lady who met Wilde at a country 
 house shortly after he had left Oxford said that one day 
 he came down looking very pale. " I am afraid," said 
 one of the party, " that you are ill, Mr Wilde." " No, 
 not ill, only tired," he answered ; " the fact is I picked a 
 primrose in the wood yesterday, and it was so ill I have 
 been sitting up with it all night." This was, of course, 
 mere posing, but that Wilde had the power of true spon- 
 taneous wit is shown in his happy retort on Sir Lewis 
 Morris. Morris was complaining of what he regarded as 
 the studied neglect of his claims when possible successors 
 to the Laureateship were being discussed after Tennyson's 
 death. Said the author of " The Epic of Hades " : " It 
 is a complete conspiracy of silence against me — a con- 
 spiracy of silence ! What ought I to do, Oscar ? " 
 " Join it," replied Wilde, with happy readiness. 
 
 In a discussion on George Meredith he said, " Meredith 
 is a prose Browning — and so is Browning." That he 
 could paraphrase Meredith is to be seen in his saying, 
 " There are many things that we would throw away if 
 
SOME RECENT WITS 319 
 
 we were not afraid that others might pick them up," 
 which is but a new form of 
 
 " How many a thing which we cast to the ground, 
 When others pick it up becomes a gem." 
 
 When he arrived at New York on his lecturing visit to 
 the United States, Wilde on being asked at the Custom 
 House if he had anything to declare answered : " I have 
 nothing to declare, except my genius." 
 
 When a Russian visitor to London held a series of 
 receptions Oscar Wilde said of him : " He thinks he is 
 setting up a salon — ^but it is only a restaurant." 
 
 " I don't think I shall live to see the new century," said 
 Wilde, when ill in Paris. " If another century began and 
 I was still aUve it would be more than England could 
 stand." 
 
 " It appears that I am dying beyond my means," was 
 his whimsical comment on the straits to which he was 
 reduced in his last illness. In that perversion or reversing 
 of a familiar phrase we have an instance of the form of 
 wit of which in his writings he was a neat master. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Although Oscar Wilde and the wits cited in the preced- 
 ing chapter are those most widely known among recent 
 sayers of good things, there are many bon-mots recorded 
 of other men, a representative few of which may close this 
 chapter. Though termed recent wits the term is one not 
 too narrowly to be limited, for wit can but very roughly 
 be divided into periods. It is true that at one period 
 the pun may have been the triumphant medium of wit, at 
 another time the epigram, and at another the paradox. 
 
320 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 but wit — especially conversational wit — ^is the reduction 
 of the thing said to its lowest term without allowing of any 
 such Hterary decoration as " dates " it, and thus a neat 
 retort grows archaic, or even old fashioned, but very 
 gradually, and the " periods " merge insensibly one in 
 another. 
 
 A gathering of the witty sayings of those whose fame 
 is other than that of the wits brings many unexpected 
 people into the circle of the latter. For instance, in 
 a discussion which took place at a reception at G. H. 
 Lewes', somebody asserted that everyone had written a 
 tragedy. Lewes agreed with the statement, saying : 
 " Yes, everyone — even Herbert Spencer." " Ah," inter- 
 posed Huxley, " I know what the catastrophe would be — 
 an induction killed by a fact." 
 
 Huxley as a conversational wit may be something of a 
 surprise to those who know of him only as the great 
 scientist, the brilliant expositor, but those who knew him 
 best were struck by his conversational brilliancy and, with 
 a fitting opponent, of repartee. After a meeting of the 
 trustees of the British Museum, Archbishop Benson 
 helped Huxley on with his greatcoat, and the latter de- 
 clared himself quite overcome by this species of spiritual 
 investiture, sajdng : " Thank you. Archbishop ; I feel as if 
 I were receiving the Palhum." 
 
 At a breakfast-party the host asked Huxley his views 
 on the Pentateuch, which he gave. Dean Stanley, who 
 was one of the company, disagreed. To use Huxley's 
 own words, the account of Creation in Genesis he dis- 
 missed at once as unhistorical ; but the call of Abraham, 
 and the historical narrative of the Pentateuch he ac- 
 cepted. This was because — ^he had seen Palestine, but 
 he wasn't present at the Creation ! 
 
 James Kenneth Stephen, the author of " Lapsus Calami," 
 
SOME RECENT WITS 321 
 
 whose early death removed one of the most promising men 
 of his generation, seems to have been possessed of a hvely 
 wit, for to him we owe the neat remark : " It has been said 
 that heaven lies about us in our infancy — ^but that is no 
 reason why we should lie about heaven in our old age." 
 
 It having been remarked that Lord Dufferin had slept 
 undisturbed by a great explosion at Rome when many tons 
 of gunpowder blew up, someone said that if that were so 
 " he would sleep through the last trump." " That de- 
 pends," commented W. W. Story, " whether or not it was 
 the Queen of Hearts." 
 
 A story of Edward FitzGerald's dislike of Sir Henry 
 Irving's acting shows him in a humorous light. The 
 EngMsh Omar had been persuaded to go and see Irving 
 as Hamlet and had sat on until the third act was in 
 progress, when his dishke getting the better of him he 
 rose to leave the theatre. As he reached the doorway 
 came the Prince's words, " Something too much of this." 
 Turning as he passed out FitzGerald said in audible tones, 
 " Much too much of it." 
 
 WilUam Hepworth Thompson (1810-1886) who was 
 Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, for the last twenty 
 years of his hf e was a man whose sayings were repeated far 
 beyond the limits of his university. One of those sayings 
 may indeed be regarded as having become proverbial. 
 A coUege meeting was being held about 1877 for the 
 revision of the statutes when one of the junior fellows 
 proposed to throw some new and onerous duty upon the 
 senior fellows, Thompson in replying to the proposal said : 
 " We are none of us infallible — ^not even the youngest 
 among us." 
 
 He described examinations as " impious attempts to 
 fathom the depths of human ignorance " ; and neatly 
 said of someone that he " devoted all the time he could 
 
322 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 spare from the adornment of his person to the systematic 
 neglect of his duties." 
 
 Thompson was accompanying a Church dignitary into 
 St Mary's through a crowd, and as progress became difii- 
 cult he called out : " Make way for the preacher, or some 
 of us will be disappointed." 
 
INDEX 
 
 X Beckett, Gilbert, 210 
 Abington, Mrs, 90 
 Addison, Joseph, 53-54 
 Ainger, Canon, 245-247 
 Alderson, Baron, 278-279 
 Alvanley, Lord, 175 et seq. 
 Apollo Club, the, 25 et seq. 
 Archer, Thomas, 14 
 Aubrey, John, 14, 123 
 Avonmore, Lord, 297-300 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 4, 17 
 
 Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 18 
 
 Bannister, Charles, met seq. 
 
 Bannister, John, 116 
 
 Barrington, Mr Rutland, 309 
 
 Barrow, Isaac, i 
 
 Barrowby, Dr, iii, 121-122 
 
 Beaconsfield, Earl of, 137 
 
 Beauclerk, Topham, 82-83 
 
 Beaumont, Francis, 16 
 
 Bedford Coffee-house, 109 
 
 Beefsteaks, Sublime Society of, 198 
 
 Belgrave, Lord, 153 
 
 Bemers Street Hoax, the, 217-219 
 
 Bettesworth, Serjeant, 51 
 
 Blanchard, Sydney, 212 
 
 Blomfield, Bishop, 239-240 
 
 Boswell, James, 12, 71-72, 74, 79. 83, 
 
 118 
 Bowen, Lord, 283-284 
 Bright, John, 245 
 Brome, Alexander, 26 
 Brookes, Shirley, 210-212 
 Brothers' Club, the, 52 
 Brougham, Xxjrd, 282, 289 
 Brown, Tom, 42 et seq. 
 Brudenel, George, 128 
 Brummell, Beau, 159, 183, 186 
 Burdett, Sir Francis, 135 
 
 323 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 76, 126, 129-131, 
 
 154, 167 
 Burnet, Bishop, 35 
 Bums, Mr John, 139 
 Busby, Dr, 40 
 Button's Coffee-house, 47 
 Byron, Henry James, 304 
 Byron, Lord, 141, 172, 209 
 
 Canning, George, 132-135 
 
 Cannon, Edward, 220 
 
 Cardwell, Viscount, 137 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 197 
 
 Carmarthen, Lord, 109 
 
 Chapter Coffee-house, 41 
 
 Charles II., King, 35-36 
 
 Chatterton, Thomas, 84 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 9, 73, 76 et seq. 
 
 Chesterton, Mr G. K., 11 
 
 Churchill, Charles, 102 
 
 Cibber, CoUey, 87 
 
 Cibber, Theophilus, 91-93 
 
 Clare, Lord, 293-294 
 
 Cobb, James, 187 
 
 Cobden, Richard, 136 
 
 Coffee-houses, 37 et seq., 45 et seq. 
 
 Colman, George, 116 et seq. 
 
 Combe, Alderman, 186 
 
 Comic Press, the, 7 
 
 Congreve, William, 41 
 
 Coryat, Thomas, 31 
 
 Creevey, Thomas, 176 
 
 Curran, John Philpot, 273, 286 et seq. 
 
 DiCKBNS, Charles, 208 
 
 Dictionary of National Biography, 60, 
 
 62, 101, 164, 295 
 Doyle, Sir Francis, 197 
 Dryden, John, 36, 39 
 Duck, Stephen, 61 
 
324 
 
 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Dudley, Lord, 172, 193, 195 
 Dundas, Henry, 128, 274 
 
 Edward VII., King, 196, 283, 312 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 17, 20, 21 
 EUenborough, Lord, 279-281 
 Erskine, Henry, 10, 274-276 
 Erskine, Lord, 159-160, 276 
 Estcourt, Dick, 54 
 Etherege, Sir George, 40 
 
 Falkland, Lord, 124 
 
 Farquharson, Right Hon. Robert, 58 
 
 Fell, Dr, 42 
 
 FitzGerald, Edward, 321 
 
 Fitzgerald, Mr Percy, 1 14 
 
 Foote, Samuel, 107 et seq., 115 
 
 Fox, Charles James, 129-132, 153, 160, 
 
 16S 
 Francis, Sir Phihp, 193 
 
 Garrett, John, 30 
 
 Garrick, David, 73, 87-89, 102-103, 
 
 109-111 
 Garth, Sir Samuel, 46 
 George II., King, 181 
 George III., King, 181, 188 
 George IV., King, 182, 300 
 George, Mr Lloyd, 138 
 Gibbon, Edward, 155 
 Gilbert, Sir William Schwenck, 12, 
 
 307-310 
 Gladstone, W. E., 120, 135 
 Glover, Mrs, 94 
 Godwin, William, 302 
 Goethe, 208 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 72, 79-8o, 82 
 Goschen, Lord, 138 
 Gregory, Pope, 15 
 Guildford, Lord, 162 
 
 Hallam, Henry, 261-262 
 
 Hazlitt, Mr W. Carew, S, 6, 16, 18, 
 
 S8. 63- 8S 
 Healy, Father James, 249-251 
 Healy, Mr Timothy, 284 
 Heard, Sir Isaac, 188 
 Heidegger, John James, 87 
 Henneker, Dr, 7 
 Henry, Rev. Robert, 234 
 Hill, Rowland, 236-239 
 Hill, Tom, 228 
 
 Holcroft, Thomas, 145 
 
 Holland, Lord, 132, 165-166 
 
 Holt, Lord Chief Justice, 271 
 
 Hood, Thomas, II, 209 
 
 Hook, Theodore, 89, 119, 215 et seq. 
 
 Houghton, Lord, 195-197, 258 
 
 How of Norwich, John, 20 
 
 Humby, Mrs, 94 
 
 Hume, David, 75 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, 209 
 
 Huxley, T. H., 320 
 
 Irving, Sir Henry, 321 
 Irving, Washington, 2 
 
 James I., King, 232 
 
 Jeffreys, Judge, 67 
 
 Jekyll, Joseph, 168 et seq. 
 
 Jenkins, Elijah, 59 
 
 Jerdan, William, 199 
 
 Jerrold, Douglas, 203 et seq. , 228 
 
 "Jest Book," Mark Lemon's, 59 
 
 Jest books, old, 3, 17 
 
 Jesters, old-time, 6 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, 3, 70 et seq., 108, 
 
 116, 128 
 Jones, Henry, bricklayer poet, 78 
 Jonson, Ben, 24 et seq. 
 Joseph, Rev., 233 
 
 Kelly, Michael, 146-147 
 Kemble, Roger, 89 
 Kit-Cat Club, 46 
 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 48 
 Knight, Joseph, 102, 108, 304 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 199 et seq. 
 Lear, Edward, 247 
 Lee, Sir Sidney, 60 
 Lemon, Mark, 59, 211 
 Lewes, G. H., 319 
 Lewis, " Monk," 146 
 Lindsay, Lady Charlotte, 128 
 Lockhart, J. G., 263 
 Lockit's Coffee-house, 40 
 Lucy, Sir Henry W., 137 
 Luttrell, Henry, 172-175 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 35, 37-39, 260-261 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 81 
 Macklin, Charles, 76, 90-91, 114 
 
INDEX 
 
 325 
 
 Mackreth, Sir Robert, 165 
 Magee, Bishop, 248 
 Maginn, William, 212-214 
 Malmesbury, William of, 15 
 Mansel, Dean, 248-249 
 Mansfield, Lord, 271-272 
 Martin, Henry, 123-124 
 Marvell, Andrew, 33 
 Mathews, Charles, 93-94 
 Maule, Sir William, 276-278 
 Mermaid Tavern, the, 24 et seq. 
 Miller, Joe, 29, 49, 55, 58 «' ■?«?-. 8? 
 Milnes, R. M. See Houghton 
 More, Sir Thomas, 17, 18 
 Morris, Sir Lewis, 318 
 Mottley, John, 59, 64 
 
 Nash, Beau, 104, 183 et seq. 
 Norbury, Lord Chief Justice, 272-274 
 North, Lord, 125-128 
 
 O'CoNNELL, Daniel, 175-178 
 O' Connell, Morgan, 176-177 
 O'Leary, Father, 302 
 Orger, Mrs, 94 
 
 Paley, Archdeacon, 235 
 Pantomime puns, 9 
 Palmerston, Lord, 137, 244 
 Parr, Samuel, 81-83 
 Patrick, Samuel, 47 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 136 
 Pepys, Samuel, 40 
 Philips, Ambrose, 52-53 
 Pitt, William, 125 
 Pitt, William, the younger, 128 
 Plunkett, Lord Chancellor, 281 
 Pollock, Sir Frederick, 264 
 Poole, John, 93 
 Pope, Alexander, 47-48 
 Popham, Speaker, 17 
 Pun, defence of the, 10 
 Purcel, Daniel, "the famous punster,'^ 
 65-66 
 
 QuiN, James, 87, 100 et seq. 
 
 Radcliff, Dr, 47 
 Ralegh, Sir Walter, 22, 24 
 Randolph, Thomas, 28 
 Rational Club, 207 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 167 
 
 Richardson, Joseph, 156 
 
 Robinson, Crabb, 169, 252 
 
 Rodd, Sir Rennell, 312 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, 173, 193-195, 260- 
 
 263, 267, 302 
 Rose, Sir George, 190 
 Rowe, Nicholas, 46 
 Ruskin, John, 315 
 Russell, Lord John, 135-136 
 Rutherford, Dr, 75 
 Rutland, Earl of, 17 
 
 Savage Club, 305 
 
 Scot, John the, 15 
 
 Selwyn, George Augustus, 163 et seq. 
 
 Shakespeare, William, 3, 20, 28 
 
 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 132, 140 
 
 et seq., 259 
 Sheridan, Tom, 162 
 Shore, Canon Teignmouth, 183 
 Shuter, Ned, go-91 
 Sichel, Mr Walter, 157 
 Siddons, Mrs, 71, 89 
 Smith, Horace, 192 
 Smith, James, 190- 191, 228 
 Smith, Sydney, 188, 252 et seq., 278 
 Smollett, Tobias, 102 
 South, Rev. Robert, 233 
 South Sea Bubble, the, 47 
 Steele, Sir Richard, 4, 46, 53 et seq. 
 Stephen, James Kenneth, 320 
 Stephen, Sir Leslie, 80 
 Sterne, Laurence, 48, 87, 234 
 Story, W. W., 320 
 Stowell, Baron, 172 
 Stubbs, Bishop, 247-248 
 Sutton, — , 189 
 
 Swan, " the famous punster," 66 
 Swift, Jonathan, 48, 49 et seq., 61 
 
 Tarlton, Richard, 1% et seq., 61 
 Taylor, John, the Water Poet, 4, 30 
 
 et seq. 
 Taylor, Michael Angelo, 149 
 Teck, Duchess of, 183 
 Tennyson, Lord, 196 
 Thackeray, W. M., 41, 208-209, 21 1 
 Thompson, W. H., 321 
 Thurlow, Lord, 300-302 
 Tillotson, Archbishop, 180 
 
326 
 
 A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 
 
 Toole, John Lawrence, 95 et seq. 
 Townsend, Charles, 164, 187 
 
 Waller, Edmund, 34-35 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 79, 100, 128, 164, 
 
 187-188 
 Warburton, Bishop, 56, 100 
 Westbury, Lord, 244 
 " Wet Paper Club," the, 41 
 Whately, Archbishop, 240-243 
 
 Whistler, J. A. McNeill, 310 et seq. 
 Wilberforce, Bishop, 243, 260 
 Wilberforce, William, igo 
 Wilde, Oscar, 316, 317-319 
 Wilkie, Sir David, 225 
 William IV., King, 182 
 Will's Coffee-house, 40, 44, 46 
 Wyndham, Sir Charles, 138, 305-307 
 
 Young, Edward, 83-84 
 
THE Rn'BRSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBDROH, 
 
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