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Cimon was overrunning with puns and jests, but the others not very merry. The omen of Glaucon’s thoughtlessness, or something else, made husband and wife silent, yet it was a day when man or maid should have felt their spirits rise. The sky had never been brighter, not in Athens. Never had the mountains and sea spread more gloriously.
Its principal faults are that it is sadly wire-drawn, and abounds in puns, endless antitheses, and inventions for surprising or bewildering the reader; graces which were greatly admired by the contemporaries of the poet.
To this the man objected, that his business was to drive, not to run on errands. See ante, ii. 241, for Johnson's contempt of puns. 'He left not faction, but of that was left. Absalom and Achitophel, l. 568. Boswell wrote of Gibbon in 1779: 'He is an ugly, affected, disgusting fellow, and poisons our Literary Club to me. Letters of Boswell, p.242. See ante, ii.443, note 1.
Under this ridiculous exterior indeed lay no small amount of moral courage and of intellectual ability. James was a ripe scholar, with a considerable fund of shrewdness, of mother-wit, and ready repartee. His canny humour lights up the political and theological controversies of the time with quaint incisive phrases, with puns and epigrams and touches of irony which still retain their savour.
He is a theoretical Quidnunc is tenacious in argument, though wary; carries his point thus and thus, bandies objections and answers with uneasy pleasantry, and when he has the worst of the dispute, puns very emphatically on his adversary's name, if it admits of that kind of misconstruction. George Kirkpatrick is admired by the waiter, who is a sleek hand, for his temper in managing an argument.
But what I relished most was the long talks I had with them both about authorship in all its phases, and the exchange of delight in this poem and that, this novel and that, with gay, wilful runs away to make some wholly irrelevant joke, or fire puns into the air at no mark whatever.
Alfred, who is not accustomed, among us, to benevolent listeners, gave himself up to the delight of being able to talk without fear of interruption from jests and ironical puns. They had charmed each other. The stronghold of Richard Coeur-de-Lion recalls, by its situation and architecture, the castles of the Rhine.
We all dined together at the hotel; and a merry party we certainly were, "within the limits of becoming mirth." Wit sparkled, conundrums puzzled, bad puns checked, and rich jokes awoke the laughing echoes of the old dining-hall. Happy people are those travelling actors happy because they are careless, and, in the enjoyment of to-day, think not of the morrow. Are they not true philosophers?
Talking of fins and friends, Heaven defend me from ever again forming an intimacy with a pedantic epicure, especially if he puns!" "Why, what has a pedant to do with fins?"
You must have been associating with Dr. C n, lately." "So you can't give me credit for a little originality, because my facetious vein is new to you. Now, do your old friend justice, and believe even in his puns; if not pungent, he is self-sustaining and independent; but, remember, I count on you absolutely, next week. One trunk apiece and no bandboxes or baskets.
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