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Updated: May 8, 2025
He trots about a briefless little barrister, a scribbler, devilish clever and impudent, who does his farces for him. Tenby 's the fellow's name, and it's the only thing I haven't heard him pun on. Puns are the smallpox of the language; we're cursed with an epidemic. By gad, the next time I meet him I 'll roar out for vaccine matter.
His Silvas, his Ribieras, his Shriftens, his Delmars remind us of people we have heard of somewhere, many times, without ever believing in their existence. His morality is honourable and conventional. There is cruelty in his fun and he can invent puns in the midst of carnage. His naiveties are perpetrated in a lurid light.
The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but not, like his wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason, and to tyrannize over the whole man. There are too many places in the Plays where this happens. Poor old dying John of Gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name, is a pathetic instance of it.
As the latter anticipated, the day proved very tiresome; the usual complement of music was contributed by Grace, the expected quantity of flattering nothings gracefully uttered by her brother, the customary amount of execrable puns handed around the circle for patronage and Irene gave the signal for dinner. Mr.
"I think nothing is more contemptible." "Merely because that way of being funny is grown old-fashioned," said Cutter. "Fifty or sixty years ago, a hundred years ago, when a man wanted to be very bitingly sarcastic, he would compose a criticism upon his enemy which was only a long string of abominable puns; each pun was printed in italics. That was thought to be very funny."
When he was about ten yards off he turned, and making a speaking-trumpet of his hands, he shouted through them: "She's perfection!" Larive is decidedly an ass. His jokes strike you as funny at first; but there's nothing in him, he's a mere hawker of stale puns; there's nothing but selfishness under his jesting exterior. I have no belief in him.
"It is evident that his judgment was not equal to his other faculties; that his passions, which were naturally strong and violent, were not always under proper regulation; that he was weak, credulous, enthusiastic, and superstitious. His conversation is said to have been instructive and entertaining, in a high degree, though often marred by levity, vanity, imprudence and puns."
That is the case of the image too large for comprehension. Another instance sticks in my mind of the image which is too small. In one of his poems, he says that abyss between the known and the unknown is bridged by "Pontifical death." There are about ten historical and theological puns in that one word.
The Arab poets have written many poems in praise of their favourite tree and fruit, but none of them are so funny as these lines which Campbell wrote from Algiers where the date tree also flourishes and with which we will end this chapter: "Though my letter bears date as you view From the land of the date-bearing palm I will palm no more puns upon you."
People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism. I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two books, of which I will mark the places on this slip of paper. I wished to refer to two eminent authorities.
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