A gentleman, who was dining with another, praised the meat very much, and inquired who was his butcher. "His name is Addison."—"Addison!" echoed the guest; "pray is he any relation to the poet?"—"I can't say: but this I know, he is seldom without his Steel by his side."
A traveller coming up to an inn door, said: "Pray, friend, are you the master of this house?"—"Yes, sir," answered Boniface, "my wife has been dead these three weeks."
Lord John Russell, remarkable for the smallness of his person as Lord Nugent was for the reverse, was expected at a house where Sydney Smith was a guest. "Lord John comes here to-day," said Sydney Smith, "his corporeal anti-part, Lord Nugent, is already here. Heaven send he may not swallow John! There are, however, stomach-pumps in case of accident."
A very dull man, after dinner, had been boring the company with a long discourse, in the course of which he had given utterance to ethical views as old as the hills, as though he had just discovered them. When he had done repeating his truisms, Charles Lamb gravely said: "Then, sir, you are actually prepared to maintain that a thief is not altogether a moral man."
(Said to be written by Peter Pindar.)
A young lawyer who had been "admitted" about a year, was asked by a friend, "How do you like your new profession?" The reply was accompanied by a brief sigh to suit the occasion: "My profession is much better than my practice."
Mr. Reynolds, the dramatist, once met a free and easy actor, who told him that he had passed three festive days at the seat of the Marquis and Marchioness of ——, without any invitation. He had gone there on the assumption that as my lord and lady were not on speaking terms, each would suppose the other had asked him, and so it turned out.
Judge Clayton was an honest man, but not a profound lawyer. Soon after he was raised to the Irish bench, he happened to dine in company with Counsellor Harwood, celebrated for his fine brogue, his humor, and his legal knowledge. Clayton began to make some observations on the Laws of Ireland. "In my country" (England), said he, "the laws are numerous, but then one is always found to be a key to the other. In Ireland it is just the contrary; your laws so perpetually clash with one another, and are so very contradictory, that I protest I don't understand them."—"True, my lord," cried Harwood, "that is what we all say."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was so bad a horseman, that when mounted he generally attracted unfavorable notice. On a certain occasion he was riding along a turnpike road, in the county of Durham, when he was met by a wag, who, mistaking his man, thought the rider a good subject for sport. "I say, young man," cried the rustic, "did you see a tailor on the road?"—"Yes, I did; and he told me that, if I went a little further, I should meet a goose."
The editor of the Evangelical Observer, in reference to a certain person, took occasion to write that he was rectus in ecclesia, i.e., in good standing in the church. The compositor, in the editor's absence, converted it into rectus in culina, which although not very bad Latin, altered the sense very materially, giving the reverend gentleman a good standing in the kitchen.
(Upon the trustworthiness of —— ——.)
When ladies wore their dresses very low and very short, a wit observed that "they began too late and ended too soon."
A gentleman gave a friend some first-rate wine, which he tasted and drank, making no remark upon it. The owner, disgusted at his guest's want of appreciation, next offered some strong but inferior wine, which the guest had no sooner tasted than he exclaimed that it was excellent wine. "But you said nothing of the first" remarked his host "O," replied the other, "the first required nothing being said of it. It spoke for itself. I thought the second wanted a trumpeter."
A judge, joking a young barrister, said, "If you and I were turned into a horse and an ass, which would you prefer to be?"—"The ass, to be sure," replied the barrister. "I've heard of an ass being made a judge, but a horse never."
At an hotel at Brighton, Douglas Jerrold was dining with two friends, one of whom, after dinner, ordered "a bottle of old port."—"Waiter," added Jerrold, with a significant twinkle of his eye, "mind now; a bottle of your old port, not your elder port."
When Dr. H. and Sergeant A. were walking arm-in-arm, a wag said to a friend, "These two are just equal to one highwayman."—"Why?" was the response. "Because it is a lawyer and a doctor—your money or your life."
Burke once mentioned to Fox that he had written a tragedy. "Did you let Garrick see it?" inquired his friend: "No," replied Burke; "though I had the folly to write it, I had the wit to keep it to myself."
Dr. Maginn dining with a friend on ham and chicken, addressed Sukey Boyle, his friend's housekeeper, thus: "You know, Boyle, what old Ovid, in his 'Art of Love' (book iii.), says; I give you the same wish:—
May you always have a ham hanging in your kitchen." The doctor insisted that tea was well known to the Romans, "for," said he, "even in the time of Plautus it was a favorite beverage with the ladies,—
Observing Sukey Boyle, he said to his friend, "Ah! John, I see you follow the old advice we both learned at school, [Greek: Charizou tê Psychê], 'Indulge yourself with Sukey.'" There was some hock at dinner, which he thus eulogized:—
One of the Kembles made his first appearance on the stage as an opera singer. His voice was, however, so bad, that at a rehearsal the conductor of the orchestra called out, "Mr. Kemble! Mr. Kemble! you are murdering the music!"—"My dear sir," was the quiet rejoinder, "it is far better to murder it outright, than to keep on beating it as you do."
Some one jocularly observed to the Marquis Wellesley, that, in his arrangements of the ministry, his brother, the Duke, had thrown him overboard. "Yes," said the Marquis; "but I trust I have strength enough to swim to the other side."
One asked his friend, why he married so little a wife? "Why," said he, "I thought you knew, that of all evils we should choose the least."
A laborer's daughter, who had been in service from her childhood, would frequently wish to be married, that, as she expressed herself, she might rest her bones. Some time afterwards she got married, and her late mistress meeting her, asked her, "Well, Mary, have you rested your bones yet?"—"Yes, indeed," replied she, with a sigh, "I have rested my jaw-bones."
A chartist at a public meeting, in the course of a speech about the "five points" of the charter, exclaimed, "Gentlemen, is not one man as good as another?"—"Uv course he is," shouted an excited Irish chartist, "and a great deal betther."
A well-dressed fellow walked into a room where they were talking politics, and, stretching himself up to his full height, exclaimed, in a loud voice, "Where is a radical? Show me a radical, gentlemen, and I'll show you a liar!" In an instant a man exclaimed, "I am a radical, sir!"—"You are?"—"Yes, sir, I am!"—"Well, just you step round the corner with me, and I'll show you a fellow who said I couldn't find a radical in the ward. Ain't he a liar, I should like to know?"
Curran, in describing a speech made by Sergeant Hewitt, said: "My learned friend's speech put me exactly in mind of a familiar utensil in domestic use, commonly called an extinguisher. It began at a point, and on it went widening and widening, until at last it fairly put the question out altogether."
A friend of Sydney Smith inquired, "What is Puseyism!" To which the witty canon replied: "Puseyism, sir, is inflexion and genuflexion; posture and imposture; bowing to the east, and curtseying to the west."
Brougham, speaking of the salary attached to a new judgeship, said it was all moonshine. Lyndhurst, in his dry and waggish way, remarked, "May be so, my Lord Harry; but I have a strong notion that, moonshine though it be, you would like to see the first quarter of it."
Lord Grey complains that he cannot succeed in pleasing any party. He should follow the example of duellists, and by going out he would certainly give satisfaction.
An actor named Priest was playing at one of the principal theatres. Some one remarked to the Garrick Club that there were a great many men in the pit. "Probably clerks who have taken Priest's orders," said Mr. Poole, one of the best punsters as well as one of the cleverest comic satirists of the day.
After a very violent speech from an opposition member, Mr. Burke started suddenly from his seat, and rushed to the ministerial side of the house, exclaiming with much vehemence, "I quit the camp! I quit the camp!"—"I hope," said Mr. Sheridan, "as the honorable gentleman has quitted the camp as a deserter, he will not return as a spy."
A Cambridge tutor said to his pupil, "If you go over to Newmarket, beware of betting, for in nine cases out of ten it brings a man to ruin."—"Sir," said the youth, "I must really differ from you; so far from ever being the worse for it, I have invariably been the better."
When Curran was cross-examining Lundy Foot, the celebrated Irish tobacconist, he put a question at which Lundy hesitated a great deal: "Lundy," exclaimed Curran, "that's a poser,—a deuse of a pinch, Lundy!"
An eminent painter, who had suffered, under the common malady of his profession, namely, to paint portraits for persons who neither paid for them nor took them away, sent word to an ugly customer who refused to pay, that he was in treaty for the picture with the landlord of the "Saracen's Head." It was paid for immediately.
An Irish post-boy having driven a gentleman a long stage during torrents of rain, was asked if he was not very wet? "Arrah! I wouldn't care about being very wet, if I wasn't so very dry, your honor."
The beautiful Lady Coventry was exhibiting to Selwyn a splendid new dress, covered with large silver spangles, the size of a shilling, and inquired of him whether he admired her taste. "Why," he said, "you will be change for a guinea."
A little boy one day came running home, and said, "O father, I've just seen the blackest man that ever was!"—"How black was he, my son?"—"O, he was as black as black can be! why, father, charcoal would make a white mark on him!"
Harry Woodward, walking with a friend, met a most miserable object, who earnestly solicited their charity. On Woodward giving a few pence, his friend said, "I believe that fellow is an impostor."—"He is either the most distressed man, or the best actor, I ever saw in my life," replied the comedian: "and, as either one or the other, he has a brotherly claim upon me."
A poet was once walking with T——, in the street, reciting some of his verses. T—— perceiving, at a short distance, a man yawning, pointed him out to the poet, saying, "Not so loud, he hears you."
A gentleman from Ireland, on entering a London tavern, saw a countryman of his, a Tipperary squire, sitting over his pint of wine in the coffee-room. "My dear fellow," said he, "what are you about? For the honor of Tipperary, don't be after sitting over a pint of wine in a house like this!"—"Make yourself aisy, countryman," was the reply, "It's the seventh I have had, and every one in the room knows it."
Barham having sent his friend, Sydney Smith, a brace of pheasants, the present was acknowledged in the following characteristic epistle: "Many thanks, my dear sir, for your kind present of game. If there is a pure and elevated pleasure in this world, it is that of roast pheasant and bread sauce; barn-door fowls for dissenters, but for the real churchman, the thirty-nine times articled clerk, the pheasant, the pheasant.—Ever yours, S.S."
Thomson, the author of the "Seasons," was wonderfully indolent. A friend entered his room, and finding him in bed, although the day was far spent, asked him why he did not get up. "Man, I hae nae motive," replied the poet.
The surgeon of an English ship of war used to prescribe salt water for his patients in all disorders. Having sailed one evening on a party of pleasure, he happened by some mischance to be drowned. The captain, who had not heard of the disaster, asked one of the tars next day if he had heard anything of the doctor. "Yes," answered Jack: "he was drowned last night in his own medicine chest."
Admiral Lee, when only a post captain, being on board his ship one very rainy and stormy night, the officer of the watch came down to his cabin and cried, "Sir, the sheet-anchor is coming home."—"Indeed," says the captain, "I think the sheet-anchor is perfectly in the right of it. I don't know what would stay out such a stormy night as this."
Theodore Hook was relating to his friend, Charles Mathews, how, on one occasion, when supping in the company of Peake, the latter surreptitiously removed from his plate several slices of tongue; and, affecting to be very much annoyed by such practical joking, Hook concluded with the question, "Now, Charles, what would you do to anybody who treated you in such a manner?"—"Do?" exclaimed Mathews, "if any man meddled with my tongue, I'd lick him!"
A landed proprietor in the small county of Rutland became very intimate with the Duke of Argyle, to whom, in the plenitude of his friendship, he said: "How I wish your estate were in my county!" Upon which the duke replied: "I'm thinking, if it were, there would be no room for yours."
At one of the annual dinners of the members of the Chapel Royal, a gentleman had been plaguing Edward Cannon with a somewhat dry disquisition on the noble art of fencing. Cannon for some time endured it with patience; but at length, on the man remarking that Sir George D—— was a great fencer, Cannon, who disliked him, replied, "I don't know, sir, whether Sir George is a great fencer, but Sir George is a great fool!" A little startled, the other rejoined, "Possibly he is; but then, you know, a man may be both."—"So I see, sir," said Cannon, turning away.
Mrs. Powell the actress was at a court of assize when a young barrister, who rose to make his maiden speech, suddenly stopped short and could not proceed. The lady, feeling for his situation, cried out, as though he had been a young actor on his first appearance, "Somebody give him the word,—somebody give him the word!"
Porson was once disputing with an acquaintance, who, getting the worst of it, said, "Professor, my opinion of you is most contemptible."—"Sir," returned the great Grecian, "I never knew an opinion of yours that was not contemptible."
One of the curiosities some time since shown at a public exhibition, professed to be a skull of Oliver Cromwell. A gentleman present observed that it could not be Cromwell's, as he had a very large head, and this was a small skull. "O, I know all that," said the exhibitor, undisturbed, "but you see this was his skull when he was a boy."
A Cantab, one day observing a ragamuffin-looking boy scratching his head at the door of Alderman Purchase, in Cambridge, where he was begging, and thinking to pass a joke upon him, said, "So, Jack, you are picking them out, are you?"—"Nah, sar," retorted the urchin; "I takes 'em as they come!"
The late Earl Dudley wound up an eloquent tribute to the virtues of a deceased Baron of the Exchequer with this pithy peroration: "He was a good man, an excellent man. He had the best melted butter I ever tasted in my life."
Epigram on the occasion of the duel between Tom Moore, the poet, and Francis Jeffrey:—
The Duke of Wellington having had his windows broken by the mob, continued to have boards before the windows of his house in Piccadilly. "Strange that the Duke will not renounce his political errors," said A'Beckett, "seeing that no pains have been spared to convince him of them."
There was in Wilkes's time a worthy person, who had risen from the condition of a bricklayer to be an alderman of London. Among other of his early habits, the civic dignitary retained that of eating everything with his fingers. One day a choice bit of turbot having repeatedly escaped from his grasp, Wilkes, who witnessed the dilemma, whispered, "My lord, you had better take your trowel to it."
During the representation of "Macbeth," an eminent special pleader graced the boxes of Drury Lane Theatre, to see it performed. When the hero questions the Witches, as to what they are doing: they answer, "a deed without a name." Our counsellor, whose attention was at that moment directed more to Coke upon Littleton than to Shakespeare, catching, however, the words in the play, repeated, "A deed without a name! why, 't is void."
The following lines were addressed to a gentleman notoriously addicted to the vice which has been euphemistically described as "the postponement of the truth for the purposes of the moment":—
An Irishman was once brought up before a magistrate, charged with marrying six wives. The magistrate asked him how he could be so hardened a villain? "Please your worship," says Paddy, "I was just trying to get a good one."
The conversation at Holland House turning on first love, Thomas Moore compared it to a potato, "because it shoots from the eyes."—"Or rather," exclaimed Lord Byron, "because it becomes less by pairing."
An acquaintance remarked to Dr. Robert South, the celebrated preacher at the court of Charles the Second, "Ah! doctor, you are such a wit!" The doctor replied, "Don't make game of people's infirmities: you, sir, might have been born a wit!"
Sir Joseph Jekyll wrote the following impromptu, on observing a certain sergeant, well known for his prosiness, bustling into the Court of King's Bench, where he was engaged in a case:—
Mr. Dale, who it would appear was a short stout man, had a person in his employment named Matthew, who was permitted that familiarity with his master which was so characteristic of the former generation. One winter day, Mr. Dale came into the counting-house, and complained that he had fallen on the ice. Matthew, who saw that his master was not much hurt, grinned a sarcastic smile. "I fell all my length," said Mr. Dale. "Nae great length, sir," said Matthew. "Indeed, Matthew, ye need not laugh," said Mr. Dale, "I have hurt the sma' of my back."—"I wunner whaur that is," said Matthew.
"Mr. Brown, I owe you a grudge, remember that!"—"I shall not be frightened then, for I never knew you to pay anything that you owe."
"Pray, my lord," asked a fashionable lady of Lord Kenyon, "what do you think my son had better do in order to succeed in the law?"—"Let him spend all his money: marry a rich wife, and spend all hers: and when he has not got a shilling in the world, let him attack the law." Such was the advice of an old Chief Justice.
It is too true that there are many patriots, who, while they bleat about the "cause of liberty," act in so interested a manner that they are evidently looking more after the effects.
When the British ships under Lord Nelson were bearing down to attack the combined fleet off Trafalgar, the first lieutenant of the "Revenge," on going round to see that all hands were at quarters, observed one of the men,—an Irishman,—devoutly kneeling at the side of his gun. So very unusual an attitude exciting his surprise and curiosity he asked the man if he was afraid. "Afraid," answered the tar, "no, your honor; I was only praying that the enemy's shot may be distributed in the same proportion as the prize-money,—the greatest part among the officers."
When we heard —— say a thing of some acidity the other night in the House of Commons, the honorable member reminded us of a calf's head with a lemon in it.—G. A'B.
A namesake of Charles Fox having been hung at Tyburn, the latter inquired of George Selwyn whether he had attended the execution? "No," was his reply, "I make a point of never attending rehearsals!"
Rowland Hill rode a great deal, and exercise preserved him in vigorous health. On one occasion, when asked by a medical friend what physician and apothecary he employed, to be always so well, he replied, "My physician has always been a horse, and my apothecary an ass!"
A Roman Catholic prelate requested Pugin, the architect, to furnish designs, etc., for a new church. It was to be "very large, very handsome, and very cheap"; the parties purposing to erect being "very poor; in fact, having only £——."—"Say thirty shillings more," replied the astonished architect, "and have a tower and spire at once!"
A beggar in Dublin had been long besieging an old, gouty, testy gentleman, who roughly refused to relieve him. The mendicant civilly replied, "I wish your honor's heart was as tender as your toes."
A nation grown free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigor of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze, that he might chuckle over the splendor.—S.S.
A lady having put to Canning the silly question, "Why have they made the spaces in the iron gate at Spring Gardens so narrow?" he replied, "O, ma'am, because such very fat people used to go through" (a reply concerning which Tom Moore remarked that "the person who does not relish it can have no perception of real wit").
Lord Plunkett had a son in the Church at the time the Tithe Corporation Act was passed, and warmly supported the measure. Some one observed, "I wonder how it is that so sensible a man as Plunkett cannot see the imperfections in the Tithe Corporation Act!"—"Pooh! pooh!" said Norbury, "the reason's plain enough; he has the sun (son) in his eye."
An Englishman paying an Irish shoeblack with rudeness, the "dirty urchin" said, "My honey, all the polish you have is upon your boots and I gave you that."
On the formation of the Grenville administration, Bushe, who had the reputation of a waverer, apologized one day for his absence from court, on the ground that he was cabinet-making. The chancellor maliciously disclosed the excuse on his return. "O, indeed, my lord, that is an occupation in which my friend would distance me, as I was never a turner or a joiner."
A conceited coxcomb, with a very patronizing air, called out to an Irish laborer, "Here, you bogtrotter, come and tell me the greatest lie you can, and I'll treat you to a jug of whiskey-punch."—"By my word," said Pat, "an' yer honor's a gintleman!"
Hook one day walking in the Strand with a friend, had his attention directed to a very pompous gentleman, who strutted along as if the street were his own. Instantly leaving his companion, Hook went up to the stranger and said, "I beg your pardon sir, but pray may I ask,—are you anybody in particular?" Before the astonished magnifico could collect himself so as to reply practically or otherwise to the query, Hook had passed on.
A schoolmaster said of himself: "I am like a hone, I sharpen a number of blades, but I wear myself in doing it."
Judge Jeffreys, of notorious memory (pointing with his cane to a man who was about to be tried), said, "There is a great rogue at the end of my cane." The man pointed at, inquired, "At which end, my lord?"
A gentleman one day observed to Henry Erskine, that punning was the lowest of wit. "It is," answered Erskine, "and therefore the foundation of all wit."
Lord North's good humor and readiness were of admirable service to him when the invectives of his opponents would have discomforted a graver minister. He frequently indulged in a real or seeming slumber. On one occasion, an opposition debater, supposing him to be napping, exclaimed, "Even now, in these perils, the noble lord is asleep!"—"I wish I was," suddenly interposed the weary minister.
"How do you find yourself to-day," said an old friend to Jack Reeve, as he met him going in dinner costume to the city. "Thank you," he replied, "the Lord Mayor finds me to-day."
Sheridan, being on a parliamentary committee, one day entered the room as all the members were seated and ready to commence business. Perceiving no empty seat, he bowed, and looking round the table with a droll expression of countenance, said: "Will any gentleman move that I may take the chair?"
A man with a scolding wife, being asked what his occupation was, replied that he kept a hot-house.
A lady, who was very submissive and modest before marriage, was observed by a friend to use her tongue pretty freely after. "There was a time," he remarked, "when I almost imagined she had no tongue."—"Yes," said the husband, with a sigh, "but it's very very long since!"
When Sir Thomas More was brought a prisoner to the Tower, the lieutenant, who had formerly received many favors from him, offered him "suche poore cheere" as he had; to which the ex-chancellor replied, "Assure yourself, master lieutenant, I do not mislike my cheer; but whensoever so I do, then thrust me out of your doors."
A gentleman going to take water at Whitehall stairs, cried out, as he came near the place, "Who can swim?"—"I, master," said forty bawling mouths; when the gentleman observing one slinking away, called after him; but the fellow turning about, said, "Sir, I cannot swim,"—"Then you are my man," said the gentleman, "for you will at least take care of me for your own sake."
A Scottish minister being one day engaged in visiting some members of his flock, came to the door of a house where his gentle tapping could not be heard for the noise of contention within. After waiting a little he opened the door and walked in, saying, with an authoritative voice, "I should like to know who is the head of this house?"—"Weel, sir," said the husband and father, "if ye sit doon a wee, we'll maybe be able to tell ye, for we're just trying to settle that point."
Curran was just rising to cross-examine a witness before a judge who was familiar with the dry-as-dust black-letter law books, but could never comprehend a jest, when the witness began to laugh before the learned counsel had asked him a question. "What are you laughing at, friend," said Curran, "what are you laughing at? Let me tell you that a laugh without a joke is like—is like—"—"Like what, Mr. Curran," asked the judge, imagining he was at fault. "Just exactly, my lord, like a contingent remainder without any particular estate to support it."
On the departure of Bishop Selwyn for his diocese, New Zealand, Sydney Smith, when taking his leave of him, said: "Good by, my dear Selwyn; I hope you will not disagree with the man who eats you!"