The late amiable, learned, and pious Bishop Heber was not above a pun
in his day, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's _anathema_, that a man who
made a pun would pick a pocket. Among the _jeux des mots_ attributed
to him are the following: he was one day dining with an Oxford party,
comprises the élite of his day, and when the servant was in the act
of removing the table-cloth from off the green table-covering, at the
end of their meal, he exclaimed, in the words of Horace--
"Diffugere nives: redeunt jam gramina campis."
At another time he made one of a party of Oxonians, amongst whom was a
gentleman of great rotundity of person, on which account he had
acquired the _soubriquet_ of 'heavy-a--se;' and he was withal of very
_somniferous_ habits, frequently dozing in the midst of a conversation
that would have made the very glasses tingle with delight. He had
fallen fast asleep during the time a mirth-moving subject was recited
by one of the party, but woke up just at the close, when all save
himself were "shaking fat sides," and on his begging to know the
subject of their laughter, HEBER let fly at him in pure Horatian--
"Exsomnis stupet Evias."
The mirth-loving Dr. Barnard, late Provost of Eton, was cotemporary,
at Cambridge, with