If by worst be only meant the most far-fetched and startling, we agree
to it. A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a
pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect. It
is an antic which does not stand upon manners, but comes bounding into
the presence, and does not show the less comic for being dragged in
sometimes by the head and shoulders. What though it limp a little, or
prove defective in one leg--all the better. A pun may easily be too
curious and artificial. Who has not at one time or other been at a
party of professors (himself perhaps an old offender in that line),
where, after ringing a round of the most ingenious conceits, every man
contributing his shot, and some there the most expert shooters of the
day; after making a poor _word_ run the gauntlet till it is ready to
drop; after hunting and winding it through all the possible ambages of
similar sounds; after squeezing, and hauling, and tugging at it, till
the very milk of it will not yield a drop further,--suddenly some
obscure, unthought-of fellow in a corner, who was never 'prentice
to the trade, whom the company for very pity passed over, as we
do by a known poor man when a money-subscription is going round,
no one calling upon him for his quota--has all at once come out
with something so whimsical, yet so pertinent; so brazen in its
pretensions, yet so impossible to be denied; so exquisitely good,
and so deplorably bad, at the same time,--that it has proved a Robin
Hood's shot; any thing ulterior to that is despaired of; and the party
breaks up, unanimously voting it to be the very worst (that is, best)
pun of the evening. This species of wit is the better for not being
perfect in all its parts. What it gains in completeness, it loses in
naturalness. The more exactly it satisfies the critical, the less hold
it has upon some other faculties. The puns which are most entertaining
are those which will least bear an analysis. Of this kind is the
following, recorded, with a sort of stigma, in one of Swift's
Miscellanies.
An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carrying a hare through
the streets, accosts him with this extraordinary question: "Prithee,
friend, is that thy own hare, or a wig?"
There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. A man might blur ten
sides of paper in attempting a defence of it against a critic who
should be laughter-proof. The quibble in itself is not considerable.
It is only a new turn given, by a little false pronunciation, to a
very common, though not very courteous inquiry. Put by one gentleman
to another at a dinner-party, it would have been vapid; to the
mistress of the house, it would have shown much less wit than
rudeness. We must take in the totality of time, place, and person;
the pert look of the inquiring scholar, the desponding looks of the
puzzled porter; the one stopping at leisure, the other hurrying on
with his burthen; the innocent though rather abrupt tendency of
the first member of the question, with the utter and inextricable
irrelevancy of the second; the place--a public street, not favourable
to frivolous investigations; the affrontive quality of the primitive
inquiry (the common question) invidiously transferred to the
derivative (the new turn given to it) in the implied satire; namely,
that few of that tribe are expected to eat of the good things which
they carry, they being in most countries considered rather as the
temporary trustees than owners of such dainties,--which the fellow was
beginning to understand; but then the _wig_ again comes in, and he can
make nothing of it: all put together constitute a picture: Hogarth
could have made it intelligible on canvass.
Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a very bad pun,
because of the defectiveness in the concluding member, which is its
very beauty, and constitutes the surprise. The same persons shall
cry up for admirable the cold quibble from Virgil about the broken
Cremona;[1] because it is made out in all its parts, and leaves
nothing to the imagination. We venture to call it cold; because of
thousands who have admired it, it would be difficult to find one who
has heartily chuckled at it. As appealing to the judgment merely
(setting the risible faculty aside,) we must pronounce it a monument
of curious felicity. But as some stories are said to be too good to be
true, it may with equal truth be asserted of this bi-verbal allusion,
that it is too good to be natural. One cannot help suspecting that the
incident was invented to fit the line. It would have been better had
it been less perfect. Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suffered
by filling up. The _nimium Vicina_ was enough in conscience; the
_Cremonæ_ afterwards loads it. It is in fact a double pun; and we
have always observed that a superfoetation in this sort of wit is
dangerous. When a man has said a good thing, it is seldom politic to
follow it up. We do not care to be cheated a second time; or, perhaps,
the mind of man (with reverence be it spoken) is not capacious enough
to lodge two puns at a time. The impression, to be forcible, must be
simultaneous and undivided.
[Footnote 1: Swift.]