with S. was Th, who has since executed with ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts. Thwas a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech, with raven locks. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentleman in his teens.

"Matthew Field had for many years the classical charge of a hundred children, during the four or five years of their education; and his very highest form seldom proceeded further than two or three of the introductory fables of Phædrus. How things were suffered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the proper person to have remedied these abuses, always affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a province not strictly his own. I have not been without my suspicions that he was not altogether displeased at the contrast we presented to his end of the school. We were a sort of helots to his young Spartans. He would sometimes, with ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of the Under-master, and then, with sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper boys, 'how neat and fresh the twigs looked.' While his pale students were battering their brains over Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep as that enjoined by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our ease, in our little Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of his discipline, and the prospect did but the more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous forces: his storms came near, but never touched us; contrary to Gideon's miracle, while all around were drenched, our fleece was dry. His boys turned out the better scholars; we, I suspect, have the advantage in temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without something of terror alloying their gratitude; the remembrance of Field comes back with all the soothing images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work like play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and life itself a playing holiday.'

"Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to understand a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds of the Ululantes, and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a rabid pedant. His English style was crampt to barbarism. His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to these periodical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes. He would laugh, ay, and heartily, but then it must be at Flaccus's quibble about

Rer-or at the tristes severitas in vultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence-thin jests, which at their first broaching could hardly have had vis enough to move a Roman muscle. He had two wigs, both pedantic, but of different omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh-powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old, discoloured, unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execution. Woe to the school, when he made his morning appearance in his passy, or passionate wig. No comet expounded surer. J. B. had a heavy hand. I have known him double his knotty fist at a poor trembling child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a 'Sirrah, do you presume to set your wits at me?"

ORIGIN OF "ELIA."

"Poor Elia-the real (for I am but a counterfeit)—is dead. The fact is, a person of that name, an Italian, was a fellow clerk of mine at the South Sea House thirty (not forty) years ago, when the characters I described there existed, but had left it like myself many years; and I having a brother now there, and doubting how he might relish certain descriptions in it, I clapped down the name of Elia to it, which passed off pretty well, for Elia himself added the function of an author to that of a scrivener like myself. I went the other day (not having seen him for a year) to laugh over with him at my usurpation of his name, and found him, alas! no more than a name, for he died of consumption eleven months ago, and I knew not of it.

"So the name has fairly devolved to me, I think; and 'tis all he has left me.

"June 30, 1821."

CHARLES LAMB'S PUNS.

"C. LAMB.

"Puns I have not made many (nor punned much) since the date of my last. One I cannot help relating. A constable in Salisbury Cathedral was telling me that eight persons dined at the top of the spire of the cathedral; upon which I remarked that they must be very sharp set. But, in general, I cultivate the reasoning part of my mind more than the imaginative. I am stuffed out with eating turkey for dinner, and another turkey for supper yesterday (Turkey in Europe and Turkey in Asia) that I can't jog on. It is New Year here. That is, it

was New Year half a year back when I was writing this. Nothing puzzles me more than time and space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them. The Persian Ambassador is the principal thing talked of now. I sent some people to see him worship the sun on Primrose Hill, at halfpast six in the morning, 28th of November; but he did not come, which made me think the old fire-worshippers are a sect almost extinct in Persia. The Persian Ambassador's name is Shaw Ali Mirzan, and common people call him Shaw Nonsense."

THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST. Here is one of Lamb's "Popular Fallacies," somewhat abridged :"If by the worst he 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.

"This species of wit is the better for being not 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 inexplicable 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 canvas.

"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 person shall cry up for admirable the cold quibble from Virgil about the broken Cremona; 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 biverbal 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 Cremone afterwards loads it. It is in fact a double pun; and we have always observed that a superfotation 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."

66

CHARLES LAMB AT A PUBLISHER'S DINNER.

Amongst others, Charles Lamb came to most of these dinners, always dressed in black (his old snuff-coloured suit having been dismissed for years); always kind and genial;

conversational, not talkative, but quick in reply; eating little, and drinking moderately with the rest. Allan Cunningham, a stalwart man, was generally there-very Scotch in aspect, but ready to do a good turn to any one. His talk was not too abundant, although he was a voluminous writer in prose. His songs, not unworthy of being compared with even those of Burns, are, as everybody knows, excellent. His face shone at these festivities. Reynolds came always. His good temper and vivacity were alike condiments at the feast. There also came, once or twice, the Rev. H. F. Cary, the quiet gentleness of whose face almost interfered with its real intelligence. Yet he spoke well, and with readiness, on any subject that he chose to discuss. He was very intimate with Lamb, who latterly often dined with him, and was always punctual'By Cot's plessing we will not be absent at the Grace,' he writes in 1834. Lamb's taste was very homely: he liked tripe and cow-heel; and once, when he was suggesting a particular dish to his friend, he wrote 'We were talking of roast shoulder of mutton and onion sauce; but I scorn to prescribe hospitalities.' Thomas Hood was there, almost silent, except when he shot out some irresistible pun, and disturbed the gravity of the company. Hood's labours were poetic, but his sports were passerine. It is remarkable that he, who was capable of jesting on his own prejudices and predilections, should not (like Catullus) have brought down the 'Sparrow,' and inclosed him in an ode. Lamb admired and was very familiar with him. 'What a fertile genius he is' (Charles Lamb writes to Bernard Barton), and quiet withal.' He then expatiates particularly on Hood's sketch of 'Very Deaf Indeed!' wherein a footpad has stopped an old gentleman, but cannot make him understand what he wants, although the fellow is firing a pistol into his ear-trumpet. 'You'd like him very much,' he adds. Although Lamb liked him very much, he was a little annoyed once by Hood writing a comical essay in imitation of (and so much like) one of his own, that people generally thought that 'Elia' had wakened in an unruly mood. Hazlitt attended once or twice, but he was a rather silent guest, rising into emphatic talk only when some political discussion (very rare) stimulated him. Mr. De Quincey appeared at only one of these dinners. The expres

sion of his face was intelligent, but cramped and somewhat peevish. He was self-involved, and did not add to the cheerfulness of the meeting."-Cornhill Magazine.