Punning
It would be vain, at this time of the world’s age, to enter upon a serious disquisition into the “art or mystery” of punning: it would be useless to argue upon its utility, the genius and talent required for carrying it on, or the pleasure or amusement derivable from it. The fact is self-evident, that puns are an acknowledged ingredient of the English language amongst the middling classes, and are, in their societies, the very plums in the pudding of conversation.
It may be said that punning is a vice, and we are quite ready to admit the charge; but still it exists and flourishes amongst dapper clerks in public offices, hangers-on of the theatres; amongst very young persons at the universities; in military messes amongst the subalterns; in the City amongst apprentices; and, in some instances, with old wits razee, who are driven to extravagant quibbles to furnish their quota of entertainment to the society in which they are endured.
A punster (that is, a regular hard-going thick and thin punster) is the dullest and stupidest companion alive, if he could but be made to think so. He sits gaping for an opportunity to jingle his nonsense with whatever happens to be going on, and, catching at some detached bit of a rational conversation, perverts its sense to his favourite sound, so that, instead of anything like a continuous intellectual intercourse, which one might hope to enjoy in pleasant society, one is perpetually interrupted by his absurd distortions and unseasonable ribaldry, as ill-timed and as ill-placed as songs in an opera sung by persons in the depth of despair, or on the point of death.
Admitting, however, the viciousness, the felonious sinfulness of punning, it is to be apprehended that the liberty of the pun is like the liberty of the press, which, says the patriot, is like the air, and if we have it not we cannot breathe. Therefore, seeing that it is quite impossible to put down punning, the next best thing we can do is to regulate it, in the way they regulate peccadilloes in Paris, and teach men to commit punnery as Cæsar died and Frenchmen dissipate—with decency.
The proverb says, “wits jump,” so may punsters, and two bright geniuses may hit upon the same idea at different periods quite unconsciously. To avoid any unnecessary repetition or apparent plagiarisms, therefore, by these coincidences, we venture to address this paper to young beginners in the craft, to the rising generation of witlings; and we are led to do this more particularly, from feeling that the tyro in punning, as well as in everything else, firmly believes that which he for the first time has heard or read, to be as novel and entertaining to his older friends, who have heard it or read it before he was born, as to himself, who never met with it till the day upon which he so liberally and joyously retails it to the first hearers he can fall in with.
For these reasons we propose, in order to save time and trouble, to enumerate a few puns which, for the better regulation of jesting, are positively prohibited in all decent societies where punnery is practised; and first, since the great (indeed the only) merit of a pun is its undoubted originality, its unequivocal novelty, its extemporaneous construction and instantaneous explosion, all puns by recurrence, all puns by repetition, and all puns by anticipation, are prohibited.
Secondly, all words spelt differently, having a similar sound, which are carefully collated and arranged in a catalogue prefixed, for the use of little punnikins at schools, to Entick’s small dictionary, of whatever sort, kind, or nature they may be, are prohibited. Take for example:
| Augur | a soothsayer. |
| Auger | a carpenter’s tool. |
| All | every one. |
| Awl | a shoemaker’s gimblet. |
| Haul | (for the Cockneys) to pull. |
| Hall | a vulgar proper name. |
| Boar | a male pig. |
| Bore | Mr. Creevy. |
| Wax | the produce of Bees. |
| Whacks | thumps on the head or body |
and so on.
In the next place, all the following travelling puns are strictly prohibited:—
All allusions upon entering a town to the pound and the stocks—knowing a man by his gait and not liking his style—calling a tall turnpike-keeper a colossus of roads—paying the post-boys charges of ways and means—seeing no sign of an inn—or, replying, “Sir, you are out,” to your friend who says he does—talking of a hedger having a stake in the bank—all allusions to sun and air to a new-married couple—all stuff about village belles—calling the belfry a court of a peal—saying, upon two carpenters putting up paling, that they are very peaceable men to be fencing in a field—all trash about “manors make the man,” in the shooting season—and all such stuff about trees, after this fashion—“that’s a pop’lar tree—I’ll turn over a new leaf, and make my bough,” etc. etc.
Puns upon field sports, such as racing being a matter of course—horses starting without being shy—a good shot being fond of his but and his barrel—or saying that a man fishing deserves a rod for taking such a line; if he is sitting under a bridge calling him an arch fellow—or supposing him a nobleman because he takes his place among the piers—or that he will catch nothing but cold, and no fish by hook or by crook. All these are prohibited.
To talk of yellow pickles at dinner, and say the way to Turn ’em Green is through Hammersmith—all allusions to eating men, for Eton men, or Staines on the table-cloth—or Egg-ham, are all exploded—as are all stuff about Maids and Thornbacks, and Plaice—or saying to a lady who asks you to help her to the wing of a chicken, that it is a mere matter of a pinion—all quibbles about dressing hare and cutting it—all stuff about a merry fellow being given to wine—or upon helping yourself to say you have a platonic affection for roast beef—or when fried fish runs short, singing to the mistress of the house, with Tom Moore,—
“Your sole, though a very sweet sole, love,
Will ne’er be sufficient for me,”
are entirely banished.
At the play-house never talk of being a Pittite because you happen not to be in the boxes—never observe what a Kean eye one actor has, or that another can never grow old because he must always be Young—never talk of the uncertainty of Mundane affairs in a farce, or observe how Terrybly well a man plays Mr. Simpson—banish from your mind the possibility of saying the Covent Garden manager has put his best Foot forward, or that you should like to go to Chester for a day or two—or that you would give the world to be tied to a Tree—or that Mr. Make ready is a presentable actor—all such stuff is interdicted.
In speaking of Parliament, forget Broom and Birch, Wood and Cole, Scarlett and White, Lamb and the Leakes, the Hares and the Herons, the Cootes and the Cruins—such jumbles will lead into great difficulties, and invariably end, without infinite caution, in an observation, that the conduct of that House is always regulated by the best possible Manners.
There are some temptations very difficult to avoid—for instance, last Saturday we saw gazetted, as a bankrupt, “Sir John Lade, Cornhill, watchmaker!” Now this, we confess, was a provocation hard of resistance—when one sees a lad of sixty-four set up only to break down, and perceives that whatever he may do with watches, he could not make a case before the Insolvent Debtors’ Court; and moreover, since his taking to watchmaking arose from his having, in the spring of life, gone upon tick, and that the circumstance may be considered as a striking instance of a bad wind-up—we admit that in the hands of a young beginner such a thing is quite irresistible, but such temptations should be avoided as much as possible.
We have not room to set down all the prohibited puns extant; but we have just shown that the things which one hears, when one dines in the City (where men eat peas with a two-pronged fork, and bet hats with each other), as novelties, and the perfection of good fun, are all flat, stale, and unprofitable to those who have lived a little longer and seen a little more of the world, and have heard puns when it was the fashion to commit them at the west end of the town.
These hints are thrown out for the particular use of some sprightly persons, with whose facetiousness we have been of late extremely pestered—we apologise to our rational readers for the insertion of such stuff, even by way of surfeit to our quibbling patients.
CAUTIONARY VERSES TO YOUTH OF BOTH SEXES.56
My readers may know that to all the editions of Entick’s Dictionary, commonly used in schools, there is prefixed “A table of words that are alike, or nearly alike, in sound, but different in spelling and signification.” It must be evident that this table is neither more nor less than an early provocation to punning; the whole mystery of which vain art consists in the use of words, the sound and sense of which are at variance. In order, if possible, to check any disposition to punning in youth, which may be fostered by this manual, I have thrown together the following adaptation of Entick’s hints to young beginners, hoping thereby to afford a warning, and exhibit a deformity to be avoided, rather than an example to be followed; and at the same time showing the caution children should observe in using words which have more than one meaning.
“My little dears, who learn to read, pray early learn to shun
That very silly thing indeed which people call a pun:
Read Entick’s rules, and ’twill be found how simple an offence
It is, to make the self-same sound afford a double sense.
“For instance, ale may make you ail, your aunt an ant may kill,
You in a vale may buy a veil, and Bill may pay the bill.
Or if to France your bark you steer, at Dover, it may be,
A peer appears upon the pier, who, blind, still goes to sea.
“Thus one might say, when to a treat good friends accept our greeting,
’Tis meet that men who meet to eat should eat their meat when meeting.
Brawn on the board’s no bore indeed, although from boar prepared;
Nor can the fowl, on which we feed, foul feeding be declared.
“Thus one ripe fruit may be a pear, and yet be pared again,
And still be one, which seemeth rare until we do explain.
It therefore should be all your aim to speak with ample care:
For who, however fond of game, would choose to swallow hair?
“A fat man’s gait may make us smile, who has no gate to close:
The farmer sitting on his style no stylish person knows:
Perfumers men of scents must be; some Scilly men are bright;
A brown man oft deep read we see, a black a wicked wight.
“Most wealthy men good manors have, however vulgar they;
And actors still the harder slave, the oftener they play:
So poets can’t the baize obtain, unless their tailors choose;
While grooms and coachmen, not in vain, each evening seek the Mews.
“The dyer who by dying lives, a dire life maintains;
The glazier, it is known, receives—his profits from his panes:
By gardeners thyme is tied, ’tis true, when spring is in its prime;
But time or tide won’t wait for you, if you are tied for time.
“Then now you see, my little dears, the way to make a pun;
A trick which you, through coming years, should sedulously shun.
The fault admits of no defence; for wheresoe’er ’tis found,
You sacrifice the sound for sense: the sense is never sound.
“So let your words and actions too, one single meaning prove,
And, just in all you say or do, you’ll gain esteem and love:
In mirth and play no harm you’ll know, when duty’s task is done;
But parents ne’er should let ye go unpunish’d for a pun!”