The tramp answered with heavy sarcasm:
"That 'ere nose o' mine, mum, is a-blushin' with pride, 'cause it ain't stuck into other folks's business."
But British wit, while often amiable enough, may on occasion be as trenchant as any French sally. For example, we have the definition of gratitude as given by Sir Robert Walpole—"A lively sense of future favors." The Marquis of Salisbury once scored a clumsy partner at whist by his answer to someone who asked how the game progressed: "I'm doing as well as could be expected, considering that I have three adversaries." So the retort of Lamb, when Coleridge said to him: "Charles, did you ever hear me lecture?". * * * "I never heard you do anything else." And again, Lamb mentioned in a letter how Wordsworth had said that he did not see much difficulty in writing like Shakespeare, if he had a mind to try it. "Clearly," Lamb continued, "nothing is wanted but the mind." Then there is the famous quip that runs back to Tudor times, although it has been attributed to various later celebrities, including Doctor Johnson: A concert singer was executing a number lurid with vocal pyrotechnics. An admirer remarked that the piece was tremendously difficult. This drew the retort from another auditor:
"Difficult! I wish to heaven it were impossible!"
Americans are famous, and sometimes infamous, for their devotion to the grotesque in humor. Yet, a conspicuous example of such amusing absurdity was given by Thackeray, who made reference to an oyster so large that it took two men to swallow it whole.
It is undeniable that the British are fond of puns. It is usual to sneer at the pun as the lowest form of wit. Such, alas! it too often is, and frequently, as well, it is a form of no wit at all. But the pun may contain a very high form of wit, and may please either for its cleverness, or for its amusing quality, or for the combination of the two. Naturally, the really excellent pun has always been in favor with the wits of all countries. Johnson's saying, that a man who would make a pun would pick a pocket, is not to be taken too seriously. It is not recorded that Napier ever "pinched a leather," but he captured Scinde, and in notifying the government at home of this victory he sent a dispatch of one word, "Peccavi" ("I have sinned"). The pun is of the sort that may be appreciated intellectually for its cleverness, while not calculated to cause laughter. Of the really amusing kind are the innumerable puns of Hood. He professed himself a man of many sorrows, who had to be a lively Hood for a livelihood. His work abounds in an ingenious and admirable mingling of wit and humor. For example:
"Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms,
But a cannon ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.