Compare the reflections on puns in the essay on "Distant Correspondents." Compare also the review of Hood's Odes and Addresses (Vol. I.). Cary's account of a punning contest after Lamb's own heart makes the company vie with each in puns on the names of herbs. After anise, mint and other words had been ingeniously perverted Lamb's own turn, the last, was reached, and it seemed impossible that anything was left for him. He hesitated. "Now then, let us have it," cried the others, all expectant. "Patience," he replied; "it's c-c-cumin."
Page 293, line 18. One of Swift's Miscellanies. This joke, often attributed to Lamb himself, will be found in Ars Punica, sine flos Linguarum, The Art of Punning; or, The Flower of Languages, by Dr. Sheridan and Swift, which will be found in Vol. XIII. of Scott's edition of Swift. Among the directions to the punster is this:—
Rule 3. The Brazen Rule. He must have better assurance, like Brigadier C——, who said, "That, as he was passing through a street, he made to a country fellow who had a hare swinging on a stick over his shoulder, and, giving it a shake, asked him whether it was his own hair or a periwig!" Whereas it is a notorious Oxford jest.
Page 294, line 8. Virgil … broken Cremona. Swift (as Lamb explained in the original essay in the New Monthly Magazine), seeing a lady's mantua overturning a violin (possibly a Cremona), quoted Virgil's line: "Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ!" (Eclogues, IX., 28), "Mantua, alas! too near unhappy Cremona."
Page 294. X.—THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES.
New Monthly Magazine, March, 1826.
Whether a Mrs. Conrady existed, or was invented or adapted by Lamb to prove his point, I have not been able to discover. But the evidence of Lamb's "reverence for the sex," to use Procter's phrase, is against her existence. The Athenæum reviewer on February 16, 1833, says, however, quoting the fallacy: "Here is a portrait of Mrs. Conrady. We agree with the writer that 'no one that has looked on her can pretend to forget the lady.'" The point ought to be cleared up.
Page 296. XI.—THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT-HORSE IN THE MOUTH.
New Monthly Magazine, April, 1826.
Page 297, line 13. Our friend Mitis. I do not identify Mitis among
Lamb's many friends.