The incident is told of Charles Lamb that once when in Salisbury Cathedral the constable remarked to him that eight people had dined at the top of the spire; whereupon Lamb remarked that they must be "very sharp set."
The story is told that a man noted for his wit in puns was asked in regard to the writings of Thomas Carlyle if he did not like "to expatiate in such a field?" He replied, "No. I can't get over the stile (style)."
From the riddle or pun it is but a short step to the conundrum, which takes the pun from its purely factitious setting and gives it a general application and a permanent form. It is, when rightly constructed, at once interesting and instructive, teaching as much by negative as by affirmative statement. It embodies the ever new analogies between dissimilar things, and with a language so fertile in idiom as the English aids in its mastery. Used in application to historical and geographical subjects it may serve to fix names and places definitely in memory, as well as facts which but for the humorous interest given to them would be dry and easily forgotten.
There is a certain distinctive flavor to the current conundrums of a period which tells more of the popular interests of the time than anything but a newspaper could. The best conundrums of each period, or those that center around a great event, would make most illuminating historical reading. The opinions of the day are often more clearly expressed in a conundrum than in an essay. It would have been of interest to know what the wits, as well as the historians, said of Napoleon at Waterloo, of the Boston Tea Party, and of Washington and the Continental Congress. Possibly the opinion of posterity would not have differed so widely from that of the wits as from that of the contemporary chroniclers.
John Taylor, whose book, "Wit and Mirth," published in 1630, was one of the oldest and most distinctive original collections, was the forerunner of such punning poets as Hood and Holmes. In the dedication of his book, in order to forestall criticism for the publishing of sayings already well-known, he says: "Because I had many of them (the jests) by relation and heare-say, I am in doubt that some of them may be in print in some other Authors, which I doe assure you is more then I doe know." The authors of all compilations of conundrums in the almost three centuries since have had to make increasingly comprehensive acknowledgment, which the present author here hastens to give, having drawn from the great common sources, as well as from the unpublished current wit of the day.
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