IV. There are also many cases in which a phrase or idiom, consisting of two or three words, may be used equivocally, and these may be fairly considered as puns.
Of the first class the following are specimens:—
1. ... beauty’s purchased by the weight,
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
Making them lightest that wear most of it.
Merchant of Venice, Act iii. sc. 2.
2. At one light bound high overleaped all bound.
Paradise Lost, Book iv.
3. Dean Ramsay tells a story of a Scotch minister who, having to preach at some distance from home, was caught in a shower of rain. On arriving at his kirk, he got a friend to rub down his clothes, anxiously asking if he thought he was dry enough. The latter replied, ‘Never fear; you’ll be dry enough when you get into the pulpit!’
Under the second division may be placed such puns as the following:—