Gives genus a better discerning.
In the fourth class may be placed punning by the use of an equivocal phrase.
1. It was this form of the pun that Sydney Smith used when, hearing of a boy who always read the word ‘patriarchs’ as ‘partridges,’ declared it was too bad to make game of them in that way.
2. In this class we may also place Douglas Jerrold’s well-known reply to a friend who told him he was afraid he was going to have a brain fever. ‘Never fear, my friend,’ said the wit, ‘there is no foundation for the fact.’
3. The story related of Sydney Smith, who recommended the bishops laying their heads together to make a wooden pavement, may be placed in the same category, and here the wit is quite as pungent as in the other cases.
4. For if the Jew do but cut deep enough,
I’ll pay it instantly with all my heart.
Merchant of Venice.
The instances of a play on words we meet with in Milton are not so much puns, properly so called, as what the Italians called conceits (concetti). This poet was deeply imbued with the spirit of Italian literature; and this form of it often appears in his verses. The following passages are examples:—
1. Highly they raged against the Highest.