"''Tis oft the poet's curse
To mar his little light with verse.'"
In the same way a classic line which is quoted in mimicry of a modern situation can raise the surprise of a pun. The very best instance, perhaps, of this felicity was the quotation of Dean Swift when a lady's long train swept down a fine fiddle and broke it. He cried out,—
"Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ!"[1]
Sporting with words blew aside a little the powder-smoke of the battle of Shiloh, and etherized the pain of one of our soldiers, whose cheek and chin had been carried away by a shot. "What can we do for you?" asked his comrades. "Boys," said he, with what articulation was left to him, "I should like a drink of water mighty well, if I only had the face to ask for it."
A very good pun can be made unconsciously, as when the schoolmaster asked the class what Shylock meant when he said, "My deeds upon my head." "Well," said one of the boys, "I don't know, unless he carried his papers in his hat." In the same way, Lord Dundreary makes a good pun because he can only comprehend one use for one word at a time; and, if the most obvious use strikes him first, he is incapable of making any transfer of it. So he says to Lieutenant Vernon, "Of course you can pass your examination: what I want to know is, can you go through it?"
Every language invites this trick of the pun. The Greeks and Romans relished it, but the instances would involve explanations too tedious for popular reading. Perhaps a few may be ventured from the French, who are as delicate in this as in the manufacture of a Sèvres cup or a pattern of tapestry.
Henry IV., at the surrender of Chartres, received a deputation at the gates. The spokesman said, "Sire, the city submits to your Majesty as much by divine as by Roman law." He replied, "You may as well add, by canon law, too."
Louis XIV., during a critical aspect of his affairs, said in council, "Nous maintiendrons la couronne de la France." His dauphin merely remarked, "Maintenons la" (Madame de Maintenon l'a).
When complaint was made in Paris that the first Napoleon was too young to assume command of an Italian campaign against Austria, he said, "They may let me alone: in six months j'aurai Milan" (j'aurai mille ans).
But the late M. Jules Janin made the cleverest pun. It was at a time when the Parisian authorities were macadamizing some of the streets that he was unsuccessfully proposed for membership of the famous Académie. Some one condoling with him for his failure, he replied that he meant to throw himself into the streets. "But how so, Monsieur?" "Parceque, dans ce cas, on tout de suite m'acadamiserait."