SUNDRY QUALITIES OF THE ATHENS, IN SUPPLEMENT.
“In Ethiopia there is a lizard,
Green on the grass, but golden on the sand,
Of slender form and many-tinctured skin:
Of this, when you suppose that you have counted
The tints and glosses, straight the creature turns,
Or you but step aside, when lo, it seems
As new and strange as ever. What you noted
Is all errata, and your task of telling
Is never at an end.”
The wonderful agility with which the Athenians skip about from opinion to opinion in other matters, and the great faculty which they show in altering the attitude and aspect of that everlasting subject, their own city, render it next to impossible to give a likeness of them that shall be accurate for one moment beyond the time that you are taking it. Indeed, if you be not all the readier at your pencil, the chance is that there shall be no congruity or keeping among the features and limbs that you sketch. What you begin with as a Jupiter, you have a chance of ending with as a Vulcan; your Apollo glides into a satyr, and your Venus becomes a hag under your hands. If you would paint a philosopher, however limber or however large you design him, he changes to a driveller or a dandy before you know what you are about; and when you follow him to his home, in order to contemplate the progress of those great things with which he is to enlighten and astonish the world, you find the whole of his mighty mind occupied in fitting false shoulders to his waistcoat, or dipping his whiskers in the essence of Tyne, till the tale run down his cheeks in purple demonstration as he flounders along in the ball-room. Under such circumstances, I ought not to be blamed, although the light in which I have attempted to represent the Athenians be not that in which they may have appeared to others; nor ought they who fancy that their picture is more accurate than mine, to allow themselves to fall into that idolatrous worship of the Athenian gods; for they may rest assured that there can be more than two pictures of the Athens, all very unlike each other, and yet all very like the original.
The wit of the Athenians may be considered as one of their “fundamental features,” for many reasons, and for this among the rest, that it mainly consists of punning, which is accounted the lowest stratum, and therefore the foundation of all wit whatsoever. It is of various kinds and degrees, according to the class of persons among whom it passes current; but still the basis of every Athenian witticism is a pun, and every Athenian, though he should be nothing else, is sure to be a punster. There are two original species of Athenian pun,—the legal and the learned: the first is said to have been introduced by the late Henry Erskine, and the second is contested by the late Professor Hill, Dr. Brewster, and others. Whether this be true at all, and if true, how far the truth of it extends, I am not either bound or prepared to say, but certain it is that those learned and humorous persons get more of it laid at their door than do any others now in existence; and the “gentleman of the Dunciad” who was “determined that every good thing should be Shakspeare’s,” has many praise-worthy imitators in the Gem of the North. You cannot meet with an idle draper yawning at the door of a shop, who has not some good thing of Harry Erskine to tell you; nor is there a student within the Athenian college who has not John Hill by rote. Brewster, indeed, is not so often quoted; but Brewster is still alive, and what is more, he holds no public function or situation of any great consequence.
I went to view the Advocates’ Library, in company with two of that faculty; and they edified me with sundry choice sayings of the immortal Harry. I remarked, that it was singular that the advocates, the most illustrious body within the Scotch seas, should have been the last to have a hall in which to contain their collection of books. “The same remark was made,” said my conductor, “to the late Honourable Henry Erskine, and he said a very clever thing upon the subject.” I very naturally gave him that wishing and inquiring look, which brings out a good thing without any preamble; and he, after working a-while at his ears, hemming, and rubbing his spectacles, said, “Why, Sir, I must condescend, in limine, that the Dean of Faculty, (Mr. Erskine was once Dean, and the title continues longer than the office,) was a great wit, and that ‘a mortification,’ according to our vocabulary, means a bequest of money or property of any kind; and, having given in this condescendence, I will proceed to the argument of the case. Well, Sir, a gentleman was remarking to the Dean, the shame that it was to the faculty, that they had not a better apartment for their library. ‘We shall get it some time, and get it in a Christian way,’ said the Dean, with that happy look which always indicated that there was something to come. ‘Why in a Christian way?’ said the gentleman. ‘Because,’ said the Dean, ‘we shall get it through the mortification of our members,’ at which the gentleman laughed very heartily.” I, of course, had no choice but to laugh also, although the wit ran a little too slow for me; but my laugh was taken with more cordiality than I had grace to give it with, and that was a signal for more of the same kind, of which I may mention a specimen or two. A case was argued one day before Lord Braxfield, in which the counsel had rather exposed a position which that hasty judge had laid down a few days previous; and his lordship was so much irritated, that he snatched up a ruler, and brandished it at the counsel, as much as to say, “if I had you out of court, I would cudgel you.” “What does he mean by that?” said an English barrister who happened to be present. “He is doing that which you must have done often,” said Erskine, “he is taking a rule to show cause.” “Why that is rather a novel rule to take in a court of justice,” said the Englishman. “Not at all,” replied Erskine, “it is merely a rule nisi.” One of the latest of Erskine’s witticisms that were repeated to me was that of the two Macnabs, father and son,—the first of whom was chief of that sept of the Celts, and the other the author of a system of the universe, too sublime even for Athenian comprehension. The chief was the most patriarchal as well as the most powerful man of his day, and the number of his sons and daughters rivalled that of some of the illustrious patriarchs of olden time. Harry Erskine said, that “these two Macnabs were the two greatest men that ever had lived, for the one could make a world, and the other could people it.” Another saying of his was very often repeated to me, but I confess I never could see the point of it. A Tory lawyer, of feeble body and feebler mind, was elevated to the bench, and the Athenians supposed that a Whig, remarkable alike for his talents and the slowness of his motions, had been improperly overlooked, while the little Tory was promoted. It was remarked to Erskine, that they “had put the cart before the horse.” “No,” said Harry, “they have not done that, they have only put the ass before the elephant.” Another time, when a client was hesitating into which of the hands of two writers to the signet he should throw himself, somebody said, he was like the ass between the two bundles of hay. “No,” said Erskine, “he is like the bundle of hay between the two asses; for, whichever way he goes, he will be eaten up.” This species of pun is mostly confined to Whigs, or gentlemen who have some pretensions to literature or taste; and in as far as intellectuality can be predicated of such matters, it may be called the pun intellectual. From Harry Erskine, the intellectual pun of the Athenian barristers does not appear to have descended full and entire to any one individual. A small piece fell to the share of George Cranstoun; but he is too independent for using it, and therefore he is said to have laid it out at interest for the benefit of the next generation. John Archibald Murray got a slice, but it was from the side upon which the article had lain for some time, and thus it is said to be somewhat musty. Jeffrey got a choice cut, but he is said to have carried it so long in his breeches-pocket, among slips of the Review, that it is as hard as granite. Cockburn got a large piece out of the very middle, but he is reported as having stuck it over so thickly with sugar-plums, that the original owner would have great difficulty in knowing it. The kissing-crust, and a dainty crust it is, fell to the share of John Clerk, but John is said to have soaked it so much in butter, that delicate stomachs are unable to bear it. After such a distribution, it seems exceedingly doubtful whether the whole can be again reunited; and while one laments the cutting up of the thing itself, one is amused at the more slender Whiglings, who run about showing, boasting, and smacking the waste-paper in which it was originally wrapped up.
There is another species of legal pun, which first came to maturity under M’Queen, of Braxfield. This may be styled the pun ad hominem, and is calculated to depress the spirits in the same ratio as the other is calculated to raise them. While I was in the Athens it was by no means common in the Parliament-House, but I was told that it forms a standard dish at all loyal and official feasts, and that upon ordinary occasions it lies in Blackwood’s shop for the inspection of the curious.
The learned pun is of several kinds, according to the class by whom it is used. That which was brought to perfection by Professor Hill was a sort of polyglot. For instance, in order to indicate learning, and wit, and tea, the Professor inscribed his tea-chest with the word “doces,” and when upon a cold winter day, one of his students kept bawling “claude ostium;” so loud as to give annoyance, the Professor turned upon him with “claude os tuum,” which gained him more admiration with the Athenians than if he had rivalled Porson himself.
None of those kinds of punning are, however, to be regarded as purely Athenian. They were all invented or improved by strangers; and if one wishes to become acquainted with the genuine Athenian pun in all its simplicity, one must seek it at those coteries of small philosophers and blue-stockings, which are found at Athenian suppers, more especially on Sunday evenings, for it is by much too delicate and weakly a thing for lasting even till the day following.