“My lord,” replied Davy, rising with grave solemnity, “I am concerned for him, and very much concerned, after what I have heard.”
Wit is often the fittest instrument with which to destroy the bubble of bombast. When Curran, in an outburst of histrionic anger, placed his hand upon his heart, saying, “I am the trusty guardian of my own honour,” it was Sir Boyle Roche who spoiled the episode by rising with much friendliness to say, “I congratulate my honourable friend on the snug little sinecure to which he has appointed himself.”
Wit may fairly be used to strip the cloak of pretension from the shoulders of impudence. Holker was cross-examining a big vulgar Jew jeweller in a money-lending case and began by looking him up and down in a sleepy dismal way and drawled out: “Well, Mr. Moselwein, and what are you?”
“A genschelman,” replied the jeweller with emphasis.
“Just so, just so,” ejaculated Holker with a dreary yawn, “but what were you before you were a gentleman?”
Wit, skilfully used, is the kindliest and most effective method of exhibiting the futility of judicial interruptions.
“Where do you draw the line, Mr. Bramwell?” asked a learned judge in the Court of Common Pleas.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care, my lord. It is enough for me that my client is on the right side of it.”
Wit and courtesy need never be divorced. They are, indeed, complementary. Wit, deftly used, refreshes the spirit of the weary judge.
Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, writing from the Northern Circuit, says: “Gully was excellent. His phrase, when he asked for a stay of execution ‘in order to consider more at leisure some of your lordship’s observations,’ tickled my fancy very much. Misdirection was never more courteously described.”