“I don’t know,” replied Keller; “but at all events there is a great deal of the Pretender, and I always understood them to travel in company.”
This was a kind of caustic wit which was not much cultivated in the higher convivial societies of that day, the members whereof used a more cordial species. But such sallies were always repeated with great glee when they did not affect the person who repeated them.
Norcott’s mimickry was complete. This is a disagreeable and dangerous, because generally an offensive faculty. The foibles, absurdities, or personal defects of mankind are thus caricatured, and the nearer perfection the mimickry, the more annoying to the mimicked. Done in a man’s presence, it amounts to a personal insult; in his absence, it is dramatic backbiting,—a bad quality in every point of view to cultivate, and such a weapon of ill-nature as every body should assist in blunting.
In a company where the late Lord Chief Baron Avonmore was a guest, Norcott was called on to show his imitative powers. He did so with great effect, taking off particularly well the peculiarities of the judges; and when he had finished, Lord Avonmore said, with point, but good-humour, “Upon my word, Norcott, as you so ably exposed the absurdities of eleven of the judges, I think you did not act fairly by us in not giving also the twelfth of them” (his lordship’s self).—Norcott did not utter a word more during the evening.
It is very singular, that a man with such a surplus of wit as Curran, never could write a good epigram—nor, with such an emporium of language, compose a pamphlet or essay that would pay for the printing; while a very eminent living friend of mine, high in the world—though not Curran’s equal in either qualities—has written some of the most agreeable and classic jeux d’esprits, of the most witty and humorous papers, and most effective pamphlets, that have issued from the pen of any member of his profession during my time. I had collected as many as I could of this gentleman’s productions and sayings (several printed and a few in manuscript); but, unfortunately, the whole was lost in a trunk of mine, (with a great number of my books and private papers and memoranda,) in 1812. I can scarce attempt to recollect any of them, save one or two, which may give some idea, but nothing more, of the agreeable playfulness of this gentleman’s fancy. They have been long recorded by the Irish bar; and some of the English bar, who are not at present celebrated for their own impromptus or witticisms, and are too wise and steady to understand those of Ireland (unless in print and after due consideration), may be amused by reading and unriddling an Irish epigram, sent into the world by an English bookseller.[[44]]
[44]. An English gentleman once said to me very seriously, that he always preferred a London edition of an Irish book, as he thought, somehow or other, it helped to take out the brogue.
A placard having been posted in the courts of law in Dublin by a bookseller for the sale of Bibles, the gentleman I allude to wrote instantly under it with his pencil—
How clear is the case,