PUNS AND PATRONYMICS.
robably there are few things more common, and at the same time more opposed to good taste, than punning upon people’s names. Possibly the impertinence of it has some attraction; for, of course, all such ‘witticisms’ are impertinent—unless, indeed, a man puns on his own name, or, if he puns upon another’s, takes care to make the observation complimentary. No doubt, neither Mrs. Cuffe nor Mrs. Tighe was very offended when Sydney Smith described one as ‘the cuff that every one would wear,’ and the other as ‘the tie that no one would loose.’ These are word-plays of the innocuous sort. Would that all such jests were equally inoffensive!
However, it is of little use to complain of a ‘stream of tendency’ which cannot be diverted from its course. The most distinguished people have had to tolerate the liberties taken with their names. Even the first of men has had to suffer, Hood having long ago said what a pity it was that, when Eve offered him the apple, poor Adam was not adam-ant. And when one turns to the celebrities of one’s own country, one finds that many of them have had to endure attentions of the kind. There was, for example, that distinguished Marquis of whom it was said on one occasion that ‘The nation’s asleep, and the minister Rockingham.’ There was also that Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, of whom Byron declared that he would return to the Whigs if they would re-Ward him. How hard, again, was Punch upon Sir Francis Head, for his well-known apologia for Louis Napoleon:
‘He wrote to the Times
In defence of the crimes
Disgraceful to the heart and to the Head, Head, Head.’
Hood pretended that, when he heard ‘Those Evening Bells,’ they did but remind him of the statesman who had invented and established the income-tax:
‘Recalling only how a Peel
Has taxed the comings-in of Time!’
That Mr. Disraeli’s popular diminutive should suggest punning was inevitable, and so we find Shirley Brooks proposing, in 1865, that,