Till Venus saw a Suffragette Cried she, "But women should regret A broken gla.s.s!" But then, next minute, "Poor thing! she saw her image in it!"
WIT ON OCCASION
_Lamb said that the greatest pleasure in life was to do good in secret and be found out by accident_.
"_I suppose" said Lamb, "that Johnson was thinking of Shakespeare making Hector talk about Aristotle when he says,
And panting Time toils after him in vain_."
_A clergyman who had several livings was under discussion. "Why, such fellows look at a cure of souls like a cure of herrings--so much per hundred."
"Ah, but the herring cures fulfil their contract," said Jerrold.
He called clerical pluralists_ polypi, _parsons with many stomachs and no hearts_.
_A young prince had just been born and they were firing royal salutes to celebrate the occasion. A bystander exclaimed, "How they do powder these babies!_"
_In a pompous speech of self-defence the orator wound up by declaring himself the guardian of his own honour. "What a sinecure!" murmured his opponent._
"_How do you like babies, Mr. Lamb?" cried the gushing mother._
"_Boi-boi-boiled," answered the stammering old bachelor._
_Foote used to say that the Irish take us in and the Scots turn us out._
_A stout duellist once said to his diminutive antagonist, "It is a perfectly unequal contest. It is almost impossible to hit any one of your size, or to miss any one of mine."_
"_I agree," said his opponent. "And I will chalk my size on your body.
We will not count the shots that go out of the ring_."
"_Ah," said Curran, noticing an Irish friend walking along absent-mindedly with his tongue out, "he is evidently trying to catch the English accent_."
_Sydney Smith was asked his opinion of Newton"s portrait of Tom Moore.
"Couldn"t you," he asked the painter, "put more hostility to the Established Church into the face?_"
_An intemperate duke asked Foote how he should go to a masquerade. "Go sober," said Foote._
"_I"m afraid the salad is gritty," apologised the host.
"Gritty!" mumbled the guest, "it"s a gravel path with a few weeds in it_."
"_I never read a book before reviewing it" said Sydney Smith to a friend. "It is so apt to prejudice one_."
_Bentley, the publisher, said to Jerrold, "I thought of calling my magazine_ The Wits" Miscellany, _but I have decided on_ Bentley"s Miscellany."
"_My dear fellow," said Jerrold, "why go to the other extreme?_"
"_What a magnificent-looking man!" said Goldsmith of a stranger; "he ought to be a Lord Chancellor."
He was, in fact, a rich baker.
"Not Chancellor," whispered a friend; "only Master of the Rolls_."
_Coleridge was dreaming of the time when he was a minister. "Ah, Charles, you never heard me preach." "My dear fellow," cried Lamb, "I never heard you do anything else_."
_Sydney Smith said that the whole of his life had been spent like a razor--in hot water or a sc.r.a.pe._
_As a means of bragging of his acquaintance, a man was remarking to the company that, although he had often dined at the Duke of Devonshire"s, there had never been any fish. "Is it not_ extraordinary?" _he asked.
Jerrold said, "Hardly. They ate it all upstairs_."
_A jealous general was abusing Wolfe to the King.
"The man is mad," he declared bitterly.