By-ways in Book-land: Short Essays on Literary SubjectsAdams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
History
By-ways in Book-land: Short Essays on Literary Subjects
Adams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
English literature -- History and criticism
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,
'Having finished his Iliad and ceased to be busy,
Lord Derby should try and translate his Odd-Dizzy.'
The annals of the Church are no more free from jingles on names than
those of any other institution. Familiar to many is the laconic epitaph
on Archbishop Potter:
'Alack and well-a-day:
Potter himself is turned to clay!'
Horace Walpole wrote bitterly of Thomas Secker, Archbishop of
Canterbury, that 'His grace signed his own proper name--Thomas _Cant._,'
which would certainly have read better as 'Thomas Cantuar.' But the
bishops' signatures have always been regarded as fair game. What puns
have been made on the unhappy, because so obvious, 'Oxon!' In 1848,
when Bishop Hampden was accused of heresy by the party headed by the
Bishop of Oxford, the would-be satirist wrote that
'As once the Pope with fury full,
When Luther laid his heavy knocks on,
At the Reformer loosed a Bull--
So these at Hampden set an Ox-on.'
Again, when Archdeacon Hale figured prominently in the old churchyard
controversy, _Punch_ observed:
'The intramural churchyard's reeking pale
Breathes health around it, says a reverend party;
But though the spot may keep a parson Hale,
Can people who in-hale its fumes be hearty?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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