Nearer, however, to Goldsmith’s day a very similar pleasantry used to be current about Archbishop Herring when he was at college. Herring, having fallen into a ditch near St. John’s, a wag, passing by, called out, “There, Herring, you are in a fine pickle now!” A Johnian, overhearing this, went back to his college, and was asked by some of his friends what made him so merry. “Oh,” says he, “I never met with such a good story before. Herring of Jesus fell into the ditch, and an acquaintance said, as he lay sprawling, ‘There, Herring, you are in a fine _condition_ now.’” “Well,” observed some one, “where is the wit in that?” “Nay,” replied the first, “I am sure it was an excellent thing when I heard it.” Here, in good faith, was a crassitude which Joe Miller himself would have hardly surpassed in his most Bœotian and opaque moments. The Gaulardism, borrowing its name from a certain Sieur de Gaulard, who was remarkable for the negation of everything savouring of intelligence, strikes one as of an analogous complexion to this jocular _gaucherie_; and both are intimately allied to the Gothamite drolleries and ineptitudes, of which the most ancient types have very probably and very naturally disappeared by escaping registration. The gaulardisms and their analogues pursue a uniform vein:-- “The Sieur Gaulard, being told by somebody that the Dean of Alençon was dead, said, ‘Don’t believe it; for, if it were so, I should have heard from him, as he keeps no secrets from me.’” “A person, seeing a great heap of stones, said to a friend how much he would like to have them at home. ‘How so?’ demanded the other. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘then I would build a good handsome brick wall round my house with them.’” The mantle of Gaulard must have descended on the President Goussaut, who, if the anecdotes about him are to be credited, must have adorned his lofty official position. The rest are as by sample exhibited:-- “Monsieur Goussaut, President of the Chamber of Accompts, was celebrated for stupidity. One day standing behind a player at piquet, who did not know him, the player throwing a foolish card, exclaimed, ‘I am a mere Goussaut!’ The president, enraged at finding his name used as a proverb, said, ‘You are a fool.’ ‘True,’ said the other, without ever looking back, ‘that is just what I meant to say.’” Had Goussaut been an English, instead of a French, name, we might have looked upon it as an inadvertent felicity. Of course these merriments have their equivalents or survivals in the later life and literature; and I may adduce as a specimen the question raised in some company as to the age of Lord Chesterfield, when one of the party suggested that his lordship must be older than was generally supposed, as he would be at least one-and-twenty when he signed the bond which was forged by Dr. Dodd!