to translate them? _Senator urbanus_, with _Curruca_ to boot for a
synonime, would but faintly have done the business. Words, involving
notions, are hard enough to render; it is too much to expect us to
translate a sound, and give an elegant version to a jingle. The
Virgilian harmony is not translatable, but by substituting harmonious
sounds in another language for it. To Latinise a pun, we must seek
a pun in Latin, that will answer to it; as, to give an idea of the
double endings in Hudibras, we must have recourse to a similar
practice in the old monkish doggrel. Dennis, the fiercest oppugner of
puns in ancient or modern times, professes himself highly tickled
with the "a stick" chiming to "ecclesiastic." Yet what is this but a
species of pun, a verbal consonance?

IX.--THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST

If by worst be only meant the most far-fetched and startling, we agree
to it. A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a
pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect. It
is an antic which does not stand upon manners, but comes bounding into
the presence, and does not show the less comic for being dragged in
sometimes by the head and shoulders. What though it limp a little, or
prove defective in one leg--all the better. A pun may easily be too
curious and artificial. Who has not at one time or other been at a
party of professors (himself perhaps an old offender in that line),
where, after ringing a round of the most ingenious conceits, every man
contributing his shot, and some there the most expert shooters of the
day; after making a poor _word_ run the gauntlet till it is ready to
drop; after hunting and winding it through all the possible ambages of
similar sounds; after squeezing, and hauling, and tugging at it, till
the very milk of it will not yield a drop further,--suddenly some
obscure, unthought-of fellow in a corner, who was never 'prentice
to the trade, whom the company for very pity passed over, as we
do by a known poor man when a money-subscription is going round,
no one calling upon him for his quota--has all at once come out
with something so whimsical, yet so pertinent; so brazen in its
pretensions, yet so impossible to be denied; so exquisitely good,
and so deplorably bad, at the same time,--that it has proved a Robin
Hood's shot; any thing ulterior to that is despaired of; and the party
breaks up, unanimously voting it to be the very worst (that is, best)
pun o