been so often utilized by the dramatists as 'School,' and probably, too,
no modern playwright would be disposed to add lightly to the number of
those who have 'annexed' it.

PUNS AND PATRONYMICS.

Probably 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,

'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 Arch