"Yes, my Lord."
"Here is a pretty witness to convict the prisoner!" cried the judge; "he
swears _Ave Maria_ is Latin for the Lord's Prayer!"
Now, surely, this scene is hardly laughable, and yet it is thoroughly
humorous. But take an instance which is entirely comic:--"All ye
blackguards as isn't lawyers," exclaimed a crier, "quit the Coort." Or
this:--"Och, Counsellor, darling," said a peasant once to O'Connell,
"I've no way _here_ to show your Honor my gratitude! but _I wish I
saw you knocked down in my own parish_, and may be I wouldn't bring a
faction to the rescue." A similar instance occurred in this country. An
enthusiastic Irishwoman, listening once to a lecturer praising Ireland,
exclaimed,--"I wish to God I saw that man in poverty, that I might do
something to relieve him."
We shall now cite an example of pure wit.
"How can you defend this item, Mr. Curran," said Lord Chancellor
Clare,--"'To writing innumerable letters, L100'?"
"Why, my Lord," said Curran, "nothing can be more reasonable. _It is not
a penny a letter_."
But we might fill the whole space of our article, ay, or of twenty
articles, with such illustrations; we will content ourselves with two
others. The idea is the same in both; but in the first it seems to have
a mixture of the witty and the humorous; in the second, it belongs
entirely to the humorous.
A lady at a dinner-party passing near where Talleyrand was standing,
he looked up and significantly exclaimed, "Ah!" In the course of the
dinner, the lady having asked him across the table, why on her entrance
he said "Oh!" Talleyrand, with a grave, self-vindicatory look,
answered,--"_Madame, je n'ai pas dit_ 'Oh!' _J'ai dit_ 'Ah!'"
Here is the second.
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