The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1876-10-19
A Celebrated English Wit.
New Quarterly Magazine.l


No man of his time made 60 man,
mots, or, what perhaps is of more valu
as test of contemporary estimation, hat
more fathered upon him than JOSEPH
Jekyll. His epigrams and lampoops wer,
the admiration Of all Wing London, ant
divided public attention with the Tory
jeu1 d'esprit of Canning and Frere. Al
Carlton House he held his own with
Sheridan, Hare, and Fitzpatrick, anc
among the brilliant gatherings at Hol
land House, the wit who in the young
days might have sat at the feet of George
Selwyn, found foemen worthy of his
steel in Sidney Smith, Luttrell, and Cur
ran. And yet little more than thirty
years after his death this man, who in
his time was quite a power in society, il
almost utterly forgotten, for Jekyll in
deed was wit par ct simple, and unlike
most of the members of the brilliant cir.
Gle in which he lived, left but little repu
tation in literature or politics to embalm
his memory. Many of JekylPs jokes
have been chronicled in the books oi
legal ana but we shall give few speci.
| mems:
An accident once occurred at Lands
downe House, the ceiling having fallen
suddenly and scattered dinner party.
Jekyll had escaped dining there by a
, prior engagement to meet the judges.
81 had been asked" he said, "' to Ruat
celum,' but dined instead at Fiat
justitia."
When Lady Cork gavea party at which
she wore an enormous plume, Jekyll said,
"She was exactly shuttlecock-all cork
and feather"
One of JekylPs contemporaries at the
bar-Mr. Morgan-had such extremely
long legs and arms that he was always
called "Frog Morgan" In the course
of an argument in court he spoke of "our
natural enemies, the French" Jekyll, in
reply, complimented him upon an ex-
preston so personally appropriate I"
But this has also been attributed to
Erskine.
Erskine, who was always very fond of
talking about himself, was once pane
gyrizing his own humanity. "For in
stance" said he, there is my dog.
wish it to be happy in this life, and l wish
it to be happy in the ether. Like the
Indian, 1 wish wherever / may 90 my
faithful dog shall bear me company"
"And a confoundedly unlucky dog he
would be-" muttered Jekyll. An envious
rival once initiated the style of his
epigrams:
As Jekyll was Fastening with gown and with wig
He happened to tread on q very small pig;
Cried ne, That's learned pig or Tm mistaken,
For tits, you may see, an Abridsment Of Bacon"
Erskine, when at the bar, once COM
planned to Jekyll that he had pain in
his bowels, for which he could get no re.
lief. cpl give you an infallible specific"
said Jekyll. "Get made Attorney Gen
eral, my friend, and then you'll have no
bowels at ALL"
A certain nobleman was expressing to
Jekyll how much he was displeased that
his head should have been handled so
freely by the caricaturists. 81 am as
much surprised as your lordship that they
should have been able to make go much
out of it," was the reply.
Jekyll excelled In punning upon
names. In case which came before the
Queens Bench in 1906, Mr.. Skill had
been cheated by man of the name of
Baird, whose principal witness rejoiced in
the name of Tickle. Tickle was not flip
pant witness, but Mr.. Garrow artfully
drew the facts from him with such address
that Jekyll said the Sergeant had sup
piled Skilps want of judgment, had the
secrets of the usurer Baird, and exerted
his usual ingenuity to Tickle the
witness.
Many of his jokes are, to be sure, of
the kind disparagingly called funny but
they are funny with substratum in
them of shrewd mother-wit, and tickle
our sense of humor with something be-
sides and far better than the mere verbal
jangle of an ordinary punster's conceit.
Take the following for instance:
A brewer having been drowned in one
of his own vats, "Alas, poor fellow"
said Jekyll, " floating on his watery
bier!
An Irish barrister, just arrived in En-
gland, had bad habit of putting out
his tongue. suppose" said Jekyll,
that he is trying to catch the English
accent"
"I hear" said a friend, "that our
friend Smith, the attorney. is dead, and
leaves scarcely any effects" "It could
scarcely be otherwise, said Jekyll, che
had 80 very few causes"
An attorney named Else, rather di-
minutive in stature, and not particularly
in his character, once met
Jekyll. "Sir," said he. az hear you
have called me pettifogging scoundrel.
Have you done so, sirW "Sir," said
Jekyll, with a look of contemp "I
never said you were pettifogger. or
: scoundrel but I said you were little
Else."
Jekyll could be coarse and impertinent |
enough at times. A Welsh Judge, no
torious for his greed of office and his
want of personal cleanliness, was once
Of being neglected. "My
dear cir, said Jekyll, in his most amiable
tones, you have asked the minister for
almost everything else, why don't you
ask him for piece of soap and a nail
brush 2"
OF Lord Kenyon's large and gloomy
house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, he said,
All the year through it is Lent in the
kitchen and Passion Week in the parlor."
Some one having mentioned that al
though the fire was very dull in the
kitchen crate the spits were always
bright. at is quite irrelevant" said
Jekyll, to talk about the spits, for moth.
ing turns upon them"
Lord Kenyon was very careless in his
dress, but once appeared at court in
much the worse for wear, which
it was alleged by the bar had been pur-
chased as a left-of garment from Lord
valet de chdmbre. Jekyll as
serted that the Chief Justice never used
q pocket-handkerchief in his life until
he found one in the pocket of this waist
coat, which pocket-handkerchief he ought
to have returned, as it was not included
in the bargain for the waistcoat.
1t was mentioned in Jekyll's company
that the Russians during their stay in
England (after the Pesce) had eaten large
quantities of tallow candles. "Ahp' said
he, "bad food for the liver but good for
the lights"
Jekyll, like DIR. johnson, gloried in
London. He was accustomed to say that
II he were compelled to live in the coun-
try he would have the approach to his