Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/48

 us smile when he paints the "poppy's red effrontery—till autumn spoils their fleering quite with rain,"

"And, turbanless, a coarse, brown, rattling crane Protrudes."

This reminds me that in the West a bald man's head is spoken of as rising above the timber-line; which is quite in the style of American similes, as when Rufus Choate, who so frequently appeared to be saying to his jury, "If you have tears, prepare to shed them now," was described to be a man who always bored for water.

Charles Lamb commenting upon the following line from Davenport's King John and Matilda,—

"And thou, Fitzwater, reflect upon thy name, And turn the Son of Tears,"—

says, "Fitzwater: son of water." A striking instance of the compatibility of the serious pun with the expression of the profoundest sorrows. Grief as well as joy finds ease in thus playing with a word. Old John of Gaunt in Shakspeare thus descants on his name: "Gaunt, and gaunt, indeed;" to a long string of conceits which no one has ever yet felt to be ridiculous. The poet Wither, thus, in a mournful review of the declining estate of his family, says with deepest nature,—

"'The very name of Wither shows decay.'"

But, in the following passage from John Fletcher's "Bonduca," pure poetry checks the laugh,—

"I have seen these Britons that you magnify Run as they would have outrun time, and roaring, Basely for mercy, roaring; the light shadows, That in a thought scur o'er the fields of corn, Halted on crutches to them."