As happens to so many men:
Towards the age of twenty-six,
They shoved him into politics;
In which profession he commanded
The income that his rank demanded
In turn as Secretary for
India, the Colonies and War.
But very soon his friends began
To doubt if he were quite the man:
Thus, if a member rose to say
(As members do from day to day),
"Arising out of that reply...!"
Lord Lundy would begin to cry.
A hint at harmless little jobs
Would shake him with convulsive sobs,
While as for Revelations, these
Would simply bring him to his knees
And leave him whimpering like a child.

This genial idiocy, this unexpectedness and inconsequence, are perhaps
the most characteristic qualities of his freest humour elsewhere. Take,
for example, the flavour of this singular remark from _The Four Men_.
Grizzlebeard is telling, according to his oath, in a most serious
fashion the story of his first love. He says:

"I learnt ... that she had married a man whose fame had long been
familiar to me, a politician, a patriot, and a most capable
manufacturer.... Then strong, and at last (at such a price) mature,
I noted the hour and went towards the doors through which she had
entered perhaps an hour ago in the company of the man with whose
name she had mingled her own."

_Myself._ "What did he manufacture?"

_Grizzlebeard._ "Rectified lard; and so well, let me tell you, that
no one could compete with him."

Let the reader explain, if he can, the comic effect of that startling
irrelevance; we cannot, but it is characteristic.

It is some effect of dexterity with words, some happy spring of
inconsequence, which produces this particular kind of joke. A certain
exuberance in writing which plainly intoxicates the writer and carries
the reader with it, is at the bottom of humour of this sort. What is it
that causes us to smile at the following passage, a disquisition on the
aptitude of the word "surprising"?

An elephant escapes from a circus and puts his head in at your
window while you are writing and thinking of a word. You look up.
You may be alarmed, you may be astonished, you may be moved to
sudden processes of thought; but one thing you will find about it,
and you will find out quite quickly, and it will dominate all your
other emotions of the time: the elephant's head will be surprising.
You are caugh