at in all ages the wits of Westminster
Hall have delighted in puns; and it may be here added, with the
exception of some twenty happy verbal freaks, the puns of lawyers have
not been remarkable for their excellence. L'Estrange records that when a
stone was hurled by a convict from the dock at Charles I.'s Chief
Justice Richardson, and passed just over the head of the judge, who
happened to be sitting at ease and lolling on his elbow, the learned man
smiled, and observed to those who congratulated him on his escape, "You
see now, if I had been an _upright judge_ I had been slaine." Under
George III. Joseph Jekyll[30] was at the same time the brightest wit and
most shameless punster of Westminster Hall; and such pride did he take
in his reputation as a punster, that after the fashion of the wits of an
earlier period he was often at considerable pains to give a pun a
well-wrought epigrammatic setting. Bored with the long-winded speech of
a prosy sergeant, he wrote on a slip of paper, which was in due course
passed along the barristers' benches in the court where he was
sitting--

"The sergeants are a grateful race,
Their dress and language show it;
Their purple garments come from _Tyre_,
Their arguments go to it."

When Garrow, by a more skilful than successful cross-examination, was
endeavoring to lure a witness (an unmarried lady of advanced years) into
an acknowledgment that payment of certain money in dispute had been
tendered, Jekyll threw him this couplet--

"Garrow, forbear; that tough old jade
Will never prove a _tender maid_."

So also, when Lord Eldon and Sir Arthur Pigott each made a stand in
court for his favorite pronunciation of the word 'lien;' Lord Eldon
calling the word _lion_ and Sir Arthur maintaining that it was to be
pronounced like _lean_, Jekyll, with an allusion to the parsimonious
arrangements of the Chancellor's kitchen, perpetrated the _jeu
d'esprit_--

"Sir Arthur, Sir Arthur, why what do you mean
By saying the Chancellor's _lion_ is _lean_?
D'ye think that his kitchen's so bad as all that,
That nothing within it can ever get fat?"

By this difference concerning the pronunciation of a word the present
writer is reminded of an amicable contest that occurred in Westminster
Hall between Lord Campbell and a Q.C. who is still in the front rank of
court-advocates. In an action brought to recover for damages done to a
carriage, the learned counsel repeatedly