192 



IMN 



PUNCTUATION 



Pan, the name given to a play upon words tlmt 

 agree or resemble each other in sound lull differ in 

 MOM, a verlwl ijuiblile by moans of which an incon- 

 gruous and therefore ludicrous idea is unexpectedly 

 iliot into the sentence-^is, for example, in the 

 answerto the grave quest ion. 'Is life worth living?' 

 'That de|>ends mi tin- liver.' \Ve lind tliis 

 form of witticism in Aristophanes and Cicero, and 

 in old England it was not unknown even in the 

 pulpit. The sermons of Bishop Andrewes and the 

 Church History and other works of Thomas Fuller 

 aUitind in puns of all degrees of goodness and bad- 

 ness ; they meet us strangely enough even in the 

 gravest situations in tlic tragedies of Shakespeare, 

 and there is at least one in l.iddell and Scott's 

 Creek Lexicon. Dr Johnson said that the man who 

 would make a pun would pick a pocket ; hut this 

 sentence bears too hard upon the best beloved of 

 English writers, Charles Lamh, a hardened punster, 

 not to speak of Sydney Smith, Hook, Hood, the 

 prince of punsters, and Bishop \Vilherforce. Boswell, 

 while relating Dr Johnson's dislike to puns, ven- 

 tures his own opinion that 'a good pun may be 

 admitted among the smaller excellencies of con- 

 versation.' But a pun of the best kind has a value 

 infinitely higher than this: there is tenderness as 

 well as wit in Fuller's phrase of tin; Hoi v Innocents 

 of Bethlehem ' the infantry in the noble army of 

 martyrs." 



See Spectator, No. 61, L. Larchey'i Let Jonrurt del 

 Matt (1866), and Hohnrg'i Autocrat of the Brratfatt 

 TabU. The Hon. Hush Rowley's Puniana (1867 (and 

 More funiana. (1875) contain many hundred examples, 

 among them a few good puns. 



Punch, a beverage introduced into England 

 from India, and so called from being usiiallv made 

 of five (Hindi, panch) ingredients arrack, tea, 

 sugar, water, and lemon-juice. As now prepared, 

 punch is a drink the basis of which is alcohol of 

 one or more kinds (especially nun), diluted with 

 water, flavoured with lemon or lime-juice and 

 spices, .-ind sweetened with sugar ; sometimes other 

 ingredients are added according to taste, especially 

 wine, ale, and tea. ' Hack-punch ' takes its name 

 from Arrack (q.v.). Milk-punch is prepared liefore- 

 hand (of rum and brandy with milk), bottled, and 

 served cold even iced. Whisky-toddy, made with 

 whisky, hot water, and sugar, is a kind of punch, 

 the name toddy being Hindustani 



Punch, with his wife Judy and dog Toby, the 

 chief characters in a popular comic puppet show, 

 of Italian origin, the name being a contraction of 

 Punchinello, for Pulcinello, the droll clown in 

 Neapolitan comedy. The word is a diminutive 

 from pitlcino, 'a young chicken.' The identifica- 

 tion with Pontius Pilate, as well as of Judy with 

 t lie betrayer Judas, is entirely without foundation. 

 Many l>elieve the modern Punch to have originated 

 in :i survival of the Maccits, the fool or clown 

 of the ancient Atcllan.-e (<|.v.), just as the Italian 

 Arlecchino and Brighetta are oftheir other Oscan 

 'haracters. But the line of descent is certainly 

 ( oWure enough, and it is at least not improbable 

 . that some trace of the old Ludi Osci, transmitted 

 through the Vice of the mystery plays, may lurk in 

 the modern (Ira ma of the hook-nosed hunchback 

 Punch and his unfortunate wife Judy. The full- 

 grown modern drama, which can scarcely be looked 

 on as a school of the domestic virtues, is ascribed 

 loan Italian comedian, Silvio Fiorillo, alwut 1600. 

 The exhibition soon found its way into other 

 countries, ami was very popular in England during 

 the 17th century. It* popularity seems to have 

 reached it-, height in the time of Queen Anne, and 

 Addison has given in the S/irrl,itnr a regular criti- 

 cism of one of the performances. In ISI'2 Onseley 

 aw at Tabriz in Persia a <v\psy piimiet show very 

 like our Punch and Judy. See also MAKIOXETTIW. 



The performance of Punch, as generally repre- 

 sented, requires the assistance of only two persons 

 one to carry the theatre and work the figures, 

 the other to l.car the IHIX of puppets, blow tin) 

 trunipet, and sometimes keep up the dialogue with 

 the hero of the piece. The movements of the 

 puppets are managed simply by putting the hands 

 under the dress, making the" second finger and 

 thumb serve for the arms, while the forefinger 

 works the head. 



Punch, or the LONDON CHARIVARI, the English 



' ' journal par excellence, is a weekly maga/.ine 



of wit, humour, and satire in prose and n 

 copiously illustrated by sketches, caricatures, and 

 emblematical devices. It draws its materials as 

 freely from the most exalted spheres of foreign 

 politics as from the provincial nursery ; and, dealing 

 with every side of life, is not less olwervant of the 

 follies of BeJgravia than of the peculiarities of 

 Whitechapel. Punch gives due place to Irish bulls 

 ami dry Scotch humour, and does its best topn- 

 them in the raciest vernacular. Stem in the 

 exposure of sham and vice, Punch is yet kindly 

 when it makes merry over innocent foibles. Usual ly 

 a censor morum in the guise of Joe Miller, a genial 

 English Democrittis who laughs and provokes to 

 laughter, Punch at times weeps with those that 

 weep, and,/oci remotis, pays a poetical tribute to 

 the memory of the departed great. The wittiest 

 of serial prints was founded in 1841, the first number 

 appearing on the 17th July of that year, and, 

 under the joint editorship of Henry Mayhew and 

 Mark Lemon, soon became a household word, 

 while ere long its satirical cuts and witty rhymes 

 were admittedly a power in the land, 'j'mii-h is 

 recognised as an English institution, and in corners 

 of Europe where an Englishman rarely comes the 

 frequenters of the cafe may be seen puzzling o\ IT 

 the esoteric wit and wisdom of Cockayne. Tlicir 

 contributions to Punch, helped to make Douglas 

 Jen-old, Gilbert a Beckett, Tom Hood, Albert 

 Smith, Thackeray, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor, 

 and F. C. Burnand famous ; as their illustrations 

 did H. K. Browne, Doyle, Leech, Tenniel, Du 

 Manner, Keene, Linley Sambourne, and Fnrniss. 

 It should be noted that this genial comic paper has 

 done memorable service in purifying the moral 

 standard of current wit in England. 



See CHARIVARI, CARICATURE, the articles on the chief 

 contributors, &<x ; A Jorum of Punch, by Athol Mayhew. 

 rather unduly magnifying Mayhcw'a share (1895); and 

 The Biitory of Punch, by M. H. Spiehnann (1895). 



Pimchestown. a racecourse close to N'aas. 

 21) miles SVV. of Dublin, where are held in April 

 the steeplechases of the Kildare Hunt. Theie are 

 stone monuments near. 



Punctuation is the art of marking the divi- 

 sions of a sentence by means of conventional sj^ns 

 the full stop or period (.), colon (:), semicolon (; ), 

 comma (,), dash ( ), mark of exclamation (!), 

 mark of interrogation (?), inverted commas (" "), 

 and brackets) ), [ \ Broadly speaking, there are 

 two principal systems of punctuation, the gram- 

 matical and the logical. The system most fre- 

 quently followed in British printing-houses is 

 neither of these, lieing a set of empirical rule*, in 

 which the logical element is almost entirely want- 

 ing, the grammatical is present to some extent. 

 but the ruling factor is apparently arbitrary fancy. 

 Commas are too often held in profound contempt, 

 Ix'ing scattered at random amongst the words as if 

 from a pepper-box. These lawless little adjuncts 

 can IM- found, in the bent-printed Imoks, insinuating 

 themselves between subject anil verb in even short 

 sentences. The printing-ollicesof the I'nited States 

 are to some extent uniform in their practice. The 

 system they follow is much better than those in 



