“This Guffawgraph is intended to form a refuge for destitute wit — an asylum for the thousands of orphan jokes — the millions of perishing puns, which are now wandering about without so much as a shelf to rest upon!” — Punch, Volume 1 (1841) Punch, or the London...

"For hym was levere have at his beddes heed Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed, Of Aristotle and his philosophie, Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie. But al be that he was a philosophre, Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre But al that he myghte of...