To the surgeon in the witness-box who said, "I employ myself as a surgeon," Lord Ellenborough retorted, "But does anybody else employ you as a surgeon?"
The demand to be examined _on affirmation_ being preferred by a Quaker witness, whose dress was so much like the costume of an ordinary _conformist_ that the officer of the court had begun to administer the usual oath, Lord Ellenborough inquired of the 'friend,' "Do you really mean to impose upon the court by appearing here in the disguise of a reasonable being?" Very pungent was his ejaculation at a cabinet dinner when he heard that Lord Kenyon was about to close his penurious old age by dying. "Die!--why should he die?--what would he get by that?" interposed Lord Ellenborough, adding to the pile of jests by which men have endeavored to keep a grim, unpleasant subject out of sight--a pile to which the latest _mot_ was added the other day by Lord Palmerston, who during his last attack of gout exclaimed playfully. "_Die_, my dear doctor! That's the _last_ thing I think of doing." Having jested about Kenyon's parsimony, as the old man lay _in extremis_, Ellenborough placed another joke of the same kind upon his coffin. Hearing that through the blunder of an illiterate undertaker the motto on Kenyon's hatchment in Lincoln's Inn Fields had been painted '_Mors Janua Vita_,' instead of 'Mors Janua Vitæ,' he exclaimed, "Bless you, there's no mistake; Kenyon's will directed that it should be 'Vita,' so that his estate might be saved the expense of _a diphthong._" Capital also was his reply when Erskine urged him to accept the Great Seal. "How can you," he asked, in a tone of solemn entreaty, "wish me to accept the office of Chancellor, when you know, Erskine, that I am as ignorant of its duties as you are yourself?" At the time of uttering these words, Ellenborough was well aware that if he declined them Erskine would take the seals. Some of his puns were very poor. For instance, his exclamation, "Cite to me the decisions of the judges of the land: not the judgments of the Chief Justice of Ely, who is fit only to _rule_ a copybook."
One of the best 'legal' puns on record is unanimously attributed by the gossipers of Westminster Hall to Lord Chelmsford. As Sir Frederick Thesiger he was engaged in the conduct of a cause, and objected to the irregularity of a learned sergeant who in examining his witnesses repeatedly put leading questions. "I have a right," maintained the sergeant, doggedly, "to _deal_ with my witnesses as I please." "To that I offer no objection," retorted Sir Frederick; "you may _deal_ as you like, but you shan't _lead_." Of the same brilliant conversationalist Mr. Grantley Berkeley has recorded a good story in 'My Life and Recollections.' Walking down St. James's Street, Lord Chelmsford was accosted by a stranger, who exclaimed "Mr. Birch I believe?" "If you believe that, sir, you'll believe anything," replied the ex-Chancellor, as he passed on.