The Art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about Maps,
But Biography is about Chaps.

John Stuart Mill
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote Principles of Political Economy.

The people of Spain think Cervantes
Equal to half-a-dozen Dantes:
An opinion resented most bitterly
By the people of Italy.

When Alexander Pope
Accidentally trod on the soap
And came down on the back of his head —
Never mind what he said.

The younger Van Eyck
Was christened Jan, not Mike.
The thought of this curious mistake
Often kept him awake.

“I quite realized,” said Columbus,
“That the Earth was not a rhombus,
But I am a little annoyed
To find it an oblate spheroid.”

— Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) (More.)

The one-L lama,
He’s a priest.
The two-L llama,
He’s a beast.
And I would bet
A silk pajama
There isn’t any
Three-L lllama.

When Ogden Nash published this poem, a reader pointed out that a large fire in Boston is a three-alarmer.

Nash responded, “Pooh.”

If you have ever, like me,
Missed the “r” and hit the “t,”
Addressing some fat blister
As “Mt.” instead of “Mr.,”
I trust you left it unamended?
Splendid.

— J.B. Boothroyd, Punch, 1948

G stands for gnu,
Whose weapons of defense
Are long, sharp, curling horns, and common sense.
To these he adds a name so short and strong,
That even hardy Boers pronounce it wrong.
How often on a bright autumnal day
The pious people of Pretoria say,
“Come, let us hunt the–” Then no more is heard
But sounds of strong men struggling with a word.
Meanwhile, the distant gnu with grateful eyes
Observes his opportunity and flies.

— Hilaire Belloc

The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
Called a hen a most elegant creature.
The hen, pleased with that,
Laid an egg in his hat–
And thus did the hen reward Beecher.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes