Literary Lapses

Leacock was a humorist genius loved by Groucho Marx and many others for his comic chops, great emotional detail of humor. Using the fictional English royal family, the Oxheads, he detailed the mythic cowardice of Lord Oxhead's family, several members of which are set up to be admired and then we see the description of their valor was more in its absence than presence. First to reach Plymouth in a boat to let the people know that, near as he could tell from a great distance, the Spanish Armada had arrived. Or the one who fought with Wellington, and was fired for it.