The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability.

Poe’s epigram treats the pun as a deliberately “bad” form whose success depends on how much it strains taste and patience. By casting “goodness” as proportional to “intolerability,” he flips ordinary aesthetic judgment: the more groan-inducing the wordplay, the more perfectly it fulfills the pun’s peculiar purpose. The line also hints at Poe’s broader interest in effects—how a literary device works on an audience—suggesting that puns operate through a kind of comic violence against sense and decorum. The statement is often read as both a defense of punning (as a craft with its own criteria) and a wry acknowledgment of why many readers despise it.