"No; black are our bosoms, and red are our hands, But a model of virtue our Ponniboy stands; And his basest detractors can only say this, That he's fond of the cup, and the card, and the kiss.

"A warm-hearted fellow—a faithful ally, Our Bloater's[42] Vice-Regent o'er Punch's gone by; He's as true to the flag of the White Friars still As when he did service with Jerrold and Gil.

"Here's his health in a bumper! "Old" Ponny—a fib; What's fifty? A baby. Bring tucker and bib. Add twenty; then ask us again, little boy, And till then may your life be all pleasure and joy!"

"Ponny" Mayhew, who did not actually write anything for some years before his end, died in May, 1872; and on p. 191 of the sixty-second volume a graceful obituary notice pays tribute to his long and faithful service and his gentle good-nature.

By this time Punch's established reputation brought a great number of anonymous contributions, only a very few of which were ever used, and of fewer still was the authorship placed upon record. Early in 1843, however (p. 82, Vol. IV.), Mr. Blackwood, of Edinburgh, sent in one of the earliest of Scottish witticisms, a conundrum; Joseph O'Leary, a reporter of the "Morning Herald," is said to have contributed a poem on "The English Vandal;" and R. B. Peake, who had adapted "A Night with Punch" for W. J. Hammond, began his little series of "Punch's Provincial Intelligence," of which the most notable is a humorous report of the University Boatrace of the year; and then the elder Hood began his short but brilliant career.



Thomas Hood had forgiven and forgotten the annoyance he had felt on seeing in the first number of Punch a bogus advertisement ascribed to him under the title of "Lessons in Punmanship," at which he "could only express his amazement that his name should be paraded with apparent authority in a paper of the very existence of which he was not aware;" and within two years he became a fairly constant contributor, after writing to Dickens, "You will be glad to hear that I have made an arrangement with Bradbury to contribute to Punch, but that is a secret I cannot keep from you. It will be light occasional work for odd times." So he began with a sketch re-drawn by H. G. Hine, accompanying a "Police Report of a Daring Robbery by a Noble Lord"—the first of his stinging attacks on Lord William Lennox, one of Punch's favourite and, it must be admitted, legitimate butts. Then followed at different times a score or more of conundrums in the true Hoodian vein under the title of "Whys and Whens," fair specimens of which are these: "Why is killing bees like a confession? Because you unbuzz 'em." "Why is 'yes' the most ignorant word in the language? Because it doesn't no anything." "What's the difference between a soldier and a bomb-shell? One goes to wars, the other goes to peaces." "When is a clock on the stairs dangerous? When it runs down." A couple of sketches and "A Drop of Gin," an important poem of seventy-six lines somewhat in the manner of the latter portion of "Miss Kilmansegg" were followed—enclosed within a comic border!—by his greatest popular effort, "The Song of the Shirt." This appeared, not in the "Almanac," but in the "Christmas Number," on p. 261 of the second volume for 1843.

The particular incident by which this immortal poem was suggested was one which had called forth a powerful leading-article in the "Times." It was the "terrible fact" that a woman named Bidell, with a squalid, half-starved infant at the breast, was "charged at the Lambeth police-court with pawning her master's goods, for which she had to give L2 security. Her husband had died by an accident, and had left her with two children to support, and she obtained by her needle for the maintenance of herself and family what her master called the 'good living' of seven shillings a week."

Punch was at once aglow with red-hot indignation, and in an article entitled "Famine and Fashion!" proposed an advertisement such as this for the firm that employed her—

"Holland coats from two-and-three are shown By Hunger's haggard fingers neatly sewn. Embroidered tunics for your infant made,— The eyes are sightless now that worked the braid; Rich vests of velvet at this mart appear, Each one bedimm'd by some poor widow's tear; And riding habits formed for maid or wife, All cheap—aye, ladies, cheap as pauper-life. For mourning suits this is the fitting mart, For every garment help'd to break a heart."

The subject touched Hood more powerfully perhaps than others, for his nature was essentially grave and sympathetic. As he himself had said, it was only for his livelihood that he was a lively Hood—although he was always brimming over with comicalities; and he never felt more deeply the dignity of his profession and his own force and weight than when he was engaged on serious work. So Hood conjured up his "Song of the Shirt," moved by the revelations of poor seamstresses who received, as it appeared, five farthings a shirt, out of which sum they had to find their own needles! Mark Lemon told Mr. Joseph Hatton that Hood had "accompanied the poem with a few lines in which he expressed the fear that it was hardly suitable for Punch, and leaving it between his discretion and the waste-paper basket." It had, said Hood, already been rejected by three papers, and he was sick of the sight of it. Mark Lemon brought the poem up at the Table, where the majority of the Staff protested against its inclusion in a comic paper. But Lemon was determined; and, after all, was it not for a Christmas number that he destined it—a number in which something serious, pathetic, with a note of pity and love, was surely not out of place?

The effect on its publication was tremendous. The poem went through the land like wild-fire. Nearly every paper quoted it, headed by the "Times;" it was the talk of the hour, the talk of the country. It went straight to John Bull's kind, bourgeois, sympathetic heart, just as Carlyle declared that Ruskin's truths had "pierced like arrows" into his. The authorship, too, was vigorously canvassed with intense interest. Dickens, with that keen insight and critical faculty which had enabled him almost alone among literary experts to detect the sex of George Eliot, then an unknown writer (though doubtless he was helped in the case I now speak of by Hood's letter to him just quoted), was one of the few who at once named the writer of the verses. And it was well for Hood that he had proof positive of the authorship, for one of the most curious things connected with the poem was the number of persons who had the incomprehensible audacity to claim it. One young gentleman was mentioned by name, either by his friends or himself, and I find a letter in a volume of newspaper cuttings to this effect: "I have just read, to my great surprise, the announcement in your paper that Mr. Hood wrote 'The Song of the Shirt,' because I know positively that what I before stated to you is the fact." So hard pressed, indeed, was Hood, that he wrote a private letter in February, 1845, in the following terms:—

"As I have publicly acknowledged the authorship of the 'Song of the Shirt,' I can have no objection to satisfy you privately on the subject. My old friends Bradbury and Evans, the proprietors of Punch, could show you the document conclusive on the subject. But I trust my authority will be sufficient, especially as it comes from a man on his death-bed."

Had these literary vultures had their way, Hood would have been brazened out of his verses altogether.

Punch shared handsomely in the glory of the poet, and its circulation tripled on the strength of it. And Mrs. Hood, poor soul, triumphed in her prophecy; for had she not said, and maintained in spite of each successive rejection from foolish editors—"Now mind, Hood, mark my words; this will tell wonderfully! It is one of the best things you ever did!"

And so this song, which, in spite of its defects, still thrills you as you read, achieved such a popularity that for sudden and enthusiastic applause its reception has rarely been equalled. It was soon translated into every language of Europe—(Hood used to laugh as he wondered how they would render "Seam and gusset and band," into Dutch); it was printed and sold as catchpennies, printed on cotton pocket-handkerchiefs, it was illustrated and parodied in a thousand ways; and the greatest triumph of all, which brought tears of joy to Hood's eyes, before a week was out a poor beggar-woman came singing it down the street, the words set to a simple air of her own. The greatest delight of Hood—"the darling of the English heart," as he was called, who was literally dying when he wrote the song, and so fulfilled the sole condition which Jerrold said was all that was needed to make him famous—was the conviction that the interest which the nation was taking in his lines would turn to the real advantage of those in whose cause he pleaded. He felt that he had touched not only the nation's heart but the nation's conscience, and he deeply appreciated Kenny Meadows' and Leech's efforts in the same direction, such as are to be seen in the cartoons of "Pin Money, Needle Money," and many more besides.

Speaking of the "Song of the Shirt," which brought letters to Punch from every part of the globe, Mr. Ruskin declares it the most impressive example of the most perfect manifestation of the temper of the caricaturist, the highest development of which is to be found in Hood's poetry; and he compares it to Leech's "General Fevrier turned Traitor." There certainly can be no doubt that its force is amazingly assisted by its plainness and simplicity of language.

It is a curious fact that one verse of the poem was not printed by Mark Lemon, although it appeared in the original manuscript; nor is it included in the reprinted "Works." I imagine that its omission was simply a matter of make-up, as it would be hard to compress the poem into the space allotted to it, without using a much smaller type than was usual in Punch; and an odd number of verses is a serious matter for a sub-editor to wrestle with when he has to arrange a poem into double columns of a given depth. The missing verse, which, to do Mark Lemon justice, is the one most easily spared, runs as follows:—

"Seam, and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam, Work, work, work, Like an Engine that works by Steam! A mere machine of iron and wood, That toils for Mammon's sake, Without a brain to ponder and craze, Or a heart to feel—and break!"

In the same number that contained the "Song of the Shirt" was another impressive poem by Hood, "The Pauper's Christmas Carol," in seven stanzas; but it was entirely overshadowed and eclipsed by its fellow-song, so that it lay, as it has done for the most part since, almost unknown, unhonoured, and unsung. Yet it was as ringing and true as any of Jerrold's most stirring efforts in his championship of the poor. But the two friends were essentially different in their treatment and methods. Hood's satire was never personal, as Jerrold's was; and, unlike Jerrold, Hood would never tolerate the idea, much less practise it, of placing "a wide moral gulf between Rich and Poor, with Hate on one side and Fear on the other." He sought to help the poor by awakening the love and sympathy of Society, and for that reason he selected his epitaph in reference to his poem, for he would never have chosen this as technically his finest work. He was altogether out of harmony with Jerrold's policy of stinging the rich into charity and justice by biting satire and illogical sarcasm, warm-hearted and well-meant though it was.

At this time Hood was fast approaching his end; and he wrote for Punch on his death-bed. Though still young, he was becoming more and more afflicted with physical ailments. Amongst other troubles, he was getting stone deaf, he said; but consoled himself with the reflection that his friend Charles Landseer was two stone deafer. And all the while his rollicking fun, and quaintly sudden turn of word and idea were transporting his readers, as he somewhere says, "from Dull-age to Grin-age." His humour was effervescent, continuous, and effortless—not like Jerrold's wit, intermittent flashes called up at need—but overflowing in a rich stream of joke, pun, hit, crank, and quip, covering a field far wider than Jerrold's, and more genial.

The next contribution was his poem "The Drama," apropos of the State trials in Ireland, and the Fair Maid of Perth, with allusion to the Fighting Smith in either case—a poem of 108 lines. Then followed "Reflections on New Year's Day" (January 6th, 1844), from which a couple of specimen verses may well be quoted:—

"Yes, yes, it's very true and very clear! By way of compliment and common chat, It's very well to wish me a New Year; But wish me a New Hat.

"Oh, yes, 'tis very pleasant, though I'm poor, To hear the steeple make that merry din; Except I wish one bell were at the door To ring new trowsers in."

After a column on "The Awful State of Ireland" Hood was, on the 3rd of March, 1844, editorially reckoned on the Staff. But the decree of Fate was against him, and he only contributed two more pieces altogether. Punch, as he acknowledged, was the one bright meteor that had flashed across his milk-and-watery way in his latter years, and gave him, together with Sir Robert Peel's tactful and charming bestowal of a pension, his last delight. But already death, he said, had thrown open wide its door to him, and he was "so near to it that he could almost hear the hinges creak." And when he died, there were engraved upon his tombstone, at his own desire, the simple words, "He Sang the Song of the Shirt."

The first arrival of 1844 was Dr. Edward Vaughan Kenealy, who, many years after, acted for and defended the historic "Claimant," the self-confessed Orton, alias Castro, alias "Sir Roger Tichborne," with so much violent ability, lost his balance and came to utter grief. In his youth one of his scholarly relaxations was to translate English verse of various sorts into various languages—Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindustani, and the like, for he was a remarkable linguist. His unique Punch contribution was the rendering of "The King of the Cannibal Islands" into Greek, and very good Greek too. The jeu d'esprit is to be found on p. 79, Volume VI., as well as in his volume of verse dedicated to Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, whom he was destined afterwards to waste his life in vilifying, while shattering his own career in his savage and ineffective assaults.

In the following month T. J. Serle struck up an ephemeral connection. He had been Macready's secretary, and acting manager of Drury Lane, and had written "The Shadow on the Wall," and other successful plays; and Jerrold's eldest son was named Thomas Serle, after him. His first paper was "A Fine Lady," on the 10th of March; but after one further contribution, two months later, he appeared no more. About the same time there was printed "The Magnitia," by Frank Moir (May 3rd, No. 199).

J. W. Ferguson was a far more important and more useful contributor, whose work was full of talent, whose versification was clever and pointed, and whose topical "Punch's Fairy Tales" (with obtrusively obvious morals) are models of their kind. His "Little Frenchman's First Lesson" (May 18th, 1844) purports to be a translation of a French poem with which patriots are supposed to implant hatred of England in the minds and hearts of their children the refrain being "Car ce sont la des perfides Albionnais!"—and the "Second Lesson," which replies to a French attack, were important efforts. His "Lays of the Amphitheatre (Royal), by T. B. Macaulay," "Cyinon and Iphigeneia," and similar contributions justified his inclusion in the Staff (April, 1845); but after the autumn of 1846, by which time he was represented by a score of columns, he disappeared from Punch's scene.

A letter from Charles Lever (6th June, 1844), under the title of "A Familiar Epistle," and over the signature "Archy Delany," for a moment brought that distinguished novelist into contact with Thackeray—a circumstance that was not forgotten by either writer, when the latter paid his rather stiff Dublin visit some time afterwards to the "Harry Rollicker" whom he so brilliantly parodied in his "Prize Novelists." Then Mr. W. P. Bull, of Nuneaton, sent in half a column of mock-heroic verse—"A Soliloquy"—which purported to be the commencement of a scene from an unpublished drama entitled "The Chemist," a contribution of which Lemon thought very highly. No further items, however, came from that quarter.

Three recruits appeared with the month of October. A writer named Jackson forwarded a couple of pieces ("Irish Intelligence" and "The Polka Pest"—the latter well describing the craze with which the new dance inoculated the whole country); and then Laman Blanchard, Jerrold's life-long friend and fellow-worker from the beginning, made a debut that was almost coincident with his death. His "Royal Civic Function" showed what a hand had been lost to Punch; but it was his delightful "New Year's Ode: To the Winner of the St. Nisbett—Season, 1844," that was the best of his rare contributions. It was at once an elegy of Mrs. Nisbett, and a prayer and prophecy that she might again be seen on the boards. The last verse runs:—

"Who weds a mere beauty, dooms dozens to grieve; Who marries an heiress, leaves hundreds undone; Who bears off an actress (she never took leave), Deprives a whole city of rational fun. But farewell the glances and nods of St. Nisbett; We list for her short ringing laughter in vain, And yet—bereaved London!—What think you of this bet? A hundred to one we shall see her again!"

The prophecy was only partly fulfilled; Mrs. Nisbett was certainly seen again upon the stage, but Blanchard was not there to enjoy the sight. He died within the same year, to the passionate grief of Douglas Jerrold.



The last and most important accession of the year was Tom Taylor, for six-and-thirty years a Staff officer of Punch, and for the last six of them commander-in-chief. He was twenty-seven years old when he sent in his first two contributions—"Punch to Messieurs les Redacteurs of the French Press" and "Startling and most Important Intelligence" (October 19th, 1844). According to John Timbs, "Landells in one of his artistic visits to Cambridge met with Mr. T. Taylor, who, having completed his University studies, came to London to embark in the profession of letters, his first contribution being to Douglas Jerrold's 'Illuminated Magazine,'" just at the time when Landells ceased his connection. Bristed, in his record of English University life, foretold of "Travis," generally accepted as a literary portrait of Taylor, "perhaps he will be a nominal barrister and an actual writer for Punch and the magazines. Perhaps he will go quite mad and write a tragedy:" a capital example of a prophecy after the event, so far as it goes—for "Five Years" was published in 1851.



Tom Taylor prided himself on the classic verve of his prose and verse, and undoubtedly assisted in maintaining Punch's literary standard. His work for the paper went on increasing—from six columns in Vol. VII., to forty-two in Vol. XIII.—and soon won him his seat at the Table. For a long while, however, he did not shine as a cartoon-suggestor, the first being "Peel's Farewell" (July 14th, 1849), and the second in the following May, the extremely happy burlesque on the picture in the National Gallery—"Leeds Mercury instructing Young England." As time went on and he became known as a writer of taste and versatility, as a dramatist and adaptor of plays, French and English; art critic of the "Times;" artist biographer; and Civil Servant (he attained to the secretaryship of the Local Government Board), the weight of his increasing responsibility and influence seemed to get into what should have been his humorous work. To counteract it, Thackeray, up to the time of his resignation, struggled to maintain the spirit of jollity and the lightness of touch which had formerly been Punch's true note. But in 1874, when Shirley Brooks died, Tom Taylor, who had been identified with the paper ten years before Brooks had joined it, was promoted, as by right of service, to the supreme command.

It cannot be said that his editorship was a success. His fun was too scholarly and well-ordered, too veiled, deliberate, and ponderous; and under him Punch touched its lowest point of popularity.

"In humour slow, though sharp and keen his mind; His hand was heavy, though his heart was kind."

His popularity among the outsiders was great, as I have learnt from many of his old contributors; for he loved to extend his hospitality to young men at his house, Lavender Sweep, at Wandsworth, and to send kindly notes of encouragement and promises of future help. Nevertheless, he was ever the butt of rival publications. In one of them a cartoon, entitled "An Editor Abroad," was published, showing Mr. Burnand and Mr. du Maurier helping him and his Punch Show out of the mud in which he had stuck; in another he was represented as "The Trumpet Blower;" while in an article in "The Mask" (April, 1868), before he had assumed his sway, Mr. Punch is supposed to point to "Mark Lemon's Triumphal Car" and, referring to Taylor, to say: "He is our seraph.... His adaptations, I assure you, are delightful. You must be well up in Michel Levy's repertoire to find him out. He is so very artful."

A peculiar feature of Tom Taylor's editorship was the hieroglyphical character of his handwriting. His missives of instructions to artists and writers came as a terror to the receivers, who could make little of them. "Mr. Tom Taylor's letters," Mr. Swain informs me, "were often very difficult to decipher. His writing was peculiar, and he would also continue the letter if necessary in any odd corner that was vacant. I remember his writing some instructions to an artist one day in this fashion, while I stood at his table, and, while blotting it, saying, 'You can send it off, but I don't think he'll be able to make it out.'" To this experience may be added my own—that I have been the first to decipher one of these notes addressed to an unattached artist, now understood for the first time, nearly twenty years after it was written. To the compositors he was a perpetual tribulation; and it is doubtful if he could not have given points to Horace Greeley. That his son helped him, towards the end, in a secretarial sort of way, was no doubt a saving mercy.

His was one of the busiest literary and journalistic careers of the day; and when he died he left a void—great, it is true, yet in one respect easily enough filled. But it was little to his friends that his humour was not of the brightest and lightest, for his heart was of the warmest, as Mr. George Meredith set forth in the October number of the "Cornhill Magazine," to which he contributed a noble tribute—"To a Friend Recently Lost, T. T."—a sonnet beginning:—

"When I remember, Friend, whom lost I call Because a man beloved is taken hence, The tender humour and the fire of sense In your good eyes: how full of heart for all; And chiefly for the weaker by the wall, You bore that light of sane benevolence:"

The Punch men, themselves, in a whole-page obituary (July 24th, 1880), bore graceful testimony to his personal worth. "That he is not with us," they said, "is hard to imagine.... A cultivated man of letters, an admirable scholar, he was as free from pedantry as he was incapable of idleness. From first to last he was, in the highest and best sense, 'Thorough.' ... Quick to detect and appreciate talent, he was ready in every way and on all occasions to hold out a helping hand to a beginner." Thus feelingly they spoke of "the dear friend" they had lost. For in his death they forgot the little annoyances they had suffered from the tampering with their lines and spoiling their points, of which they had sometimes had occasion to complain; with other drawbacks belonging to an essentially fidgety nature. It may safely be said, that if he left a hard task to his successor to work up the reputation of Punch as a comic paper, he did not at least render it difficult for him to make his mark by comparison.

No new humorist appeared in the volumes for 1845, although a poet of eminence found expression on a single occasion. To one Kelly is to be credited some humorous verses on "Dunsinane;" to J. Rigby, an Irish Song; to Leech, his Harlequinade verses (which do not aspire even to the dignity of a "trifle" or doggerel); to Watts Phillips, a few articles of little importance; and to J. King, the verses in which an "Exiled Londoner" (p. 147, Vol. IX.) apostrophises his beloved Babylon. The one contribution of importance was that of Mr. Coventry Patmore.

This was written in hot indignation of generous youth (he was but twenty-two years old) at the French atrocity in Algiers, when, during the campaign, General Pelissier filled with straw the mouth of the caves of Dahra, wherein the opposing Arabs, with their women and children, had taken refuge, and set fire to the mass. This foul act of the future Duke of Malakoff caused a thrill of horror to pass through Europe, and the gentle author of "The Angel in the House" was moved by the scandal to the composition of his eight-stanza poem, of which Douglas Jerrold procured the insertion on the 16th of August (p. 73, Vol. IX.):—

"Rush the sparks in rapid fountains Up abroad into the sky! From the bases of the mountains Leap the fork'd flames mountain-high! The flames, like devils thirsting, Lick the wind, where crackling spars Wage hellish warfare, worsting All the still, astonished stars! Ply the furnace, fling the faggots! Lo, the flames writhe, rush, and tear And a thousand writhe like maggots In among them—Vive la guerre!"

The poem follows the details of the massacre, sickening but for the power the lines display. It continues:

"And now, to crown our glory, Get we trophies, to display As vouchers for our story, And mementoes of this day! Once more, then, to the grottoes! Gather each one all he can— Blister'd blade with Arab mottoes, Spear-head, bloody yataghan. Give room now to the raven And the dog, who scent rich fare; And let these words be graven On the rock-side—Vive la guerre!"

It was Mr. Patmore's sole contribution, his Muse never again being startled into any other poetical demonstration of the sort in Punch's pages. The following year he became assistant-librarian at the British Museum.

"Jacob Omnium's" first appearance, curiously enough, was with a short article which, in the reprinted works of Thackeray, has been ascribed to the novelist. This was "A Plea for Plush" (July 20th, 1846), appropriately signed "[Greek: Philophlynkes]," dealing, it is true, with Jeames's nether garments on a hot day, but still with no internal evidence of style to warrant its ascription to the "Fat Contributor." Henceforward his other few papers were entered to him in his own name of Matthew J. Higgins. He was a great friend of the Punch Staff, particularly of Thackeray and Leech. Of him the former had written in the "Ballad of Policeman X"—

"His name is Jacob Homnium, Exquire; And if I'd committed crimes, Good Lord! I wouldn't ave that mann Attack me in the Times!——"

while Leech took his part against Lord John Russell on the occasion of Higgins's "Story of the Mhow Court Martial." He was shown as a tall, self-possessed gentleman, saying to the little fellow, who is sparring up to him—"Pooh, go and hit one of your own size." Higgins's height, indeed, was greater than that of either Thackeray or his friend Dean Hole—six feet eight; and when the three friends walked abroad, the sensation among the passers-by was considerable. On Thackeray and Dean Hole measuring heights once in the house of a common friend, it was found that they were practically equal. "Ah, yes," exclaimed the Dean; "the cases are about the same, but one contains a poor dancing-master's fiddle, and the other a Stradivarius."

Punch's sensation of the year was the fierce revenge taken by Tennyson in its pages on Bulwer Lytton. Bulwer, as is explained elsewhere, had been set up by Punch as one of its pet butts from the very beginning; and when Tennyson's sledge-hammer onslaught was brought to them, so it is said, by a distinguished man of letters—a particular friend of both parties—they rejoiced exceedingly. Tennyson's broadside had not been unprovoked. Years before, in 1830, he had published, through Effingham Wilson, "Poems, chiefly Lyrical," which contained the poem "To a Darling Room," afterwards suppressed. Seizing on this, Lytton had re-echoed in his "New Timon: A Romance of London," the strictures which Christopher North has so severely, though good-naturedly, passed upon it in "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine" for May, 1832, and furthermore taunted the Laureate with the pension of L200 which had just been conferred upon him. The attack was just the sort to extort a violent reply.

"Not mine, not mine (O, muse forbid!) the boon Of borrowed notes, the mock-bird's modish tune, The jingling medley of purloined conceits Out-babying Wordsworth, and out-glittering Keats, Where all the airs of patchwork pastoral chime To drown the ears in Tennysonian rhyme.

* * * * *

"Let school-miss Alfred vent her chaste delight On darling rooms, so warm and bright;[43] Chant 'I am weary' in infectious strain, And 'catch the blue-fly singing on the pane;' Though praised by critics and adored by Blues, Though Peel with pudding plumb the puling muse; Though Theban taste the Saxon purse controls, And pensions Tennyson while starves a Knowles."

Punch (p. 64, Vol. X.) had rushed in to the rescue with the clever retort:—

"The New Timon" and Alfred Tennyson's Pension.

"You've seen a lordly mastiff's port, Bearing in calm, contemptuous sort The snarls of some o'erpetted pup Who grudges him his 'bit and sup:' So stands the bard of Locksley Hall, While puny darts around him fall, Tipp'd with what TIMON takes for venom; He is the mastiff, TIM the Blenheim."

But Tennyson's was not by any means "the lordly mastiff's port." He was stung by the contemptuous reference to the pension, and proved the truth of Johnson's aphorism—

"Of all the griefs that harass the distrest, Sure the most bitter is the scornful jest"—

and he straightway wrote the ten verses that appeared under the title of "The New Timon, and the Poets" (p. 103, Vol. X.), signing them "ALCIBIADES":—

"We know him, out of SHAKESPEARE'S art, And those fine curses which he spoke; The old TIMON, with his noble heart, That, strongly loathing, greatly broke. So died the Old: here comes the New. Regard him: a familiar face: I thought we knew him: What, it's you, The padded man that wears the stays—

* * * * *

"What profits now to understand The merits of a spotless shirt— A dapper boot—a little hand— If half the little soul is dirt?

* * * * *

"A TIMON, you! Nay, nay, for shame: It looks too arrogant a jest— The fierce old man—to take his name, You bandbox. Off, and let him rest."

This crushing rejoinder was cordially welcomed by Thackeray and the rest of the Staff, who loved to castigate the fopperies of the conceited poetaster, and Lytton, it is said, was not a little astonished at the virility of "school-miss Alfred." But Tennyson's anger soon cooled; perhaps his conscience smote him; for the very next week he toned down the savagery of his first verses in an "Afterthought," in which he said:

"And I too talk, and lose the touch I talk of. Surely, after all, The noblest answer unto such Is kindly silence when they brawl."

The first set of verses are not to be found in the poet's collected poems; but the second are included, only "kindly silence" is replaced by "perfect stillness." After that Tennyson broke silence no more; and Lytton subsequently made what was put forward as an amende honorable, in a speech at Hertford (October, 1862), when he said that "we must comfort ourselves with the thought so exquisitely expressed by our Poet Laureate," and so forth. The quarrel between Punch and Lytton faded, first into a truce, and then into friendship; and in 1851 we find several of the Staff playing "Not so Bad as we Seem"—written specially for them—at Devonshire House, before the Queen and the Prince Consort. It may not inappropriately be mentioned that when Woolner's bust of Tennyson was presented to Trinity College and the authorities excluded it from the chapel and library on the ground that there was no precedent for paying so much honour to a living person, Punch, by the hand of Shirley Brooks, published one of the finest parodies extant of the Laureate's style, beginning with the line—

"I am not dead; of that I do repent."

In January, 1847, Horace Smith, the brother of James —— they of the "Rejected Addresses"—contributed a column "Christmas Commercial Report;" and John Macgregor—"Rob Roy"—began his acknowledged series of papers and sketches with "Costumes for the Commons" and "Meeting of the Streets," the pecuniary results of which he devoted to police-court poor-boxes. He was hardly more than a lad at the time; but he was already a strong writer, and his references to the French Revolution have the intrinsic merit that they were written by one who was in Paris at the time when the "Citizen King" took flight to England.



Mr. Henry Silver, ex-Punch Staff officer, first appeared anonymously in Punch in February, 1848, with an obituary notice, sent from Norwich, where he was articled to Sir William Foster, Bart., solicitor. It was called "The Death of Mr. Wimbush's Elephant"—the Jumbo of the period, which had died at the age of eighty-four. He was then only twenty years of age, and, encouraged by this success, he began contributing trifles to "The Month." This publication was edited by Albert Smith in 1851; but although it was illustrated by Leech, and was one of the most genuinely humorous works of its kind, it ran for only six months. When "The Month" came to a sudden stop, the articles remaining unpublished were turned over to Mark Lemon to see what use he could make of them. Some were by Mr. Silver, who was forthwith summoned from his anonymity by a line in Punch: "'Naughty Boy' has not sent his address." Mark Lemon was not kept waiting for the answer, and after paying him for several of his previous contributions (an attention highly appreciated) he at once installed the young man as a writer at the rate of one guinea per column. This, in due course, was raised to thirty shillings, and at that remained until 1881, when he received a weekly stipend of six guineas, which the Editor declared to be the maximum then payable to a Punch writer. Some years previous to this, and soon after the death of Douglas Jerrold, Mr. Silver had been summoned to occupy the place at the Table left vacant by the great satirist. "My chief work," he writes in answer to my inquiry, "was in the decade ending with the 'Sixties, though it by no means ceased then. I often filled four or five columns a week, and contributed 'Punch's History of Costume'" (illustrated by Tenniel), "'Our Dramatic Correspondent,' 'Our Dramatic Spectator,' with a great amount of prose and verse, and sundry pages of the 'Essence of Parliament' when Shirley Brooks was away."

Perhaps Mr. Silver's greatest service to Punch, as elsewhere explained, was his introduction of Charles Keene, with whom he was very intimate for more than forty years. His friendship with Leech, a fellow-Carthusian, though of course greatly his senior, is another interesting passage of his life, testified to by the many hunting sketches which, with a score or more of Keene's, decorated the billiard room of the fine old house in Kensington where Leech had died, and which Mr. Silver subsequently occupied until it was pulled down in 1893.

At Leech's death Mr. Silver was invited by Mark Lemon to apply to the Governors of Charterhouse for the gift of an admission into "Gown-boys" for the son of the great draughtsman who had been so good a friend. After many fruitless efforts he was at length successful, and received the welcome present from the hands of Lord John Russell—as is set forth elsewhere. On the death of Lemon, Mr. Silver severed his regular connection with Punch.

The advent of the brilliant journalist Mr. Sutherland Edwards was the other event of 1848. "I was engaged on Punch," he says, "at the recommendation of Gilbert a Beckett, who had thought well of satirical verses and poems contributed by me to a paper called 'Pasquin.' Douglas Jerrold, however, had been attacked rather severely in 'Pasquin;' not by me, but by James Hannay. Hannay and myself wrote the whole of 'Pasquin' up to the time of my quitting that publication in order to write for Punch; and we considered ourselves jointly responsible for what appeared in its columns. Jerrold was away in the Channel Islands at the time of my being engaged on Punch; and on his return to London he showed himself annoyed (not unnaturally, perhaps) at the Editor, Mark Lemon, having engaged me. 'Two youths,' he was reported to have said, 'throw mud at me, and because one of them hits me in the eye you clasp him to your bosom.' Mark Lemon now asked me to give up writing for Punch, but to contribute as much as I liked to a magazine he was about to start with the assistance of the contributors to Punch. It was to have been called 'The Gallanty Show;' but it never came out. After I had contributed to Punch for some weeks, I wrote a few articles for one of 'Punch's Pocket-Books;' then finding I was not wanted, I ceased to send in contributions, and my engagement came to an end.... I resumed my connection with Punch when Mr. Burnand became Editor (thirty-two years afterwards), and still write for it from time to time, but only as an occasional contributor." In this year Richard Doyle made a slight literary appearance in the paper, with an article on "High Art and the Royal Academy."

Charles Dickens is supposed to have contributed to Punch in the following year (1849) an article entitled "Dreadful Hardships Endured by the Shipwrecked Crew of the London, Chiefly for Want of Water"—a criticism on the scandalous condition of the suburban water supply. Mr. F. G. Kitton has examined the original manuscript preserved by Mrs. Mark Lemon in her autograph album. Mr. Hatton found it among Lemon's papers, bearing on the outside, in the Editor's handwriting, the inscription, "Dickens' only contribution to Punch!" But the alleged contribution is absolutely undiscoverable in the pages of the paper. The explanation is, in Mr. Kitten's words, that "about the time the manuscript was written, several pictorial allusions to foul water in suburban London appeared in Punch, which bear directly upon the subject of Dickens's protest, and it is surmised that the Editor, on the receipt of Dickens's contribution, considered that greater prominence would be given to the matter to which they referred by means of a cartoon than by a few lines of text. Hence we find the rebuke enforced by the pencil of the artist, instead of the mere literary lashing which Dickens intended to inflict upon that particular public grievance." It may safely be suggested that this was the only occasion on which, after his reputation was made, Dickens was ever "declined with thanks." This MS., it may be added, was sold at Sotheby's on the 9th of July, 1889, and was knocked down for L16.



The curious fact remains that Dickens, who was the intimate friend of Punch's Editor for the best part of their working lives, whose publishers were Punch's proprietors as well as the publishers and part proprietors of the "Daily News," which Dickens edited, never contributed to Punch, nor was in any way identified with it, save, indeed, with its Dinner-Table. At that function he was at one time a frequent visitor, and also was he present when at the Prince of Wales's wedding a brilliant company assembled at the publishing office to see the cortege go by. It was on that occasion that Sothern, one of the invited guests, arrived on the other side of the way, but, owing to the denseness of the crowd, was utterly unable to force his way across. His friends caught sight of him, and pointed to a policeman. Sothern took the hint. "Get me through," he whispered, "and I'll give you a sovereign." "Afraid I can't," said the man regretfully, "but I'll try." A prodigious effort was made, but unsuccessfully, loud protests going up from the packed crowd. Sothern was at his wits' end; he could not bear the thought of losing such a dinner in such a company, but his invention did not fail him. "Look here," he said to the constable; "put your handcuffs on me, drag me through, and land me at that door, and I'll give you two pounds." The man seized the idea and Sothern together; he slipped on the handcuffs, and with a loud "Make way, there!" dragged his prize through a mass of humanity that was only too happy to assist the law as far as might be; and after a few moments of crushing, pushing, and general rough handling, the dishevelled comedian was successfully landed at Punch's publishing door. "You'll find the money in my waistcoat pocket," said Sothern. But he did not observe that, after the policeman had secured it, a stealthy addition was made to the money in the constabular palm by one of his Punch friends; and only when the man disappeared in the crowd did Sothern realise that a timely bribe had left him to mix with his friends for the rest of the day and to eat his dinner with hands firmly secured in his manacles!

It is said that Dickens held aloof from Punch on account of Thackeray's success in it. If so, the jealousy must have been all on Dickens' side; for Thackeray's well-known exclamation, when he hurried into the Punch office and slapped down before Lemon the latest number of "Dombey and Son" containing Paul Dombey's death, "It's stupendous! unsurpassed! There's no writing against such power as this!" was that of a generous and magnanimous man. Bryan Proctor ("Barry Cornwall"), writing to E. Fitzgerald in 1870, said, "I saw a good deal of Thackeray until his death.... I did not observe much jealousy in Thackeray towards Dickens, nor vice versa. They travelled pretty comfortably on their dusty road together. Each had a quantity of good-nature, and each could afford to be liberal to the other." The probable explanation is that Dickens simply did not care to interrupt his triumphant career of novelist in order to write occasional articles in a paper in which anonymity was the rule and rejection so painfully possible.

Once, however, by the hand of Leech, Dickens made an appearance in Punch, and, curiously enough, only once. This was in the drawing of the awful appearance of a "wopps" at a picnic (p. 76, Vol. XVII.), where the novelist appears as the handsome, but not very striking, youth attendant on the young lady who is overcome at the distressing situation. It must be admitted that the portrait is hardly recognisable.

But a serious quarrel broke out between Dickens and the Punch men, publishers and Editor alike—a quarrel wholly on Dickens's side. So great had been his intimacy and his influence that he could cause the insertion of a cartoon and even bring about the alteration of the Dinner day. But now, on the unhappy differences between himself and his wife, trouble arose between old friends. Mark Lemon had naturally leaned towards the wife, from chivalry and sense of right, and the publishers preferred to take no share in a quarrel in which they certainly had no concern. On May 28, 1859, the whole of the back page of Punch was given to an advertisement of "Once a Week," which was to follow "Household Words," and to an explanation of the position of affairs between "Mr. Charles Dickens and his late Publishers." The following paragraphs are all that it is needful to quote from the statement:—

"So far as 1836, Bradbury and Evans had business relations with Mr. Dickens, and, in 1844, an agreement was entered into by which they acquired an interest in all the works he might write, or in any periodical he might originate, during a term of seven years. Under this agreement Bradbury and Evans became possessed of a joint, though unequal, interest with Mr. Dickens in 'Household Words,' commenced in 1850. Friendly relations had simultaneously sprung up between them, and they were on terms of close intimacy in 1858, when circumstances led to Mr. Dickens's publication of a statement, on the subject of his conjugal differences, in various newspapers, including 'Household Words' of June 12th.

"The public disclosure of these differences took most people by surprise, and was notoriously the subject of comments, by no means complimentary to Mr. Dickens himself, as regarded the taste of this proceeding. On June 17th, however, Bradbury and Evans learnt from a common friend, that Mr. Dickens had resolved to break off his connection with them, because this statement was not printed in the number of Punch published the day preceding—in other words, because it did not occur to Bradbury and Evans to exceed their legitimate functions as proprietors and publishers, and to require the insertion of statements on a domestic and painful subject in the inappropriate columns of a comic miscellany. No previous request for the insertion of this statement had been made either to Bradbury and Evans, or to the editor of Punch, and the grievance of Mr. Dickens substantially amounted to this, that Bradbury and Evans did not take upon themselves, unsolicited, to gratify an eccentric wish by a preposterous action.... Bradbury and Evans replied that they did not, and could not, believe that this was the sole cause of Mr. Dickens's altered feeling towards them; but they were assured that it was the sole cause, and that Mr. Dickens desired to bear testimony to their integrity and zeal as his publishers, but that his resolution was formed, and nothing could alter it."

So this foolish estrangement went on until, years afterwards, Clarkson Stanfield on his death-bed besought Dickens to resume his friendship with the man with whom, after all, he had had no cause of quarrel. So Dickens sent to Lemon (whom he doubtless suspected of having written the publishers' damaging defence just quoted) a kindly letter when "Uncle Mark" appeared as Falstaff before the public, and when Stanfield was buried the two men clasped hands over his open grave; and later on, when Dickens died, some of the most touching and beautiful verses that ever appeared in Punch were devoted to his memory.



In 1850 appeared James Hannay, Mr. Sutherland Edwards' associate in "Pasquin," and founder (I am informed by his cousin, Mr. J. L. Hannay, the police magistrate) of "The Puppet Show." It was when he was approached by the proprietors of this periodical (the Vizetelly brothers), and was asked to write for it as well—"Something in the manner of Sterne, with a dash of Swift"—he replied that in that case his remuneration would have to be "Something in the manner of Rothschild, with a dash of Baring." Hannay was at that time on the "Morning Chronicle," after having, like Jerrold and Stanfield, given a trial to the Royal Navy and found it wanting. He literally fought his way into Punch, just as Shirley Brooks did a few years subsequently, and was assisted from within by the kindly appreciation of Thackeray. Perhaps Jerrold was reconciled to the accession in view of Hannay having started "The Puppet Show" with the main object of violently assaulting his old friend and chum Mr. Edwards, who, in spite of all journalistic amenities, remained his chum, for these assaults were only attacks pour rire.

For a time Hannay's pen was of the utmost value to Punch. His earliest contributions were notes on a tour in Scotland—his native country—he describing himself as "The Scotchman who went back again." But he did not remain very long with Punch; besides being a wit, he was a scholar with a very serious side to his character, and the amusement of the public became, in his eyes, less important than their instruction. He was only twenty-three when he produced his first novel of "Singleton Fontenoy, R.N.," which so pleased Carlyle that it induced the old philosopher to invite him to his house. Then he turned lecturer on literary subjects, became "Quarterly" reviewer, married a daughter of Kenny Meadows, took to diplomacy in a small way, and was appointed Her Majesty's Consul at Barcelona, where he died in 1873. Mr. Holman Hunt, one of the band of wits and youthful geniuses of whom Hannay was the wittiest of all, writes to me of him as "a contributor of great power who might with self-control have gained a great position—a friend who used to come on our nocturnal boating expeditions up the river. He was one of the dear crew who in different capacities and with varied powers once manned life's larger boat with me."

Sir John Tenniel contributed a few pieces in 1851 (p. 56, Vol. XX.) and later, but they were of little importance. Cuthbert Bede was as much a writer as a draughtsman, as he showed by his parody of the "High-mettled Racer." Then came another of Punch's stars of the first magnitude, Shirley Brooks.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] Mark Lemon.

[43] The author here quotes in a footnote a few lines from the poem, beginning

"O, darling room, my heart's delight"——

and then observes: "The whole of this Poem (!!!) is worth reading, in order to see to what depths of silliness the human intellect can descend."



CHAPTER XVI.

PUNCH'S WRITERS: 1852-78.

Shirley Brooks—His Wit and Humour—Training—Lays Siege to Punch—And Carries him by Assault—"Essence of Parliament"—William Brough—Mr. Beatty Kingston—F. I. Scudamore—M. J. Barry—Dean Hole—Mr. Charles L. Eastlake—Mr. Francis Cowley Burnand—His Little Joke with Cardinal Manning—"Fun"—"Mokeanna"—Its Success—Thackeray's Congratulations to Punch—"Happy Thoughts"—And Other Happy Thoughts—Mr. Burnand as a Ground-Swell—Promoted to the Editorship—The Apotheosis of the Pun—Mr. J. Priestman Atkinson—Mr. John Hollingshead—Mr. R. F. Sketchley—"Artemus Ward"—A Death-bed Ambition—H. Savile Clarke—Locker-Lampson and C. S. Calverley—Miss Betham-Edwards—Mr. du Manner's "Vers Nonsensiques"—Mr. A. P. Graves—Rev. Stainton Moses—Mr. Arthur W. a Beckett—"A. Briefless, Junior"—Mortimer Collins—Mr. E. J. Milliken—"The 'Arry Papers"—Gilbert a Beckett—"How we Advertise Now"—Mr. H. F. Lester—Mr. Burnand and the Corporal.



Shirley Brooks—he dropped his first names of Charles William—was perhaps the most brilliant and useful all-round man who ever wrote for Punch. His rapidity was extraordinary. The clergyman who boasted that he could write a sermon in an hour "and think nothing of it" courted the reply that probably the congregation thought nothing of it either. But the single hour in which Brooks began and finished the composition of his "Rime of the Ancient Alderman" (1855)—a poem of fifty stanzas, that fills nine pages in his volume of selected work—brought him criticism of a different sort. His facility was not less astonishing, and I have heard repeated some of his flashes of epigram enclosed in polished verse which it would be hard to believe were extempore but for the circumstances under which they were inspired. Indeed, his fancy, like himself, was a diamond of great fire and high polish, and rich by bounteous favour of nature. He was as witty as Jerrold without the sting; but, when he chose, he could strike as hard, and, as he himself once said, never care "a horse's mamma."

He had been articled to a solicitor, but he preferred the comic muse, and Punch on "Joe Miller" was more to him than Coke upon Littleton. His humorous prose and graceful witty verse were cast upon the waters of the comic press. He was thirty-two before he had his best chance of making himself widely known in the line he especially loved. This was in 1847, when he began to write for the "Man in the Moon," which was just started under the editorship of two Punch men—Albert Smith and Angus B. Reach. For the latter he had a close and tender friendship. When Reach fell ill, Brooks did all his journalistic work for months, and would touch not a penny of the money; as the cheques arrived, they were immediately forwarded for the benefit of the sufferer. He was his colleague on the "Morning Chronicle," for which Brooks was gallery-reporter in the House of Commons for five sessions as well as leader-writer, and when Reach was sent through France on an expedition of inquiry into the condition of the agricultural classes, Brooks was despatched through South Russia, Asia Minor, and Egypt. And in 1852 he wrote in conjunction with him "A Story with a Vengeance," which was partly illustrated by Charles Keene; but the artist was at that time so little known that it was not considered worth the publisher's while to mention his name.

Under Reach's editorship, then, he appeared in the "Man in the Moon," and the next year (1848) in Hannay's "Puppet Show." It was for the pages of the former (November, 1847) that Brooks wrote one of the severest assaults on Punch ever published—the more severe for the excellence of its quality. It was entitled "Our Flight with Punch" (in imitation of Tom Taylor's "Flight with Russell" and his far less happy "Flight with Louis Philippe," in Punch, August and October, 1847, Volume XIII.), in which the "Man in the Moon" was supposed to fly, genie-like, with Punch over the land which at one time he ruled with his wit; and the "Dreary Hunchback," as he was apostrophised, was caustically besought to awake and stem the tide of his supposed degeneration. It is hardly surprising that this poem, clever as it is, was not reprinted in the posthumous collection of the writer's poems.

But not immediately did he conquer his position. There were still years to wait, which were occasionally occupied with a pleasing attack on Punch, one of which, it is said, drew from Leech his picture of two little "snobs" in a low coffee-house. "Punch is very dummy and slow this week, I think," says the first disreputable-looking "fast man." "So do I," replies the other. "It's their own fault, too, for I sent 'em some dem'd funny articles, which the humbugs sent me back." "That's just the way they served me," resumes his friend—"the great fools!" But at last, at the end of 1851, his first contribution to Punch was received, and he was soon invited to join the Staff. He was not long in making a mark with "Miss Violet," but it was not among his strongest contributions. Nevertheless, "Epicurus Rotundus" was now a made man on the highway to success.

It was his charm and grace as much as his vigour that compelled the admiration of his fellows and their admission that he was the most valuable accession that the Staff had ever received. At the dinner given to Thackeray in 1856, Jerrold, in proposing Brooks's health, pronounced him "the most rising journalist of the day," and Mark Lemon declared openly that "Shirley's pen is the gracefullest in London." It was, in fact, the general opinion at the time that his verses combined much of the technical merit of Pope's with the keen sarcasm of Swift; and of such verse he contributed not fewer than six hundred pieces in the course of his Punch career. One of their merits was the unexpected spontaneity of their humour—the faculty that is distinctive of some of the best of his mots, such as that when looking at Edmund Yates's book-shelves which caused him to pause before one of the volumes and read off "Homer's Iliad," and murmur, "Homer's—Yes—that is the best." On one occasion he, with Mr. George Chester (my informant), was on a visit to Mark Lemon at Crawley, and at the breakfast-table a discussion arose between the two men upon noses, their shapes and characteristics. Turning kindly to one of his host's little daughters, and looking at her delicate little nez retrousse, he said, "When they were looking about for a nose for you, my dear, they chose the first that turned up"—a joke often since repeated and well-nigh worked to death.

The contribution by which he will certainly be best and most gratefully remembered is his "Essence of Parliament"—a work which was entirely his own conception, and which was continued for twenty years from week to week while Parliament was sitting, with cleverness, refinement, truth, and humour that are invaluable to the historian and delightful to the general reader. For this work his experience and training as the "Chronicle" reporter were invaluable to him. Brooks was essentially a politician in feeling, full of suggestion—apt, happy, and ingenious—and yet could turn with ease and equal facility to social, literary, poetical, or art-critical work, to his daily "leader" or weekly article for the "Illustrated London News." He was in his time the cartoon suggestor-in-chief, and towards the end of Mark Lemon's life rendered great assistance in the editorship of the paper; although Percival Leigh was the recognised locum tenens. Lemon had been dead but just a week when Brooks wrote (June 1st, 1870) from the Punch office to a friend:—

"Yesterday I accepted the Editorship of Punch. It will be a tie, and give me trouble, but I seem to have been generally expected to take the situation, and it is not good to disappoint General Expectations, as he is a stern officer. Wish me good fortune—but I know you do.

"I was offered a seat on a four-horse coach, for the Derby, alongside M. Gustave Dore. But I am here. Who says I have no self-denial?"

—which shows that he was already in harness.

In his editorship he took the utmost pride, and he would defend his paper with spirit. When an ill-mannered acquaintance told him "that of all the London papers he considered Punch the dullest," Brooks replied, "I wonder you ever read it." "I don't," said the other. "So I thought," retorted the Editor, "by your foolish remark."

Shirley Brooks fell ill with a complication of disorders, and Mr. Burnand did him the same service on Punch that he had done for Lemon, and that Leigh did for himself and Tom Taylor. When he was near his end, and a newspaper acquaintance called persistently to inquire how he was progressing, "Tell him," said the sick man, with a shrewd smile about his lips, "that he shall have his 'par' in good time." He was engaged in writing "Election Epigrams" and "The Situation" on his death-bed; and died in February, 1874, before their publication. He was buried in the cemetery of Kensal Green, close to where Thackeray lay by Leech, and within whose walls, though at some distance apart, Doyle was to sleep, and Henry Mayhew.

Neither Robert nor William Brough ever drew for Punch, but it is the belief of their brother, Mr. Lionel Brough, that they were both at one time literary contributors. Of this, however, I have no record. William was brother-in-law to Mark Lemon, but the two men were not on the best of terms. Robert, a provincial Jerrold, with all Douglas's power of sarcasm and some of his genius, had started the "Liverpool Lion," and was a brilliant comic draughtsman. It was the success of his play, "The Enchanted Isle," that brought him to London, where he wrote burlesques and so forth; but he will be remembered for his clever illustrations to most of Punch's rivals of his time, as well as his creation of "Billie Barlow"—the "Ally Sloper" of the day; and it was not to Punch's advantage that he did not enlist Brough's humorous talent.

In the year 1854—or it may have been a few months later—Mr. W. Beatty Kingston made an early appearance with a cockney ballad on the subject of the admission of female searchers to the penetralia of H.M. Record Office, of which at that time he was a "flickering light" at L100 a year. Soon he took service under the Hapsburgs, and left England afterwards for nearly a quarter of a century. In 1883 he resumed comic operations on the invitation of Mr. Burnand, and continued, until June, 1887, to contribute a good deal of verse, illustrated by Mr. Sambourne and Mr. Furniss. Many of these pieces have since been republished in "My Hansom Lays;" while of those which have since appeared some, such as "A Triplet" and "The Wizard's Curse," have passed into the category of "stock recitations."

Then F. I. Scudamore, still remembered for his vers de societe, was a passing contributor. But in 1855 he joined "The Comic Times," with other of old Punch outsiders, and then obtained an appointment in the Government Telegraphs, and, with a Companionship of the Bath, the superintendence of the Constantinople Post Office.

Mr. Ashby-Sterry's name belongs to the following year, but he appeared solely as a draughtsman; his literary connection, which began twenty-four years later, will be spoken of in its proper place. Michael John Barry was another who at this time (1857) shed no little brilliancy on Punch; and to him is now credited the admirable "Peccavi" despatch—perhaps the most finished and pointed that ever appeared in Punch's pages, and certainly one of the most highly appreciated and most loudly applauded:—

"'Peccavi! I've Scinde,' said Lord Ellen[44] so proud— Dalhousie, more modest, said 'Vovi, I've Oude!'"

This brilliant couplet, according to the "Times," is said to have been contended for by "both Punch and Thomas Hood;" and it never was finally decided which of the two great humorists followed the other. Their claims, indeed, are not irreconcilable. Latterly, the credit has been claimed, with some show of authority, for Barry, who was generally regarded in his day as one of Jerrold's peers in wit. It is curious to observe that in the House of Commons debate on the Candahar question, Mr. P. J. Smyth was reported to have referred to "the unexampled brevity of the General's despatch after he had won his great victory on the Indus," in the quaint belief that the first half-line of the epigram was Lord Ellenborough's actual report.

The Very Rev. Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester, always a spoilt child of Punch's, and the intimate friend of Leech, was more of a Punch man than most contributors, as he was one of the very few outsiders who were ever entertained at the Wednesday Dinner.[45] "Some six-and-thirty years ago," he informed me, "Mark Lemon wrote to me, 'Punch is proud of such a contributor,' and I have his letter. I wrote a few short paragraphs about Oxford, and some longer articles in verse, entitled 'The Sportsman's Dream' and 'My Butler.' Leech told me, 'You are an honorary member of our weekly meetings, and will be always welcome.'" His charming book, "A Little Tour in Ireland," written "by an Oxonian," had the advantage of Leech's pencil, and by his friendship with that artist, as well as with Thackeray and others of the Staff, he was for a time identified in some measure with Punch itself, besides obtaining recognition as the beau-ideal of "the genial, jolly parson." That he did not become a regular contributor to the paper was due, it is believed, to a subsequent misunderstanding.

In "Jack Easel," the writer of a number of delightful letters upon artistic and social topics at home and abroad, it is difficult to recognise Mr. Charles L. Eastlake, the able Keeper of the National Gallery. From 1859 to the autumn of 1862 Mr. Eastlake contributed eight-and-twenty articles of importance, one of them in verse, and the majority headed "Our Roving Correspondent." "Jack Easel on the Continent" and "The Royal Academy Exhibition" were the subjects of many of them, and their note was lively enough to cause his papers to be looked forward to by Punch's readers.

Mr. Francis Cowley Burnand, when he first appeared in Punch, in 1863, was no mere recruit; he was a proved humorist, though of short standing, and his debut was an astonishing success. His debut, that is to say, as a Punch writer, for eight years previously he had sent up from Cambridge a couple of drawings which Leech had made artistically suitable for publication.

Mr. Burnand was born in 1837—having been too gallant, it was said, to come into the world before his Queen had ascended the throne, and too loyal and zealous to delay his appearance after she had taken her place. He was sent to Eton, where, however, he did not care much for football, being, as he expressed it, "more shinned against than shinning;" and thence, at the age of seventeen, he went into Trinity College, Cambridge. In three years he had graduated and had founded the still flourishing "A.D.C.;" at the same time, he determined to enter the Church. He placed himself under the Rev. H. P. (afterwards Canon) Liddon; but soon left for the seminary of the Oblates of St. Charles, at Bayswater, the head of which was Dr. (Cardinal) Manning. While there his passion for playwriting was too strong to be resisted, and before he left Dr. Manning confessed that he feared his young friend had no "vocation," i.e. for the ecclesiastical state. Mr. Burnand, taking a wider view of the term, entirely acquiesced with Dr. Manning, and added rather timidly that he "thought he had a vocation for the stage." Dr. Manning raised his eyebrows, wrinkled his forehead, sniffed, and then said: "A 'vocation' concerns the spiritual welfare. You cannot speak of 'going on the stage' as a 'vocation.' You might as well call 'being a cobbler' a 'vocation.'" "Well, yes, Dr. Manning," rejoined Mr. Burnand very nervously; "but—if I were a cobbler I should still have the cure of soles."



An unsuccessful trial of the stage at Edinburgh, and a call to the Bar in 1862, indirectly shaped Mr. Burnand's career, and, throwing him into playwriting and humorous journalism, led him quickly into a talented circle. With Mr. W. S. Gilbert, H. J. Byron, Matt Morgan, Jeff Prowse, and others, Mr. Burnand helped to strengthen Tom Hood's additional staff of "Fun," then newly established, under the proprietorship of a looking-glass maker, named Maclean—whom, by reason of his expansive smile and shining teeth, Byron used to call "Maclean teeth." Mr. Burnand's fresh and bright productions sparkled on the pages and caught the eye of Mark Lemon; but it was an unusually happy and original idea that was to bring the two men closely together. Mr. Burnand had conceived a series of burlesque stories, satirising the sensational style of the day, to be accompanied by an equally burlesque imitation of the illustrations that were to be seen in publications such as the "London Journal." To his own daughter, as "one of his oldest friends," Mr. Burnand once confided the following facts and circumstances for publication:—

"The astute proprietor of 'Fun,' in which I had achieved some success, observed that 'Mokeanna' wouldn't do. I am not sure but that he was right; but if he had been a literary editor he would have seen the idea in a rough copy, and would have suggested improvement. This good he did me, however—I read it to a friend, who thought some of it good and most of it the contrary, and so, in a temper, I burnt the entire manuscript, and, being quite sure of the humour of the idea, commenced rewriting it. Then I communicated with Mark Lemon; he jumped at the idea—determined to say nothing to anybody, except those who had to illustrate it, and the first number of 'Mokeanna' appeared on February 21st, 1863, with an illustration by Sir John Gilbert, burlesquing his own style, whilst the page in Punch was, in arrangement, a facsimile of the 'London Journal.' The proprietors rushed down to the office, terrified with the thought that, by accident, the 'London Journal' had been sewn up with Punch, and it took a lot of explanation in Mark Lemon's best manner to make them see the joke in its right light. The success of the experiment was immediate. Thackeray was supposed to have perpetrated the burlesque imitation, but Thackeray knew nothing whatever about it, though, as I have since learnt, he was greatly tickled by it and, subsequently, was personally most kind to the 'New Boy,' as he called me, on the Punch Staff."

The illusion was complete, and the fun most apt and full of spirit. The various artists ("Phiz," Charles Keene, Mr. du Maurier, and Sir John Millais) each drew a picture for it, in every case burlesquing his own style and trotting out his peculiarities. The public laughed heartily—first, at itself for having been deceived by the verisimilitude to the "London Journal," and then at the work upon its merits; and "Mokeanna, or the White Witness" became the talk of the hour, and one of the good things of Punch. Charles Dickens was among those who most admired the execution of the jeu d'esprit, and he displayed considerable interest in the writer.

In due time Mr. Burnand was called to the Table. "My first appearance," he tells me, "was at the Inn at Dulwich where Punch sometimes dined in the summer in those days. Thackeray drove there, and left early. He had come on purpose to be present on this occasion, and before quitting the room he paused, placed his hand on my shoulder, and said, 'Gentlemen, I congratulate you on the "New Boy!"' I felt, and probably looked, very hot and uncomfortably proud; and then he shook me warmly by the hand."

Mr. Burnand's next success—a phenomenal success, too, on which his reputation as a humorist will stand unshaken—was "Happy Thoughts." For popularity and for immediate advantage to the paper this clever series, with its exquisite fooling and keen appreciation of humour, was second only to the "Caudle Curtain Lectures," and among the greatest hits that Punch has ever made. It has since been admirably translated into French by M. Aurelien de Courson under the title of "Fridoline!"—"happy thought!" being, however, somewhat inadequately rendered "ingenieuse pensee!" Then followed his imitations of popular writers—including "Strapmore," by "Weeder," and "One-and-three," by "Fictor Nogo"—"Happy Thought Hall," with illustrations by himself, "More Happy Thoughts," "Out of Town," and many others, which are still to be found on the bookstalls. His, too, was the song "His 'Art was true to Poll," which achieved so great a success when Mrs. John Wood introduced it into "My Milliner's Bill" many years after it first appeared in Punch.

And in addition to the mass of work he has contributed to Punch, there are "The Incompleat Angler," "The New History of Sandford and Merton," "The Real Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," more than a hundred burlesques—beginning with his exceedingly popular perversion of Jerrold's "Black-Eyed Susan"—and a number of comedies and adaptations: a total rivalling, and in some cases surpassing, the industry of the most hard-working of his predecessors in Punch's editorial chair. Moreover, he has been a lecturer with "realistic notions," as he proved on the occasion when he was giving a public reading dealing with a yachting cruise, and, as he stood behind his reading-desk, stooped and rose with a regular maritime motion, relieved by an occasional roll, until the more susceptible among his audience began seriously to ask themselves if they were good enough sailors to sit out the reading to its ground-swell, breezy end.

In August, 1880, after the death of Tom Taylor, Mr. Burnand, who had been acting-editor in his last illness, was called upon to take up the task of restoring to Punch its ancient reputation for liveliness and fun, and with a dinner to every contributor, outside as well as Staff, the proprietors inaugurated the new era. Mr. Burnand at once made great changes among the outside contributors, and introduced new blood upon the Staff. For himself, he showed his chief strength as a punster of extraordinary ability; probably no one before him ever tied so many and such elaborate knots in his mother-tongue as he. "Mr. Burnand's puns are generally good, and sometimes very good," said a critic in the "Spectator;" "but they are really too plentiful.... When it comes to be a question of a volume of four hundred pages, with an average of ten puns to a page, the reader is likely to suffer from an indigestion ... a cake that is all plums is likely to lie rather heavily on the person who eats it." But he was constrained to admit artistic merit in the humour of such passages as this: "There was a dead pause in the room. How long it had been there it was impossible to say, for it was only at this minute that the three became aware of it. And the Bishop sniffed uncomfortably, as though there was something wrong with the drainage."

But there was something of greater import brought in by Mr. Burnand's editorship than the literary tone. It was tolerance, political and religious, and wider sympathy than had lately been the case. The heavy political partisanship of Tom Taylor gave way to the more beneficent neutrality of Mr. Burnand—a personal neutrality, at least, even though Whig proclivities still coloured the cartoons to a certain, yet not unreasonable degree. And a larger religious tolerance and warmer magnanimity developed in Punch, such as comes chiefly from quarters where oppression has been known.

So he who has been called "the Commandant of the Household Brigade of British Mirth" has marched gaily along in Punch's service for more than thirty years. Prodigal of his jokes, he sometimes makes the best of them outside the pages of his paper. Thus in November, 1893, he wrote to the press in contradiction of the statement made by a police-court prisoner named Burnand, that he was the brother of the editor of Punch: "I beg to say that I have no brother, and never had any brother. I have two half-brothers (this man is neither of them), but two half-brothers don't make one whole brother." And people chuckled as the little joke was copied from one paper to another all over the English-speaking world, and applauded the excellent quaintness of Punch's Aristophanes. So, when a fictitious dinner of the Punch Staff at Lord Rothschild's was reported in the press, Mr. Burnand briefly dismissed the matter with the remark that the only dish was—canard.

Again, in the autumn of 1894, when he fell ill, alarming reports were spread. One of his colleagues on the Staff received a request for a column obituary notice of the dying man from the editor of a leading daily newspaper. But Mr. Burnand was much better, and was greatly cheered on learning the particulars. "Really," he said, "that's more than I expected. A column! Why, that's what they gave to Nelson and the Duke of York!"

Mr. J. Priestman Atkinson's literary achievements in Punch are spoken of in the chapter where "Dumb Crambo's" pictorial contributions are treated. From August, 1877, to October, 1880, they are frequent, and consist for the most part of fanciful verse accompanied by cuts from the same hand. There is a charming prose story, however, in the Pocket-Book for 1879, seasonably entitled "The Invention of Roast Goose." But with Mr. Burnand's editorship Mr. Atkinson's energies were exclusively concentrated on humorous sketches and "Dumb Crambo" eccentricities.

In 1864 Mr. John Hollingshead—"Practical John"—was dramatic critic of the "Daily News." His notices attracted the attention of Shirley Brooks, with the result that he was invited to contribute to Punch. But it was in 1881 that he was taken on the salaried outside Staff, writing for the paper for several years, chiefly on the subject of social reform. He is the inventor, to whom Londoners should be grateful, of "Mud-Salad Market" and the "Duke of Mudford;" and the "Gates of Gloomsbury," "The Seldom-at-Home Secretary," and "The Top of the Gaymarket," are also his. It was with his pen that Punch attacked so lustily our licensing system—or want of system; and from him, too, came the burlesque "Schopenhauer Ballads," and other contributions, which, many of them, have been reprinted in "Footlights," "Plain English," and "Niagara Spray."

In the same year came Mr. R. F. Sketchley, late Librarian of the Dyce and Forster collection in the South Kensington Museum, who was destined to become one of Punch's Staff officers. "I find," he writes, "that I became a contributor to Punch in 1864. At the beginning of 1868 I was honoured with an invitation from Mark Lemon to join the Table. I served also under his successors—Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor, and Burnand; and finally retired of my own accord in 1880. I have seen it stated that in an illness of Shirley Brooks I did some of the 'Essence of Parliament.' If I had been called on to take up the pen of that most brilliant man of letters, I should have been in despair. All I did was to turn the Queen's Speech on the opening of Parliament into verse.



"I was never a prominent member of the Staff, but I am, and always shall be, proud of having been connected with Punch. I wrote both prose and verse—more of the former than the latter—and my contributions ranged in extent from a column down to a single line. My subjects were generally 'topical,' sometimes 'imaginary,' and the verse included a good many parodies." Mr. Sketchley, it should be observed, is one of the few members of the inside Staff—at least, within the last forty years—who have ever resigned their appointments, Richard Doyle, Mr. Henry Silver, and Mr. Harry Furniss being the others. His strong point was prose parody, the best, perhaps, being the quaint quasi-Gulliverian sketch called "A Fortnight in Sparsandria," which he contributed to Punch's Pocket-Book. Sober in judgment and wise in counsel, he was greatly missed when his genial companionship was lost to Punch's Knights of the Round Table.

Passing over Mr. W. S. Gilbert's connection with the paper—which is described in the section devoted to artistic contributors—we find another humorist, equally distinguished, who identified himself with the paper the same year, Charles F. Browne, better known as "Artemus Ward." He had arrived in England early in the year, and soon after his arrival he was invited by Mark Lemon to contribute. Ward was at that time in failing health, and, according to his secretary and manager Mr. Kingston, two or three of the papers produced in accordance with the understanding that was entered into were written with painful effort—the reason, no doubt, why so little of his usually rollicking humour is to be found in them. Nowadays many Americans profess to regard Punch with a sort of scornful amusement, and "Life," with an assumption of lofty disdain, is for ever sneering at it as a survival of the unfittest; and the same line is taken in England by New Journalists and Newer Critics. Not that the New American Journalist was unknown in Ward's day. He had already declared that "Shakespeare wrote good plase, but he wouldn't have succeeded as the Washington correspondent of a New York daily paper. He lacked the reckisit fancy and imagination." Anyhow, he did not live so near to the fin de siecle; nor was he ashamed to own that for years it had been his pet ambition to write for the "London Charivari." Unhappily, its realisation came too late to permit him to do justice to his talent and his humour; and he himself was only too conscious of his sad shortcoming, or, rather, of his failing powers. Only eight papers had come from his hand when it closed in death. In September the first of his papers was published—"Personal Recollections;" the last in November—"A Visit to the British Museum;" they are garrulous and discursive, and a good deal of the humour they contain was repeated from earlier works. That they should have contained any at all, under the circumstances, is the wonder; indeed, one is irresistibly reminded by them of his own humorous reference to one of the burlesque "pictures" illustrative of his "Lecture." "It is by the Old Masters," he said, in his quaint, sad way; "it is the last thing they did before dying. They did this, and then they died."



It is, indeed, curious how many of Punch's most valued contributors were working for the paper up to within a few hours, a few minutes, of being called away—Jerrold, Thomas Hood, C. H. Bennett, John Leech, Shirley Brooks, and Artemus Ward; and many a time have the public laughed aloud at jokes and pictures wrought when the hand was stiffening in death, when the brain that had imagined them had already ceased to think.



H. Savile Clarke, previously a "Fun" contributor, and a disciple of James Hannay, made his Punch debut with a set of verses in August, 1867; but he did not follow them up, except in a very small way, until Mr. Burnand's editorship, in 1880, encouraged him to write regularly. This he soon began to do, his main work being Society verse, mostly bearing on medical and scientific subjects, for he was brought up as a doctor. "Songs of the Sciences," "Lyrics in a Library" (verse on books), verse on the minor picture exhibitions, clever trifles like the "Carmen Culinarium" (December, 1891), and the important and strikingly able and successful parody, "Modern Life in London, or Tom and Jerry Back Again," illustrated by Mr. Priestman Atkinson—these formed the staple of his Punch work. But he was not enthusiastic about writing for the paper, as the chance of gaining reputation by unsigned contributions was very small. "I feel strongly," he wrote to me years ago, "as many writers do on the paper, as to the inequality of authors and artists. It keeps very good men off it."

"Berkeley Square, 5 p.m." was a poem of five stanzas that formed Frederick Locker-Lampson's sole contribution to Punch; it was published at the same time as Savile Clarke's maiden effort (August, 1867), and was illustrated by Mr. du Maurier. It was Locker-Lampson, it may here be mentioned, who sent in C. S. Calverley's ewe-lamb—a charade—to Punch's pages.

On the 25th of July, 1868, a lady-contributor made her debut in Punch's pages. This was Miss M. Betham-Edwards, who was already well known as the authoress of "A Winter with the Swallows," and whose travel "Through Spain to the Sahara," dealing with much the same scene, was then expected from the press. In the earlier part of the year a friend had shown to Mark Lemon a clever skit by the young lady, and the Editor forthwith commissioned her to write a series of papers to be called "Mrs. Punch's Letters to her Daughter"—a sort of belated sequel to Jerrold's "Punch's Letters to his Son." These letters, which ran through six numbers—the last in November 7th of the same year—are contributions of the worldly-wise order, cynical, satirical, and shrewd. Two years later Mark Lemon died, and Miss Betham-Edwards dropped out of the outside Staff position which she was by courtesy supposed to occupy. Certain contributions she sent in were returned; she took the hint, and the connection was severed.

It was about this time that Mr. du Maurier wrote his admirable "Vers Nonsensiques," and proved the literary talent which he afterwards displayed in so striking a manner in his lecture on "Social Satire" and in his novels. But, as has already been pointed out in several other cases, he is not by any means alone in having used both pen and pencil in the paper. Thackeray is the principal example of the twin-talent; but others, in very various degrees, are Cuthbert Bede, Watts Phillips, Thomas Hood (a single cut, and a wonderful one, too), Richard Doyle (a single contribution), John MacGregor, with Sir John Tenniel, and Messrs. Alfred Thompson, Ashby-Sterry, W. S. Gilbert, W. Ralston (one literary effort), J. Priestman Atkinson, J. H. Roberts (one poem), Harry Furniss (a dramatic criticism), and Arthur A. Sykes. As a rule, however, artist and author has kept strictly within his own field, although a bold experiment of a curious kind was once proposed. On that occasion the literary Staff had been complaining, with malicious frankness, that the drawings in a certain issue—(it is not necessary to particularise)—were not up to the mark. They were at once challenged by the artists, who declared that they would strike—that they would do the text, and allow the literary men to do the pictures. The idea was seized upon; the result, they thought, would be screamingly funny. But the Editor would not hear of it; he imagined, not without reason, that the public, who would be called upon (but would probably decline) to pay, would not see the point of the joke. Years after a similar discussion arose; and those who heard it are not likely to forget the mock-philosophic-gastronomic blank verse composed by Mr. Sambourne on the spur of the moment just to illustrate how very easy clever verse-writing really is.

Whilst Punch has been greatly indebted for much of its humour to Scotsmen, several Irishmen also have contributed not a little to its success. Mr. Alfred Perceval Graves is one of these, although it is long since he wrote for the paper. "I contributed to Punch" he says, "during Shirley Brooks's editorship. Tom Taylor was then secretary to the Local Government Board, and I was private secretary to the Parliamentary Under Secretary for the Home Office, Mr. Winterbotham. Meeting on business, we struck up a friendly acquaintance, and, Punch being then a close borough, Taylor smuggled in verses and jokes of mine for a while, till he thought I had established a claim to introduction to Shirley Brooks. My work only went on from 1871 to 1874, as I became so engaged on literary work of a severer kind, and educational work as an Inspector of Schools, that I had not time for Punch; and when I cared to return to it Taylor had gone, and the present Editor was surrounded by fresh men, so I have not resumed my connection with it."

Mr. Graves—the author of the popular "Father O'Flynn," perhaps the best of all his Irish songs—wrote for Punch "The Tea-Table Tragedy," "The Ballad of the Babes in the Wood," and those admirable "Lines of Farewell to the Irish Humorist, Baron Dowse, on leaving the House of Commons"—

"Dick Dowse, Dick Dowse, Is it lavin' the House?"

Then there is "On St. Patrick's Day falling on a Sunday," and in Punch's Pocket-Book the lines on "A Frog," and "A Cauliflower"—a parody of "The green, immortal Shamrock." But another merit in Mr. Graves was his coaching of Charles Keene on the subject of his Irish jokes, for which the former was greatly responsible in the years of his Punch connection.

Nursery jingles newly adapted and applied to the morals and manners of the day are always a favourite vehicle of satire with the public, and have been freely used by professional humorists. Punch offers many instances of happy examples of the work. The first of a long series of "Nursery Rhymes for the Times" was begun by Mr. Charles Smith Cheltnam on January 9th, 1875, as well as in the Almanac of the same year. The writer forthwith became a busy contributor. About fifty of these rhymes appeared in Punch in quick succession, and there were many other pieces besides. "The Infallible Truth," a comment in verse on the passage at arms which was then (November 13th, 1875) taking place between Lord Redesdale and Dr. Manning on the subject of infallibility, showed that Punch's "papal aggression" was still rankling in his bosom. Mr. Cheltnam remained a contributor until the death of Tom Taylor, when he transferred his pen to the service of "Fun."

On April 1st, 1872, the Rev. F. D. Maurice died, and Punch contained a set of verses to his memory, in which the beauty and the strength of his character were set forth with deep sympathy, and not without power or poetical thought. They were from the hand of the Rev. Stainton Moses, of Exeter College, Oxford, for seventeen years an assistant master at the University College School. He was the editor of the leading London organ of Spiritualism. The more ribald of his pupils and acquaintance declared that his spiritualism was of another sort; but there is no doubt that he was very popular with all men, and exercised great influence among the faithful.

Eighteen years after the death of Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, his son, Arthur W. a Beckett, restored the family name to Punch's Staff. He had been nominated to the War Office by Lord Palmerston, but he soon found that he could walk in no other path but that which his father had trodden. Like him, he became an editor at twenty, by assuming for a space the direction, relinquished by Mr. F. C. Burnand, of an evening paper called the "Glow-Worm"—whose light, after Mr. a Beckett left it, steadily refused to burn with the requisite effulgence. Mark Lemon was then approached; but he would have nothing to say to—or, rather, nothing to do with—the sons of his old friend, who thereupon sought elsewhere the encouragement they had hoped for in Punch's show. Mr. Arthur a Beckett started a satirico-humorous paper of great ability and promise, the staff including himself and his brother, Matt Morgan, Frederick Clay, and Frank Marshall, with Messrs. Alfred Thompson, Austin, T. G. Bowles, and T. H. Escott—most of them Civil Servants. But in the full tide of its success its financial foundations were weakened by one in the managerial department, and the whole thing came to the ground. After a few years of an active journalistic career he was invited by Tom Taylor, who had succeeded to the command, to contribute to Punch. A curious success attended his opening chapters. His first paper on a "Public Office" (p. 226, Vol. LXVI.), as well as the twelve following—that is to say, his contributions to thirteen consecutive numbers—were all of them quoted in the "Times," though whether or not through Taylor's intermediary did not appear. After the fourth number Mr. a Beckett was put on the salaried Staff, and in August, 1875, was invited to join the Table. Since Mr. Burnand's promotion to the editorship Mr. a Beckett has acted as his locum tenens, just as Shirley Brooks did to Lemon, and Percival Leigh to Brooks.



Being called to the Bar in 1881, Mr. a Beckett was enabled to revive the humours of his father's "Mr. Briefless," by the filial creation of the happily-named "A. BRIEFLESS, Junior." The "Papers from Pump Handle Court" from this self-sufficient, inflated, and utterly hopeless Junior, have been a feature in Punch for years past, and by them the author has—so says an expert—"charmingly illuminated the legal profession by his queer fancy." One of the best papers in the collection is an account of a visit to the studio of a well-known firm of West-End photographers in the character of a legal celebrity, which is wittily called "A Matter in Camera." Up to December, 1894, he had contributed to a thousand and eighty consecutive numbers, his work including many "series," besides the usual topical subject-articles.

Mortimer Collins became an occasional, and by no means a prolific, contributor of verse from the year 1874. The sonnet in Punch on p. 237, Vol. XI. (December, 1846), has been ascribed to him, but there is no ground for the statement (he would then have been only nineteen years of age), nor did he contribute otherwise than from 1874 to 1876. His light lyric touch may be traced in many a poem. In "Where shall we go?" (p. 105, Vol. LXIX., September 11th, 1875) his dainty pen is to be recognised; as in "Lady Psyche's Garden Party," and various other verses of similar style and pleasant flavour. The attack on Mr. Whalley and "Crede Byron" (July 20th, 1875) are his, and the verses on the Burnham Beeches, and, in September, "Causidicus ad Canem." The charming "Sonnets for the Sex" (June 17th, 1876) and, on July 8th, the humorous prose in praise of goose-quill and sealing-wax, entitled "Mr. Oldfangle's Opinion," were full of pleasing turns of thought—little presaging the writer's death three weeks later. When he died, Punch contained an obituary notice of the writer (p. 57, Vol. LXXI., August 12th, 1876), in which it is said, "He wrote the 'Secret of Long Life,' to teach men to live a century, and himself died at forty-nine." He was in this respect a curious echo of Thomas Walker, who wrote his "Art of Attaining High Health" in his paper "The Original," and did not survive the completion of his task; and the prototype of the Duke of Marlborough, who died while engaged on an essay on the "Art of Living" for the "Nineteenth Century." Had he lived, he would certainly have been promoted to the Staff; and the fact that his funeral was officially attended by Tom Taylor, Percival Leigh, and Mr. Arthur a Beckett, on behalf of Punch, is testimony of the respect in which his co-operation was held.