Men's dress had already ceased to be decorative long before the 'seventies were in their mid career. There had been spasmodic attempts to introduce a note of colour and picturesqueness into male attire, and a fresh effort was made by the apostles of the æsthetic movement, but the average man of fashion took no heed of these eccentricities. His aim was to be unobtrusively well dressed, though in the domain of pastime one may note an increasing addiction to highly coloured hose and the multiplication of club colours and ribbons.

As a chronicler and illustrator of the vagaries of Mode, Punch continues to pay far more attention to the costume of women than of men. But here also one notes a change – a tendency which warrants the labelling of this period as the Age of Approximation, in which in regard both to material and design women were more and more inclined to take a leaf from the fashion books of their brothers. The increasing addiction of girls to athletic pastimes was no doubt largely responsible for a change which could not be better exemplified than in Du Maurier's picture in 1877 of an old gentleman who mistakes the Dean's three daughters for young men and is gravely corrected by the verger. The mistake was venial, for the young amazons in their ulsters and hard hats presented a decidedly masculine appearance. In a word, they were "tailor-made" – a word of vast and epoch-making significance.

The Divided Skirt

References to this approximation recur throughout the 'eighties. In 1880 Sambourne, taking for his text an article in the Journal des Modes, gives us a design of evening dress entitled, "Man or Woman – a Toss Up," and in the same year Du Maurier, in a picture of the "Ne Plus Ulster," represents a customer expostulating with the shop-woman, "But it makes one look so like a man," only to be told, "That's just the beauty of it, Miss." Within limits Punch applauded the change. When short dresses for dances were said to be coming in, in the same year, he dilates in verse on the salutary innovation. To the year 1881 belongs the foundation of the "Rational Dress Society." "Bloomerism," as I pointed out in an earlier volume, never appealed to Mayfair. But the Rational Dress Society claimed a live Viscountess – Lady Harberton – as its President, and recommended the adoption of a "dual garmenture" or "divided skirt" as its cardinal tenet. Punch declared that the "divided skirt" was simply the old Bloomer costume slightly disguised, and saw in the movement only a fresh proof of woman's conscious inferiority: —

True that another skirt hides this insanity
Miss Mary Walker in old days began;
Yet it should flatter our masculine vanity,
For this means simply the trousers of Man!

Old Gentleman (shocked beyond description) to Verger: "Don't you think those youths had better be told to take their hats off?"

Verger: "Take their 'ats off! Bless you, Sir, those are the Dean's young ladies!"

The Rational Dress reformers were tremendously in earnest, but they entirely failed to convert the fashionables, and Punch, who refused to take them seriously, ridiculed the movement in a burlesque cut of "United Trousers v. Divided Skirts," in which retaliation effects a reductio ad absurdum. An exhibition of Rational Dress was held in Prince's Hall in the summer of 1883, but Punch remained unconvinced, and even obscurantist in his comments: —

We look at the models – they puzzle our noddles —
Regarding them all with alarm and surprise!
Each artful customer revives Mrs. Bloomer,
And often produces an army of guys.
The costume elastic, the dresses gymnastic,
The wonderful suits for the tricycle-ess —
Though skirts be divided, I'm clearly decided,
It isn't my notion of Rational Dress!

See gowns hygienic, and frocks calisthenic,
And dresses quite worthy a modern burlesque;
With garments for walking, and tennis, and talking,
All terribly manful and too trouseresque!
And habits for riding, for skating, or sliding,
With "rational" features they claim to possess;
The thought I can't banish, they're somewhat too mannish,
And not quite the thing for a Rational Dress!

Note robes there for rinking, and gowns for tea-drinking,
For yachting, for climbing, for cricketing too;
The dresses for boating, the new petticoating,
The tunics in brown and the trousers in blue.
The fabrics for frockings, the shoes and the stockings,
And corsets that ne'er will the figure compress;
But in the whole placeful there's little that's graceful
And girlish enough for a Rational Dress!

'Tis hardy and boyish, not girlful and coyish —
We think, as we stroll round the gaily-dight room —
A masculine coldness, a brusqueness, a boldness,
Appears to pervade all this novel costume!
In ribbons and laces, and feminine graces,
And soft flowing robes, there's a charm more or less —
I don't think I'll venture on dual garmenture,
I fancy my own is the Rational Dress.

Punch the "Anti-Rationalist"

Strong-minded women, in Punch's view, only emphasized their angularity by the masculinity of their attire – witness his "Aunt Jemima," an uncompromising Blue Ribbonite, in an ulster and hard felt hat, explaining to a French cab-driver that the extra half-franc is a "pour-manger" and not a "pour-boire." The allusion to corsets in the lines quoted above may be supplemented by a paragraph which appeared early in 1891 showing that the "rationalizing" of dress had spread to the Dominions. At Sydenham, Ontario, corsets had been declared, in a memorable phrase, to be "incompatible with Christianity." To the end of this period Punch discourages the extremes of the "Rational" school. His wittiest criticism is the paradoxical remark put in the mouth of one girl who disapproves of the mannish costume of a friend in a covert coat with a man's hat: "It makes you look like a Young Man, you know, and that's so effeminate!" The small deer-stalking cap worn by the lady, salmon fishing with a formidable gillie, in 1885, is identical with that worn by the male sportsman. The ulsters and "golf-capes," worn by women when travelling, and the narrow-brimmed felt hats shown in 1891, are practically identical for men and women; and in 1892 Punch laments (after Herrick) the introduction of the loose "sack" coat, in imitation of the masculine model: —

Whenas my Julia wears a sack,
That hides the outline of her back,
I cry in sore distress, Alack!

Later on in the same poem his clothes philosophy is summed up in six lines: —

Although men's clothes are always vile —
The coat, the trousers and the "tile" —
Some sense still lingers in each style.

But women's garments should be fair,
All graceful, gay, and debonair,
And if they lack good sense, why care?

Slaves of Fashion

In the last three lines we find the whole essence and spirit of Du Maurier's method. He proved to demonstration again and again that women could dress in the fashion of the moment and be delightful to look at, so long as they were the judicious interpreters and not the Slaves of Mode. If he saw no beauty in the designs of the "Rationalists," and habitually ridiculed the sprawling attitudes, the shapeless garments, and unwholesome languor of the female "æsthetes," he did not spare the monstrosities and barbarities of the ultra-fashionables. The age of lateral expansion had given place to a craze for compression, to the "eel-skin" model. Skirts were so tight in 1875 that Du Maurier suggests that upholsterers should devise a special sort of chair suited to the peculiar exigencies of ladies who can neither stoop nor sit down. Three years later a lady and a hussar officer at a dance are depicted as both equally unable to depart from a rigidly perpendicular attitude. Tight lacing was again in fashion but met with no approval from Punch. In 1877 Du Maurier depicts a lady resolutely determined to lace down to the waist measurement of a rival, and Punch quotes with approval Miss Frances P. Cobbe's indictment of the causes which led to the "Little Health of Women." Besides tight lacing the list includes the neglect of exercise, the discouragement of appetite, sentimental brooding over disappointments, the lack of healthy occupation for mind and body, false hair, bonnets that don't protect the head, heavy dragging skirts, high heels and "pull-backs" – a tolerably comprehensive catalogue. Punch renews his attack on tightly-laced pinched-in figures in his Horatian ode to "A Modern Pyrrha" in 1880, and in 1889 Jones, after offering the wasp-waisted Miss Vane tea and strawberries at a garden party, remarks to himself: "By Jove! she takes 'em – she's going to swallow 'em! But where she'll put 'em – goodness knows!"

Jones (to himself, as he offers Miss Vane a cup of tea and some strawberries): "By Jove! She takes 'em – she's going to swallow 'em! But where she'll put 'em – goodness knows!"

Now that fashionable skirts are worn so tight that the fair wearers thereof can neither stoop nor sit down, it might be worth somebody's while to devise a chair suited to the peculiar exigencies of the positions.

Lady (speaking with difficulty): "What have you made it round the waist, Mrs. Price?"

Dressmaker: "Twenty-one inches, ma'am. You couldn't breathe with less!"

Lady: "What's Lady Jemima Jones's waist?"

Dressmaker: "Nineteen-and-a-half just now, ma'am. But her Ladyship's a head shorter than you are, and she's got ever so much thinner since her illness last autumn?"

Lady: "Then make it nineteen, Mrs. Price, and I'll engage to get into it!"

The crusade against wearing birds' wings is an old story. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts' efforts in 1875 – cordially supported by Punch– were prompted by the cruel practice of obtaining rare feathers by plucking birds when alive. The Baroness had approached Mme. Louise, who was sympathetic but pointed out that there was an increasing demand for this kind of decoration. Punch repeatedly protests against the practice, and in 1889, when flowers were once more in fashion as hat trimmings, expressed his delight at a change which checked wholesale bird slaughter: —

When lovely woman stooped to folly,
And piled bird plumes upon her head,
She no doubt fancied she looked jolly,
But filled the woodland choirs with dread.

His delight, however, was short-lived, and in 1892 he was again moved to denounce the "Modish Moloch of the Air," and pillory, under the title of "A Bird of Prey," the woman of fashion who decked herself out in feathers.

Fringes and Bustles

This was the age of the fringe, another of Punch's pet aversions, whether worn by 'Arriet or the maidens and matrons of Mayfair. Du Maurier lent his aid in the triple cut headed "Alas!" representing "Pretty Grandmamma Robinson" as she was in 1851, as she is now in 1880, in a tight dress cut low in front with a monstrous frizzed fringe, and finally as she might and should be – altogether a most instructive sermon on the art of growing old gracefully and the reverse.

"What does t'lass want wi' yon Boostle for? It aren't big enough to Smoggle things, and she can't Steer herself wi' it!"

It is interesting to note, by way of contrast, that caps were still worn in the house by quite young married women. The affectation of perennial youth was not universal in 1880. The popularity and drawbacks of the jersey are attested in the same year, when we are shown the fearful struggles of Jones in his efforts to help his lovely wife to divest herself of this garment. In 1881 reference is made to the agitation against a revival of the crinoline. The successful stand made against the "crinolette" by the Princess of Wales in 1883 is alluded to elsewhere. Punch declares that the very large fans used at this time were almost as great a nuisance in the stalls as crinoline had been, but this is obviously a gross exaggeration. The red veils which were introduced in 1884 were to him a sheer abomination. "It makes girls look blear-eyed and red-nosed. It gives them the appearance of just recovering from the measles."

In the same year the ultra-smart ladies are shown wearing hats, while others still have bonnets. In 1886 Du Maurier shows ladies in a brougham specially built to match the fashion of hats with high conical crowns. The small fur capes of a few years back give place in 1887 to long fur boas – so long that one picture shows a lady walking between two men with the ends of her boa round their necks.

A more formidable monstrosity of these years was the "bustle," admirably criticized by the fisherman in Du Maurier's picture. By 1889 Punch celebrated its departure along with other excrescences in a parody of Browning: —

EVELYN'S HOPE

The hideous bustle at last is dead.
Come and talk of the beast a minute!
Never again will it flourish, it's said;
What on earth we women saw in it,
Or why we liked it, is hard to discover;
Only the world is a nicer place,
Now that the pest called a "dress-improver"
Is improved, by Fashion, right off its face.

There's the tall hat, too, which they say is doomed.
One rather liked it, or viewed it with awe,
Till one sat in a theatre, and far away loomed
A rampart of feathers, frilling, and straw,
Hiding the stage, the footlights, and all,
Save perhaps the top of a paste-board tree;
Oh, then one's fingers did certainly crawl
To fling a book at the filigree!

But, some day, in Fashion's whirligig,
The monstrous bustle, the Eiffel hat,
May arise once more, even twice as big,
For our great-grandchildren to wonder at.
Well, that's Posterity's matter, not mine.
The one thing now is to put up a hymn
Of praise, and of hope that, when new suns shine,
Good taste may flourish instead of whim!

Æsthetic Children

In 1891 a new fashion of dressing hair in the "teapot handle" style arose and was pronounced by Punch to be "frightful," and the epithet is at least justified by Punch's caricature.

Mamma: "Who are those extraordinary-looking children?"

Effie: "The Cimabue Browns, Mamma. They're Æsthetic, you know!"

Mamma: "So I should imagine. Do you know them to speak to?"

Effie: "Oh dear no, Mamma – They're most exclusive. Why, they put out their tongues at us if we only look at them!"

Throughout this period the children in Du Maurier's pictures, however dressed, are a joy to look at. The fashion of arraying them in "æsthetic" costumes meets, however, with no favour. It is even implied that such a garb impairs their manners and conduces to arrogance, witness Du Maurier's picture of the young Cimabue Browns putting out their tongues in derision at ordinary normally clad children in the park. In 1881 we read: —

The poor little Guys who have been compelled by unthinking parents to walk about in long skirts, antique cloaks, and coal-scuttle bonnets, have caused so much laughter that the dress is now called "The Grinaway Costume."

It may have been by Punch; but against his churlish condemnation must be set the enthusiastic approval of Kate Greenaway's illustrations by leading art critics, including Ruskin, throughout the world; and the extraordinary success of her revival of old-fashioned costumes for children. In spite of Punch, and in virtue of the exquisite charm of her designs, she went a long way toward justifying the verdict of one of her admirers that "Kate Greenaway dressed the children of two continents."

She: "Awfully nice Dance at Mrs. Masham's last night?"

He: "Yaas. Were you there?"

She: "Was I there? Why – I danced with you Three Times!"

He: "Really! So glad!"

The Demon "Topper"

Allusions to men's attire in this period are few and far between, and a careful study of Punch's illustrations reveals little substantial divergence between the fashions of 1880 and 1920. The only approach to a crusade or campaign in which Punch engaged was directed against his old enemy the "chimney pot." When Dr. Carpenter in 1882 declared that Englishmen "would rather suffer martyrdom than give up its use," Punch enlarged on this text in an "anti-sanitary ballad." He reverts to the theme in "All round my hat" in 1889: —

Incarnate ugliness, bald, tasteless, flat,
My stove-pipe hat!
A rigid cylinder that engirts
My cranium close, and heats, and hurts
My head most frightfully.
It cuts, it chafes, it raises lumps,
Each vein beneath it throbs and thumps
Fiercely and spitefully;
An Incubus of woe, and yet I wear it
And grin and bear it.

Its pipy structure, black and hollow,
Would make a guy of bright Apollo,
Clapt on his crown.
It takes one's top-locks clean away,
And turns the scanty remnant grey,
Once thick and brown.
And oh! how terrible its torrid tether
In sultry weather!

Ever the same, though fashion's whim
Wide-bell the body, curl the brim,
Or more or less;
Play little tricks with shape or size,
And Yankeefy or Quakerize
Design or dress,
Long, short, broad, narrow, curled this way or that,
'Tis still a hat!

The centenary of the tall-hat (according to the Daily News) arrived in 1890, and Punch heaped scorn on this unlovely centenarian: —

Mad was the hatter who invented
The demon "topper," and demented
The race that, spite of pain and jeers,
Has borne it – for One Hundred Years!

For holiday or sporting wear Tyrolese hats came into vogue in the late 'eighties, and the picture of two "chappies" at Monte Carlo in what is presumably the height of the fashion presents them in check tweeds, spats and Austrian jäger hats. The Homburg hat belongs to a slightly later period.

Mr. A. C. Corbould, in an illustration of the correct costume for Rotten Row in 1885 and 1889, shows that for men the tall hat and frock coat had yielded in the latter year to the bowler and tweeds. The dress of the ladies shows less change, but the tall hat has gone and the skirts are grey not black. Short tailless coats for morning wear were coming in, and Punch welcomes in 1889 the introduction of brown boots as a relief from "that dual despotism, dreadful grown, of needless nigritude and futile polish." Whiskers were still worn, but, amongst young men, were severely restricted in length, and shorn of the ambrosial exuberance of the 'fifties and 'sixties.

"Æsthetes" were once described as a set of long-haired men and short-haired women, and Du Maurier's pictures justify the summary, but these peculiarities were confined to a coterie; they never seriously affected the usages of Mayfair or involved any revision of the "petty decalogue of Mode." Spats were generally worn, and the "mashers" of the 'eighties carried very slim umbrellas when they took their walks abroad in the park for Sunday parade. Evening dress presents few and negligible differences from that in vogue to-day. One of the very few references to military uniforms in these years indicates the reaction against "useless flummery." A military correspondent in The Times had said, in 1890, that the day of cocked hats and plumes was gone, and Punch availed himself of the saying to design a new and rational uniform for general officers, so that they might be mistaken by the enemy for harmless gentlemen farmers.

LETTERS AND JOURNALISM: DRAMA AND MUSIC

As I ventured to remark in an earlier volume, a literary critic's acumen and flair are better shown in his estimates of writers whose fame is as yet unassured, or who are just emerging above the horizon, than of authors of established reputation. No special credit attaches to Punch for writing with reverence of Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Scott or Charles Lamb, whose centenary evoked a charming tribute in 1875, when the Headmaster of Christ's Hospital appealed in The Times for support in erecting a memorial to Elia in his old school. A better test is furnished in his references to Browning and Swinburne, Matthew Arnold, Charles Reade and Trollope, Jefferies and Stevenson and Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward, and, to come down to the end of this period, Kipling and Barrie. Yet all established reputations were not respected by Punch. When Rabelais was included in Professor Henry Morley's series of World's Classics in 1883 Punch uttered a vehement protest against the choice. He calls Rabelais a "dirty-minded, scurrilous, blasphemous, witty, broadly humorous and extravagantly grotesque clerical buffoon." The Saturday Review thought otherwise, but Punch declared that the defence was only put forward as "a stalking-horse for a malicious attack on ourselves."

The lines on George Eliot in 1881 are brief but laudatory. The phrase declining to rank her "among the tricksy mimes" is not happy; but she is spoken of as "this large-orbed glory of our times," and Punch prophesies for her "unfading bays," a prophecy to which the present generation would seem inclined to demur. Punch had little to add to his previous tributes to Carlyle when the Sage of Chelsea passed away in the same year, except to express the view that he was profoundly discontented with the England of to-day: —

He lived through England's triumph, but he heard
With dying ears the shadow of decline.

Mistress: "As you've never been in Service, I'm afraid I can't engage you without a 'character.'"

Young Person: "I have three School Board certificates, Ma'am!"

Mistress: "Oh, well – I suppose for honesty, cleanliness – "

Young Person: "No, Ma'am – for 'Literatoor,' Joggr'phy and Free'and Drawin'!"

Relations with American Authors

The founding of the Browning Society in the same year met with no more encouragement from Punch than Miss Braddon's boiled-down versions of Scott's novels. Punch dimly recognized Browning's greatness while resenting his obscurities and eccentricities, and in a further skit on the Society carefully disclaims any disrespect for Browning himself. This mitigated appreciation is developed in the memorial verses in 1889 which hail him as a gallant and manly singer and apostle of healthy optimism, while denying his Muse the quality of elegance. Punch was nearer the mark in his laconic reference to Tupper, who died in the same year: —

"His name has passed into a Proverb."

Martin F. Tupper, famed for his Proverbial Philosophy, has joined the majority. He was thoroughly in earnest, and said many a true thing in what popularly passed for poetry. He will be remembered as "The Great Maxim Gun" of the nineteenth century.

The Annual Register reminds us that in twenty-five years over 100,000 copies of Proverbial Philosophy were sold in England and nearly half a million in America.

Punch was happier in dealing with Longfellow than with Emerson; the description of the latter as "the cheery oracle, alert and quick," is hardly adequate. Punch, however, protested against the proposed monument to Longfellow in the Abbey. He had learned to appreciate J. R. Lowell, who, on leaving England in 1885 after his four years' tenure of office as American Minister, said that "he had come among them as a far-away cousin, and they were sending him away as something very like a brother." Punch refused to say good-bye to this great and wise American, and his "au revoir" verses contain pleasant allusions to The Biglow Papers and Study Windows. Nor was his welcome of Oliver Wendell Holmes a whit less cordial, when the beloved "Autocrat" visited England to receive a D.C.L. degree in 1886. Bret Harte had been welcomed by Punch in 1879 as a master of wit and wisdom, humour and pathos. Though, as was said of a famous composer, he began as a genius and ended as a talent, the influence of The Luck of Roaring Camp¹⁰ on the development of the short story was fruitful and abiding. To complete the record of Punch's relations with American authors it may be noted that in 1881 he greeted Joel Chandler Harris, the author of Uncle Remus, as a benefactor; that he resented Mr. W. D. Howells's critical depreciations of Dickens and Thackeray; and that, when Walt Whitman died in 1892, he indited what was virtually a palinode: —

Whilst hearts are generous and woods are green,
He shall find hearers, who, in a slack time
Of puny bards and pessimistic rhyme,
Dared to bid men adventure and rejoice.
His "yawp barbaric" was a human voice;
The singer was a man.

To return to native writers, Punch happily linked a great Churchman and a great Victorian novelist in the stanza which appeared at the close of 1882: —

Two men whose loss all Englishmen must rue,
True servants of the Studio and the State.
No manlier Churchman Trollope ever drew
Than History will portray in gentle Tait.

Punch had long acclaimed Tennyson as one of the major poets; but a slight element of reserve mingles in the congratulations on his peerage in 1883. Approval is tempered by chaff, and allusion is made to the Laureate's being prevented from taking his seat in the Lords by having lost his robes. There are no reserves in the tribute to the "beloved Cambridge rhymer" C. S. Calverley, when he passed away in early middle age in 1884. The memorial verses omit all mention of Calverley's genius for high parody, and incorrectly speak of the Ode to Beer as being written in Spenserian stanzas, but are otherwise affectionately appreciative: —

Well, well, omnivorous are the Shades;
But seldom hath that Stygian sculler
Oared o'er a gayer ghost than "Blayds,"¹¹
Whose transit leaves the dull world duller.

Literary Controversies

Charles Reade, who died in the same year, is not ineptly described as the "Rupert of Letters," and his indiscretions and exuberances are overlooked in virtue of his services both as a dramatist and novelist, and the "noble rage" with which he vindicated "the master-virtue, Justice."

Echoes of a controversy over the censorship exerted by the libraries, revived periodically in later years, come to us from the years 1884 and 1885, when the banning of Mr. George Moore's novels led to a correspondence in the Pall Mall Gazette. Here the late Mr. George Gissing, while professing little sympathy with Mr. Moore, had fallen foul of Thackeray for truckling to the demands of Mrs. Grundy and betraying his artistic conscience —à propos of the Preface to Pendennis. This was altogether too much for Punch, who belaboured Mr. Gissing to his heart's content in his most truculent vein, and did not abstain from his old and ugly habit of making offensive capital out of an antagonist's name: "humbly we own that we never heard of his name before, though it seems suggestive of a kind of guttural German embrace performed by the nationalizer of the Land [Henry George]."

Another famous literary quarrel broke out in 1886, the year of the trenchant attack, recalling the style and temper of Macaulay, on Mr. Gosse in the Quarterly Review for October. As Punch had already indulged in a good deal of acid pleasantry at the expense of the mutual admiration of "Poet Dobson" and "Poet Gosse," it was easy to guess on which side his sympathies would be enlisted. The sting of the Quarterly's indictment lay in the statement that "the men who write bad books are the men who criticize them," and Punch did not refrain from rubbing in the charge: —

Quarterly pay was dear to man
Since or ever the world began,
Chances vanish, and ventures cross,
Even sometimes for bards like Gosse;
Since or ever the world began.
Quarterly pay was dear to man.

But there's a something in quarterly pay
Which doesn't please all men alway!
Less than half-truth is a quarter-lie,
Bound to be found out by-and-by;
Since or ever the world began,
Quarterly pay has been strict with man.

Play straight and honest – for, if you don't,
The public meed 'tis receive you won't;
The mutual arts of puff and praise,
Even in these degenerate days,
Sink at last in the scorn they raise;
Since or ever the world began,
Quarterly pay has been straight with man.

Poet Dobson shall claim on high
From Poet Gosse immortality!
And Poet Dobson shall shed the same,
No doubt, upon Poet Gosse's name —
While a weak world wonders whence they came,
And never a weakling dares deny
(For there's no such thing as puffery)
To each his immortality!
Yet Quarterlies dare to say, for once,
That dunce's works are reviewed by dunce.

Shocking! Anonymous donkeys speak
Donkey's dislike of a cultured clique —
("Fudge," by Goldsmith; but now called "cheek") —
Yet since or ever the world began,
Quarterly reckoning's good for man!

The Quarterly, not for the first time, overshot the mark by its "savage and tartarly" methods, and the incriminated critic survived an attack fortified by accurate learning but impaired by unrestrained animosity.

Punch Salutes Mr. Kipling

Punch resumed his genial strain in his tribute to Richard Jefferies, when that admirable prose poet of rural England and the pageantry of the seasons died prematurely in 1887. Matthew Arnold was not exactly one of Punch's literary heroes. His urbanity was admitted, but Punch slightly resented his intellectual superciliousness. Yet the verses on his death in 1888, cast in the "Thyrsis" stanza, acknowledge the value of his crusade against Philistinism, and the beauty of his elegiac poetry; he was "the great son of a good father." Towards Matthew Arnold's distinguished niece, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Punch was less benevolent on the occasion of the appearance of Robert Elsmere in the same year. The sorely tried hero is described as "wandering about, a married Hamlet in clerical attire, undecided as to his mission to set everything right and dying a victim to the Mephistophelean-Betsy-Prig spirit." Nor was Punch altogether appreciative of R. L. Stevenson, though he pays a reluctant homage to his genius in one of the "Mems for the New Year" for a literary man in January, 1889: "Resolutely to avoid making the most distant reference to 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.'" The standard of precision in the editing of Punch at this time was not above reproach. In the same year "Mr. J. L. Stevenson's Master of Ballantine" is reviewed though there was no such author and no such book. Punch made amends, however, in 1890 in his salutations of two notable newcomers. In February he was delighted by "the homely simplicity," the keen observation, shrewd wit and gentle pathos of Barrie in A Window in Thrums. Six weeks later he recognized in Rudyard Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills a "new and piquant flavour," as of an Anglo-Indian Bret Harte. Punch found an "excessive abundance of phrases and local allusions which will be dark sayings to the uninitiated." But here adverse criticism ends. For the rest he acknowledges in the new writer a surprising knowledge of life, civil, military and native, and a happy command of pathos and humour. This tribute was followed up a few weeks later by a much more characteristic act of homage in doggerel verse: —