The literary quality of Punch's literary criticism was not high in these days and his outlook was decidedly limited. It is therefore a welcome surprise to find him not only recognizing the beauty of Cory's Ionica in 1891, but specially singling out the famous version of the epitaph on Heraclitus. Punch could not dissect it as Walter Headlam did afterwards, but he noted one blemish – the confusion of "thou" and "you." Almost as unexpected, in view of his attitude towards much contemporary realism, is Punch's eulogy of Hardy's Tess in 1892. Barring the "absurdly melodramatic character of the villain" Punch has nothing but praise for its essential truth; acquits the author of "foolhardiness" in "boldly telling ugly truths about the Pagan Phyllises and Corydons of our dear old Christian England," and accepts his word for the faithfulness of the portraiture.

Punch had rejoiced over the dissolution of the Browning Society formed by Dr. Furnivall in 1891: —

Lovers of Browning may laugh and grow fat again,
Rid of the jargon of Furnivallese.

He was not, however, any better disposed to Swinburne, Furnivall's antagonist and rival in the art of ferocious obloquy, of whom he wrote in the same year: —

There was a poor poet named Clough;
Poet Swinburne declares he wrote stuff —
Ah, well, he is dead!
'Tis the living are fed,
By log-rollers on butter and puff!

Parodies and "Limericks"

Of Punch's relations with Ruskin we speak in another place. The most detailed notice of Meredith grew out of a real incident, the calling of the illustrious novelist as a witness in a libel action in the year 1891. Punch professes to give a full report of his evidence, in which Judge and Counsel are overwhelmed in a deluge of Meredithyrambics. It is a perfectly friendly and by no means inexpert parody of the contortions and obscurities which induced Tennyson to declare that reading Meredith was like wading through glue. Punch's friendly irreverence to his old friend of thirty years' standing prompts me to add that, throughout this period, parody was continually and increasingly employed, not like the bladder with which the Fool belabours bystanders, but as a weapon of genuine criticism. Here is a list, though not a complete list, of the authors who were subjected to this method in the period under review. Rhoda Broughton (for her emotional sentimentality) in Gone Wrong; Captain Hawley Smart, the sporting novelist; "Ouida"; Trollope; Disraeli, the florid magnificence and aristocratic atmosphere of whose Endymion is amusingly travestied in 1880; J. C. Harris, the author of Uncle Remus; Rider Haggard; Lord Lytton ("Owen Meredith") in "Fitzdotterel," a parody of Glenaveril; Stevenson; F. C. Philips, the author of As in a Looking Glass; Oscar Wilde; Barrie; Kipling; Hardy; Henley and Maeterlinck (in the style of Ollendorff).

Burnand was not a parodist of the class of Calverley or Sir Owen Seaman, Max Beerbohm or Mr. J. C. Squire; but what he lacked in literary felicity and scholarship and in that impersonation which assumes the habit of mind of the author travestied, he made up in his unfailing sense of the ludicrous, his high spirits and audacious burlesque. He confined himself mainly to prose. At the end of this period Mr. Anstey was a veritable tower of strength to the paper. His Voces Populi and his burlesques of recitations and music-hall songs are masterpieces of close observation and high-spirited fun. The extravagances of the æsthetic poets engaged other pens, but the best literary parodies belong to a rather later date. There is, however, a good specimen in the "domestic threnody" on Oleo-Margarine in the manner of Swinburne, which appears in 1881, and opens impressively: —

I am she whose nameless naked name to utter
The strong are weak;
The suet-sprung soft sweet sister of bad butter,
Yet rid of reek.
I, that, molten o'er the fires beneath me burning,
From void of vat,
Uprise supremer, in this my creamless churning,
First-born of fat!

In this context I may note an original contribution to existing forms of verse in the ingenious doggerel French "Limericks" of Du Maurier, of which two specimens may suffice: —

Il était un homme de Madère
Qui cassa le nez à son père.
On demandait "Pourquoi?"
Il répondit "Ma foi!
Vous n'avez pas connu mon père!"

Il existe une Espinstère à Tours,
Un peu vite, et qui porte toujours
Un ulsteur peau-de-phoque,
Un chapeau bilicoque,
Et des nîcrebocqueurs en velours.

The Proprietor: "I'll tell you what it is, Shardson, I'm getting sick of the 'ole bloomin' Show! The Knacker ain't selling a Scrap – no notice took of us anywhere – not a bloomin' Advertisement! And yet there ain't 'ardly a livin' Englishman of mark, from Tennyson downwards, as we 'aven't shown up and pitched into, and dragged 'is Name in the Mud!"

The Editor: "Don't let's throw up the Sponge yet, Old Man! Let's give the dead 'uns a turn – let's have a shy at Thackeray, Browning, George Eliot, or, better still, let's bespatter General Gordon and Cardinal Newman a bit —that ought to fetch 'em a few, and bring us into Notice!"

Russel and Delane

Turning for the moment from gay to grave, we may note that Punch bestowed his benediction on the Dictionary of National Biography, when the first instalment of what was the greatest act of true sportsmanship in the publishing world of our times appeared in January, 1885. Per contra, the proposal for a British Academy in 1890 only met with irreverent suggestions from Punch for the constitution of the Elective Body.

Punch kept a watchful eye on the developments of journalism and periodical literature. He notes in 1876 the impending appearance of Truth, but his opinion of Society journals, discussed elsewhere, was not flattering. When Alexander Russel, the great editor of the Scotsman, died in July, 1876, Punch did not fail to recognize the conspicuous services of that fearless, honest and trenchant publicist and malleus stultorum: —

The shadows that make up our night,
Were growing thin for him to fight,
But still he fights, we think with pride,
Our battle from the other side!

Long in our mêlée will be missed
The mace of Russel's mighty fist,
That struck and, wasting nought in sound,
Buried its blow without rebound.

Bagehot, equally distinguished in letters and journalism, passed unnoticed in 1877, but Delane, the third and most widely renowned of the three great editors who died in the last half of this decade, was fitly eulogized in 1879 by one who was not the only writer who had served on the staff of both Punch and The Times: —

Rest in thy grave, that knew no resting here,
Editor without equal, strenuous soul,
Staunch friend, despising favour, scorning fear,
Far-seeing, forward, cleaving to thy goal.

He left a different scene from that he found,
And had a large part in all change he saw,
No slave, nor leader, of his time, but bound
Abreast of it to keep its glass from flaw.

The centenary of The Times, which occurred in 1888, is duly noted, and by way of contrast to what was then a national institution there are allusions to short-lived but now forgotten papers and periodicals, more notorious than notable. Punch kept a vigilant eye on the provincial press, but he was, on the whole, more inclined to utilize it when it suited its purpose and to make humorous capital out of its shortcomings than to acknowledge its solid merits. Of Punch's own domestic history it may suffice to maintain that a mountain in the Arctic regions was named after him by the expedition under Captain Nares in 1876; and that he was once more banned in Paris on account of the cartoons on Marshal MacMahon in 1878. He paid affectionate homage to Tom Taylor on his death in 1880 as a cultivated man of letters, a considerate and judicious editor, above all, a warm-hearted, upright man and a staunch and loyal friend. Henry Mayhew, who died in 1887, "comrade of Punch and champion of the poor," was only associated with the paper in its earlier days and for a short period. By the death of the gentle Percival Leigh, of "Pips's Diary" fame, in 1889, the last link was snapped with the days of Mark Lemon, Douglas Jerrold, Leech and Doyle and Thackeray.

FINE ARTS

A survey of the Fine Arts from 1874 to 1892, based on a study of Punch, reveals changes and even reactions in his outlook. As we have seen in an earlier volume, he had been converted in great measure to Pre-Raphaelitism; he had welcomed Whistler as a master etcher; he had been a severe and at times even savage critic of the stereotyped conventions, the opportunism, the inanities of the Royal Academy.

Punch and Æstheticism

Something of this spirit remains in the period under review. The annual exhibitions at Burlington House are dealt with in no reverential mood. As far back as 1877 we note the first appearance of an article with illustrations very much on the lines of the modern "Academy Depressions." The pictures exhibited in the years of his declining powers by the late Mr. J. R. Herbert, R.A., are caricatured without mercy in 1885, and the New English Art Club is welcomed in 1889 for its revolt against "the dull dead level of sleek respectability, the commonplace churchwardenism of suburban gentility." The sequel invites quotation: —

A bold, original, impudent lot are these New Englanders, but they are notwithstanding wonderfully refreshing. Sometimes their spirits are too much for their strength, and they come tremendous "croppers." It has been well said that a strikingly original writer occasionally writes absolute nonsense, and by the same rule an artist, who turns aside from the well-swept, carefully watered, mathematically paved academic high road, must not infrequently paint absolute nonsense; but he thinks for himself, he does not view Nature through the spectacles of others, and in nine cases out of ten he is likely to produce works that will be successful in the long run. Though there are some pictures among the collection will make the casual visitor jump, there are not a few will make him think.

Some of the rebels of 1889 have developed into the academics of thirty years later, and Punch's list of the most notable contributors makes us jump as well as think: John S. Sargent, Solomon J. Solomon, Whistler, B. Sickert, Tuke, Edward Stott, A. Roche, N. Garstin, G. Roussell, Sidney Starr, F. Brown, A. Mann, H. Vos, W. J. Laidlaw and J. E. Christie.

Punch, then, cannot be written down as a Philistine, but there is no denying the fact that his artistic judgment was warped and impaired by his invincible hostility to the æsthetic movement; his inability to disentangle the good in it from the evil; his confusion of charlatanry and sincerity; and his failure to recognize the great services rendered by Morris in the domain of decorative design. Prejudice and ignorance mingle with good sense and good feeling in the manifesto which Punch put forth in 1882, and which may serve as a general exposition of his artistic and literary creed in the 'eighties: —

IN EARNEST

Let us be clearly understood. The word "Æstheticism" has been perverted from its original meaning; i.e. the perception of all that is good, pure and beautiful in Nature and in Art, and, as now vulgarly applied, it has come in a slang sort of way to stand for an effeminate, invertebrate, sensuous, sentimentally-Christian, but thoroughly Pagan taste in literature and art, which delights in the idea of the resuscitation of the Great God Pan, in Swinburnian songs at their highest fever-pitch, in the mystic ravings of a Blake, the affectation of a Rossetti, the Charmides and revoltingly pantheistic Rosa Mystica of Oscar Wilde, the Songs of Passion and Pain and other similar mock-hysterical imitations of the "Mighty Masters." Victor Hugo, Ouida, Swinburne, Burne-Jones, have much to answer for.

May: "Mamma! Mamma! Don't go on like this, pray!!"

Mamma (who has smashed a favourite pot): "What have I got left to live for?"

May: "Haven't you got me, Mamma?"

Mamma: "You, child! You're not unique!! There are six of you – a complete set!!"

This Æstheticism, as it has gradually come to be known, is the reaction from Kingsley's muscular Christianity. Exaggerated muscular Christianity, in its crusade against canting and whining religion, in its bold attempt to show that the practice of true religion was for men, as well as for women, trampled on the Christian Lily, emblem of perfect purity; and what Athleticism trod under foot, Æstheticism picked up, cherished, and then, taking the sign for the reality, paid to it the extravagant honours of a Pagan devotion; and the worship of the Lily was substituted for the veneration paid to the sacred character, in whose hand Christian Art had originally placed it. To this was added the worship of the Peacock's Feather. It is this false Æstheticism which we have persistently attacked, and will persistently attack to the bitter end, and henceforward those who misunderstand us do so wilfully, and it may be maliciously.

Whistler and Ruskin

Punch was justified in deploring the opportunism of Millais in painting "pot-boilers" and "pretty-pretty" pictures, such as "Bubbles." He had powerful and well-equipped allies in his view that Whistler in his later manner left off painting or etching where the difficulties began, a view expressed in the lines in 1883 on "Whistler in Venice": —

Whistler is "Niminy-Piminy,"
Funny, fantastic, and quaint.
Yet he's so clever that Jimmy nigh
Makes men believe he can paint.

What of his works? Why, each etching is
Only at present half done,
And on the copper the sketching is
Simply a wild piece of fun.

Vainly the Critics will sit on him,
Why such a butterfly slay?
No one can e'er put the bit on him —
Whistler's the wag of the day.

Yet Punch thought Ruskin had gone too far in the famous onslaught which led to the historic lawsuit and verdict in 1878: —

To John Ruskin

(On a recent Verdict)

If "Fors Clavigera," dear Slade Professor,
Means "Force that bears a club,"
Be warned, since of a big stick you're possessor,
And more discreetly drub.
Strength unrestrained's not greater strength but lesser,
And scorn provoketh snub.

The Grosvenor Gallery, opened in 1877, at once eclipsed Burlington House as the favourite target of Punch's ridicule and caricature, and as the home of all the tendencies which he repudiated in the manifesto quoted above. His general attitude is very much that of Gilbert in Patience; and Burne-Jones and Rossetti (whom he miscalls "D. S. Rosetti" as late as 1880) were indiscriminately confounded in dispraise along with the lesser fry. Tennyson's "Palace of Art" is perverted into a vehicle for assailing Pre-Raphaelitism. The "Dream of Queer Women" in 1878 gives prominence to the artistic type, and a visit to the Grosvenor Gallery in the early summer of the same year inspires "The Haunted Limbo; a May-night Vision" animated by the same hostility: —

Those women, ah, those women! They were white,
Blue, green, and grey – all hues, save those of nature,
Bony of frame, and dim, and dull of sight,
And parlous tall of stature.

Ars longa est– aye, very long indeed,
And long as Art were all these High-Art ladies,
And wan and weird; one might suppose the breed
A cross 'twixt earth and Hades.

If poor Persephone to the Dark King
Had children borne, after that rape from Enna,
Much so might they have looked, when suffering
From too much salts and senna.

Many their guises, but no various grace
Or changeful charm relieved their sombre sameness
Of form contorted, and cadaverous face,
And limp lopsided lameness.

Homage to Cruikshank

Leighton's "Athlete and Python" in 1877 had been saluted as "a statue at last," and Punch welcomed his election as P.R.A. in the following year, with an excellent portrait by Sambourne of "the right man in the right place." It was in 1878 again that Punch turned aside from the flagellation of his pet aversions to pay homage to the genius of George Cruikshank, who died on February 1: —

England is the poorer by what she can ill spare – a man of genius. Good, kind, genial, honest and enthusiastic George Cruikshank, whose frame appeared to have lost so little of its wiry strength and activity, whose brain seemed as full of fire and vitality at fourscore as at forty, has passed away quietly and painlessly after a few days' struggle. He never worked for Punch, but he always worked with him, putting his unresting brain, his skill – in some forms of Art unrivalled – and his ever productive fancy, at the service of humanity and progress, good works, and good will to man. His object, like our own, was always to enforce truth and urge on improvement by the powerful forces of fun and humour, clothed in forms sometimes fanciful, sometimes grotesque, but never sullied by a foul thought, and ever dignified by a wholesome purpose.

(With verses by Jellaby Postlethwaite, who is also said to have sat for the Picture.)

His fourscore and six years of life have been years of unintermitting labour, that was yet, always, labour of love. There never was a purer, simpler, more straightforward, or altogether more blameless man. His nature had something childlike in its transparency. You saw through him completely. There was neither wish nor effort to disguise his self-complacency, his high appreciation of himself, his delight in the appreciation of others, any more than there was to make himself out better, or cleverer, or more unselfish than his neighbours.

In him England has lost one who was, in every sense, as true a man as he was a rare and original genius, and a pioneer in the arts of illustration.

Punch's estimate accords with that of the friend who knew Cruikshank well and described him as "in every word and deed a God-fearing, Queen-honouring, truth-loving, honest man," and it is all the more significant in view of Cruikshank's vehement and even fanatical espousal of the cause of temperance. Another great illustrator, though of a very different type, emerged in the following year in Randolph Caldecott. His genial and graceful commentaries on Nursery Rhymes were entirely after Punch's heart. He was speedily enlisted as an occasional contributor up to 1886, the year of his premature death, when Punch faithfully summed up the gifts of a true benefactor of all ages: —

We loved the limner whose gay fun
Was ever loyal to the Graces;
Who mixed the mirth of Gilpin's run
With willowy forms and winsome faces;
Who made old nursery lyrics live
With frolic force rejuvenated,
And yet the sweetest girls could give
That ever pencil-point created.

From Bracebridge Hall to Banbury Cross
His fancy flew with fine facility.
Orchards all apple-bloom and moss,
Child sport, bucolical senility,
The field full cry, snug fireside ease,
Horse-fun, dog-joke his pencil covers,
With Alderman and hawthorn trees,
Parsons and Squires, and rustic lovers.

But in these years Punch had little time to spare for praise; he was so busy belabouring Burne-Jones and Rossetti, the Grosvenor Gallery, the Kyrle Society, or new fashions in house decorations and furniture, in which he saw nothing but gloom and discomfort. The protest in 1879 of the three Slade Professors – Sidney Colvin, W. B. Richmond and Legros – against the critics who denied Burne-Jones genius and greatness on the strength of defective anatomical details, left Punch impenitent. He mocked at their "triune testimonial" as an unconvincing attempt to convert the callous and captious critics who,

Persisted in belabouring B. – J. with tongue and pen
Whilst Philistia looked on and laughed at those Three Mighty Men.

Prigs and Philistines

(Ineffable Youth goes into ecstasies over an extremely Old Master – say, Fra Porcinello Babaragianno, A.D. 1266-1281?)

Matter-of-fact Party: "But it's such a repulsive subject!"

Ineffable Youth: "'Subject' in art is of no moment! The Picktchah is beautiful!"

Matter-of-fact Party: "But you'll own the Drawing's vile, and the Colour's beastly!"

Ineffable Youth: "I'm Cullah-blind, and don't p'ofess to understand D'awing! The Picktchah is beautiful!"

Matter-of-fact Party (getting warm): "But it's all out of Perspective, hang it, and so abominably untrue to Nature!"

Ineffable Youth: "I don't care about Naytchah, and hate Perspective. The Picktchah is most beautiful!"

Matter-of-fact Party (losing all self-control): "But, dash it all, man, where the dickens is the beauty, then?"

Ineffable Youth (quietly): "In the Picktchah!"

Total defeat of Matter-of-fact Party.

It is true that Punch makes some reservations in his "Moral": —

Critics are full of "cussedness," omniscience sometimes slips,
And even triune Oracles may chance to miss their tips.

But his sympathies undoubtedly remain with the critics, and he virtually identifies himself with Philistia in the plea of the Philistine in the following year: —

Take away all your adornments æsthetical,
Plates of blue china and bits of sage green,
Though you may call me a monster heretical,
I can't consider them fit to be seen.
Etchings and paintings I loathe and abominate,
Grimly I smile at the name of Burne-Jones,
Hating his pictures where big chins predominate —
Over lean figures with angular bones.

Buy me what grinning stage rustics call "farniture,"
Such as was used by our fathers of old;
Take away all your nonsensical garniture,
Tapestry curtains and borders of gold,
Give me the ancient and solid mahogany,
Mine be the board that will need no repairs,
Don't let me see, as I sit at my grog, any
Chippendale tables or spindle-legged chairs.

Hang up a vivid vermilion wall-paper,
Covered with roses of gorgeous hue,
Matching a varnished and beautiful hall-paper,
Looking like marble so polished and new.
Carpets should all show a floral variety,
Wreaths intermingling of yellow and red;
So, when it enters my home, will Society
Say, here's a house whence æsthetics have fled.

Belabouring Burne-Jones

The "Lay of the Private View" at the Grosvenor Gallery in May, 1881, forms a useful supplement to Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience, produced a fortnight before the verses appeared: —

The Grosvenor! the view that's called private,
Yet all the world seems to be there;
Each carriage that comes to arrive at
The door, makes the populace stare.
There's Gladstone, severe of demeanour,
It's plain that the pictures don't please;
And there, with an aspect serener,
Her Highness the Princess Louise.

The Haunt of the very æsthetic,
Here come the supremely intense,
The long-haired and hyper-poetic
Whose sound is mistaken for sense.
And many a maiden will mutter,
When Oscar looms large on her sight,
"He's quite too consummately utter,
As well as too utterly quite."

Here's Whistler paints Miss Alexander,
A portrait washed out as by rain;
'Twill raise Ruskin's critical dander,
To find James is at it again.
The flesh-tints of Watts are quite comic;
There's Herkomer's chaos of stones;
But where is the great anatomic
Improver on Nature, Burne-Jones?

A Grosvenor without him so strange is,
We miss the long chins and knock-knees,
The angel of bronze, who for change is
Tied up to the stiffest of trees:
Limp lads with their belli capelli,
Mad maidens with love smitten sore,
Oh, shade of defunct Botticelli,
Burne-Jones comes to startle no more!

I deal in another section with the fashionable cult of æstheticism, which was now at its zenith. In estimating its artistic importance, Punch erred in his refusal to discriminate between eccentricity and independence. He continued to "belabour B. – J.," and brackets him with Whistler in the ribald suggestion that they were jointly responsible for the pictures exhibited by the "Screevers" or pavement artists. Millais is congratulated on breaking away from Pre-Raphaelitism, and invidious comparisons are drawn in 1886 between his pictures and those of Holman Hunt: —

There couldn't be a better foil to the manliness of the Millais Show at the Grosvenor than the pseudo-mediæval-O-quite-too-beautiful-namby-pamby-gilt-edged-and-gothic-clasped-Church-service style of the effeminate religious Art of Mr. Holman Hunt. Millais tried it, and, after a struggle, snapped the Pre-Raphaelite fetters, and escaped.

Yet in the next two years Millais is criticized for sacrificing character to "prettiness" and desecrating his talent by placing it at the disposal of the advertiser. Watts's enigmatic "Hope" was "guyed" in 1887 under the title "Cutting off her head with a saw." The multifarious activities of Herkomer – painter, etcher, director of a school of art at Bushey, designer of posters, operatic composer, etc. – did not escape Punch's amused notice. Punch himself, as might readily be expected, did not enjoy an immunity from art criticism. In 1883 he had congratulated Ruskin on his second election to the Slade Professorship at Oxford; at the end of the year Ruskin repaid the compliment, in his lectures on the Art of England, by a long detailed and in the main highly eulogistic survey of Punch's artistic work. But the panegyric was tempered by certain reserves: —

Says Mr. Ruskin, having before him in review one or two selected specimens of Mr. Punch's cartoons: —

"Look, too, at this characteristic type of British heroism – 'John Bull guards his pudding.' Is this the final outcome of King Arthur and Saint George, of Britannia and the British Lion? And is it your pride or hope or pleasure that in this sacred island that has given her lion hearts to Eastern tombs and her Pilgrim Fathers to Western lands, that has wrapped the sea round her as a mantle, and breathed against her strong bosom the air of every wind, the children born to her in these latter days should have no loftier legend to write upon their shields than 'John Bull guards his Pudding'?"

And then Mr. Ruskin, as if conscious that the very onward sweep of his own free fancy has carried him beyond the limits of fair and reasonable estimate, as it were, harks somewhat back again, and offering Mr. Punch something in the nature of an apology, acquits him of all true responsibility for this same terrible and offending "pudding": —

"It is our fault" (proceeds Mr. Ruskin) "and not the Artist's; and I have often wondered what Mr. Tenniel might have done for us if London had been as Venice, or Florence, or Siena. In my first course of Lectures I called your attention to the Picture of the Doge Mocenigo kneeling in prayer; and it is our fault more than Mr. Tenniel's if he is forced to represent the heads of the Government dining at Greenwich rather than worshipping at St. Paul's."

Punch's Virtues as an Art Critic

Punch took the criticism in good part, while declaring that he had found this commonplace nineteenth century and its humdrum materials pretty well suited to his purpose; and after indulging in a whimsical dialogue between the editor, Giovanni Tennielo, and Ruskino in Venice, comes to the conclusion that after all the Queen of the Adriatic may have had even in her great days something less noble to lose than that condemned typical "pudding" which John Bull as yet has fortunately known how to guard. In this context I may add that in 1885 Punch reprinted an advertisement in which a young man, seeking for a place, stated amongst his credentials that he could "paint and talk Ruskinesque."

The Duke of Dilwater: "I – a – have taken the liberty of calling to say that I shall esteem myself highly honoured if you will be so very kind as to accept from me a Commission to paint my Portrait, at any time most convenient to yourself!"

Fashionable Artist (after careful survey of His Grace's features): "You must excuse me, Duke, but I really can't. I – a – always choose my own Subjects now, you know, and I'm sorry to say that your Grace won't do!"

As I have not minimized Punch's limitations as an art critic, it is only fair to add that he was often sound and sometimes even acute. He said the right thing on the parvenu as art patron, and delicately hinted his approval of the independence of portrait painters. His appreciation of the strength of "Phiz" (Hablot K. Browne) as the illustrator of Dickens and Lever in helping us to visualize and fix certain types is excellently done, and generous admiration does not prevent him pointing out "Phiz's" weaknesses – his sketchiness, thin and skimpy style, and simpering mannerisms. This was said on the occasion of the show of "Phiz's" drawings in 1883 (the year after his death) which Punch recommended to "genial Middle-age with memories and unpriggish Youth without hyperæsthetic prejudices."

Nothing could be better in its way, again, than the castigation of the "slick" and deliberate eccentricities of Jan Van Beers in 1886. Punch admits the Dutch artist's talent, his capacity for higher work, proved in historical paintings, and then sets to work to wield the lash: —

Popinjay Art is plentiful enough. It is the trick whereby mediocrity antics itself into a sort of notoriety, and cynical cleverness indolently plays the fool with an easily humbugged public. It is probably calculated – perhaps with some reason – that these stagey tricks, and limelight effects, and dismal draperies, and bogey surprises, and peep-show horrors will perplex people into a foolish wonder, if not into an impossible enjoyment or an honest approval. Maybe that is all which is aimed at? But what an aim for anything calling itself Art!

Posturing Pierrots and smirking skeletons, goggling sphinxes and giggling cocottes, cadaverous surprises and ensanguined startlers, all the parade of nightmare and nastiness, pall upon the mind, as the phantasmagoric effects and sickly scents do upon the senses, of the visitors to the Salon Parisien. Whim and fantasy are all very delightful in their way. But this is not Wonderland, it is the world of drunken delirium and the Witches' Sabbath. A girl with emerald face, purple hair, and vivid vermilion lips, peeping between amber portières, is an inoffensive though purposeless, and not very interesting bizarrerie. But such gratuitous ghastlinesses as "Will o' the Wisp," "Felo de se," "Vive la Mort!" and particularly the offensively named "Ecce Homo," are simply revolting horrors. Somebody has hazarded the statement that they are Edgar-Poe-ish. Pooh! Poe was creepy sometimes, but he was an artist, an idealist, subordinating even occasional horror to the beautiful in his daring dreams.

Philistine Father: "Why the dickens don't you paint something like Frith's 'Derby Day' – something everybody can understand, and somebody buy?"