Volume 93 — SMALL ENGRAVINGS.

Academy Pictures, 9, 13

Alderman's Reason for drinking Champagne, 226

Amateur Vocalist at a Penny Reading (An), 306

'Arry, 'Arriet, and the Indians, 18

Artist and his Rich Patron (An), 94

Artists and School-Board Notice, 46

Aunty and the Policeman, 231

Babes in the Christmas Wood (The), 266

Baby Bottesini (The), 38

Baby Gorilla (The), 214

Birds on the Telegraph Wires, 155

Boatman's Opinion on a Dress-Improver, 126

Bogeyish Pictures, 190

Boulanger-Ferry Duel (The), 63

Brown's Boarhound and the Rabbit, 270

Brown's Experience of Squalls, 118

Bulgar Boy and the Bear, 142

Buying Grouse, 135

Cannibal Uncle (A), 70

Chamberlain and the Gladstone Bait, 230

Children's Day in the Country (A), 30

Chimney-Sweep not in Black, 130

Chinaman on Tricycle (A), 50

Chorister Boys with the Mumps, 217

Churchill at the Battle of the Estimates, 39

Clergyman and the Widow (The), 263

Colour of the Gorse (The), 111

Comte de Paris and his Manifesto, 134

Costumes for the Recess, 143

Country Ladies and Street Boys, 291

Cricket at Lord's, 12, 28

Dachshund's Sore Throat (A), 278

Darwinian Ancestor (A), 265

Débutante's Series of Suppers (A), 222

Disadvantage of being an Aristocrat, 110

Division Lobbies (The), 11

Don Chamberlain Quixote, 194

Duke evicting the Volunteers (The), 74

Dumb Crambo's School-Book Review, 37

East Countrymen on Disestablishment, 219

English and American Yachts, 157

Fag-end of the Session (The), 83

Family Starting for the Seaside, 90

Finding the Law Courts, 129

First Meet of the Season (The), 227

F.-M. Punch's Parliamentary Review, 23

Footman's Opinion of the Unemployed, 243

German Belle's English (A), 62

Gladstone and Jenny Jones, 290

Gladstone's Sale of Chips, 202

Gondolier and the Steam-launch, 98

Good-woodcuts, 48

Grandpapa, Johnny, and the Irish Stew, 298

Grand Parliamentary Cricket-Match, 71

Grouse Prospects, 60

Guest's Departure and the little Trees, 210

Hampstead Ponds (The), 198

Hansom Cab in a Hampstead Pond, 246

Honeymoon Riddle (A), 75

Host treading on Lady's Skirt, 213

House "Up" at Last (The), 131

How We Advertise Now, 262

Hungry Professor at a Pic-nic, 186

Improvised Butler and Distinguished Guest at Dinner-Table, 309

In Lowther Arcadia at Christmas Times, 299

Innings of the Two Bills, 2

"Instantaneous Photography" in Ireland, 238

Irish Waiter and Bow-legged Traveller, 195

Jack and Effie on the Sea-shore, 78

Japanese and the Lady's Feet (A), 267

John Bull and Miss Columbia, 122

John Bull and the Jubilee Gifts, 178

King of the Belgians and Ostend Fishery, 154

Ladies wilfully mistaking Identity, 42

Lady's Long-lasting Voice (A), 82

Laurie growing too rapidly, 159

"London Quite Empty!" 167

Long Sight or Short Arms? 203

Lordly Cecil and his Queen (The), 87

Lord Lytton translated into French, 218

Madame France's Next Fashion, 27

Making Good Use of the Square, 6

Mamma and her Selfish Daughters, 102

Matthews and the Police, 207

McScrew's Glasgow Friends, 179

Minister's Retort on Free Kirk Elder, 251

Missionary who couldn't convert the Sultan, 45

Miss Tomkyn's return from the Concert, 66

Modern Autolycus (The), 182

Money-making Schoolboy (The), 256

Mother-in-law's Return (A), 286

Mr. Punch's Parliamentary Naval Review, 35

Nelson as a Special Constable, 243

New French President (The), 279

Newly-titled Lord and an Old Chum, 225

New Shylock (The), 285

Nizan of Hyderabad and Britannia, 158

Northern Belle and Provincial Masher, 22

Not in Love—this Season, 274

Octopus of Romance and Reality, 171

Old Butler and Her Ladyship's Music, 234

Old Gent and Small Boy on Beach, 137

Old Lady and Cabman, 183

Old Lady forgets where she Dined, 26

Parliamentary Alpine Club, 59

Parliamentary Cattle-Show (The), 275

Parliamentary Harvest (The), 107

Pic-Nic Parties disturbed by Rain, 150

Pigheaded Attack on the Immortal Bard, 273

Pricing an Artist's Masterpiece, 3

Probable Pictures for Christmas, 250

Professional Cricketers, 53

Professor's Opinion on Long Words (The), 255

Public School Boy and his Grandfather, 123

Punch and the Police Recruit, 191

Punch as Apollo, 1

Punch at Portsmouth, 54

Railway Station Puzzle, 93

Record of the Session—Dead Heat, 133

Regretting not having eaten more Oysters, 294

Returning Home from Seaside, 162

Robert and Stingy Old Gent, 81

Rough Day at the Sea-side, 138

Sacred Music in French, 189

Salisbury awaking the Crocodile, 160

Science appealing to John Bull, 51

Scotch Wife and the Minister's Tricycle, 166

Seeing the Blondin Donkey, 99

Set Fair at Whitby, 114

Several Boxing Encounters, 287

Sharp Boy and Papa's Sixpence, 209

Sir W. V. Harcourt as Falstaff, 254

Sketching a Lady Sketcher, 174

Snap-shots for the Twelfth, 69

Society's Pugilistic Pet, 282

Speaker using the Birch (The), 47

Special Constable and Lady Cook, 258

Speechifying on Railway Platforms, 215

Street Puzzle—in the Strand, 117

Sultan's Appeal to Mr. Punch, 153

Teacher of Shorthand (A), 170

Times, Salisbury, and National League, 40

Toby's New Year's Greeting, 302

Tradesmen clearing Regent Street, 15

Triangular Duel of Operatic Managers, 21

Turning on Whiskey and Water, 106

Unemployed Man's Shovel (An), 206

University Coach and Volatile Pupil, 34

Unwelcome Lady Visitor (An), 86

Utilising a Theatrical Poster, 216

Watching a Couple on the Balcony, 58

Wearing a Real Engagement Ring, 239

Whim-buildin', 17, 29

Willow-Pattern Plate (The), 146

Wolff and the Sultan, 29

Wonderful Sporting Dog (A), 147

Woolly Landscape, but not Woolly Sheep (A), 303

LONDON: BRADBURY AGNEW & CO., PRINTERS WHITEFRIARS.

PUNCH VOL 93

LONDON:

PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE, 85, FLEET STREET,

AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.

1887.

LONDON:

BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

PREFACE

SCENE—A snug and sequestered if cloudy corner of the Elysian Fields. Present, the Shades of Shakspeare and Bacon, engaged in reading Mr. Donelly's egregious lucubrations, not without such mild and mitigated mirth as becomes the locality. To them enters a small and sprightly Personage, light-footed, but of seeming cis-Stygian solidity.

Bacon Shakspeare } (together). Hillo!

Mr. Punch. That sounds human. Savours rather of my own Fleet Street than of the realms of the other Rhadamanthus. What cheer, sweet Will? How fare you, Brother Francis?

[Salutes courteously.

Bacon. 'Twere affectation to ask who you are, Sir. The question, "How gat you here?" may perchance be more pertinent—and pardonable.

Mr. P. (airily). Oh, I had been for—say, the xth time—to see "Our Mary" in The Winter's Tale, and being more inclined for profitable talk than for sleep, I just took you on my way home.

Bacon (smiling). Marry, Mr. Punch, were the statement of sequence equivalent to the explanation of causation, yours would be a most satisfactory answer.

Shaks. (mildly). Be not too scientifically scrutinising, Brother Bacon. Mr. Punch, Puck and Ariel in one, is free of all places, lord of all latitudes, penetrator of all spheres, permeator of all elements.

Mr. P. True, sweet Will! How much more catholic, in comprehension, as in charity, is the creative mind than the merely critical one!

Bacon. Humph! That sounds Sphinxian. Heraclitus the Obscure was pellucid in comparison.

Mr. P. And yet, I warrant you, Master Shakspeare here could play the "Diver of Delos" where your pundit's plummet should not find bottom. However, "broad-browed Verulam," let not that brow's breadth cloud or corrugate in vexation at my persiflage. What do you read, Sir?

Shaks. "Words, words, words!"

Mr. P. "I mean the matter that you read."

Shaks. "Slanders, Sir." For the coney-catching rogue—one Donelly—says here——but of course you know what he says.

[The trio laugh Homerically, until the asphodels wag their white heads and convulse their starry corollas in sheer sympathy.

Bacon. By Democritus, laughter in these latitudes is seldom enough of this sort and compass.

Mr. P. To succeed in shaking the sides—of Bacon, here, is somewhat indeed, the greatest triumph, be sure, that awaits the incongruous Cryptogrammatist.

Shaks. Would that Ben Jonson were with us to join in the glorious guffaw.

Mr. P. Conceive Rare Ben being jockeyed into accepting you, his contemporary and tavern-companion, as the author of such "unconsidered trifles" as Hamlet and Lear, Othello and Macbeth, The Tempest and The Midsummer Night's Dream! Wer't ever at the "Mermaid," Verulam?

Bacon. Verily, Mr. Punch, I should like mightily to have joined in that company, just for once, and to have discussed the Cryptogram with the "Spanish great galleon" and the "English man-of-war" (as Fuller puts it), whom Donelly now desires to knock, as it were, into one curiously composite craft. Did not this same maker of mare's-nests indite a fantastic tome, full of bottomless argument and visionary particularity, concerning that fabled island or continent of Atlantis, which the Egyptian priest told Solon had been swallowed up by an earthquake?

Mr. P. Like enough, my Lord, like enough. Once a mare's-nester, always a mare's-nester. Nephelo-Coccygia was terra firma compared with the elaborate but evanescent Cloud-Cuckoolands of riddle-reading theory-mongers.

Shaks. When Œdipus gets crotchet-ridden the sooner the Sphinx devours him the better.

Mr. P. True, O Swan! Let the Great Brethren of British Genius be brethren still—twins, if you please, but twain. Verily it might almost pass the might of Mother Nature to round two such splendid orbs into one. Rare Ben had his tribute for you also, my Verulam. "No man ever spake more neatly, more purely, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered." Might have been said of Me!

Bacon. Praise shared with you is praise indeed! But the language of the Realm of Phantasy—Will's own world—the speech of Arcady, of Arden, of shadowy Elsinore, of Prospero's enchanted Isle—Will's native tongue—passeth many a league-long step beyond the "neatness" of the judgment-seat, or the "fulness" of the Novum Organum Scientiarum.

Mr. P. Well said, Wisdom!

Shaks. (chortling softly). Why, who knows? One day, perchance,—æons hence, of course,—some puzzle-headed pragmatist may propound the preposterous question, "Who wrote Punch?" From out the fathomless deeps of its many thousand wit-stored tomes the Donelly of that dim and distant future may readily dip up, in his poor bucket, a Cryptogram, to show that they were produced by a scientific syndicate, including Faraday and Mill, Huxley and Herbert Spencer, Darwin and the Duke of Argyll.

[At the mention of the Olympian and autocratic Scottish Sciolist, Homeric laughter bursts forth anew in yet fuller force.

Bacon. Prithee, sweet Will, don't! Shadowy sides can ache, I find, and then, what will Rhadamanthus think?

Mr. P. As Jupiter did when the adventurous Ixion intruded into Olympus, perhaps. Well, well, put aside that preposterous book, which, as you, my Lord Bacon, said of the Aristotelian method, is "only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of works for the benefit of the life of man," and, I may add, of immortals.

Shaks. (yawning). Not all reading, my Francis, makes a full man—save in the sense in which one may be filled with the East wind. My books were men. Not much that is novel in Nature, human or otherwise, to study in these shadowy realms. I miss the "Mermaid," and the mazy world which was my stage. Donelly's book is dull, however. Canst furnish us with a substitute, excellent Mr. Punch?

Mr. P. That can I, sweet Will. To that end indeed came I hither. As a popular stage-character—not one of your own—saith, "I hope I don't intrude." Ah, I thought not; but you needn't try (ineffectually) to wring my hands off, the pair of you. Behold!!!!!!

As Mr. Punch reluctantly turned his back upon Elysium, he left the two Illustrious Shades, prone side by side and cheek by jowl upon an asphodel bank, eagerly and diligently perusing his