Note 3 — ContentsCHAPTER I.

So ignorant were their immediate successors of the events I am relating that in a letter written in confutation of the assertion that Gilbert à Beckett had been an editor of Punch, Shirley Brooks said: "From the first the editorship was in the hands of my predecessor, Mark Lemon; the opening address was from his pen, and he was sole editor from July 17th, 1841 (the day of the birth of the publication) until May 23rd, 1870, the day of his lamented death." In the Jubilee number of Punch this misconception was confirmed upon the authority of this statement of Shirley Brooks.