Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893

Affable Stranger. Ullo, Mister, there you are! I say, that was a Racy Bit you gave us last week, about the 'Cat And The Fiddle'! Quite in Your Old Form, eh!
Our Artist. You're very kind, but—a—I—a—I fear I haven't the pleasure of your Acquaintance—a——
Affable Stranger. Hoity-toity me! How proud we are this Morning!
From the Common-place Book of The O'Wilde. —The play? Oh, the play be zephyr'd! The play is not the thing. In other words, the play is nothing. Point is to prepare immense assortment of entirely irrelevant epigrams. Epigram, my dear Duke, is the refuge of the dullard, who imagines that he obtains truth by inverting a truism. That sounds well; must lay it by for use. Take Virtue, for instance. Virtue offers a fine field for paradox, brought strictly up to date. Must jot down stray thoughts. (Good idea in the expression Stray Thoughts. Will think over it, and work it up either for impromptu or future play.) Here are a few examples:—
So much for Virtue. Repentance may be treated according to the same formula.
Having finished these examples, I will put down a few notions for general use.
There you have the whole secret. Be fearfully cynical, dreadfully bold, delightfully wicked, and carefully unconventional; let paradox and epigram flow in copious streams from your pen. Throw in a few aristocrats with a plentiful flavouring of vices novelistically associated with wicked Baronets. Add an occasional smoking-room—( Mem. Everything ends in smoke, my dear boy, except the cigars of our host. Use this when host is a parvenu unacquainted with the mysteries of brands)—shred into the mixture a wronged woman, a dull wife, and, if possible, one well tried and tested situation, then set the whole to simmer for three hours at the Haymarket. The result will be—— But to predict a result is to prophesy, and to prophesy is to know. (N.B.—Work up this rough material. It will come right, and sound well when polished up.)
A Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph suggests that, as the Scotch keep up St. Andrew's Day, and the Irish St. Patrick's, the English should also have a national fête on St. George's Day, the 23rd of April. Why not have the 23rd as St. George's Day, and the 24th as the Dragon's Day? We ought to Remember the Dragon —say, by depositing wreaths before the Temple Bar specimen. A Dragon's Day would be a most useful National Institution. The object would not be to exalt the beast, but to celebrate our own (and George's) triumph over it. Everybody has his own private Dragon, and some people have public ones as well. For example, Sir Wilfred Lawson, in laying down his wreath, would be commemorating the introduction of the Veto Bill; Mr. Gladstone would be slaying (in spirit) the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords, who is evidently the Dragon of the Prime (Minister) referred to by Tennyson; Lord Cranborne would be Mr. Davitt's Dragon, and so on. The fun would be that nobody would be expected to say what Dragon he meant. If a law were passed establishing such a festivity, perhaps it would be denounced as too Dragonic !