SHAKESPEARE AND THE PIGMIES
As a critic of letters Punch is subjected to more searching ordeal in his references to living and rising than to dead or risen authors. His recognition of James Montgomery—the author of one of the very few fine modern hymns—has been noticed elsewhere. There was chivalry as well as appreciation in his defence of Alexander Smith when the charge of plagiarism was brought against the "City Poems" by the Athenæum. The ridicule of the "Spasmodic" school in Aytoun's brilliant burlesque drama Firmilian was a much more damaging criticism, but in recognizing Smith's force and originality Punch ranges himself on the side of Clough and Matthew Arnold, John Forster, Arthur Helps and G. H. Lewes—in other words, the most enlightened and best equipped critics of the time.
Though Tennyson had been Laureate for several years, he was still regarded—surprising and even painful as it may seem to the neo-Georgian reader—with a certain amount of suspicion by austere critics bred up in eighteenth century traditions. Both as regards matter and manner he was considered to be an innovator. Punch's admiration for Tennyson was already an old story. He had lent him the hospitality of his pages in 1846 to reply to Bulwer Lytton's defamatory abuse in The New Timon. But in some quarters judgment was still suspended, and Tennyson was not yet held to have completed the period of probation. So when in 1859 the bust of the Laureate was denied admission to the Library at Trinity College, Cambridge, on the ground that the honour was premature, Punch printed a satirical "Fragment of an Idyll" in which the poet's detractors were rebuked in his own manner.
A Wonderful Three-penny-worth
Punch's championship of Tennyson never faltered, though he was reconciled to Bulwer Lytton, who had called the Laureate a "School-miss," and it dated back to a time when Tennyson's claims to recognition were vehemently canvassed. Still we are inclined to regard as a much more remarkable sign of his flair and enlightenment, the quoting of Meredith's poem, Modern Love, in his "Essence of Parliament," in the year 1865. It is only a scrap—four words; yet when one remembers how remarkably small Meredith's audience was in the 'sixties, even for his prose, the quotation is a notable sign of grace. But Shirley Brooks, who distilled the "Essence," was a scholar and something of a poet into the bargain. There was also a special bond between Punch and George Meredith. In 1860, under the heading "An Honest Advertisement," Punch refers to Once a Week as having been enlarged to thirty-two pages, and speaks of it as "already one of the most extraordinarily cheap publications in the world when you consider the brilliancy of the literature and the beauty of the illustrations." This was admittedly a puff, for the proprietors of Punch and Once a Week were the same, but it was no more than the truth. Once a Week was the most wonderful three-penny-worth in the whole journalistic history of the nineteenth century, with Millais, Rossetti, Sandys, Frederick Walker, G. J. Pinwell and Charles Keene as regular illustrators. As for the letterpress, it is enough to say that Meredith's Evan Harrington (illustrated by Charles Keene) appeared in its pages, as well as many of his and Tennyson's poems. In spite of this galaxy of talent the magazine was not a commercial success, and after a few years passed into other hands.
In extending a welcome to Kingsley's[26] Water Babies, and later on to Alice in Wonderland, our friend Punch did no more than might have been expected of him. But his praise of the former story is pitched in a pretty high key: the author of the "Table Talk" in 1865 declaring that he "would rather have written the Water Babies than any book in the last fifty years." In the controversy that raged over Poems and Ballads, in 1866, Punch committed himself truculently to the side of the angels of decorum. In consequence he writes pungently, that "having read Mr. Swinburne's defence of his prurient poetics, Punch hereby gives him his royal licence to change his name to what is evidently its true form—"Swine-born." Name-twisting, with a view to casting odium on an antagonist, is an old but dangerous game. The most that can be said in Punch's defence, which is not much, is that he was not the only offender. In the acrimonious pamphlet warfare that raged between Swinburne and Dr. Halliwell Phillipps, the latter called the poet "Pigsbrook," and the poet retorted by referring to his opponent as "Hell-P." Apart from this error of taste, Punch had at least the support of powerful and distinguished allies in his condemnation. But he overdid his disparagement when four years later he observed that "certain Songs before Sunrise are promised us ere long, from the pen of a young poet." Nor was the allusion to Walt Whitman as "an impostor" in 1869 any happier than his previous description of him as a Yankee rough.
Martin Tupper
Though by no means an infallible or judicial critic, Punch made no mistakes about bad poets, even though they were popular. Throughout this period he was the champion of the middle-classes in politics; but his championship did not extend to their literary preferences. In the 'sixties, Tupper was widely read and, judged by circulation, the most successful poet of the day. To this generation his name has become a synonym for platitude; and as an author, he survives, if at all, in the immortal parody of Calverley. Yet we can never get away from the fact that he gave pleasure to scores of thousands of decent people by his blameless banalities. Though his Proverbial Philosophy was the quintessence of commonplace and orthodoxy, there are passages in it, as Professor Elton has pointed out, which deviate into something like poetry. He was, though vain, a kindly, good man, and a patriotic citizen, who did good service in promoting the Volunteer Movement. He was not a fool: did he not defeat Mr. Gladstone in the competition for a prize for a theological essay at Christ Church? The University of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of D.C.L. in 1847. He was also an inventor in a small way, and patented a screw-top for glass bottles. He was even a Fellow of the Royal Society! But to Punch he was simply a bad poet, and as such a subject for ridicule and parody. Thus, à propos of his Three Hundred Sonnets, Punch published in 1860 what purported to be the three-hundred-and-first on "My Five New Kittens," winding up with the couplet:—