On Carlyle's manly breast:
The star can shed no honour there,
'Tis honoured there to rest.
The only other great Victorian literary lion of whom mention is made is Ruskin, and Punch's attitude towards him is somewhat mixed. In 1871 he addressed an open letter to Ruskin, à propos of his suggestions for preventing inundations of the Tiber, the gist of it being that, whatever he might be as an art critic, he was not infallible as an engineer. Punch admitted the "mystical and musical" eloquence of Ruskin, whom he was quite content to regard as an oracle—though not always intelligible—on Art and Nature, Paintings Old and Modern, Lamps of Architecture, Crowns of Wild Olive, and so forth, but he refused to take him seriously as a writer on economics or social problems. He showed unexpected sympathy with him, however, over the famous road-making experiment in 1874 at Hincksey, when the not very expert efforts of his disciples moved Philistine undergraduates to ribald mirth:—
HINCKSEY DIGGINGS
(See recent Correspondence in Daily News, and elsewhere)
'Tis well for snarlers analytic,
Who the art of the snarl to the sneer have brought,
To spit their scorn at the eloquent critic,
Leader of undergraduate thought.
Heart of the student it will not harden