Enthusiastic Pedestrian: "Am I on the right road for Stratford—Shakspere's town, you know, my man? You've often heard of Shakspere?"
Rustic: "Ees. Be you he?"
Mark Twain did not visit London until seven years later, and Punch greeted the "distinguished humorist" in the quatrain headed "Welcome to a Lecturer":—
"'Tis time we Twain did show ourselves." 'Twas said
By Cæsar, when one Mark had lost his head:
By Mark whose head's quite bright, 'tis said again:
"Therefore, go with me, friends, to bless this Twain."
The greeting was renewed a couple of months later, and Punch's admiration, thus early expressed, never wavered in all the years that elapsed before Mark Twain was entertained by Punch at his table on the occasion of his last visit to England in 1907, when he came over to receive the degree of Doctor of Literature from the University of Oxford.
W. S. Gilbert
The relations of W. S. Gilbert with Punch were made public property to a certain extent by Gilbert's statement, in the preface to the collected edition of the Bab Ballads, that the Cruise of the Nancy Bell had been "offered to the Editor and declined by him on the ground that it was too cannibalistic to suit the taste of his readers." The Bab Ballads (so called from the signature "Bab" which Gilbert appended to his illustrations) appeared in Fun, which was founded in 1861, and were, while they lasted, the chief attraction of that paper. Gilbert was undoubtedly nettled by Mark Lemon's decision; had it been otherwise, he might very probably have become a regular contributor to Punch. But it is not strictly correct to say, as the author of the notice of Gilbert in the Encyclopædia Britannica does, that Gilbert continued to contribute to Fun because he had failed to gain the entrée into the pages of Punch. As a matter of fact he had frequently contributed, both with pen and pencil, to Punch in the early 'sixties. In 1865 his contributions included an amusing illustrated squib on the hydrophobia scare, the lines to "An Absent Husband," and a long prose piece "A wonderful Shilling's worth!" on the performances at the Polytechnic. The last named was Gilbert's final contribution to Punch.