The Nancy Bell was offered and rejected early in 1866, and appeared in Fun of March 3 without illustrations. The nonsense verses, "Sing for the Garish Eye," which appeared in Punch on April 16, 1873, were from Gilbert's pen, but the explanation given a fortnight later showed that they had been printed inadvertently; a "valued contributor" having forwarded them for Punch's private diversion and not for publication. They had actually been printed elsewhere ten years earlier. The amende was handsomely made, but Gilbert never contributed again to Punch. One cannot help regretting that he began the Bab Ballads with just the only one to which exception could have been taken, for it is cannibalistic!
Holding that a Free Press was an advantage to a nation, Punch had supported the Memorial to Leigh Hunt, who had been sent to prison "for publishing opinions which Mr. Punch in perfect safety may now put forth when he pleases, and the fact that Punch can just say what he likes without a fear of Newgate is owing in great measure to the battles Leigh Hunt fought," for which Punch was content to overlook Leigh Hunt's self-indulgent improvidence—so cruelly satirized by Dickens in Harold Skimpole. But when Charles Knight died in 1873 there was no need for reservation in the homage paid to that life-long and stalwart fighter for the repeal of the taxes on learning:—
Oft times the fuel well nigh failed his flame,
And Ruin stood between him and his aim,
But manfully he grappled the grim foe,
Nor ever yielded sword though oft struck low.
And his reward was that he lived to see
Cheap Letters broad-cast sown, and knowledge free!
[26] In 1858 Punch had chaffed Kingsley for his Ode to the North-East Wind in a parody purporting to be written by a dyspeptic valetudinarian, who resented the strenuous "muscular Christianity" of the original.