[LETTERS AND JOURNALISM: DRAMA AND MUSIC]
As I ventured to remark in an earlier volume, a literary critic's acumen and flair are better shown in his estimates of writers whose fame is as yet unassured, or who are just emerging above the horizon, than of authors of established reputation. No special credit attaches to Punch for writing with reverence of Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Scott or Charles Lamb, whose centenary evoked a charming tribute in 1875, when the Headmaster of Christ's Hospital appealed in The Times for support in erecting a memorial to Elia in his old school. A better test is furnished in his references to Browning and Swinburne, Matthew Arnold, Charles Reade and Trollope, Jefferies and Stevenson and Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward, and, to come down to the end of this period, Kipling and Barrie. Yet all established reputations were not respected by Punch. When Rabelais was included in Professor Henry Morley's series of World's Classics in 1883 Punch uttered a vehement protest against the choice. He calls Rabelais a "dirty-minded, scurrilous, blasphemous, witty, broadly humorous and extravagantly grotesque clerical buffoon." The Saturday Review thought otherwise, but Punch declared that the defence was only put forward as "a stalking-horse for a malicious attack on ourselves."
The lines on George Eliot in 1881 are brief but laudatory. The phrase declining to rank her "among the tricksy mimes" is not happy; but she is spoken of as "this large-orbed glory of our times," and Punch prophesies for her "unfading bays," a prophecy to which the present generation would seem inclined to demur. Punch had little to add to his previous tributes to Carlyle when the Sage of Chelsea passed away in the same year, except to express the view that he was profoundly discontented with the England of to-day:—
He lived through England's triumph, but he heard
With dying ears the shadow of decline.
CULTURE—1881
Mistress: "As you've never been in Service, I'm afraid I can't engage you without a 'character.'"