His fancy flew with fine facility.
Orchards all apple-bloom and moss,
Child sport, bucolical senility,
The field full cry, snug fireside ease,
Horse-fun, dog-joke his pencil covers,
With Alderman and hawthorn trees,
Parsons and Squires, and rustic lovers.
But in these years Punch had little time to spare for praise; he was so busy belabouring Burne-Jones and Rossetti, the Grosvenor Gallery, the Kyrle Society, or new fashions in house decorations and furniture, in which he saw nothing but gloom and discomfort. The protest in 1879 of the three Slade Professors—Sidney Colvin, W. B. Richmond and Legros—against the critics who denied Burne-Jones genius and greatness on the strength of defective anatomical details, left Punch impenitent. He mocked at their "triune testimonial" as an unconvincing attempt to convert the callous and captious critics who,
Persisted in belabouring B.-J. with tongue and pen
Whilst Philistia looked on and laughed at those Three Mighty Men.