With old memories of our youth—
Thrice immortal Pips's Diary!
Masterpiece of Mirth and Truth!
Personally I should invert the epithet "thrice immortal" and apply it to the "Continental Tour of Brown, Jones and Robinson"; otherwise the verses are a well merited tribute to the winged fancy and graceful humour of "Dicky Doyle." Charles Keene's death in January, 1891, removed another good comrade whose association with the paper was unbroken up to his last illness, and was one of the chief if not the greatest of its artistic glories:—
Frank, loyal, unobtrusive, simple-hearted,
Loving his book, his pipe, his song, his friend,
Peaceful he lived and peacefully departed,
A gentle life-course, with a gracious end.
Ruskin on Leech
So much for the man; as for the artist, Punch was hardly overstating the case when he claimed that the exhibition of Keene's work in the following May stood for the supreme triumph of black and white in the achievements of its greatest master.