"Influenza never lick'd him,
But he fell an easy victim
To that universal scourge—'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!'"
The amazing popularity of Mr. Albert Chevalier's coster songs is acknowledged in 1892, but Punch hardly does justice to the talents of the creator of what was virtually a new and specialized type of comic song heavily larded with sentiment.
[HEROES AND WORTHIES]
In the course of these chapters mention has not infrequently been made of the homage paid by Punch to his special heroes and heroines. Memorial verses had always been a feature of the paper, and in the beginning of this period they assumed formidable dimensions: at its close there was a welcome reaction towards brevity; but in the following anthology I have not always quoted these tributes in full, preferring to extract the stanzas or lines which seemed to me to come nearest the mark in truth of portraiture or felicity of expression. Thus, while other features of Charles Kingsley's work in life and letters are noted in the verses printed on his death in 1875, his achievement in the domain of historical romance is much the most happily treated:—
He raised strong Saxon Hereward from death
In his grey shroud of mist from mere and fen;