As unprovocative as unpretentious,
Skilful though seeming slow;
Unmoved by impulse of conceit contentious
To risk success for show.
O rare command of gifts, which, common branded,
Are yet so strangely rare!
Selflessness patient, judgment even-handed,
And spirit calmly fair!
To turn from grave to gay, I may round off this collection with two zoological elegies. When "Jumbo," the famous elephant at the Zoo, whose purchase by Barnum and departure from London had provoked a grotesque explosion of sentimentality, was killed by a railway accident in America in 1885, Punch recorded his decease in the following epigram:—