Mnemosyne her privilege abuses—
Nothing from her distorting glass secure is.
Life is a Sphinx; folk cannot solve her riddles,
So they've recourse to spiteful taradiddles,
Which they dub "Reminiscences." Kind fate,
From the Fool's Memory preserve the Great!
Another and a newer aversion was the parasitic patronage of FitzGerald by inferior novelists and writers, which moved Punch to include among "the things that we are still waiting, and it seems, likely to wait for—A Temporary Surcease from Omar Khayyám." This last-named nuisance has ceased to be so vocal of late years, but the plague of "Diaritis" is worse than ever. Mr. H. G. Wells appears on Punch's horizon in 1898, but only as the weaver of circumstantial scientific romances, not as the regulator of the Universe, and discoverer of new Heavens and Hells. The War of the Worlds is parodied in The Martian, but the wonderland of science appealed less to Punch than the dream-world of "Lewis Carroll," whose death inspired a graceful tribute to author and illustrator:—
Lover of children! Fellow-heir with those
Of whom the imperishable kingdom is!
Beyond all dreaming now your spirit knows