thus laying the foundation for the charges of musical ignorance, illiteracy, musical-"ghost"-employment, and other imposture, under which he suffered in this country nearly all his life. Jullien indignantly denied the hard impeachment, and declared that he began his musical life as a fifer in the French navy, and had in that capacity been present on a man-o'-war at the battle of Solferino in 1829. His assailant accepted the statement as to his military achievement, adding the suggestion that after working himself up to more than concert pitch, and "holding in his hand one sharp, which he turned into several flats," Jullien withdrew from the service on account of the discord of battle, particularly as the shrieks of the wounded were horribly out of tune.
Punch fell back on Jullien's well-oiled ringlets, his general tenue and violent gesticulation, and, with better cause, on his "Row Polka," and on those wild and frenzied quadrilles in which the music in one part was "accentuated with a salvo of artillery." But Punch, ignoring the better part of Jullien's musical ability, made no allowance for the curious quality of his mind, which was evidently ill-balanced, and indeed was finally overthrown. Jullien's vanity, for example, was sublime, rivalling that of the Knellers and Greuzes of earlier days; and his biographer sets forth how, in the scheme he imagined for the civilisation of the world by means of music, he had determined (though essentially a "dance musician") to set to music the Lord's Prayer. It could not fail, said Jullien, to be an unprecedented success, with two of the greatest names in history on its title-page! The musician ultimately died through over-work, the consequence of an honourable attempt to meet his liabilities.
Sir Peter Laurie was another favourite quarry, who almost from the beginning was singled out of the Corporation, of which he was really one of the most efficient members, because he aimed at "putting down" by the stern administration of justice what, perhaps, could only be dealt with by sympathy. Punch chose to interpret Sir Peter's views into regarding poverty less as a misfortune than as primâ-facie evidence of the poor man's guilt or folly; but it was when the well-meaning alderman so far "opened his mouth as to put his foot into it," by declaring, when trying a case, "that it was his intention to put down suicide," that Jerrold's pen stuck him on to Punch's page, and heaped ridicule on him from every point of view. Alderman Moon, the famous print-seller of Threadneedle Street, was another butt—the more unjustly (though he certainly did sometimes cut a ridiculous figure) as he rendered real service to artists, and looked upon English art and its patronage in a broad and patriotic way, even while he made his own fortune in doing so. This, however, he did not succeed in retaining, and his acts and motives were sneered at, and his "testimonial" fatally ridiculed.
Then Harrison Ainsworth, as much for his good-looks and his literary vanity, as for his tendency to reprint his romances in such journals as came under his editorship, was the object of constant banter. An epigram put the case very neatly:—
Says Ainsworth to Colburn,[22]
"A plan in my pate is,
To give my romance, as
A supplement, gratis."
Says Colburn to Ainsworth,
"'Twill do very nicely,
For that will be charging
Its value precisely."
Harrison Ainsworth could not have his portrait painted, nor write a novel of crime and sensation, without being regarded as a convenient peg for pleasantry. Similarly did Tom Taylor fall foul of Bulwer Lytton (p. 91, Vol. IX.) by reason of the dedication of "Zanoni" to Gibson the sculptor, in which it was said that the book was not for "the common herd." The story of Lytton's castigation by Tennyson is duly related where the Laureate's contributions to Punch are spoken of. In Lytton's case, at least, Punch forgot to apply Swift's aphorism that a man has just as much vanity as he has understanding.
Of the artists, Turner perhaps lent himself most to Punch's satire. Ruskin had not yet arisen to champion the mighty painter's ill-appreciated art; and Turner's colour-dreams, in which "form" was often to a great extent ignored, were not more tempting to the satirical Philistine than those extraordinary quotations from his formless epic, called "The Fallacies of Hope," extracts from which he loved to append to his pictures' titles. Nothing could be better in the way of satire than the manner in which Punch turned upon the poor painter, and "guy'd" his picture with a burlesque of his own poetic "style." It was in the Royal Academy of 1845 that the artist exhibited his celebrated "Venice—Returning from the Ball;" and this is how Punch received it:—
"Oh! what a scene!—Can this be Venice? No.
And yet methinks it is—because I see
Amid the lumps of yellow, red, and blue
Something which looks like a Venetian spire.
This in my picture I would fain convey;
I hope I do. Alas! What fallacy!"