Mr. Punch's Cockney Humour

Take Phil May's pictures and jokes, and the difference is at once apparent. He was fully alive to the Cockney's deficiencies of manner and culture; now and then he quite genially and without the least touch of scorn or self-complacency makes fun of them; but he really gives you the Cockney character. Take, for instance, such a picture as his "Politics and Gallantry," his "I say, 'Arry, don't we look frights!" his "Informal Introduction"—(the self-consciousness of the girl's expression, and the blatant pride of the man's)—here, and in almost any of his drawings you turn to, you have the absolutely natural Cockney; his types are full of character and so true and free from condescension that not only are we moved irresistibly to laugh at them, but the Cockney himself would be

the first to recognise their truth and to laugh joyously at them too. We may say pretty much the same of Charles Keene, of Mr. Raven-Hill, of Mr. Bernard Partridge, and of others of the "Punch" artists represented here, who illustrate the essential Cockney character, and do not go on the easy assumption that dropped H's and mispronounced words and aggressive vulgarity are the beginning and the end of it.

"All's swell that ends swell," as 'Arry remarked when he purchased a pair of "misfits."