Old Lady. "Yes, I do object, very strongly!"
Workman. "Oh! Then out you get!!"
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
To recommend Lyre and Lancet to readers of Punch is to preach to the converted, and, as Sir William Harcourt said when he opened his election campaign in Derby, that is a work of supererogation. There is, however, this new thing to be said, that Smith, Elder & Co., including the work in their Novel Series, have presented it in dainty form, and have preserved Mr. Partridge's illustrations. My Baronite has read it through again with increased admiration for the perilous audacity of the plot, the skill with which it is worked out, and the many felicities of the phrasing. It would be so easy to spoil it by a coarse or slovenly touch. In no scene of the breathless drama does Mr. Anstey's hand forget its cunning.
The larger number of the verses that make up the little volume Smith, Elder & Co. publish under the title Tillers of the Sand have, Mr. Owen Seaman states in his preface, appeared in the National Observer. Whilst they are above the average of the cleverness of that really smart journal, they are tainted by its besetting sin. Purporting to present "a fitful record of the Rosebery Administration," the recorder finds it all very bad. This is hard on the late Government, but it is harder still on the clever versifier. True art requires light and shade, and here is none. Appearing week by week the pungent admixtures were passable, were even titillating. But the monotony of vituperation, however cleverly compounded, grows a little wearisome, even in a volume that does not much exceed a hundred pages. My Baronite likes best "The Lament of the Macgregor," not because its literary style is more masterly than that of its companion verse, but because its fun is less acrid. The rest, with significant exception of two pieces that appeared in these pages, is too hotly spiced with Ashmead-Bartlettism to please one who looks to Mr. Seaman for the wine of scholarly verse and finds the vinegar of election squibs.
The Baron de B.-W.
Shakspeare on the recent R. A. Elections.
Onslow Ford, Sculptor, R. A.
W. B. Richmond, Painter, R. A.
"Good Master Ford, be contented."
Merry Wives of Windsor, Act III., Scene 3.
"For Richmond's good."
Richard the Third, Act V., Scene 3.