Of Punch as a local politician we are hardly fair judges, and it may be a mistaken suspicion that he has occasionally given up to party what was meant for mankind. With respect to "foreign affairs," we shall be safer in saying, that, with all his cosmopolitanism, he is a shade or two John-Bullish. Thanking him for his fraternal cordiality towards "Jonathan," we must doubt if it will do to trust implicitly his reports and impressions of men and things across the Channel. That he is more than half right, however, when lingering remains of insular prejudice tinge his solicitude to save his native land from entangling alliances, and keep its free government from striking hands with despotism, we incline to believe; and we honor him that his loyalty is not mere adulation, but duly seasoned with the democratic principle that would have the stability of the throne the people's love,—the people being of infinitely greater importance than the propping-up or the propagation of royal houses. In one sad direction Punch's patriotism and humanity, it seems to us, were wrathful exaggerations, open to graver objection than yielding unconsciously to a natural bias. In his zeal against terrible outrages, he forgot that two wrongs never make a right. We refer to his course on the Indian Revolt. From the way he raised his voice for war, almost exterminating, and with no quarter, one would think the British rule in the East had been the rule of Christian love,—that Sepoys and other subjects had known the reigning power only as patriarchal kindness,—and so, without excuse, a highly civilized, justly and tenderly treated people, suddenly, and without provocation, became rebellious devils, and rebellious only because they were devils. In the hour of horror-struck indignation, was not Punch too blood-thirsty, vindictive, unjust, and oblivious to the truth of history, that the insurgents are poor superstitious heathens, whom a selfish policy may have kept superstitious and heathenish? True, he was the witness of broken hearts and desolate hearth-stones at home, and daily heard of hellish atrocities inflicted on the women and children abroad,—enough to crush out for the moment every thought but the thought of vengeance. Yet, even at such a crisis, he should have remembered, that England, in strict accordance with the stern, unrelenting logic of events, having sown to the wind, might therefore have reaped the whirlwind. It is among the mysteries of Providence, that retributive justice, when visiting nations, often involves innocent victims,—but it is retributive justice still; and tracing up rightly the chain of causes and effects, it may be that the tragedies of Delhi and Lucknow are attributable, to say the least, as much to the avarice of the dominant as to the depravity of the subjugated race. The bare possibility that this might be the truth a philosopher like Punch ought not to have overlooked, in the suddenness and fire of his anger.
Finally, Punch is no ascetic, but quite the reverse. He cannot be expected, any more than his namesake, the beverage, to go down with the apostles of temperance. He is a convivialist,—moderately so,—and no teetotaler. He evidently prefers roast-beef and brown-stout to bran-bread and cold water, and has gone so far as to sing the praises of pale-ale. He thinks the laboring classes should have their pot of beer, if the nobility and gentry are to eat good dinners and take airings in Hyde Park, on Sundays. He is a Merry Englishman, as to the stomach,—and, like a Merry Englishman, enjoys good living. There is no denying this fact; but here is the whole front of his offending. Remember that he was born at the Shakspeare's Head, and has had a publican for his right-hand man.
These are defects, it may be; and yet not by its defects are we to judge of a work of Art. Of that generous and just canon Punch should have the full benefit. Try him by that, and he has abounding virtues to flood and conceal with lustrous and far-raying light his exceptional errors. To brief notices of some of these—regretting the want of room to enlarge upon them as it would be pleasant to do—we gladly turn.
Punch is to be loved and cherished as the maker of mirth for the million. Saying this, we do not propose to go into an argument to excuse, justify, or recommend hilarity for its own sake or its medicinal effects on overtasked bodies and souls. Desperate attempts have been made to prove the innocence of fun, and the allowableness of wit and humor. Assuming or conceding that the jocose elements or capacities of human nature need apology and defence, very nice distinctions have been drawn, and very ingenious sophistry employed, to prove that the best of people may, within certain limits, crack jokes, or laugh at jokes cracked for them. These efforts to accommodate stern dogmas to that pleasant stubborn fact in man's constitution, his irresistible craving for play, and irresistible impulse to laugh at whatever is really laughable, are about as necessary as would be an essay maintaining the harmlessness of sunshine. The fact has priority over the dogmas, and is altogether too strong to need the patronizing special-pleading they suggest. Instead of going into the metaphysics of the question about the lawfulness and blamelessness of humor shown or humor relished, suppose we cut the knot by a delightful illustration of the compatibility of humor with the highest type of character.
No one will deny the sincerity, earnestness, devotedness, sublime consecration to duty, of the heroine of the hospitals of Scutari. No one will dispute the practical piety of the gentle, but fearless, the tenderhearted, but truly strong-minded woman, who made the lazar-house her home for months together,—ministered to its sick, miserable, and ignorant inmates,—put, by the unostentatious exercise of indomitable faith and unswerving self-sacrifice, the love and humanity of the Gospel in direct and strongest contrast with the barbarisms of war. No one will deny or dispute this now. That heroic English maiden, whose shadow, as it fell on his pillow, the rude soldier kissed with almost idolatrous gratitude, has won, without thought of seeking it, and without the loss of a particle of humility and womanly delicacy, the loving admiration of all Christendom. Well, she
"whose presence honors queenly guests,
Who wears the noblest jewel of her time,
And leaves her race a nobler, in her name,"
shall be the sufficient argument here,—especially as none have paid finer, more delicate, or truer tributes to her virtue than Punch. In a recent sketch of her career, accompanying her portrait in the gallery of noted women, this sentence is given from a descriptive letter:—"Her general demeanor is quiet and rather reserved; still, I am much mistaken, if she is not gifted with a very lively sense of the ridiculous." Here is a delightful, and, we doubt not, true intimation. Since the springs of pathos lie very near the springs of humor, in the richest souls, the fair Florence must, in moments of weariness, have glanced with merry eyes over the pages of Punch, or handed, with smiling archness, his inimitable numbers to her wan and wounded patients, kindly to cheat them into momentary forgetfulness of their agonies. If this were so, who shall say that the use or enjoyment of wit is not as right as it is natural? None, unless it be the narrowest of bigots,—like those who objected to this heroic lady's mission of mercy to the East, because she did not echo their sectarian shibboleths, and would not ask whether a good nurse were Protestant or Romanist.
We may repeat, therefore, as a prime excellence of Punch, that he is the maker of mirth for the million. He is mainly engaged in furnishing titillating amusement,—and he furnishes an article, not only marketable, but necessary. All work makes Jack a dull boy,—and not infrequently an unhappy, if not bad boy,—whether Jack be in the pulpit, the counting-room, the senate-house, or digging potatoes; and what is true of Jack is equally true of Gill, his sister, sweetheart, or wife. That Punch every week puts a girdle of smiles round the earth, interrupts the serious business of thousands by his merry visits, and with his ludicrous presence delights the drawing-room, cheers the study, and causes side-shakings in the kitchen,—entitles him to be called a missionary of good. Grant this,—then allow, on the average, five minutes of merriment to each reader of each issue of Punch,—then multiply these 5 minutes by—say 50,000, and this again by 52 weeks, and this, finally, by 17 years, and thus cipher out, if you have a tolerably capacious imagination, the amount of happiness which has flowed and spread, like a river of gladness, through the world, from that inexhaustible, bubbling, and sparkling fountain, at 85, Fleet Street, London.
Punch is the advocate of true manliness. Velvet robes and gilded coronets go for nothing with him, if not worn by muscular integrity; and fustian is cloth-of-gold, in his eyes, when it covers a stout heart in the right place. He has no mercy on snobbism, flunkeyism, or dandyism. He whips smartly the ignoble-noble fops of the household-troops,—parading them on toy-horses, and making them, with suicidal irony, deplore the hardships of comrades in the Crimea. He sneers at the loungers, and the delicate, dissipated roués of the club-house,—though their names were once worn by renowned ancestors, and are in the peerage. Fast young men are to him befooled prodigals, wasting the wealth of life in profitless living. He is not, however, an anchorite, or hard upon youth. On the contrary, he is an indulgent old fellow, and too sagacious to expect the wisdom of age from those sporting their freedom-suits. Still, he has no patience with the foppery whose whole existence advertises fine clothes, patronizes taverns, saunters along fashionable promenades, and ogles opera-dancers. In this connection, his hits at "the rising generation" will be called to mind. Punch has found out that in England there are no boys now,—only male babies and precocious men;—no growing up,—only a leap from the cradle, robe, and trousers to the habiliments and manners of a false manhood. Punch has found out and frequently illustrates this fact, and furnishes a series of pictures of Liliputians aping the questionable doings of their elders. It is observable, however, that he confines these portraits of precocity chiefly to one sex. Whether this be owing to his innate delicacy and habitual gallantry, or to the English custom of keeping little girls—and what we should call large girls also—at home longer, and under more restraint, than in our republic, we cannot say. Were he on this side of the Atlantic, he might possibly find occasion to be less partial in the use of his reproving fun. Young misses seem to be growing scarce, and young ladies becoming alarmingly numerous. The early date at which the cry comes for long skirts, parties, balls, and late hours, for lace, jewelry, and gold watches, threatens to rob our homes of one of their sweetest charms,—the bright presence of joyous, gentle, and modest lasses, willing to be happy children for as many years as their mothers were, on their way to maidenhood and womanhood.
Punch is a reformer,—and of the right type, too; not destructive, declamatory, vituperative; not a monomaniac, snarly, and ill-natured,—as if zeal in riding a favorite hobby excused exclusiveness of soul and any amount of bad temper. He would not demolish the social system and build on its ruins a new one; being clearly of the opinion that the growths of ages and the doings of six thousands of years are to be respected,—that progress means improvement upon the present, rather than overthrow of the entire past. Calm, hopeful, cheerful, and patient, he is at the same time bold and uncompromising, and a bit radical into the bargain. In his own delicious way, he has been no mean advocate of liberal principles and measures. He has argued for the repeal of the corn and the modification of the game laws, the softening of the cruelties of the criminal code, and the fair administration of law for all orders and conditions of men and women. He has had no respect for ermine, lawn, or epaulets, in his assaults upon the monopolies and sinecures of Church and State, circumlocution offices, nepotism, patronage, purchase, and routine, in army or navy. He wants the established religion to be religious, not a cover for aristocratic preferments and dog-in-the-manger laziness,—and government administered for the whole people, and not merely dealing out treasury-pap and fat offices for the pensioned few. Punch is loyal, sings lustily, "God Save the Queen," and stands by the Constitution. He is a true-born Englishman, and patriotic to the backbone; but none are too high in place or name for his merciless ridicule and daring wit, if they countenance oppressive abuses. It is a tall feather in his fool's-cap, that his fantastic person is a dread to evil-doers on thrones, in cabinets, and red-tape offices. Crowned tyrants, bold usurpers, and proud statesmen are sensitive, like other mortals, to ridicule, and know very well how much easier it is to cannonade rebellious insurgents than to put down the general laugh, and that the point of a joke cannot be turned by the point of the bayonet. "Punch" was seized in Paris on account of the caricature of the "Sphinx," but after twenty-four hours' consideration the order of confiscation was rescinded, and the irreverent publication now lies upon the tables of the reading-rooms. So, iron power is not beyond the reach of the shafts of wit; once make it ridiculous, and it may continue to lie dreaded, but will cease to be respected.