is the
principle involved; it has its root in the chameleon-like variety of
aspect possible to a piece of fooling or a flash of wit. Jokes are as
adaptable to times and circumstances, as the human race itself; and to
identify them and pin them down on a specimen card, one must be another
Pastor Aristaeus, alert and skilful, in pursuit of a lightning Proteus,
infinitely various and hopelessly volatile.

But even that is not enough. Suppose the editor to be a scholar, deeply
read in the Classics and in Oriental writings, and endowed besides with
a memory so prodigious as to be able to recognise every joke that turns
up, he has still to guard against the contributor, on whom he is to a
considerable extent dependent. The jest-purveyor may be honest when he
unwittingly sends in a joke that has already gone the rounds, and has
appeared perhaps in some country paper; or he may be deliberately
dishonest; or he may simply be impatient at not seeing his contribution
printed (perhaps, after all, it is only being kept back for an
illustration to be drawn to accompany it), and may send it off
elsewhere--anticipating its publication in the paper of his original
choice. Or a group of jokes may form the stock-in-trade of a newly
accepted contributor, who, as the seaside landladies say, "must have
brought them in his portmantel." And then there are recurring events
that naturally give recurring birth to jokes they almost necessarily
suggest. There is thus no standard, no system of identification for the
thousand disguises in which a joke may lurk; and unconscious plagiarism
and repetition deserve greater indulgence than that which they commonly
receive. Mr. Burnand, probably the most prolific punster of the age,
once wrote to a contributor, "For goodness' sake, send no more puns;
_they have all been made_!" Indeed, _Punch_ has given us more
"pre-historic peeps" of humour than he or Mr. Reed have any notion of.
"Bless you," said _Punch_ in his third number, "half the proverbs given
to Solomon are mine!"

It was the fashion when _Punch_ was young for the comic papers to
indulge in fierce recrimination and bitter charge and counter-charge of
plagiarism. At that time it was thought that a satirical paper could be
launched into public favour on its abuse of rivals--so that all the
drowning journals caught at the straws of the others' reputations.
Nowadays they more practically apply for an injunction. _Punch_, in
point of fact, has sought