n
who accounts for his sore-throat by explaining that "Yesterday morning I
have wash my neck!" And the Duke of Wellington, in one of the cartoons
(May, 1849), cries, "Cobden, spare that tree," just as Beaconsfield
pleaded with Gladstone in Tenniel's picture of thirty years later.
Again, a man with a gorgeous black-eye enters a room, and when it is
remarked on, expresses his surprise that anyone should have noticed it.
Six years later Leech repeated the idea in _Punch_. In his parting shot
the "Showman" says, "The _Punch_ writers say they can't understand our
jokes. We feel assured that the world will admit that they _take_ them
fast enough"--itself a pun, _by_ the way, which _Punch_ had himself used
in the postscript to his first volume: "Ours hasn't been a bed of
roses--we've had our rivals and our troubles. We came as a great hint,
and everybody took us."

In "The Arrow," a clever fortnightly rival which existed (it cannot be
said to have "flourished") in the year 1864, _Punch_ was severely
handled for "plagiarising" two of that journal's jokes two or three
weeks after their original publication. One of these had reference to
the "Fight with Fate," which was then being played at the Surrey
Theatre; and as Mr. Banting and his famous cure (the stout undertaker
lived but two doors from Leech, in The Terrace at Kensington, and struck
up a pleasing friendship with the artist) were then the talk of the
town, "The Arrow" suggested a revised version, "A Fight with Fat," with
a disciple of Mr. Banting as the chief character. _Punch_ followed suit
with the entire idea. Thereupon the rival editor, Henry S. Leigh--the
lines are manifestly his--apostrophised Mr. Banting thus:--

"Take mental exertion--fight shy of diversion
(Remember, the proverb says 'Laugh and grow fat');
You may venture securely on _Punch_, because surely
There can't be much fear of your laughing at _that_."

Anyone who possesses the original "Joe Miller's Jest-book" will be able,
if he cares to look, to recognise a goodly number of the most popular
jokes of the day, even including a number of _Punch_ jokes. He will
there find set forth in quaint terms the retort of the non-churchgoer
that if he is not a pillar of the church, he is certainly one of the
buttresses, for he stops outside--used in due time by Charles Keene; he
will find the repartee placed by _Punch_ in the drawing by the same
artist (May 4th, 1872) in the mouth of an Irish beggar-wo