her it springs simply from
good-humour or has its source in the passion of contempt, hatred, or
revenge, of hope or despair. Mere amusement, said Swift, "is the
happiness of those who cannot think," while Humour, to quote Carlyle
again, "is properly the exponent of low things; that which first renders
them poetical to the mind." Through this truth we may see how _Punch_
has so continually dealt with vulgarity without being vulgar; while many
of his so-called rivals, touching the self-same subjects, have so
tainted themselves as to render them fitter for the kitchen than the
drawing-room, through lack of this saving grace. Fun may have been in
their jokes, but not true humour. _Punch_ thus became to London much
what the Old Comedy was to Athens; and, whatever individual critics may
say, he is recognised as the Nation's Jester, though he has always
sought to do what Swift declared was futile--to work upon the feelings
of the vulgar with fine sense, which "is like endeavouring to hew blocks
with a razor."

If there is one thing more than another on which _Punch_ prides
himself--on which, nevertheless, he is constantly reproached by those
who would see his pages a remorseless mirror of human weakness and
vice--it is his purity and cleanness; his abstention from the unsavoury
subjects which form the principal stock-in-trade of the French humorist.
This trait was Thackeray's delight. "As for your morality, sir," he
wrote to Mr. Punch, "it does not become me to compliment you on it
before your venerable face; but permit me to say that there never was
before published in this world so many volumes that contained so much
cause for laughing, and so little for blushing; so many jokes, and so
little harm. Why, sir, say even that your modesty, which astonishes me
more and more every time I regard you, is calculated, and not a virtue
naturally inherent in you, that very fact would argue for the high sense
of the public morality among us. We will laugh in the company of our
wives and children; we will tolerate no indecorum; we like that our
matrons and girls should be pure."

It was not till the great occasion of his Jubilee that the Merry Old
Gentleman of Fleet Street, who "hath no Party save Mankind; no
Leader--but Himself," discovered the full measure of his popularity. The
day broke for him amid a chorus of greeting--a perfect paean of triumph,
in which his own trumpet was not the softest blown. It is not an
exaggeration to say