y and the
lightness of touch which had formerly been _Punch's_ true note. But in
1874, when Shirley Brooks died, Tom Taylor, who had been identified with
the paper ten years before Brooks had joined it, was promoted, as by
right of service, to the supreme command.

It cannot be said that his editorship was a success. His fun was too
scholarly and well-ordered, too veiled, deliberate, and ponderous; and
under him _Punch_ touched its lowest point of popularity.

"In humour slow, though sharp and keen his mind;
His hand was heavy, though his heart was kind."

His popularity among the outsiders was great, as I have learnt from many
of his old contributors; for he loved to extend his hospitality to young
men at his house, Lavender Sweep, at Wandsworth, and to send kindly
notes of encouragement and promises of future help. Nevertheless, he was
ever the butt of rival publications. In one of them a cartoon, entitled
"An Editor Abroad," was published, showing Mr. Burnand and Mr. du
Maurier helping him and his _Punch_ Show out of the mud in which he had
stuck; in another he was represented as "The Trumpet Blower;" while in
an article in "The Mask" (April, 1868), before he had assumed his sway,
Mr. Punch is supposed to point to "Mark Lemon's Triumphal Car" and,
referring to Taylor, to say: "He is our seraph.... His adaptations, I
assure you, are delightful. You must be well up in Michel Levy's
_repertoire_ to find him out. He is so very artful."

A peculiar feature of Tom Taylor's editorship was the hieroglyphical
character of his handwriting. His missives of instructions to artists
and writers came as a terror to the receivers, who could make little of
them. "Mr. Tom Taylor's letters," Mr. Swain informs me, "were often very
difficult to decipher. His writing was peculiar, and he would also
continue the letter if necessary in any odd corner that was vacant. I
remember his writing some instructions to an artist one day in this
fashion, while I stood at his table, and, while blotting it, saying,
'You can send it off, but I don't think he'll be able to make it out.'"
To this experience may be added my own--that I have been the first to
decipher one of these notes addressed to an unattached artist, now
understood for the first time, nearly twenty years after it was written.
To the compositors he was a perpetual tribulation; and it is doubtful
if he could not have given points to Horace Greeley. That his son helped
him, towards