PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 1.



FOR THE WEEK ENDING JULY 31, 1841.

* * * * *


POETRY ON AN IMPROVED PRINCIPLE.

Let me earnestly implore you, good Mr. PUNCH, to give publicity to a new
invention in the art of poetry, which I desire only to claim the merit of
having discovered. I am perfectly willing to permit others to improve upon
it, and to bring it to that perfection of which I am delightedly aware, it
is susceptible.

It is sometimes lamented that the taste for poetry is on the decline--that
it is no longer relished--that the public will never again purchase it as a
luxury. But it must be some consolation to our modern poets to know (as no
doubt they do, for it is by this time notorious) that their productions
really do a vast deal of service--that they are of a value for which they
were never designed. They--I mean many of them--have found their way into
the pharmacopoeia, and are constantly prescribed by physicians as
soporifics of rare potency. For instance--

"---- not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world.