besides his knowledge of London, had varied his experience of that city
by a lengthened residence in France. Still, he had not yet caught _the
nation_,--there being many degrees of celebrity below _that_ stage of it;
and now, in middle life, his best and crowning success was to begin.

I believe that Jerrold had long desiderated a "Punch"; but it is certain
that the present famous periodical of that name was started by his
son-in-law, Mr. Henry Mayhew. For a while it had no great success, and the
copyright was sold for a small sum to Messrs. Bradbury and Evans. Success
came, and such a success that "Punch" must always last as part of the comic
literature of England. That literature is rich in political as well as
other forms of satire; and from various causes, about the time of "Punch,"
political satire was at a low ebb. The newspapers no longer published
squibs as they once had done. The days of the Hooks and Moores had gone
by; there was nobody to do with the pen what H. B. did with the pencil. So
"Punch" was at once a novelty and a necessity,--from its width of scope,
its joint pictorial and literary character, and its exclusive devotion to
the comic features of the age. "Figaro" (a satirical predecessor, by Mr. a
Beckett) had been very clever, but wanted many of "Punch's" features, and
was, above all, not so calculated to hit "society" and get into families.

Jerrold's first papers of mark in "Punch" were those signed "Q." His style
was now formed, as his mind was, and these papers bear the stamp of his
peculiar way of thinking and writing. Assuredly, his is a _peculiar_ style
in the strict sense; and as marked as that of Carlyle or Dickens. You see
the self-made man in it,--a something _sui generis_,--not formed on the
"classical models," but which has grown up with a kind of twist in it, like
a tree that has had to force its way up surrounded by awkward environments.
Fundamentally, the man is a thinking humorist; but his mode of expression
is strange. The perpetual inversions, the habitual irony, the mingled