The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 1, November, 1857 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various
page 21 of 282 (07%)
page 21 of 282 (07%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
The "Q." papers, I say, were the first essays which attracted attention
in "Punch." In due time followed his "Punch's Letters to his Son," and "Complete Letter-Writer," with the "Story of a Feather", mentioned above. A basis of philosophical observation, tinged with tenderness, and a dry, ironical humor,--all, like the Scottish lion in heraldry, "within a double tressure-fleury and counter-fleury" of wit and fancy,--such is a Jerroldian paper of the best class in "Punch." It stands out by itself from all the others,--the sharp, critical knowingness, sparkling with puns, of a Beckett,--the inimitable, wise, easy, playful, worldly, social sketch of Thackeray. In imagery he had no rivals there; for his mind had a very marked tendency to the ornamental and illustrative,--even to the grotesque. In satire, again, he had fewer competitors than in humor;--sarcasms lurk under his similes, like wasps in fruit or flowers. I will just quote one specimen from a casual article of his, because it happens to occur to my memory, and because it illustrates his manner. The "Chronicle" had been attacking some artists in whom he took an interest. In replying, he set out by telling how in some vine countries they repress the too luxuriant growths by sending in asses to crop the shoots. Then he remarked gravely, that young artists required pruning, and added, "How thankful we ought all to be that the 'Chronicle' keeps a donkey!" This is an average specimen of his playful way of ridiculing. In sterner moods he was grander. Of a Jew money-lender he said, that "he might die like Judas, but that he had no bowels to gush out";--also, that "he would have sold our Saviour for _more money_." An imaginative color distinguished his best satire, and it had the deadly and wild glitter of war-rockets. This was the most original quality, too, of his satire, and just the quality which is least common in our present satirical literature. He had read the old writers,--Browne, Donne, Fuller, and Cowley,--and was tinged with that richer and quainter vein which so emphatically distinguishes them from the prosaic wits of our day. His weapons reminded you of Damascus rather than Birmingham. |
|