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.