s _mot_, which has also been
attributed to Kenny, had already been published in "The Month" as early
as August, 1851 (page 147, Vol. I.); and I may add that though I
remember hearing Professor Key quote it more than once, I never heard
him pretend to its authorship.
Then, the belated Foozle returning home drunk, and offering to fight his
aggressive-looking hat-stand, appeared in H. J. Byron's "Comic News"
(October 3rd, 1863), as well as in _Punch_ by Keene's pencil (1875); and
the humorous chess-problem in the latter paper, in which White had to
mate in a certain number of moves, if Black interposed no serious
obstacle, was an echo of "White to play and check if Black doesn't
prevent him" in "The Man in the Moon" of 1847, and of "White to play and
check if Black doesn't mate him before" in "The Month" of October, 1851.
Mr. Sambourne's famous "cartoon junior" of Mr. Gladstone in the
character of the child in the soap advertisement, who "Won't be happy
till he gets It" (_i.e._ the cake of Home Rule, just out of his reach),
was found, to his subsequent annoyance and surprise, to have been
anticipated by a week or two by the now defunct "Funny Folks;" and Sir
John Tenniel's cartoon representing Mr. Goschen, then Chancellor of the
Exchequer, as a hen sitting on her eggs--an idea which was not new even
to him, as he had used it in 1880, ten years before--appeared some days
after a similar one had been issued in the "Pall Mall Budget;" though,
of course, _Punch's_ picture had, in accordance with the mechanical
routine of the office, been decided on a week before publication.
_Punch's_ advice to vocalists, "Take care of the sense, and the sounds
will take care of themselves" (November, 1892), had, curiously enough,
been spoken years before by the eccentric Duchess in "Alice in
Wonderland;" and his conceit that there is no fear for the prosperity of
Ireland under Home Rule "so long as her _capital's D(o)ublin'_" dates
from still earlier times. Then there was the fine old Scotch joke of a
Glasgow baillie who, replying to the toast of the "Law," remarked that
"all our greatest law-givers are dead--Moses is dead, Solon is dead,
Confucius and Justinian are dead--_and I'm nae feelin' that vera weel
mysel'_," which in March, 1893, _Punch_ republished, adapting it,
however, to modern literature--the speaker quaintly including George
Eliot amongst our deceased "best men." More recently a precisely
parallel anecdote has been attribute
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