g some of Jerrold's feeblest verse] that it never
occurs to a wholesale dealer in slander and ridicule that he is
liable to be assailed by the very weapons he useth against others?

Then comes the portrait of Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, in wig and gown,
but with devil's hoofs and tail. On him the attack is savage in the
extreme, the details of his _early_ lack of financial success being
published, and the whole dismissed with the comprehensive remark: "a
very prolific person, this friend of yours, Punch!--editor of thirteen
periodicals, and lessee of a theatre into the bargain, and all total
failures!" After heavy-handed chaff he proceeds to abuse Mark Lemon, up
and down, in similar terms; and with a view to show that others write
verse as bad as his, reprints the weakest lines in his "Fridolin" and
"The Rhine-boat." In the course of his very effective attack Bunn
proceeds:--

In speaking of the Castle of Heidelberg, which _he_ says is on the
Rhine, although everyone else says it is on the Neckar, he thus
apostrophises it:--

"'Tis here the north wind loves to hold
His dreary revels, loud and cold,
The nettle's bloom's his daily fare,
The TOAD _the guest most welcome there_!!"

Whether the last line _gives the reason why Thickhead visited
Heidelberg does not appear_.

He then dots epigrams and so forth--all insults of various degrees of
offensiveness--about the remaining pages, virtually suggesting, in
Sheridan's words, that while _Punch's_ circulation has gone down
hopelessly, "everything about him is a jest except his witticisms." The
advertisements, too, are of a similarly satirical character, one of them
showing, as an illustration of a "patent blacking," Mark Lemon (as
pot-boy) looking at his own likeness in the polish of a Wellington boot
which reflects a rearing donkey. The last cut represents a medicine
bottle with a label inscribed "This dose to be repeated, should the
patients require it," and the "Notice to Correspondents" declares that
ample material is left for future use. Such further publication,
however, was never called for. _Punch_ attempted no reply--inexplicably,
one would think, for there must have been something left to say of Hot
Cross Bunn. _Punch's_ rivals were not slow to twit him on his defeat,
especially the "Puppet Show" and "The Man in the Moon," the latter of
which, in a comic report of the proceedings at the "Licensing Committee
for Poets,"