Sing a song of threepence,
A paper full of trash;
Four-and-twenty "funny men"
Have made a pretty hash;
For when the paper's opened,
One soon begins to sing--
"Oh! threepence is a dainty price
To pay for such a thing."

And he returns to the charge later on in a set of verses in which he
pretends to pay tribute to _Punch's_ bygone force--"honest if
delicate"--and to Judy's and Toby's straightforward roughness. After
making charges of corruption, he proceeds:

"Alas! how times and manners pass!
When no one fears a panic--
When Scotland tolerates the Mass--
And Spain is puritanic;
When Yankee 'anacondas' scrunch
The South's heroic leader--
Then may we find a pleasant _Punch_,
And _Punch_ a happy reader."

Nowadays the commoner form of humorous attack upon _Punch_ is the
assumption that it is a serious journal: a cold-blooded analysis of its
contents will be made, or the quotation of its best bits under the
ungrateful title of "Alleged Humour from _Punch_;" or a joke will be
printed and savagely "quoted" as "From _next week's_ PUNCH." When the
three "New Humorists," Messrs. Barry Pain, Jerome, and Zangwill, were
driven to despair (so says one of them) by the sneers of the Press, they
met in solemn conclave and swore never to make another joke. So Mr.
Zangwill set to work at a serious novel. Mr. Jerome took to editing a
weekly paper, and Mr. Pain _began writing for Punch_! Even when Mr.
Pincott, for thirty years the "reader" on the paper, committed suicide
the day after his wife was buried, a number of papers could not resist
the temptation that was offered. "Fancy having to read through all
_Punch's_ jokes week after week for years!" exclaimed one. "No wonder we
are a hardy race. No wonder the poor man shot himself." Mr. Pincott was
a man of great ability, of remarkable erudition, and extreme
conscientiousness. Although his bereavement was preying on his mind, he
saw the paper out, and did not commit the fatal act until he had sent
his usual letter to the Editor, wherewith he would relieve himself of
his week's responsibility. "I never met a man with so much information
and of so varied a character," writes one of his fellow-workers. "He
never passed a quotation without verifying it, and could give you
chapter and verse for everything. He knew his Shakespeare by heart, and
all the modern poets, and he was never at fault in his classics." He was
not, however, allowed