Sir John Tenniel was
challenged by Mr. Sala on the correctness of the balloon in his
frontispiece to the seventy-sixth volume, and in March, 1893, Mr. du
Maurier was soundly rated for showing a group of Oxford undergraduates,
in the rooms of one of them, wearing cap and gown with perfect docility.
Yachtsmen fell foul of Mr. Sambourne for introducing an ensign on a
staff in his famous drawing of "The _Times_ Tacking;" for such a staff,
stuck on the taffrail with the boom touching it, was "an impossible
object," and would have been instantly snapped off, while, moreover, the
ensign should have been at the peak. In another admirable drawing
_Punch_ once showed a ship on the starboard tack while the helmsman is
steering on the port tack, and the ship, by what appears a miracle, is
lying over to the wind; and, again, Toby is actually shown in the
Almanac for 1895 drawing a cork from a champagne bottle with a
cork-screw! Then photographers are as resentful of inaccuracy as
bicyclists; and the fact that Mr. Hodgson in the second of his two
drawings, "To be well shaken before taken" (August, 1894), representing
an "'Arry on 'orseback" first whipping up his horse before being
photographed, and then posing before the "seaside tintype man," placed
the equestrian _between_ the sun and the lens, was warmly taken up; for
would not the result, forsooth, be "the loss of the picture in a flare
spot?"

The literary error, too, is held to be inexcusable, and _Punch_ is
pointed at with scorn for a misquotation from Horace; or an incorrect
rendering in one of his drawings of an antiquarian inscription; or a
slip in a Shakespearean line; or an inaccuracy in slang or dialect.
Scottish, Irish, Suffolk, or Yorkshire must all be perfectly rendered,
or the natives will know the reason why. In August, 1894, Mr. Hodgson
sent from the Yorkshire moors a story of a keeper who, dissatisfied with
the calendar, replies to a sportsman's inquiries: "Well, sir, middlin',
pretty middlin'. But, oh dear, it's awk'ard this 'ere Twelfth bein'
fixed of a Sunday! Now might Mr. Gladstone ha' had hanything to do wi'
that arrangement, sir?" An outraged correspondent--a fluent Yorkshire
conversationalist, of course--at once corrected the original version and
translated it into the true vernacular: "Nobbut middlin', sir, nobbut
middlin'. But, ah lad, it's a fond business this puttin' t' Twelfth o' a
Sunday. Div ye think 'at owd Gladstone 'ad owt to do wi' it?" And agai