unch_ showed himself at once a
fighting man who meant to be in the thick of the fray, a politician as
impulsive as Macaulay; and though Jerrold did not begin to sign his
articles until the ninth week (which has given grounds to some writers
to assert that "Peel Regularly Called In" was the first of his
contributions), he soon succeeded in setting up "Q" as a personality
every bit as important and influential amongst his readers as _Punch_
himself. The Court, the Church, the Political and Social arena, he
included them all in his comprehensive gaze, and not an injustice, a
sham, an affectation, or a blunder--or what he happened to regard as
such--but came in for exposure and castigation. It was fortunate for him
and for _Punch_, no doubt, that he was "a humorist;" for his own
blunders and misjudgments were regarded with the more indulgence for it,
or were condoned as the excusable excesses of a chartered jester running
playfully amok. But it must not be imagined that though a humorist he
was not desperately sincere. His own early struggles, his ghastly
experience, as he ever thought it, when as a midshipman in the Navy he
saw how authority had to be enforced by flogging, and witnessed all the
revolting horrors of the cockpit during an engagement, had imparted
intense earnestness to his mind; and he focussed all his brilliancy on
the opportunity _Punch_ afforded of tilting at the windmills in the
plain. The fact seems to be that Jerrold's heart, and sometimes his
logic and his judgment as well, were a good deal of a woman's;
distinguished by every estimable and admirable quality, but with little
statesmanlike perspicuity and moderation. Such may truly be said of
those early "Q Papers," by which, nevertheless, he was able to effect
much, then and thereafter, greatly to the good of the people, yet often
wrought some of that intolerance and injustice which he was too ready to
ascribe to others.

It was he, more than anyone else, who forced on _Punch_ that admixture
of Radicalism with his Whiggery which did not wear off for the first
years of his life, and which was often enough preached with that
picturesqueness of expression which we nowadays would smile at as
"high-falutin." But the lofty ideas of the writer carried off this fault
of style. His creed was simple and clear: Cant was devilish and
Samaritanism godly; to him hypocrisy was the blackest of the vices, and
kindness the sum of all the virtues. It mattered little tha