poverty to point it. He was the brilliant
Morgan O'Doherty of "Fraser" and "Blackwood," and was nearly, but not
quite, "Captain Shandon" in "Pendennis." Thackeray had an affectionate
admiration for his talents. But the times and the doctor were out of
gear; he lost sympathy through his persecution of "L.E.L.," and his
misfortunes led him to follow a class of journalism out of all
consonance with his powers and better feeling; he is credited with
having been the forerunner of scurrilous society-journalism. But no hint
of these defects is apparent in his work for _Punch_, in which, perhaps,
he saw an opportunity for some degree of re-instatement; and he conveyed
his gratitude in a five-stanza poem in praise of the paper (p. 131, Vol.
II.), "Verses by a Bard--Much be-rhymed in _Punch_." But he was near his
end; and when he died a year afterwards, _Punch_ devoted to him the
first of his little black-bordered obituaries.

The year 1842 was the stormiest and most threatening in _Punch's_
history; so that, with an empty till and growing liabilities, there was
no disposition towards introducing new contributors involving the
principle of "cash down." Only three names belong to this year, but all
were men of great importance, each in his own line--John Oxenford, W. M.
Thackeray, and Horace Mayhew. In common with Coyne, Oxenford had a
stronger sympathy for the stage than for periodical literature, so that
after the tenth volume he ceased to be even an occasional contributor.
His first paper was "Herr Doebler and the Candle Counter." The popular
conjurer had advertised that to begin his performance and illumine his
stage he would light two hundred candles by a single pistol-shot. (This
was in the very early days of practical electricity.) The "Times" had
reported the entertainment, but complained that, having counted the
number of candles, they found there were only eighty-seven!--whereupon
Oxenford executed a literary dance upon the "Times" reporter.
Thenceforward, he contributed with some degree of regularity. After his
"Christmas Game" (January 6th, 1844) he was, on the 3rd of the following
year, accounted upon the regular Staff, although from that time he did
but little. Verse, clever and bright, burlesque, and the like, in the
true spirit of _Punch_, came from time to time; but there was not enough
of his work to place him in rank with the chief of the contributors.
"There is one," Mr. Jabez Hogg reminds me, "whose name is rar