allads"
(Volume XV.), 1848, "Mr. Brown's Letters to a Man about Town" (Volume
XVI.), and "Mr. Brown's Letters to his Son" (Volume XVII.), 1849; "The
Proser" (Volumes XVIII.-XIX.), 1850, and "Important from the Seat of
War" (Volumes XXVI.-XXVII.), 1854. These papers, with the exception of
"Mr. Punch to an Eminent Personage" (Volume XXVII., p. 110) and "A
Second Letter to an Eminent Personage" (Volume XXVII., p. 113), were the
last Thackeray ever wrote for _Punch_. The statement of his biographers
that in the year 1850, "If we except one later flicker in 1854,
Thackeray's long connection with _Punch_ died out," is totally
incorrect, for in 1851 there are forty-one literary items and a dozen
cuts to his credit. But from that time until 1854 he only contributed
"The Organ Boy's Appeal" (Volume XXV., p. 144), and thenceforward we
hear no more of "Policeman X," of Maloney and his Irish humour, of the
Frenchman on whom, in spite of himself, he was always so severe, no more
of Jeames, Jenkins, or the rest of the puppets who lived for us under
his manipulation.[40]

[Illustration: INKSTAND PRESENTED TO THACKERAY BY HIS EDINBURGH
ADMIRERS.]

The labour of producing his _Punch_ work was often irksome to him in the
extreme, and many a time would he put Mark Lemon off--now, because he
was so well in the swim with his novel then in hand that he begged hard
to be let off, and again, because the Muse was coy and would not on any
account be wooed. On one occasion he wrote explaining with what
weariness he had been battening rhymes for three hours in his head, and
could get nothing out: "I must beg you to excuse me," he ingeniously
added, "for I've worked just as much for you as though I had done
something." At other times he would break away from the company he was
in, in order to complete his regulation number of columns. His godson,
afterwards the Rev. Francis Thackeray, has told us how the great man
once took him to a conjuring entertainment and, having secured him a
good place, explained "Now, I must leave you awhile, and go and make a
five-pound note." And in such a manner, in haste and with
disinclination, was often produced what James Hannay calls "the
inimitable, wise, easy, playful, worldly, social sketch of Thackeray."

Although, as a rule, Thackeray preferred social to political satire, he
would sometimes point an epigram with sharp effect. For example, in
1845, the disclosure in the "Freeman" of J. Young's letter, to the