d as an _amende honorable_,
in a speech at Hertford (October, 1862), when he said that "we must
comfort ourselves with the thought so exquisitely expressed by our Poet
Laureate," and so forth. The quarrel between _Punch_ and Lytton faded,
first into a truce, and then into friendship; and in 1851 we find
several of the Staff playing "Not so Bad as we Seem"--written specially
for them--at Devonshire House, before the Queen and the Prince Consort.
It may not inappropriately be mentioned that when Woolner's bust of
Tennyson was presented to Trinity College and the authorities excluded
it from the chapel and library on the ground that there was no precedent
for paying so much honour to a living person, _Punch_, by the hand of
Shirley Brooks, published one of the finest parodies extant of the
Laureate's style, beginning with the line--

"I am not dead; of that I do repent."

In January, 1847, Horace Smith, the brother of James ---- they of the
"Rejected Addresses"--contributed a column "Christmas Commercial
Report;" and John Macgregor--"Rob Roy"--began his acknowledged series of
papers and sketches with "Costumes for the Commons" and "Meeting of the
Streets," the pecuniary results of which he devoted to police-court
poor-boxes. He was hardly more than a lad at the time; but he was
already a strong writer, and his references to the French Revolution
have the intrinsic merit that they were written by one who was in Paris
at the time when the "Citizen King" took flight to England.

[Illustration: HENRY SILVER.
(_From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry._)]

Mr. Henry Silver, ex-_Punch_ Staff officer, first appeared anonymously
in _Punch_ in February, 1848, with an obituary notice, sent from
Norwich, where he was articled to Sir William Foster, Bart., solicitor.
It was called "The Death of Mr. Wimbush's Elephant"--the Jumbo of the
period, which had died at the age of eighty-four. He was then only
twenty years of age, and, encouraged by this success, he began
contributing trifles to "The Month." This publication was edited by
Albert Smith in 1851; but although it was illustrated by Leech, and was
one of the most genuinely humorous works of its kind, it ran for only
six months. When "The Month" came to a sudden stop, the articles
remaining unpublished were turned over to Mark Lemon to see what use he
could make of them. Some were by Mr. Silver, who was forthwith summoned
from his anonymity by a line in _Punch_: "'Naughty Boy' has