s. John Wood introduced it into "My
Milliner's Bill" many years after it first appeared in _Punch_.

And in addition to the mass of work he has contributed to _Punch_, there
are "The Incompleat Angler," "The New History of Sandford and Merton,"
"The Real Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," more than a hundred
burlesques--beginning with his exceedingly popular perversion of
Jerrold's "Black-Eyed Susan"--and a number of comedies and adaptations:
a total rivalling, and in some cases surpassing, the industry of the
most hard-working of his predecessors in _Punch's_ editorial chair.
Moreover, he has been a lecturer with "realistic notions," as he proved
on the occasion when he was giving a public reading dealing with a
yachting cruise, and, as he stood behind his reading-desk, stooped and
rose with a regular maritime motion, relieved by an occasional roll,
until the more susceptible among his audience began seriously to ask
themselves if they were good enough sailors to sit out the reading to
its ground-swell, breezy end.

In August, 1880, after the death of Tom Taylor, Mr. Burnand, who had
been acting-editor in his last illness, was called upon to take up the
task of restoring to _Punch_ its ancient reputation for liveliness and
fun, and with a dinner to every contributor, outside as well as Staff,
the proprietors inaugurated the new era. Mr. Burnand at once made great
changes among the outside contributors, and introduced new blood upon
the Staff. For himself, he showed his chief strength as a punster of
extraordinary ability; probably no one before him ever tied so many and
such elaborate knots in his mother-tongue as he. "Mr. Burnand's puns are
generally good, and sometimes very good," said a critic in the
"Spectator;" "but they are really too plentiful.... When it comes to be
a question of a volume of four hundred pages, with an average of ten
puns to a page, the reader is likely to suffer from an indigestion ...
a cake that is all plums is likely to lie rather heavily on the person
who eats it." But he was constrained to admit artistic merit in the
humour of such passages as this: "There was a dead pause in the room.
How long it had been there it was impossible to say, for it was only at
this minute that the three became aware of it. And the Bishop sniffed
uncomfortably, as though there was something wrong with the drainage."

But there was something of greater import brought in by Mr. Burnand's
editorship than the liter