re, in which Taylor promised to invite Mr. Milliken to
the Table as soon as a vacancy occurred. At the end of the second year
of probation this promise was fulfilled, and early in 1877 "E. J. M."
cut his initials on the board.

It is worthy of remark that the successful career of Mr. Milliken is in
direct opposition to his training, for he began life, much against his
will, as a man of business in a great engineering firm. But literature
was his goal, and the appreciation of the editors of a few magazines and
journals to some extent satisfied his ambition. In point of fact, Mr.
Milliken, in respect to his work, is the most modest and retiring of
men; and the only contribution to which his name appeared, for years
before or after, was the set of memorial verses to Charles Dickens which
were printed in the "Gentleman's Magazine" in 1870.

[Illustration: E. J. MILLIKEN.
(_From a Photograph by Messrs. Bassano._)]

Without a doubt "The 'Arry Papers" are the most popular and best known
of Mr. Milliken's contributions, although "Childe Chappie's Pilgrimage,"
"The Modern Ars Amandi" (1883), "The Town" (1884), "Fitzdotterel; or,
T'other and Which" (a parody of Lord Lytton's "Glenaveril"), 1885;
"Untiled; or, the Modern Asmodeus" (1889-90), and "The New Guide to
Knowledge," have successively loomed large in _Punch's_ firmament. But
it is the great creation of 'Arry for which Mr. Milliken is most
applauded--and least understood. It is generally supposed that the 'Arry
of Mr. Milliken corresponds to the similar character conceived by
Charles Keene and Mr. Anstey. But the author means him for a great deal
more. 'Arry with him is not so much a personage as a type--as much an
impersonal symbol as Mr. Watts's Love, or Death, or other quality,
passion, or fate, without individuality and, in spirit at least, without
sex.

It is often suggested that Mr. Milliken's 'Arry is the survival--or, at
least, the descendant--of the "gent" of Leech and the "snob" of
Thackeray and Albert Smith. He is nothing of the sort. The gent and the
snob had at least this merit; they aspired, or imagined themselves, to
be something more and better than they really were. But 'Arry is a
self-declared cad, without either hope or desire, or even thought, of
redemption. Self-sufficient, brazen, and unblushing in his irrepressible
vulgarity, blatant and unashamed, he is distinguished by a sort of
good-humour that is as rampant and as offensive as his swaggering