gh; and over that power,
in all its phases of motive, act, and talk, Mr. Anstey has absolute
control. In addition, he has a genius for plot-making and verse-writing,
be it original or parody, which in its own line is unsurpassed in modern
literature. In his analysis of character and motive he seems to set
before us our own weak selves laid bare, until his _voces populi_ become
_voces animi_, the voice of the people speaking unpleasantly like the
voice of conscience.

In this comic reproduction of actual experience Mr. Anstey has travelled
over the road pointed out by Mr. Burnand in his "Happy Thoughts" and
"Out of Town;" but, adding greatly to the scientific truth of it, he
seems to have lost something of the geniality and joviality of the form.
Mr. Anstey has placed Society on the dissecting-table, and probing with
a little less of the sympathy shown by Mr. du Maurier, he carries his
observation, consciously or unconsciously, to a much farther and more
merciless point. Not that he has no kindly feeling for his subjects; he
has--but he reserves it for his good people. Towards his snobs and cads
and prigs he is pitiless; he turns his microscope upon them, and with
far less mercy than is to be found in a vivisector he lays bare their
false hearts, points to their lying tongues, and tears them out without
a pang of remorse. It is all in fun, of course; but it is unmistakable.
Still, who shall find fault with what is the essence of justice and
truth, which mercy only interferes with to weaken?

The burlesques in the "Model Music Hall Songs" are often as good as
their originals--just as some of the Rejected Addresses by the Smiths
were as good as the genuine poems they parodied; and the representation
of them is placed before the reader with more than photographic truth.
In "So Shy!" we see the lady "of a mature age and inclined to a
comfortable embonpoint," who comes forward and sings--

"I'm a dynety little dysy of the dingle,
So retiring and so timid and so coy--
If you ask me why so long I have lived single,
I will tell you--'tis because I am so shoy."

It is a notable fact that songs of this sort were driven off the
better-class music-hall stage about this time, and there is little doubt
that Mr. Anstey, to whom Mr. Bernard Partridge afterwards rendered
artistic help, took yeoman's share in the campaign. More certain it is
that with "Mr. Punch's Young Reciter" he effectively suppressed the
drawing-room