LORID VOCABULARY: "Well, if I'd ha' known all I
was goin' to see was a set o' blanky nobs shut up in their
blank-dash kerridges, blank my blanky eyes if I'd ha' stirred a
blanky foot, s'elp me dash, I wouldn't!"

A VENDOR (_persuasively_): "The kerrect lengwidge of hevery flower
that blows--one penny!"

In the composition of his "Voces" and kindred work, it has been the
practice of Mr. Anstey to visit the needful spot, where he would try to
seize the salient points and the general tone, the speakers and the
scene, trusting to luck for a chance incident, feature, or sentence that
might provide a subject. Sometimes he would have to go empty away; but
as a rule he would find enough to provide the rough material for a
sketch. Sometimes, too, he would combine hints and anecdotes received
from his acquaintance with his own experience and invention; on rarer
occasions he would happen upon an incident which could be worked up into
a sketch very much as it actually occurred, though with strict selection
and careful elaboration. On the whole it may be taken that the
conversations are mostly what _might_ have happened, but that they never
were shorthand reproductions of overheard talk; and the incidents are
almost invariably invented. Occasionally something in an exhibition or
show would suggest a typical comment, or a casual remark might provide
an idea for a character; but a good deal is certainly unconscious
reminiscence and fragmentary observation, and the residue pure
guess-work.

Of the artistic quality of Mr. Anstey's work there can be no
question--neither of its humour, nor of its value as a complete
reflection of English, and especially of Cockney, life. Old-fashioned
people may and do denounce it as newfangled; but does anyone doubt the
sort of welcome that would have been accorded to it by Jerrold and
Thackeray and Gilbert a Beckett if they had had the good fortune to have
an Anstey in their midst half-a-century ago?

[Illustration: R. C. LEHMANN
(_From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry._)]

Mr. R. C. Lehmann, grand-nephew of W. H. Wills, one of _Punch's_ early
crew, had a good reputation as a Cambridge wit before Mr. Burnand
captured him for _Punch_. In April, 1889, he began to edit "The Granta,"
the clever "barrel-organ of the Cambridge undergraduates," satirical,
brightly humorous, and freshly youthful. On the 14th of the following
December there appeared in _Punch_ his first contribution