The Humourous Poetry of the English Language

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and his fellow-students and intimates at Middlesex Hospital were at no
loss to identify the majority of the characters introduced. Mr. Smith's
connection with "Punch" was not of long continuance. A severe criticism
appearing subsequently in its columns, on his novel of the "Marchioness
of Brinvilliers" (published in "Bentley's Miscellany," of which journal
he was then editor), he, in retaliation, made an onslaught on "Punch"
in another story, the "Pottleton Legacy," where it figures under the
title of the Cracker.
Mr. Gilbert a'Beckett, who had before been engaged in many unsuccessful
periodicals, found in "Punch" ample scope for his wit and extraordinary
faculty of punning. In "The Comic Blackstone," "Political Dictionary,"
"Punch's Noy's Maxims," and the "Autobiography, and other papers
relating to Mr. Briefless," he put his legal knowledge to a comic use.
Many fugitive minor pieces have also proceeded from his pen, and he has
but few equals in that grotesque form of hybrid poetry known as
Macaronic. He is now a London magistrate, and PAR EXCELLENCE, the
punster of "Punch."
The Greek versions of sundry popular ballads, such as "The King of the
Cannibal Islands," were the work of Maginn. Hood's world-famous "Song
of the Shirt," first appeared in "Punch's" pages.
Thackeray has also been an industrious contributor, Commencing with
"Miss Tickletoby's Lectures" (an idea afterward carried out in a
somewhat different fashion by a'Beckett in his "Comic History of
England"), he, besides miscellaneous writings, produced the "Snob
Papers," "Jeames's Diary," "Punch in the East," "Punch's Prose
Novelists," "The Traveler in London," "Mr. Brown's Letters to a Young
Man about Town," and "The Proser." Of the merits of these works it is
unnecessary to speak. The "Book of Snobs" may rank with its author's
most finished productions. "Jeames's Diary," suggested by the
circumstance of a May-fair footman achieving sudden affluence by
railroad speculations during the ruinously exciting period of 1846,
may, however, be considered only a further carrying out of the original
idea of "Charles Yellowplush." A ballad in it, "The Lines to my
Sister's Portrait," is said, to use a vulgar, though expressive phrase,
to have SHUT UP Lord John Manners, who had achieved some small
reputation as "one of the Young England poits." Thackeray parodied his
style, and henceforth the voice of the minstrel was dumb in the land.
Like Jerrold's "Caudle Lectures," of which many versions appeared at