Though dogmatists and dullards long opposed
His Theory with venomous persistence,
Darwin may now consider it has closed
Its—"Struggle for existence."
To calm research, not fierce polemic raid,
Truth yields her secrets. After fair inspection
The age twixt Science and her foes has made
A—"Natural selection."
When Darwin died in April, 1882, Punch had entered on a phase in which the claims of science to solve the riddle of the universe excited his misgiving, and his obituary lines are of a non-committal order, save for one admirable couplet:—
Recorder of the long Descent of Man
And a most living witness of his rise.
There are no reserves in his valediction to Henry Fawcett in November, 1884:—
No braver conquest o'er ill fortune's flout
Our age has seen than his who held straight on,
Though the great God-gift from his days was gone,
"And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out"—
Held on with genial stoutness, seeing more
Than men with sight undarkened, but with mind
Through prejudice and Party bias blind.
Another statesman of equal fearlessness and independence was W. E. Forster; but here the whole virtue of Punch's salutation in April, 1886, is summed up in the two lines:—
A sturdy lover of a sturdy land,
He served it, zeal at heart and life in hand.
I pass over the "In Memoriam" lines on the good Lord Shaftesbury in the previous year. They render full justice to his splendid and life-long service on behalf of the "helpless thralls of trade" and the "all unchildlike children" "victims of modern Molochs," "all who creep or fall on poverty's rough road or crime's steep slope"; but they are otherwise laboured and diffuse. Sincerity is no guarantee of literary excellence. Punch shows to greater advantage in the lines on Newman in August, 1890, who is lauded, not as a great Cardinal nor as one
Above all office and all state,
Serenely wise, magnanimously great;
Not as the pride of Oriel, or the Star
Of this host or of that in creed's hot war,
But as the noble spirit, stately, sweet,
Ardent for good without fanatic heat,
Gentle of soul, though greatly militant,
Saintly, yet with no touch of cloistral cant;
Him England honours, and so bends to-day
In reverent grief o'er Newman's glorious clay.
Two statesmen, widely differing in birth, temperament and character, are commemorated in 1891. Of Lord Granville Punch writes:—
Bismarckian vigour, stern and stark
As Brontë's self, was not his dower;
Not his to steer a storm-tost bark
Through waves that whelm, and clouds that lower.
Temper unstirred, unerring tact
Were his. He could not "wave the banner,"
But he could lend to steely act
The softly silken charm of manner.
Mr. W. H. Smith was a much harder subject for eulogy, for he was not a "dæmonic genius," an orator, or a romantic figure, but simply a good plain honest servant of his country. Yet Punch's verses, if not inspired by high poetic rapture, are something more than adequate in their appreciation of Mr. W. H. Smith's solid qualities:—
A capable, clear-headed, modest toiler,
Touched with no egoist taint,
To Duty sworn, the face of the Despoiler
Made him not fear or faint.
O'erworn, o'erworked, with smiling face, though weary,
The tedious task he plied;
Sagacious, courteous, ever calm and cheery,
Unsoured by spleen or pride.
As unprovocative as unpretentious,
Skilful though seeming slow;
Unmoved by impulse of conceit contentious
To risk success for show.
To turn from grave to gay, I may round off this collection with two zoological elegies. When "Jumbo," the famous elephant at the Zoo, whose purchase by Barnum and departure from London had provoked a grotesque explosion of sentimentality, was killed by a railway accident in America in 1885, Punch recorded his decease in the following epigram:—
Alas, poor Jumbo! Here's the fruit
Of faithless Barnum's greed of gain;
How sad that so well-trained a brute
Should owe his exit to a train!
The elegy on Charles Jamrach, the celebrated naturalist and menagerie-keeper of St. George's-in-the-East, who died in September, 1891, at the age of seventy-six, was better deserved. Charles Jamrach, the most notable of the dynasty which for three-quarters of a century enjoyed a practical monopoly of the trade in wild animals in this country, was a "stout fellow": Frank Buckland describes his single-handed struggle with a runaway tiger in 1857; he appears in the D.N.B.; and Punch, in his lines on "The King of the Beasts," after describing the lamentations of the animals at the Zoo, ends up on a note of genuine regret:—
O Jamrach! O Jamrach! Woe's stretched on no sham rack
Of metre that mourns you sincerely;
E'en that hard nut o' natur, the great Alligator,
Has eyes that look red, and blink queerly.
Mere "crocodile's tears," some may snigger, but jeers
Must disgust at a moment so doleful;
For Jamrach the brave, who has gone to his grave,
All our sorrow's sincere as 'tis soulful!
[10] It was translated in the feuilleton of an Italian paper as La Fortuna del Campo Clamoroso!
[11] The surname borne by C. S. C. until his branch of the family resumed that of Calverley.
[12] Presumably a reference to Louis XIV's versatile Minister of that name.
[13] The title of one of Sullivan's most popular songs.
Printed in England by Cassell & Company, Limited, London,
E.C.4.
A complete Index will be found in the Fourth Volume.