Page:Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day.djvu/228



editorship of 'Punch' necessarily confers upon its holder a prominent position among men of letters; but the present occupant of the editorial chair was an eminent man of letters, as well as a tried and valued collaborateur on the staff of the comic paper, before he filled the difficult position of its literary chief. When Mark Lemon died in 1870, a few weeks before his friend Charles Dickens was taken from us, everybody felt, as was said of Garrick, and also of Lever, that his loss was the removal of a light the extinction of which eclipsed the gaiety of nations. It is often unknown to the world by whom a popular paper is edited, but Mark Lemon's name was familiar in their mouths as a household word—to quote the now hackneyed line of the poet, of whose Falstaff the first editor of 'Punch' was so excellent a representative. The name of Mark Lemon was known all over the English-speaking world, and everywhere 'Punch' connoted Lemon. The two ideas were inseparable from the term. But when the first grief at the loss of the genial and witty humorist had had time to lose some of its poignancy, all who wished well to the satirical journal—in other words, all the world—were rejoiced to hear that the choice of his successor had fallen on Shirley Brooks: like the original projector of 'Punch,' himself a novelist, humorist, playwright,—and to employ a phrase in use in the cricket-field—'good all-round' man of letters.

The promise implied in his selection has been well borne out, and 'Punch' has rarely—take it one month with another—been more amusing and clever, or more brightly lighted with honest yet kindly satire, than it has been since Shirley Brooks has driven the team of artists and men of letters that make up the staff of the English 'Charivari.'

The subject of our notice was born in 1815, and after his education—as far as youthful studies are concerned—was completed, he turned his