Punch (34.1858)

98

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI

[March 6, 1858.

SOME FOREIGN PRODUCE THAT MR. BULL

A JOKE IN THE SATURDAY REVIEW!

Our dear — that, is our sixpenny — contemporary, the Saturday
Review, labours regularly and diligently to express its utter abhor-
rence and excessive contempt of bad jokes. It sneers, with a syste-
matic punctuality, which seems to be the soul of its business, at
professionally funny men. Doggedly, steadily, constantly, directly
and indirectly, it abuses and assails them in the language of prepense
disparagement and studied scorn. It jeers at them and traduces them,
by name if possible, with the same perseverance as that with which
certain persons, some years ago, earnestly pooh-poohed the Ecclesias-
tical Titles Bill, passed in spite of their teeth, which they have not
ceased to gnash ever since. It maligns the memory of one whom it
ranks among them after his death, and says as much as it dares with a
view to injure his surviving family. Evidently the Saturday Review
objects to popular jokes and popular jokers very much. Some people
may imagine that its animosity against them arises from the fact that
they bring into contempt and ridicule peculiar ideas and principles
which the Saturday Review would rather like the vulgar herd to
venerate. For nearly the same animosity is displayed by that periodical
against certain portions of the Exeter Hall press, whose influence is
greater than its own. But it would be a mistake to suppose that
theological hatred is the sole feeling which prompts its assiduous
endeavours to depreciate jocular literature. A high sense of their own
«it, equalled only by a corresponding opinion of their own wisdom,

doubtless occasions the writers in the Saturday Review unaffectedly to
despise all attempts at joking except their own. We will not say that
they are not as fully justified in admiring their own sharpness as they
are in revering their own profundity. The sincerity of their belief in
their comic powers is evinced by their confident manifestation of them.
Not content with denouncing bad jokes, they show how good jokes
should be made. Much of the Saturday Review may be defined to be
Buffoonery teaching by example. Subjoined, by way of specimen, is a
magnificent pun lately published by our good-natured contemporary
and generous rival. It occurs in a critique on a new book called The
Hasheesh Eater, wherein the critic, alluding to the depression described
by the author as caused by hasheesh, remarks that—

" He warns us against the drug that produced it, lamenting in sackcloth and
hasheesh, as it were, the errors into which he was led."

Sackcloth and hasheesh ; that is you see, dull reader, sackcloth and
ashes. Hasheesh (H)ashe(e)s(h)—ashes. If an old clothes-dealer in
Houndsditch were to attempt to say Sackcloth and ashes, he would, in
his pronunciation of "ashes," precisely illustrate the witticism of the
Saturday Review. Sackcloth and ashes—a neat Scriptural joke; just
the bit of fun for the clerical readers of a journal maintaining high
ecclesiastical views. Macte novd—no, we must not quote Latin, about
which the Saturday Review alone knows anything; in plain English,
therefore, we will only recommend our kindly contemporary to per
severe with redoubled energy in that facetious line in which it shines
so brightly. Proceed, Edward !