Punch (98.1890)

50

PUNCH, OE THE LONDON CHAKIVARI.

[February 1, 1890.

AN OLD FABLE.

Frog. " I mean to be as BlS as you, one day, and S wallow you VV. bust ie I don't

A "FISH OUT OF "WATER" AT GREENWICH.

Is a not very wise speech delivered while presiding at the opening
of a new series of lectures in connection with the Greenwich Branch
of the Society for the Extension of University Teaching, Lord
Wolseley modestly admitted "that whatever information he had
acquired in life had heen acquired from the ordinary penny news-
paper which he had read day hy day." No doubt this rather
humiliating fact accounts for the florid style of the proclamations
"Our Only General"_used to publish in Egypt and elsewhere—
proclamations at the time recognised as having the tone of Astley's
in the good old days of the Battle of Waterloo and other military

Unfortunately he touched upon another matter, about which he
knows evidently very little, if anything at all. His Lordship spoke
in very disrespectful terms of what he called the "Shilling Dreadful,"
which, he declared (in this instance accurately enough), was "prized
by many people." Certainly the novelette is more popular than The
Soldier's Pocket-book, although both brochures are equally works of
imagination. So it should be, considering that amongst the authors
who have produced it have been Wilkie Collins, Hugh Conway,
F. Anstey, Robert Buchanan, Grant Allen, Walter Besant,
Rhoda Broughton, and others equally well known to fame. He con-
cluded by remarking, " that if men of all politics were to be shaken
up in a bag, he believed there would be very little difference between

melodramas. However, if it pleases Lord Wolseley to give mate- [ them." Quite true, if the bag were shaken sufficiently long to corn-
rials for a future biography, that is no one's concern but his own. plete the transformation—but it would be rather a brutal experiment!