Punch (71.1876)

August 12, 1876-1 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHAKIVAE1. 57

BORN JUNE 29, 1827. DIED JULY 28, 1876.

The Everlasting Silence has suddenly come down upon a clear, joyous, and musical voice, which
for the last two years has rung among the most regular as well as blithest in our weekly concert.

Mortimer Collins, in the apparent fulness of health and strength, has been carried off, after
two days' illness, by disease of the heart, induced it may be, certainly brought to a head, by the
wear and tear of literary labour, which for many years past had known no intermission, not even for
the ordinary interval of a brief yearly holiday. In the most literal sense of the words, "he died in
harness." " The natural end," the Cynic may say, " of the literary hack." Not the less sad is the
thought how much nobler in results, as well as longer-sustained, his labour might have been under
better-regulated conditions and happier circumstances.

As Journalist (Provincial and Metropolitan), Essayist, Critic, Novelist, Poet, Mortimer Collins
has done much gay and genial, much ingenious and suggestive, much graceful and scholarly, work ;
though the best of it, no doubt, in all kinds, might, with more leisure, have been better. But though
the field was too constantly cropped for the harvest ever to come to its perfection, it grew always
wholesome and pure grain, with sap of scholarship, fine colour of fancy, and the juice of a large,
kindly, and generous nature. He wrote the Secret of Long Life to teach men to live a century, and
himself died at forty-nine.

He was a man who, in an unconventional way, deeply believed in Cod, and strove to do his duty
honestly and punctually by his employers, loving his family and friends : variously accomplished,
happy under hard labour, and helpful to all he could help, by word or deed.

Two stanzas of a Poem which terminates his last published volume of Verse may form his
worthiest epitaph :—

The Poet may tread earth sadly,

Yet is he Dreamland's king,
And the fays at his bidding gladly

Visions of beauty bring;
But his joys will be rarer, finer,
Away from this earthly stage,
When he, who is now a minor,
Comes of age.
* * # * *

: Roll on, O tardy cycle,

Whose death is the Poet's birth !
Blow soon, great trump of Michael,

Shatter the crust of earth !
Let the slow spheres turn faster ;

Hasten the heritage
Of him who, as life's true master,
Comes of age ! "

CHIEF OBJECTS OF INTEREST IN LONDON DURING

AUGUST.

In Belgrave Square.—Several rows of magnificent brown Holland
window-blinds.

In Rotten Row.—Private Jones (3rd Life Guards Green), wait-
ing in vain for Miss Mary Jane Smith (Nursery Superintendent-
out of town with " her people.")

In Bond Street.—A Policeman (very rare).

In Charing Cross.—An empty Hansom carefully avoiding
Northumberland Avenue.

In Piccadilly.—A Footman (on board wages) in a straw hat.

In Leicester Square.—M. Le Due de Chateah Ordinaire, just
arrived from France to take part in the gaieties of the "High Life "
during the London Season.

In the Strand.—A Country Cousin.

In Oxford Street.—Another.

In Regent Street.—The Infant Deputy of the Regular Crossing
Sweeper.

In Hanover Square.—A home-sick cat.

In the British Museum.—Several specimens "of the Government
Official.

In Pall Mall.—The solitary Sentry in front of Marlborough
House.

In St. lames' Park.—The Park Keeper.
In All Saints, Margaret's Street.—The officiating Clergy.
In the Zoological Gardens.—Chief Representatives of the Human
Race to be found in the Monkey House.
In the West End Generally.—Nobody.

In the East End.—The usual Couple of Millions or so. And
lastly,

In 85, Fleet Street.—Mr. Punch's locum tenens—the Venerable
Toby. _ '

centre oe civilisation.

Did Victor Hugo call Paris "the brain of the world"? The
great Metropolis and Centre of Cookery might rather perhaps be
denominated the world's stomach ; but " Magister Artium Venter: "
so it is all one.

PADDY'S AUTONOMY.

There's a mighty fine thing in vogue,

Which, by divil a bit of pseudonomy,
In an iligant Grecian brogue

Slav insurgents call " Autonomy : "
Jupiter, Venus, and Mars,

Wid the rest of our scheme of astronomy,
Is a system of separate stars,

That has aich got its own Autonomy."
'Tis a plain and simple phrase,

Not at all at all a metonymy,
For it manes just as much as it says

Without the laist smack of homonymy.
The Jews, in the times of old,

According to Deuteronomy,
By the best accounts we 're told,

Enjoyed a nate " Autonomy."
And who can be such a fool

As not to perceive the synonomy
Of the terrum with Butt's " Home Rule,"

Or, " Irish Domestic Economy " ?

POISONS AND FIGS.

Note a strange, but seasonable, paragraph in the Pall Mall
Gazette concerning :—

" Taktab, Emetic.—At Ballina, on Wednesday, a grocer was remanded on
the charge of selling tartar emetic for cream of tartar. Five persons had a
narrow escape from death through, the mistake."

Is it lawful for a grocer to sell tartar emetic at all ? In that_ case
the sooner it ceases to be lawful the better; unless on condition
that grocers shall have to be qualified by a proper examination to
deal in drugs, as well as in groceries. Even then it would be desirable
that an extended inscription over the grocer's shop-door should
describe him as " Licensed to deal in tea, coffee, tobacco, snuff,
arsenic, corrosive sublimate, prussic acid, oil of vitriol, tartar
emetic, vinegar, pepper, and poisons generally."

vol. lxxt.

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