"The greater the employment of the primer, the less the need of the 'cat'" is an aphorism which sums up the creed of the humanitarian reformers of the 'forties and 'fifties. The "ladder of learning" was not yet planted in the modern sense, and efforts to ascend from the lower to the upper rungs were frowned upon by those in authority. At a meeting of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in June, 1849, a clerical speaker ridiculed the questions, set in an examination paper for National School teachers, which presupposed a knowledge of the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Adam Smith, Johnson and Scott, and of the Life of Mrs. Fry. Learning was at a discount; authors of note, with few exceptions--such as Thackeray and Macaulay--were generally impecunious, and sometimes on the border-land of destitution. Douglas Jerrold had a life-long struggle to keep his head above water, for all his industry. There were no royalties in those days, and for _Black-Eyed Susan_, which brought tens of thousands of pounds to theatrical lessees and popular actors, he received from first to last the sum of £60. _Punch_ was the constant champion of the distressed author fallen on evil days, such as Joseph Haydn of the _Dictionary of Dates_, who was granted a Civil List pension of £25 a year just three weeks before his death in January, 1856, or old Joseph Guy, "the man of many books, the ever-green 'Spelling Book' among the number." One of the finest (but posthumous) tributes to Sir Robert Peel was on the occasion of the Literary Fund dinner in 1856, when a sum of £100 was sent from the proceeds of the first portion of the _Peel Papers_:-- [Illustration: NEWSVENDOR: "Now, my man, what is it?" BOY: "I vonts a nillustrated newspaper with a norrid murder and a likeness in it."] From the tomb of Sir Robert speaks the spirit that, when in the flesh and baited by the dogs of party [not to mention the bitter satire of _Punch_ himself], still beneficently thought of the wants of spasmodic Haydn; still, by sympathy in word and act, smoothed the dying pillow of poor Tom Hood.