æsthete was held up to derision. Sambourne's drawing in June, 1881, is called a "fancy portrait," but it is quite a realistic likeness. "A Maudle-in Ballad, to the Lily," had appeared in April:-- My lank limp lily, my long lithe lily, My languid lily-love, fragile and thin, With dank leaves dangling and flower-flap chilly, That shines like the shin of a Highland gilly! Mottled and moist as a cold toad's skin! Lustrous and leper-white, splendid and splay! Art thou not Utter? and wholly akin To my own wan soul and my own wan chin, And my own wan nose-tip, tilted to sway The peacock's feather, sweeter than sin, That I bought for a halfpenny, yesterday? My long lithe lily, my languid lily, My lank limp lily-love, how shall I win-- Woo thee to wink at me? Silver lily, How shall I sing to thee, softly, or shrilly? What shall I weave for thee--which shall I spin-- Rondel, or rondeau, or virelay? Shall I buzz like a bee, with my face thrust in Thy choice, chaste chalice, or choose me a tin Trumpet, or touchingly, tenderly play On the weird bird-whistle, sweeter than sin, That I bought for a halfpenny, yesterday? Other parodies by "Oscuro Wildegoose" followed, and Wilde's poems are "slated" in the Bludyer vein under the heading "Swinburne and Water." A good deal of Wilde's verse was derivative--even tertiary deposit--and _Punch_ made fair game of the Swinburnian echoes and phrases such as "argent body," "pulse of sin," and "kosmic soul." But his literary criticism is somewhat heavy-handed. He is much happier in "Oscuro Wildegoose's" burlesque sonnet lamenting the unenlightened Philistinism of Grahamstown, in South Africa, where the Town Council did not know what a dado was, and conjectured that it was an ecclesiastical term! Wilde's visit to America in 1882 let loose a cascade of ridicule beginning with a bogus interview, followed up by a cartoon "Ariadne in Naxos," representing (in the manner of W. B. Richmond) the grief of Æstheticism at the departure of her hierophant. When Wilde lectured at Boston sixty students appeared in white waistcoats and knee-breeches, with sun-flowers in their buttonholes, and _Punch_ welcomed the attention as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of Wilde's efforts to revolutionize costume. Later on occurred the episode--which caused _Punch_ unfeigned delight--of a letter addressed to "Oscar Wilde, Poet, London," being returned as "Not known." But the craze was passing. Gilbert's _Patience_, produced in 1881, had been largely instrumental in reducing the pose of preciosity to its true proportions, and by the summer of 1883 we find _Punch_ coupling "Oscar" and "Jumbo" (the elephant) together as overrated lions. From this point onward the campaign slackens. In some acid verses on the _Zeit-Geist_ in the spring of 1884, which we quote later on, a would-be Juvenal denounces