Poet Dobson shall claim on high From Poet Gosse immortality! And Poet Dobson shall shed the same, No doubt, upon Poet Gosse's name-- While a weak world wonders whence they came, And never a weakling dares deny (For there's no such thing as puffery) To each his immortality! Yet Quarterlies dare to say, for once, That dunce's works are reviewed by dunce. Shocking! Anonymous donkeys speak Donkey's dislike of a cultured clique-- ("Fudge," by Goldsmith; but now called "cheek")-- Yet since or ever the world began, Quarterly reckoning's good for man! The _Quarterly_, not for the first time, overshot the mark by its "savage and tartarly" methods, and the incriminated critic survived an attack fortified by accurate learning but impaired by unrestrained animosity. [Sidenote: _Punch Salutes Mr. Kipling_] _Punch_ resumed his genial strain in his tribute to Richard Jefferies, when that admirable prose poet of rural England and the pageantry of the seasons died prematurely in 1887. Matthew Arnold was not exactly one of _Punch's_ literary heroes. His urbanity was admitted, but _Punch_ slightly resented his intellectual superciliousness. Yet the verses on his death in 1888, cast in the "Thyrsis" stanza, acknowledge the value of his crusade against Philistinism, and the beauty of his elegiac poetry; he was "the great son of a good father." Towards Matthew Arnold's distinguished niece, Mrs. Humphry Ward, _Punch_ was less benevolent on the occasion of the appearance of _Robert Elsmere_ in the same year. The sorely tried hero is described as "wandering about, a married Hamlet in clerical attire, undecided as to his mission to set everything right and dying a victim to the Mephistophelean-Betsy-Prig spirit." Nor was _Punch_ altogether appreciative of R. L. Stevenson, though he pays a reluctant homage to his genius in one of the "Mems for the New Year" for a literary man in January, 1889: "Resolutely to avoid making the most distant reference to 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.'" The standard of precision in the editing of _Punch_ at this time was not above reproach. In the same year "Mr. J. L. Stevenson's _Master of Ballantine_" is reviewed though there was no such author and no such book. _Punch_ made amends, however, in 1890 in his salutations of two notable newcomers. In February he was delighted by "the homely simplicity," the keen observation, shrewd wit and gentle pathos of Barrie in _A Window in Thrums_. Six weeks later he recognized in Rudyard Kipling's _Plain Tales from the Hills_ a "new and piquant flavour," as of an Anglo-Indian Bret Harte. _Punch_ found an "excessive abundance of phrases and local allusions which will be dark sayings to the uninitiated." But here adverse criticism ends. For the rest he acknowledges in the new writer a surprising knowledge of life, civil, military and native, and a happy command of pathos and humour. This tribute was followed up a few weeks later by a much more