Turning o'er his own past pages, _Punch_, with tearful smile, can trace That fine talent's various stages, Caustic satire, gentle grace, Feats and freaks of Cockney funny-- Brown, and Jones, and Robinson; And, huge hive of Humour's honey, Quaint quintessence of rich fun, Coming fresh as June-breeze briary With old memories of our youth-- Thrice immortal Pips's Diary! Masterpiece of Mirth and Truth! Personally I should invert the epithet "thrice immortal" and apply it to the "Continental Tour of Brown, Jones and Robinson"; otherwise the verses are a well merited tribute to the winged fancy and graceful humour of "Dicky Doyle." Charles Keene's death in January, 1891, removed another good comrade whose association with the paper was unbroken up to his last illness, and was one of the chief if not the greatest of its artistic glories:-- Frank, loyal, unobtrusive, simple-hearted, Loving his book, his pipe, his song, his friend, Peaceful he lived and peacefully departed, A gentle life-course, with a gracious end. [Sidenote: _Ruskin on Leech_] So much for the man; as for the artist, _Punch_ was hardly overstating the case when he claimed that the exhibition of Keene's work in the following May stood for the supreme triumph of black and white in the achievements of its greatest master. Ruskin, in the lecture noted above, had described Leech's work as containing "the finest definition and natural history of the classes of our society, the kindest and subtlest analysis of its foibles, the tenderest flattery of its pretty and well-bred ways, with which the modesty of subservient genius ever immortalized or amused careless masters." Small wonder was it, then, that _Punch_ appealed for greater generosity to John Leech's three surviving sisters. Their combined pensions only amounted to £180--a "dole" which lent point to the dramatic dialogues in 1881 between a Minister and a Celebrity and (after the Celebrity's death) between the Minister and his Secretary, as a result of which the former decides to give the orphan daughter £50. The cult of Japanese art in the late 'eighties furnished _Punch's_ artists with new formulas and new methods of treating Parliamentary scenes. It also inspired the following ingenious adaptation of a famous phrase:-- Madame Roland Re-Edited (from a sham Japanese point of view): O Liberty! what strange (decorative) things are done in thy name! _Punch_ had reproached Millais for condescending to the "pretty-pretty" style, but in 1888 he was moved to caricature the modern fear of the same tendency--a fear destined to dominate so much of modern art in later years and to enthrone the Golliwog in the nursery. DRAMA, OPERA AND MUSIC