So I sit in the seclusion of my room-de-ay, And deny myself to all--no matter whom-de-ay-- For I dread a creature coming Whose involuntary humming May assume the fatal form, "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!" Oh, I fear that when the Summer roses bloom-de-ay, You will read upon a well-appointed tomb-de-ay: "Influenza never lick'd him, But he fell an easy victim To that universal scourge--'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!'" The amazing popularity of Mr. Albert Chevalier's coster songs is acknowledged in 1892, but _Punch_ hardly does justice to the talents of the creator of what was virtually a new and specialized type of comic song heavily larded with sentiment. HEROES AND WORTHIES In the course of these chapters mention has not infrequently been made of the homage paid by _Punch_ to his special heroes and heroines. Memorial verses had always been a feature of the paper, and in the beginning of this period they assumed formidable dimensions: at its close there was a welcome reaction towards brevity; but in the following anthology I have not always quoted these tributes in full, preferring to extract the stanzas or lines which seemed to me to come nearest the mark in truth of portraiture or felicity of expression. Thus, while other features of Charles Kingsley's work in life and letters are noted in the verses printed on his death in 1875, his achievement in the domain of historical romance is much the most happily treated:-- He raised strong Saxon Hereward from death In his grey shroud of mist from mere and fen; Called up the England of Elizabeth, With Drake and Raleigh, chief of Devon men. To 1878 belong the lines on the "Christian athlete" Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand and afterwards of Lichfield:-- At length from work he rests, and to the bier His good deeds follow him, and good men's love; And one true Bishop less we reckon here, And one good angel more they count above. The epitaph on Lord John Russell, who died three weeks after his golden wedding in 1878, applauds his consistency but is not memorable, though he is well described as a fighter for freedom "in spite of what was done in Freedom's name." The lines on the great John Lawrence in July, 1879, contain one good stanza:-- A simple mannered, rude and rugged man, But true and wise and merciful and just. Of all these monuments, when all we scan, Which rises o'er more justly honoured dust? [Sidenote: _Rowland Hill, Stanley, and Darwin._] Rowland Hill, always one of _Punch's_ special heroes, was buried in the Abbey in September of the same year. Here _Punch's_ best tribute is in prose, when he speaks of him as