From this wonder world _Punch_ turned to "_le monde où l'on s'affiche_" to castigate the methods of Mr. Hall Caine and Mr. Le Gallienne--the Manx megalomaniac and the Author-Lecturer--and to the realm of blameless banality ruled over by Sir John Lubbock. Sir John's genius for truisms had been guyed in 1894; in 1900 he appears in a special section of "The Book of Beauty" as the author of some enchanting platitudes, e.g. "A man's work will often survive him. Thus, Shakespeare and Watt are dead; but _Hamlet_ and the steam engine survive." This was the year of the appearance of Lady Randolph Churchill's _Anglo-Saxon Review_, a sumptuous publication which for a brief period revived the glories of the _Books of Beauty_ and _Keepsakes_, edited in the 'thirties and 'forties of the last century by that "most gorgeous" lady, the Countess of Blessington. Pseudo-intellectuality was one of the social shams which _Punch_ loved to pillory, and there is a good example in 1901 in the "Cultured Conversation" of a lady who observes, "I'm _devoted_ to Rossetti--I _delight_ in Shelley--and I simply _love_ Ella Wheeler Wilcox." _Punch_ himself in the same year "delighted" quite sincerely in _Some Experiences of an Irish R.M._, and "wept tears of laughter" over the episode of "Lisheen Races." This was apparently his first introduction to the work of those two wonderfully gifted Irish cousins, Violet Martin and Edith Somerville, but only towards the end of their long and fruitful collaboration did he recognize in them far higher qualities than those of the mere mirth-provoker. In 1903 he was destined to make acquaintance with one of the most conspicuous representatives of the opposite tendency, Gorki, the Russian novelist and playwright. In "The Lowest Depths" _Punch_ parodied the dreary, violent and brutal squalors of _The Lower Depths_, and incidentally had a dig at the Stage Society for producing it. It was in the same year that _Punch_ described the "new curse of Caine"--"to be everlastingly coupled with the name of Miss Marie Corelli"--and paid them both grateful homage as purveyors of "copy":-- From cutting continual capers Ev'n Kaisers must sometimes refrain; But _you're_ never out of the papers-- Corelli and Caine. At the time of the Boer war poets had been vociferously active. By 1904 a "slump" had set in; and in an interview Mr. John Lane, of the Bodley Head, had declared that verse had ceased to be remunerative. Embroidering this text _Punch_ traced the cause to the material self-indulgence of the public. People dined too well to want to read rhymes, and poets wanted better pay:-- And this is why no bards occur. None ever knows that aching void, That hunger, prompting like a spur, Which former genii enjoyed; For all the poets dead and gone, Whose Muse contrived to melt the nation, Habitually did it on A regimen of strict starvation. [Sidenote: _Notable Newcomers_]