Morning journal and courier., 1880-07-29
Tom Taylor and Punch.
The Requirements Of Comic JOurnaIisn1
 in London.
 tlna

In London
 [From the London Spectator.1
 There is probably no position in the world more difficult than that of the editor of an English comic paper with great reputation already made. He must secure an audience that is, must make his paper sell, and must, therefore, prepare supply of. the good-hu- mored, domestic or political, but in either case very patent and inteligible fun which the British lower middle class appreciates and will pay off. It is a very good public in it's way; it Is easy-tempered, intelligent and quick about ordinary things, such as it tknows well, and extremely amused by joke it com prehends; but it will not do the authors or actor's thinking for him, it will not ponder except when called upon to sympathize with some rather ghastly form of suffering, it will not endure the smallest infraction of it's idea of the proper and becoming, whether the infraction take the form of jest for or against chastity, or for or against religion, or for or against the more important social con- venances. Cham would succeed in London as little as Rochefort, and Rochefort as little as Veuillot. The public which buys comic papers will have the pulpit, and poverty except ln it's extreme form of pauperism- and Cremorne all kept out of sight together, and obtain it's fun either out of politics or out of decent middle-class interiors and the sights of respectable streets, or it will cease to buy at once. Punch which Is as much an institu- ton as the Times could be destroyed as a property in a single number The editor must do all his work in perpetual recollection of that fetter-a most valuable letter, be it understood which no admirer of Punch wish es to relax, but real fetter on the humorist and also of another not quite so visible The editor of Punch is like West-End cler- gyman who desires, first of all, to benefit his parish, but who cannot quite forget he breaches, that people accustomed to much stronger intellectual food are listening to him. not altogether lost in reverential awe. The artists and writers in Punch cannot for get the cultivated public altogether, must show themselves equal to entertaining them also if only to foster their own self-respect, and so have occasionally to play to two audi ences at once-one fastidious to tine last de- gree, and one content if only it may have it's solid, respectable fun. A third of the diners like and understand ortolans and queneIles and two-thirds are connoisseurs in beef, and both must be sent away filled. It is difficult for the chef, and it is part of the very cu rious history of Punch-perhaps the most separate paper that ever existed-that the donble demand is so fairly, though, of course, often imperfectly, supplied. It is much to keep up such a tradition, and MT. Taylor, succeeding what is now quite 8 line of suc- cessful editors, keep it up very fairly well. We do not know that he improved Punch !; indeed, we should say that he did not. It may be that the difference is in ourselves, but to our minds the slowly growing defect of Punch is a certain want of acid flavor, a cer- tain fatness in tone and want of cutting ef feet in its hits, as if everybody on it were middle-aged and in good temper with most things, Irishmen excepted, and disposed to be rather jolly than effectively humorous. We should say, if we were permitted to criticise him, when he has become parsonage in the State ?--that in his late middle-age his temper had improved, and very often his looks quoting in proof of the latter remark MT. Du Maurier's often wonderful interiors, in which dozen persons are portrayed, each with 8 character, yet each helping toward the pict- ure,-but that his wit had not. Wit, satire,