PUNCH,

Or the London charivari.

Vol. 102.

March 19, 1892.

“Are you Hansard now?”

MERCHANT OF VENICE.

["The entire stock of Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates ... was offered for sale.  The vast collection, nearly 100,000 volumes, scarcely fetched the price of waste paper.”—­Daily Paper.]

  The Auctioneer exclaimed,—­“These Vols. 
    Have neither fault nor blot. 
  I think that I, without demur,
    May call them quite ‘a lot.’

  “Speeches by Russell, Pam, and Bright,
    Good for the heart and head. 
  Take them as spoken; if you like,
    Pray take them, too, as read.”

  But when the Auction did begin,
    Bidders, alack! were lacking;
  Back numbers hove in sight in shoals,
    Yet seemed to have no backing.

  “Then this,” quoth he, “appears to be
    The dismal situation;
  Though from these speeches statesmen quote,
    For them there’s no quotation.

  “The eye has ‘heavenly rhetoric,’
    Hear William SHAKSPEARE cry;
  But heavenly rhetoric now, ’tis plain,
    Itself is all my eye.

  “A penny!  Really such a bid
    I can’t allow to pass;
  A man who’d offer coppers here
    Must be composed of brass.

  “‘Progress’ I cannot well ‘report,’
    Unless this lot is bought in;
  The only progress seems to be,
    When there’ll be no reportin’.

  “Such priceless gems, such wretched bids!”
    The hammer-man did shout;
  “If you desire, I knock them down—­
    You first must knock me out!

  “No higher offer?  Then I’m forced,
    Pray pardon the suggestion—­
  To take a hint from Parliament,
    And ‘move the Previous Question.’”

* * * * *

Another SHAKSPEARE!

[Illustration:  Mysterious!]

The last play by M. Blague Van Der Bosch has just been translated into English.  It is called The Blackbeetle, and is a purely domestic drama.  The following Scene from the last Act will give some idea of the exquisite simplicity and pathos of this great work.  M. Van Der BOSCH’s admirers freely assert that SHAKSPEARE never wrote anything like this.  It will be noticed that M. Van Der Bosch, like M. Maeterlinck, does not always name his characters, but only mentions their relation to each other.

Scene XXV.—­The Great Grandmother, the Mother-in-law, the Female First Cousin one remove, and the Brother-in-law’s Aunt are discovered standing on the table, and the Half-sister’s Nephew by marriage on a chair.

The Mother-in-law.  Eh? eh? eh?