Burnand

Burnand, Francis Cowley, was born in 1837, educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and destined for the bar. Though called in 1862, he never engaged in serious practice, but took to writing for the burlesque stage and the comic papers. In the former line he has produced Ixion, Black-eyed Susan, Stage Dora, and several other amusing travesties specially contrived for the display of Mr. Toole's talents. Artful Cards, Betsy, and Miss Decima are specimens of his skill as a borrower from the French. In journalism Mr. Burnand associated himself at the start with Mr. H. J. Byron, then editor of Fun. Presently he transferred his talents to Punch, and in 1880 succeeded Mr. Tom Taylor in the direction of that paper. Perhaps his best known contributions to its columns have been his parodies on modern novelists, somewhat overdone but full of keen observation and tempered satire, and the long series of papers entitled Happy Thoughts, in which the inner workings of the common-place mind are amusingly laid bare, and certain types of character and phases of social manners are hit off with playful dexterity. Mr. Burnand is a master rather of verbal fence and sarcastic humour than of true wit, but he has for many years discharged a difficult task with great tact and unfailing good nature.