Mr. Simms, who the other day applied for a summons
against the Duke of Cambridge, and did not succeed in getting it, seems to be a sensitive journalist, as he has now been threatening Mr. Linley Sambourne, the Punch artist, for a cartoon in Punch which was a very good-natured one, though it caricatured Mr. Simms as a deer, and led to a good deal of chaff which he found it hard to bear. He has been bound over to keep the peace, and has probably convinced some of those who thought (with us) that the Duke of Cambridge should have apologised to Mr. Simms for the unintentional assault, that there may have been less to apologise for than we had imagined. We rather wonder that the journalist class so seldom seem to gain the sang-froid of politicians, when subjected to ridicule of any kind. Certainly they ought to know how little malice ridicule implies, better
than most men,—unless they be really very malicious them- selves,—for they are constantly employed in laughing at other people without usually intending to do them very much harm.
We suppose that it is their own immunity from personal attack which prevents them from acquiring the thick skin of politicians. Ridicule seems so very different in its animus when it is pointed at ourselves and when it is pointed at another, that it is really almost a misfortune that those who point most of the shafts of literary ridicule, so seldom feel the smart inflicted by the satiric weapon.
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