of Robbing Roy to the Gaiety Theatre in 1879. Burnand's prolific writing came at some cost in quality. A biographer wrote that he "was a facile and slapdash writer. False rhymes and awkward rhythms occur frequently in his verse, and his favourite devices included puns, topical references and slang." Burnand also translated or adapted for the London stage several French operettas by Offenbach, Edmond Audran, Charles Lecocq and Robert Planquette. At the same time as his busy theatrical career, he was a member of the staff of Punch under Lemon and his successors, Shirley Brooks and Tom Taylor, writing a regular stream of genial articles. His best-known work for the magazine was the column "Happy Thoughts", in which the narrator recorded the difficulties and distractions of everyday life. A. A. Milne considered it "one of the most popular series which has ever appeared in Punch"; alongside it, he rated as Burnand's best comic contributions his burlesques of other writers, such as "The New History of Sandford and Merton" (1872) and "Strapmore" by "Weeder" (1878). 1880s: editor of Punch The third editor of Punch, Tom Taylor, died in July 1880; the proprietors of the magazine appointed Burnand to succeed him. In Milne's view the magazine's reputation increased considerably under Burnand: A later biographer, Jane Stedman, writes, "His predecessor, Tom Taylor, had allowed the paper to become heavy, but Burnand's rackety leadership brightened it." Burnand, who declared himself "hostile to no man's religion", banned Punch's previous anti-Catholicism, although he was unable to prevent some antisemitic jokes. One of Burnand's biggest successes, both in Punch and on stage, was satire of the aesthetic movement. His play The Colonel (1881), based on The Serious Family, a play by Morris Barnett, ran for 550 performances and toured extensively. It made so much money for the actor-manager Edgar Bruce that he was able to build the Prince of Wales Theatre. Burnand rushed The Colonel into production to make sure that it opened several months before Gilbert and Sullivan's similarly themed comic opera, Patience, but Patience ran even longer than The Colonel. Oscar Wilde, no fan of Burnand's farces, wrote, in anticipation of seeing Patience: "With Gilbert and Sullivan I am sure we will have something better than the dull farce of The Colonel". For the Gaiety Theatre, Burnand wrote a burlesque of The Tempest entitled Ariel in October 1883, with music by Meyer Lutz, starring Nellie