an article published after his death the Pall Mall Gazette says, 'Painters and draughtsmen alike place Charles Keene at the head of all the artists who have ever drawn for Punch.""

What has become of the original drawings which masters like Keene have executed for reproduction through wood-engraving up to ten or fifteen years ago? Nearly all of the precious originals which were thus published have been annihilated in the process of reproduction. The artist made his drawing on the wood-block direct, and the engraver in cutting the block (more or less faithfully) of necessity destroyed the artist's original design. Thus it happens that very few of the earlier published designs of Keene and his contemporaries remain in existence- and the loss is irreparable. Fortunately for art in the present day, what is vaguely termed "process" work gives us not only a tolerably faithful copy of the artist's drawing, but also allows the drawing itself to remain intact.

But most happily for the memory of Charles Keene it happens that his very best original works are still available. These are the intimate little studies and sketches which he did solely for himself, and which have been piously preserved by his family. When he worked for publication he was bound to subordinate his own artistic convictions to the requirements of his editor who in turn was tied down to the taste of the "big public"; and no artistic creator is at his best unless when he works to please himself alone.

IN

GEORGE DU MAURIER

ARTIST, HUMORIST, NOVELIST

this strange world of ours it certainly is "the unexpected which happens." Within the past week the greatest of living Englishmen, Gladstone, now eighty-six years old, has been thrilling the civilized world with his unimpaired eloquence in the cause of justice and mercy, while the same newspapers that reported his great appeal also contained the news that George du Maurier— young enough to be Gladstone's son "slightly indisposed." Later we read that he was "resting quietly"; and by Thursday last he was resting quietly indeed for he was dead.

was

I have sometimes expressed the hope that du Maurier's life would outlast my own, and now that he is gone I am one of the many who will miss him sadly. When, during my yearly sojourn in London, I would visit some reading-room where all the best periodicals were at hand, some dominating impulse always led me to do the same thing. I would first get hold of the latest number of Punch, and next I would seek out in it the picture by du Maurier. But I had not done with him when I had done with his picture, for the printed legend below - often brilliantly witty and always of delicious literary quality - was his work as well.

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST Size of the original drawing, 4 by 33 inches. From the drawing by George du Maurier

Many hoth, returns of the day, Billy!

"MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY."

Size of the original drawing, 4 by 63 inches.

From the drawing by George du Maurier.

Punch's salutary rule used to be that the artists should confine themselves to illustrating the subjects furnished them by the literary staff, but du Maurier was too big a man to be trammeled by an editor's rule; and it was this very practise of his which made a trained writer of him, so that when, at the age of nearly sixty, he produced his first novel, his book bore no trace of the "prentice hand," and he at once took rank with the eminent veterans of contemporary literature.

Nobody will feel disposed to contradict me when I say that it is not in me to make so good an editor as Mr. Alden of Harper's Magazine! It is certain that he was right and I was wrong in our first estimate of du Maurier as a novelist. When I read "Peter Ibbetson," though I found the earlier chapters charming, yet the rest of the book seemed to me to be unreal and almost tiresome; and so, when a second story, entitled "Trilby," was announced as forthcoming, I was tempted to think that the editor had made a mistake. Well, "Trilby" proved to be a delight to the whole English-speaking world; but unless a man has lived among the artists of the Latin Quarter in Paris he cannot know how entirely good the book is. Was there ever so good a novel so well illustrated by its author? I think not. Thackeray's text of "Vanity Fair" outweighs that of "Trilby," but du Maurier's illustrations are incomparably better than Thackeray's.

And yet it was the custom of a few critics to maintain that du Maurier was not a great