still more in the originals of these, the
masterly pen-and-ink drawings which are now for the first time shown
in a collected form to the Public."

So says Mr. CLAUDE PHILLIPS, in his "Prefatory Note," to the
"Catalogue of a Collection of Drawings of the late CHARLES KEENE," now
on view at the Rooms of the Fine Arts Society, 148, New Bond Street.

If the British Public possess that "taste for Art" and that "sense of
humour" which some claim for and others deny to it, it (the B.P.) will
throng the comfortable and well-lighted Gallery in New Bond Street,
where hang some hundreds of specimens of the later work of the most
unaffected humorist, and most masterly "Black-and-White" artist of
his time. Walk up, Ladies and Gentlemen, and see--such miracles of
delineation, such witcheries of effect, as were never before put on
paper by simple pen-and-ink!

It is difficult to realise sometimes that it _is_ pen and ink, and
that only--all the delightful display of fresh English landscape and
unsophisticated British humanity, teeming with effects of distance,
hints of atmosphere, and suggestions of colour. Many a much-belauded
brush is but a fumbling and ineffective tool, compared with
the ink-charged crowquill handled by CHARLES KEENE. Look at
"_Grandiloquence_!" (No. 220) There's composition! There's effect!
Stretch of sea, schooner, PAT's petty craft, grandiloquent PAT
himself, a nautical Colossus astride on his own cock-boat, with stable
sea-legs firmly dispread, the swirl of the sea, the swish of the
waves, the very whiff of the wind so vividly suggested!--and all in
some few square inches of "Black-and-White!"

Look, again, at the breadth of treatment, the power of humorous
characterisation, the strong charm of _technique_, the colour, the
action, the marvellous ease and accuracy of street perspective in No.
16 ("_The Penny Toy!_"). Action? Why, you can _see_ the old lady jump,
let alone the frog! Fix your eye on the frightened dame's foot, and
you'll swear it jerks in time to the leap of the "horrid reptile."

Or at that vivid bit of London "hoarding," and London low life, and
London street-distance in "_'Andicapped!_" (No. 25.) Good as is the
"gaol-bird," is not the wonderfully real "hoarding" almost better?

Who now can draw--or, for that matter, _paint_--such a shopkeeper,
_such_ a shop, _such_ a child customer as those in "_All Alive!_" (No.
41), where the _Little Girl_ a-tip-toe with a wedge of cheap "Cheddar"
at