ling his comrades with droll stories, creating a witty
atmosphere at his own corner by his taste for repartee.

[Illustration: The Mutual Admirationists

(Fragments overheard by Grigsby and the Colonel at one of Prigsby's
Afternoon Teas.)

_Young Maudle_ (_to Mrs. Lyon Hunter and her Daughters_). "In the
supremest Poetry, Shakespeare's for instance, or Postlethwaite's, or
Shelley's one always feels that," &c., &c., &c.

_Young Postlethwaite_ (_to the three Miss Bilderbogies_). "The
_greatest_ Painters of ALL, such as Velasquez, or Maudle, or even
Titian, invariably suggest to one," &c., &c., &c.

_Punch_, May 22, 1880.]

The difficulties with his sight might well have been expected to poison
the artist's well of happiness. But it was noticed of Charles Lamb that
the very fact of possessing the little pleasures of everyday life only
under a lease, as it were, which Fate at any moment might refuse to
renew, caused him to be the very poet of such pleasures, experiencing
them with an acuteness that became to him an inspiration. With du
Maurier the enjoyment of social life, so manifestly evident in his art
at one time, may well have been entered into with something of the
fierce delight with which we take our sunshine in a rainy summer. In
later years he became home-staying in his habits. One imagines he felt
that he had taken from Society all that it had to give him--the
knowledge of life necessary to him in his work, and friends in
sufficient number. It is from about this time that his art shows
evidence that an intimate contact with the social movement was no longer
sustained. The tendency to repeat himself, to produce his weekly
picture by a sort of formula, becomes noticeable; and the absence of
variety in his work becomes oppressive.

Du Maurier was a man of great natural versatility. For some reason or
other he was not fond of the theatre, but he was in possession of a
considerable genius for monodrama, and often delighted his friends by
his impersonations. We have seen that it was once within the bounds of
possibility that he would have become a professional singer. His
conversational gifts were great. He was a writer of singular
picturesqueness. A considerable interest in the progress of science was
noted in him to the last. If we look back at the record of the lives of
artists to find what manner of men as a rule they were, we shall find
that, in contradistinction to poets and musicians, they were pre-emi