find in vain in du Maurier's professional work.
It is a sympathetic pen-drawing; the lines express much more than a
formula--they secure a dramatic play of shadow.

This memorandum--for that is what the drawing is--was, we believe, never
used by du Maurier, though some of the sketches appearing here--that,
for instance, of the lady with a child in her arms (page 64), and that
of the girl in a window-seat, wearing a frilled dress (facing page
176)--can be found serving as initial letters and head-pieces in the
early _Cornhill Magazines_, carried no farther in finish than they are
here.

So far as one can judge from the study for an illustration to _Wives and
Daughters_ (facing page 36), which we print with the illustration as it
actually appeared in the _Cornhill_, seems to show that the artist could
carry the conception of a drawing a long way without reference to a
model. The sketch of the girl near the window affords us, in its
Whistlerian suggestiveness and refinement, another instance of the
purely artistic qualities which some critics have denied du Maurier the
ability to secure, his professional ready style being too quickly
accepted as completely expressing to the full his artistic nature. Du
Maurier seems to have purchased his great journalistic and worldly
success at the expense of qualities not altogether dissimilar from those
shown in the works of Whistler, his companion at the beginning of his
career. The pen sketch referred to of the girl by the window, the soft
shadow outlining her face and falling upon the chair, the play of the
line that suggests the contour of her figure, all reveal something of
the refined skill, economy, and sensitiveness of expression that
distinguished everything of Whistler's.

And du Maurier's handwriting--witness the manuscript for his French
version of Byron's "Sun of the sleepless--melancholy star!" which
appeared in the _Illustrated Magazine_--is characteristic of an
exquisite artist in its pleasant nervous beauty of style. It is the
writing of one who could have etched. Etching demands only the most
autographic features of a man's draughtsmanship; it prevents him from
spreading himself in the irrelevancies of space-covering lines necessary
in work done to meet the demand of the Editor's measure. The demand must
have its effect on those who meet it, in diluting the intimate quality
of their work, so that it is not always easy to estimate the real
strength of artistic impul