ghly appreciated lest it should turn
out to be merely a feeble joke instead of a happily-invented
conversation. There are some of the drawings for jokes which we should
very much like to have included with our illustrations, but the human
mind being so constituted that it goes direct to the legend of an
illustration, feeling "sold" if it isn't there, and the "jokes" in some
of these instances being so fatal to the understanding of the atmosphere
and charm of the drawing, we have had to abandon the idea of doing so.
What the reader has to understand is that circumstances harnessed du
Maurier to a certain business; he imported all manner of extraneous
graces into it, and thus gave a determination to the character of the
art of satire which it will never lose. The pages of _Punch_ were
enriched, beautified, and made more delicately human. _Punch_ gained
everything through the connection and du Maurier a stimulus in the
demand for regular work. But it is not impossible to imagine
circumstances which, but for this early connection with _Punch_, would
have awakened and developed a different and perhaps profounder side of
du Maurier, of which we seem to get a glimpse in the illustrations to
Meredith in _The Cornhill Magazine_.

Section 8

The famous reply of an early Editor to the usual complaint that _Punch_
was not as good as it used to be--"No, sir, it never was"--cannot be
considered to hold good in any comparison between the present period and
that in which the arts of du Maurier and Keene held sway. There have
been periods, there is such a one now, when the literary side of
_Punch_ has touched a high-water mark. But on the illustrative side
_Punch_ seems to be always hoping that another Keene or du Maurier will
turn up. It does not seem prepared to accept work in quite another
style. But there is no more chance of there ever being another Keene
than of there being another Rembrandt, or of there ever being another du
Maurier than another Watteau. The next genius to whom it is given to
illuminate the pages of the classic journal in a style that will rival
the past is not likely to arise from among those who think that there is
no other view of life than that which was discovered by their immediate
predecessors. By force of his genius--or, if you prefer it, of
sympathy--which means the same thing--for some particular phase of life,
some artist may at any moment uncover in its pages an altogether fresh
kind of humour and