ls to put into
circulation, when he can, a character to whom he may attribute as many
as possible of the affectations or the vices of the day. Robert Macaire,
an imaginative, a romantic rascal, was the hero of a highly successful
melodrama written for Frederick Lemaitre; but Daumier made him the
type of the swindler at large in an age of feverish speculation--the
projector of showy companies, the advertiser of worthless shares. There
is a whole series of drawings descriptive of his exploits, a hundred
masterly plates which, according to M. Champfleury, consecrated
Daumier's reputation. The subject, the legend, was in most cases, still
according to M. Champfleury, suggested by Philipon. Sometimes it was
very witty; as for instance when Bertrand, the muddled acolyte or
scraping second fiddle of the hero, objects, in relation to a brilliant
scheme which he has just developed, with the part Bertrand is to play,
that there are constables in the country, and he promptly replies,
"Constables? So much the better--they'll take the shares!" Ratapoil was
an evocation of the same general character, but with a difference of
_nuance_--the ragged political bully, or hand-to-mouth demagogue, with
the smashed tall hat, cocked to one side, the absence of linen, the club
half-way up his sleeve, the swagger and pose of being gallant for the
people. Ratapoil abounds in the promiscuous drawings that I have looked
over, and is always very strong and living, with a considerable element
of the sinister, so often in Daumier an accompaniment of the comic.
There is an admirable page--it brings the idea down to 1851--in which
a sordid but astute peasant, twirling his thumbs on his stomach and
looking askance, allows this political adviser to urge upon him in
a whisper that there is not a minute to lose--to lose for action, of
course--if he wishes to keep his wife, his house, his field, his heifer
and his calf. The canny scepticism in the ugly, half-averted face of the
typical rustic who considerably suspects his counsellor is indicated by
a few masterly strokes.

This is what the student of Daumier recognizes as his science, or, if
the word has a better grace, his art. It is what has kept life in his
work so long after so many of the occasions of it have been swept into
darkness. Indeed, there is no such commentary on renown as the "back
numbers" of a comic journal. They show us that at certain moments
certain people were eminent, only to make us u