ninterrupted
course of prosperity for a period of upwards of two and twenty years.

The enormous success and reputation which the "sketches," as they were
called, achieved, was due not only to the cleverness and originality of
the artist himself, but also in a great measure to the mystery which
attended their publication and appearance. Both parties concerned in
their production preserved an inviolable secrecy on the subject of the
identity of the artist and the place whence the "sketches" originated.
Mr. Buss tells us,[109] "the drawings were called for in a mysterious
hackney coach, mysteriously deposited in a mysterious lithographic
printing office, and as mysteriously printed and mysteriously stored
until the right day of publication." The HB mystery was most religiously
preserved for a great number of years, both by the artist and the
publisher. The initials afforded no clue to those not immediately
concerned in preserving the secret; and yet in this very original
monogram lay the key to the whole of the mystery. The origin of this
signature was simply the junction of two I's and two D's (one above the
other), thus converting the double initials into HB. The single initials
were those of John Doyle, father of the late Richard Doyle, who
afterwards made his own mark as a comic artist in the pages of _Punch_
and elsewhere.

The "sketches" of HB were a complete innovation upon pictorial satire.
The idea of satirizing political subjects and public men without the
exaggeration or vulgarity which the caricaturists had more or less
inherited from Gillray, was entirely new to the public, and took with
them immensely; and herein lies their peculiarity, that whilst the
subjects are treated with a distinctly sarcastic humour, there is an
absence of anything approaching to exaggeration, and the likenesses of
the persons represented are most faithfully preserved. Whilst claiming
for himself the character of a pictorial satirist, the artist is all
throughout anxious to impress upon you the fact that he repudiates the
notion of being considered a caricaturist in the Johnsonian meaning of
the word. This _idea_ seems also to have struck Thackeray, who, writing
at the time when the sketches were appearing, says of him, "You never
hear any laughing at 'H.B.'; his pictures are a great deal too genteel
for that,--polite points of wit, which strike one as exceedingly clever
and pretty, and cause one to smile in a quiet, gentlemanlike k