ce as a lay figure; while the walls of
Northampton Castle (in "King John") are so much out of the
perpendicular, that the courtiers seem less concerned at finding the
dead body of Arthur, than in seeking a place of shelter from the
impending downfall. Henry the Eighth, although acknowledged to be a
corpulent, was not, so far as we know, a deformed man; the preposterous
"beak" of Richard the Third occupies one half of his otherwise
remarkably short face, and its owner (in the well-known tent scene)
suffers from an attack of tetanus instead of an accession of mental
terror. These eccentric realizations, in which he has succeeded in
setting all the rules of drawing at defiance, are rendered the more
remarkable by reason of the circumstance that the work now under
consideration is interspersed with numerous charming drawings, the
effect of which is wholly marred by these erratic performances. Meadows
was an admirable water-colour artist, and a scarce edition of this work
contains some engravings of Shakespearian heroines after his designs.
The Germans fancy they understand Shakespeare better than ourselves (an
amiable and complimentary weakness), and the work was favourably
received in Germany, the artist's conception of Falstaff, in particular,
being so highly appreciated that a bronze statuette was modelled after
it, which enjoyed a large sale.

His ideas of female beauty were almost as eccentric as those of
Cruikshank. A couple of beauties of the Meadows type will be found at
page 3 of Henry Cockton's "Sisters" (Nodes, 1844), where one lady is
represented to us with a neck like that of a giraffe, whilst her sister
beauty is sensibly inconvenienced by a lock of hair which has strayed
into her eye,--a favourite device, by the way, of the artist. This book,
now scarce (in the illustration of which he was assisted by Alfred
Crowquill), is adorned with a portrait on steel, after a painting by
Childe, in which the author is presented to us in a white waistcoat and
dress coat, with a pen in his hand, leading us to the inference that his
clumsily constructed novels (one of which--"Valentine Vox," thanks
perhaps to the illustrator, Onwhyn--still holds its ground) were written
in evening costume.

But notwithstanding these failures, Kenny Meadows has happily left
behind him work of a very much better kind. His Christmas pictures in
particular are impressed with the kindly, genial humour which
characterized the man; the "Illumina