f a great literary masterpiece, and Doyle's conception of
the Colonel, of Honeyman, of Lady Kew, is accepted at once as authentic
portraiture. In Ethel he was less happy, which was a misfortune, as she
was the heroine of the book; but many of the minor characters were
successes of the most striking and indisputable kind." Further on, he
says of Doyle's etching, _A Student of the Old Masters_,--"Colonel
Newcome is sitting in the National Gallery, trying to see the merits of
the old masters. Observe the enormous exaggeration of aerial perspective
resorted to in order to detach the figure of the Colonel. The people
behind him must be several miles away; the floor of the room, if judged
by aerial perspective only, is as broad as the Lake of Lucerne." The
criticism, though exaggerated, is not unfair or unjust; but the people
are certainly not miles away. Doyle has perpetuated a mistake common
with many English artists, who seem to think, as Hazlitt expresses it,
that, "if they only leave out the subordinate parts, they are sure of
the general result."[191] Doyle's intention to give us a portrait of
Colonel Newcome _only_ has prompted him to treat the subordinates as
almost non-existent. His work, however, was never intended to be
faultless; it carries out his own intention most thoroughly and
admirably, and in a manner very far superior to anything which Thackeray
himself could have done.

The closing scenes in the life of this most amiable and unselfish of
artists we give in the singularly graceful words of his Catholic
biographer: "In the autumn of last year (1883), Mr. Doyle spent some
time in North Devon, and while there painted a picture of Lynton
churchyard. The view is taken at a distance of some ten or fifteen yards
to the south-west of the church, and is looking in an easterly
direction. In front of the picture one sees far down below the blue
waters of the Bristol Channel, while behind the picturesque little
church nestles among the trees. In the churchyard an old man is mowing
down the long grass amid the graves, while two or three little children
scatter flowers on one of them. This picture was unfinished at the time
of his death. A strange coincidence that he should have chosen such a
scene for his last picture, when, as far as man can judge, he had no
sort of reason for thinking that death was so near; stranger still, that
on his return home he chose for the sketch a black frame, as if to
clothe it in the garb