oured. It was new to find our genial old friend smiling
an invitation to us--in Bond Street. This--which I took for a
lithographed "poster"--was Mr. Grego's own work, portrayed in water
colours.

There have been many would-be illustrators of the chronicle, some on
original lines of their own; but these must be on the whole pronounced to
be failures. On looking at them we somehow feel that the figures and
situations are wholly strange to us; that we don't know them or recognize
them. The reason is possibly that the artists are not in perfect
sympathy or intelligence with the story; they do not know every turning,
corner and cranny of it, as did "Phiz"--and indeed as did everyone else
living at that time; they were not inspired, above all, by its author.
But there was a more serious reason still for the failure. It will be
seen that in Phiz's wonderful plates the faces and figures are more or
less _generalized_. We cannot tell exactly, for instance, what were Mr.
Winkle's or even Sam Weller's features. Neither their mouths, eyes, or
noses, could be put in distinct shape. We have only the general air and
tone and suggestion--as of persons seen afar off in a crowd. Yet they
are always recognizable. This is art, and it gave the artist a greater
freedom in his treatment. Now when an illustrator like the late
Frederick Barnard came, he drew his Jingle, his Pickwick, Weller, and
Winkle, with _all_ their features, in quite a literal and particular
fashion--the features were minutely and carefully brought out, with the
result that they seem almost strange to us. Nor do they express the
characters. There _is_ an expression, but it seems not the one to which
we are accustomed. Mr. Pickwick is generally shown as a rather "cranky"
and testy old gentleman in his expressions, whereas the note of all
"Phiz's" faces is a good softness and unctuousness even. Now this
somewhat philosophical analysis points to a principle in art illustration
which accounts in a great measure for the unsatisfactory results where it
is attempted to illustrate familiar works--such as those of Tennyson,
Shakespeare, etc. The reader has a fixed idea before him, which he has
formed for himself--an indistinct, shapeless one it might be, but still
of sufficient outline to be disturbed. Among the innumerable
presentments of Shakespeare's heroines no one has ever seen any that
satisfied or that even corresponded. They are usually not generalized
eno