there is one thing to justify the opinion of his admirers that he
is the "Thackeray of the pencil," it is primarily to be found, not so
much in the keen satire of his drawing and legends, but in his
startling, his strikingly truthful creations. Creations we have had from
Leech, Keene, and others--from Leech's pure sense of fun and jollity;
from Keene's unerring observation of men and women, and fleeting
emotion--but those of Mr. du Maurier go deeper into vices, virtues,
habits, and motives, and are at the root of his pictorial commentaries.
He has given us true pictures of the manners of his time; and those
manners he has satirised with more politeness and irony, perhaps, than
broad humour. He worked well with Keene in double harness, and his
pictures are at once a foil and a complement of that genius's work and
_point de vue_. He has satirised everything, and his art has been
admirably adapted to the depth of the civilisation he probes and
dissects. His sense of beauty and tenderness apart, he is to art much
what Corney Grain was to the stage, though his hand is not so heavy; and
while you laugh with Leech, you smile with Mr. du Maurier--lovingly at
his children, respectfully at his pretty women, and sardonically at his
social puppets.

His own particular creations--his types and "series"--are to some
sections of _Punch's_ admirers, _Punch's_ chief attraction. Especially
is this the case in the United States,[59] where to Mr. du Maurier many
people have looked almost exclusively, not only for English fashions in
male and female attire, and the _derniere mode_ in social etiquette, but
for the truest reflection of English life and character. First of all
these types are Sir Gorgius Midas--who, the artist once confided to me,
was drawn without exaggeration from real life--and his common wife and
still vulgarer son. Then Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns, the clever and
scheming, and her husband, depressed and stolidly obedient; the bishop
and the flunkey, all calves and dignity; Grigsby, the "comic" man, and
his punctilious friend, Sir Pompey Bedell, inflated with pretentious
emptiness; 'Arry and 'Arriet, blatant and irrepressible; young Cadby,
the Cockney; and the Duke and Duchess of Stilton, whose very figures
seem to be drawn in purple ink; the refined colonel, a counterpart and
not unworthy comrade of Newcome himself; Maudle, Postlethwaite, and Mrs.
Cimabue Brown, most delightful trio of sickening "aesthetes"--specially
belov