Bright tilting at a
quintain under the title of "Pros and Cons," Mr. Sambourne found
himself, at the age of twenty-two, a regular contributor to
_Punch_--though he had still to wait until 1871 before he was rewarded
with a seat at the Table.

Of artistic education he had had practically none. In the engineering
drawing-office he had learned how to handle the pen and to put it to
uses which have become a feature of his draughtsmanship. But besides a
life-school attendance extending over not more than a fortnight, he had
no other teachers than his own eyes and his own intelligence. In his
earliest work with the pencil there was a curious use of the point.
Suddenly he was called upon, through the unexpected absence of Charles
Keene from town, for more important work than that with which he had
hitherto been entrusted. This was the half-page head-piece and the
tail-piece to the preface to Vol. LIII. Then came promotion to the
"small socials" and "half-page socials." Some of the work he did fairly
well, founding himself now upon Leech, now upon Keene; but his character
and originality were too powerful to follow any man. He began to form a
style of his own, and that style did not lend itself to the
representation of modern life. It was suited better for decoration than
for movement; while the beauty of line and of silhouette which he sought
and obtained, in spite of his intense, almost aggressive, individuality,
placed him absolutely apart from all the black-and-white artists of the
day.

It was, I have said, to the example of his predecessor, Charles H.
Bennett, who died in April, 1867 (the very month in which Sambourne's
first drawing appeared), that we owe those wonderful initial letters to
the "Essence of Parliament" of Shirley Brooks--those intricate drawings
which, covering nearly a whole page, were such miracles of invention, of
fancy, and of allusion, swarming with figures, overflowing with
suggestion, teeming with subtle symbolism. But these things did not come
at once. It was not until the "comic cut" idea was put entirely on one
side and his imagination allowed full play, that Mr. Sambourne fully
developed his powers--his strength of conception, design, and execution.
And then it was that he revealed the fact that though a humorist--and
invariably, too, a good-humorist--by necessity, he is a classic by
feeling.

The artist's personality, as it should, impresses us first, powerfully
and irresistibly. While unde