recognised as a master as soon as he asserted himself--an
original master with many disciples and more imitators. He cannot be
called a caricaturist, for in his work there lacks that fierce quality
of critical conception--above all, that subject-matter that makes one
think, that sardonic appeal to head and heart at once, which make up the
sum of true caricature. If caricature is drollery, and not humour, as
Carlyle says it is, Mr. May is above all things a humorist, and not at
all a droll. He is neither a politician nor a reformer, nor even, if
properly understood, a satirist. His aim is to show men and things as
they really are, seen through a curtain of fun and raillery--not as they
might or ought to be. Yet the essence of his work is inexorable truth,
and his version of life is depicted to a delighted public with the
unerring pencil of a laughing philosopher. And, moreover, his greatest
quality is the astounding excellence of his draughtsmanship, which, so
far from being germane to caricature, is not only unnecessary to it, but
sometimes even a hindrance.

And so Mr. May began with his "social" cuts for _Punch_, selecting "low
life" for the most part, as Mr. du Maurier chose high life, and making
for every picture as careful a study from Nature as ever Charles Keene
did--and probably as many of them. Furthermore, he prefers to seek out
his jokes for himself. When he was in New York and found that the
professional joke-purveyor was untrustworthy, he sauntered into a
police court in the hope of finding character there, and perhaps humour.
A woman was up before the magistrate on a charge of drunkenness--a
charge which the lady denied. "How do you know she was drunk?" asked the
magistrate. "She walked into a baker's shop," replied the policeman,
"and wanted to buy a bonnet." The evidence was accepted as conclusive;
and Mr. May sketched the prisoner there and then, and introduced her
into his first drawing for _Punch's_ page as the gutter-woman who,
looking over an illustrated paper, confides to a friend that the
portrait it contains of "Lady Sorlsbury" isn't a bit like what she
really is in private life. Mr. May was in due course drawn into
_Punch's_ net, and eating his first Dinner in February, 1895, he cut his
initials on the Table between those of Thackeray and Mr. du Maurier. The
accompanying sketch was the eloquent announcement I received of his
promotion.

[Illustration: "I JOINED THE 'PUNCH' TABLE LAST WEEK, AND