genius, and grace his damnation." It hardly required the couple of
initials ("A" and "E" on pp. 144 and 146 of the first vol.), conceived
and carried out in the Birket Foster manner, with landscape backgrounds
and field-sport symbols, to prove that Nature had not intended the
artist for a _Punch_ draughtsman. He was far better fitted for the
illustration of "Knight's Pictorial Shakespeare" than for comic
draughtsmanship. And when he had spread consternation in the office by
sending in a charge of twelve guineas for the third wrapper, which he
had been commissioned to design--money never being scarcer than at that
moment--the proprietors immediately became equally convinced that such
was not his vocation, and his connection with the paper ceased
forthwith.

I said he drew "in the Birket Foster manner," for that young
draughtsman, who was at the time one of Landells' apprentices, had
already begun to draw initials on p. 85 of _Punch's_ first volume--an
"O," consisting of a laurel wreath with a Lifeguardsman charging
through. These initials--there were thirteen in 1841, eleven in the
following year, and two in 1843--were remarkable work for a boy of
seventeen; and still more remarkable was the fact that he should be
entrusted, even at a pinch, with the execution of a cartoon. It is true
that this was only an adaptation of Cruikshank's plate of "Jack Sheppard
cutting his name on the Beam"--a design highly appreciated at a moment
when the fortunes of Harrison Ainsworth's young housebreaker were being
followed with breathless interest by every section of society; and it is
not less a fact that the head of Lord John Russell was touched up by
Henning. Still the achievement is as remarkable as coming from an artist
of Mr. Birket Foster's temperament, as those other cartoons, executed in
"The Censor" at a later period, by Professor Herkomer. But this was not
all he did, for to him are to be credited also a few miscellaneous
illustrations, as well as those extremely French-looking designs which
he imitated, by order, from drawings by Gavarni for a novelette by
Lecourt (pp. 262, 263 and 275, Vol. I.). As an artist he was entirely
untaught, save for Brine's quaint advice, and for the counsel of
Crowquill that in figure-drawing he should make dots first for the head
and chief joints, as an assistance. For a time he followed these strange
indications on the royal road to drawing, and on them, perhaps, he based
to some extent the ill