pears more impressive with
its proper style of "H H H H H H"--and so delicate was the drawing that,
firm and solid as were the lines, it looked as if you could blow it off
the wood. The result is that Swain has always _interpreted_ Sir John
Tenniel's work, not simply facsimile'd it, aiming rather at producing
what the artist intended or desired to have, than what he actually
provided in his exquisite grey drawings. So Swain would thicken his
lines while retaining their character, just as he would reduce Mr.
Sambourne's, particularly in the flesh parts, and otherwise bring the
resources of the engraver's art to bear upon the work of the masters of
the pencil. Doubtless the artists might deplore the "spoiling" of their
lines; but pencil greys are not to be reproduced in printer's ink--they
must be "rendered." And though, as artists, draughtsmen may groan under
the transitional process, they realise that in submitting their work to
the wood-cutter's craft, they must take its drawbacks along with its
advantages.

[Illustration: ROUGH SKETCH FOR "THOR" FOR "PUNCH'S POCKET-BOOK."]

The first drawing by Tenniel in the bound volume is, as he says, the
frontispiece to the second half-yearly volume for 1850, but his actual
first contribution the initial on p. 224 of that volume. Perhaps the
most notable thing about it is the extraordinary resemblance between
the artist's work at the beginning and at the end of his career. Of
course, it is much "tighter;" it is much younger. But the hand and
method are strangely unchanged. It is beautiful in its exquisite
precision and its refinement, and altogether superior in its character
to what its creator, in a spirit of severe self-criticism, chooses to
believe. "My first cartoon," he wrote to me, "was 'Lord Jack the
Giant-Killer'--and awfully bad it is; in fact, all my work, at that
particular time, NOW seems to me about as bad as bad could be, and fills
me with wonder and amazement!!" But this cartoon, continuing the Papal
campaign so hateful to Doyle, by showing Lord John Russell with his
sword of truth and liberty attacking the crozier-armed Cardinal Wiseman,
was greatly inferior to the smaller contributions. His improvement,
however, was rapid. Tenniel's first "half-page social" is on p. 218 of
the same volume; while in 1852 we have his first superb Lion, and his
first obituary cartoon. Gradually he took over the political big cut,
which Leech was happy to place in his hands; but duri