e nations. It is not a happy effort, and is clearly
inspired by Doyle--whose fancy the Editor was still seeking to replace;
and, moreover, it is poorly engraved; but it is as full of figures as of
incident. Then came C. H. Bradley, who seldom got beyond initials and
trifles of large heads on little bodies, being only once or twice
promoted to "socials" during the nine years of his connection with the
paper. On occasion he showed real humour, while his artistic merit seems
to have owed most of what excellence it possessed to the study of
Tenniel's work. Bradley, whose monogram might easily be mistaken by the
unwary for that of C. H. Bennett, who followed eight years later,
executed but five-and-thirty cuts between 1852 and 1860.

[Illustration: CHARLES S. KEENE.

(_Drawn by J. D. Watson. By Courtesy of "Black and White."_)]

_Punch_ was ten years old when the hand of Charles Keene, but not
Charles Keene himself, was introduced to the Editor, through the
instrumentality of Mr. Henry Silver. Keene had at first been intended
for the law, and afterwards had spent a short period in an architect's
office. But he decided to throw himself into art; and in order to learn
engraving and drawing on the wood, he followed the practice of the day
(such as had been adopted by Leech, William Harvey, Fred Walker, Mr.
Birket Foster, Mr. Walter Crane, and other of _Punch's_ artists), and
apprenticed himself to an engraver--Whymper, for choice. Then he studied
along with his comrade Tenniel and other incipient geniuses at the
Clipstone Street Academy, and as early as 1846 produced with his
friend--who was soon to be his fellow-giant on _Punch_--the "Book of
Beauty," already referred to. He took a studio in the Strand--a
sky-parlour renowned for its dust and inaccessibility--and lived, as all
good Bohemians should, chiefly on art, song, and smoke: an existence
sweetened by a few warm but eclectic friendships. He worked desperately
hard, and having, through his fellow-shireman Samuel Read, become
connected with the "Illustrated London News," he made for it many
drawings of the sort now called "actuality."

By that time Mr. Henry Silver had contracted with Keene an
acquaintanceship which was to grow into a warm friendship, and it was
under the shadow of that intimacy that his earlier contributions were
made. As Mr. Silver himself explains in his statement written for Mr.
George S. Layard's admirable "Life and Letters of Charles Keene of
_Pu