more stately, decorative, and
safe.

Amongst Keene's own subjects are to be included the greater number of
those series of drawings dealing with artist and volunteer life; but it
must be recognised that to a great extent Keene was frankly the
illustrator of other men's ideas, and often of other men's "legends."
These legends, or "cackle," were often touched up by Keene; but
sometimes they were entirely original. And though it must be admitted
that they are not concise as Leech's, they are, as a rule, more
life-like, more truthfully Impressionistic--just as his drawings are.
The "legend," by the way, Keene used to term the "libretto"--a
reflection, as it were, of his passion for music (a passion he shared
with Gainsborough and Dyce and Romney, and so many more of our most
eminent artists). This love of music he indulged at the meetings of the
Moray Minstrels, in the Crystal Palace Choir during the Handel
Festivals, and in the depths of the country, wherein he would bury
himself in order to torture the bagpipes, without testing too severely
the forbearance of his fellow-men.

When he secured a good story--which he loved to impart with an ecstatic
wink to one or other of his closest friends--he would look as carefully
to the "libretto" as to the drawing, as in the case of the British
farmer who, crossing the Channel for the first time--in great discomfort
at the roll of the boat--"This Capt'n don't understand his business.
_Dang it, why don't he keep in the furrows?_" or the story--older, by
the way, than Keene had any knowledge of--of the Scotchman who was asked
by a friend, upon whom he had called, if he would take a glass of
whiskey. "No," he said, "it's too airly; besides, I've had a gill
a'ready!"

[Illustration: CHARLES KEENE TORTURING THE BAGPIPES.

(_From a Pen-Drawing by Himself. By Permission of Henry S. Keene.
Engraved by J. Swain._)]

And when his legends were altered by the Editor he would fret for a
week. Once when Tom Taylor altered the good Scotch of a "field preacher"
(Almanac for 1880) he declared himself "in a great rage," and swore that
he would "never forgive" the delinquent. On other occasions, too, he
fumed at the desecration of his "librettos;" and when the word "last"
was accidentally omitted from his joke--"Heard my [last] new song?" "Oh,
Lor! I hope so!!" he mourned over the loss of the point. Yet he might
have been comforted; for had the word been retained, the further charge
of plagiaris