as in life, in the picturesque as well as in the humorous, he can
display a notable mastery."

This confession of one of my "chosen familiars" I have the pluck to
reprint, as an answer to those unknown strangers who so frequently write
me down as "a conventional comic draughtsman of funny ill-drawn little
figures." "What shall I call him?" said one; "a master of
hieroglyphics?" Well, if I am commissioned to draw humorous
hieroglyphics, I do my best to master their difficulties. Caricature
pure and simple is not the art I either care for or succeed in
practising as well as I do in my less known more serious and more
finished work. When I joined _Punch_, at the age of twenty-six, I had
had nine-tenths of my time previous to that occupied (ever since I was
fifteen years of age) in drawing far more elaborate and finished work
than would be in keeping in a periodical such as _Punch_. _Punch_
required "funny little figures," and I supplied them; but my _metier_, I
must confess, was work requiring more demand upon direct draughtsmanship
and power. I am a funny man, a caricaturist, by force of circumstances;
an artist, a satirist, and a cartoonist by nature and training. The one
requires technical knowledge--in the other, "drawing doesn't count." The
more amateurish the work, the funnier the public consider it. The
serious confession I have to make is that I have been mistaken for a
caricaturist in the accepted and limited meaning of the term.

"It is the ambition of every low comedian to play Hamlet, that of every
caricaturist to be able to paint a picture which shall be worthy of a
place on the walls of the National Gallery," are my own words on the
platform; but I do not essay to play Hamlet on the platform, nor do I
paint pictures for posterity in my studio. Therefore I do not place
myself in the category of either, for I am neither a low comedian nor
am I strictly and solely a mere caricaturist. This fact is perhaps not
generally known to the public, but it is known to the publishers, and
when a Society Church paper wished to present a series of
supplements--portraits of the leading clergy--I was selected as the
artist. The portrait of Canon Liddon, which is here very much reduced,
is one of these.

[Illustration: CANON LIDDON. A SKETCH FROM LIFE.]

And furthermore I received a commission from General Booth, which
unfortunately, through pressure of work, I was unable to undertake, to
make a study of Mrs. Booth, who was