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GEORGE DU MAURIER.

Sa cartoonist for "Punch" for thirty years, Mr. Du Maurier had made himself known to half the world; as the author of "Trilby," he, a few years ago, made himself known to the other half. To be sure, the halves were not entirely separate; the people who had so long watched for and smiled at the caricatures were probably the first readers of the novel; but the readers became a great multitude which no man could number, while the lovers of his pictorial work were but a clique, although a large one.

A few had known him even before " Punch" had exploited him, in the old " Once a Week," where some quaint and whimsical drawings had appeared, in which a few artists and critics recognized a new touch. But the work all had a certain individuality; on even to the end of it all, there could be no mistaking the hand that did those slight, exquisite things, whose charm no one could ever describe, and only the like-minded feel.

How constantly the types were repeated all his admirers knew, but there was still variety in sameness, and a unique delight in finding now and again that all were not gone, the old familiar faces. After one had seen Du Maurier's millionaires and swells and

singers and artists a sufficiently long time, he preferred them to other people, for it is undeniable that there was a bit of chic about them that could not be readily picked up in the shops. The facility in caricature which is now so common, was a development after he first began his labors, not perhaps owing to him very much, but a part of the development of art taste in the people during the time in which he had been working.

Born in Paris in 1834, he had known fully the ups and downs of an artist's life both there and in England. His mixed blood and his residence alternately in the two countries had given him a keen insight into the characters of both the French and English people. He had lived also in Berlin and in Belgium in his youth, and retained some of the pictures there stamped upon an immature mind.

One can but smile at the thought of Du Maurier as a chemist, yet that was the business for which he was first designed by his father. Even in the shop it is said he began to caricature every sort of customer who appeared before him, and his text-books were covered with all sorts of grotesque representations. Some of these were prodigiously funny, and their originality attracted some attention even at that early day. He began to publish first in the "Cornhill," but as early as 1864 began his contributions to "Punch." He lived for many years at Hampstead, and every feature of the landscape which could be seen from his windows entered constantly into his drawings, and was recognized year after year by his friends. Henry James, who always writes of him lovingly, almost caressingly, says on this point:

"I like for this reason, as well as for others, the little round pond where the hill is highest, the folds of the rusty Heath, the dips and dells and ridges, the scattered nooks and precious bits, the old red walls and jealous gates, the old benches in the right places, and even the young couples in the wrong. Nothing was so completely in the right place as the group of Scotch firs that in many a 'Punch' had produced for August or September a semblance of the social deer forest, unless it might be the dome of St. Paul's, which loomed far away, through the brown breath of London."

Here were passed the middle years between his sweet eccentric youth and the time when the world claimed him for its own, after he had published his books which dealt so patiently and so faithfully with his own early life. They were perhaps his happiest days, for they were largely given to the friends of his heart, those artists and literary men, those musicians, and those people of unclassified genius, who sat in the light of his smiles and heard those quaint and merry and pathetic revelations of his inward life, which so enthralled the reading world when they were afterward given in his novels. His intimates had heard them, bit by bit, through all the years of their acquaintance. Here had been told to loving and eager listeners all the dreams of " Peter Ibbetsen," all the experiences of his boyhood in a French school, which so fascinated the readers of "The Martian; and here the descriptions of life in the Latin Quarter which were the charm of "Trilby" had been repeated many times to his cronies, through clouds of smoke. That new note which he struck in his writings, as in his drawings, had long been known to his special Bohemia, as the personal note, struck