_From "Paris and Some Parisians"_]




_FRANK REYNOLDS._ III.

How does one portray a type? What are the rules that govern the
selection of those separate distinctive features which are to form,
when blended together, one harmoniously characteristic whole? Frank
Reynolds, surely, of all people should be able to answer. But if
the question be asked him, he will reply that he does not know.
The process is unconscious, or almost so. The portrait "comes"
of its own accord. Reflection shows that this must be so. If the
artist were to try deliberately to copy this or that feature from
concrete personalities, the result would fail to carry conviction.
The portrait of a type must be the presentment of an abstract
personality--a print, as it were, from a composite negative comprising
the likenesses of many individuals, so welded together as to reproduce
only that which is common to all: a collective portrait which is
like all but resembles none.

[Illustration: There's no 'olding 'im now, sir, since 'e's gone
into knickers--e's' that pomptious!
_From "Punch"_]

It is related of Charles Dickens that the creation of many of his
famous characters was inspired by a chance remark overheard in the
street. A single telling sentence, uttering some quaint sentiment,
perhaps in quaint idiom, would set up a train of ideas ultimately