Du Maurier could add a reason of his own for availing himself of the
opportunity to enlarge his drawings when he could, namely, that of his
weak sight. But it is certainly not among the large drawings that we
should look for the work that places him in the place we wish to claim
for him.

It will well repay the student of du Maurier's art to look into the
illustration for the novel _Wives and_ _Daughters_ reproduced on page
26. In this very highly finished picture the drawing of all the detail
seems done with the greatest pleasure to the artist. It has not the
breadth of style which du Maurier himself could admire in Keene, but the
line work is intensely sympathetic throughout; there is that enjoyment
in the actual touch of pen to paper which was always characteristic of
Keene, which is always special to great art; which, alas, was not always
characteristic of du Maurier. It is like the touch of a sympathetic
musician. Du Maurier, always generous to his contemporaries, in his
lecture upon art, instances the natural skill of Walker by his success
with the difficulties of drawing a tall hat. But Walker himself has
nothing of this kind better to show than the hat in the picture we are
describing.


§6

In the early eighties the change was made from drawing on wood to
drawing on paper for _Punch_, the drawing being afterwards photographed
on to the wood. Later, metal was made possible as a substitute for wood,
and this enabled illustrations and letterpress to be printed together.
The modern process of reproduction has introduced its own pleasant