comprehensible arrangement of little groups, and a neat, dainty manner,
in which wise it was no difficult task for him to represent such scenes
with truth and grace. Thus we find these pictures of his, which, for
the most part, are painted on small sheets, his sports, banterings,
quarrellings, sledge-parties of children, with their half-frozen but
still merry faces, in their puffy yet not unpicturesque costume; his
beggar-boys, with their rag-ware on their backs, are almost always
genial and pleasing. In the course of his narrow, in-doors life, he
had worked himself into a friendly, nay, as it were, almost paternal
relation with domestic and fire-side animals, especially with cats.
While he sat painting, a cat might generally be seen sitting on his back
or on his shoulder; and many times he kept, for hours, the most awkward
postures, that he might not disturb it. Frequently there was a second
cat sitting by him on the table, watching how the work went on;
sometimes a kitten or two lay in his lap under the table. Frogs (in
bottle) floated beside his easel; and with all these creatures he kept
up a most playful, loving style of conversation; though, often enough,
any human beings about him, or such even as came to see him, were
growled or grunted at in no social fashion. His countenance, especially
in latter years, was a mixture of the bear's, the lion's, and the human,
for most part of a dull brick-colour; so that many people, particularly
children, were afraid to look at him. In figure he was very small, and
bent; but, at the same time, had hands and fingers of extraordinary
size and coarseness, with which, nevertheless, he produced the cleanest
and prettiest drawings. His chief diligence and most careful elegance
he brought to work in the painting of his beloved cats. In right
delineation of their forms he had the art to seize the general nature
of this animal, and, in the portrait-like indication of their various
physiognomies, to reflect the specific character of each. The
sycophantic look full of falseness, the dainty movements of the kittens,