Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/497

1885.] clad, is floating towards her, expressing as plainly as looks may, "Poor dear!" while another in white raiment pats her panting breast. Two sprites that have woven a necklace of grass are putting it round the hare's neck; two more are bringing her red berries, as a slight refreshment after her exertions – the one presenting the offering on a leaf-platter, the other on the point of a thorn. An elf in scarlet, seated easily, though it might be thought uncomfortably, on the stem of a bramble, is watching the hunters, evidently in order to give notice if they should return. And besides these, the grass and stems are populous with quaint forms, half sprite, half insect, who have no particular concern in the hare, but have been disturbed by the commotion, as a swarm of flies by an approaching step. This drawing, beautifully executed, is the more welcome as showing the race to be actuated by the novel impulse of benevolence.

When not employed in his more serious and important function of showing us what goes on in fairy and dragon circles, Mr Doyle could relax into representations of our own scenery. He could show us the leafy recesses of a dell in Devonshire, or the stately towers of a baronial castle in the North. One of his best landscapes represents the park and seat of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, which, contrary to what might be anticipated respecting the surroundings of that apostle of temperance, contains no water, but is full of spirit. On the verge of the crowded tombstones of Haworth churchyard, he has placed the dreary parsonage where the Brontës lived their intense imaginative lives the – picture being perhaps his reply to the question, "Tell me, where is Fancy bred?" In early days he gave us the many comic outlines of daily life which adorned 'Punch,' and the grotesque illustrations of our national history which he describes as rejected in the competition for decorating the walls of Westminster. But his real business lay with the scenery of that pleasant moonlit land where Oberon ruled in the days of Duke Theseus and Bully Bottom, and which in more recent times had been illustrated by the French fairy chroniclers, Perrault and Madame d'Aulnois.

A superficial observer would never have guessed from Mr Doyle's aspect that he was connected intimately with the inhabitants of fairyland, or painter-in-ordinary to its royal family. Goodly of stature, he was also substantial of person, and could not be thought of for a moment as one who could join in racing on rabbits, leaping over toadstools, riding on bats, or floating about clothed in glorified cobwebs; nor, on the other hand, was he of a temper to challenge dragons to combat. Kind and pleasant of discourse, gentle of voice, courteous of bearing, his value as a companion was very widely recognised, and his society was much coveted by the Titanias of Mayfair and Belgravia. His agreeable humour was by no means restricted to his pictures: he was quaint in speech as in art and his way of showing that something uttered had amused him – by retiring into his cravat, in the recesses of which a soft smothered laugh would be heard, and then emerging to cap the jest – was special to himself. For the many who appreciated him, some of the brightness and grace which spread a wholesome illusion over common life died out of the world last year with Richard Doyle.