Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/508

 Doyle reaped much respect by the "noble sacrifice" of which the writer speaks. English prejudice looks with special coldness on conscientious motives it does not understand, and with which it can have but little sympathy. Doyle was a man of purer motives and finer sympathies than George Cruikshank; but the same insular prejudice which conduced to the ruin of George Cruikshank, wrecked the future prospects of an artist almost as original in some respects as the more brilliant George. From the moment that Doyle retired from Punch, English fanaticism and English prejudice persisted in regarding him as a supporter of the "Papal aggression," and he permanently lost from that moment the ground which his talent and his reputation had so honourably won for him. From the moment he deemed it his duty to retire from the circle of literary and artistic wits and humourists with whom he was then associated, he took himself practically out of the range of comic art, and the public ceased to trouble itself about him, although it had lost (in the expressive language of Mr. Thackeray) "the graceful pencil, the harmless wit, the charming fancy," of one of the most genial and promising of English graphic satirists of the modern time. Before he left Punch he had executed for the periodical upwards of five hundred illustrations, of which nearly eighty are cartoons.

But Richard Doyle manifested the honesty of purpose which was a part of his noble nature by other sacrifices than his retirement from Punch. From the friendly hand which has strewn flowers upon his grave, we learn that at one time he was offered a handsome income to draw for a periodical started some years ago, but declined the engagement because he disapproved of the principles of those by whom it was conducted. "At another he had a similar offer made him by a distinguished statesman on behalf of a political journal, in which the work would have been light and the remuneration excellent." He was offered his own terms to illustrate an edition of Swift's humorous works; but here too he refused, because he did not admire the morality of the witty Dean of St. Patrick's. "In these and other cases like them, religion, virtue, high principle, carried the day against interests which would have proved too much