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594 In the possession of this power the illustrators of Doyle's day,—Cruikshank, Hablot Browne,—whose work all are familiar with in the editions of Dickens and other novelists, were specially eminent. In their somewhat meagre drawings, devoid of all serious suggestion of tone or color, it stands out prominently as the chief gift or attainment of the English illustrative art of the time. Doyle has many delightful qualities which these others have not. One finds in him far more of a purely artistic feeling, but he shares with them their leanness of manner and the power of characterization; and one may justly say that it is in so far as they have been able to preserve this latter virtue amid the allurements of the modern sirens that Doyle's successors have gone about "Punch's" business prosperously. The extent to which this power is developed in these illustrators is clearly traceable to the point of view from which they regarded their art, and one may very fairly measure the availability of any body of illustrative work for the uses of "Punch" by how much it shows a similarity in aim and disposition to this illustrative work of Doyle's day. It is a long way from Hogarth to "Punch," but the road is sufficiently clear and direct, and it is not surprising to find in a recent book on English painting a line devoted to Hogarth, which describes very neatly the point of view, the aim and disposition of the typical illustrators who manifest the essential quality of "Punch's" art—characterization—in the highest degree. This line of M. Chesneau's says that for Hogarth "drawing, color, composition, are a dead letter, words without sense, so long as they do not serve to express first an idea, and second an idea useful with moral tendencies, easily applicable and intelligible." This surpassing regard for the idea is distinctly the note of these illustrators; and with them the means and method of expression, the qualities of the design, are held subordinate, and frequently considered but just sufficiently to get the idea expressed. Illustration is the phase in which art impinges upon literature, and the talent of these illustrators who exhibit this Hogarthian type of it is quite as strongly literary as plastic. In fact, in some instances, as notably in the case of Thackeray, illustration becomes more an exceptional form of literary-expression than of art in any strict sense, which demands a more or less successful striving to express through the qualities of the design a feeling for beauty. The feeling for beauty may be there, but the expression of it is not the important thing: the important thing, the animating and governing thing, is the idea. Truth of form, truth of tone, harmonious arrangement, all important to a complete sensuous art, may or may not be present; they have nothing directly to say to the value of illustrative work, as the Hogarthian illustrator conceived it. Its value from his point of view consisted in the force with which the idea was advanced. It is from their cultivation of the idea as the pre-eminent thing that these illustrators derive that power of characterization—the idea's vernacular—which they possess so abundantly; and in neglecting these other matters they gain a rapidity and ease in exercising this power, which give us their drawings thronging with multitudinous life. These men are perfectly at home in a crowd. Doyle's crowds are proverbial; there is that fine crowd, extremely legal, opening Westminster Hall; there is the crowd listening to the band in Kensington Gardens; there is the crowd at Epsom, almost to the most minute individual with faces that tell each its tale. These crowds for "Punch's" purposes are of the greatest possible service; they abound in our friends, and are a most vivid and effective pictorial comment on life. But, apart from the facility in handling crowds which the abandonment of these other matters gives them, this abandonment is in itself a direct advantage; in the barrenness of other points of interest, the idea comes to us with a crispness, with an eye-kissing smack. There is an air of brevity in their performance; and for the