_Punch_, March 22, 1884. ] The drawing "Things one would rather have expressed Differently" (reproduced opposite page 194) represents du Maurier's final phase at its very best. It has the precision of workmanship of a thing executed to a well-tried recipe. It is dainty as well as precise; and still in the way the dimpling of soft dress fabric is touched in, sympathetic, and characteristic of the earlier du Maurier. It belongs to the _Trilby_ period, but is better than the illustrations to _Trilby_. § 3 The unpublished sketches which we have been allowed to reproduce from du Maurier's private sketch-book, and which we are using as end pieces, are very interesting. In the strictest artistic sense there is very little of the art of pen-drawing to-day. In the work done with the pen for modern illustration the inking-in is too much of an after process of ink upon pencil work. The quality of the drawing is really determined by the pencil, which is the actual medium of work. In going over the pencil work the ink-line follows it in many cases so closely that it cannot assert the characteristics of penmanship. But in making preliminary small studies for a picture with the pen, an artist, feeling less necessity for a certain kind of accuracy, often uses the pen much more freely, sympathetically, and happily because he is actually drawing with it and not merely following over forms determined first in another medium. We have printed the reproductions from the sketch-book about their original size. Many of them express the freer qualities of real pen-drawing--an autographic character in the line-work akin to that secured in original etching. The pen is an instrument that works best on a small scale, in which it can be manipulated flexibly in the fingers; in this it is like the etching-needle itself. The artist working direct with his pen has before him while he draws the actual effect of his ink on paper, instead of having to imagine it in advance while he works out his subject in pencil. The vignette of the man lying back in his chair near the leaded window (page 147) has qualities in the shadow of the window that we look to find in vain in du Maurier's professional work. It is a sympathetic pen-drawing; the lines express much more than a formula--they secure a dramatic play of shadow. This memorandum--for that is what the drawing is--was, we believe, never used by du Maurier, though some of the sketches appearing here--that, for instance, of the lady with a child in her arms (page 64), and that of the girl in a window-seat, wearing a frilled dress (facing page 176)--can be found serving as initial letters and head-pieces in the early _Cornhill Magazines_, carried no farther in finish than they are here.