undeniably a great man, and extremely vain of his personal appearance. But he is built contrary to all the laws of Nature, and if H. F. draws him as he is, he is accused of libelling him. If he improves him, no one knows him. Oh, Mr. Pen, you may take it from me that the lot of the caricaturist is not a happy one." "For the matter of that," put in the Pen, "neither is the painter's. You know Gay's lines: "So very like, a painter drew, That every eye the picture knew, He hit complexion, feature, air, So just, the life itself was there. He gave each muscle all its strength, The mouth, the chin, the nose's length, His honest pencil touched with truth, And marked the date of age and youth. He lost his friends, his practice failed,-- Truth should not always be revealed." But Gay did not live in the days of Sargent!" "We are getting on nicely," said the Pen. "Now answer a question which is often put to me--viz., why caricaturists eschew paint?" "Because," replied the Pencil, "people often seem to forget that in the present day, when events follow each other in quick succession, a subject becomes stale almost before the traditional nine days' interest in it has expired--that paint is no longer the medium by which a caricaturist can possibly express his thoughts. Of course, I am not referring to mere tinting, such as that in which the old caricaturists had their drawings reproduced, but to colouring in oils, after the manner of the great satirist Hogarth. Some may remember H. F.'s caricature in _Punch_ of the late Serjeant-at-Arms, Captain Gosset, as a black-beetle. Now, had he painted a full-length portrait of him, and sent it elaborately framed to the Royal Academy, it would not only have taken him very much longer to execute, but the Captain would not have looked a whit more like a black-beetle than he did in black and white in the pages of _Punch_.