10 JULY 1897, Page 25

English Society. Sketched by G. du Maurier. (Osgood, McIlvaine, and

Co.)—In the preface Mr. Howells deals with Du Maurier more as a novelist than as a black and white artist ; and in it seems inclined to recant his former heresy as to the method of Thackeray. Most of the drawings reproduced here are from Punch, and are already familiar. Du Maurier had great limitations, and his work, unlike Charles Keene's, suffers from being seen in quantities. When one has once noticed that he in- variably drew the junction of trousers and boots when seen in profile in the same way, one cannot help being on the look-out for this trick of manner, and being disgusted at its constant recurrence. The gigantic young people, too, become extremely tiresome ; but it is with genuine delight that we turn to those masterpieces of pictorial satire, the German professors and maestros, whose vanities and vagaries are always delightful. One drawing called " Bonjour Suzon " is very interesting from the number of portraits it contains of artists and men of letters, Thackeray, Millais, Leighton, and others.