Bulletin. Mr. May seized the opportunity of going to the antipodes, and went. The fine air, the warm climate, and the regular food made, as he tells you, a man of him; but it was the starvation, he adds, which made him the artist he is.

The rest of Mr. Phil May's story has been told before, and is not interesting, being one long series of successes, which culminated in his winning the blue ribbon of black-and-white art, an appointment on Punch, which leaves him free to draw for any other paper that appreciates his art and can pay his prices.

The story of his early life and struggles is not exceeded in interest, perhaps, by that of anybody except that of Henri Murger or that of Honoré de Balzac. The hard life he once led has left his features somewhat hard, but it has not soured his disposition. There is nothing of the cynic in him. He is still careless of everything but his art, generous to a fault not only with his money, but with his lavish praises of the work of those who aspire to be his rivals. High and low, everybody speaks of him as "dear old Phil," and the applause, even of princes, has not made him a snob. His talents and his temptations would have made many a boy of more severe training a pickpocket, burglar, or a gaol bird, as François Villon was. It made Phil May an artist, and his story is one to be remembered as an encouragement instead of a warning.

Of the one hundred and twenty drawings collected in this volume, there is little to say, for they speak for themselves. For some of them, I am indebted to Mr. Louis Meyer of 13a Pall Mall, who has enabled me to complete the series of drawings done at a time when Phil May was, as I have described him above, a poor, struggling artist. Youth and enthusiasm, made these drawings bolder than most of his later work, and the lack of pence, when every line meant pennies, made them more elaborately finished than those which of late he has made us accustomed to. But though everyone is satisfied with his present work, I can only trust that the artistic majority will think with me that he has never done better than these drawings which are here collected. That at least is why I have published them.

AUGUSTUS M. MOORE