A Breath from the Veldt 179 



or opportunity for becoming a hunter too, and searching for and studying the 

 wild creatures in their own homes, even if his inclination runs that way ; and 

 hence a certain form of illustration has grown up in our books the interest of 

 which is in inverse proportion to its theatrical and sensational character. We 

 have got a bit sick now of these conventional lions, buffaloes, and elephants 

 in a chronic state of charge. One or two pictures of these animals charging, 

 if well done, are always pleasant to the eye, but a whole series of this same 

 thing, such as we have now in nearly every book on Africa — even when fairly 

 well done (and few of them are that) — is as nauseating as the bulk of political 

 speeches in these days of working-man worship. 



Only one man towers above the heads of all other artists of wild beasts and 

 birds of this or any other time — Joseph Wolf — and he, strange to say, has 

 never seen any big creatures roaming about, except German wild boars and 

 stags. Yet, broadly speaking, he is the greatest master of animal life (not even 

 excepting Landseer) that ever lived ; and though some few naturalists and 

 sportsmen — happily a daily increasing body — have had full knowledge and 

 appreciation of this truly great man's work for the past fifty years, it is astonish- 

 ing how little known his work is. It may perhaps seem presumptuous on my 

 part to criticise the works of Landseer as compared with those of Wolf ; but as 

 a little boy I believe I once sat on Landseer's knee, and, armed with pencil and 

 paper, devoted half an hour of my valuable time to teaching him how to draw 

 deer ! It will be seen, therefore, that " modesty of nature " is not altogether a 

 strong feature of my composition ; but, joking apart, I think I have at least as 

 much right to criticise the works of these two artists as some of the art reviewers 

 in the daily papers, who hardly know a duck from an owl, or a deer from an 

 antelope. I have at least been trying to the best of my ability to master some 

 portion of this field of art for the last ten years, and at any rate I know how 

 hard the task is, how easy it is to make mistakes, and how extremely difficult 

 it is to produce good work. 



Sir Edwin Landseer was one of the ablest delineators of sympathy and 

 sentiment that ever lived, while his composition and drawing — it seems a 

 platitude to say so — were as perfect as anything the world has ever seen. His 

 dogs and deer and domestic animals are in nearly every case perfection, but 

 even without them his landscapes would live on their own merits alone. 

 Against this, however, must be set off the fact that Landseer often failed as a 

 colourist ; and when he plunged into natural history, which he knew but 

 little about, he made most absurd mistakes. In point of sentiment and execu- 



