Whenever he finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with that.That does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he is doing in the picture.This one has just been striking out a smart thing, and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes, gloating.They are full of envy and malice, editors are.This picture will serve to remind you that Edward II.was the first English king who was DEPOSED.Upon demand, he signed his deposition himself.He had found kingship a most aggravating and disagreeable occupation, and you can see by the look of him that he is glad he resigned.He has put his blue pencil up for good now.He had struck out many a good thing with it in his time.
Edward III.next; fifty RED squares.(Fig.15.)This editor is a critic.He has pulled out his carving-knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast.This one's arms are put on wrong.
I did not notice it at first, but I see it now.Somehow he has got his right arm on his left shoulder, and his left arm on his right shoulder, and this shows us the back of his hands in both instances.It makes him left-handed all around, which is a thing which has never happened before, except perhaps in a museum.
That is the way with art, when it is not acquired but born to you: you start in to make some simple little thing, not suspecting that your genius is beginning to work and swell and strain in secret, and all of a sudden there is a convulsion and you fetch out something astonishing.This is called inspiration.
It is an accident; you never know when it is coming.I might have tried as much as a year to think of such a strange thing as an all-around left-handed man and I could not have done it, for the more you try to think of an unthinkable thing the more it eludes you; but it can't elude inspiration; you have only to bait with inspiration and you will get it every time.Look at Botticelli's "Spring." Those snaky women were unthinkable, but inspiration secured them for us, thanks to goodness.It is too late to reorganize this editor-critic now; we will leave him as he is.He will serve to remind us.
Richard II.next; twenty-two WHITE squares.(Fig.16.)We use the lion again because this is another Richard.Like Edward II., he was DEPOSED.He is taking a last sad look at his crown before they take it away.There was not room enough and Ihave made it too small; but it never fitted him, anyway.
Now we turn the corner of the century with a new line of monarchs--the Lancastrian kings.
Henry IV.; fourteen squares of YELLOW paper.(Fig.17.)This hen has laid the egg of a new dynasty and realizes the magnitude of the event.She is giving notice in the usual way.
You notice I am improving in the construction of hens.At first I made them too much like other animals, but this one is orthodox.I mention this to encourage you.You will find that the more you practice the more accurate you will become.I could always draw animals, but before I was educated I could not tell what kind they were when I got them done, but now I can.Keep up your courage; it will be the same with you, although you may not think it.This Henry died the year after Joan of Arc was born.
Henry V.; nine BLUE squares.(Fig.18)
There you see him lost in meditation over the monument which records the amazing figures of the battle of Agincourt.French history says 20,000 Englishmen routed 80,000 Frenchmen there; and English historians say that the French loss, in killed and wounded, was 60,000.
Henry VI.; thirty-nine RED squares.(Fig.19)This is poor Henry VI., who reigned long and scored many misfortunes and humiliations.Also two great disasters: he lost France to Joan of Arc and he lost the throne and ended the dynasty which Henry IV.had started in business with such good prospects.In the picture we see him sad and weary and downcast, with the scepter falling from his nerveless grasp.It is a pathetic quenching of a sun which had risen in such splendor.
Edward IV.; twenty-two LIGHT-BROWN squares.(Fig.20.)That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear, so that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they are and get bribes for it and become wealthy.That flower which he is wearing in his buttonhole is a rose--a white rose, a York rose--and will serve to remind us of the War of the Roses, and that the white one was the winning color when Edward got the throne and dispossessed the Lancastrian dynasty.
Edward V.; one-third of a BLACK square.(Fig.21.)His uncle Richard had him murdered in the tower.When you get the reigns displayed upon the wall this one will be conspicuous and easily remembered.It is the shortest one in English history except Lady Jane Grey's, which was only nine days.She is never officially recognized as a monarch of England, but if you or I should ever occupy a throne we should like to have proper notice taken of it; and it would be only fair and right, too, particularly if we gained nothing by it and lost our lives besides.
Richard III.; two WHITE squares.(Fig.22.)That is not a very good lion, but Richard was not a very good king.You would think that this lion has two heads, but that is not so; one is only a shadow.There would be shadows for the rest of him, but there was not light enough to go round, it being a dull day, with only fleeting sun-glimpses now and then.
Richard had a humped back and a hard heart, and fell at the battle of Bosworth.I do not know the name of that flower in the pot, but we will use it as Richard's trade-mark, for it is said that it grows in only one place in the world--Bosworth Field--and tradition says it never grew there until Richard's royal blood warmed its hidden seed to life and made it grow.
Henry VII.; twenty-four BLUE squares.(Fig.23.)Henry
