CHAPTER VII: SOME ILLUSTRATED BOOKS OF THE PERIOD BEFORE 1860

To draw up a complete list, with the barest details of title, artist, author, and publisher of the books in the period with which this volume is concerned would be unnecessary, and well-nigh impossible. The _English Catalogue_, 1863-1872, covering but a part of the time, claims to give some 30,000 entries. Many, possibly a large majority, of these books are not illustrated; but on the other hand, the current periodicals not included contain thousands of pictures. The following chapters cannot even claim to mention every book worth the collector's notice, and refer hardly at all to many which seemed to the compiler to represent merely the commercial average of their time. Whether this was better or worse than the commercial average to-day is of no moment. Nearly all of the books mentioned have been referred to personally, and the facts reported at first hand. In spite of taxing the inexhaustible courtesy of the officials of the British Museum to the extent of eighty or more volumes during a single afternoon, I cannot pretend to have seen the whole output of the period, for it is not easy to learn from the catalogue those particulars that are needed to identify which books are illustrated.

So far as we are concerned here, the interest of the book lies solely in its illustrations, but the catalogue may not even record the fact that it contains any, much less attribute them to their author. Of those in which the artist's share has been recognised by the publisher in his announcements, I have done my best to find the first edition of each. By dint of patient wading through the advertisements, and review columns of literary journals, trade periodicals, and catalogues, a good many have turned up which had otherwise escaped notice; although for the last twenty years at least I have never missed an opportunity of seeing every illustrated book of the sixties, with a view to this chronicle, which had been shaping itself, if not actually begun, long before any work on modern English illustrators had appeared. When a school-boy I made a collection of examples of the work of each artist whose style I had learned to recognise, and some of that material gathered together so long ago has been of no little use now. These personal reminiscences are not put forward by way of magnifying the result; but rather to show that even with so many years' desultory preparation the digesting and classification of the various facts has proved too onerous. A staff of qualified assistants under a capable director would be needed to accomplish the work as thoroughly as Mr. Sidney Lee has accomplished a not dissimilar, if infinitely more important, task--_The Dictionary of National Biography_. A certain proportion of errors must needs creep in, and the possible errors of omission are even more to be dreaded than those of commission. A false date, or an incorrect reference to a given book or illustration, is easily corrected by a later worker in the same field; but an omission may possibly escape another student of the subject as it escaped me. As a rule, in a majority of cases--so large that it is practically ninety-nine per cent., if not more--the notes have been made side by side with the publication to which they refer. But in transcribing hasty jottings errors are apt to creep in, and despite the collation of these pages when in proof by other hands, I cannot flatter myself that they are impeccable. For experience shows that you never open the final printed text of any work under your control as editor or author, but errors, hitherto overlooked, instantly jump from the page and force themselves on your notice. An editor of one of the most widely circulated of all our magazines confesses that he has made it a rule never to glance at any number after it was published. He had too often suffered the misery of being confronted with obvious errors of fact and taste which no amount of patient care on his part (and he is a most conscientious workman) had discovered, until it was too late to rectify them. In the matter of dates alone a difficulty meets one at first sight. Many books dated one year were issued several months before the previous Christmas, and are consequently advertised and reviewed in the year before the date which appears upon their title-page. Again, many books, and some volumes of magazines (Messrs. Cassell and Co.'s publications to wit), bear no date. 'Women and books should never be dated' is a proverb as foolish as it is widely known. Yet all the same, inaccuracy of a few months is of little importance in this context; a book or a picture does not cease to exist as soon as it is born, like the performance of an actor or a musician. Consequently, beyond its relative place as evidence of the development or decline of the author's talent, it is not of great moment whether a book was issued in 1869 or 1870, whether a drawing was published in January or February. But for those who wish to refer to the subjects noted, the information has been made as exact as circumstances permitted. When, however, a book has been reissued in a second, or later edition, with no reference to earlier issues, it is tempting to accept the date on its title-page without question. One such volume I traced back from 1868 to 1849, and for all I know the original may have been issued some years earlier; for the British Museum library is not complete; every collector can point with pride to a few books on his shelves which he has failed to discover in its voluminous catalogue.

To select a definite moment to start from is not easy, nor to keep rigidly within the time covered by the dates upon the cover of this book. It is necessary to glance briefly at some work issued before 1855, and yet it would be superfluous to re-traverse ground already well covered in _The History of Wood Engraving_, by Chatto and Jackson, with its supplementary chapter by H. G. Bohn (in the 1861 edition), in Mr. W. J. Linton's _Masterpieces of Engraving_, in Mr. Joseph Pennell's two sumptuous editions of _Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen_ (Macmillan), and the same author's _Modern Illustrations_ (Bell), not to mention the many admirable papers read before learned societies by Messrs. W. J. Linton, Comyns Carr, Henry Blackburn, Walter Crane, William Morris, and others. Still less is it necessary to attempt to indorse their arguments in favour of wood-engraving against process, or to repeat those which support the opposite view. So that here, in the majority of cases, the question of the engraver's share has not been considered. Mr. Pennell, for one, has done this most thoroughly, and has put the case for process so strongly, that if any people yet believe a wood-engraving is always something sacred, while a good process block of line work is a mere feeble substitute, there is little hope of convincing them. Here the result has been the chief concern. The object of these notes is not to prove what wood-engraving ruined, or what might or ought to have been, but merely to record what it achieved, without too frequent expression of regret, which nevertheless will intrude as the dominant feeling when you study many of the works executed by even the better class wood-engravers.

One must not overlook the very obvious fact that, in the earlier years, an illustration was a much more serious affair for all concerned than it is to-day. In Jackson's _Pictorial Press_ we find the author says: 'Illustration was so seldom used that the preparation of even a small woodcut was of much moment to all concerned. I have heard William Harvey relate that when Whittingham, the well-known printer, wanted a new cut for his Chiswick Press Series, he would write to Harvey and John Thompson, the engraver, appointing a meeting at Chiswick, when printer, designer, and engraver talked over the matter with as much deliberation as if about to produce a costly national monument. And after they had settled all points over a snug supper, the result of their labours was the production a month afterwards of a woodcut measuring perhaps two inches by three. At that time perhaps only a dozen persons besides Bewick were practising the art of wood-engraving in England.'

But this preamble does not seek to excuse the meagre record it prefaces. A complete bibliography of such a fecund illustrator as Sir John Gilbert would need a volume to itself. To draw up detailed lists of all the various drawings in _The Illustrated London News_, _Punch_, and other prominent weeklies, would be a task needing almost as much co-operation as Dr. Murray's great Dictionary. The subject, if it proves to be sufficiently attractive, will doubtless be done piece by piece by future workers. I envy each his easy pleasure of pointing out the shortcomings of this work, for no keener joy awaits the maker of a handbook than gibbeting his predecessors, and showing by implication how much more trustworthy is his record than theirs.

Few artistic movements are so sharply defined that their origin can be traced to a particular moment, although some can be attributed more or less to the influence of one man. Even the pre-Raphaelite movement, clearly distinct as its origin appears at first glance, should not be dated from the formal draft of the little coterie, January 13th, 1851, for, as Mr. W. M. Rossetti writes, 'The rules show or suggest not only what we intended to do, but what had been occupying our attention since 1848. The day when we codified proved also to be the day when no code was really in requisition.' Nor has the autumn 1848 any better claim to be taken as the exact moment, for one cannot overlook the fact that there was Ford Madox Brown, a pre-Raphaelite, long before the pre-Raphaelites, and that Ruskin had published the first volume of _Modern Painters_. There can be little doubt that it was the influence of the so-called pre-Raphaelites and those in closest sympathy with them, which awakened a new interest in illustration, and so prepared the ground for the men of the sixties; but to confine our notice from 1857 to 1867--a far more accurate period--would be to start without sufficient reference to the work superseded by or absorbed into the later movement. So we must glance at a few of the books which preceded both the _Music-master_ of 1855 and the _Tennyson_ of 1857, either volume, the latter especially, being an excellent point whence to reckon more precisely 'the golden decade of British Art,' as Mr. Pennell terms it so happily.

Without going back too far for our purpose, one of the first books that contains illustrations by artists whose work extended into the sixties (and, in the case of Tenniel, far beyond) is _Poems and Pictures_, 'A Collection of Ballads, Songs, and Poems illustrated by English Artists' (Burns, 1846). So often was it reprinted that it came as a surprise to discover the first edition was fourteen years earlier than the date which is upon my own copy. Despite the ornamental borders to each page, and many other details which stamp it as old-fashioned, it does not require a rabid apologist of the past to discuss it appreciatively. From the first design by C. W. Cope, to the last, _A Storm at Sea_, by E. Duncan, both engraved by W. J. Linton, there is no falling off in the quality of the work. The influence of Mulready is discernible, and it seems probable that certain pencil drawings for the _Vicar of Wakefield_, engraved in facsimile--so far as was within the power of the craftsmen at that time--did much to shape the manner of book-illustrations in the fifties.

Nor does it betray want of sympathy with the artists who were thus influenced to regret that they chose to imitate drawings not intended for illustration, and ignored in very many cases the special technique which employs the most direct expression of the material. In _The Mourner_, by J. C. Horsley (p. 22), you feel that the engraver (Thompson) has done his best to imitate the softly defined line of a pencil in place of the clearly accentuated line which is most natural in wood. Yet even in this there is scarcely a trace of that elaborate cross-hatching so easily produced in plate-engraving or pen drawing, so tedious to imitate in wood. Another design, _Time_, by C. W. Cope (p. 88), shows that the same engraver could produce work of quite another class when it was required. Curiously enough, these two, picked at random, reappear in almost the last illustrated anthology mentioned in these chapters, Cassell's _Sacred Poems_ (1867).

Several books earlier in date, including De la Motte Fouqué's _Undine_, with eleven drawings by 'J. Tenniel, Junr.' (Burns, 1846), and _Sintram and his Companions_, with designs by H. S. Selous and a frontispiece after Dürer's _The Knight and Death_ need only be mentioned. The _Juvenile Verse and Picture Book_ (Burns, 1848), with many illustrations by Gilbert, Tenniel, 'R. Cruikshank,' Weigall, and W. B. Scott, which was reissued with altered text as _Gems of National Poetry_ (Warne, 1868), and _Æsop's Fables_ (Murray, 1848), with 100 illustrations by Tenniel, deserve a bare mention. Nor should _The 'Bon Gaultier' Ballads_ (Blackwood, 1849) be forgotten. The illustrations by Doyle, Leech, and Crowquill were enormously popular in their day, and although the style of humour which still keeps many of the ballads alive has been frequently imitated since, and rarely excelled, yet its drawings have often been equalled and surpassed, humorous although they are, of their sort.

_The Salamandrine_, a poem by Charles Mackay, issued in a small quarto (Ingram, Cooke, and Co., 1853), with forty-six designs by John Gilbert, is one of the early volumes by the more fecund illustrators of the century. It is too late in the day to praise the veteran whose paintings are as familiar to frequenters of the Royal Academy now as were his drawings when the Great Exhibition entered a formal claim for the recognition of British Art. Honoured here and upon the Continent, it is needless to eulogise an artist whom all agree to admire. The prolific invention which never failed is not more evident in this book than in a hundred others decorated by his facile pencil, yet it reveals--as any one of the rest must equally--the powerful mastery of his art, and its limitations. Thomson's _Seasons_, illustrated by the Etching Club (1852), S. C. Hall's _Book of British Ballads_ (1852), an edition of _The Arabian Nights_, with 600 illustrations by W. Harvey (1852), and _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, with 100 drawings by George Thomas, can but be named in passing. Gray's _Elegy_, illustrated by 'B. Foster, G. Thomas, and a Lady,' (Sampson Low), _The Book of Celebrated Poems_, with eighty designs by Cope, Kenny Meadows, and others (Sampson Low), _The Vicar of Wakefield_, with drawings by George Thomas, _The Deserted Village_, illustrated by members of the Etching Club--Cope, T. Creswick, J. C. Horsley, F. Tayler, H. J. Townsend, C. Stenhouse, T. Webster, R.A., and R. Redgrave--all published early in the fifties--may also be dismissed without comment. About the same time the great mental sedative of the period--Tupper's _Proverbial Philosophy_ (Hatchard, 1854)--was reprinted in a stately quarto, with sixty-two illustrations by C. W. Cope, R.A., E. H. Corbould, Birket Foster, John Gilbert, J. C. Horsley, F. R. Pickersgill and others, engraved for the most part by 'Dalziel Bros.' and H. Vizetelly. The dull, uninspired text seems to have depressed the imagination of the artists. Despite the notable array of names, there is no drawing of more than average interest in the volume, except perhaps _To-morrow_ (p. 206), by F. R. Pickersgill, which is capitally engraved by Dalziel and much broader in its style than the rest.

_Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ (David Bogue, 1854) appears to be the earliest English illustrated edition of any importance of a volume that has been frequently illustrated since. This book is uniform with the _Poetical Works of John Milton_ with 120 engravings by Thompson, Williams, etc., from drawings by W. Harvey, _The Works of William Cowper_ with seventy-five illustrations engraved by J. Orrin Smith from drawings by John Gilbert; Thomson's _Seasons_ with illustrations 'drawn and engraved by Samuel Williams,' and _Beattie and Collins' Poems_ with engravings by the same hand from designs by John Absolon. The title-page of the Longfellow says it is illustrated by 'Jane E. Benham, Birket Foster, etc.' It is odd to find the not very elegant, 'etc.' stands for John Gilbert and E. Wehnert, also to note that the engravers have in each of the above volumes taken precedence of the draughtsman. Except that we miss the pre-Raphaelite group for which we prize the Moxon _Tennyson_ to-day, the ideal of these books is very nearly the same as of that volume. This edition of Longfellow must not be confused with another, a quarto, issued the following year (Routledge, 1855), 'with over one hundred designs drawn by John Gilbert and engraved by the brothers Dalziel.' This notable instance of the variety and inventive power of the artist also shows (in the night pieces especially, pp. 13, 360), that the engraver was trying to advance in the direction of 'tone' and atmospheric effect; and endeavouring to give the effect of a 'wash' rather than of a line drawing or the imitation of a steel engraving. This tendency, which was not the chief purpose of the work of the sixties, in the seventies carried the technicalities of the craft to its higher achievements, or, as some enthusiasts prefer to regard it, to its utter ruin, so that the photographic process-block could beat it on its own ground. But these opposite views have been threshed out often enough without bringing the parties concerned nearer together to encourage a new attempt to reconcile the opposing factions. The Longfellow of 1855 was reissued with the addition of _Hiawatha_ in 1856. Another edition of _Hiawatha_, illustrated by G. H. Thomas, issued about this time, contains some of his best work.

Allingham's _Music-master_ (Routledge, 1855) is so often referred to in this narrative that its mere name must suffice in this context. But, as the book itself is so scarce, a sentence from its preface may be quoted: 'Those excellent painters' (writes Mr. Allingham), 'who on my behalf have submitted their genius to the risks of wood-engraving, will, I hope, pardon me for placing a sincere word of thanks in the book they have honoured with this evidence through art of their varied fancy.' To this year belongs also _The Task_, illustrated by Birket Foster (Nisbet, 1855).

_Eliza Cook's Poems_ (Routledge, 1856) is another sumptuously illustrated quarto gift-book with many designs by John Gilbert, J. Wolf, Harrison Weir, J. D. Watson, and others, all engraved by Dalziel Brothers. A notable drawing by H. H. Armstead, _The Trysting Place_ (p. 363), deserves republication. In this year appeared also the famous edition of Adams's _Sacred Allegories_ with a number of engravings from original drawings by C. W. Cope, R.A., J. C. Horsley, A.R.A., Samuel Palmer, Birket Foster, and George C. Hicks. The amazing quality of the landscapes by Samuel Palmer stood even the test of enormous enlargement in lantern slides, when Mr. Pennell showed them at his lectures on the men of the sixties; had W. T. Green engraved no other blocks, he might be ranked as a great craftsman on the evidence of these alone.

In _George Herbert's Poetical Works_ (Nisbet, 1856), with designs by Birket Foster, John Clayton, and H. N. Humphreys, notwithstanding the vitality of the text, the drawings are sicklied over with the pale cast of religious sentimentality which has ruined so much religious art in England. A draughtsman engaged on New Testament subjects of that time rarely forgot Overbeck, Raphael, or still more 'pretty' masters. In the religious illustrations of the period many landscapes are included, some of them exquisite transcripts of English scenery, others of the 'Oriental' order dear to the Annuals. The delightful description of one of these imaginary scenes, by Leland, 'Hans Breitmann,' will come to mind, when he says of its artist that

'All his work expanded with expensive fallacies, Castles, towered walls, pavilions, real-estately palaces. In the foreground lofty palm-trees, as if full of soaring love, Bore up cocoa-nuts and monkeys to the smiling heavens above; Jet-black Indian chieftains--at their feet, too, lovely girls were sighing, With an elephant beyond them, here and there a casual lion.'

George Herbert the incomparable may be hard to illustrate, but, if the task is attempted, it should be in any way but this delineation of pretty landscapes, with 'here and there a casual lion.' This reflection upon the mildly sacred compositions of 'gift-book' art generally, although provoked by this volume, is applicable to nearly every one of its fellows.

In _Rhymes and Roundelays_, illustrated by Birket Foster (Bogue, 1856), the designs are not without a trace of artificiality, but it contains also some of the earliest and best examples of a most accomplished draughtsman, and in it many popular blocks began a long career of 'starring,' until from guinea volumes some were used ultimately in children's primers and the like.

_The Works of William Shakespeare_ illustrated by John Gilbert (Routledge, 1856-8) will doubtless be remembered always as his masterpiece. At a public dinner lately, an artist who had worked with Sir John Gilbert on the _Illustrated London News_, and in nearly all the books of the period illustrated by the group of draughtsmen with whom both are associated, spoke of his marvellous rapidity--a double-page drawing done in a single night. Yet so sure is his touch that in the mass of these hundreds of designs to Shakespeare you are not conscious of any scamping. Without being archæologically impeccable, they suggest the types and costumes of the periods they deal with, and, above all, represent embodiments of actual human beings. They stand apart from the grotesque caricatures of an earlier school, and the academic inanities of both earlier and later methods. Virile and full of invention, the book is a monument to an artist who has done so much that it is a pleasure to discover some one definite accomplishment that from size alone may be taken as his masterpiece, if merely as evidence that praise, scantily bestowed elsewhere, is limited by space only.

Scott's _Lady of the Lake_, illustrated by John Gilbert, appeared in 1856. The other volumes, _Marmion_, the _Lady of the Lake_, and the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, appear to have been published previously; but to ascertain their exact date of issue, the three bulky volumes of the British Museum catalogue devoted to 'Scott (Walter)' can hardly be faced with a light heart. This year saw an edition of Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ with outline drawings by J. R. Clayton, who is sometimes styled 'J. R.,' and sometimes 'John.' An illustrated guinea edition of a once popular 'goody' book, _Ministering Children_, with designs by Birket Foster and H. Le Jeune (Nisbet, 1856), an edition of _Edgar Allan Poe's Works_, illustrated by E. H. Wehnert and others (Addey, 1856); Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_, with pictures by Birket Foster, A. Duncan, and E. H. Wehnert, are also of this year, to which belongs, although it is post-dated, Pollok's _Course of Time_ (W. Blackwood, 1857), a book containing fifty fine illustrations by Birket Foster, John Tenniel, and J. R. Clayton, engraved by Edward Evans, Dalziel Brothers, H. N. Woods, and John Green. A block by Dalziel, after Clayton, on page 19, shows a good example of the white line, used horizontally, for the modelling of flesh, somewhat in the way, as Pannemaker employed it so effectively in many of Gustave Doré's illustrations years after. The twenty-seven Birket Fosters are full of the special charm that his work possesses, and show once again how a great artist may employ a method, which, merely 'pretty' in inferior hands, has something of greatness when he touches it.

In the next year appeared the famous '_Poems by Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L._, Poet-Laureate. London. Edward Moxon, Dover St., 1857.' Not even the bare fact that it was illustrated appears on the title-page. As the book has been re-issued lately in a well-printed edition, a detailed list of its contents is hardly necessary; nor need any of the illustrations be reproduced here. It will suffice to say that Dante Gabriel Rossetti is represented by five designs to _The Lady of Shallott_ (p. 75), _Mariana_ (p. 82), _Palace of Art_ (pp. 113-119), _Sir Galahad_ (p. 305); Millais has eighteen, W. Holman Hunt seven, W. Mulready four, T. Creswick six, J. C. Horsley six, C. Stanfield six, and D. Maclise two. A monograph by Mr. G. Somes Layard, _Tennyson and his pre-Raphaelite Illustrators_ (Stock, 1894), embodies a quantity of interesting facts, with many deductions therefrom which are not so valuable. In the books about Rossetti and the pre-Raphaelites, and their name is legion, this volume has rarely escaped more or less notice, so that one hesitates to add to the mass of criticism already bestowed. The whole modern school of decorative illustrators regard it rightly enough as the genesis of the modern movement; but all the same it is only the accidental presence of D. G. Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and Millais, which entitles it to this position. It satisfies no decorative ideal as a piece of book-making. Except for these few drawings, it differs in no respect from the average 'quarto poets' before and after. The same 'toned' paper, the same vignetted pictures, appear; the proportions of the type-page are merely that in ordinary use; the size and shape of the illustrations was left apparently to pure chance. Therefore, in place of talking of the volume with bated breath as a masterpiece, it would be wiser to regard it as one of the excellent publications of the period, that by the fortuitous inclusion of a few drawings, quite out of touch with the rest, has acquired a reputation, which, considered as a complete book, it does not deserve. The drawings by Rossetti, even as we see them after translation by the engraver had worked his will, must needs be valued as masterpieces, if only for the imagination and thought compressed into their limited space, and from their exquisite manipulation of details. At first sight, some of these--for instance, the soldier munching an apple in the _St. Cecilia_--seem discordant, but afterwards reveal themselves as commentaries upon the text--not elucidating it directly, but embroidering it with subtle meanings and involved symbolism. Such qualities as these, whether you hold them as superfluous or essential, separate these fine designs from the jejune simplicity of the mass of the decorative school to-day. To draw a lady with 'intense' features, doing nothing in particular, and that in an anatomically impossible attitude, is a poor substitute for the fantasy of Rossetti. No amount of poorly drawn confused accessories will atone for the absence of the dominant idea that welded all the disturbing elements to a perfect whole. One artist to-day, or at most two, alone show any real effort to rival these designs on their own ground. The rest appear to believe that a coarse line and eccentric composition provide all that is required, given sufficient ignorance of academic draughtsmanship.

Another book of the same year, _The Poets of the Nineteenth Century_, selected and edited by the Rev. Robert Aris Willmott (Routledge, 1857), is in many respects quite as fine as the Tennyson, always excepting the pre-Raphaelite element, which is not however totally absent. For in this quarto volume Millais' _Love_ (p. 137) and _The Dream_ (p. 123) are worthy to be placed beside those just noticed. Ford Madox Brown's _Prisoner of Chillon_ (p. 111) is another masterpiece of its sort. For this we are told the artist spent three days in a dissecting-room (or a mortuary--the accounts differ) to watch the gradual change in a dead body, making most careful studies in colour as well as monochrome all for a foreshortened figure in a block 3-3/4 by 5 inches. This procedure is singularly unlike the rapid inspiration which throws off compositions in black and white to-day. In a recent book received with well-deserved applause, some of the smaller 'decorative designs' were produced at the rate of a dozen in a day. The mere time occupied in production is of little consequence, because we know that the apparently rapid 'sketch' by Phil May may have taken far more time than a decorative drawing, with elaborately minute detail over every inch of its surface; but, other qualities being equal, the one produced with lavish expenditure of care and thought is likely to outlive the trifle tossed off in an hour or two. In the _Poets of the Nineteenth Century_ the hundred engravings by the brothers Dalziel include twenty-one of Birket Foster's exquisite landscapes, all with figures; fourteen by W. Harvey, nine by John Gilbert, six by J. Tenniel, five by J. R. Clayton, eleven by T. Dalziel, seven by J. Godwin, five by E. H. Corbould, two by D. Edwards, five by E. Duncan, seven by J. Godwin, and one each by Arthur Hughes, W. P. Leitch, E. A. Goodall, T. D. Hardy, F. R. Pickersgill, and Harrison Weir--a century of designs not unworthy as a whole to represent the art of the day; although Rossetti and Holman Hunt, who figure so strongly in the Tennyson, are not represented. This year John Gilbert illustrated the _Book of Job_ with fifty designs; _The Proverbs of Solomon_ (Nisbet, 1858), a companion volume, contains twenty drawings.

Another noteworthy volume is Barry Cornwall's _Dramatic Scenes and other Poems_ (Chapman and Hall, 1857) illustrated by many of the artists already mentioned. The fifty-seven engravings by Dalziel include one block on p. 45, from a drawing by J. R. Clayton, which is here reprinted--not so much for its design as for its engraving; the way the breadth of the drapery is preserved, despite the elaborate pattern on its surface, stamps it as a most admirable piece of work. Thornbury's _Legends of the Cavaliers and Roundheads_ (Hurst and Blackett, 1857), was illustrated by H. S. Marks.

So far the few books of 1857 noticed have considerable family likeness. The Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ (Nisbet, 1857), illustrated with twenty designs by G. H. Thomas, more slight in its method, reflects the journalistic style of its day rather than the elaborate 'book' manner, which in many an instance gives the effect of an engraving 'after' a painting or a large and highly-wrought fresco. As one of the many attempts to illustrate the immortal Protestant romance it deserves noting. To this year belongs _The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe_, illustrated with some striking designs by John Tenniel, and others by F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., Birket Foster, Percival Skelton; and besides these, Felix Darley, P. Duggan, Jasper Cropsey, and A. W. Madot--draughtsmen whose names are certainly not household words to-day. In the lists of 'artists' the portrait of the author is attributed to 'daguerreotype'! one of the earliest instances I have encountered of the formal appearance of the ubiquitous camera as an artist. Longfellow's prose romance, _Kavanagh_ (Kent, 1857), with exquisite illustrations by Birket Foster, appeared this year; _Hyperion_ (Dean), illustrated by the same author, being issued the following Christmas.

_Poetry and Pictures from Thomas Moore_ (Longman, 1857), the _Poems and Songs of Robert Burns_ (Bell and Daldy, 1857), both illustrated by Birket Foster and others, and _The Fables of Æsop_, with twenty-five drawings by C. H. Bennett, also deserve a passing word. _Gertrude of Wyoming_, by Thomas Campbell (Routledge, 1857), is only less important from its dimensions, and the fact that it contains only thirty-five illustrations, engraved by the brothers Dalziel, as against the complete hundred of most of its fellows. The drawings by Birket Foster, Thomas Dalziel, Harrison Weir, and William Harvey include some very good work.

_Lays of the Holy Land_ (Nisbet, 1858), clad in binding of a really fine design adapted from Persian sources, is another illustrated quarto, with one drawing at least--_The Finding of Moses_--by J. E. Millais, which makes it worth keeping; a 'decorative' _Song of Bethlehem_, by J. R. Clayton, is ahead of its time in style; the rest by Gilbert, Birket Foster, and others are mostly up to their best average. The title-page says 'from photographs and drawings,' but as every block is attributed to an artist, the former were without doubt redrawn and the source not acknowledged--a habit of draughtsmen which is not obsolete to-day.

Perhaps the most important illustrated volume of the next year is _The Home Affections [portrayed] by the Poets_, by Charles Mackay (Routledge, 1858), which continues the type of quarto gilt-edged toned paper table-books so frequent at this time. Its illustrations are a hundred in number, all engraved by Dalziels. Its artists include Birket Foster, John Gilbert, J. R. Clayton, Harrison Weir, T. B. Dalziel, S. Read, John Abner, F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., John Tenniel, with many others, 'and' (as play-bills have it) J. Everett Millais, A.R.A. _There's nae Luck about the House_ (p. 245) and _The Border Widow_ (p. 359) are curiously unlike in motive as well as handling; the one, with all its charm, is of the Mulready school, the other intense and passionate, highly wrought in the pre-Raphaelite manner. Yet after the Millais' all the other illustrations in the book seem poor. A landscape by Harrison Weir (p. 193), _Lenore_, by A. Madot (p. 159), a very typical Tenniel, _Fair Ines_ (p. 135), _Oriana_ (p. 115), _Hero and Leander_ (p. 91), _The Hermit_ (p. 67), and _Good-night in the Porch_ (p. 195), by Pickersgill, claim a word of appreciation as one turns over its pages anew. Whether too many copies were printed, or those issued were better preserved by their owners than usual, no book is more common in good condition to-day than this.

Another book of the same size, with contents less varied, it is true, but of almost the same level of excellence, is _Wordsworth's Selected Poems_ (Routledge, 1859), illustrated by Birket Foster, J. Wolf, and John Gilbert. This contains the hundred finely engraved blocks by the brothers Dalziel, some of them of the first rank, which was the conventional equipment of a gift-book at that time.

Other noteworthy volumes of 1858-9 are _Merrie Days of England, Sketches of Olden Times_, illustrated by twenty drawings by Birket Foster, G. Thomas, E. Corbould, and others; _The Scouring of the White Horse_, with designs by Richard Doyle (Macmillan), his Foreign Tour of _Brown, Jones, and Robinson_, and the same artist's _Manners and Customs of the English_, all then placed in the first rank by most excellent critics; _Favourite English Poems of the last two Centuries_, illustrated by Birket Foster, Cope, Creswick, and the rest; Wordsworth's _White Doe of Rylstone_ (Longmans), also illustrated by Birket Foster and H. N. Humphreys; _Childe Harold_, with many designs by Percival Skelton and others; Blair's _Grave_, illustrated by Tenniel (A. and C. Black); Milton's _Comus_ (Routledge, 1858), with illustrations by Pickersgill, B. Foster, H. Weir, etc.; and C. H. Bennett's _Proverbs with Pictures_ (Chapman and Hall). _Thomas Moore's Poems_ (Longmans, 1858); _Child's Play_, by E. V. B., appeared also about this time. Krummacher's _Parables_, with forty illustrations by J. R. Clayton (Bohn's Library, 1858), is another unfamiliar book likely to be overlooked, although it contains good work of its sort; inspired a little by German design possibly, but including some admirable drawings, those for instance on pages 147 and 347. _The Shipwreck_, by Robert Falconer, illustrated by Birket Foster (Edinburgh, Black, 1858), contains thirty drawings, some of them charmingly engraved by W. T. Green, Dalziel Brothers, and Edward Evans in 'the Turner vignette' manner; they are delightful of their kind.

In 1859 there seems to be a falling off, which can hardly be traced to the starting of _Once a Week_ in July, for Christmas books--and nearly all the best illustrated volumes fall into that category--are prepared long before midsummer. C. H. Bennett's illustrated Bunyan's _Pilgrim Progress_ (Longmans) is one of the best of the year's output. A survival of an older type is _A Book of Favourite Modern Ballads_, illustrated by C. W. Cope, J. C. Horsley, A. Solomon, S. Palmer, and others (Kent), which, but for the publisher's announcement, might well be regarded as a reprint of a book at least ten years earlier; but its peculiar method was unique at that time, and rarely employed since, although but lately revived now for half-tone blocks. It consists in a double printing, black upon a previous printing in grey, not solid, but with the 'lights' carefully taken out, so that the whole looks like a drawing on grey paper heightened by white chalk. Whether the effect might be good on ordinary paper, these impressions on a shiny cream surface, set in gold borders, are not captivating.

_Odes and Sonnets_, illustrated by Birket Foster (Routledge, 1859), has also devices by Henry Sleigh, printed in colours. It is not a happy experiment; despite the exquisite landscapes, the decoration accords so badly that you cannot linger over its pages with pleasure. _Byron's Childe Harold_, with eighty illustrations by Percival Skelton, is another popular book of 1859.

_Hiawatha_, with twenty-four drawings by G. H. Thomas, and _The Merchant of Venice_ (Sampson Low, 1860), illustrated by G. H. Thomas, Birket Foster, and H. Brandling, with ornaments by Harry Rogers, are two others a trifle belated in style. Of different sort is _The Voyage of the Constance_, a tale of the Arctic Seas (Edinburgh, Constable), with twenty-four drawings by Charles Keene, a singularly interesting and apparently scarce volume which reveals powers of imagining landscape which he had never seen in a very realistic manner. I once heard him declare that he had never in his life been near either an Irish bog or a Scotch moor, both subjects being very frequent in his work.

_The Seasons_, by James Thomson (Nisbet, 1859), illustrated by Birket Foster, F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., J. Wolf, G. Thomas, and Noel Humphreys, is another small quarto gift-book with the merits and defects of its class. Yet, after making all due allowance, one feels that even these average volumes of the fifties, if they do not interest us as much as those of the sixties, are yet ahead, in many important qualities, of the average Christmas gift-book to-day. The academic scholarship and fine craft of this era would equip a whole school of 'decorative students,' and leave still much to spare. Yet if we prefer, in our heart of hearts, the Birmingham books to-day, this is merely to confess that modernity, whether it be frankly actual, or pose as mediæval, attracts us more than a far worthier thing out of fashion for the moment. But such preference, if it exists, is hardly likely to outlast a serious study of the books of 'the sixties.'