CHAPTER IX: SOME ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, 1865-1872

With 1865 we reach the height of the movement--this and the following year being of all others most fertile in books illustrated by the best representative men. It saw Rossetti's frontispiece and title to _The Prince's Progress_ (Macmillan, 1866), these two designs being almost enough to make the year memorable. _A Round of Days_ (Routledge), one of the finest of the illustrated gift-books, contains Walker's _Broken Victuals_ (p. 3), _One Mouth More_ (p. 58), and the well-known _Four Seasons_ (pp. 37, 39, 41, 43), for one of which the drawing on wood is at South Kensington Museum. A. Boyd Houghton appears with fourteen examples (pp. 1, 2, 5, 19, 20, 21, 22, 30, 47, 48, 71, 73, 77, 78), J. W. North with three exquisite landscapes (pp. 15, 17, 18), G. J. Pinwell with five subjects, Paul Gray with one (p. 81), J. D. Watson with five (pp. 26, 28, 62, 64, 66), T. Morten with one (p. 79), A. W. Bayes with two, T. Dalziel with seven, and E. Dalziel with two. These complete its contents, excepting two delicately engraved studies of heads after Warwick Brookes. The book itself is distinctly a lineal descendant from the annuals of the earlier half of the century; a typical example of a not very noble ideal--a scrap-book of poems and pictures made important by the work of the artists.

Yet, with full recognition of the greater literalism of reproductive process to-day, one doubts if even _The London Garland_ (Macmillan, 1895), which most nearly approaches it, will maintain its interest more fully, after thirty years' interval, than does this sumptuous quarto, and a few of its fellows. That we could get together, at the present time, as varied and capable a list of artists is quite possible; but where is the publisher who would risk paying so much for original work designed for a single book, when examples by the same men are to be obtained in equally good reproductions, and not less well printed in many of the sixpenny weeklies and the monthly magazines? The change of conditions seems to forbid a revival of volumes of this class, although the _Yellow Book_, _The Pageant_, _The Savoy_, and _The Quarto_, are not entirely unrelated to them.

To 1864 belongs formally _The Cornhill Gallery_, a hundred impressions from the original blocks of pictures. Among the early volumes issued for Christmas 1865, this is, perhaps, the most important book, but, as its contents are fully noticed elsewhere, no more need be said here. It is amusing to read that a critic disliked 'Mr. Leighton's unpleasant subjects'--the Romola designs! Dalziels' _Illustrated Goldsmith_ (Ward and Lock, 1865), may be considered, upon the whole, the masterpiece of G. J. Pinwell, who designed the hundred illustrations which seemed then to be accepted as the only orthodox number for a book. How charming some of these are every student of the period knows. Pinwell, as certain original drawings that remain prove only too clearly, suffered terribly at the engraver's hands, and, beautiful as many of the designs are, one cannot avoid regret that they were not treated more tenderly. It is quite possible that bold work was needed for the serial issue in large numbers, and that the engravers simplified the drawings of set purpose; but the delicacy and grace of the originals are ill-replaced by the coarser modelling of the faces and the quality of the 'line' throughout. This year saw also _Home Thoughts and Home Scenes_, a book with thirty-five drawings of children, by A. Boyd Houghton (Routledge, 1865); which was afterwards reprinted as _Happy Day Stories_. This book is absolutely essential to any representative collection of the period, but nevertheless its designs can hardly be regarded as among the artist's most masterly works.

Warne's edition of _The Arabian Nights_ (1866), with sixteen drawings, eight by A. Boyd Houghton, must not be confused with the other edition to which he contributed quite distinct subjects. This, and _Don Quixote_ (Warne) appear in the Christmas lists for 1865. The great Spanish novel hardly seems to have sustained the artist to his finest achievements throughout. It contains 100 most interesting designs; some that reveal his full accomplishment. At the same time it fails to astound you, as the _Arabian Nights_ have a knack of doing again and again, whenever you turn over their pages.

This was a great year for Gustave Doré. So many English editions of his books were issued that a summary of the year's art begins with an apology for calling it 'l'année dorée.' Among these _Don Quixote_ gained rapid and firm hold of popular fancy. Many people who have risen superior to Doré to-day, and speak of him with contempt now, at that time grovelled before the French artist's work. A contemporary critic writes of him as one who, 'by common consent occupies the first place of all book-illustrators of all time.' As he is not in any sense an English illustrator we need not attempt to appraise his work here, but it influenced public taste far more than it influenced draughtsmen; yet the fact that _Don Quixote_, as Houghton depicted him, even now fails to oust the lean-armoured, grotesque hero (one of Doré's few powerful creations), may be the reason for Houghton's version failing to impress us beyond a certain point.

A book of the year, _Ballads and Songs of Brittany_, from the French of Hersart de la Villemarqué, by Tom Taylor (Macmillan), should be interesting to-day, if only for the two steel plates after Tissot, which show that, in his great Eastern cycle of Biblical drawings, he reverts to an earlier manner, which he had employed before the _mondaine_ and the _demi-monde_ attracted him. The book contains also four Millais', and a fine Keene, which, with most of the other subjects, had already appeared with the poems in _Once a Week_.

_Enoch Arden_ (E. Moxon & Co., 1866), with twenty-five most dainty drawings by Arthur Hughes, is said, in some contemporaneous announcements of the season, to be the first successful attempts at photographing the designs on wood; but we have already noticed the fine example of Mr. Bolton's new process for photographing on wood, a bas-relief after Flaxman, in the _Lyra Germanica_ (1861). Another table-book, important so far as price is concerned, is _The Life of Man Symbolised_ (Longmans, 1866), with many illustrations by John Leighton, F.S.A. _Gems of Literature_, illustrated by Noel Paton (Nimmo); _Pen and Pencil Pictures from the Poets_ (Nimmo), with forty illustrations by Keeley Halswelle, Pettie, M'Whirter, W. Small, J. Lawson, and others; and _Scott's Poems_, illustrated by Keeley Halswelle, were also issued at this time. An epoch-making book of this season, _Alice in Wonderland_ (Macmillan), with Tenniel's forty-two immortal designs, needs only bare mention, for who does not know it intimately?

A very interesting experiment survives in the illustration to Watts's _Divine and Moral Songs_ (Nisbet, 1865). This book, edited by H. Fitzcock, the enthusiastic promoter of graphotype, enlisted the services of notable artists, whose tentative efforts, in the first substitute for wood-engraving that attained any commercial recognition, make the otherwise tedious volume a treasure-trove. The Du Maurier on page 14, the J. D. Watson (p. 22), T. Morten (p. 43), Holman Hunt (p. 49), M. E. Edwards (p. 62), C. Green (p. 9), and W. Cave Thomas (p. 75), are all worth study. A not very important drawing, _The Moon Shines Full_, by Dr. C. Heilbuth (p. 3), is a very successful effort to rival the effect of wood-engraving by mechanical means. The titles of the poems come with most grotesque effect beneath the drawings. An artist in knickerbockers, by Du Maurier, entitled 'The excellency of the Bible,' for instance, is apt to raise a ribald laugh; and some of the Calvinistic rhymes and unpleasant theology of the good old doctor are strangely ill-matched with these experiments in a medium which evidently interested the draughtsman far more than the songs which laid so heavy a burden on the little people of a century ago.

_Legends and Lyrics_, by A. A. Procter (Bell and Daldy, 1865), is another quarto edition of a popular poet, but here, in place of the usual hundred Birket Fosters, Gilberts, and the rest, we have but nineteen engravings; but they are all full pages. Charles Keene's two subjects are _The Settlers_ and _Rest_ (a night bivouac of soldiers); John Tenniel with _A Legend of Bregenz_, and Du Maurier with _A Legend of Provence_ and _The Requital_, also represent the _Punch_ contingent. The others are by W. T. C. Dobson, A. R. A., L. Frolich, T. Morten, G. H. Thomas, Samuel Palmer, J. D. Watson, W. P. Burton, J. M. Carrick, M. E. Edwards, and William H. Millais; all engraved by Horace Harral, who cannot be congratulated upon his rendering of some blocks. A very charming set of drawings by J. E. Millais will be found in Henry Leslie's _Little Songs for me to sing_ (Cassell, undated). The subjects, seven in number, are slightly executed studies of childhood by a master-hand at the work. The first volume of Cassell's _Shakespeare_, which contains a large number of drawings by H. C. Selous, was issued this year.

A fine collection of reprinted illustrations is _Pictures of Society_ (Sampson Low, 1866); its blocks are taken from Mr. James Hogg's publications, _London Society_ and _The Churchman's Family Magazine_, and include the fine Sandys, _The Waiting Time_, and M. J. Lawless's _Silent Chamber_, both reproduced here by his permission. It is a scarce but very interesting, if unequal, book.

The minor books at this time are rich in drawings by most of the artists who are our quest in this chronicle. The number, and the difficulty of ascertaining which of them contain worthy designs, must be the excuse for a very incomplete list, which includes _Keats's Poetical Works_, with a hundred and twenty designs by G. Scharf; _The Children's Hour_ (Hunter, Edinburgh), W. Small, etc.; _Jingles and Jokes for Little Folks_, Paul Gray, etc.; _The Magic Mirror_, W. S. Gilbert (Strahan); _Dame Dingle's Fairy Tales_, J. Proctor (Cassell); _Ellen Montgomery's Bookshelf_, twelve plates in colour by J. D. Watson (Nisbet); _An Old Fairy Tale_, R. Doyle (Routledge); _What the Moon saw_, eighty illustrations by A. W. Bayes (Routledge); _Ernie Elton the Lazy Boy_, _Patient Henry_, _The Boy Pilgrims_, all illustrated by A. Boyd Houghton and published by Warne; _Sybil and her Snowball_, R. Barnes (Seeley); _Stories told to a Child_, Houghton, etc. (Strahan); _Aunt Sally's Life_, G. Thomas, (Bell); _Mother's Last Words_, M. E. Edwards, etc. (Jarrold), and _Watts's Divine Songs_ (Sampson Low), with some fine Smalls and Birket Fosters.

Although the style of work that prevailed in 1865-66 was so widely popular, it did not find universal approval. Critics deplored the 'sketchy' style of Dalziels' engraving and, comparing it unfavourably with Longmans' _New Testament_, moaned, 'when shall we find again such engraving as in Mulready's drawings by Thompson.' In _Don Quixote_ they owned Houghton's designs were clever, but thought, 'on the whole, the worthy knight deserved better treatment.' And so all along the line we find the then present contrasted with the golden past; even as many look back to-day to the golden 'sixties' from the commonplace 'nineties.' This time saw the beginning of the superb toy-books by Walter Crane--which are his masterpieces, and monuments to the skill and taste of Edmund Evans, their engraver and printer. For wood-block printing in colours, no western work has surpassed them even to this date.

_Poems by Jean Ingelow_ (Longmans, 1867) is a very notable and scarce volume, which was published in the autumn of 1866. It contains twenty drawings by G. J. Pinwell, of which the seven to _The High Tide_ are singularly fine; but that they suffered terribly at the engraver's hands some originals, in the possession of Mr. Joseph Pennell, prove only too plainly. J. W. North is represented by twenty-four, A. Boyd Houghton by sixteen, J. Wolf by nine, E. J. Poynter by one, W. Small by four, E. Dalziel by three, and T. Dalziel by twenty. The level of this fine book is singularly high, and it must needs be placed among the very best of one of the most fruitful years.

Another book published at this time, _Ballad Stories of the Affections_, by Robert Buchanan (Routledge, undated), contains some singularly fine examples of the work of G. J. Pinwell, W. Small, A. B. Houghton, E. Dalziel, T. Dalziel, J. Lawson, and J. D. Watson, engraved by the Brothers Dalziel; _Signelil_ (pp. 7 and 9), _Helga and Hildebrand_ (p. 17), _The Two Sisters_ (p. 29), and _Signe at the Wake_ (_frontispiece_) show Houghton at his best; _Maid Mettelil_ (p. 47) exhibits Pinwell in an unusually decorative mood. Indeed, the thirty-four illustrations are all good, and the book is decidedly one of the most interesting volumes of the period, and unfortunately one least frequently met with to-day.

If _Wayside Poesies_ (Routledge, 1867) is not the finest illustrated book of the Christmas season of 1866, it is in the very front rank. Its eighteen drawings by G. J. Pinwell are among the best things he did; the five by Fred Walker are also well up to his best manner, and the nineteen by J. W. North include some of the most exquisite landscapes he ever set down in black and white. It was really one of Messrs. Dalziels' projects, and its publishers were only distributors; so that the credit--and it is not slight--of producing this admirable volume belongs to the popular engravers whose names occur in one capacity or another in almost every paragraph of this chronicle. Still more full of good things, but all reprinted, is _Touches of Nature by Eminent Artists_ (Strahan, 1866). This folio volume, 'into which is gathered much of the richest fruit of Strahan and Company's magazines,' does not belie its dedication. As almost every one of its ninety-eight subjects is referred to in the record of the various magazines whence they were collected, it will suffice to note that it contains three by Sandys, nine by Fred Walker, four by Millais, five by A. Boyd Houghton, eight by G. J. Pinwell, two by Lawless, and many by J. W. North, W. Small, J. Pettie, G. Du Maurier, J. Tenniel, J. D. Watson, Robert Barnes, with specimens of Charles Keene, J. Mahoney, Marcus Stone, W. Orchardson, F. J. Shields, Paul Gray, H. H. Armstead, and others.

A volume of even greater interest is _Millais's Collected Illustrations_ (Strahan, 1866). The eighty drawings on wood include many subjects originally published in _Lays of the Holy Land_, _Once a Week_, _Tennyson's Poems_, _Good Words_, _Orley Farm_, etc. etc. Copies in good condition are not often in the market; but it should be the blue riband of every collector, for the blocks here receive more careful printing than that allowed by the exigencies of their ordinary publication, and, free from any gold border, set on a large and not too shiny page, they tell out as well as one could hope to find them. As you linger over its pages you miss many favourites, for it is by no means an exhaustive collection even from the sources mentioned; but it is representative and full of superb work, interspersed though it be with the less fine things done while the great draughtsman was still hampered by the conventions of Mulready and Maclise.

_Idyllic Pictures_ (Cassell, 1867) is another reprinted collection, this time selected entirely from one magazine, _The Quiver_. It contains a fine Sandys here called _October_, elsewhere _The Advent of Winter_, whereof the artist complained bitterly of the 'cutting.' In March 1884, the _Art Journal_ contained a very excellent paper on 'Frederick Sandys,' by J. M. Gray, where the original drawing for this subject is reproduced by process. The more important things in _Idyllic Pictures_ are: G. J. Pinwell's _Faded Flowers_ (p. 13), _Sailor's Valentine_ (p. 47), _The Angel's Song_ (p. 73), _The Organ-man_ (p. 121), and _Straight On_ (p. 169); A. Boyd Houghton's _Wee Rose Mary_ (p. 89), _St. Martin_ (p. 181), and _Sowing and Reaping_ (p. 189); Paul Gray's _Cousin Lucy_ (_Frontispiece_), _A Reverie_ (p. 17), _By the Dead_ (p. 21), _Mary's Wedding-day_ (p. 141), and _The Holy Light_ (p. 193); W. Small's _Between the Cliffs_ (p. 29), _My Ariel_ (p. 43), _A Retrospect_ (p. 85), _Babble_ (p. 109), and _Church Bells_ (p. 173); T. Morten's _Izaak Walton_ (p. 69) and _Hassan_ (p. 81); M. E. Edwards's _A Lullaby_ (p. 49), _Seeing Granny_ (p. 117), and _Unrequited_ (p. 129), with others by the artists already named, and R. Barnes, H. Cameron, R. P. Leitch, C. J. Staniland, and G. H. Thomas.

_Two Centuries of Song_, selected by Walter Thornbury (Sampson Low, 1867), is a book almost exactly on the lines of those of the earlier sixties, which seems at first sight to be out of place amid the works of the newer school. It has nineteen full-page drawings, set in ornamental borders, which, printed in colours, decorate (? disfigure) every page of the book. The illustrations, engraved by W. J. Linton, Gavin Smith, H. Harral, are by eminent hands: H. S. Marks, T. Morten, W. Small, G. Leslie, and others. The frontispiece, _Paying Labourers, temp. Elizabeth_, by the first named, is very typical; _Phyllis_, by G. Leslie, a pretty half-mediæval, half-modern 'decorative' subject; and _Colin and Phoebe_, by W. Small, a delightful example of a broadly-treated landscape, with two figures in the distance--a really notable work. In my own copy, freely annotated with most depreciatory criticisms of text and pictures in pencil by a former owner, the illustration (p. 138) has vanished, but on its fly-leaf the late owner has written--

'This verse its picture had, A vulgar lass and lout; The _wood-cut_ was so bad That I _would cut_ it out.'

That it is signed G. W. is a coincidence more curious than pleasing to me, and I quote the quatrain chiefly to show that the term 'wood-cut' for 'wood-engraving' has been in common use unofficially, as well as officially, all through this century. Nevertheless it is a distinct gain to differentiate between the diverse methods, by refusing to regard the terms as synonymous.

Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_ (Cassell, undated), issued about this time, has a number of notable contributors; but the one-sided gruesome record of cruelties which, whether true or false, are horribly depressing, has evidently told upon the artists' nerves. The illustrators, according to its title-page, are: 'G. H. Thomas, John Gilbert, G. Du Maurier, J. D. Watson, A. B. Houghton, W. Small, A. Pasquier, R. Barnes, M. E. Edwards, T. Morten, etc.' Some of the pictures have the names of artist and engraver printed below, while others are not so distinguished. Those most worthy of mention are by A. Boyd Houghton (pp. 389, 480, 508, 572, 596, and 668), S. L. Fildes (p. 493), G. Du Maurier (p. 541), and W. Small (pp. 333, 365, 624). Among artists not mentioned in the title-page are F. J. Skill, J. Lee, J. Henley, and F. W. Lawson. The first volume of Cassell's _History of England_ appeared this year with many engravings after W. Small and others.

Another book of the season worth noting is _Heber's Hymns_ (Sampson Low, 1867). It contains 100 illustrations by T. D. Scott, W. Small, H. C. Selous, Wilfrid Lawson, Percival Skelton, and others; but they can hardly be styled epoch-making. _Christian Lyrics_ (Sampson Low, 1868) (re-issued later in Warne's _Chandos Classics_), contains 250 illustrations by A. B. Houghton, R. Barnes, and others.

_The Story of a Feather_ (Bradbury, Evans, and Co. 1867), illustrated by G. Du Maurier, is a book that deserves more space than can be allowed to it. It holds a large number of drawings, some of which, especially the initial vignettes, display the marvellously fecund and dramatic invention of the artist. _The Spirit of Praise_ (Warne, 1867) is an anthology of sacred verse, containing delightful drawings by W. Small (pp. 57, 97, 149, 189), by Paul Gray (p. 89), by G. J. Pinwell (pp. 19, 157), by A. Boyd Houghton (p. 53), and others by J. W. North and T. Dalziel.

To 1866 belongs most probably _Gulliver's Travels_, illustrated with eighty designs by 'the late T. Morten,' in which the ill-fated artist is seen at his best level; they display a really convincing imagination, and if, technically speaking, he has done better work elsewhere, this is his most successful sustained effort.

_Moore's Irish Melodies_ (Mackenzie) contains many illustrations by Birket Foster, Harrison Weir, Cope, and others. _Art and Song_ has thirty original illustrations engraved on _steel_, which naturally looks very out of date among its fellows. _A New Table-Book_ by Mark Lemon (Bradbury) is illustrated by F. Eltze. Mackay's 1001 _Gems of Poetry_ (Routledge) numbers among its illustrations at least one Millais.

Books containing designs by artists whose names appear after the title, may be noted briefly here. _Little Songs for Little Folks_, J. D. Watson; _Æsop's Fables_, with 114 drawings by Harrison Weir (Routledge); _Washerwoman's Foundling_, W. Small (Strahan); _Lilliput Levée_, J. E. Millais, G. J. Pinwell, etc. (Strahan); _Roses and Holly_ (Nimmo); _Moore's Irish Melodies_, Birket Foster, H. Weir, C. W. Cope, etc. (Mackenzie); _Chandos Poets: Longfellow_, A. Boyd Houghton, etc. (Warne); _Things for Nests_ (Nisbet). The popularity of the illustrator at this time provoked a critic to write: 'Book-illustration is a thriving fad. _Jones fecit_ is the pendant of everything he does. The dearth of intellectual talent among book-illustrators is amazing. The idea is thought less of than the form. Mental growth has not kept pace with technical skill'--a passage only worth quoting because it is echoed to-day, with as little justice, by irresponsible scribblers.

In another criticism upon this year's books we find: 'For the pre-Raphaelite draughtsman and the pre-Bewick artist, who love scratchy lines without colour, blocks which look like spoilt etchings, and the first "proofs" of artists' work untouched by the engraver, nothing can be better.' It was the year of Doré's _Tennyson_, and Doré's _Tupper_, a year when the fine harvests were nearly at an end, when a new order of things was close at hand, and the advent of _The Graphic_ should set the final seal to the work of the sixties and inaugurate a new school.

But, although the Christmas of 1866 saw the ingathering of the most fertile harvest, the next three years must be not overlooked. In 1867 _Lucile_, with Du Maurier's designs, carries on the record; and _North Coast and other Poems_, by Robert Buchanan (Routledge, 1868), nobly maintains the tradition of Dalziels. It contains fifty-three drawings: thirteen by Houghton, six by Pinwell, two by W. Small, one by J. B. Zwecker, three by J. Wolf, twenty-five by T. and three by E. Dalziel, and the engraving is at their best level, the printing unusually good.

_Golden Thoughts from Golden Fountains_ (Warne, 1867) is another profusely illustrated anthology, on the lines of those which preceded it. The first edition was printed in sepia throughout, but the later editions printed in black do more justice to the blocks. In it we find seventy-three excellent designs by A. Boyd Houghton, G. J. Pinwell, W. Small, J. Lawson, W. P. Burton, G. Dalziel, T. Dalziel, and others; if the book, as a whole, cannot be placed among the best of its class, yet all the same it comprises some admirable work. The _Savage Club Papers_, 1867 (Tinsley), has also a galaxy of stars in its list of illustrators, but their sparkle is intermittent and feeble. True that Du Maurier, A. Boyd Houghton, J. D. Watson, and a host of others drew, and Dalziels, Swain, Harral, and the rest engraved their work; but all the same it is but an ephemeral book. _Krilof and His Fables_ (Strahan, 1867) enshrines some delightful, if slight, Houghtons, and many spirited animal drawings by Zwecker. Wood's _Bible Animals_ is also rich in fine zoological pictures. The _Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity_ (Nisbet, 1867) would be notable if only for its three designs by Albert Moore, who appears here as an illustrator, probably the only time he ever contributed to any publication. Notwithstanding two or three powerful and fantastic drawings by W. Small, the rest are a very mixed lot, conceived in all sorts of manners. _The Illustrated Book of Sacred Poems_ (Cassell, undated) is a big anthology, with a silver-print photograph by way of frontispiece. It contains a rather fine composition, _Side by Side_ (p. 17), with no signature or other means of identification. W. Small (p. 21), J. D. Watson (pp. 69, 89, 105, 200, 209), M. E. Edwards, H. C. Selous, J. W. North, and many others are represented; but the engravers, for the most part, cannot be congratulated upon their interpretation of the artists' designs.

Other books worth mention are: _The Mirage of Life_, with twenty-nine characteristic illustrations by John Tenniel (Religious Tract Society); _The Story without an End_, illustrated by E. V. B.; _Cassell's Illustrated Readings_, two volumes with a mass of pictures of unequal merit, but the omnivorous collector will keep them for the sake of designs by F. Barnard, J. D. Watson, J. Mahoney, W. Small, S. L. Fildes, and many another typical artist of the sixties, in spite of the unsatisfactory blocks; _Fairy Tales_, by Mark Lemon, illustrated by C. H. Bennett and Richard Doyle; _Pupils of St. John the Divine_, illustrated by E. Armitage (Macmillan); _Puck on Pegasus_ (the new and enlarged edition); _Poetry of Nature_, illustrated by Harrison Weir; and _Original Poems_ by J. and E. Taylor (Routledge, 1868), with a large number of designs by R. Barnes, A. W. Bayes, etc.

With 1868 the end is near; the few books of real merit which bear its date were almost all issued in the autumn of the previous year. _The Savage Club Papers_, 1868, is a book not worth detailed comment; _Five Days' Entertainment at Wentworth Grange_, by F. T. Palgrave (Macmillan), contains some charming designs by Arthur Hughes; _Stories from Memel_, illustrated by Walter Crane (W. Hunt and Co.), is a pleasant book of the year; and, about this time, other work by the same artist appeared in _The Merrie Heart_ (Cassell). _King Gab's Story Bag_ (Cassell), _The Magic of Kindness_ (Cassell), and other children's books I have been unable to trace, nor the _Poetry of Nature_, edited by J. Cundall.

_Lyra Germanica_ (Longmans), a second anthology of hymns translated from the German, contains three illustrations by Ford Madox Brown, _At the Sepulchre_, _The Sower_, and _Abraham_, six by Edward Armitage, R.A., and many headpieces and other decorations by John Leighton, which should not be undervalued because the taste of to-day is in favour of a bolder style, and dislikes imitation Gothic detail. Of their sort they are excellent, and may be placed among the earliest modern attempts to decorate a page, with some show of consistency of treatment. Compared with the so-called 'rustic' borders of earlier efforts, they at once assume a certain importance. The binding is similar to that upon the first series.

_Tom Brown's School Days_, illustrated by Arthur Hughes and S. P. Hall, is one of the most notable books of the year. It is curious that at the close of the period, as at its beginning, this artist is so much to the fore, although examples of his work appear at long intervals during the years' chronicle. Yet, as 1855 shows his work in the van of the movement, so also he supplies a goodly proportion of the interesting work which is the aftermath of the sixties, rather than the premature growth of the seventies. _Tom Brown_ is too well known in its cheap editions, where the same illustrations are used, to require any detailed comment here. _Gray's Elegy_ (illustrated in colour by R. Barnes, Birket Foster, Wimperis, and others) is of little importance.

In 1869 _The Nobility of Life_ (Warne), an anthology, edited by L. Valentine, is attractive, less by reason of its coloured plates after J. D. Watson, C. Green, E. J. Poynter, and others, than from its headpieces, by A. Boyd Houghton (pp. 26, 106, 122, 136, 146, 178), Francis Walker (pp. 82, 170), J. Mahoney (p. 98), which, subsidiary as they appear here, are in danger of being overlooked. _Carmina Crucis_ (Bell and Daldy, 1860), poems by Dora Greenwell, has two or three decorative pieces, by G. D. L[eslie], which might be attributed to the influence of the _Century Guild Hobby Horse_, if direct evidence did not antedate them by twenty years. _Miss Kilmansegg_, illustrated by Seccombe; _The Water Babies_, Sir Noel Paton and P. Skelton; _In Fairyland_, R. Doyle (Longmans); _Vikram and the Vampire_, E. Griset (Longmans), and _Æsop's Fables_ (Cassell), with one hundred clever and humorous designs, by the same artist, are among the few others that are worth naming.

Several series of volumes, illustrated by various hands, may be noticed out of their due order. For the date of the first volume is often far distant from the last, and yet, as the series maintained a certain coherency, it would be confusing to spread its record over a number of years and necessitate continual reiteration of facts.

The _Choice Series_ of selections from the poets, published by Messrs. Sampson Low and Co., include several volumes issued some time before they were included as part of this series. The ideal of all is far more akin to that of the early fifties--when the original editions of several of these were first issued--than to that of the sixties. They include Bloomfield's _Farmer's Boy_ (1857), Campbell's _Pleasures of Hope_ (1855), Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_ (1857), Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_ and _Vicar of Wakefield_, Gray's _Elegy_ (1853), Keats's _Eve of St. Agnes_, Milton's _L'Allegro_, Warton's _The Hermit_, Wordsworth's _Pastoral Poems_, and Rogers's _Pleasures of Memory_ (1864). All the volumes, but the last, have wood-engravings by various hands after drawings by Birket Foster, Harrison Weir, Gilbert and others; but in the _Pleasures of Memory_ 'the large illustrations' are produced by a new method without the aid of an engraver, and some little indulgence is asked for them on the plea of the inexperience of the artists in this process. 'The drawing is made' (to continue the quotation) 'with an etching needle, or any suitable point, upon a glass plate spread with collodion. It is then photographed [? printed] upon a prepared surface of wax, and from this an electrotype is formed in relief which is printed with the type.' Samuel Palmer, J. D. Watson, Charles Green, and others are the artists to whom this reference applies, and the result, if not better than the best contemporary engraving, is certainly full of interest to-day.

The _Golden Treasury_ Series (Macmillan and Co.) contains, in each volume, a vignette engraved on steel by Jeens, after drawings by J. E. Millais, T. Woolner, W. Holman Hunt, Sir Noel Paton, Arthur Hughes, etc.

Although the 'Household Edition' of Charles Dickens's complete works was issued early in the seventies, it is illustrated almost entirely by men of the sixties, and was possibly in active preparation during that decade. Fred Barnard takes the lion's share, the largest number of drawings to the most important volumes. His fame as a Dickens illustrator might rest secure on these alone, although it is supplemented by many other character-drawings of the types created by the author of _Pickwick_. To _Sketches by Boz_ he supplies thirty-four designs, to _Nicholas Nickleby_ fifty-nine, to _Barnaby Rudge_ forty-six, to _Christmas Books_ twenty-eight, to _Dombey and Son_ sixty-four, to _David Copperfield_ sixty, to _Bleak House_ sixty-one, and to the _Tale of Two Cities_ twenty-five. 'Phiz' re-illustrates _The Pickwick Papers_ with fifty-seven designs, concerning which silence is best. J. Mahoney shows excellent work in twenty-eight drawings to _Oliver Twist_ and fifty-eight each to _Little Dorrit_ and _Our Mutual Friend_; Charles Green's thirty-nine illustrations to the _Old Curiosity Shop_ are also admirable. F. A. Fraser is responsible for thirty to _Great Expectations_, E. G. Dalziel for thirty-four to _Christmas Stories_ (from _All the Year Round_), twenty-six to the _Uncommercial Traveller_, and a few to minor pieces, issued with _Edwin Drood_, which contain S. L. Fildes's excellent designs. H. French contributes twenty to _Hard Times_, A. B. Frost illustrates _American Notes_, J. Gordon Thomson _Pictures from Italy_, and J. M'L. Ralston supplies fifteen for _A Child's History of England_. To re-embody characters already stereotyped, for the most part, by the earlier plates of the original editions, was a bold enterprise: that it did not wholly fail is greatly to its credit. It is quite possible that as large a number of readers made their first acquaintance with the _dramatis personæ_ of the novels in these popular editions as in the older books, and it would be interesting to discover what they really felt when the much-vaunted copper-plates afterwards fell under their notice. The sentiment of English people has been amply expended on the Hablot K. Browne designs. Cruikshank is still considered a great master by many people; but if one could 'depolarise' their pictures (to use Wendell Holmes's simile), and set them before their admirers free from early associations, free from the glamour of Dickens romance, and then extract a frank outspoken opinion, it would be, probably, quite opposite to that which they are now ready to maintain.

Recognising that the old illustrations are still regarded with a halo of memory and romance, not unlike that which raises Mumbo Jumbo to a fetish among his worshippers, a wish to estimate anew the intrinsic value, considered as works of art, of these old illustrations, is not provoked by merely destructive tendencies. So long as Thackeray's drawing of _Amelia_ is accepted as a type of grace and beauty, how can the believer realise the beauty of Millais's _Was it not a lie?_ in _Framley Parsonage_. In the earlier and later engravings alike, the costume repels; but in the one there is real flesh and blood, real passion, real art, in the other a merely conventional symbol, which we agree to accept as an interesting heroine, in the way a child of five accepts the scratches on his slate as real pirates and savages. There is little use in trying to appreciate the best, if the distinctly second-best is reverenced equally; and so, at any cost of personal feeling, it is simply the duty of all concerned to rank the heroes of the sale-room, 'Phiz,' Cruikshank, and Leech at their intrinsic value. This is by no means despicable. For certain qualities which are not remotely connected with art belong to them; but the beauty of truth, the knowledge born of academic accomplishment, or literal imitation of nature, were alike absolutely beyond their sympathy. Hence to praise their work as one praises a Dürer, a Whistler, or a Millais, is apt to confuse the minds of the laity, already none too clear as to the moment when art comes in. This protest is not advanced to prove that every drawing mentioned in these pages surpasses the best work of the men in question, but merely to suggest whether it would not be better to recognise that the praise bestowed for so many years was awarded to a conventional treatment now obsolete, and should not be regarded as equivalent to that bestowed upon works of art which owe nothing to parochial conventions, and are based on unalterable facts, whether a Hokousaï or a Menzel chances to be the interpreter.

The _Chandos Poets_ (Warne), a series of bulky octavos, with red-line borders, are of unequal merit. Some, _Willmott's Poets of the Nineteenth Century_, _James Montgomery's Poems_, _Christian Lyrics_, and _Heber's Poetical Works_, appear to be merely reprints of earlier volumes with the original illustrations; others have new illustrations by men of the sixties. The _Longfellow_ has several by A. Boyd Houghton, who is also represented by a few excellent designs in the _Byron_; _Legendary Ballads_ (J. S. Roberts) has three full-page designs, by Walter Crane, to _Thomas of Ercildoune_ (p. 357), _The Jolly Harper_ (p. 462), and _Robin Hood_ (p. 580). Later volumes, with designs by F. A. Fraser and H. French, do not come into our subject.

Other series of the works of 'standard poets,' as they were called, all resplendent in gold and colours, and more or less well illustrated, were issued by Messrs. Routledge, Nimmo, Warne, Cassell, Moxon, and others, beginning in the fifties. Here and there a volume has interest, but one suspects that many of the plates had done duty before, and those which had not are not always of great merit; as, for instance, the drawings by W. B. Scott to the poetical works of L. E. L. (Routledge). In these various books will be found, _inter alia_, examples of Sir John Gilbert, Birket Foster, E. H. Corbould, W. Small, and Keeley Halswelle.

_Hurst and Blackett's Standard Library_ is the title of a series of novels by eminent hands in single volumes, each containing a frontispiece engraved on steel. That to _Christian's Mistake_ is by Frederick Sandys, engraved by John Saddler. _John Halifax_, _Nothing New_, _The Valley of a Hundred Fires_, and _Les Misérables_, each have a drawing by Millais, also engraved by John Saddler. In _Studies from Life_ Holman Hunt is the draughtsman and Joseph Brown the engraver. _No Church_, _Grandmother's Money_, and _A Noble Life_, contain frontispieces by Tenniel, _Barbara's History_, one by J. D. Watson, and _Adèle_, a fine design by John Gilbert. Others by Leech and Edward Hughes are not particularly interesting. The steel engraving bestowed upon most of these obliterated all character from the designs, and superseded the artist's touch by hard unsympathetic details; but, all the same, compositions by men of such eminence deserve mention.

With 1870 the end of our subject is reached; it is the year of _Edwin Drood_, which established S. L. Fildes's position as an illustrator of the first rank; it also has a pleasant book of quasi-mediæval work, _Mores Ridicula_, by J. E. Rogers (Macmillan), (followed later by _Ridicula Rediviva_ and _The Fairy Book_, by the author of _John Halifax_, with coloured designs by the same artist), of which an enthusiastic critic wrote: 'Worthy to be hung in the Royal Academy side by side with Rossetti, Sandys, Barnes, and Millais'; Whymper's _Scrambles on the Alps_, a book greatly prized by collectors, with drawings by Whymper and J. Mahoney; _The Cycle of Life_ (S.P.C.K.); and _Episodes of Fiction_ (Nimmo, 1870) containing twenty-eight designs by R. Paterson, after C. Green, C. J. Staniland, P. Skelton, F. Barnard, Harrison Weir, and others. _Novello's National Nursery Rhymes_, by J. W. Elliott, published in 1871, belongs to the sixties by intrinsic right. It includes two delightful drawings by A. Boyd Houghton--one of which, _Tom the Piper's Son_ (owned by Mr. Pennell), has been reproduced from the original by photogravure in Mr. Laurence Housman's monograph--and many by H. S. Marks, W. Small, J. Mahoney, G. J. Pinwell, W. J. Wiegand, Arthur Hughes, T. and E. Dalziel, and others.

_H. Leslie's Musical Annual_ (Cassell, 1870) contains a fine drawing, _The Boatswain's Leap_, by G. J. Pinwell, and a steel engraving, _A Reverie_, after Millais, which was re-issued in _The Magazine of Art_, September 1896. _Pictures from English Literature_ (Cassell) is an excuse for publishing twenty full-page engravings after elaborate drawings by Du Maurier, S. L. Fildes, W. Small, J. D. Watson, W. Cave Thomas, etc. etc. This anthology, with a somewhat heterogeneous collection of drawings, seems to be the last genuine survivor of the old Christmas gift-books, which is lineally connected with the masterpieces of its kind.

Soon after the inevitable anthology of poems reappeared, in humbler pamphlet shape, as a birthday souvenir, or a Christmas card, embellished with chromo-lithographs, as it had already been allied with photographic silver-prints; but it is always the accident of the artists chosen which imparts permanent interest to the otherwise feeble object; whether it take the shape of a drawing-room table-book, gaudy, costly, and dull, or of a little booklet, it is a thing of no vital interest, unless by chance its pictures are the work of really powerful artists. The decadence of a vigorous movement is never a pleasant subject to record in detail. Fortunately, although the king died, the king lived almost immediately, and _The Graphic_, with its new ideals and new artists, quickly established a convention of its own, which is no less interesting. If it does not seem, so far as we can estimate, to have numbered among its articles men who are worthy in all respects to be placed by Rossetti, Millais, Sandys, Houghton, Pinwell, Fred Walker, and the rest of the typical heroes of the sixties, yet in its own way it is a worthy beginning of a new epoch.

Before quitting our period, however, a certain aftermath of the rich harvest must not be forgotten; and this, despite the comparatively few items it contains, may be placed in a chapter by itself.