Part 3

You may say that you don't care for this result, that you wish to read literature and to look at pictures; and that so long as the modern book gives you these pleasures you ask no more of it; well, I can understand that, but you must pardon me if I say that your interest in books in that case is literary only, and not artistic, and that implies, I think, a partial crippling of the faculties; a misfortune which no one should be proud of.

However, it seems certain that there is growing up a taste for books which are visible works of art, and that especially in this country, where the printers, at their best, do now use letters much superior in form to those in use elsewhere, and where a great deal of work intending to ornament books reasonably is turned out; most of which, however, is deficient in some respect; which, in fact, is seldom satisfactory unless the whole page, picture, ornament, and type is reproduced literally from the handiwork of the artist, as in some of the beautiful works of Mr. Walter Crane. But this is a thing that can rarely be done, and what we want, it seems to me, is, not that books should sometimes be beautiful, but that they should generally be beautiful; indeed, if they are not, it increases the difficulties of those who would make them sometimes beautiful immensely. At any rate, I claim that illustrated books should always be beautiful, unless, perhaps, where the illustrations are present rather for the purpose of giving information than for that of giving pleasure to the intellect through the eye; but surely, even in this latter case, they should be reasonably and decently good-looking.

Well, how is this beauty to be obtained? It must be by the harmonious coöperation of the craftsmen and artists who produce the book. First, the paper should be good, which is a more important point than might be thought, and one in which there is a most complete contrast between the old and the modern books; for no bad paper was made till about the middle of the sixteenth century, and the worst that was made even then was far better than what is now considered good. Next, the type must be good, a matter in which there is more room for excellence than those may think who have not studied the forms of letters closely. There are other matters, however, besides the mere form of the type which are of much importance in the producing of a beautiful book, which, however, I cannot go into tonight, as it is a little beside my present subject. Then, the mere ornament must be good, and even very good. I do not know anything more dispiriting than the mere platitudes of printers' ornaments--trade ornaments. It is not uncommon now-a-days to see handsome books quite spoiled by them--books in which plain, unadorned letters would have been far more ornamental.

Then we come to the picture woodcuts. And here I feel I shall find many of you differing from me strongly; for I am sure that such illustrations as those excellent black and white pictures of Fred. Walker could never make book ornaments. The artist, to produce these satisfactorily, must exercise severe self-restraint, and must never lose sight of the page of the book he is ornamenting. That ought to be obvious to you, but I am afraid it will not be. I do not think any artist will ever make a good book illustrator, unless he is keenly alive to the value of a well-drawn line, crisp and clean, suggesting a simple and beautiful silhouette. Anything which obscures this, and just to the extent to which it does obscure it, takes away from the fitness of the design as a book ornament. In this art vagueness is quite inadmissible. It is better to be wrong than vague in making designs which are meant to be book ornaments.

Again, as the artists' designs must necessarily be reproduced for this purpose, he should never lose sight of the material he is designing for. Lack of precision is fatal (to take up again what I have just advanced) in an art produced by the point of the graver on a material which offers just the amount of resistance which helps precision. And here I come to a very important part of my subject, to wit, the relation between the designer and the wood-engraver; and it is clear that if these two artists do not understand one another, the result must be failure; and this understanding can never exist if the wood-engraver has but to cut servilely what the artist draws carelessly. If any real school of wood-engraving is to exist again, the wood-cutter must be an artist translating the designer's drawing. It is quite pitiable to see the patience and ingenuity of such clever workmen, as some modern wood-cutters are, thrown away on the literal reproduction of mere meaningless scrawls. The want of logic in artists who will insist on such work is really appalling. It is the actual touches of the hand that give the speciality, the final finish to a work of art, which carries out in one material what is designed in another; and for the designer to ignore the instrument and material by which the touches are to be done, shows complete want of understanding of the scope of reproducible design.

I cannot help thinking that it would be a good thing for artists who consider designing a part of their province (I admit there are very few such artists) to learn the art of wood-engraving, which, up to a certain point, is a far from difficult art; at any rate for those who have the kind of eyes suitable for the work. I do not mean that they should necessarily always cut their own designs, but that they should be able to cut them. They would then learn what the real capacities of the art are, and would, I should hope, give the executing artists genuine designs to execute, rather than problems to solve. I do not know if it is necessary to remind you that the difficulties in cutting a simple design on wood (and I repeat that all designs for book illustrations should be simple) are very much decreased since the fifteenth century, whereas instead of using the knife on the plank section of the wood, we now use the graver on the end section. Perhaps, indeed, some of you may think this simple wood-cutting contemptible, because of its ease; but delicacy and refinement of execution are always necessary in producing a line, and this is not easy, nay it is not possible to those who have not got the due instinct for it; mere mechanical deftness is no substitute for this instinct.

Again, as it is necessary for the designer to have a feeling for the quality of the final execution, to sympathise with the engravers difficulties, and know why one block looks artistic and another mechanical; so it is necessary for the engraver to have some capacity for design, so that he may know what the designer wants of him, and that he may be able to translate the designer, and give him a genuine and obvious cut line in place of his pencilled or penned line without injuring in any way the due expression of the original design. Lastly, what I want the artist--the great man who designs for the humble executant--to think of is, not his drawn design, which he should look upon as a thing to be thrown away when it has served its purpose, but the finished and duly printed ornament which is offered to the public. I find that the executants of my humble designs always speak of them as "sketches," however painstaking they may be in execution. This is the recognised trade term, and I quite approve of it as keeping the "great man" in his place, and showing him what his duty is, to wit, to take infinite trouble in getting the finished work turned out of hand. I lay it down as a general principle in all the arts, where one artist's design is carried out by another in a different material, that doing the work twice over is by all means to be avoided as the source of dead mechanical work. The "sketch" should be as slight as possible, i.e., as much as possible should be left to the executant.

A word or two of recapitulation as to the practical side of my subject, and I have done. An illustrated book, where the illustrations are more than mere illustrations of the printed text, should be a harmonious work of art. The type, the spacing of the type, the position of the pages of print on the paper, should be considered from the artistic point of view. The illustrations should not have a mere accidental connection with the other ornament and the type, but an essential and artistic connection. They should be designed as a part of the whole, so that they would seem obviously imperfect without their surroundings. The designs must be suitable to the material and method of reproduction, and not offer to the executant artist a mere thicket of unnatural difficulties, producing no result when finished, save the exhibition of a tour de force. The executant, on his side, whether he be the original designer or someone else, must understand that his business is sympathetic translation, and not mechanical reproduction of the original drawing. This means, in other words, the designer of the picture-blocks, the designer of the ornamental blocks, the wood-engraver, and the printer, all of them thoughtful, painstaking artists, and all working in harmonious coöperation for the production of a work of art. This is the only possible way in which you can get beautiful books.

SOME NOTES ON THE ILLUMINATED BOOKS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

Notes on Illuminated Books

The Middle Ages may be called the epoch of writing par excellence. Stone, bronze, wooden rune-staves, waxed tablets, papyrus, could be written upon with one instrument or another; but all these--even the last, tender and brittle as it was--were but makeshift materials for writing on; and it was not until parchment and vellum, and at last rag-paper, became common, that the true material for writing on, and the quill pen, the true instrument for writing with, were used. From that time till the period of the general use of printing must be considered the age of written books. As in other handicrafts, so also in this, the great period of genuine creation (once called the Dark Ages by those who had forgotten the past, and whose ideal of the future was a comfortable prison) did all that was worth doing as an art, leaving makeshifts to the period of the New Birth and the intelligence of modern civilisation.

Byzantium was doubtless the mother of mediæval calligraphy, but the art spread speedily through the North of Europe and flourished there at an early period, and it is almost startling to find it as we do in full bloom in Ireland in the seventh century. No mere writing has been done before or since with such perfection as that of the early Irish ecclesiastical books; and this calligraphy is interesting also, as showing the development of what is now called by printers "lower-case" letter, from the ancient majuscular characters. The writing is, I must repeat, positively beautiful in itself, thoroughly ornamental; but these books are mostly well equipped with actual ornament, as carefully executed as the writing--in fact, marvels of patient and ingenious interlacements. This ornament, however, has no relation in any genuine Irish book to the traditional style of Byzantium, but is rather a branch of a great and widespread school of primal decoration, which has little interest in the representation of humanity and its doings, or, indeed, in any organic life, but is contented with the convolutions of abstract lines, over which it attains to great mastery. The most obvious example of this kind of art may be found in the carvings of the Maoris of New Zealand; but it is common to many races at a certain stage of development. The colour of these Irish ornaments is not very delightful, and no gold appears in them. [Example: "The Book of Kells," Trinity College, Dublin, &c.]

This Irish calligraphy and illumination was taken up by the North of England monks; and from them, though in less completeness, by the Carlovingian makers of books both in France and even in Germany; but they were not content with the quite elementary representation of the human form current in the Irish illuminations, and filled up the gap by imitating the Byzantine picture-books with considerable success [Examples: Durham Gospels, British Museum, Gospels at Boulogne, &c.], and in time developed a beautiful style of illumination combining ornament with figure-drawing, and one seat of which in the early eleventh century was Winchester. [Example: Charter of foundation of Newminster at Winchester, British Museum.] Gold was used with some copiousness in these latter books, but is not seen in the carefully-raised and highly-burnished condition which is so characteristic of mediæval illumination at its zenith.

It should be noticed that amongst the Byzantine books of the earlier period are some which on one side surpass in mere sumptuousness all books ever made; these are written in gold and silver on vellum stained purple throughout. Later on again, in the semi-Byzantine-Anglo-Saxon or Carlovingian period, are left us some specimens of books written in gold and silver on white vellum. This splendour was at times resorted to (chiefly in Italy) in the latter half of the fifteenth century.

The just-mentioned late Anglo-Saxon style was the immediate forerunner of what may be called the first complete mediæval school, that of the middle of the twelfth century. Here the change for the better is prodigious. Apart from the actual pictures done for explanation of the text and the edification of the "faithful," these books are decorated with borders, ornamental letters, &c., in which foliage and forms human, animal, and monstrous are blended with the greatest daring and most complete mastery. The drawing is firm and precise, and it may be said also that an unerring system of beautiful colour now makes its appearance. This colour (as all schools of decorative colour not more or less effete) is founded on the juxtaposition of pure red and blue modified by delicate but clear and bright lines and "pearlings" of white, and by the use of a little green and spaces of pale pink and flesh-colour, and here and there some negative greys and ivory yellows. In most cases where the book is at all splendid, gold is very freely used, mostly in large spaces--backgrounds and the like--which, having been gilded over a solid ground with thick gold-leaf, are burnished till they look like solid plates of actual metal. The effect of this is both splendid and refined, the care with which gold is laid on, and its high finish, preventing any impression of gaudiness. The writing of this period becoming somewhat more definitely "Gothic," does not fall short of (it could not surpass) that of the previous half-century.

From this time a very gradual change--during which we have to note somewhat more of delicacy in drawing and refinement of colour--brings us to the first quarter of the thirteenth century; and here a sundering of the styles of the different peoples begins to be obvious. Throughout the twelfth century, though there is a difference, it is easier to distinguish an English or French book from a German or Italian by the writing than by the illumination; but after 1225 the first glance on opening the book will most often cry out at you, German, Italian, or French-English. For the rest, the illuminations still gain beauty and delicacy, the gold is even more universally brilliant, the colour still more delicious. The sub-art of the rubricator, as distinguished from the limner and the scribe, now becomes more important, and remains so down to the end of the fifteenth century. Work of great fineness and elegance, drawn mostly with pen, and always quite freely, in red and blue counterchanged, is lavished on the smaller initials and other subsidiaries of the pages, producing, with the firm black writing and the ivory tone of the vellum, a beautiful effect, even when the more solid and elaborate illumination is lacking. During this period, apart from theological and philosophical treatises, herbals, "bestiaries," &c., the book most often met with, especially when splendidly ornamented, is the Psalter, as sung in churches, to which is generally added a calendar, and always a litany of the saints. This calendar, by the way, both in this and succeeding centuries, is often exceedingly interesting, from the representations given in it of domestic occupations. The great initial B (Beatus vir qui non) of these books affords an opportunity to the illuminator, seldom missed, of putting forth to the full his powers of design and colour.

The last quarter of the thirteenth century brings us to the climax of illumination considered apart from book-pictures. Nothing can exceed the grace, elegance, and beauty of the drawing and the loveliness of the colour found at this period in the best-executed books; and it must be added that, though some work is rougher than other, at this time there would appear, judging from existing examples, to have been no bad work done. The tradition of the epoch is all-embracing and all-powerful, and yet no single volume is without a genuine individuality and life of its own. In short if all the other art of the Middle Ages had disappeared, they might still claim to be considered a great period of art on the strength of their ornamental books.

In the latter part of the thirteenth century we note a complete differentiation between the work of the countries of Europe. There are now three great schools: the French-Flemish-English, the Italian, and the German. Of these the first is of the most, the last of the least, importance. As to the relations between England and France, it must be said that, though there is a difference between them, it is somewhat subtle, and may be put thus: of some books you may say, This is French; of others, This is English; but of the greater part you can say nothing more than, This belongs to the French-English school. Of those that can be differentiated with something like certainty, it may be said that the French excel specially in a dainty and orderly elegance, the English specially in love of life and nature, and there is more of rude humour in them than in their French contemporaries; but he must be at once a fastidious and an absolute man who could say the French is better than the English or the English than the French.

The Norwich Psalter, in the Bodleian Library; the Arundel, Queen Mary's, and Tennison Psalters, in the British Museum, are among the finest of these English books: nothing can surpass their fertility of invention, splendour of execution, and beauty of colour.

This end of the thirteenth century went on producing splendid psalters at a great rate; but between 1260 and 1300 or 1320 the greatest industry of the scribe was exercised in the writing of Bibles, especially pocket volumes. These last, it is clear, were produced in enormous quantities, for in spite of the ravages of time many thousands of them still exist. They are, one and all, beautifully written in hands necessarily very minute, and mostly very prettily illuminated with tiny figure-subjects in the initials of each book. For a short period at the end of this and the beginning of the next century many copies of the Apocalypse were produced, illustrated copiously with pictures, which give us examples of serious Gothic designs at its best, and seem to show us what wall-pictures of the period might have been in the North of Europe.

The fourteenth century, the great mother of change, was as busy in making ornamental books as in other artistic work. When we are once fairly in the century a great change is apparent again in the style. It is not quite true to say that it is more redundant than its predecessor, but it has more mechanical redundancy. The backgrounds to the pictures are more elaborated; sometimes diapered blue and red, sometimes gold most beautifully chased with dots and lines. The borders cover the page more; buds turn into open leaves; often abundance of birds and animals appear in the borders, naturalistically treated (and very well drawn); there is more freedom, and yet less individuality in this work; in short the style, though it has lost nothing (in its best works) of elegance and daintiness--qualities so desirable in an ornamental book--has lost somewhat of manliness and precision; and this goes on increasing till, towards the end of the century, we feel that we have before us work that is in peril of an essential change for the worse. [In France "Bibles Historiaux," i.e., partial translations of the Bible, very copiously pictured, were one of the most noteworthy productions of the latter half of the century. The Bible taken in the tent of the French King at the battle of Poitiers, now in the British Museum, is a fine example.] The differentiation, too, betwixt the countries increases; before the century is quite over, England falls back in the race [though we have in the British Museum some magnificent examples of English illumination of the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries, e.g., "The Salisbury Book;" a huge Bible (Harl. i., e. ix.) ornamented in a style very peculiarly English. The Wyclifite translation of the Bible at the Museum is a good specimen of this style], and French-Flanders and Burgundy come forward, while Italy has her face turned toward Renaissance, and Germany too often shows a tendency toward coarseness and incompleteness, which had to be redeemed in the long last by the honesty of invention and fitness of purpose of her woodcut ornaments to books. Many most beautiful books, however, were turned out, not only throughout the fourteenth, but even in the first half of the fifteenth century. ["The Hours of the Duke of Berry" (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris), and the "Bedford Hours," in the British Museum, both French, are exceedingly splendid examples of this period.]

The first harbinger of the great change that was to come over the making of books I take to be the production in Italy of most beautifully-written copies of the Latin classics. These are often very highly ornamented; and at first not only do they imitate (very naturally) the severe hands of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but even (though a long way off) the interlacing ornament of that period. In these books the writing, it must be said, is in its kind far more beautiful than the ornament. There were so many written and pictured books produced in the fifteenth century that space quite fails me to write of them as their great merits deserve. In the middle of the century an invention, in itself trifling, was forced upon Europe by the growing demand for more and cheaper books. Gutenberg somehow got hold of punches, matrices, the adjustable mould, and so of cast movable type; Schoeffer, Mentelin, and the rest of them caught up the art with the energy and skill so characteristic of the mediæval craftsman. The new German art spread like wildfire into every country of Europe; and in a few years written books had become mere toys for the immensely rich. Yet the scribe, the rubricator, and the illuminator died hard. Decorated written books were produced in great numbers after printing had become common; by far the greater number of these were Books of Hours, very highly ornamented and much pictured. Their style is as definite as any of the former ones, but it has now gone off the road of logical consistency; for divorce has taken place between the picture-work and the ornament. Often the pictures are exquisitely-finished miniatures belonging to the best schools of painting of the day; but often also they are clearly the work of men employed to fill up a space, and having no interest in their work save livelihood. The ornament never fell quite so low as that, though as ornament it is not very "distinguished," and often, especially in the latest books, scarcely adds to the effect on the page of the miniature to which it is a subsidiary.