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 3¾ 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.'
Among the books dated 1860, or issued in the autumn of that year, are more elaborately illustrated editions of popular poets—all, as a rule, in the conventional quarto, or in what a layman might be forgiven for describing as 'quarto,' even if an expert preferred to call it octavo. Of these Tennyson's The Princess, with twenty-six drawings by Maclise, may be placed first, on account of the position held by author and artist. All the same, it belongs essentially to the fifties or earlier, both in spirit and in style. A more ample quarto, Poems by James Montgomery (Routledge, 1860), (not the Montgomery castigated by Lord Macaulay), 'selected and edited by Robert Aris Wilmott (Routledge), with one hundred designs by John Gilbert, Birket Foster, F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., J. Wolf, Harrison Weir, E. Duncan, and W. Harvey, is perhaps slightly more in touch with the newer school. Its engravings by the brothers Dalziel are admirable. The Clouds athwart the Sky (p. 23), by John Gilbert, and other landscapes by the same hand, may hold their own even by the side of those in the Moxon Tennyson, or in Wilmott's earlier anthology. Of quite different calibre is Moore's Lalla Rookh, with its sixty-nine drawings by Tenniel, engraved by the Dalziels (Longmans, 1861). If to-day you hardly feel inclined to indorse the verdict of the Times critic, who declared it to be 'the greatest illustrative achievement by any single hand,' it shows nevertheless not a few of those qualities which have won well-merited fame for our oldest cartoonist, even if it shows also the limitations which just alienate one's complete sympathy. Yet those who saw an exhibition of Sir John Tenniel's drawings at the Fine Art Society's galleries will be less ready to blame the published designs for a certain hardness of style, due in great part (one fancies) to their engraver.
In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (Routledge), with a hundred and ten designs by J. D. Watson, engraved by the Dalziels, we are confronted with a book that is distinctly of the 'sixties,' or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that most of its illustrations are distinguished by the broader treatment of the new school. It is strange that the ample and admirable achievements of this artist have not received more general recognition. When you meet with one of his designs set amid the work of the greatest illustrators, it rarely fails to maintain a dignified equality. If it lack the supreme artistry of one or the fine invention of another, it is always sober and at times masterly, in a restrained matter-of-fact way. Some sketches reproduced in the British Architect (January 22, 1878) display more freedom than his finished works suggest.
Quarles' Emblems (Nisbet), illustrated by C. H. Bennett, a caricaturist whose style seems to have lost touch with modern taste, with decorative adornments by W. H. Rogers, must not be overlooked; nor Tennyson's May Queen (Sampson Low), with designs by E. V. B., a gifted amateur, whose work in this book, in Child's Play, and elsewhere, has a distinct charm, despite many technical shortcomings.
Lyra Germanica (Longmans, 1861), an anthology of hymns translated from the German by Catherine Winkworth, produced under the superintendence of John Leighton, F.S.A., must not be confused with a second series, with the same title, the same anthologist and art editor, issued in 1868. This book contains much decorative work by John Leighton, who has scarcely received the recognition he deserves as a pioneer of better things. At a time when lawless naturalistic detail was supreme everywhere he strove to popularise conventional methods, and deserves full appreciation for his energetic and successful labours. The illustrations include one fine Charles Keene (p. 182), three by M. J. Lawless (pp. 47, 90, 190), four by H. S. Marks (pp. 1, 19, 57, 100), and five by E. Armitage (pp. 29, 62, 111, 160, 197). The engraving by T. Bolton, after a Flaxman bas-relief, is apparently the same block Bohn includes in his supplementary chapter to the 1861 edition of Chatto and Jackson's History of Wood-Engraving, as a specimen of the first experiment in Mr. Bolton's 'new process for photographing on the wood.' As this change was literally epoch-making, this really beautiful block, with its companion p. 111, is of historic interest.
Shakespeare: His Birthplace, edited by J. R. Wise, with twenty-three pictures drawn and engraved by W. J. Linton (Longmans); The Poetry of Nature, with thirty-six drawings by Harrison Weir (Low), and Household Song (Kent, 1861), illustrated by Birket Foster, Samuel Palmer, G. H. Thomas, A. Solomon, J. Andrews, and others, including two rather powerful blocks, To Mary in Heaven especially, by J. Archer, R.S.A.; Chambers's Household Shakespeare, illustrated by Keeley Halswelle, must not be forgotten; nor A Boy's Book of Ballads (Bell and Daldy), illustrated by Sir John Gilbert; but The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, with designs by A. Crowquill (Trübner), is not very important.
An illustrated edition of Mrs. Gatty's Parables from Nature (Bell and Daldy) would be remarkable if only for the Nativity by 'E. Burne-Jones.' It is instructive to compare the engraving with the half-tone reproduction of the original drawing which appears in Mr. Pennell's Modern Illustrations (Bell). But there are also good things in the book by John Tenniel, Holman Hunt, M. E. Edwards, and drawings of average interest by W. (not J. E.) Millais, Otto Speckter, F. Keyl, L. Frolich, Harrison Weir, and others. In the respective editions of 1861 and 1867 the illustrations vary considerably.
Another book that happened to be published in 1860 would at any time occupy a place by itself. Founded on Blake, David Scott developed a distinctly personal manner, that has provoked praise and censure, in each case beyond its merit. Yet without joining either detractors or eulogists, one must own that the Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (Edinburgh, 1860), illustrated by David and W. B. Scott, if a most ugly piece of book-making, contains many very noteworthy designs. It is possible, despite the monograph of J. M. Gray (one of the earliest critics who devoted special study to the works of Frederick Sandys) and a certain esoteric cult of a limited number of disciples, that David Scott still remains practically unknown to the younger generation. Yet this book, and Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, which he also illustrated, contain a great many weird ideas, more or less adequately portrayed, which should endear themselves to the symbolist to-day.
Goldsmith's Poems, with coloured illustrations by Birket Foster, appeared this year, which saw also many volumes (issued by Day and Son), resplendent with chromo-lithography and 'illuminations' in gold and colours. So that the Christmas harvest, that might seem somewhat meagre in the short list above, really contained as many high-priced volumes appealing to Art, 'as she was understood in 1860,' as the list of 1897 is likely to include. But the books we deem memorable had not yet appeared, and the signs of 1860 hardly point to the rapid advance which the next few years were destined to reveal. In passing it may be noted that this was the great magenta period for cloth bindings. 'Surely the most exquisite colour that ever left the chemist's laboratory,' exclaims a contemporary critic, after a rapturous eulogy.
The 'wicked fratricidal war in America,' we find by references in the trade periodicals of the time, was held responsible for the scarcity of costly volumes at this date. Perhaps the most important book of 1862 is Willmott's Sacred Poetry of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries (like many others issued the previous Christmas). It contains two drawings by Sandys, which are referred to elsewhere, three by Fred Walker, seven by H. S. Marks, two by Charles Keene, twenty-eight by J. D. Watson, one by Holman Hunt, eight by John Gilbert, and others by G. H. Andrews, H. H. Armstead, W. P. Burton, F. R. Pickersgill, S. Read, F. Smallfield, J. Sleigh, Harrison Weir, and J. Wolf. Although the absence of Millais and Rossetti would suffice to place it just below the Tennyson, it may be considered otherwise as about of equal interest with that and the earlier anthology of Poets of the Nineteenth Century, gathered together by the same editor. It is distinctly a typical book of the earlier sixties, and one which no collector can afford to miss.
Poetry of the Elizabethan Age, with thirty illustrations by Birket Foster, John Gilbert, Julian Portch, and E. M. Wimperis, is not quite representative of the sixties, but of a transitional period which might be claimed by either decade. The Songs and Sonnets of Shakespeare, with ten coloured and thirty black-and-white drawings by John Gilbert, to whatever period it may be ascribed, is one of his most superb achievements in book-illustration. Christmas with the Poets, 'embellished with fifty-three tinted illustrations by Birket Foster' (Bell and Daldy), can hardly be mentioned with approval, despite the masterly drawings of a great illustrator. As a piece of book-making, its gold borders and weak 'tinted' blocks, printed in feeble blues and browns, render it peculiarly unattractive. Yet in all honesty one must own that its art is far more thorough and its taste possibly no worse essentially than many of the deckle-edged superfluities with neo-primitive designs which are popular at the present time. The work of this artist is perhaps somewhat out of favour at the moment, but its neglect may be attributed to the inevitable reaction which follows undue popularity. There are legends of the palmy days of the Old Water-Colour Society, when the competition of dealers to secure drawings by 'Birket Foster' was so great that they crowded round the doors before they opened on the first day, and one enterprising trader, crushing in, went straight to the secretary and said, 'I will buy the screen,' thereby forestalling his rivals who were hastily jotting down the works by this artist hung with others upon it. But even popular applause is not always misdirected; and the master of English landscape, despite a certain prettiness and pettiness, despite a little sentimentality, is surely a master. There are 'bests' and bests so many; and if Birket Foster is easily best of his kind, and the fact would hardly be challenged, then as a master we may leave his final place to the future, sure that it is always with the great who have succeeded, and not with the merely promising who just escape success. Among the minor volumes of this year, now especially scarce, are Dr. George Mac Donald's Dealings with the Fairies, with illustrations by Arthur Hughes; and several of Strahan's children's books: The Gold Thread, by Dr. Norman Macleod, with illustrations by J. D. Watson, J. M'Whirter, and others; and The Postman's Bag, illustrated by J. Pettie and others. A curious volume, Spiritual Conceits, 'illustrated by Harry Rogers,' is printed throughout in black letter, and, despite the title, would be described more correctly to-day as 'decorated' by the artists, for the engravings are 'emblematical devices' more or less directly inspired by the emblem books of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. As one of the few examples of conventional design of the period, it is interesting. New copies are by no means scarce, so it would seem to have been printed in excess of the demand, which, judging by the laudatory criticism it received, could not have been meagre.
1862, the year of the second great International Exhibition, might have been expected to yield a full crop of lavishly produced books, but as a matter of fact there are singularly few. Two important exceptions occur: Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market, with the title-page and frontispiece by her brother, and The New Forest, by J. R. Wise, with drawings by Walter Crane, 'a very young artist, whom we shall be glad to meet with again,' as a contemporary criticism runs. Yet, on the whole the men of the sixties appear to have exhausted their efforts on the new magazines which had just attained full vigour; hence, as we might expect, publishers refrained from competing with the annual volumes, which gave at least twice as much for seven shillings and sixpence as they had hitherto included in a guinea table-book. Birket Foster's Pictures of English Landscape, with pictures in words by Tom Taylor (Routledge 1863), contains thirty singularly fine drawings engraved by Dalziels, of which the editor says: 'It is still a moot point among the best critics how far wood-engraving can be profitably carried—whether it can attempt, with success, such freedom and subtlety of workmanship as are employed, for example, on the skies throughout this series, or should restrict itself to simple effects, with a broader and plainer manner of execution.' Its companion was styled Beauties of English Landscape, and appeared much later.
Early English Poems, Chaucer to Pope (Sampson Low, 1863), is another book of the autumn of 1862, which like the rest is a quarto, with an elaborately designed cover and the usual hundred blocks delightfully engraved, after John Gilbert, Birket Foster, George Thomas, T. Creswick, R.A., R. Redgrave, R.A., E. Duncan, and many others. Although there is no reference to the fact in the book itself, many of the illustrations had already done duty in other books, or possibly did duty afterwards, for, without a tedious collation of first editions, it is difficult to discover the first appearance of any particular block. Probably this was the original source of many blocks which afterwards were issued in all sorts of volumes, so frequently that their charm is somewhat tarnished by memories of badly printed clichés in children's primers and the like.
The Life of St. Patrick, by H. Formby, is said to be illustrated by M. J. Lawless, but the labour in tracking it was lost; for, whoever made the designs, the wood-engravings are of the lowest order, and the book no more interesting than an illustrated religious tract is usually. A sumptuously produced volume, Moral Emblems (Longmans), 'from Jacob Cats and Robert Fairlie,' contains 'illustrations freely rendered from designs found in their works,' by John Leighton. The text is by Richard Pigot, whose later career affords us a moral emblem of another sort; if indeed he be the hero of the Parnell incident, as contemporary notices declared. Its two hundred and forty-seven blocks were engraved by different hands—Leighton, Dalziel, Green, Harral, De Wilde, Swain, and others, all duly acknowledged in the contents. It is only fair to say that the decorators rarely fall to the level of the platitudes, interspersed with Biblical quotations, which form the text of the work. Among other volumes worth mentioning are: Papers for Thoughtful Girls, by Sarah Tytler, illustrated by J. E. Millais; Children's Sayings, with four pictures by Walter Crane; Stories of Old, two series, each with seven illustrations by the same artist; Stories little Breeches told, illustrated by C. H. Bennett; and volumes of Laurie's Shilling Entertainment Library, including probably (the date of the first edition is not quite clear) Defoe's History of the Plague, with singularly powerful designs by Frederick Shields,—'Rembrandt-like in power,' Mr. Joseph Pennell has rightly called them; and Puck on Pegasus, a volume of humorous verses by H. Cholmondeley Pennell, illustrated, and well illustrated, by Leech, Tenniel, Doyle, Millais, Sir Noel Paton, 'Phiz,' Portch, and M. Ellen Edwards. The Doyle tailpiece is the only one formally attributed, but students will have little difficulty in identifying the work of the various hands represented in its pages. A volume, artless in its art, that has charmed nevertheless for thirty years, and still amuses—Lear's Book of Nonsense appeared this year; but luckily its influence has been nil so far, except possibly upon modern posters; Wordsworth's Poems for the Young, with fifty illustrations by John Pettie and J. M'Whirter; an illustrated edition of Mrs. Alexander's Hymns for Little Children, mildly exciting as works of art, Famous Boys (Darton), illustrated by T. Morten; One Year, with pictures by Clarence Dobell (Macmillan), and Wood's Natural History, with fine drawings by Zwecker, Wolf, and others, are also in the sterile crop of the year 1862. Passages from Modern English Poets (1862), illustrated by the Junior Etching Club, an important book of its sort, is noticed elsewhere.
In 1863 Millais' Parables of our Lord was issued, although it is dated 1864. Of the masterpieces it contained a reviewer of the period wrote: 'looked at with unfeeling eyes there is little to commend them to the average class of book-buyers.' This, which is no doubt a fairly representative opinion, may be set against the wide appreciation by artists they aroused at the time, and ever since, merely to show that the good taste of the sixties was probably confined to a minority, and that the public in 1867 or 1897, despite its pretence of culture, is rarely moved deeply by great work. It is difficult to write dispassionately of this book. Granted that when you compare it with the drawings of some of the subjects which are still extant, you regret certain shortcomings on the part of the engravers; yet, when studied apart from that severe test, there is much that is not merely the finest work of a fine period, but that may be placed among the finest of any period. We are told in the preface that 'Mr. Millais made his first drawing to illustrate the Parables in August 1857, and the last in October 1863; thus he has been able to give that care and consideration to his subjects which the beauty as well as the importance of The Parables demanded.' It is not necessary to describe each one of the many illustrations. Those which appeared in Good Words are printed with the titles they first bore in the notice of that magazine. The other eight are: The Tares, The Wicked Husbandman, The Foolish Virgins, The Importunate Friend, The Marriage Feast, The Lost Sheep, The Rich Man and Lazarus, and The Good Shepherd, all engraved by the brothers Dalziel, who (to quote again from the preface), 'have seconded his efforts with all earnestness, desiring, as far as their powers would go, to make the pictures specimens of the art of wood-engraving.' Here it would be superfluous to ask whether the designs could have been better engraved, or even whether photogravure would not have retained more of the exquisite beauty of the originals. As they are, remembering the conditions of their production, we must needs accept them; and the full admiration they demand need not be dashed by useless regret. In place of blaming Dalziels, let us rather praise lavishly the foresight and sympathy which called into being most of the books we now prize. Indeed, a history of Dalziels' undertakings fully told would be no small part of a history of modern English illustration. If any one who loves art, especially the art of illustration, does not know and prize these Parables, then it were foolish to add a line in their praise, for ignorance of such masterpieces is criminal, and lukewarm approval a fatal confession.
It is difficult to place any book of 1863 next in order to The Parables; despite many fine publications, there is not one worthy to be classed by its side. Perhaps the most important in one sense, and the least in another, is Longmans' famous edition of the New Testament, upon the preparation of which a fabulous amount of money was spent. Yet, although an epoch-making book to the wood-engraver, it represents rather the end of an old school than the beginning of a new. Its greatly reduced illustrations, wherein a huge wall-painting occupies the space of a postage-stamp, the lack of spontaneity in its formal 'correct' borders, impress us to-day more as curiosities than as living craft. All the same, it was considered a marvellous achievement; but its spirit, if it ever existed, has evaporated with age; indeed, one cannot help thinking that it was out of date when it appeared. Ten years earlier it would have provoked more hearty approval; but, with Millais' treatment of the similar subjects, who could look at this precise, unimaginative work? That it ever exercised any influence on wood-engraving is doubtful, and that it repaid, even in part, its cost and labour is still more problematical. Bound, if memory can be trusted, in sham carved and pierced oak, it may be still encountered among the rep and polished walnut of the period, a monument of misapplied endeavour. Its ideal seems to have been to imitate steel-plates by wood-blocks. Just as Crusaders' tombs had been modelled in Parian to do duty as match-boxes, and a thousand other attempts, then and since, with the avowed intention of imitation, have attracted no little common popularity; so its tediously minute handiwork no doubt won the approbation of those whose approval is artistic insult. One has but to turn to the tiny woodcuts of Holbein's Dance of Death to find that size is of no importance; a netsuke may be as broadly treated as a colossus, but the art of the miniature is too often miniature art. Therefore, side by side with the splendour of Millais, this mildly exciting 'art-book' comes as a typical contrast. No matter how Millais was rewarded, the mere engraver in this case must have been paid more, if contemporary accounts are true; yet the result is that nobody wants the one, and every artist, lay or professional, who is awake to really fine things, treasures a chance impression of a Parable, torn out of Good Words, as a thing to reverence.
On turning back to a scrap-book, where a number of them were preserved by the present writer in the late sixties, the old surprise comes back with irresistible force to find that things which he then ranked first still maintain their supremacy. At that time, when the wonders of Japanese Art were a sealed book, the masterpieces of Dürer and Rembrandt, the triumphs of Whistler, and the exquisite engravings of the French wood-engravers, past and present, all unknown to him, he, in common with dozens of others, was conscious that here was something so great that it was almost uncanny, for, obvious and simple as it looked, it yet accomplished what all others seemed only to attempt. There are very few pictures which after thirty years retain the old glamour; but while the Longmans' New Testament when seen anew raises no thrill of appreciation, the Parables appear as astoundingly great to one familiar with modern illustrations as they did to an ignorant boy thirty years ago. Other fetishes have gone unregretted to the lumber-room, but the Millais of 1863 is a still greater master in 1896. They builded better than they knew, these giants of the sixties, and that the approval of another generation indorses the verdict of the best critics of their own may be taken as a promise of abiding homage to be paid in centuries yet to come.
Curiously enough, among some literary notes for Christmas 1863, we find that 'early next year Messrs. Dalziel hoped to issue their Bible pictures,' and the writer goes on to praise several of the drawings—notably the Leightons, which were even then engraved: this note, nearly twenty years before the book actually appeared, is interesting, but it must not be thought that the time was devoted entirely to the engraving or in waiting for the perfection of photographic transfer to wood.
An English edition of Michelet's The Bird, illustrated by Giacomelli (Nelson), was issued this year, and the highly wrought naturalistic details of the engravings became extremely popular. Its 'pretty' finish, and tame, colourless effect influenced no little work of the period, and, coupled with the clichés of Gustave Doré engravings, so lavishly reprinted here about this date, did much to promote a style of wood-engraving which found its highest expression in the pages of American magazines years afterwards, and its lowest in the 'decorated' poems of cheap 'snippet' weeklies, which to-day are yet imitated unconsciously by those who work in wash for half-tone processes.
The next important volume of the year, after Millais' Parables, judged by our standard, is unquestionably Dalziels' edition of The Arabian Nights (Ward, Lock, and Tyler)—'illustrated by A. Boyd Houghton,' one feels tempted to add to the title. But although the book is often referred to as the work of one artist, as a matter of fact it is the work of many. Houghton does not even contribute the largest number; his eighty-seven designs are beaten by T. Dalziel's eighty-nine. Nor is he the greatest draughtsman therein, for there are two by Millais. Still, notwithstanding these, and eight by John Tenniel, ten by G. J. Pinwell, one by T. Morten, two by J. D. Watson, and six by E. Dalziel, it is for Houghton's sake that the book has suddenly assumed importance, even in the eyes of those who do not search through the volumes of the sixties for forgotten masterpieces, but are content with Once a Week, the Cornhill Gallery, and Thornbury's Legendary Ballads. One thing is beyond doubt: that with the Arabian Nights and the others on this short list you have a National Gallery of the best things—not the best of all possible collections, not even an exhaustive collection of specimens of each, but a good working assortment that suffices to uphold the glory of 'the golden decade,' and can only be supplemented but not surpassed by the addition of all the others.
The book was issued in weekly numbers, as you see on opening a first edition of the volume at the risk of breaking its back. Close to the fold appears the legend, 'Printed by Dalziel Brothers, the Camden Press, N.W.,' etc. It was eventually issued in two volumes in October 1864, but dated '1865.' Mr. Laurence Housman's volume, Arthur Boyd Houghton (Kegan Paul, 1896), and his excellent article in Bibliographica, are available for those who wish for a fuller appreciation of this fine book.