SOME explanation seems needed for the intrusion of a talk about the
woodcuts of the fifteenth century into a book dealing with the work of
the illustrators of our own day, and the explanation, though no doubt
discreditable, is simple enough. It was to a mere bibliographer that
the idea occurred that lists of contemporary illustrated books, with
estimates of the work found in them, might form a useful record of the
state of English book-illustration at the end of a century in which for
the first time (if we stretch the century a little so as to include
Bewick) it had competed on equal terms with the work of foreign
artists. Fortunately the bibliographer's scanty leisure was already
heavily mortgaged, and so the idea was transferred to a special student
of the subject, much better equipped for the task. But partly for the
pleasure of keeping a finger in an interesting pie, partly because
there was a fine hobby-horse waiting to be mounted, the bibliographer
bargained that he should be allowed to write an introduction in which
his hobby should have free play, and the reader, who has got a much
better book than he was intended to have, must acquiesce in this
meddling, or resort to his natural rights and skip.
[Illustration: FROM 'LES QUINZE JOIES DE MARIAGE,'