To draw up a complete list, with the barest details of title, artist,
author, and publisher of the books in the period with which this
volume is concerned would be unnecessary, and well-nigh impossible.
The _English Catalogue_, 1863-1872, covering but a part of the time,
claims to give some 30,000 entries. Many, possibly a large majority,
of these books are not illustrated; but on the other hand, the current
periodicals not included contain thousands of pictures. The following
chapters cannot even claim to mention every book worth the collector's
notice, and refer hardly at all to many which seemed to the compiler
to represent merely the commercial average of their time. Whether this
was better or worse than the commercial average to-day is of no moment.
Nearly all of the books mentioned have been referred to personally, and
the facts reported at first hand. In spite of taxing the inexhaustible
courtesy of the officials of the British Museum to the extent of eighty
or more volumes during a single afternoon, I cannot pretend to have
seen the whole output of the period, for it is not easy to learn from
the catalogue those particulars that are needed to identify which books
are illustrated.
So far as we are concerned here, the interest of the book lies solely
in its illustrations, but the catalogue may not even record the fact
that it contains any, much less attribute them to their author. Of
those in which the artist's share has been recognised by the publisher
in his announcements, I have done my best to find the first edition of
each. By dint of patient wading through the advertisements, and review
columns of literary journals, trade periodicals, and catalogues, a
good many have turned up which had otherwise escaped notice; although
for the last twenty years at least I have never missed an opportunity
of seeing every illustrated book of the sixties, with a view to this
chronicle, which had been shaping itself, if not actually begun, long
before any work on modern English illustrators had appeared. When a
school-boy I made a collection of examples of the work of each artist
whose style I had learned to recognise, and some of that material
gathered together so long ago has been of no little use now. These
personal reminiscences are not put forward by way of magnifying the
result; but rather to show that even with so many years' desultory
preparation the digesting and classification of the various facts has
proved too onerous. A staff of qualified assistants under a capable
director would be needed to accomplish the work as thoroughly as Mr.
Sidney Lee has accomplished a not dissimilar, if infinitely more
important, task--_The Dictionary of National Biography_. A certain
proportion of errors must needs creep in, and the possible errors of
omission are even more to be dreaded than those of commission. A false
date, or an incorrect reference to a given book or illustration, is
easily corrected by a later worker in the same field; but an omission
may possibly escape another student of the subject as it escaped me.
As a rule, in a majority of cases--so large that it is practically
ninety-nine per cent., if not more--the notes have been made side by
side with the publication to which they refer. But in transcribing
hasty jottings errors are apt to creep in, and despite the collation
of these pages when in proof by other hands, I cannot flatter myself
that they are impeccable. For experience shows that you never open the
final printed text of any work under your control as editor or author,
but errors, hitherto overlooked, instantly jump from the page and
force themselves on your notice. An editor of one of the most widely
circulated of all our magazines confesses that he has made it a rule
never to glance at any number after it was published. He had too often
suffered the misery of being confronted with obvious errors of fact and
taste which no amount of patient care on his part (and he is a most
conscientious workman) had discovered, until it was too late to rectify
them. In the matter of dates alone a difficulty meets one at first
sight. Many books dated one year were issued several months before the
previous Christmas, and are consequently advertised and reviewed in
the year before the date which appears upon their title-page. Again,
many books, and some volumes of magazines (Messrs. Cassell and Co.'s
publications to wit), bear no date. 'Women and books should never be
dated' is a proverb as foolish as it is widely known. Yet all the same,
inaccuracy of a few months is of little importance in this context;
a book or a picture does not cease to exist as soon as it is born,
like the performance of an actor or a musician. Consequently, beyond
its relative place as evidence of the development or decline of the
author's talent, it is not of great moment whether a book was issued in
1869 or 1870, whether a drawing was published in January or February.
But for those who wish to refer to the subjects noted, the information
has been made as exact as circumstances permitted. When, however, a
book has been reissued in a second, or later edition, with no reference
to earlier issues, it is tempting to accept the date on its title-page
without question. One such volume I traced back from 1868 to 1849, and
for all I know the original may have been issued some years earlier;
for the British Museum library is not complete; every collector can
point with pride to a few books on his shelves which he has failed to
discover in its voluminous catalogue.
To select a definite moment to start from is not easy, nor to keep
rigidly within the time covered by the dates upon the cover of this
book. It is necessary to glance briefly at some work issued before
1855, and yet it would be superfluous to re-traverse ground already
well covered in _The History of Wood Engraving_, by Chatto and Jackson,
with its supplementary chapter by H. G. Bohn (in the 1861 edition),
in Mr. W. J. Linton's _Masterpieces of Engraving_, in Mr. Joseph
Pennell's two sumptuous editions of _Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen_
(Macmillan), and the same author's _Modern Illustrations_ (Bell), not
to mention the many admirable papers read before learned societies
by Messrs. W. J. Linton, Comyns Carr, Henry Blackburn, Walter Crane,
William Morris, and others. Still less is it necessary to attempt to
indorse their arguments in favour of wood-engraving against process,
or to repeat those which support the opposite view. So that here, in
the majority of cases, the question of the engraver's share has not
been considered. Mr. Pennell, for one, has done this most thoroughly,
and has put the case for process so strongly, that if any people yet
believe a wood-engraving is always something sacred, while a good
process block of line work is a mere feeble substitute, there is
little hope of convincing them. Here the result has been the chief
concern. The object of these notes is not to prove what wood-engraving
ruined, or what might or ought to have been, but merely to record
what it achieved, without too frequent expression of regret, which
nevertheless will intrude as the dominant feeling when you study many
of the works executed by even the better class wood-engravers.
One must not overlook the very obvious fact that, in the earlier years,
an illustration was a much more serious affair for all concerned than
it is to-day. In Jackson's _Pictorial Press_ we find the author says:
'Illustration was so seldom used that the preparation of even a small
woodcut was of much moment to all concerned. I have heard William
Harvey relate that when Whittingham, the well-known printer, wanted
a new cut for his Chiswick Press Series, he would write to Harvey
and John Thompson, the engraver, appointing a meeting at Chiswick,
when printer, designer, and engraver talked over the matter with as
much deliberation as if about to produce a costly national monument.
And after they had settled all points over a snug supper, the result
of their labours was the production a month afterwards of a woodcut
measuring perhaps two inches by three. At that time perhaps only a
dozen persons besides Bewick were practising the art of wood-engraving
in England.'
But this preamble does not seek to excuse the meagre record it
prefaces. A complete bibliography of such a fecund illustrator as Sir
John Gilbert would need a volume to itself. To draw up detailed lists
of all the various drawings in _The Illustrated London News_, _Punch_,
and other prominent weeklies, would be a task needing almost as much
co-operation as Dr. Murray's great Dictionary. The subject, if it
proves to be sufficiently attractive, will doubtless be done piece by
piece by future workers. I envy each his easy pleasure of pointing out
the shortcomings of this work, for no keener joy awaits the maker of a
handbook than gibbeting his predecessors, and showing by implication
how much more trustworthy is his record than theirs.
[Illustration: D. G. ROSSETTI
'THE MUSIC-MASTER'
BY WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
1855
THE MAIDS OF
ELFENMERE]
Few artistic movements are so sharply defined that their origin can be
traced to a particular moment, although some can be attributed more or
less to the influence of one man. Even the pre-Raphaelite movement,
clearly distinct as its origin appears at first glance, should not
be dated from the formal draft of the little coterie, January 13th,
1851, for, as Mr. W. M. Rossetti writes, 'The rules show or suggest
not only what we intended to do, but what had been occupying our
attention since 1848. The day when we codified proved also to be the
day when no code was really in requisition.' Nor has the autumn 1848
any better claim to be taken as the exact moment, for one cannot
overlook the fact that there was Ford Madox Brown, a pre-Raphaelite,
long before the pre-Raphaelites, and that Ruskin had published the
first volume of _Modern Painters_. There can be little doubt that it
was the influence of the so-called pre-Raphaelites and those in closest
sympathy with them, which awakened a new interest in illustration, and
so prepared the ground for the men of the sixties; but to confine our
notice from 1857 to 1867--a far more accurate period--would be to start
without sufficient reference to the work superseded by or absorbed
into the later movement. So we must glance at a few of the books which
preceded both the _Music-master_ of 1855 and the _Tennyson_ of 1857,
either volume, the latter especially, being an excellent point whence
to reckon more precisely 'the golden decade of British Art,' as Mr.
Pennell terms it so happily.
Without going back too far for our purpose, one of the first books that
contains illustrations by artists whose work extended into the sixties
(and, in the case of Tenniel, far beyond) is _Poems and Pictures_,
'A Collection of Ballads, Songs, and Poems illustrated by English
Artists' (Burns, 1846). So often was it reprinted that it came as a
surprise to discover the first edition was fourteen years earlier than
the date which is upon my own copy. Despite the ornamental borders to
each page, and many other details which stamp it as old-fashioned,
it does not require a rabid apologist of the past to discuss it
appreciatively. From the first design by C. W. Cope, to the last, _A
Storm at Sea_, by E. Duncan, both engraved by W. J. Linton, there is no
falling off in the quality of the work. The influence of Mulready is
discernible, and it seems probable that certain pencil drawings for the
_Vicar of Wakefield_, engraved in facsimile--so far as was within the
power of the craftsmen at that time--did much to shape the manner of
book-illustrations in the fifties.
Nor does it betray want of sympathy with the artists who were thus
influenced to regret that they chose to imitate drawings not intended
for illustration, and ignored in very many cases the special technique
which employs the most direct expression of the material. In _The
Mourner_, by J. C. Horsley (p. 22), you feel that the engraver
(Thompson) has done his best to imitate the softly defined line of a
pencil in place of the clearly accentuated line which is most natural
in wood. Yet even in this there is scarcely a trace of that elaborate
cross-hatching so easily produced in plate-engraving or pen drawing, so
tedious to imitate in wood. Another design, _Time_, by C. W. Cope (p.
88), shows that the same engraver could produce work of quite another
class when it was required. Curiously enough, these two, picked at
random, reappear in almost the last illustrated anthology mentioned in
these chapters, Cassell's _Sacred Poems_ (1867).
Several books earlier in date, including De la Motte Fouqué's
_Undine_, with eleven drawings by 'J. Tenniel, Junr.' (Burns, 1846),
and _Sintram and his Companions_, with designs by H. S. Selous and
a frontispiece after Dürer's _The Knight and Death_ need only be
mentioned. The _Juvenile Verse and Picture Book_ (Burns, 1848), with
many illustrations by Gilbert, Tenniel, 'R. Cruikshank,' Weigall, and
W. B. Scott, which was reissued with altered text as _Gems of National
Poetry_ (Warne, 1868), and _Æsop's Fables_ (Murray, 1848), with 100
illustrations by Tenniel, deserve a bare mention. Nor should _The 'Bon
Gaultier' Ballads_ (Blackwood, 1849) be forgotten. The illustrations
by Doyle, Leech, and Crowquill were enormously popular in their day,
and although the style of humour which still keeps many of the ballads
alive has been frequently imitated since, and rarely excelled, yet its
drawings have often been equalled and surpassed, humorous although they
are, of their sort.
_The Salamandrine_, a poem by Charles Mackay, issued in a small
quarto (Ingram, Cooke, and Co., 1853), with forty-six designs by John
Gilbert, is one of the early volumes by the more fecund illustrators
of the century. It is too late in the day to praise the veteran whose
paintings are as familiar to frequenters of the Royal Academy now as
were his drawings when the Great Exhibition entered a formal claim for
the recognition of British Art. Honoured here and upon the Continent,
it is needless to eulogise an artist whom all agree to admire. The
prolific invention which never failed is not more evident in this
book than in a hundred others decorated by his facile pencil, yet it
reveals--as any one of the rest must equally--the powerful mastery
of his art, and its limitations. Thomson's _Seasons_, illustrated
by the Etching Club (1852), S. C. Hall's _Book of British Ballads_
(1852), an edition of _The Arabian Nights_, with 600 illustrations by
W. Harvey (1852), and _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, with 100 drawings by George
Thomas, can but be named in passing. Gray's _Elegy_, illustrated by 'B.
Foster, G. Thomas, and a Lady,' (Sampson Low), _The Book of Celebrated
Poems_, with eighty designs by Cope, Kenny Meadows, and others (Sampson
Low), _The Vicar of Wakefield_, with drawings by George Thomas, _The
Deserted Village_, illustrated by members of the Etching Club--Cope, T.
Creswick, J. C. Horsley, F. Tayler, H. J. Townsend, C. Stenhouse, T.
Webster, R.A., and R. Redgrave--all published early in the fifties--may
also be dismissed without comment. About the same time the great mental
sedative of the period--Tupper's _Proverbial Philosophy_ (Hatchard,
1854)--was reprinted in a stately quarto, with sixty-two illustrations
by C. W. Cope, R.A., E. H. Corbould, Birket Foster, John Gilbert, J.
C. Horsley, F. R. Pickersgill and others, engraved for the most part
by 'Dalziel Bros.' and H. Vizetelly. The dull, uninspired text seems
to have depressed the imagination of the artists. Despite the notable
array of names, there is no drawing of more than average interest in
the volume, except perhaps _To-morrow_ (p. 206), by F. R. Pickersgill,
which is capitally engraved by Dalziel and much broader in its style
than the rest.
_Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ (David Bogue, 1854) appears
to be the earliest English illustrated edition of any importance of
a volume that has been frequently illustrated since. This book is
uniform with the _Poetical Works of John Milton_ with 120 engravings
by Thompson, Williams, etc., from drawings by W. Harvey, _The Works
of William Cowper_ with seventy-five illustrations engraved by J.
Orrin Smith from drawings by John Gilbert; Thomson's _Seasons_ with
illustrations 'drawn and engraved by Samuel Williams,' and _Beattie
and Collins' Poems_ with engravings by the same hand from designs by
John Absolon. The title-page of the Longfellow says it is illustrated
by 'Jane E. Benham, Birket Foster, etc.' It is odd to find the not
very elegant, 'etc.' stands for John Gilbert and E. Wehnert, also
to note that the engravers have in each of the above volumes taken
precedence of the draughtsman. Except that we miss the pre-Raphaelite
group for which we prize the Moxon _Tennyson_ to-day, the ideal of
these books is very nearly the same as of that volume. This edition
of Longfellow must not be confused with another, a quarto, issued the
following year (Routledge, 1855), 'with over one hundred designs drawn
by John Gilbert and engraved by the brothers Dalziel.' This notable
instance of the variety and inventive power of the artist also shows
(in the night pieces especially, pp. 13, 360), that the engraver was
trying to advance in the direction of 'tone' and atmospheric effect;
and endeavouring to give the effect of a 'wash' rather than of a line
drawing or the imitation of a steel engraving. This tendency, which
was not the chief purpose of the work of the sixties, in the seventies
carried the technicalities of the craft to its higher achievements, or,
as some enthusiasts prefer to regard it, to its utter ruin, so that the
photographic process-block could beat it on its own ground. But these
opposite views have been threshed out often enough without bringing
the parties concerned nearer together to encourage a new attempt to
reconcile the opposing factions. The Longfellow of 1855 was reissued
with the addition of _Hiawatha_ in 1856. Another edition of _Hiawatha_,
illustrated by G. H. Thomas, issued about this time, contains some of
his best work.
Allingham's _Music-master_ (Routledge, 1855) is so often referred to
in this narrative that its mere name must suffice in this context.
But, as the book itself is so scarce, a sentence from its preface may
be quoted: 'Those excellent painters' (writes Mr. Allingham), 'who on
my behalf have submitted their genius to the risks of wood-engraving,
will, I hope, pardon me for placing a sincere word of thanks in the
book they have honoured with this evidence through art of their varied
fancy.' To this year belongs also _The Task_, illustrated by Birket
Foster (Nisbet, 1855).
_Eliza Cook's Poems_ (Routledge, 1856) is another sumptuously
illustrated quarto gift-book with many designs by John Gilbert, J.
Wolf, Harrison Weir, J. D. Watson, and others, all engraved by Dalziel
Brothers. A notable drawing by H. H. Armstead, _The Trysting Place_ (p.
363), deserves republication. In this year appeared also the famous
edition of Adams's _Sacred Allegories_ with a number of engravings
from original drawings by C. W. Cope, R.A., J. C. Horsley, A.R.A.,
Samuel Palmer, Birket Foster, and George C. Hicks. The amazing quality
of the landscapes by Samuel Palmer stood even the test of enormous
enlargement in lantern slides, when Mr. Pennell showed them at his
lectures on the men of the sixties; had W. T. Green engraved no other
blocks, he might be ranked as a great craftsman on the evidence of
these alone.
In _George Herbert's Poetical Works_ (Nisbet, 1856), with designs by
Birket Foster, John Clayton, and H. N. Humphreys, notwithstanding the
vitality of the text, the drawings are sicklied over with the pale cast
of religious sentimentality which has ruined so much religious art in
England. A draughtsman engaged on New Testament subjects of that time
rarely forgot Overbeck, Raphael, or still more 'pretty' masters. In the
religious illustrations of the period many landscapes are included,
some of them exquisite transcripts of English scenery, others of the
'Oriental' order dear to the Annuals. The delightful description of one
of these imaginary scenes, by Leland, 'Hans Breitmann,' will come to
mind, when he says of its artist that
'All his work expanded with expensive fallacies,
Castles, towered walls, pavilions, real-estately palaces.
In the foreground lofty palm-trees, as if full of soaring love,
Bore up cocoa-nuts and monkeys to the smiling heavens above;
Jet-black Indian chieftains--at their feet, too, lovely girls
were sighing,
With an elephant beyond them, here and there a casual lion.'
George Herbert the incomparable may be hard to illustrate, but, if the
task is attempted, it should be in any way but this delineation of
pretty landscapes, with 'here and there a casual lion.' This reflection
upon the mildly sacred compositions of 'gift-book' art generally,
although provoked by this volume, is applicable to nearly every one of
its fellows.
In _Rhymes and Roundelays_, illustrated by Birket Foster (Bogue, 1856),
the designs are not without a trace of artificiality, but it contains
also some of the earliest and best examples of a most accomplished
draughtsman, and in it many popular blocks began a long career of
'starring,' until from guinea volumes some were used ultimately in
children's primers and the like.
_The Works of William Shakespeare_ illustrated by John Gilbert
(Routledge, 1856-8) will doubtless be remembered always as his
masterpiece. At a public dinner lately, an artist who had worked with
Sir John Gilbert on the _Illustrated London News_, and in nearly
all the books of the period illustrated by the group of draughtsmen
with whom both are associated, spoke of his marvellous rapidity--a
double-page drawing done in a single night. Yet so sure is his touch
that in the mass of these hundreds of designs to Shakespeare you
are not conscious of any scamping. Without being archæologically
impeccable, they suggest the types and costumes of the periods they
deal with, and, above all, represent embodiments of actual human
beings. They stand apart from the grotesque caricatures of an earlier
school, and the academic inanities of both earlier and later methods.
Virile and full of invention, the book is a monument to an artist who
has done so much that it is a pleasure to discover some one definite
accomplishment that from size alone may be taken as his masterpiece, if
merely as evidence that praise, scantily bestowed elsewhere, is limited
by space only.
[Illustration: FORD MADOX BROWN
WILLMOTT'S 'POETS OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY,' 1857
THE PRISONER
OF CHILLON]
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.
[Illustration: JOHN GILBERT
WILLMOTT'S 'POETS OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY,' 1857
HOHENLINDEN]
[Illustration: F. R. PICKERSGILL
WILLMOTT'S 'POETS OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY,' 1857
THE WATER
NYMPH]
Another book of the same year, _The Poets of the Nineteenth Century_,
selected and edited by the Rev. Robert Aris Willmott (Routledge, 1857),
is in many respects quite as fine as the Tennyson, always excepting the
pre-Raphaelite element, which is not however totally absent. For in
this quarto volume Millais' _Love_ (p. 137) and _The Dream_ (p. 123)
are worthy to be placed beside those just noticed. Ford Madox Brown's
_Prisoner of Chillon_ (p. 111) is another masterpiece of its sort.
For this we are told the artist spent three days in a dissecting-room
(or a mortuary--the accounts differ) to watch the gradual change in a
dead body, making most careful studies in colour as well as monochrome
all for a foreshortened figure in a block 3-3/4 by 5 inches. This
procedure is singularly unlike the rapid inspiration which throws off
compositions in black and white to-day. In a recent book received with
well-deserved applause, some of the smaller 'decorative designs' were
produced at the rate of a dozen in a day. The mere time occupied in
production is of little consequence, because we know that the
apparently rapid 'sketch' by Phil May may have taken far more time than
a decorative drawing, with elaborately minute detail over every inch of
its surface; but, other qualities being equal, the one produced with
lavish expenditure of care and thought is likely to outlive the trifle
tossed off in an hour or two. In the _Poets of the Nineteenth Century_
the hundred engravings by the brothers Dalziel include twenty-one of
Birket Foster's exquisite landscapes, all with figures; fourteen by W.
Harvey, nine by John Gilbert, six by J. Tenniel, five by J. R. Clayton,
eleven by T. Dalziel, seven by J. Godwin, five by E. H. Corbould, two
by D. Edwards, five by E. Duncan, seven by J. Godwin, and one each
by Arthur Hughes, W. P. Leitch, E. A. Goodall, T. D. Hardy, F. R.
Pickersgill, and Harrison Weir--a century of designs not unworthy as
a whole to represent the art of the day; although Rossetti and Holman
Hunt, who figure so strongly in the Tennyson, are not represented. This
year John Gilbert illustrated the _Book of Job_ with fifty designs;
_The Proverbs of Solomon_ (Nisbet, 1858), a companion volume, contains
twenty drawings.
Another noteworthy volume is Barry Cornwall's _Dramatic Scenes and
other Poems_ (Chapman and Hall, 1857) illustrated by many of the
artists already mentioned. The fifty-seven engravings by Dalziel
include one block on p. 45, from a drawing by J. R. Clayton, which is
here reprinted--not so much for its design as for its engraving; the
way the breadth of the drapery is preserved, despite the elaborate
pattern on its surface, stamps it as a most admirable piece of work.
Thornbury's _Legends of the Cavaliers and Roundheads_ (Hurst and
Blackett, 1857), was illustrated by H. S. Marks.
So far the few books of 1857 noticed have considerable family likeness.
The Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ (Nisbet, 1857), illustrated with
twenty designs by G. H. Thomas, more slight in its method, reflects
the journalistic style of its day rather than the elaborate 'book'
manner, which in many an instance gives the effect of an engraving
'after' a painting or a large and highly-wrought fresco. As one of
the many attempts to illustrate the immortal Protestant romance it
deserves noting. To this year belongs _The Poetical Works of Edgar
Allan Poe_, illustrated with some striking designs by John Tenniel,
and others by F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., Birket Foster, Percival
Skelton; and besides these, Felix Darley, P. Duggan, Jasper Cropsey,
and A. W. Madot--draughtsmen whose names are certainly not household
words to-day. In the lists of 'artists' the portrait of the author
is attributed to 'daguerreotype'! one of the earliest instances I
have encountered of the formal appearance of the ubiquitous camera
as an artist. Longfellow's prose romance, _Kavanagh_ (Kent, 1857),
with exquisite illustrations by Birket Foster, appeared this year;
_Hyperion_ (Dean), illustrated by the same author, being issued the
following Christmas.
_Poetry and Pictures from Thomas Moore_ (Longman, 1857), the _Poems
and Songs of Robert Burns_ (Bell and Daldy, 1857), both illustrated by
Birket Foster and others, and _The Fables of Æsop_, with twenty-five
drawings by C. H. Bennett, also deserve a passing word. _Gertrude of
Wyoming_, by Thomas Campbell (Routledge, 1857), is only less important
from its dimensions, and the fact that it contains only thirty-five
illustrations, engraved by the brothers Dalziel, as against the
complete hundred of most of its fellows. The drawings by Birket Foster,
Thomas Dalziel, Harrison Weir, and William Harvey include some very
good work.
_Lays of the Holy Land_ (Nisbet, 1858), clad in binding of a really
fine design adapted from Persian sources, is another illustrated
quarto, with one drawing at least--_The Finding of Moses_--by J.
E. Millais, which makes it worth keeping; a 'decorative' _Song of
Bethlehem_, by J. R. Clayton, is ahead of its time in style; the rest
by Gilbert, Birket Foster, and others are mostly up to their best
average. The title-page says 'from photographs and drawings,' but as
every block is attributed to an artist, the former were without doubt
redrawn and the source not acknowledged--a habit of draughtsmen which
is not obsolete to-day.
[Illustration: J. R. CLAYTON
BARRY CORNWALL'S
'DRAMATIC SCENES'
1857
OLYMPIA AND
BIANCA]
[Illustration: J. E. MILLAIS
'HOME AFFECTIONS FROM
THE POETS,' 1858
THERE'S NAE LUCK
ABOUT THE HOUSE]
[Illustration: J. E. MILLAIS
'HOME AFFECTIONS FROM
THE POETS,' 1858
THE BORDER
WIDOW]
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.'