"Life's Journey."—George Wither.
FROM "ENGLISH SACRED POETRY."
By Frederick Sandys.
By permission of Messrs. George Routledge & Sons.
It is perhaps hardly necessary here to state how perfectly our confidence in J. D. Watson's ability was indorsed, not only by the publishers, but by the public voice and the pen of the critics; this edition of Bunyan's immortal work being, in a pecuniary sense, among the most successful of the many Fine Art Books issued by the Messrs. Routledge. Immediately on the publication and instant success of this book, we were instructed to secure Watson's services in illustrating De Foe's "Robinson Crusoe" with a like number of pictures. This he readily undertook to do, and, as a series of drawings in black and white, they will certainly compare favourably with any work of the kind this country has produced.
After the "Pilgrim's Progress" and "Robinson Crusoe" perhaps there is no other work where the versatility of his power is so strongly shown as in "English Sacred Poetry," to which book he was a very large contributor, having no less than ten drawings to "Gray's Elegy in a Churchyard," and twenty or more to other poems—"Time and the Year," and "Scene in a Scottish Cottage" being among the best.
On one occasion Watson happened to be at our offices when Birket Foster came in. They had never met before, and on being introduced, seemed mutually pleased to make each other's acquaintance, and left together. This acquaintance ripened into a life-long friendship, Birket Foster marrying Watson's sister.
