It is difficult to record Sir John Everett Millais' contributions to this magazine with level unbiassed comments. Notwithstanding the palpable loss they suffered by translation under the hands of even the most skilful of his engravers, the impressions belong to a higher plane than is reached by their neighbours save in a very few instances. The Millais wood-engravings deserve a deliberately ordered monograph as fully as do the etchings by Rembrandt and Whistler, or Hokousaï's prints. It is true that not quite all his many illustrations to contemporary literature are as good as the best works of the great artist just named; but if you search through the portfolios of the past for that purpose, you will find that even the old masters were not always adding to a cycle of masterpieces. The astounding fact remains that Sir John Millais, dealing with the hair-net and the Dundreary whiskers, the crinoline and peg-top trousers, imparted such dignity to his men and women that even now they carry their grotesque costumes with distinction, and fail to appear old-fashioned, but at most as masqueraders in fancy dress. For in Millais' work you are face to face with actual human beings, superbly drawn and fulfilling all artistic requirements. They possess the immense individuality of a Velasquez portrait, which, as a human being, appeals to you no less surely, than its handling arouses your æsthetic appreciation. At this period it seems as if the artist was overflowing with power and mastery—everything he touched sprang into life. Whether he owed much or little to his predecessors is unimportant—take away all, and still a giant remains. It is so easy to accept the early drawings of Millais as perfect of their kind, beyond praise or blame, and yet to fail to realise that they possess the true vitality of those few classics which are for all time. The term monumental must not be applied to them, for it suggests something dead in fact, although living in sentiment and admired by reason of conventional precedent. The Millais drawings have still the power to excite an artist as keenly as a great Rembrandt etching that he sees for the first time, or an early Whistler that turns up unexpectedly in a loan collection, or an unknown Utamaro colour print. The mood they provoke is almost deprived of critical analysis by the overwhelming sense of fulfillment which is forced on your notice. In place of gratified appreciation you feel appalled that one man should have done over and over again, so easily and with such certainty, what dozens of his fellows, accomplished and masterly in their way, tried with by no means uniform success. If every canvas by the artist were lost, he might still be proved to belong to the great masters from his illustrations alone; even if these were available only through the medium of wood-engraving.

The first volume of Once a Week contains, as Millais' first contribution, Magenta (p. 10), a study of a girl who has just read a paper with news of the great battle that gave its name to the terrible colour which typifies the period. It is badly printed in the copy at my side, and, although engraved by Dalziels, is not an instance of their best work. In Grandmother's Apology (p. 41) we have a most delightful illustration to Tennyson, reproduced in his collected volume, but not elsewhere. On the Water (p. 70) and La Fille bien gardée (p. 306) may be passed without comment. But The Plague of Elliant (p. 316), a powerful drawing of a woman dragging a cart wherein are the bodies of her nine dead children, has been selected, more than once, as a typical example of the illustrator at his best. Maude Clare (p. 382), A Lost Love (p. 482), and St. Bartholomew (p. 514), complete the Millais' in vol. i.

In the second volume we find The Crown of Love (p. 10), a poem by George Meredith. This was afterwards painted and exhibited under the same title in the Royal Academy of 1875. A Wife (p. 32), The Head of Bran (p. 132), Practising (p. 242), (a girl at a piano), and Musa (p. 598), complete the list of the five in this volume. In vol. iii. there are seven: Master Olaf (p. 63), Violet (p. 140), Dark Gordon's Bride (p. 238), The Meeting (p. 276), The Iceberg (pp. 407, 435), and A Head of Hair for Sale (p. 519). In vol. iv. but two appear, Iphis and Anaxarete (p. 98) and Thorr's Hunt for the Hammer (p. 126), both slighter in execution than most of the Once a Week Millais'.

Volume v. also contains but two, Tannhäuser (p. 211) and Swing Song (p. 434), a small boy in a Spanish turban swinging. Volume vi. houses a dozen: Schwerting of Saxony (p. 43), The Battle of the Thirty (p. 155), The Child of Care (pp. 2, 39), five designs for Miss Martineau's Sister Anne's Probation (pp. 309, 337, 365, 393, 421), Sir Tristem (p. 350), The Crusader's Wife (p. 546), The Chase of the Siren (p. 630), and The Drowning of Kaer-is (p. 687). The seventh volume contains eleven examples by this artist: Margaret Wilson (p. 42), five to Miss Martineau's Anglers of the Don (pp. 85, 113, 141, 169, 197), Maid Avoraine (p. 98), The Mite of Dorcas (p. 224), (which is the subject of the Academy picture, The Widow's Mite of 1876; although in the painting the widow turns her back on the spectator), The Parting of Ulysses (p. 658), The Spirit of the Vanished Island (p. 546), and Limerick Bells (p. 710), a design of which a eulogist of the artist says: 'the old monk might be expanded as he stands into a full-sized picture.'

In the eighth volume Endymion on Latmos (p. 42), a charming study of the sleeping shepherd, is the only independent picture; the other nine are by way of illustration to Miss Martineau's The Hampdens (pp. 211, 239, 267, 281, 309, 337, 365, 393, 421, 449). These are delightful examples of the use of costume by a great master. Neither pedantically correct, nor too lax, they revivify the period so that the actors are more important than the accessories.

J. E. MILLAIS

'ONCE A WEEK'
VOL. V. p. 211

TANNHÄUSER

J. E. MILLAIS