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.
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.