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.
FORD MADOX BROWN