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.
JOHN GILBERT
WILLMOTT'S 'POETS OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY,' 1857
HOHENLINDEN
F. R. PICKERSGILL