Perhaps the most important illustrated volume of the next year is The Home Affections [portrayed] by the Poets, by Charles Mackay (Routledge, 1858), which continues the type of quarto gilt-edged toned paper table-books so frequent at this time. Its illustrations are a hundred in number, all engraved by Dalziels. Its artists include Birket Foster, John Gilbert, J. R. Clayton, Harrison Weir, T. B. Dalziel, S. Read, John Abner, F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., John Tenniel, with many others, 'and' (as play-bills have it) J. Everett Millais, A.R.A. There's nae Luck about the House (p. 245) and The Border Widow (p. 359) are curiously unlike in motive as well as handling; the one, with all its charm, is of the Mulready school, the other intense and passionate, highly wrought in the pre-Raphaelite manner. Yet after the Millais' all the other illustrations in the book seem poor. A landscape by Harrison Weir (p. 193), Lenore, by A. Madot (p. 159), a very typical Tenniel, Fair Ines (p. 135), Oriana (p. 115), Hero and Leander (p. 91), The Hermit (p. 67), and Good-night in the Porch (p. 195), by Pickersgill, claim a word of appreciation as one turns over its pages anew. Whether too many copies were printed, or those issued were better preserved by their owners than usual, no book is more common in good condition to-day than this.
Another book of the same size, with contents less varied, it is true, but of almost the same level of excellence, is Wordsworth's Selected Poems (Routledge, 1859), illustrated by Birket Foster, J. Wolf, and John Gilbert. This contains the hundred finely engraved blocks by the brothers Dalziel, some of them of the first rank, which was the conventional equipment of a gift-book at that time.
Other noteworthy volumes of 1858–9 are Merrie Days of England, Sketches of Olden Times, illustrated by twenty drawings by Birket Foster, G. Thomas, E. Corbould, and others; The Scouring of the White Horse, with designs by Richard Doyle (Macmillan), his Foreign Tour of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, and the same artist's Manners and Customs of the English, all then placed in the first rank by most excellent critics; Favourite English Poems of the last two Centuries, illustrated by Birket Foster, Cope, Creswick, and the rest; Wordsworth's White Doe of Rylstone (Longmans), also illustrated by Birket Foster and H. N. Humphreys; Childe Harold, with many designs by Percival Skelton and others; Blair's Grave, illustrated by Tenniel (A. and C. Black); Milton's Comus (Routledge, 1858), with illustrations by Pickersgill, B. Foster, H. Weir, etc.; and C. H. Bennett's Proverbs with Pictures (Chapman and Hall). Thomas Moore's Poems (Longmans, 1858); Child's Play, by E. V. B., appeared also about this time. Krummacher's Parables, with forty illustrations by J. R. Clayton (Bohn's Library, 1858), is another unfamiliar book likely to be overlooked, although it contains good work of its sort; inspired a little by German design possibly, but including some admirable drawings, those for instance on pages 147 and 347. The Shipwreck, by Robert Falconer, illustrated by Birket Foster (Edinburgh, Black, 1858), contains thirty drawings, some of them charmingly engraved by W. T. Green, Dalziel Brothers, and Edward Evans in 'the Turner vignette' manner; they are delightful of their kind.
In 1859 there seems to be a falling off, which can hardly be traced to the starting of Once a Week in July, for Christmas books—and nearly all the best illustrated volumes fall into that category—are prepared long before midsummer. C. H. Bennett's illustrated Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress (Longmans) is one of the best of the year's output. A survival of an older type is A Book of Favourite Modern Ballads, illustrated by C. W. Cope, J. C. Horsley, A. Solomon, S. Palmer, and others (Kent), which, but for the publisher's announcement, might well be regarded as a reprint of a book at least ten years earlier; but its peculiar method was unique at that time, and rarely employed since, although but lately revived now for half-tone blocks. It consists in a double printing, black upon a previous printing in grey, not solid, but with the 'lights' carefully taken out, so that the whole looks like a drawing on grey paper heightened by white chalk. Whether the effect might be good on ordinary paper, these impressions on a shiny cream surface, set in gold borders, are not captivating.
Odes and Sonnets, illustrated by Birket Foster (Routledge, 1859), has also devices by Henry Sleigh, printed in colours. It is not a happy experiment; despite the exquisite landscapes, the decoration accords so badly that you cannot linger over its pages with pleasure. Byron's Childe Harold, with eighty illustrations by Percival Skelton, is another popular book of 1859.
Hiawatha, with twenty-four drawings by G. H. Thomas, and The Merchant of Venice (Sampson Low, 1860), illustrated by G. H. Thomas, Birket Foster, and H. Brandling, with ornaments by Harry Rogers, are two others a trifle belated in style. Of different sort is The Voyage of the Constance, a tale of the Arctic Seas (Edinburgh, Constable), with twenty-four drawings by Charles Keene, a singularly interesting and apparently scarce volume which reveals powers of imagining landscape which he had never seen in a very realistic manner. I once heard him declare that he had never in his life been near either an Irish bog or a Scotch moor, both subjects being very frequent in his work.
The Seasons, by James Thomson (Nisbet, 1859), illustrated by Birket Foster, F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., J. Wolf, G. Thomas, and Noel Humphreys, is another small quarto gift-book with the merits and defects of its class. Yet, after making all due allowance, one feels that even these average volumes of the fifties, if they do not interest us as much as those of the sixties, are yet ahead, in many important qualities, of the average Christmas gift-book to-day. The academic scholarship and fine craft of this era would equip a whole school of 'decorative students,' and leave still much to spare. Yet if we prefer, in our heart of hearts, the Birmingham books to-day, this is merely to confess that modernity, whether it be frankly actual, or pose as mediæval, attracts us more than a far worthier thing out of fashion for the moment. But such preference, if it exists, is hardly likely to outlast a serious study of the books of 'the sixties.'