T. MORTEN
'GULLIVER'S TRAVELS'
CASSELL
THE LAPUTIANS
Golden Thoughts from Golden Fountains (Warne, 1867) is another profusely illustrated anthology, on the lines of those which preceded it. The first edition was printed in sepia throughout, but the later editions printed in black do more justice to the blocks. In it we find seventy-three excellent designs by A. Boyd Houghton, G. J. Pinwell, W. Small, J. Lawson, W. P. Burton, G. Dalziel, T. Dalziel, and others; if the book, as a whole, cannot be placed among the best of its class, yet all the same it comprises some admirable work. The Savage Club Papers, 1867 (Tinsley), has also a galaxy of stars in its list of illustrators, but their sparkle is intermittent and feeble. True that Du Maurier, A. Boyd Houghton, J. D. Watson, and a host of others drew, and Dalziels, Swain, Harral, and the rest engraved their work; but all the same it is but an ephemeral book. Krilof and His Fables (Strahan, 1867) enshrines some delightful, if slight, Houghtons, and many spirited animal drawings by Zwecker. Wood's Bible Animals is also rich in fine zoological pictures. The Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity (Nisbet, 1867) would be notable if only for its three designs by Albert Moore, who appears here as an illustrator, probably the only time he ever contributed to any publication. Notwithstanding two or three powerful and fantastic drawings by W. Small, the rest are a very mixed lot, conceived in all sorts of manners. The Illustrated Book of Sacred Poems (Cassell, undated) is a big anthology, with a silver-print photograph by way of frontispiece. It contains a rather fine composition, Side by Side (p. 17), with no signature or other means of identification. W. Small (p. 21), J. D. Watson (pp. 69, 89, 105, 200, 209), M. E. Edwards, H. C. Selous, J. W. North, and many others are represented; but the engravers, for the most part, cannot be congratulated upon their interpretation of the artists' designs.
Other books worth mention are: The Mirage of Life, with twenty-nine characteristic illustrations by John Tenniel (Religious Tract Society); The Story without an End, illustrated by E. V. B.; Cassell's Illustrated Readings, two volumes with a mass of pictures of unequal merit, but the omnivorous collector will keep them for the sake of designs by F. Barnard, J. D. Watson, J. Mahoney, W. Small, S. L. Fildes, and many another typical artist of the sixties, in spite of the unsatisfactory blocks; Fairy Tales, by Mark Lemon, illustrated by C. H. Bennett and Richard Doyle; Pupils of St. John the Divine, illustrated by E. Armitage (Macmillan); Puck on Pegasus (the new and enlarged edition); Poetry of Nature, illustrated by Harrison Weir; and Original Poems by J. and E. Taylor (Routledge, 1868), with a large number of designs by R. Barnes, A. W. Bayes, etc.
With 1868 the end is near; the few books of real merit which bear its date were almost all issued in the autumn of the previous year. The Savage Club Papers, 1868, is a book not worth detailed comment; Five Days' Entertainment at Wentworth Grange, by F. T. Palgrave (Macmillan), contains some charming designs by Arthur Hughes; Stories from Memel, illustrated by Walter Crane (W. Hunt and Co.), is a pleasant book of the year; and, about this time, other work by the same artist appeared in The Merrie Heart (Cassell). King Gab's Story Bag (Cassell), The Magic of Kindness (Cassell), and other children's books I have been unable to trace, nor the Poetry of Nature, edited by J. Cundall.
Lyra Germanica (Longmans), a second anthology of hymns translated from the German, contains three illustrations by Ford Madox Brown, At the Sepulchre, The Sower, and Abraham, six by Edward Armitage, R.A., and many headpieces and other decorations by John Leighton, which should not be undervalued because the taste of to-day is in favour of a bolder style, and dislikes imitation Gothic detail. Of their sort they are excellent, and may be placed among the earliest modern attempts to decorate a page, with some show of consistency of treatment. Compared with the so-called 'rustic' borders of earlier efforts, they at once assume a certain importance. The binding is similar to that upon the first series.
Tom Brown's School Days, illustrated by Arthur Hughes and S. P. Hall, is one of the most notable books of the year. It is curious that at the close of the period, as at its beginning, this artist is so much to the fore, although examples of his work appear at long intervals during the years' chronicle. Yet, as 1855 shows his work in the van of the movement, so also he supplies a goodly proportion of the interesting work which is the aftermath of the sixties, rather than the premature growth of the seventies. Tom Brown is too well known in its cheap editions, where the same illustrations are used, to require any detailed comment here. Gray's Elegy (illustrated in colour by R. Barnes, Birket Foster, Wimperis, and others) is of little importance.
A. BOYD HOUGHTON